Grrl Power #415 – Are you there god? It’s me, Maxima
The first draft of this page stated explicitly what they’re both dancing around, but these two like being circuitous with each other. Essentially, Max is a super in her own right (at least a late bloomer since she hadn’t exhibited any powers by the age of 13.) AND has some sort of symbiote (?) of indeterminate origin adding its powers to hers AND that it was able to determine her superness and made a decision (whether consciously or by some sort of instinct – if it indeed even had any agency at all) to hitch its wagon to her horse. All guesswork by both of them, and probably impossible to determine at this point. Also it would be virtually impossible to tell if it’s boosting her existing powers, or if she would have been a moderately powerful super on her own, and it provides her power pool, or if it’s the source of her armor or what.
I’d love to do the extended version of Max’s origin, which deals with stuff like a 13 year old girl dealing with what seems like pretty frightening disfigurement at first (like girls that age don’t have enough body image issues – hence the coming of age reference in the page title) her first day back at school, breaking the land speed record while trying out for the track team, stuff like that. I just don’t want to derail the main story for that long. Maybe one day I’ll find someone who can draw it for me at a reasonable rate.
I messed up the art a little in this one. Max was supposed to be somewhere around sandy brunette to dirty blonde, but her hair gets really sun bleached and she spends a lot of time outside. She did cross country and track in high school, and kept up with her running over the summer. Really the tips of her hair should be that color, the rest should look like Sydney’s, minus the weird bangs obviously.
Patreon supporters can view this page at twice the size! (as soon as I wake up and post it then immediately go back to sleep since Patreon doesn’t have a way to schedule posts yet.) $1 and up, but feel free to contribute as much as you like :)
Here’s the link to the new comments highlighter for chrome, and the GitHub link which you can use to install on FireFox via Greasemonkey.
SuperheroThey're super, thanks for asking!
Meatspace ComicSeriously these are awesome. Check 'em out!
Not UpdatingNo longer updating or only updates sporadically, but definitely worth reading.
SeriouslySeriously you guys. If you like Grrl Power the check these out.
"Mature"Mature subject matter and occasionally something explicit but usually safe. Can't guarantee the ads are safe though.
Dongs Ahoy!Full frontal and backal. Lots of skin, sex on some or all pages, explicit or otherwise.
Peeling like an egg…. Why DOES that mean she’s stronger?
Oh god, her expression in panel 4.
Maxy, I would hug you if I wasn’t worried about being crushed!
That’s why she promised Sydney no lab-techs poking and prodding her: she remembered what it was like, and at a younger age :(
No, Maxi would not crush an honest sympathy hug (be embarrassed as Heck but she wouldn’t crush you)
Holy crap. I just noticed she is crying in panels 4 & 5.
The artwork is amazing and heartbreaking.
As bad as she’s taking it on this page, wait until her hair either turns purple, or starts falling out before growing back purple…
I think she’d need a sympathy hug more at that point.
Panel four shows her hair is already turning purple
So Maxima is immune to x-rays? Interesting.
On a more interesting note, I spy the orbs in the bottom of the last panel, given we saw Sydney still had them while getting the rebreather in the lab does that mean Sydney is just off-panel right now? Because that’d mean she’s probably overheard a little and would be very suspicious.
Good eye, but I imagine halo is too busy driving deus’ assistant up the wall to notice.
It looks like Halo is hiding behind the couch. Ooooooh Maxima is NOT going to be happy about that >.>
She’s not, That’s the sword display.
It’s been fixed now but for a bit you could actually see the orbs floating in a way that’d only really work if Halo was hiding behind the couch, since been fixed as it was an error.
X-ray opacity is generally function of electron density. That’s why our soft tissue casts only faint shadows on an x-ray, because we’re mostly made out of “CHON”, carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen. All light elements with small electron clouds (heaviest being oxygen with 8 electrons). And why our bones cast strong shadows, because they’re dense tissue of medium atomic weight metal, calcium (#20).
As you go along to heavier and heavier elements they get progressively less transparent to X-rays. Hence, we use lead as shielding (#82, 82 electrons) because it’s the heaviest element that is easily and cheaply available. But gold (#79), thallium (#81) or bismuth (#83) would work just as well physically (but of course be ludicrously more expensive.)
As to Max… This would suggest that her skin doesn’t just look metallic, but does, indeed, contain metals in it.
OR her skin acquired certain properties in common with some metals.
Put supers and their origin stories into the mix, and standard physics tends to get a little strained.
In El Goonish Shive when a griffin told Nanase she was violating just about all the laws of nature by creating a tiny fairy avatar her answer was:
We view the laws of physics more as polite suggestions
Kind of fitting for most super comics…
Ouch, age 13? Here I was hoping that she had made it to sixteen before the change. High school is rough enough for those different, but middle schoolers? Well, if she developed the super human body at that point, she likely broke more than a few hands of the grabby boys.
As for her current conversation, good on her for not giving details to the villain. Best not to give ideas to the guy who a) has likely tried to duplicate the process, and b) has likely fantisized that it caries over the generations.
Hmmm, just came to mind to wonder if she’s from a military family, or if she jumped at the chance to get the hell away from gawkers and gropers.
Her dad is Air Force. At the time this happened she was in school with a bunch of other military brats.
Huh…I have no idea what stereotypes to apply there. Better or worse than preachers kids, I wonder.
Suspected she had a military family, wonder if her sibling(s) will show up in uniform as well.
Military brats are a bit of a mixed breed, but there are a few common threads. Whether introverted or extroverted, they tend to bond and make friends quickly, but those friendships tend to be a bit shallower. There’s a bit of a tendency for conflict avoidance, since there are frequent opportunities to “leave problems behind” by moving to another town. Memories are often associated with locations (e.g. “when did that happen? Well, we were living in San Antonio, so it was 2005 or 2006”). Home decorating is typically extremely eclectic, and largely based on previous assignments (e.g. giant wooden fork & spoon on one wall, photo mural of base above the arctic circle on another, chunk of Berlin Wall mounted in a display case, Italian painting, jade picture frame, etc etc etc). There’s also a tendency toward “itchy feet” (an intense desire to change your surroundings) – I find myself rearranging furniture every 4-6 months if we haven’t actually moved recently.
As with all things, these are simply common themes, and YMMV with individuals…
I would say the moving thing is a bit of we go extreme in either direction. Either we move constantly. (And sometimes swearing this is the last place.)* Or like two I do know, we settle and refuse to move even if moving would be better.
*And usually moving within six months anyway.
Yea, I can agree with some of that. However, maybe because I was Canadian Air Force brat (small military), I made good friends, because I knew when we moved to another base I would have at least some kids I knew, and would likely run into a few previous friends. And after three years (standard posting) I would be bugging my dad, wondering when we were going to move, we had been here long enough.
Wait a sec.. are those some Halo orbs in the “replica” case?
I think its Halo herself. Hiding behind the couch.
Whoops! Crap that’s taken from the page with the weapon display and I forgot to turn off the layer with the orbs before I grabbed it. I need to fix that.
Lazy art recycling for the best
I checked page #408, and was *just* going to ask if it was a copy-and-paste mishap. :)
Ok that’s fixed.
Well, DaveB. You could have explained it with her telepresence power, snooping around.
So, does this mean that acquiring super powers did NOT change Maxima’s hair color, and that she voluntarily dyes it purple?
She has a couple of Purple stands in panel 4.
pretty sure some of her hair are already going purple on that panel.
i really doubt she would dye them like this, while herself being in the process of transformation.
Doubt she’d try to turn her image even more away from the norm on purpose in this situation
Not enough time has elapsed from her transformation for the hair to grow out. (You will note I didn’t reference floors and windows)
Floors and windows? Is that some kind of mutant reference to carpets and cuffs? As in “Do the carpets match the cuffs?” There’s a few different permutations on that, such as carpets and drapes, but I first heard this in one of the Bond movies where the first girl he bangs invites him in and pulls a few quick changes including wig before asking him “Do you like redheads, Mr. Bond?” And his reply was “As long as the carpets match the cuffs?, so that’s my go-to for that euphemism.
Maxima would have no “carpet”, if Daphne is to be believed. Supers don’t have body hair, remember, and Maxima was already a super, just not one that showed her power.
That is somewhat open to interpretation. No body hair can exclude the pubic region as well as the head, and just mean no leg, arm, back, chest, etc. hair.
We need a thorough investigation into the matter!
I volunteer Guesticus to investigate Maxima.
And I shall investigate Peggy, Gwen, Seneca, and Sydney.
Well i can see Sydney’s orbs in the last panel, wonder how much of that conversation she heard.
That was a mistake. It’s fixed now.
two years down the line when new readers get to this page i wonder how many will be confused about the comments about Sydneys orbs ha.
I got here just late enough to already be confused!
2 years, 2 minutes, same diff.
(note: There was a visual error on first upload, fixed now)
Because on the Internet nothing ever goes away…. https://imgur.com/LNYlCRg
…where did they get the blood?
She’s not fully transformed as the x-ray shows in panel 5.
Maybe the got blood from her by using the Nerve Weasel?
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/457
Someone use the Nerve Wolverine on General Zod please.
probably from the right side of her body. as we can see her skeleton on that side of the x-ray she will not have super tough skin on that side.
There’s another way to get blood from a woman even if her skin is impenetrable. It only works once a month, but…
I wonder if that blood sample got destroyed…
The blood itself usually would be (it’s been over 20 years), but the analysis data would be saved.
And heavily classified by now. In fact it was probably classified instantly since she’s a military kid the doc her parents took her to was likely a physician on the base initially, then a much higher up military doc once they started seeing what was happening.
How far apart in age are maxima and her brother?
He looks about 13 to me, where as she looks around 15.
WOG says she’s 13 here. I think she was 15 or 16 in the “I can do that now” scene.
Now I really wonder how supers were a secret for so long.
Poor Max must have hid herself all the time.
People probably just thought she was a cosplayer.
i am pretty sure it is rather rare for a super to actually look too different.
gold skin is Maxima’s thing alone.
Um, no. Take another look at the grand brawl, there are several villains and one Maxima who have fairly shocking looks and unless they can turn them off and on in some kind of Captain Marvel (DC) transformation it would make it very hard for them to just ‘blend in.’
the only one abnormal looking, was concreetia, (however you spell it)
and yes, i would expect her to be able to turn it on and off.
i mean, we have seen that her body is pretty much animated stone puppet, and she cant be a ghost all the time can she?
We don’t know if Cree has a normal physical form, and simply has the ability to ‘astral project’ and create a body out of what ever substance she likes to suit the objective
What about Mr. Crushednutz, with the shadow weapon hands? We don’t know that he can turn that off. I would make for a very interesting “I need to wipe” bathroom scene if he couldn’t, however…
Or that first tool, with the hulk-like physique and ‘roid rage? He’s not passing for ordinary in any setting, while Hiro, Stalwart, and Amorpeous just look like guys who work out a lot.
It’s not so hard to imagine, especially before the dawn of the information age and communications technologies. Getting news outside a single community took considerable effort. Especially when, as R said, most supers don’t generally look too different aside from being closer to idealized human body forms. Combine that with rarity and a lower world population, and its easy to pass off beyond human ability as exaggeration or trickery.
For GrrlPower supers (aka modern times supers, post WW2) the increased population density, and the capacity to quickly collect and disseminate information makes the truly super human harder to hide. Imagine Superman in modern London. One moment there’s Clark Kent in a dozen camera feeds, then he’s simply gone from them all, and Superman arrives. Even if Sups moves faster than the cameras capture, the sudden lack of a Clark on any of them is a “Dog that Didn’t Bark”.
and Mr. Kent can forget about getting away with just glasses to hide his identity, anyone with access to a halfway-decent photomanipulation program can take the glasses off and voila it’s Supes in a suit
You don’t need Photoshop or any such thing. If you’ve seen the Richard Donner cut of Superman II, there is a scene where Lois Lane just takes a pencil and draws glasses on a photo of Superman.
Well, in Superman’s case, it’s more the fact that most people don’t look for a secret identity for everyday stuff, because most don’t think he has one. He shows off his face all the time, already, he obviously doesn’t have anything to hide.
Most others go out of their way to hide their faces, which makes it all the more interesting to find out who’s behind the mask.
At on point in the comic, Jimmy Olson announced he was going to discover Superman’s secret identity (I believe he was working for a TV news network at the time). Once he realised he would be revealing his friend Clark’s identity, he announced that Superman didn’t have a secret identity, that when he wasn’t working, he just went to the North pole to relax.
Yeah, some schmuck in an office cubicle might get away with keeping their secret identity. See The Incredibles for an example. But there’s literally no non-magic reason Superman would be able to retain his secret identity as Clark Kent once the Daily Planet went from print to broadcast. It wouldn’t take a day before someone said “Hey, doesn’t that news guy look just like Superman?” and things would go downhill fast from there.
This has been explained away a few times in the comics. Super hypnotism (that apparently works through TV and also on replays…), magic glasses (when magic was no part of Superman’s origins and is in fact his only weakness other than of course K and a scant few similarly powered people), etc. All of them were lame.
He was actually a newscaster at one point until someone in DC realized that there are people in the DCU that are smart enough to put two and two together and aren’t egotistical like Lex to ignore the truth in favor of their own.
The best explanation I’ve heard is actually a very mundane one. We don’t hear their voices so Clark and Supes sound completely different. Superman is bold, confident, Clark is quiet, kind of dull. Clark also dresses in baggy clothing a few sizes to large to cover his muscle, slouches, never makes eye contact. Superman doesn’t wear a mask*, he stands tall, proud. His clothing is skin tight. His face is also handsome but generic. Multiple people probably look like him besides one Bruce Wayne who has posed as Superman a few times to cover up that whole “they’re never in the same room together.”
Sorry for the rant, I find the idea of disguises very fascinating.
* Superman not wearing a mask is actually quite ingenious. Everyone knows he’s an alien. Everyone knows about the Fortress of Solitude. They all just assume that’s his full time home and if he isn’t hiding his face he has no secrets. So they simply aren’t looking for a secret identity. You can’t find what you’re not aware exists.
A journalist who never makes eye contact?
Among all the stupid things in superhero stories that one has to rank really high.
He makes eye contact when reporting but he’s a bit of a pushover personality-wise when he isn’t on a scoop. The idea is Clark looks shorter, weaker and in a lot of ways distinctly below average and ordinary, even though he’s not drawn by the artist that way. Otherwise you end up with something like this: https://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/clark-kent/2861360
There was one I liked better where after his secret identity was exposed he went to Mexico, added a mustache, and lasted maybe a day before his new editor said something like “Tu est Superman,” and he was all like “Sonova bitch!”
Google failed me, but then maybe it wasn’t SNL, but I thought it was.
Seriously. He’d have a hard time even being considered for the job if that was his demeanor.
There’s an easy explanation why he got that job. He has X-Ray vision. It’s easy to get blackmail material. Superman is a dick! Just look up Superdickery some time.
I often wonder why they don’t just go with when he’s using his solar energy enhanced powers it grants him a far godly appearance so when he’s plain old Clark Kent he looks absolutely normal in addition to the acting he does to enforce that idea?
So he literally glows like a god darn halogen lamp as far as physical appeal goes but as Clark he’s what he appears to be… not sure that would work but no one would link the pair even with photo shop because it would come across as such a complete difference.
Prior to modern times, it would have been easy for a smart super to “fly under the radar”, so to speak. However, now we have easy travel and fast media access to and from pretty much every place where humans live, plus computerized data networks, social media, surveillance via drone and satellite, and so on.
Long and short of it. These days, if you display obvious super abilities and/or look “unusual”, odds are word will very quickly get around unless you live someplace that remains REALLY out-of-the-way – as in isolated villages in the New Guinea Highlands or the Amazon Basin (and even then you’d still have to worry about visits from the Discovery Channel).
I’ve always thought that a lot of people had figured it out, but were one and all decent enough not to bug him. Like, dude saves the earth constantly. If he wants to do reporter cosplay, that’s his privilege.
I so want there to be a live action She-Hulk Comedy/Adventure movie in my lifetime.
A scene::
“Hey look! It’s She Hulk… or is it THE She Hulk? I’m going ask for an autograph!”
“Can’t you see she’s wearing a business suit? That’s her secret identity, Jennifer Walters. Pretend you don’t notice her.”
“But she’s 7 feet tall, green and those things are at eye level!”
She-hulk has been publicly out for her entire run, she’s like maxima in that regard…
Ms… I was agreeing with Walter.
I don’t think supers have been secret, just Arc-SWAT; they’re talked about before Sydney’s powers are revealed to exist, when she talks with her coworker (forgotten his name) about why people still buy comics even though there are real supers around.
You mean Archon, Arc-SWAT (and the rest of the Arc-Angles) are a sub-group
So all supers are right now in the Alaskan Yukon damning the families bringing in filming crew? Sounds about right.
They were known for some time already. It’s open to interpration for how long. From Sydney’s talk I got the impression it was a recent phenomen but a few might have been around longer. Lincoln’s supers were unknown.
Possibly much much longer.
Think the mythology of pretty much every culture on Earth, and all the stuff that numerous heroes (and villains) thereof supposedly did.
That will be explained eventually. :)
The Air Force hid her in the Cheyenne Mountain Complex so the Army could not claim her?
Dude, she was at Groom Lake.
It is where the air force builds and tests new planes SECRETLY.
And it is next door to area 51.
Also – you won’t NEED to find a reasonably priced artist after your a zillionare from the Grrlpower movie! Superheros movies are hot right now. Say hi to J-Lo for me…
Holy Shitake Mushrooms she looks so sad in panel 4. Hurt, Betrayed and almost like she’s being treated as a hing, not a person. I want to support her, but… I cant.
I knoooow.
I just want to hug her, and tell her it will be okay, shes gonna become one of the most badass women on the planet.
But, A) shes fictional, and 2) shed probably kill me if I tried to touch her.
Not sure where you are getting the ‘betrayed’ part from
And it’s only ‘bad-touching’ that would get to killed
Betrayed by life, by fate, by whatever imaginary deity she might foolishly worship, etc. Feelings and emotions don’t always have to be rational, you know.
Did you ever watch Eat Pray Love? I saw it with my wife. After the movie when we were discussing it I told her that I just didn’t get her breakdown that basically launched the movie. She has a good job, a faithful husband who clearly loves her even if he is a bit of a ditz. She is well educated, quite wealthy (able to travel to resorts around the world and stay for months at a time at each), and successful in life. Then for some unknown reason she has this breakdown where she is literally on her knees crying and asking the ceiling “Oh, God. Why me?!?!” Why you, you stupid twit? Half the world would happily trade places with you, you entitled piece of first world crap.
And then she divorces her husband and the movie proper begins. It was the most ridiculous scene I have seen in a movie for a great many years, because for me it painted her as a completely shallow and unsympathetic character and I wanted nothing but bad things to happen to her.
So of course she gets a happy ending, because Hollywood sucks. I wanted to see the story about her husband, divorced for no good reason, winning a sweet settlement since there was no basis for the divorce, and then traveling the world and finally finding happiness.
I felt the same way about the Runaway Bride. Woman keeps dumping these men at the altar, which is a ruthlessly cruel thing to do by the way, she’s done it so much that she has a reputation for it. Then she gets angry to the point of getting a man fired with the help of her friends because he reported it. I kept shouting at the screen “Lady! This is called comupence! You don’t get to be the victim when you’re a total bitch!”
So of course in true Hollywood fashion, he comes to the town, get’s treated as the villain that needs to learn his lesson despite doing nothing wrong. He falls in love with her, we get brief snippets of the dumped men that amounts to nothing and he tries to marry her. Admittedly, someone with that rep I wouldn’t touch with a ten foot pole, but Hollywood! She dumps him at the altar as per usual. And instead of yelling at her and telling her off like any sane person would, he helps her through her problems and they finally do get married.
Romantic comedies seem to follow a pattern. Horrible woman does horrible things, and man comes along. He either calls her out on it and is immediately considered the villain for it, or he isn’t calling her out in which case he’s just the love interest. Either way, he must learn a lesson to earn her at the end. Meanwhile she will run around doing horrible things and get off scot-free. Doubly so if it’s Julia Roberts.
I really don’t care for Roberts. Her mouth is way too big for her face, and she can’t act worth shit.
I call it the PEZ dispenser head. She opens her mouth and when it opens up enough, a candy pops out.
Don’t let him get inside your head Maxima…………………
That’s what the robotic nano-probes are for. (You know, the ones he slipped into her drink)
1) they couldn’t transmit through her skin (if x-rays don’t work)
B) trying to collect them after they were done (most likely from her urine) would be …interesting.
Lastly, her stomach acid would probably make short work of them. Making the whole exercise a waste of time.
1) If she has the need to eat and breath, things can pass through her intestines and lungs into her blood stream;
B) The proper way to manufacture a nano-probe is to have it show up at your lab when the job is completed;
Lastly, it’s fairly easy to make something that resists acid. Gold, for example, is inert and unharmed by acid. Gold electo-plated nano-probes, no more outrageous than any other super-tech item in the comics. And a lot more plausible IMO than ray guns and the like, which Dabbler has already. Mono-filament banding strong enough to tow an asteroid is a thing in this comic, as is an injection bracelet which can keep a person unconscious for whatever period of time without simply killing people due to overdoses or failing due to underdoses. So if a wrist band with the super-tech of monitoring vitals and administering anesthetics exists, so can a nano-probe.
If we’re going with nano probes, why not quantum-entanglement transmitters / transceivers as part of they deployment package? Skip right past those pesky EM issues. :D
Of course nano-probes can exist in the Grrl Power universe, but is it within the capabilities of human tech? The ray guns and asteroid towing tape that Xuriel used are alien technology, and she’s not sharing it. The injection bracelet is probably the least problematic and not far from what we could create today, but it’s a large step going from
If Deus does have nano-probes of decent quality they were probably created by either a gadgeteer or he has access to some alien who does not share Xuriels reluctance to share.
(missed a bit there)
…but it’s a large step going from making a injection bracelet to creating nano-probes.
If we have nano probes, why not quantum entanglement transceivers / transmitters as part of the probe? Skip the whole EM spectrum entirely. :D
Well, crap, that was both weird and moderately upsetting. Sorry for the double-post (redundapost?).
It showed up twice because the post was quantum entangled with itself.
I was just thinking this but you beat me to it.
So if I understand the Author section right, that is confirmation that Max was a super (though unaware of it) already before this incident happened?
After the previous page I thought she might have been a regular human. Though it is interesting that the stuff that bonded with her isn’t the source of her power but instead that it changed / added to her existing power(s).
Just confirmation that Maxima and Deus *suspect* the orb chose her because she was a super. And that she hadn’t manifested any powers by that time, which would make her a “late bloomer” by super standards.
Does it? I haven’t heard of any super-children in this world, yet. I imagine super-powers manifest in puberty, and Max is just starting that here. Maybe the orb sensed, somehow, that her superpowers were just starting to manifest, and responded.
Well, I believe it’s been said before that Harem manifested her first duplicate around the time she was 10-ish, and started making more as time went on. So it’s possible that a lot of supers start to get their powers slowly, and some less-obvious powers might not become apparent for some time after they’ve actually started to emerge.
(For example, how do you initially tell the difference between some kid who’s getting stronger because he’s suddenly getting buffed by testosterone, and a kid who is getting legit super-strength, if the latter only manifests over the course of several years?
I don’t think you’ll find many instances of toddlers with superpowers – other than if they also have at least one superpowered parent. If you don’t understand why, ask any parent of a two-year-old what it would be like if their kid had any one of Max’s powers.
The closest I can think of is Katherine Gilchrist in Wapsi Square. She’s devoid of paranormal or super powers, and either one of her daughters could rip her limb from limb in seconds. BUT… they are both adopted, and the younger one was five or six years old when she met them. (Also, Kath has absolutely mastered Mom Voice, to such a degree that she now has a paranormal-high-school athletics coach going “oh shit I’m in it deep”.)
Don’t forget, Kath is on a level above the MIB (the MIB were partially set up to cover her tracks)
And don’t forget the part that says:
Also it would be virtually impossible to tell if it’s boosting her existing powers, or if she would have been a moderately powerful super on her own, and it provides her power pool, or if it’s the source of her armor or what.
So Dave doesn’t actually say anything about just what the heck is going on with her powers. The “geode” could be enabling her powers, augmenting her powers, adding powers, be the sole reason she’s got any powers at all, or almost anything you can dream of. At this time all we or they know is that she first manifested any abilities after being bathed in whatever was in that container.
This makes me wonder if Sydney is the similar, a dormant super who is compatible with the orbs.
remember when varia grabbed sydney’s hand, and the orbs added her to their rotaiton…
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/1751
Holy crap I totally missed the orbs thing! Also, this page would explain her powers not working with Maxima…
Not just her ears, but her bone structure changed? At least the two sides of Max’s head look different.
You’re right, more pronounced bone structure
That’s, uh, just slightly sloppy art. :/
So it’s just puberty?
Well her cheekbone already went pointer, unless that’s just supposed to be a reflection.
As Max’s dad is in the Air Force, Max is being seen by MILITARY DR’s. Which means that she and her transformation could have been classified by the Military/Government from that point on.
Also, look at Max’s face, I feel like she needs major hugs.
Yet she was on the track team?
Because she still went to school, military bases still have schools, or the kids simply go to a regular school if the family is stationed in one place long enough
Honestly? As gorgeous as the art is, I’d be more than happy just to read Max’s extended Origin Story as pure text, novella-style. Same for the other bits of world-building that get compressed or cut due to the comic format punishing lengthy asides. Maybe as Patreon incentives?
+1
i’d put down money for that. for ease of distribution, you could self-publish via kindle or what have you, which would also allow you to (for a short time at least) control things like sharing.
I would definitely read that.
Echo that.
Waiting impatiently for the kickstarter.
I would so love side stories to some other characters. Especially the Dabbler and Maxima origin stories sound interesting, though Harem could be a lot of fun too.
Poor ol’ Max. I almost get the impression that she got a lot closer to those government sponsored vivisectionists than Sydney ever did.
Good thing is she has screwy skin. Would be funny after a while.
,,Bajonets on a minigun? Is this the best you have?”
I know this is a typo on your part, but this is now my favorite word of the day (so far)…
“Bajonets? We don’ need no steenkeeng bajonets!”
Off to sillygiggle a bit. :D
The rednecks want to talk to you “piggy”.
Fortunately, they couldn’t actually get through her skin after the transformation was complete
Although she could still be injured sufficiently to spend time in a hospital, which, IIRC, is where she met Peggy.
Sure, but remember she fought a super of equal power level at the time (he is dead. “We think”)
he isn’t. he was in the lineup of villains :P “so, i’m dead, am i?”
I know. But Maxima said ‘he’s dead (as far as we know)’
You should do a little mini comic like your “bottom of the art page” comics as a side story for her beginnings XD
Hey Dave, you do realize that she peeled her right shoulder in her room, yet in the doctors office it’s her left side that was overtaken with the right side showing normal on the verge of gold on the x-rays. Bot being nit picky just letting you know of the location error.
ouch – that one’ll be difficult to fix
If there was just something as a mirror function. Somebody should implement it into software.
You can’t just mirror someone’s face. That makes it look really weird
Good catch. The extension of the X-ray opaque area does just barely, maybe cover that area of the right shoulder. But I agree that it is most likely a continuity error.
To me in the x-ray it looks clearly like that small area she peeled is the only spot on that shoulder. She didn’t continue once her brother made the snarky comment.
Yeah I saw that as I was posting it. I could just add a little more white to the left side of the Xray.
If you recall the Gerry Anderson series Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons,there were several episodes that alluded to the many weaknesses of the Mysterons….! One is that they’re impervious to x-rays and the said x-ray would resemble a photograph.
Here’s a Wikipedia article to read about:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mysteron
I hope that’ll clear things…
Damn! Have that series on DVD (somewhere), really need to watch it now :(
Hey Dave, if you really want to do the extended origin for Max, why not put together a complete script, talk to a few artists you know to see what they’ll charge for it, and then put up a kickstarter to do it, or make it a Patreon goal? I’m fairly sure a lot of us here would put in a few dollars to see this happen :D
While you need more scripting / plotting work like you need a third nose, i endorse and approve of this idea.
Or use Max’s origins and time in the military as the script for the movie. Once that’s big he’ll have enough audience to work on the comic full time :)
Every time Deus speaks, I like him just a little bit more. And he’s not stupid, which is a HUGE plus in the villain dept.
And he’s not cruel, he can be cold or calculating sometimes but doesn’t go out of his way to be cruel.
I wanted to take a moment, DaveB, to compliment you on the detailed art in panel 1 – the subtle transition from sunburn at the top of the shoulder, fading to a tan at her lat, with the tan-line providing a solid comparative… your artistry has really grown since the series started!
There is nothing wrong looking with her hair before the transformation
He didn’t say it was wrong, just not what he was going for. Sun bleached brunette/ dirty blond would have darker roots, whiter tips.
Dirty blonde is still blonde, and seem (to me, a dirty blonde) to match with the ‘highlights’
Baseless assumption? Hasn’t she pretty much gone on record saying she’s the most powerful? Why she made a show of it at the press conference to make everyone weaker than her, cower in fear?
We’ve already seen that she’s not the strongest. Given the right circumstances, Vehemence was stronger.
Of course, there’s not just a ‘powerlevel’ issue, it’s all relative based on situation
Also in #265, Dabbler (power level 7) says she could do the same.
Hypothesis: power level is rated for normal circumstances. When Maxima “maxes out” one of her powers, it’s effectively a 10. And when a magic energy absorber gets juiced enough, they can go to 11, briefly.
Yea, Maxima is a lvl 5 in every power, just not all at the same time
The baseless assumtions were directed at the parts where he was speculating that the goo chose her or that it’s because of it that she’s more powerful.
I’d imagine she doesn’t necessarily mean the words, but more the implied assumptions behind Deus’s words
I can’t help but thinking back to that Demon Dabbler faced. The Demon that she was reminded of when Maxima went insanely destructive on the tank for the press. The Demon that we saw a shot of saying “Found You” when Arc-swat announced itself to the public.
“Golden Goddess” always felt a touch “golden calf” to me; perhaps Maxima was enhanced by something demonic, and why Dabbler is so interested with Maxima.
Welcome to the club.
My pet theory is that the gold thing was put there, by someone who was in the room, and THEY chose Maxima. That they put the “geode” in there as she was approaching it in the hopes she’d pick it up.
That’s as contrived as the Ant Man movie.
Agent 1: So, the plan involves us:
1) Knowing which random museum a vacationing family will visit (I don’t know about you, but when I was a kid and we did ‘road trip’ vacations where we would drive to our final destination across many states to save on airfare, we would stop at a pile of random local attractions as we passed through places);
2) Hoping that they have a box of geodes;
3) Placing the transformation geode in said pile;
4) Hoping no one else finds said transformation geode before our target;
5) Hoping the right kid of two picks up the right one;
6) Hoping that kid breaks it open above her head so that some of the transformation fluid gets in her mouth and all over her skin;
Is that about right?
Agent 2: Yeah, we work for a bunch of idiots, right?
But you should totally write that movie!
I was thinking more of someone spying on Max until they learned where they were going to go, then invisibly lurking to put the geode in. And it wasn’t always a geode, just a formula and a lot of different delivery mechanisms. And this one seems to have had something a homing device in the delivery. As for hoping the right one picks it up… maybe either of them?
To be clear, what I said of my pet theory is only how it relates to this case. My FULL theory is that someone or something is behind the sudden proportional increase in supers, and that this + Halo’s spheres are part of their grand plan.
One way it could work would be by creating an egg (I know, they’re geodes, but that’s the term I’m using for the spheres filled with liquid) that is a bit too tough for a hammer and chisel to puncture, but set up that a person with burgeoning super strength can break but not easily. Most people when they struggle with something strength wise tends to hold it close. It breaks under the strength and sends the goop all over her. Dave confirmed she was already a super and rocks don’t just break by hand for just anyone.
Which means the possibility of these eggs all over the place just waiting for a teen with super strength to come along. So she was chosen by conditions?
What he confirmed is that Maxima and Deus have made that assumption.
Amongst other guesses.
To me, that seems an extremely unreliable means of “selection” – she might have suddenly NOT picked up that specific geode, or her brother (or soneone else) might have instead, for any number of reasons. If you’re going to go that way, might as well just say it was invisible alien time-travellers or something, and be done with it.
It was almost like an invisible entity was controlling her every action and somehow posting those actions for others to observe for their amusement. And somehow altering the contents of her world into a much more detailed format over time.
Do you wonder if the people in the world ask each other “Have you noticed objects don’t look so flat lately? It is almost like the universe is developing another dimension beyond the known two.”
“My assumptions are classified.”
Made me smile more than anything else on the page.
Coming-of-age story tropes aside, I think we can all agree on the real tragedy of Max’s origins: the loss of the frecklies.
Yup, a true loss to the world :(
I have to give serious props to Max for restraint. The fact that her brother lived through the torment he probably inflicted on her proves she’s not as much of a hard ass as she wants people to believe. I say this as a male sibling of 2 sisters. Believe me kids find ways to annoy each other just for fun. And depending on the situation might even recruit others to join in. Not that it’s all bad, you’d take jokes from relatives you’d never take from strangers. And often an attack on one is seen as an attack on all.
Siblings do that normally, but when they are sick, or have serious problems they turn supportive. During the ‘pick on the difference’ stage she wouldn’t have powers. During the ‘is she dying’ stage he would be supportive. When she recovered enough to be picked on, he would know picking on her too much would be dangerous.
When Maxima was teaching Sydney to not have a ‘Gwen Stacy’ moment, it flashed back to her brother popping paper bag and her blowing a hole in the wall in surprise.
Yeah, he was lucky to survive.
I’m a little surprised she isn’t in a bio-hazard isolation ward.
That was undoubtedly the NEXT phase of her medical evaluation. Given the sheer strangeness of her condition, easy to imagine the medical community would subject her to every kind of test imaginavble, short of actual witch-doctoring.
Sort of crossing tinelines and/or TV universes here, but one can’t help but imagine Dr House taking her case on at some point.
I’d love to see crossovers like that. Also the CSI guys investigate the crime scenes left over by the Supernatural guys.
If you haven’t seen it already, the following is well worth a look. It is rather mind-blowing –
https://thetommywestphall.wordpress.com/the-master-list/
Maxima was a badass as a kid. I would NOT touch my skin when I’m burned enough to peel it off. That stuff HURTS
When I was a kid I burned my skin every summer, often to the degree it hurt just to lie down on the softest of beds, and a few times bad enough to leave scars. The bed sheets often felt like they were woven from barbed wire.
The best way to get some sleep that I’ve found is to take a really hot shower. Make it as hot as you are able to stand, it will feel like the skin is burning, then turn it up a bit more. The pain is quite severe at first but after a few seconds your body will produce endorphin and the pain will back off. Raise the temperature again and wait for the pain to fall off. Dry off quickly and go directly to bed. The bed sheets that moments ago was rough enough to feel painful will now feel soft as silk. If you’re lucky you will be able to fall asleep before the effect wears off…
we need a name for Max’s brother…
Trent.
Or maybe Phineous.
Nah, go with the theme.
Minimus.
Fun fact: Minimus is the name of the smallest toe
How about Sam?
‘Cause then you’d have Sam & Max (Freelance Police!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVoSylY5M_4
Too bad his father was in the military and not a cartoonist. Then he could have been ‘Sam’.
What he said! ^^
Maybe Mom and Dad were forgetful and didn’t want to have to remember a lot of names, so they named him Maxwell. Then they would be Max and Max!
Really hoping Deus turns out to be like a beneficial Doctor Doom and not just evil in the end.
Maybe “Doctor Hope” or something?
His plan is to take over the world by the opposite of standard tactics. Rather than using intimidation and hiding his facial scar behind a mask, he will gain power by showing his face and positively influencing people’s emotions. He will be Dr. Mood.
Deus is pretty straightforward. He wants the entire world (galaxy? multiverse?) to be like Galytn: prospering under his imperial reign.
Oppressive dictatorship can let you control a medium-sized country, but the more land you grab the tougher it gets to sustain. A resentful populace is less productive and more rebellious. To conquer EVERYTHING, you need happy talented citizens who believe they’re better off with you in charge.
Better yet: a self-governing nation, but not completely self-sustaining (if they ever got to the point they felt they didn’t need him at all…)
Clearly the extended origin should be a Volume I kickstarter incentive goal. Probably one of the really high ones.
Oops, Dave, you started a numbered list but didn’t count higher than 1. (My sister does that a lot.)
Hah, that’s what I get for writing the posts at 1 am.
So? One is a number. You can have only one item on a numbered list. Heck, zero is a number, too.
Ok that xray is kinda creeping me out…
wait… why would she develop elf ears if she was just peeling off her skin?
I’d imagine that was the work of whatever was in the geode.
I’m thinking it’s alien. It made Max into something else. Can you imagine what that does to someone at the age of 13!?
No wonder she gets so angry in regards to sexuality. She’s stunning, but always stands out as an outsider. She’s too powerful to safely have an intimate relationship outside of a super (all of whom have their own issues). I suspect Maxima is probably a virgin (that’s a big social-ital stigma in our country).
Panels 4 and 5 indicate that Max’s skin change was not instantaneous – it spread from the point of initial contact, her body being rebuilt from the inside. (Not a bad analogy for puberty, if I may say so.) They were still able to take blood samples from her, at this point (probably from the unaffected areas) – Deus would probably pay a LOT for those results, they’d tell him a lot about what changes were happening.
For a thirteen-year-old, this had to be terrifying – even her EYE COLOR is different between the two. Max clearly had a harder puberty than most – which lends credence to my theory that Max doesn’t think she is pretty, not on a subconscious level. Puberty teaches a lot of kids that they are clumsy, awkward, and unattractive, and Max clearly had FREAK added to that list early on. She may be beautiful now, but a part of her will never accept that.
Oh, dear. I just noticed her FACE. Blonde Max does not have those axe-blade cheekbones, but Gold Max does, and panel 4 Max has BOTH. The very bone structure of her face is being rebuilt!
I feel the need to hug her.
Some of that might be a little bit of baby fat, so to speak.
DaveB said that that was a little sloppy artwork. Probably scaled down the gold side of her face from the mature Maxima.
So the cheekbones are probably just normal puberty itself
Yeah I guess they aren’t sharp like that in 122 https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/720
Excellent points.
It may also partly explain her (presumably later) strongly feminist leanings. There is nothing wrong with having those but, in Max’s case, they might also serve as a kind of defense mechanism.
Almost certainly.
Less fear of being ‘hurt’ if you scare everyone away (shame for Dragon Maxi that Sydney is a bit of a Kender, and they have immunity to Dragon Fear :P)