Grrl Power #460 – Super misdirection
I like the idea that Supers have an inexplicable compulsion to dress in capes and skin tight outfits, as suggested in the top flashback panel – only of course they don’t actually wear that stuff in my world. At least not the “official” ones. There are a few vigilantes out there.
The expression “You can’t put toothpaste back in the tube.” never really worked for me since, well, as Sydney points out, filling them is easy with the right equipment. The expression obviously assumes you don’t in fact have industrial toothpaste gear at your disposal, but I like my alternate expression in the stinger better anyway.
This scene has gone on long enough that people are starting to wonder when something will happen, which is a perennial issue for this comic, as I do enjoy my exposition. I wrote something about it here. The short version is I’d like to try to reign in the exposition a bit so maybe I’ll try that over the next section of this arc.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon as soon as I get up. $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.
r/superslash? That’s my kind of channel. X3
I just reloaded the page, and 4 out of 6 of the pics in the title bar are wearing glasses. Awesomeness.
Apparently there is such a thing as ‘superheroine peril fiction’.
…
Excuse me. I’m going to need the afternoon alone.
In your bunk?
I’ve never been able to stand superheroine peril fiction. Seems to fly in the face of the point of being a superheroine for them to be there entirely to be ‘in peril’. Especially since you don’t see them free themselves of the peril to win in the end, like one sees when male superheroes get in trouble. Might as well be a non-superheroine being imperiled. I think the whole point of it tends to be to put a powerful woman in a situation involving subservience. Guess it’s never been a thing I was interested in. Much more interested in the superheroine being in control of the situation. :)
Halo can rescue me, anytime I am in peril. I will even give her the traditional kisses of thanks.
Save me, save me!
Oh Yorp, it’s so strange to see you with a new avatar. Think this one’ll stick?
Only on nights of the full moon. :-)
It’s the bondage aspect (and what tends to happen to the female in that situation, and not just from male captors), having a Super in that situation just makes the ‘control’ over them even greater (plus the added thrill of the risk knowing that they could be easily popped like the infected-pimple that they are)
I’ve rarely ever seen the super in peril be a hero instead of a heroine in ‘super peril genres’. Actually I’ve never seen that, EXCEPT in the occasions where hero is in danger and either frees himself/escapes, or his partner/sidekick/sometimes civilian/other hero (usually male, but occasionally female) frees him (ie, Batman and Robin). I can’t really think of examples of where the male superhero is imperiled and does not get out of the peril somehow to win in the end.
Superheroine peril, on the other hand, tends to not have the heroine free herself at all. She’s just victimized and that’s how it ends, which seems counterintuitive to me about using a super if the super never does anything… super. But it might just be a guy thing, I dunno. I just never understood the appeal of that with a superpowered heroine who doesnt actually get to use her powers.
No, I find it frustrating too. I remember watching Bond movies and finding it silly that the girls were not allowed to do anything to help out or win a fight. Although that gradually changed. And now we have a fair number of movies with strong female leads, which I love watching.
‘Superheroine peril’ just feels like an anachronism to me. Something of the past, which should not exist in modern storytelling. Not in the way you described it anyhow. It is fine to have them in peril, for the sense of drama, but not purely to allow the male lead to look all heroic.
Not that I think protagonists should be the only ones getting themselves out of danger. That limits the options of the writer. But they certainly should avoid the tired clichés of yesteryear.
Yeah, didn’t want to get into the more extreme acts perpetrated on the bound Heroine, which is why you won’t find males in a similar situation (unless it is yaoi)
“Hurt comfort” in Japan. Ladies are in pain, skimpy or revealing outfits. Lots of crying of lovely ladies. That is just one of the sub genres they have.
The Perils of Penelope Pitstop spin off from “Wacky Races” one of several from that 1970’s show.
Ooh, I like to get into ontological discussions. What constitutes “super” from the Natural? Or is it just part of a continuum that humanity hasn’t yet discovered? What makes a werewolf supernatural? A creature that has evolved two sets of DNA helices from a recoding virus that is transmitted. [Also depends on what version you mean also? Or a separate species evolved from wolves to only hunt and eat humans. “Wolfin”]
Ontology is the philosophical study of the nature of being, becoming, existence or reality as well as the basic categories of being and their relations. The philosophical study of being in general, or of what applies neutrally to everything that is real. It was called “first philosophy” by Aristotle…
Ever read Adam Warren’s Empowered comic?
Yes you can. More than one actually.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rk7kHmjFocc
Meant to attach this to Xero’s comment. Oh, well.
Nope. Those are industrial tooth paste filling machines, not RE-filling machines. New tubes, new paste. The expression implies that you cannot put toothpaste BACK into the tube after squeezing it out, which is entirely accurate, given that once it’s filled the tube is sealed and crimped off in a manner most inconvenient to purpose.
And here is one for refilling a travel size tube of toothpaste. So yes, it can be done.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rk7kHmjFocc
Did you accidentally link to the wrong video? This is the same as the first video you linked to; it’s showing machines filling full-size toothpaste tubes from the large end (that then gets crimped off).
I personally like all the exposition. It feels like you are creating a more full and complete world, which I like. To many authors throw us in a world that we are supposed to assume is exactly like ours, and only explain how things work after they’ve painted themselves into a corner, which often comes off as frantic handwaving. My personal favorite example of this comes from Star Trek TNG. In one episode, Dr. Palaski catches a disease that causes her to age rapidly, so the crew gets a sample of her DNA from before she got sick, and used that, and the transporter to “reset” her DNA, and cure her. Okay, I can see how that might work, but then why would anyone die in the Star Trek universe? Keep good DNA and anatomic data on everyone (using the transporter pattern buffer records maybe?) and boom, no more dead red shirts. Got shot by a Romulan? Beam them home, and correct the damage on the way. They never explained why this didn’t happen, and it is a bit of a plot hole in every subsequent episode where we are supposed to believe a member of the crew is in physical peril.
Also, world building is interesting to me. I like that you are taking the time to really get into how the Grrlyverse is different from our world. It also makes sense, given your framing device of Halo narrating this all as her backstory (https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/60). These are the questions she’s asking, these are the things she cares about and find interesting, so if only follows that they’d be the things that figure prominently in her story.
I wholeheartedly concur. Worldbuilding of this caliber is a rare beauty to behold. And I’m glad I’m not the only one who remembers that all of this is a flashback. I wonder when we’ll catch up to the ‘present’ where they are playing their tabletop RPG.
Is this a flash back, or did the strip start with a flash forward?
The former, as it specifically includes Sydney narrating the line “Let me back up a few months”, just before the flash-back started.*
* Past participle, from a future not yet reached, in the current predestined time-line. English is so limited, when compared to Canine, in this type of grammar.
To serve as the devil’s advocate for a moment: You also have to be careful with vast worldbuilding. the more rules you write for yourself early on the more it can limit your options later on when you have an idea for something. This is exactly what causes ret-cons, reboots (soft and hard) and those ‘world changing’ events that the likes of marvel, DC, and even Archie comics have been spinning lately.
Biggest case in point would be Cap. America’s shield, which used to be made out of Adamantium in the comics. So they established that fine, but then it broke, cause it was more impactful and epic to the story for it to. But Adamantium is unbreakable…so they had to retcon the story so it wasn’t actually made out of that, but a composite metal created in an attempt to recreate adamantium. A faux-adamantium if you will.
The point is that while worldbuilding of this scale is wonderful to see early on before it has to be implimented for story purpose, it can also be dangerous if taken too far. :)
From what I understood about Cap’s shield, it was a unique & unrepeatable alloy of adamantium AND vibranium. Adamantium to make it unbreakable & vibranium to absorb energy attacks & impacts that would have otherwise left Cap splattered into goo on the back of the shield.
That’s the oldest version of the story of the Indestructible shield, but I have no idea what the latest ret-con tells us.
While I’m not disagreeing with you, a good author has to find the proper balance between too much and not enough exposition. Even when the author knows where he or she wanted to go with a story, story elements can seem too contrived without enough information on how that “universe” works.
Yeah, I can take any amount of world building as long as it is interesting world building.
Have been wondering that about the Transporters for years, specially after they ended up with two Rikers
But yeah, World Building is good, specially, as you reminded others, this is Sydney narrating a whole new world of experience, we just happen to be along for the ride
I knew one of the Star Trek authors, so he explained that to me. In great detail. Lots and lots of it. The biggest take-home fact, that I recall now, is that cloning is a major no-no in the Federation. They know several ways to do it, but it is simply illegal. The rest of it made my eyes glaze over. Blah buffers blah buzzz buzzz.
Probably because it’s disturbingly similar to the creation of Khan’s generation of Augments in process, and presents monkeying geneticists a lot of temptation to meddle in the process.
Really there is nothing to explain, it is a lame plot device. While quantum teleportation is theoretically possible the Heisenberg uncertainty principle means that you never know exactly what it was that you teleported, and any attempt to make multiple copies of the information would automatically destroy it. The writers just came up with a cool plot and chucked out any pretense of scientific accuracy to make it work.
As for the idea that teleporting kills you and makes a duplicate, you are effectively killed and replaced by a duplicate every time you move forwards through time.
Star Trek transporter accidents that result in dimensional shift/duplication/time stop effects nearly *always* involve a massive scale (planetary scale at least) energy discharge at the time of the accident. Barclay’s accident (or rather the accident Barclay managed to resolve), Riker’s accident, TOS’s Evil Universe accident, even’s Scotty’s “I’ll just recycle the pattern buffer over and over and hope I get lucky” accident – all of them involve some sort of massive energy discharge with unique properties. The explanation of Riker’s duplication is probably strongly tied to the worldwide storms the science team was there to study in the first place before Riker and the Potemkin to evacuate them.
Someone once mentioned to me that the transporter measures a particular “quantum signature” (if you will) and includes that in the data steam for the matter information. That whatever-the-hell-it-is represents some ineffable quality that is that person. That “quantum signature” decays rapidly if someone tries to divide it and, if duplicated,the duplicate has the same problem.
Given the amount of metaphysical weird in the Star Trek universe, this isn’t completely beyond the pale.
And yeah, I watch too much Star Trek.
Yeah, I’m NEVER going to use a transporter. That’s technically murder. It scans your quantum signature, deletes the original (you), then “reassembles” the signature at a different place. Pokeballs do something similar. Also, I wouldn’t really want to live in the Federation… And here’s why:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4KBPaS-1PU
You do need to ignore the bit about Kirk being cast off the ship for mutiny is evidence for the theory though. Because tradition holds the cost of mutiny is death. He got off lightly.
The commentator argues his case well. Barring a couple of points. One of which is thinking that Star Trek has no currency (other than using gold-pressed latinum for trading with Ferengi and the like, as he mentioned). It turns out that there are a number of mentions of currency, when you trawl through the entirety of the Trek publications. As pointed out to me by one of the people who deliberately increased the number of such covert capitalist subversions.
Roddenberry had an idealistic vision, but when you include humans in it, any utopia will be undermined, from within.
” It scans your quantum signature, deletes the original (you), then “reassembles” the signature at a different place. Pokeballs do something similar.”
Well, “repackages” the original you is a bit more accurate, but your point is still more than valid. Barclay’s “irrational” fear is not quite so irrational as Geordie would lead us to believe. What I always find interesting is the number of times that, knowing the limitations of the transporter regarding high energy fields, they keep using it when they’ve got a viable alternative in the shuttle (which also is exceedingly accident prone).
Filming budgets…
Same here: shuttle or no go
Considering that the failure rate of shuttles in Star Trek episodes is something north of 90%, I would say transporters are way, way safer.
Touchê!
Now you see why my favourite means of transportation is walkies!
Then personal wormhole travel, for longer distances.
If going to die, going to die as me, not be cloned repeatedly with the original being killed off
My thought is this: If the transporter kills you every time you use it, and if there really is such a thing as a soul, and if the transporter doesn’t somehow attach your soul to the new body but copies the soul as well… Well, there are gonna be a whole lot of Picards and Rikers and Geordis up in Heaven. Could get really confusing, really fast.
“Hi, are you the Picard who died on stardate 2259.55? I really need to tell you something.”
“No, you want that Picard, over there.”
“Wait, which one? That one? How am I supposed to tell which one is the right one? You all look alike!”
On a more practical note, I don’t think you need to worry. Based on the technobabble that explains how the transporter is supposed to work, it’s been calculated that the amount of memory the transporter would need to transport one person, much less an entire away team, would require more storage than is currently available on the entire Earth. So shuttlecraft, not transporters, will still be the only practical mode of transportation… at least, until they perfect personal wormholes or something.
Yeah, but was that theorized before or after the development of TerraByte harddrives? It wasn’t really that long ago that External Harddrives were only around 64GB, and quite big, now you can get 128gb thumb drives that can fit in your pocket
Same reason they don’t just use Khan’s regenerative blood to just cure death in the new movie. It makes sacrifice irrelevant.
Actually in college I knew a guy who got his jollies by emptying his (various) roommate’s toothpaste tubes, opening them up, filling them with shaving cream or (once) Preparation H, then resealing the bottom of the tube.
And I once cracked wise about replacing shave gel with toothpaste. My friends disagreed on which way would be funnier.
Whale. Bits. Everywhere.
Stinky whale bits.
20 cases of TnT do not remove a whale. They distribute much of it over a large area. Picture a can of air freshener, then blow up the can. Except it’s not air freshener, and the contents can stain.
“If your problem can’t be solved with explosives then you aren’t using enough explosives.”
“Actually, sometimes you need careful thought and empathy. Or shaped charges. One or the other.”
The explosive whale-removal would have worked (relatively) fine if they’d used shaped charges to distribute it out over the ocean instead of letting it rain down on the onlookers. Also, if they’d used enough that it didn’t rain down in chunks the size of Hondas.
at that point it would be more efficient to use 1 nuke
I mean no stains at all as the whale, (and everything else within miles) are vaporized
Anybody who was there merely as an onlooker (IOW, not in some official capacity) and got rained on has no one but themselves.
Blah… has no one to blame but themselves, I meant. Hope that makes more sense.
Something very important to remember, if sitting on the emergency committee deciding on how to protect the Earth, from an incoming extinction-event meteor. Sending up nukes, to blow it into little bits, does not stop those little bits from hitting the Earth, with just as much energy as the one big bit.
Depends on placement – get them all on the same side and you can maybe deflect it enough to nudge it off the original trajectory. Of course, you could potentially achieve the same effect using a gravitational drag satellite with a lot less radiation and meteorites (assuming you found the meteor early enough).
The nonsense from that Bruce Willis movie was just… yeah..
See the clip of the exploding whale for how successful that kind of plan is. They put all the explosives on the landward side, to try and blast as much of the carcass as they could into the sea. Didn’t work.
An asteroid with the kind of mass needed to wipe out higher life on Earth is going to ignore any of the puny nukes humanity can throw at it. Unless it is found very early, as you say, in order that a tiny nudge will move it off course enough to miss. But to do that you are talking finding it decades in advance.
You are right that current thinking is a gradual push is the best route, with that kind of time to play with.
If you have less time than that, it is best carving monuments, on the Moon, so that the cockroach astronauts can discover our legacy someday.
We should look around for the dinosaur ones, sometime too.
“Gentlemen, I submit that we are falling behind in the bomb shelter race!”
Whether or not nukes would work to prevent a disastrous asteroid impact would really depend on the size of the asteroid. I was doing some reading on the Chelyabinsk impact, and had it been headed straight down at a city instead of grazing past at a very shallow angle it could have easily wiped out a good sized city, Yet the actual rock was only 65 feet or so across, and even a relatively small nuke a few minutes before impact would have been enough to turn a 500 kiloton explosion into a bunch of pretty fireworks. Only when you get into the really big stuff that is both incredibly rare and quite easy to spot well in advance would nukes become ineffective.
City killers are whole orders of magnitude smaller than planet killers. So, yes, that brings it within the range of ‘things that nukes can affect’. It also brings it within the range of ‘things we can divert safely, without needing to risk spreading nuclear contamination across the troposphere’.
Let alone, if trying the same thing with a larger rock, the danger of putting enough dust up there, to create a nuclear winter.
Yea, sometimes a nuke is the right tool for the job. But we should not rush to use a sledge hammer, when a push will do the trick.
As regards ‘easy to spot’ that only applies if we are looking, plus how thoroughly we are doing that. Notably the places we have done so, to date, are in the typical orbit paths of such rocks. What we do not monitor (because it is indeed less likely) is non-standard risks. Things drifting through interstellar space, which have not been sucked up into a conveniently predictable orbit.
Given that we have now found what could be a small planet, orbiting so far out it is influenced by other stars, and have indications that there could be a lot more rocks, in a similar state, it implies that interstellar space is not so empty we can discount the risks. If Sol has rocks that are being influenced by other stars, then the converse is likely true too.
I.e. that there are planet-sized objects loosely orbiting other stars, which could intersect with us. It would not take something that big to wipe us out mind. But if one did pass even vaguely in our direction, it could perturb enough smaller rocks, that the shotgun effect could put us at serious risk. In long-term species survival terms, of course. As opposed to needing to duck anytime we see a bright light in the sky.
Ok, responding on a point by point basis,
You can still effect planet killers with nukes, the tolerances and engagement ranges simply need to change. In this case, distance becomes your friend. Introducing a 1 degree deflection with a nuke would work, provided the object was stable enough to not break apart, and you had enough distance and therefore time to allow it to deviate from its current course. You can spot the obvious unknowns in that equation, and those are the factors that generally rule it out.
City killers could respond to similar treatment, or not, for the same sets of unknown factors.
Nuclear contamination is pretty much a non issue, at the ranges you would need to engage a target to deflect it in any meaningful way, it would be well outside near earth orbit and therefore our planet’s natural radiation defenses.
‘Dust’ would likely be the bigger issue, if you want to call fist to toilet sized pieces of rock dust, but again, distance and scale, a rain of dust would burn up in the upper reaches of the atmosphere. Fine particulate matter on the order of soot or gases would mostly be pushed aside by our planet’s gravitational and electromagnetic fields. The main threat of dust would be to satellites, which seems like a small problem when weighed against deflecting an impacter on course for a populated region.
All of which ignores the fact that if you have sufficient time and distance to effectively use a nuke for deflection, you have the time and distance to use means other than a nuke in the vast majority of cases.
Spotting targets in space is generally as easy as looking with the right tools. Mostly, we aren’t looking, because it’s expensive to build and maintain those tools. This is problem, yes?
Interstellar objects, and their possible effects on the inner solar system.. are actually phenomenally unlikely to be a problem. Our “bigger brother” gas giants would generally absorb the worst of any objects coming in from the Oort regions, as they always have. Now, that isn’t to rule it out entirely, but I mean, the probabilities of such an object becoming a world killer threat to Terra in particular are on the slim side. Plus, we don’t currently have the resources to do anything about it, so why worry?
*scrolls up*
Oh, snap, you actually were talking about using nukes in LEO to take out asteroids… yeah, no, at that point you’re better off finding a bomb shelter and hugging your family than nuking it. Lots of irradiated shards is more bad then one big rock that might hit the ocean.
Hitting an ocean might be Bad anyway. Nobody really wants tsunamis on that sort of scale. Hitting land is actually mostly a better option, though it does depend on what the geology of the target area is. (Apparently, the Chicxulub impactor managed to hit close to the worse position it could have found that way, as it vaporised lots of both carbonates and sulphates, creating lots of acid rain and climate problems to finish off things that weren’t wiped out by the initial event.)
I’m pretty sure that toothpaste is put in the tube before it’s an actual completed tube. It’s put in through the back, then the back of the tube is crimped up by a machine to seal it (rather than through the side with the cap). I think I saw that on How It’s Made. :)
The key part is putting it back in, once it has come out. And everybody has been focusing on the technicalities of how to do that. As opposed to simply going:
“EEEW, why would you want to?”
Well, of course we wouldn’t simply go “eww.” First, it’s the Internet and most of us here aren’t disgusted by it, in theory. (Maybe in practice, though…) Second, it’s much more interesting to think about how than to not… think… about how. *beat* That one got away from me.
”Two Toothbrushes, One Tube.”
I’m shocked that Halo isnt at least #2 on most liked supers (after Maxima).
She has only been in the public eye for around 3 days at this point. Give her time.
And, technically the Harem bar is an accumulation of 5 votes, giving it a boost in the polls.
Plus, only 1 is male out of the 6 listed supers. That is sexual discrimination! Maybe the guys need more exposure to move up in the polls (both in the press and in their wardrobe).
Whether it’s sexual discrimination or not would depend on each individual’s reason for voting for a particular superhero/superheroine (not to be confused with superheroin).
Considering barely anyone of the press at that conference didn’t have a dry chin after he finished speaking…
The chins were just fine. It was the knickers that had the moisture problem…
That superheroin really does a number on you, doesn’t it?
Haven’t ALL the Archon superheroes only been in the public eye for three days at this point?
Dabbler has the sex appeal boost.
And she still placed fourth behind Hiro
But does that actually work effectively over television?
Judging by the results, not that well.
What’s Sydney implying at?
That it may be possible to ‘hide’ Supers again, or maybe she is simply refuting that claim about not being able to refill a toothpaste tube (like how no one in-world refuted Yoda’s absolute claim that only Sith work in absolutes)
That was Obi Wan. Pretty sure Yoda sees how Ol’ Ben done fucked up there.
I wonder if O.B. Juan has anything to say on the matter?
I think I may have deciphered the meaning of the white banner seen in the lower left panel. We have seen before that it is in Celtic script and I just noticed it is arranged in the shape of a cruciferous vegetable. Therefore, it is the representation of the slogan ‘Erin go Broccoli’.
were i not using the nigh indestructible keyboard, you and Dave B. would owe me a new one…
you must be using a Logitech K310 then… you can wash the keyboard in the sink… as long as you don’t get the USB plug wet, you can dunk the thing completely under water and scrub…
It could be the banner for an undead cruciferous wizard who is also a crusader for clean water
Erin Broccolich.
Or the legendary Iavan A’Clue.
A.K.A. Little Green Men from Bars, although, they call them ‘pubs’.
“Why arf you dressed like that?”
Many more lines like that and she’s gonna get bit . . .
Golden Age superheroes pretty much speak in puns. They can’t help themselves.
Although, her outfit is VERY revealing for the ’30’s and ’40s.
They were not unfamiliar with such sights. And even more revealing. And that is skipping the NSFW results!
But, yea, you would not be likely to see that kind of fashion in the street.
I have never heard that saying (You can’t put toothpaste back in the tube) before.
I consider myself glad that it has previously escaped my notice, and I hope it returns to that status.
Huh, a super able to change his mouth into that of any animal. Could be very useful.
And, NO, you wouldn’t just use the bites that do the most damage! Heroism isn’t all about fighting, you know! And, even fighting is sometimes about tactics.
-Anteaters have long, grabby tongues.
-Mosquito might be good for getting a blood sample.
-Birds have sharp beaks.
Who said he (or she) was a Hero? o_O
And WHAT IS WITH that super-hero poll in Panel 7?? Halo comes in FIFTH?? And ANVIL is SIXTH???
(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻
Well, when that poll was taken, ARCHON had probably only just been revealed, Anvil didn’t have much of an introduction and Harem did that “oogly-boogly” thing, so that’s why she is in second place (possibly even tied for first place), Hiro is in third place because, have you seen the guy? If he had ripped off his shirt and posed, people would be going “There were others at that press release?”
Loving the moments when Maxi lets her inner-nerd out
Yeah, that’s always awesome.
there she goes, proving once again she’s one of us…
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OneOfUs
Gooble gobble
You should click on the “Some don’t care.” link, on that page.
Beware TVTropes has an addiction rating. And can turn your brain to mush.
They can’t turn my brains to mush because they’re already there. =OP
now that i’ve gotten that far into the listed like-minded luminaries, i am dismayed. our own Dave B is not among the webcomic artist/writers mentioned. this must be fixed…
Me too :)
Since today’s topic is toothpaste, I remembered back in college one student in the dorm was from Asia. He had some interesting brand names of products he brought with him from home. He had a tube of toothpaste with a label I had never seen before. Gee, I wonder why this brand wasn’t sold here in the US?
https://thefoodandrant.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/darkie4ew.jpg
Because Top Hats are no longer in fashion
testing new grabitar
What a tasteful choice! Deep thought, contemplation and style.
I don’t know why but that unnamed superheroine in the first panel really does it for me. Like… in a way that the other beautiful women in this comic don’t.
Wouldn’t have anything to do with the skin-tight outfit and her huge Powers, would it? :P
Is it the boob window? are you a power girl fan?
I suspect it is because you have NSFW tastes, such as big-breasted supers wearing body paint.
Maybe you would prefer Maxima with this look? Or Dabbler with like this?
Someone needs to make a website dedicated go sexy hero body-painting…
Fairly sure there already is
Yes, please. :)
Yeah, I feel it too, especially since the glossy fabric is shaded so well. Maybe the shine just really works well with that color, because Dabbler’s shading stands out to me often too.
Dang, now I really want to see Harem multi-cosplaying.
Is it just me, or are the special smilies no longer showing up?
They show up in the comment box but seem to disappear upon submitting
Oh noes! I ❤ 😈
No, those showed up, but had placed three of the Alt+numpad1 in the post you replied to
The ones I use come from here and always show up.
Yeah, but they use to show up, and they show up in the comment box as the smiley, they just disappear after Submitting
Or a more vampire related analogy, “there’s no un-Meyering that supernatural creature.”
You need to be careful with that: you don’t want to rile both the Sparklies and the Fluffies
What did I tell ya? Shapeshifters are the made-to-order scapegoat for any implausible situation. Or mouth-shifters, at least.
Tell me ’bout it.
Maybe the lady in the 6th (if I’m counting right) panel is a fan of the Bond movie Goldfinger?
She could be. Perhaps all set up as a cos-player, ready to attend a Bond festival?
I would call that the 7th panel, by the way. I ignore inserts, such as the Ingsol’s and Sydney’s in panel 1. But even a small panel, like Fuffy’s, where he says “Or a vampire attack”, should be counted. As it is a distinct panel, with the same kind of surrounds as all the others.
I was just being too lazy to count and figured people would figure out who I was talking about.
I’m in Oregon. I saw that stranding and it was heartbreaking. Many of them were still alive when I was there, but they were so massive there was nothing anyone could do. Worse yet, some scum were cutting off ‘souvenirs’ from them, even the live ones. Some guys with dune buggies started patrolling the beach to chase people off the whales until the authorities showed up. (Yes, some idiots were climbing on them to get photos as well.)
The dynamite was a stupid idea from the get go. I guess someone had watched too much TV and thought things actually disintegrated when you blew them up. That too was horrifying, but a different kind of horror.
:’-(
I’ve no idea what this whale stuff was about but reading this, I doubt I want to know :(
Here is more on it, just in case you decide to learn more. Footage available there does not include the abhorrent mutilation Meerling mentions above.
Which was a failure on the film-maker’s part. The perpetrators should have been publicly shamed for their reprehensible behaviour! Not to mention being prosecuted for it. Although I doubt such would have been done, in that era.
Though do keep in mind that Yorp is talking about the people cutting off ‘souvenirs’ from the whale while it was still living. That was reprehensible. By the time they tried to blow the corpses up, they were quite dead (and not from the ‘souvenirs’). Trying to blow the corpses up without realizing they were going to rain chunks over the whole beach, that was just stupid. xD
I hope that it was a souvenir-hunters car that got totalled! And that they did not have insurance.
Even if they did have insurance, I wouldn’t want to have to be the one to explain to my insurance company that “my car was crushed by a piece of exploded whale”.
I would like to say that I don’t think the insurance company would believe them. But as the State Farm commercials say, “We know a thing or two because we’ve seen a thing or two.”
yeah, i have no clue as to how TRUE it is, but there’s a “No Shit… There I was!” story that i heard about when i was in the Navy:
apparently somewhere on the East Coast, there was an Officer that REALLY hated the typical walk from his car in the parking lot to the Submarine he was stationed on… so one day he parked it as close to the head of the pier as he could get (he was probably an officer if he can do this, enlisted never get to park that close)… now, it just happens that that pier is on a rapidly flowing portion of a river, and the subs have to go upstream a ways, turn 90 degrees to the current and as the current is pushing the sub sideways, back downstream, they have to gun the engines to get the sub into the proper position on the pier itself, too little gas and the sub sticks out into the river and they have to try again… and as you can imagine, this one time the throttle-man gave it a BIT too much gas, and the sub hit the land side of pier, jumped up and CRUSHED the guy’s car with the sonar dome of the sub itself…
can you see the phone conversation in your head? “um, yeah, I’d like to report an accident to my car… um, yeah it was parked, and got crushed by a Submarine… um, No, I’m NOT Joking… uh. no, i can’t take photos, it’s a Military installation… um… uh, no, REALLY! Stop Laughing!! … I’m NOT Joking!!!
Yeah, but the guy who came up with the idea was supposed to be some sort of expert on the matter (blowing things up in general, not whales specifically… well, one would hope he hadn’t had prior experience)
If he did, he seems not to have learned much from it.
reign -> rein. The first involves rulership of a country. The second is how you control horses, which is the origin of the expression: you slow a horse down when it’s going faster than you’d like by pulling back (or in toward you) on the reins.
Dave rules an entire universe. And he was talking about his exposition within it. So, intentional or not, he can actually get away with using that term.
*wags tail regally*
Looks like you’re trying to rein in on his parade? =OP
You could always wright in a “directors cut” / filler / sick day pages that includes more exposition that you would like to add.
I know I have issues but I feel the need to point out the saying is Get the toothpaste BACK in the tube not fill a tube with toothpaste. All that industrial equipment is for filling tubes, from the back mind you, not refilling the tube with what has been squirted out.
>ahem<
I'll battle your OCD/ADHD with my super anal nature anytime, I'll probably lose but I'll be ready to argue about it afterwards. :)
Actually, Inngie did mention ‘back’ {“There’s no putting that toothpaste back in to that tube.”}, it was simply Sydney being ‘Sydney’ (and, as others have pointed out, there are ways and devices for refilling toothpaste tubes)
I was getting tired of this scene. I don’t read this comic for White Wolf monsters, after all.
But today Dave gave us a funny strip. I like Max’s compulsive need to add scarier critter mouths; she and Sydney really are a lot alike in some ways. I agree with the tagline at the bottom; that is a better expression. And compulsive gold girl was pretty funny.
… since we’re apparently getting into the topic of different teeth with this comic… I had an odd thought in regards to their benefits package. More to the point, dental. Seeing as how Max along with many of the other members of Archon have some super defensive stats, does that apply to their teeth as well? In the event that it does, how does one even begin to address replacing one of those teeth?
Interesting note: most of the damage done to teeth is either through acid generated by bacteria in the mouth, or physical damage (usually wearing down of the teeth via grinding, sometimes hastened by the weakening of the enamel caused by the aforementioned acid). Hypothetically, a single point of physical resistance plus either a single point of resistance to acid (or immunity to disease) could protect the teeth from ‘ordinary wear and tear’ almost indefinitely.
Still gotta worry about a super-powered punch knocking out a tooth or three, though.
Maxima would need to have her dental work done by someone who’s strength rating exceeded her minimum toughness level. Barring some hypothetical super dentist, who could bypass her forcefields somehow. In other words Maxima can lower her protection, to help the process, but only so far. We have seen her bleed, so we know that, unlike Achilles, her defenses are not impenetrable.
My best guess is that Maxima’s minimum attributes are three star power (compared to her five star maximums). If I am correct in that, then only Super Hiro or Stalwart would be strong enough to help, if the work had to be done in-house. Which might be necessary, given the classified nature of Maxima’s skin (and presumably other tactical characteristics), if they cannot find a suitable external super who would rate a security clearance.
Even Halo’s tentacle, with its sixteen ton lift capability, would not be strong enough, to extract one of Maxima’s teeth! Not unless it was teetering on the brink of falling out of its own accord. Although, of course, Maxima could always yank it out herself. Albeit that other dental work would be very tricky, using mirrors.
Troops do get combat medical training, where necessary. For instance we have seen that Harem used such, in the battle. Likewise with any special-forces unit (which Arc-SWAT is, in addition to its policing role) will teach its members enough such skills to be self-reliant, when cut off from support.
Finally Maxima has extensive battlefield experience, and has fought supers, so will doubtless be aware of the need to, and means of, treating super-tough individuals, such as herself. As demonstrated by having to reset her own nose! Thus this will be part of their training (be it previously or yet to come).
Regular dentistry is not likely for Maxima though. Firstly supers get the whole fit body package, which likely includes perfect teeth too.
Secondly Maxima is protected, at a molecular level, by her force fields. Providing they can discriminate between friendly and harmful bacteria, they might not be able to get close to her teeth. Plus any acidic products (which were not created underneath a force field) would certainly be prevented from attacking any body parts.
But, of course, she might suffer from combat damage, so it is worth Maxima being aware of her options.
Couldn’t she ‘dump’ into something else that would be useless, though? Like raise her speed through the roof at the cost of her defenses, and then just stay very, very still. Or raise her beam power and not fire one.
No, all of Maxima’s attributes have a minimum below which they cannot go. Maxima is always faster, stronger, tougher and can fly quicker than any low-ranked super. For instance Heatwave will never be able to outfly Maxima, nor Achilles beat her in arm wrestling.
Even Superhiro realises that Maxima has ‘pulled her punches’ in sparring. Given that he has a three star defence, this is one of the reasons I estimate that her minimums are around the three star mark. Which I was factoring in with the above comment. Maxima’s weakest punches are about as strong as his best defence (loosely speaking, there is variability, within the range, even if both do have three stars).
Maxima’s energy beam is the one thing which is unconnected to her other powers, so using it, or not using it, makes no difference.*
As such, out of curiosity, she probably weighs a lot less than her mass would normally result in, in the Earth’s gravity, as one of those stats is flight speed. I guess she flies downwards, if trying to walk in high winds, to avoid being blown away? She probably uses a similar technique to avoid being knocked back, too much, by a blow.
If my suppositions regarding the latter, then she could be vulnerable to a surprise attack, in terms of being knocked off her feet, or into the path of oncoming traffic, or the like. She would not be prepared to compensate, using her telekinesis, any more than she could stop Sydney’s fear vomit, at the bank. However, if she suspected an incoming attack was imminent, she could raise her reaction speed and/or otherwise brace herself appropriately.
If using the reaction speed route, she could simply start flying, towards the direction of the attack (or away from any collision danger) as soon as she sensed herself begin to move. This would have effect before she is knocked any significant distance, given that she can react faster than a bullet.
* Thinking about which, this is something Maxima could have used to counter Vehemence, when he was attacking her so strongly that she had to dump everything into defence. She could have still blasted him.
However the amount of power she would have had to put into the attack, to overcome his formidable defences, would have endangered (or outright killed) most of her team and the bystanders. Which actually shows Maxima must have been practicing considerable restraint, as Vehemence’s aggro aura would have been goading her to do just that!
While not entirely relevant to the dental work topic, I would like to note in response to your talk of Maxima bleeding that we have only seen her bleed from internal injury. Past suppositions that her skin is litterally impenetrable could easily still be true.
The big issues I see in this are the quality of replacement materials such as caps and actual replacement teeth, and the other being tools strong enough to do the work with. Keep in mind that we’re not just talking about Max here, but any and all of the team members. So getting a tooth knocked out in the classic sense of what we see out of hockey players comes to mind. If we’re talking about drilling and filling, that’s a whole new class of drill I would think and we’re not even going to mention the fillings. O.O
Very good points.
*epic drum-roll*
OK, OK, hamster-ball. There were no good drums to be found rolling down hills.
Oddly enough Maxima is the one with the least problem with replacement parts. Her force fields will protect anything, so she could just use regular dental fillings. But the drill, yea, that is a problem.
Ooh ooh! And I just got a solution! Lee-Press-On-Nails. His claws can cut through anything! And only his skin is meant to be impenetrable, there was no mention of his other bits having any protection. Plus it turned out to be penetrable anyhow. So just trim a bit off the end, of each, to make the drill-tips!
With his permission, of course. Plus suitable remuneration, for such a valuable resource. And always assuming that they regrow, like ours do.
I’m sure it’s been said: Reddit
Ribbit.
What frogs really say.
And these are what frogs sing
“I” thought that THIS is what they sing!!!
OR… THIS!
Ah, if only the era would have been right for a zoot suit… Please let the Council exposition last just long enough for a flashback of a werewolf in a zoot suit!
I hate when this system goes buggy and won’t allow me to post on update days…
Such as this, for instance.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFwxH3PPWiU
You canit actually put toothpaste back in the tube with a toothpaste filling machine, because the tubes are filled from the back and then sealed. You’d have to cut the seal off and then reseal them.
I have to say it… 100% agree that the toothpaste gets in the tube SOMEHOW.
Faeries.
Obviously they use illusions to make documentary film makers, and ‘factory workers’* see, and record, other things, like fancy machines. But, with the dramatically increasing human populations, they just got fed up with the workload, and expense, of having to pay so many folks, when they put rotten teeth under their beds. So they just magic toothpaste straight into the tube.
See, another hidden benefit to the Veil. Improved human dental health. But without any risk to the delicate faeries’ own lives.
* They actually spend their days fanning faeries, feeding them snax and other such tasks, despite what their senses tell them they are doing.
I actually like the exposition, so long as we have Sydney and other cast members cracking jokes as we go along. :)
+1
+2, though the exposition/comedy balance is better some days than others.
Hippos are scary.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EftFKZLsIaw
That’s nothing compared to this!
As a rule of dew-claw, it is best not to try and eat something that is so much bigger than you, that it can fit your head in its mouth! Especially not when its teeth are proportionately sized, to inflict significant damage.
Off topic but just wondering, why hasn’t Dabbler fixed Math? Here you have a super lust being and a super martial artist stuck in a horny 16 year psyche. A few minutes with Dabbler, and I do mean minutes with that type of psyche, and Math may never find other boobs as beautiful again.
All of her team-mates are off-limits to Dabbler. It is part of her agreement, in order to work at Archon. Barbarian (the super barber from the ‘villain’ side of the battle) will take several days to recover fully from his experience. Which is not something that Archon can afford to have happen to their all-too rare super personnel.
On top of the usual problems that any work relationship can cause. Given the number of such liaisons that a succubus can get up to, and the intensity of the experiences involved, this is a serious risk of widespread discontent.
And yet, in this one instance, it would solve a serious safety concern.
True, but Math is a martial arts master. If he has to rely on external help to overcome something, which is strictly a self-disciplinary matter, then it has serious implications as regards his own spiritual and martial development! He will never be able to achieve enlightenment, and therefore the pinnacle of either path, if he is unable to overcome his own carnal distractions.
In fact, putting the above aside,* Dabbler’s very act of feeding off his tantric energy might deprive him of an essential part of his own capability, if his style actually draws upon such!
* For the latter argument’s sake, and given that he has progressed to super-human (equivalent) capability despite that flaw. However supreme martial arts stories often require a search for enlightenment, despite the protagonist’s already considerable skill. The greatest foe to overcome is one’s own weaknesses, not an external enemy.
“Incidents like those could be more easily explained…”
Hold up, I think Ingsol just implied that the government has been covering up vampire and werewolf attacks for years ಠ_ಠ
And blaming it on “supers.” ಠ___ಠ
Except people weren’t properly aware of supers so they wouldn’t have been the easy scapegoat they are now.
Just the opposite, actually. He’s stating that maintaining the veil for the genuinely supernatural will be objectively easier now that people have ‘superheroes’ as an easily jumpable conclusion for the extraordinary and weird. He’s talking about the present and future, more than the past. If he were saying these things happened, his phrase would read more like “Incidents like those were easily explained…”, which is more concrete and less speculative.
The complication here, however, is that it makes self-policing for troublemakers in the supernatural set harder, because both superheroes and the supernatural will also have to struggle with the potential to jump to the wrong conclusion.
Ah, that makes more sense. Thank you.
No worries, Gray. You’re welcome.
But it still sounds like vampire and werewolf attacks have happened, and have been covered up, and are going to continue to be covered up :-\
I would say that your right. Not only have attacks happened and been covered up by the veil, but if any more happen in the future, it will be a lot easier to cover them up since people will now jump to the conclusion that a supervillain did it.
I would like to imagine that such attacks are a very rare thing in Sydney’s world though what with the way we’re told that the Council polices itself and considering how Archon stopped the guy who turned Kat into a were-hare. Unfortunately, they probably cannot be completely stopped anymore than we humans can stop murdering and otherwise abusing each other.
I think the logic is flawed. Or at least not well phrased. If people are known to be killed by a predatory super-villain, eating them, that will not be covered up. It will be front-page news, around the world!
So whilst ‘it was a werewolf’ will no longer be the public’s first thought (which hopefully it has not been since the middle-ages, anyhow), it will still be the subject of intense public scrutiny and journalistic investigation.
Presumably the Veil will be able to discourage people from coming to the conclusion that it was supernatural, rather than super-powered. I can’t quite decide if it would be helped, or hindered, by Arianna stating that legendary creatures may have been based on sightings of super-powered individuals.
On one paw it is encouraging thought that ‘a super that did it’.* On the other though, it is directly referring to legendary monsters, and thereby giving credence to their existence, albeit whilst obscuring their nature.
The biggest problem is that the public will be demanding that the perpetrator be found, and brought to justice. And I feel that they will not be satisfied if that is done behind closed doors!
But, on the plus side, that need not end up in a miscarriage of justice. Archon will be searching for the criminal. It is just that, when they try him, he will have to be treated like he is a super, rather than a werewolf (publicly). However the precautions taken will have to be those used to counter lycanthropes, not supers. Or else, for example, guards run the risk of becoming infected.
Fortunately it has already been established that Archon keep the super-prisons in-house, so that will be easy enough to do.
* Which is not necessarily the best P.R., for an organisation, which is attempting to show the positive side of supers. However their remit is not phrased that narrowly. Archon are responsible for dealing with all ‘extraordinary threats’. Which goes to show that this has been thought out very thoroughly!
Which is always a problem of mine!
I did not mean to suggest that the attack would be covered up or that people would not know that one of their neighbors had died. I just meant that the veil made people think a wild animal or a criminal human had done it rather than a supernatural being and that now they would likely guess it to have been a superhuman.
The rest of my post was saying that the supernatural races probably have just as much trouble dealing with their violent and anti-social elements as the human races do, but that those elements are surely very rare. Archon is now clearly ready and willing to fight them, after all, and the Council is ready and willing to slaughter them.
Police themselves… police themselves… what does that even mean?? Seriously, what does that mean? If cryptids aren’t held accountable by the laws of man (I’ll use US law as an example here), then by golly they shouldn’t be allowed the same rights as any other US citizen.
Like, seriously, does no one else think it’s rotten that vampire and werewolf attacks are being covered up at all?
Well, if you read through the thread, you will see that we do believe that they will be held accountable. And under the laws of the United States, at that.
We have only seen one example of the cryptids policing themselves, and it was far harsher than any comparable punishment which human laws hold. So, personally, I am not too worried that they will get off lightly.
As to how or whether or not they will police themselves in future (rather than the historical example above) that would require more exposition, which is less likely to be forthcoming, as Dave is planning on cutting down on that.
Therefore it would be down to us to speculate, until we see something which gives us a clue. So my presumption is that the cryptid enforcers might be given suitable training, to bring them up to speed with US laws (for those operating on US soil anyhow) and get properly deputised, to allow them to conduct themselves as federal agents.
Perhaps a secret treaty will be enacted between the US and the council, to allow them to punish individuals, who have not yet harmed any US citizens? If so I would expect the US judiciary to, behind closed doors, review such activity, in order to ensure it was both constitutional and proportionate to any crimes committed.
Whereas, of course, if events have gotten out of hand, and become public knowledge (or people have been hurt or killed), then Archon would have to take the lead.
“seriously, does no one else think it’s rotten that vampire and werewolf attacks are being covered up at all?”
Not innately rotten, no. People have secrets. It’s part of being people. The driving question comes from the reason the coverup is believed to be necessary. Let’s go back to the World of Darkness for a quick comparison of two other coverups of the Supernatural, which we can then contrast with the Veil.
In Vampire: the Masquerade, the Inquisition presented the vampiric community with such an existential threat that they restructured their society around the policy of ‘the Masquerade’, an organized disinformation campaign devoted to keeping knowledge of the supernatural contained, and out of the general awareness of the public. To this end, they extend control over mass media, and the entertainment industry. They also harshly police their own who violate the Masquerade, and while they turn to ‘humane’ control mechanisms like stealing evidence first, they also have been known to coopt and mind-control individuals to the point of absolute servitude, or outright kill them, if it would keep the Masquerade intact. They lean heavily on the practice of steering people’s reactions through popular entertainment so that the idea of the supernatural being real is viewed as insane.
Werewolves in Werewolf: the Apocalypse also maintain a cover-up policy called the Veil… but it is in part enabled by an effect called the Delirium, which I will focus on because it makes it easily distinguishable from the Twilight Council’s Veil. The Delirium developed in prehistory, when Werewolves considered themselves essentially the caretakers of the world. They took it upon themselves to control human populations and behaviors, which they accomplished through a systemic process of culling recorded in their history as the Impergium. They didn’t do this because they were at threat from humanity, or because humanity at the time was a threat to the world, but because they could, and they felt it was their right to do so. As a result of this culling process, humanity developed a specific response to the sight of werewolves in their warform; suppression and denial. Most people in that setting who see a Werewolf in their most violence-prone shape simply get so irrationally terrified that they huddle in the corner and cry, and later either forget that the incident happened or rationalize it as a bear attack or some other plausible excuse.
So, the Twilight Council’s Veil… doesn’t traumatize its victims through terror. Doesn’t involve exerting monopolistic control of mass media. Doesn’t allow for any cultural engineering beyond providing its membership with cultural anonymity, and attempted violations of the policy cause cryptids to be killed for their actions rather than blameless humans being killed (potentially) for ‘knowing too much’. We’re still speculating as to why the Twilight Council felt the Veil was necessary (presuming that there was at some point a threat of genocide), but its execution as we have heard it described (which admittedly we are assuming is accurate) is actually the least problematic approach.
Well, yeah, because otherwise the vampires and werewolves who AREN’T attacking are going to end up hunted to extinction by a species that carries out ethnic genocides against its own members.
Humans aren’t innocent fluffy bunnies, is what I’m saying.
I’m not saying we’re innocent, fluffy bunnies either, Caffeine. But I guarantee you if vampires and werewolves were public knowledge, and attacks by them were confirmed, with the state of the world as it is there’d be a huge public outcry that would insist, “But not all (FILL IN THE BLANK HERE) are like that!!”
No, in this story the only genocides we’ve seen demonstrated on cryptids have been by other cryptids. So, really, I don’t see any good reason for why humans are being kept out of the loop, besides the ones I’ve stated before.
This story is also set up such that the history of the world bears an overall resemblance to our own, which means that until we hear otherwise it’s perfectly reasonable to look at actual history and presume that those events happened for the most part in the same manner in Grrlpower’s setting.
On the global level, there have been no fewer than fifty incidents of human-on-human genocide in the past hundred years. For a group that operates globally, and on an extended timeline, that’s SHOCKINGLY frequent. So, we have some incidents of cryptid-on-cryptid genocide, and the Twilight Council has gone to extreme lengths to prevent the issue from reemerging through the implementation of the Veil and the Council’s membership protocols. Meanwhile, humanity at large just keeps letting human-on-human genocide -happen-, and while there’s plenty of public outcry, the wheel of justice doesn’t seem to be grinding slow but fine on the war crimes tribunals in most cases. International politics chiefly seems to be okay with it.
A later thought on this… Is it really a cover-up if the legitimate ruling body of vampires and werewolves knows about the matter and responds to the vampires and werewolves who engage in those attacks (which strain the Veil) by capturing and killing them?
Because really, that sounds less like a cover-up and more like the Council handling the problem in house, rather than expecting mortal authorities to capture and contain the culprits.
Giving the people that don’t know about the supernatural an explanation that isn’t supernatural while your supernatural government deals with the supernatural perps isn’t any more of a cover-up than the Veil already represents. The real check for this is in the population of mundane humans who are ‘in the know’ about the supernatural and thus able to directly ask council members ‘was this a werewolf rampage? If so, what happened to the perpetrator?’
If the Council conceals it from those ‘naturals’ that have been read into the reality behind the Veil, then it’s a genuine cover-up in and of itself.
The above is what I can make out of the TV captions in the second-to-last panel. My interpretation of the final part may not be right, but it made me laugh, when I read it. Can any of our patreon account readers make out what the earlier part says, on their double-sized version of the comic?
Not a patreon reader but you’re wrong. It’s actually “[Something or other.] in a phone booth! What’s a phone boo”. It’s a scrolling headline so it’s cut off at the end. Nonetheless, your amusement is well founded asthe overall message remains unchanged.
I’m not a Patreon reader either so someone correct me if I’m wrong, but I made it out at 300% magnification as, “up in the sky – in a phone booth – what’s a phone boo”
Apparently, whoever is doing the scroll is too young to remember telephone booths.
OMG! I get it! Elliot Ness of that world was a Werewolf!
And perhaps his principle enemy, Al Capone, was a rogue vampire or demon?
No, a were-capuchin monkey
Heh. Either that or a were-capybara.
Daytime —-> Nighttime
Wait, isn’t the Daytime guy the new head of CatCo media in Season Two of SuperGirl? o_O