Grrl Power #442 – Fablupus
I’m still vacation, but I’ll be back Friday. I’m posting this from my phone cause I don’t trust the open wi-fi at the hotel, https or no. Hopefully I don’t screw anything up or get too many auto concubine errors.
Ingsol raises a fair question really. Sydney does seem to have an effect on those around her. Of course the actual 4th wall penetrating reason is that it’s funny if she’s just super disarming. In canon, there’s probably no aura involved. Probably. The idea of a stupidity aura is pretty amusing to me, or even better, an intelligence vampirism field. Some super who is more intelligent the more people he’s around. When the team needs to invent something really complicated like a stargate or a time traveling thong, they buy him superbowl tickets. Of course everyone in attendance gets a few IQ points shaved off for the duration, but, well, not to dump on sports fans too much, but who’d really notice, am I right?
In Sydney’s case, it might make more sense if she was a reverse concentration vampire. She gets more distracted the more people are around. Oh, wait, that’s how regular ADHD works. Ok, maybe she leaches concentration from others, but, instead of benefitting from it, the extra concentration just gets beamed into space.
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An unexpected power….
So, uh, how does his pants usually work, considering how they have a tail space?
Actually on the last panel, it seems there is a rip in it
nah, pretty sure that’s the tail
Maybe it’s one of those pants with a hole on the butt for emergency bathroom breaks.
Or maybe a butt flap.
NSWF warning (mild).
Werewolf tailors solved these issues generations ago, and have made some of the more basic versions publicly available. Selling them for both bipedal and quadrupedal forms.
Not Safe Work For?
=OP
Now Sayeth Wobbegong Frank.
Not Safe, Worker Fired.
Naturally Silly, Wisdom Fail
You Obviously Love Owls? Wait, that’s a different acronym.
Velcro or snaps, like in tear-away pants.
Yea, last time that particular version was raised, someone pointed out that velcro and fur are two non-mixy things. Like water and… some other non-mixy thing.
Like water and sodium.
Not quite Yorp. Fur & velcro DO mix together…all too well. The problem when you combine the two is in getting them unmixed again!
:P
As Gravity said, like water and sodium!
Graith, rather than Gravity. But yea, entropy would not be happy with you trying to squeeze them back together. Especially if in a confined space, with a naked flame.
Mind you then it becomes more of an issue of how to put you back together. Or put out your burning clothes, should you survive.
Here, have a turnip, Baldrick.
*paws over a humongous turnip*
Squeezing together, confined space, naked flame… Yorp, you dog you… ok, I should have expected this sooner.
It takes a dog to know one, eh Artie?
;)
Stupidity Aura is not a superpower.
Way too many ordinary people have it.
Exactly!
I was just about to…
Have any of you ever been around drunk people while, for some reason, being sober and staying sober?
The “stupidity” that’s “radiated” by drunkenness is seriously contagious! At least it has that effect on me. No real idea why, but a theory: It might be because it’s fun playing dumb and since the others are already down on that level, you fit in easily :D
Hold my beer and watch this!
Famous last words that might be already engraved on more than a few tombstones…
:-/
They would be on mine but my tombstone is going to be a me-shaped hole in the side of a cliff.
Maybe you have been standing near to Sydney, for too long?
*shuffles away from Random Guy, in case it is contagious*
Not ‘standing near’ that’s me dancing on her shoulder, cheering her on.
https://imgur.com/gallery/ZNSaq
…you can thank me later
“We’re all looking for our holes.”
That’s something I would keep to myself.
There’s one hole in particular that I never wished to see…On the display monitor as the doctor performed the colonoscopy…
why did you post that
Quote from the link he posted.
Oops, sorry, thought I saw that as a response to my message.
Or be horrified now.
https://i3.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/030/147/Hole_Backward.jpg
Thank you, I’ve been wanting to find that again ever since I saw the Kindergarten on Steven Universe.
Scary! Thank goodness there are no dog-shaped holes!
*goes and hides in kennel*
*shuts the door*
*locks the door*
*hides the key*
no. no. no. its lock the door, then hide the door, make the key seem unrelated.
have you ever tried to hide before?
Damn you, now I’m gonna have to huddle under the blanket for a couple of hours.
Stain, more likely than hole. Unless you’re made of neutronium or something.
Fun fact: I just added ‘neutronium’ to my browser dictionary because it was flagging it as a misspelling of ‘neutron.’
I do recall that a human, falling at terminal velocity, does create a shallow crater, on hitting earth. Less than the width of the body, as best I can recall. Briefly googling that though just gets depressing pages of results about what happens to the body. Does nobody care about the poor Earth?
Presumably a cliff is made of rock, but, even so, there is bound to be some deformation, despite that. Perhaps resulting in some fracturing, rather than cratering. I think the rock will win mind, but it will have a bruise.
Bound to be some deformation? The human body is mostly water. Water (salt water, at that!) can crash against a cliff face for years before changing it. You really think that a single impact of a ~200 lb person is going to do anything other than make pretty colors on a cliff face?
I think there will be an equal and opposite reaction. The impact is sufficient to break every bone in a human’s body (and more). That same force will be applied to the rock. Any weakness will be affected by that 200lb travelling at terminal velocity. If there is a crack, it will get wider, for example.
Hitting a cliff means it is likely to hit a ledge, or other protuberance, on the way down.. Ledges are not intrinsically stable structures. So it could potentially crumble. Possibly even triggering an avalanche, if the circumstances are right.
Alternatively, if it strikes a solid, unyielding, rock face, then it may well take a forensic examination to determine what damage was done. But there will be something, yea.
You’re really stretching here. “Ledges are not intrinsically stable structures” Really? Why not? You’re basing your premise on the theory that all cliff faces are just waiting to crumble, when in fact they can last for thousands of years with just minimal spalling. Launch a ~200 lb person at one at 100 mph and all you get is pretty colors on the rock face.
There is no mention of ‘pretty colours’, when you use physics, to calculate the impact force.
The summary for hitting rock though is “less penetration, more impact force”.
3 people whip out their cell phones and you get multiple views of the same event on Fail Army.
Generally referred to as a “contact high”, I believe.
. . . It actually is a power.
I once read a printed comic where the effects as described was used. No massive stupidity, just a slight lowering The super in this case got hired at a very high tech research lab and drained his co-workers to slow down their research while he made massive advances he kept secret for himself.
Then he destroyed all the research in the lab and killed his co-workers while faking his death. He started using his inventions for his own gain, and was a hard enemy to beat.
Insert political joke here.
Insert witty comment that indicates I’m not a politician here.
Mmm.
[thinking: everybody knows what liars politicians are. trying to misdirect us with humour?]
Of course, you might expect ninja to be capable of lying. We’re not like samurai, who fight for honor; we fight to win!
;)
Honor? Isn’t that a name?
I don’t think I know of anything else called honor.
Honor Harrington. She is pretty bad-ass. I did not know that she employed ninjas mind. But, well, that is the sign of them doing a good job, after all.
Both Victor Cachat and Anton Zilwicki are pretty much super-ninjas. Of the Batman type: Normal humans with super intelligence and a lot of neat gadgets. And in Anton’s case, the ability to pound you to a pulp with his bare hands also.
Victor does not need to resort to physical violence (though he is quite capable of it).
He will just scare you to death.
For me it will always be Honor Blackman; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honor_Blackman
She did have the most . . . unusual name for any Bond girl that I can remember.
Well, before Bond, she was only interested in girls
Not True! Before Bond she was with John Steed.
Meant her character :P
Any one of her Armsmen probably qualify. The Steadholder’s Own, mind you.
Ah, yes, auto concubine errors, those are the worst…
So, extra pill at dinner means she’s able to execute surprisingly graceful pivots. And / or the presence of super fluffy items. These should be tested for effectiveness before she has to go into her next battle.
Most of us would love to have auto concubines.
That’s why I always concubine manually.
They’re certainly preferable to auto colostomy errors.
Why would you want a concubine for your car?
Well folks do ‘pimp their rides’, so why not the other way around?
Have you ever heard of the phrase ‘auto erotica’?
Yep. And don’t forget, autoerotic asphyxiation will be the cause of Fox Mulder’s death.
I think Scully will be more careful with him, than that.
Or do you think he will two-time her, with their Cadillac?
Pretty sure Mulder would make some smartass comment during intimacy and she’d strangle him for it. He never did learn not to talk with his mouth full. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡° )
Also ascii Yorp
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Oooh, if I squint, it is like looking into a sepia‡ mirror.
*strikes up a matching pose, in front of the ‘mirror’ and waves paw, to see if it responds*
‡ Thanks to the ‘new comments highlighter’.
Well to be fair, she nabbed the flight orb. Being able to freely move in three dimensions without worrying about pesky things like gravity or momentum enables one to execute phenomenal acrobatics; it’s not really all that surprising, but if the wolf and vampire don’t know how her orbs work, it looks acrobatic.
True – I suppose I should’ve been clearer in that I meant that she had the presence of mind to grab the flight orb, which was a bit shocking given Sydney – remember how far she fell when putting in her earpiece? And that was while starting off holding it.
The actual pivot, true, no sweat at all.
It’s not the pill, it’s the flight orb. Remember when she was first demonstrating them and did the ‘rotate around her core’ maneuver? Maxima said something like “She can fly in a very aggravating manner.” And also remember the pirouette on the rooftop ledge of a high building? And then releasing the flight orb and getting sudden agoraphobia/acrophobia?
Clearly the flight orb allows Sydney to control her body far more dexterously and with far more confidence than she can do without it.
[gracefully and acrobatically issues]: +1
How much you wanna bet that this is one of the tracks she could unlock as she leveled up that orb? More dexterity while using it.
It rather seems as though her flight orb uncouples her from the usual effects of gravity and inertia with regards to her own frame of reference. (That may be poorly worded, but it’s not techno babble.)
The “surprisingly graceful pivot” surprises me not at all. We’ve seen how comfortable Syd is with the flight orb multiple times. [My fav is here; https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/554 ] And she did tell Max that even when she was keeping the orbs a secret she spent a lot of time floating around her room. So close quarters maneuvering should be something she’s very practiced at.
Poor, poor Barkley…
I was a little disappointed Sydnay didn’t go with Ysengrin. It would have been a nice shout-out.
ADHD or not, Sydney seems pretty well focused on getting those pictures…Well, at least her camera seems pretty well focused.
Someday Barkley will get stuck in a tree…
With a rabid Sydney at the base shouting for him to come down, and then she remembers her Florb and Barkely wishes wolves evolved with wings as Inggie flaps away laughing :D
I have a feeling 50% nicknames she gives to people will stick.
Oh yea.
*snort*
Anyone remember Periwinkle Butt Sniffer?
Google eyes are pretty hard to forget. They really DO make everything better.
Well, if Google had been able to sell them under the “Google i” brand, they would have been much more memorable. But they probably feared litigation, from the maker of another product.
I’m 99% sure that’ll link me to apple but I’m going to avoid hoving over it so I can hold onto the hope that it’s secretly the Playtonic Games page.
You should hold on to your dreams. The truth is far too disturbing, nay horrific!
Sydney is the apple of Yorp’s eye…
:)
Gahh! Sydney has the Trump ‘playground bully’ power to make nicknames stick? Perish the thought!
Sydney’s getting good with flying
That was indeed a helluva move!
I think she learned a little something back when she tried to clobber Dabbler.
“Tried?” Merely “tried?”
Even though Sydney didn’t succeed the first time, her perserverance still got Dabbler clobbered.
At least Maxima got a good laugh out of it.
Halo actually using her orbs properly with that mid-air recovery.
(10) (10) (10)
I suppose he knew Max wouldn’t allow her to be seriously injured being tossed across the room,
but that seems an excessive use of super. Eh. No harm done.
I think that is more of a *let go*, possibly combined with a gentle push to make sure she doesn’t land on her head, than it is a *fling across the room* kind of action.
She does seem to be flying upside down before being thrown or grabbing orbs.
Actually, in the first panel it looks like Gregor is already holding Sydney up by her ankle. Notice how high up his left shoulder is there? And in panel 2, how that’s the same arm he’s using to toss Sydney away?
Yup. Sidney has both hands on the camera, and all orbs are in halo position.
That confused me for a while too. But what you said makes sense.
Ahhh, all makes sense now. Silly little bird.
Those darn auto concubines lol
sydney can’t be phased or bothered but it seems that drag and barkly can be hehe
She’s so wacky everyone forgets that thay are IRL
I think he was actually starting to enjoy it at the end there
Maybe Gregor just isn’t used to meeting such an…enthusiastic…fan.
I think that this may qualify as ‘zany.’ Or ‘wacky.’ There’s definitely an element of over-the-top there. Which Barkley probably doesn’t get much of in his diet.
Well, you do realize that referring to someone as a “fan,” you’re using a short-form version of the word “fanatic,” right?
:P
A definite point, that.
Its the stupidity aura, he kinda got sucked into the unreality of the situation and started to go along. Its actually a fascinating thing that explains why mobs sometimes form. People are surprisingly easy to lead if you go to them with confidence and the expectation of obedience. Him being a dog/wolf man might even make him easier to lead.
It’s not a stupidity aura. It’s the natural reaction of someone meeting a person who is TOTALLY into them and crazy enthusiastic. Sydney is being completely sincere. Anyone who thinks well of themself [and you -really- have to have self-confidence to be an active super] will pick up on her excitement and get a charge out of showing off.
If they need a time traveling thing they can just ask if Dabbler have one. But technicaly all thongs are time travelling as they travel forward in time with the rest of us.
Perhaps Sydney is a intelligence wampire? The smarts of nearby sapient creatures is what recharges her orbs.
A time travelling thong? I’m sure I’ve seen that film…
Sorority Sisters Hot Tub Party of the Time Traveling Thong.
I would like to get my paws on that.
*wriggling uncomfortably*
It turns out that it suits some</a, more than others.
Just watch out when it starts chaffing at 88mph.
“Draw me like one of your French Poodles…”
Sisterhood of the Travelling Underpants?
So go backwards.
Just remember to ask if the guys have to wear it if they want to time travel.
I’m guessing that if she were to have such a power, Sidney would actually drain the concentration off of other people and convert it to hyperactivity.
I read a short story Idontknowhowlongago that theorized that Sherlock Holmes wasn’t really all that smart… he was really a telepath that projected a field that dropped YOUR IQ by about 25 points if you were standing within ten feet of him. It makes sense when you think about it: Lestrade was a Captain of Detectives- a job not exactly handed out in Crackerjack boxes- and Watson was not only a full-bore MD, he was also a military officer. But along comes Holmes, and all of a sudden it’s break out the drool bibs.
“Look, Watson- a wall!”
“By Jove you’re incredible, Holmes!”
There was an SF mystery story — one of the ‘Bernie Summerfield’ Dr Who spin-offs — in which a ‘Miss Marple’ equivalent subconsciously projected a field that made people around her commit murders… thus explaining how she was fortuitously on hand to solve so many murder cases…
It would also explain how she knew they were committed and by who.
Still, after the 8th murder you would think people started to ask questions, if they lived long enough.
Also would explain “Murder She Wrote” though I still have my theories that Jessica Fletcher actually was just a Sociopathic killer. Even Cabot Cove seemed to have more murders per square mile than LA!
And finally we have the truth of what was going on in Midsomer. The village which, over time, had more murders than there were inhabitants!
If it was not for a thriving estate agent industry, and a very adroit team of spin doctors, working for the village hall, they would never have been able to keep the community going.
As an aside, that’s why the writers eventually had her move to New York (IIRC). There, having one homicide per week would not be unusual. (If she stayed in Cabot Cove much longer, the entire population would consist of her, and the murderers she helped put behind bars.)
No, it wouldn’t.
My bolds for clarification.
True enough. But what I think Corruption may have been aiming at, is the fact that the murderers would always be known to the detective. Unlike most investigations, where they must eliminate the rest of the population of the region (and beyond), the afflicted detective can home in on just the people present, since their own arrival.
Obviously , early on in their career, they might have to consider the wider public. But experience will soon teach them that following their gut instinct, that it is somebody near to hand, will invariably lead to results. If they fail to make the connection that they themselves are the commonality in these cases, then it will affect their deductive reasoning.
Of course it will be at odds with the more rational pessimism of cops, who know that it will take years to gain the slightest clue as to who the stranger might be. So, when the detective unmasks the culprit, hear at hand, it will make the cops look foolish.
Finally even if the projection is subconscious, that is also the place where we do much of our instinctive thinking. So it does explain why such a ‘great’ detective gets a hunch, which turns out to be the right path to follow.
As pointed out by others, all the pieces do fall into place.
Something that began to annoy me real soon when reading the few Sherlock Holmes stories I did read: He made a lot of (admittedly, educated) guesses and was right more often than probable, at least so I thought. Anybody could have made these guesses based on the hard facts that were observable, Holmes power was getting it right very often.
You know him by another name. Put it together: Well respected, and admired. Smart, and talents above all others. No matter what happens nothing really bad happens to him.
That’s right, he just may be a Gary Stu of his days!
Fun fact: real-life forensics pioneer (among other things, he was the one who studied the relation between the lengths of different bones, and final height, as well as being the Father of Ballistics) Alexandre LaCassagne wrote several reviews of Sherlock Holmes stories (he was alive when they were new) that pretty much called out Doyle for EXACTLY that habit.
I had a plotbunny for a story where Holmes turns out to be psychic but doesn’t realize it because he’s so hyperlogical in personality that he just rationalizes why he came to those conclusions. He’s gotten so good at it and is so on the mark with his predictions that people just assume he’s a genius, when actually he’s simply “very intelligent but mostly just psychic”. Part of the joy would come from introducing him to LaCassagne, who was always big on evidence and the scientific method and to whom Holmes’ slapdash investigatory methods would seem aggravating, ESPECIALLY when he always turned out to be right, reaching the same conclusions LaCassagne did but quicker, because LaCassagne bothered to do testing first.
I have no idea what crimes they’d be on (somewhere in Paris, though, that’s where LaCassangne primarily worked), so it’s never gone anywhere, but it’s an idea that tickles me.
Interesting stuff. Here are a couple of quirky facts, which will likely irritate some contributors to this thread, and likely make Alexandre LaCassagne spin in his grave, for several days:
Sherlock Holmes (note, not Sir Arthur Conan Doyle) received an honorary degree, for his contributions to founding the fields of forensics and ‘sleuthing‘. If I remember correctly it was the first (and possibly still the only) time a fictional character has been so honoured.
As if that were not enough, a further honour has been bestowed on him. One normally reserved for Nobel Laureates and the ilk. Namely gaining a posthumous Honorary Fellowship from the Royal Society of Chemistry.
*plays a violin (badly), in an attempt to soothe any lovers of the scientific method, who may be crying*
“If I remember correctly it was the first (and possibly still the only) time a fictional character has been so honoured.”
Kermit the frog got one too, don’t sure what lesson to learn there.
Clearly they only honour the greats, in their respective fields.
Its not easy being green, yet Kermit still managed to have “A-list” celebrities queuing up at his stage door, begging to appear in the show.
Anyone else remember a book about it not being easy being green? A bunch of monsters (or something) were hanging out, making fun of the green guy, then they get attacked (or something) and the only one who survived (or got away or something) was the green guy because he was able to blend into the green background
It was over thirty years ago since last read it, so details are swampy :(
Don’t worry about it. I am sure it was green, super green.
I don’t know why that reminds me of a GURPS Supers game that a friend of mine ran. Or rather, the intro to the game. In the intro, we were playing Boy Scouts (as in “Boy Scouts of America”), but our “Scout leader” was a super. We were attacked by a monster bought to life by a fiction writer (who didn’t know he had super abilities; his power was to bring things he wrote about to life).
The irony is that the only person who survived that encounter… is the one who died. One of the scouts suffered a heart attack upon seeing the horrible monster (critically failed his Willpower roll to resist fear). They were able to resuscitate him… the rest of the scouts, and the scout leader, all died in a much more permanent manner.
I have read LOTS of stories, but this one doesn’t ring any bell. Seems like a nice challenge. Do you remember something else? Was it fantasy? SciFi? By a known author? Contemporary? Victorian? It looks like a short story, was it in a magazine? An anthology?
Been a Sherlock Holmes fan for quite a long time, though I am not blind to the stories’ faults (and Mr Doyle’s biases). IMO, Jeremy Brett was indeed a perfect performer of the “classic” as-written Holmes, no doubt about it.
But I like Robert Downey Jnr’s own take for various reasons. First, his tendency to ‘chessplay’ various moves ahead when in a fight. Given the character, this seems entirely plausible.
Second, the accusations that Downey turned Sherlock Holmes into (gasp) ‘an action hero’. Surprise folks, HOLMES HAS ALWAYS BEEN.AN ACTION HERO. He is an acknowledged expert in bare-knuckle boxing, wrestling and single-stick fighting. He is also a master of disguise, and has little compunction about usding it to access some very scary places. It is just that he also emphaszies his mental abilities over all else.
And when talking about Holmes in general, I’d like to mention a favourite movie of mine, ‘Without A Clue’. Its central premise is that Dr Watson is the REAL detective, using a drunken buffoonish actor to play a sort of “front man” role. It’s very well done in every respect, with Michael Caine and Ben Kingsley in the main roles.
Well said. I have not seen the latest Holmes series, but your comments tally with reviews and interviews I have heard about it. I do agree with every other aspect of your comments too.
https://pepperminthelmet.com/comic/sherlock/
‘Nuff said.
;)
As long as you’re talking about Holmes anyway, I’ll just put this here.
R.I.P. Jeremy Brett.
Aww. :-(
To my mind, Jeremy Brett was the quintessential Holmes.
Agreed! You can keep your Basil Rathbone’s and your Robert Downey Jr.’s. Nobody played him better than Mister Brett.
No, you can keep all three in a sealed soiled locked room (well, it will be soiled soon enough if you fed them a ten-course meal first), the Holmes for me is from the black and white TV series, can’t remember the guys name but he looks suspiciously like Max Headroom
Were you watching Red Dwarf, on a black and white TV set? Because Kryten is the only character I can think of who looks anything even vaguely like Max Headroom (let alone any actor that odd-looking).
Not that I can recall them doing a Sherlock Holmes episode mind. But there were some where Kryten played a detective, in virtual reality. Pop a deerstalker, on one of his more intelligent spare heads, and pick up his pipe, and I am sure he could pass as a … very… very… weird Sherlock Holmes.
Nope, it was a proper TV series, from the early days of TV, so probably after Ratboner
Yes, there was a TV series in the fifties which I never saw it myself and I had to look up:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0046642/
Sherlock was Ronald Howard. Max Headroom? Well, you need to stretch it, they both have a square shaped face but that’s almost all.
Now I’m curious, I will give it a try. Thanks for the hint.
That was the one, thank you
Yeah, he always reminded me of Matt Frewer (saw “Max Headroom” as a kid long before the Ronald Howard series)
Frewer did play Sherlock Holmes in a movie, but he played a bumbling idiot and it was Watson (believe may have been played by Michael Caine?) who was the genius (could be totally wrong though :( )
Frewster did play Holmes, in a couple of movies. But, as 7thsealord correctly mentioned, above, the Michael Kane one was in was with Ben Kingsley. Where Kingsley was the genius Watson, who employed the bumbling Holmes</a, as his front man.
That sounds a lot like the premise for Remington Steel.
As far as I remember Matt Frewer performed Max Headroom with a prosthetic forehead (wich admittedly was a hard enough thing to put on) and little more.
The trailers put me right off it, so I never did get to watch it. Rather glad now, as would not want to see him naked.
What you talking about Yorpie? Duende sociopata didn’t mean Matt was naked, just that all you saw was his head (maybe his shoulders)
Mostly remember him as being the ‘head’ (get it? :P) of a music show in the early days of MTV, think of him as the precursor to “Beavis & Butthead”, back when they would play a video and rip on it, ala Mystery Theatre 3000, but for music videos rather than movies
The Max Headroom makeup was a little more than just a prosthetic forehead; it was a latex and foam prosthetic makeup with a fiberglass suit. It took about 4 or 5 hours to put the makeup on, which Matt Frewer described as “grueling” and “not fun”.
Considering the amount of time it took to put the makeup on, I would not be surprised if there were some days when Matt was filming nothing but Max Headroom scenes. Since he’s only being filmed from the shoulders up, I would not be shocked if he wore shorts (or something else inappropriate for his other character, Edison Carter) on those days.
MSpears:
Yes, as I said the prosthetic wasn’t easy to put on, but it actually was the only main thing, they didn’t change Frewer’s face.
https://www.theverge.com/2015/4/2/8285139/max-headroom-oral-history-80s-cyberpunk-interview
“John Humphreys (PROSTHETICS DESIGNER): There was no specific design. They just wanted Matt Frewer to look like a computer-generated TV presenter. You got to remember, in those days, what does a computer-generated person actually look like? There was nothing there. So we made a fairly simple make-up really, we just changed his features a little bit, as if the computer generation hadn’t quite got it right. But we wanted to keep as near to Matt Frewer as possible because he’s a great actor. He’s very animated, very expressive, so you don’t want to hide all of that.
What if the green orb leeches the concentration of this in the vicinity, stores it, and uses it to power the other orbs?
If that’s so, then maybe the brown orb can only be used in those really intense emergency moments…when the S**T has gotten really deep.
And maybe if you activate it, it makes her so hyperactive she gains bullet time?
So…
Green = vampire orb.
Brown = others shitting themselves, when Halo panics?
Nearly washed my monitor in tea at the “Give my angry. Now sexy. No that’s still angry.” dialogue from Sydney.
It is an instant classic line.
I laughed so hard I had starting coughing.
I don’t know why Barkly should be so concerned about a photo.
She’s such a wacky geek that everyone Sydney tried to show it to would just assume that it was a still from some monster movie or was a new mask in her comic book store no matter how hard she tried to convince them otherwise. Even now that she’s a super hero and has a little extra in the way of gravitas, it would be hard for the public at large to buy that werewolves and vampires are real things.
Even so, I expect Maxima is going to delete every last one of those pictures later.
Well they are on her super secure work phone.
And Sydney’s probably already been security-briefed that she’s not going to be allowed to show pictures like that to anyone outside of Archon.
Or maybe even in Archon. Remember that knowing about aliens was described as being above her pay grade and she only found out about them by accident. It’s very possible that some of her team mates know nothing about aliens or vampires, or werewolves, or who knows what else.
Work photos are a no-no for Instagram. Only those approved by management are allowed.
Good to see Max lose her composure with laughter.
But she was pretty quick in grabbing it again…Note that Ingsol noticed how “Sudden!” that happened.
Ah, I wondered what he was “suddening”.
And it is suddenly clear.
She just cheated with super-speed so she could enjoy a ‘long’ time laughing, while appearing to stop suddenly to all outside observers.
Wouldn’t though the noise, of all that laughing, hit them in one spike?
ha ha ha HA!!!!!!! *ears bleeding*
Same here
Good? Actually, I found it scary, the way Harlequin did when Batman started laughing at her.
No, that is not the aura Sydney projects! She has a cuteness aura!
Cute like a deranged kitten. Wolfman there is a red laser dot on the floor.
Actually, I was thinking more of a “best friend” aura. Similar to a “trust me” aura, but people behave as if they are your best friend. Couple that with Sydney’s fun personality trait, the “best friend aura” plus “fun” = her disarming personality.
If also explains why Vehemence wanted Sydney to stay alive, as well as causing him to drop his violence aura and not even attack Sydney.
Yea. Or Sydney cranked the pitiable aspect of her aura up to an 11, versus Vehemence.
I think Sydney got to Vehemence with her line, “Please don’t kill me.”
I wonder how much time passed between pannel 10 and 11?
Apparently far more time than it was comfortable for Gregor…
If Sydney ever has to fight a clone of herself the world is doomed.
What do you think an identical twin is?
Sydney might have twins? Or triplets? Or octuplets?
*drifts away on a happy cloud*
ha, Sydney is one of a litter
The more Sydneys the better.
Has it been established that she is an only child? If she does have siblings, I would imagine that she is the youngest.
Then there are always those mad scientists with their duplicator rays. Let’s hope no one will use a bizarro duplicator ray on Sydney. I don’t like to thiink of the possible results of that.
What? Why not? A serious, focused heroine with her power set would strike terror into the hearts of criminals everywhere. She’d have a degree in criminology in no time, and possibly a few others as well.
Of course, she also would have never read a comic book, and that might have meant a loss against Ka-Pants-man…
It might help with the work at the comic shop, but the business cards might get confusing.
Sydney Scoville junior the second.
Sydney Scoville junior the third.
Sydney Scoville junior the fourth.
Forget the business card issue. What about the orbs?
:-O
Or worse; she might produce offspring via parthenogenesis!
My point being that Nature was producing clones long before what we know as Humans ever came along. ;-p
True. But such closely related individuals are rarely, if ever, required to fight each other. To the contrary they normally share a far closer bond than even other siblings. I can say this from direct observation, having had more twin friends than non-twins, in my early youth.
How much of this is down to nature or nurture is another matter mind. One can see that nature would be likely to provide instincts to bond with a twin. On the other paw though, simply growing up under near identical circumstances could well have the same response.
I think nature does have quite a strong hand in this though. Given that siblings usually squabble over resources and attention, there can be much sibling rivalry normally. Yet this seems (to my subjective opinion) to be reduced in twins, rather than amplified.
Younger siblings can get hand-me-downs from older ones, for example. So they each get their turn at things, at an appropriate age. But this cannot be done with twins. Hence you would expect their rivalries to be far greater. Yet I saw the reverse happening, and am used to seeing anecdotal support of that, from the observations of others.
Not that I wish to imply twins do not squabble with each other mind. I just found them to be more inclined to be friendly and supportive to each other, on the whole.
unlimited sydney works
It’s great to see Maxima laugh. And yes, kind of disconcerting.
Going to be a lot of incredulous team-members once that story gets out (but, that depends on if Inggie is ever allowed to ‘mingle’ with the rest of Archon… oh wait, Dabbles and Gwen are waiting in the next room, with a shiver up and down their spines after hearing Maxi laughing)
Can’t wait to see who they’re meeting with…!
I’m starting to think that Max is starting to think of Sydney as her own personal Monster from the Id. And not in a negative sense, either.
I have been toying with the idea that Max brought Sydney to the meeting for exactly this reason.
She says Archon is collaborating with these guys, and we’ve seen that their first inclination is to go for intimidation. It may be that they’re hard to work with, and Sydney’s unstated purpose here is to throw them off their game. Max knows from personal experience that Sydney can do that just by being herself, so all she had to do was unleash her on the poor, unsuspecting Monster Squad.
The fact that it’s terribly entertaining for her (and us–I still get the undignified giggles on rereading the page) is a bonus.
Sydney would be absolutely ideal for that kind of role.
As has been said before (more than once), she doesn’t merely de-rail a train of thought, she sets it on fire and drives it off a cliff.
Well thought through.
Plus there is the additional option, that if something does not seem right, Max can ask Sydney to check it out with her True Sight orb. Possibly she will ask for a precautionary one, in any event.
A couple of things they need to be wary of though. Firstly, if discussing such things here, werewolves and vampires have notoriously accuse senses.
Secondly they have already publicly declared that the details of the Yellow Orb are classified. So even if Sydney just casually holds it, that may be enough to arouse suspicions. Assuming that the monsters get cable.
I get that reference!
Shhh! Don’t say it! it’s Forbidden to speak of it on this Planet.
Sports fans losing a few IQ points each? Wouldn’t that put them all in a coma?
:-D
He really nails that Zoolander expression!
Batman most certainly has a stupidity aura. Around him, powerful metahumans forget their capabilities….
It is also a protection aura. Bad guys either forget they have a gun and could kill him with it, or if they are not armed but still want to kill him must do it in the most elaborate and time consuming way possible.
Actually, it’s an overconfidence aura. He’s so ridiculously weak-bodied compared to every super out there that they can’t take him seriously and end up treating him like a play thing, despite his gadgets.
So somewhere up in space are some really damn-well focused aliens.
I loved the comic but man maxima laughs ugly.
She is not at her best in that panel. But we have seen she has a pretty laugh elsewhere. The ‘my little pony ringtone’ one springs to mind as the earliest example….
OK maybe not that one, pretty smile mind, but…
*starts flipping through back issues*
I get the impression it’s not exactly a genuine laugh, especially considering how suddenly she stopped. Probably, it was something more along the lines of crazed, maniacal laughter as she reflected on all of Sydney’s antics. You know, the kind you get from people who have been driven a little too close to the edge by their adorkable teammate.
Basically, that kind of laugh is Max’s way of saying ” You Have NO Idea. ”
… Or it just might be relief that somebody else has to deal with Sydney-crazy for a change.
That is nothing compared to Ari’s evil laugh (her eyes go really weird!), it shows up sometimes as one of the rotating banner images
I really have wondered that over the course of reading the strip. Max puts up with so much from Sydney that it seems as though she wouldn’t given the perceived nature of her character, if it was one of her super powers that would explain a lot. In this case I kinda expected the werewolf to have destroyed her phone by now, but the aura thing really does make a whole lot of people’s behaviors make sense.
It’s GOOF GAS! ™ Ponsonby Britt
So that’s why Sydney eats such spicey food…It’s the source of her most effective defense!
Don’t joke about it but stupidity fields are a real thing. Many of the customers at my store are so damn dumb their IQ is negative. I seriously wonder how they feed themselves sometimes. As nature abhors a vacuum they suck intelligence from those around them. Sometimes after dealing with these potatoheads all day by the time I get home I forget how to tie my shoes and I need help working the magic box that cooks food.
Err… can feel IQ dropping…
*runs away from Pit Friend*
It’s a well known fact that one’s IQ drops substantially when on the customer side of a retail transaction.
Most stores have installed the machinery for draining IQ temporarily. How else do you think half the stores in existence would even break even otherwise?
Of course stupidity fields are real. How else do you explain all those people in the late-night paid advertisements who seem Too Incompetent To Operate A Blanket? (Link to TV Tropes not provided.)
Huh. Gremlins ate it.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TooIncompetentToOperateABlanket
Both the gremlins and MSpears showed good taste, in trying to spare us that. :)
Heh, even the ones which don’t use an actor demonstrating utter incompetence as the reason you should buy their product can be really funny.
I was in a small group of people watching one where they were pitching a kitchen tool. It was a plastic cylinder about 2″ high and maybe 6″ across. It had a set of blades on a plunger, and they showed people putting pieces of carrot, celery, bell pepper, etc under it, and then they’d use it to chop them up. Someone said “Huh, that might be handy.” Whereupon I explained that once you’d broken out the kitchen knife in order to cut up the celery, carrot, bell pepper, etc. into pieces small enough to chop up with this product that you may as well just keep using the knife. To a general exclamation of “Ohhhh…”
That wouldn’t happen to have been the Slap Chop, would it? Or something very similar to it, I reckon, since “Vince Offer” was the only spokesperson for the Slap Chop, as far as I can remember.
Here’s a (slightly NSFW) remix of the Slap Chop commercial…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0cgQkT4ScQ
That was absolutely nuts!
:)
Thought you might like that.
The other major product he advertised, the ShamWow, was often parodied (“It’s a Sham! Wow!”), but surprisingly it actually wasn’t that bad. It worked as advertised (absorbing messy spills)… as long as you got it slightly damp first. When it was completely dry, it wasn’t very absorbent at all.
The one I recall was not the Slap Chop, but the theory is the same. Why bother with cutting items up until they fit under the rather small area of the Slap Chop? You can just keep using the same knife you had to use to make them fit, and be done in about the same amount of time and with less clean up of tools. Maybe if they made one that was about twice or three times the diameter, that might have some actual utility.
It’s a confusion aura: Sydney acts crazy enough that people are temporarily confused, and while they are confused they are susceptible to more acts of Sydney. Probably not a power, though, just how she acts.
Either way, people adapt to it. It worked on Maxima for a while, but she has gotten more used to it, so mostly what she gets now is amusement from watching others be confused.
I was just thinking the same thing. Remember the line about the best counter to super speed being super confusion? https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/2174 Well, Sydney knows it works against a lot of things.
So, you’re postulating that Sydney is already the most powerful of Supers with her Confusion Aura? Sydney’s not merely a Super…She’s a Force of Nature; the very essence of Contagious Confusion!
I like that Ingsol has a subdued expressive range. OK, when he gets angry he shows it, but the rest of his expression variation, such as we have seen, appears to be low key.
For example the difference between his exaggerated intimidation pose, and the immediately subsequent “uh-oh, this is not working” was very subtle and nearing imperceptibly different.
“…Ingsol has a subdued expressive range.”
I think that has something to do with being undead. Unliving muscle tissue has a tendency to lose tone & definition. As a professional body builder works to increase muscle tone & definition, undead will lose it because exercise will not help to build it up.
Omfg. This whole page just works it, but that blue steel in the second-last panel had me in a semi Rofl.
Some of us project a “just funnin'” aura that allows us to get away with nearly anything.
…and possessing Dimples of Doom doesn’t hurt, either.
…or red braids and freckles.
Oookay. This is going to take some processing, to try and remove my prior mental image.
*slams head against table*
Ow ow OW!
If only all behavioral therapy was this easy….
Oh man, this page made me laugh so SO hard! XD
I notice that around Sydney, the confused look is very easy to do.
The confused look in the last 2 panels here; https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/385
Each time you read a book about vampires shining with glitter in middle of a day and teenage metrosexual werewolfs, A Sydney lost a chance to photograph a real werewolf doing a sexy pose with a blue steel face…
Maybe that’s what one of the two ‘unknown’ balls do. Maybe one of them makes people more predisposed to react positively to things Sydney’s interested in. Sort of a ‘add half my bonus to everybody within X number of meters’ type of thing. Then again, maybe she just has a knack for seeming like an overly exuberant kid who just found herself in Disney World for the first time, and wants to try out EVERY part of the park in one day… and the energy to actually manage it.
Area of effect +10 to Geekiness