Grrl Power #480 – No relation to Captain Caveman
So if I recall, the passage I misread which inspired the idea for Elsbeth was something like the character opens her spellbook and pulls something out of it. It turned out to be something you could reasonable expect to keep in a book though, like a bookmark or a warrant or something, but my mind went to, well, what you see on the page here.
Actually my initial idea for Ellie was that she could pull basically anything out of her book, assuming that at least 2 dimensions of it fit within one of those pages. Then as I was writing the page I realized I needed to limit that ability slightly, cause what would keep her from pulling out the Wand of Orcus or some other game ender right away? Or, I don’t know, all the individual parts she needs to build a nuke or whatever. So she does have some significant limitations, or rather, the book does. I’ll get into those as she continues to appear in the comic. Regardless, she’s pretty handy to have around. The one thing I’ll say is that it does have to be a real thing that actually exists, but in a world of superheroes, magic, aliens, demons and epimeliads, that’s not much of a limitation.
I don’t know why I gave her multiple braids, but I guess they’re not so hard to draw. Maybe Sydney will have a french braid in the next arc.
Also, as I was drawing this page it occurred to me that there’s virtually no chance that Gault wouldn’t be walking around without some basic adventurer gear on him, including a mana potion or two of his own, but I guess he was busy preparing the report on the situation with the Sigils and left his mage overcoat in his other magic closet portal or however he got here.
Be sure to check out Wearing the Cape: Team-Ups & Crossovers. Sydney’s first Crossover! I’ve made a dedicated blog post for it, please comment there.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. $1 and up, but feel free to contribute as much as you like :)
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Dongs Ahoy!Full frontal and backal. Lots of skin, sex on some or all pages, explicit or otherwise.
OK, I confess, I like her already.
I load the page and only see this comment and think ?second?…. then realize… page 2
she’s definitely an intriguing type of ‘mage’, this is most definitely a case of ‘throwing the book at them’, she’s just doing it a page at a time :)
Book ’em, Danno… I mean, Elsbeth?
“Elsbeth, why is there a table here? I can’t get past it to the coats!”
“You told me to ‘book a table for dinner.’ I had to go with an Ikea one, as the coffee tables were just too small for all the plates. You did say you ‘want a Chinese,’ right master?”
Maybe she’s a normal one, it’s just he makes her carry the book becasue that thing weighs a ton and that’s what students are for.
Lovely :3
I would like to have her as near as possible.
One bit of advice for Ellie. Be careful using that page with the word ‘antidote’ on it. It would have been really bad if she had accidentally looked at the word ‘antimatter’.
not a problem… she just would need to be careful to not open the bottle.
What kind of bottle can hold anti-matter? The kind of bottle that no one who is not made of anti-matter can handle.
Seriously though, even as far back as Star Trek ToS, they used a magnetic field to handle anti-matter. Basically, it’s a container that generates an electromagnetic field strong enough to suspend an item in the middle, isolated from everything else.
you’ve never heard of a magnetic bottle… bah.
That’s exactly what I was describing in the second paragraph…
:-/
Huh, werewolf the apcolypse had a similar fetish item in the bomegnawers tribebook iirc, It was a trenchcoat, and you could pullout anything you could hide under a trenchcoat.
It’s a very good thing my BG (named Paint Job, long story) never had one of those. He would have pulled out a prosthetic leg if he ever felt he needed to be kicked and there wasn’t anyone around who could trust to do it right….
Based on the development times, Toon the RPG (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toon_(role-playing_game)) had the trench coat ability first I think.
Are you aware of Jim Hines’ “Libriomancer” books?
Within limits, libriomancers can pull anything out of regular books, depending on how popular the books are…
In the first book, characters pull the fast-penta truth drug out of a Lois Bujold story, and a pulser out of one of my brother’s “Manticore” books.
What do they do for web novels, carry around a tablet?
There is a young character later in the series who has figured out how to use a tablet and ebooks, yeah.
IIRC they also have the same size limitation, too. That series is indeed the first thing that came to mind when I saw this page, yes.
… KEWLNESS!! *goes to see about ordering these books*
His “Princess” books – with Cinderella, Snow White and Sleeping Beauty as ass-kicking “Charlie’s Angels” type trouble-shooters for Cinderella’s mother-in-law the Queen, and Red Riding Hood as a deadly assassin – are a true hoot, too. The first of these is “The Stepsister Scheme“. (The original paperbacks have great covers, too…)
Yes, i am a bit of an enabler for book addicts…
Addict? Nonsense, I can stop any time I want…really…
…Right after I finish this chapter…I promise…
Last paragraph, I swear!
So, you think you could hook me up with some primo grade Pratchett? It’s… for a friend, reallly.
None of that in stock. But I can offer yer some fresh roasted rat, on a stick. None of that city sewer rubbish, this is quality country-bred merchandise. All nice an’ plump!
Hmmm… an extension of the “belief shapes reality” style of magic. Enough people believe in the book and a mage can make that belief manifest, for a while, for a price, with the right tools.
I was not, but it sounds like a fun power for cross universe references and homages.
Exactly, and of course Isaac (the main character) is a total geek, so he uses everything from D&D tie-in novels and Star Wars books to a primer on the magic power of crystals (which he doesn’t believe in, but enough people who read the books do that it works).
I literally just discovered these books two weeks ago. Synchronicity is awesome. I especially love that libriomancy was invented by Johannes Gutenberg, since it requires identical books.
David Weber for the Win!
Yeah, he’s still my rotten kid brother…
I was getting a bit of a skyrim vibe for a second, she literally just opens a menu and pulls out a mana potion and a cure for poison.
And then she grabs an assault rifle XD. Wouldn’t that have been useful against dragons
There’s a mod for that: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/26605/?
Of curse there is… :D
Pew! Pew!
The passage you misread had the character pull a pistol out, in a similar fashion to what is shown with the mana potions – except that there’s no magic involved. It’s a spellbook, sure, but that last couple hundred pages are just blank with a cutout for a pistol, as is done for some other sufficiently large books in real life.
Okay, I’m definitely a fan of this lady.
omg i love magic dictionary person. but also being tethered to a magic item makes me think of Sydney, too. but i guess Ellie is a mage in her own right, and not just tethered to a magic item.
Interesting observation. A tethered super and a tethered mage ….
… who has Hammer Space! I suspect Elsbeth is going to acquire a new tether. Namely Halo, holding onto her leg, like a ball and chain, begging to be taught Hammer Space / magic!
If Elsbeth can put up with that, their situations may be similar enough for them to get on well. Plus their powers should be nicely complimentary. There would be few things that the pair of them could not deal with together.
What would happen if she looked up “Magic Book”? Would Bookception happen?
It all depends. Per the author’s blog above:
I’m just reminded of the book from Mr Magorium’s Wonder Emporium…
Now that you mentioned it….
We are all going to ignore the cut-out shape for the assault rifle and the double entendre that goes with it, yes? We are? OK, so, ok,good!
Its surely unintentional? I’m just impressed the book offers both left and righthanded cutout options for reaching in to pull something with the mass of an assault rifle out. It also seemed to assume the rifle would have some manner of scope, red dot or low magnification, which the rifle lacks.. which makes me wonder if the particular rifle you pull out is random.
Nevermind the last bit. Studying the shape of the rifle, it was merely allowing space for the receiver.
Considering you’re the FOURTH person to bring it up, I’m going to go with no. :P
The SCAR originally had one of those holo sights on the top, but as I was drawing the next page I decided to leave it off, but didn’t think updating the shape of the cutout was super critical.
Those double drum Beta C magazines are jam-o-matics. If you are lucky you might get off 10 shots before the magazine jams.
Best to stick with the 30rnd Stanegs
Maybe they jam because the idiot using it has a sticky finger and doesn’t know how to release the grip on the trigger
Idiots using them account for at least 75% of gun jams. Between lack of cleaning, firing too fast, and improper ammo you can account for most jams.
This new girl (Elesbeth) reminds me a lot of Miss Militia from the “Worm” web novel in the use of her power.
One possible limitation i knotice it might have is she has to put the items into said dictionary of doom before they can be pulled out, like an extra dimensional storage space. Because there were 4 manas but only 3 antidotes and the antidotes were smaller.
I opened this page to introduce my friend and he immediately said “why is there a dick imprint in that book” and now i cant unsee it
I want that book.
Seconded.
Dave, you may want to check out the Magic ex Libris series (https://www.jimchines.com/project/magic-ex-libris/) by author Jim C Hines. In the first book the main character is part of a group that can do what you are describing for Elsbeth, but with any book if the writing and their imagination is good enough.
lol got to love a girl who knows how to handle the situation.
Also, girls with guns is kinda hot.
True true.
An AA-12? Good taste.
Nope. That is an assault rifle. Looks like a Scar-L with a Beta C-Mag. Holds 100 rounds but… there are reliability and durability problems from what i hear.
Yeah, she’s not a gun expert, but she’s not questing through Afganistan and rolling down sand dunes with the gun strapped to her back either, so it should be okay. :)
She could have gone for “Light Machinegun” and gotten an RPK with a 75 round drum. ;)
Yeah, that magazine is tacticool silliness, but maybe there’s a magical fix for that piece of crap…
Then there is also the fact that it makes your gun look like a dick.
Well anybody who owns certainly looks like a dick at the range…
He he. Nice book. Nice solution to the ‘no attacking directly with magic’.
And yay! No dead bunny!
Or yay, bunny no longer has poisoned flesh!
The villains are lucky that Katrina survived. Doomguy doesn’t like it when you murder bunnies.
She’s still looking a bit peaked, though.
if she looked up the “I win” button, would it appear
Okay, I already like Book Girl, and I don’t even know anything about her except that her name is Elsbeth, and that I’m going to refer to her as Book Girl until I know more.
Also, that the hole that she’s pulling the assault rifle from looks very phallic. :)
“Wikia” would also be a good nom de guerre.
Andy Dufresne is so envious.
No one else is curious about the misread passage? Well I am! What was the book you misread that lead to this idea??
Good news. Soon we will be able to eat 40% more Nestle chocolate, without eating any extra sugar or compromising on the taste!
Why is this important for this community (other than the blindingly obvious 40% MORE CHOCOLATE)?
This is known as the Halo effect!
Halo, 40% sweeter than your average super hero!
Or just eat chocolate that’s already good like Lindt or Ghirardelli
Or Whittaker’s
The Halo brand of chocolate contains 50% super jalapeño. On second thought I doubt Ariana would allow that. People running around screaming while foaming at the mouth is not good for the Arcswat brand.
Chocolate covered ghost peppers… https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/1705
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bush-Grub-Choc-Ghost-Chilli/dp/B00FLZ28LI
I used to (once a month) shop at a hand-made chocolate shop, in Chichester, called Montezuma’s. Their chocolate was absolutely superb. But the most interesting one (due to the link with their name) was the chili chocolate.
It sounded awful (I like spicy but not when it overwhelms the basic dish), but tried some, just for a laugh. It turned out to be incredible! No trip, to the city, would be complete, without some of that to take home.
You could buy it in giant-bar (more like a tray of bricks) form or have pre-broken chunks out of a big glass jar. Or, I see various flavours are now available by mail order. In normal chocolate bar size.
Not that I can idly stand by whilst Nestle chocolate is slandered however, as they make the best chocolate confectionery ever invented!
Lindt also makes it, although i haven’t seen it in a while. i guess it’s more delicate than the one you mention, though.
Montezuma aren’t really to my tastes, not because they’re not good quality but because they are. Good dark chocolate is just too much cocoa and not enough “chocolate” for me.
A glance over that product selection, however, reminds me that they did a ginger white chocolate, which would be amazing were it a softer, more gingerbread-like flavour.
Also, since you seem to know more about the company than I do, do you have any insight into what “dragon ginger” is. They are the only source I can find for the term and I would be very interested in a freaky super-ginger. Please don’t take that second clause out of context.
100% Jalapeño would be too mild. This “super” stuff had better live up to its adjective.
Seriously though, even 5% ghost can’t raise white chocolate above a good medium.
Yorp you are not allowed to eat any chocolate.
Yes I am. I carefully researched my lethal dose, and keep strictly under it. But, yes, chocolate can easily be fatal for dogs, so that is a very sensible warning to make. As a general rule dogs should not be given any chocolate.
Chocolate is technically poisonous to all mamals, it just scales with body mass in such a way that humans would struggle to ever eat enough to be negatively affected.
Cool! The book even opens all by itself and turns to the appropriate page for Elsbeth. The sad part is that this is shown right there in panel one of today’s comic and it’s taken me this long to notice.
There is a useful side-effect, on hot days. Just in case she is lacking any entry under “fan” or “air conditioning”.
You can’t always rely on having a friendly pixie to paw.
So thats where jenks was hiding, morgan we found him!
I have a question.
In truth, I only vaguely remember the character of Captain Caveman and so I’m not getting why this page was named what it is. Does anyone have any ideas?
Also, what are those little green things floating around Kat’s head? I’m guessing they are these things, but it’s a little hard for me to tell.
IIRC, Captain Caveman had some kind of hammer space thing going on under his body hair. He’d pull whatever he needed out of there.
Didn’t his hammer club thinggie also literally open up and things would come out of it? o_O
Yes… and yes.
So he was the originator of Hammer-space? Neato :D
Correct. Biohazard symbols to denote her dying(?) of mystery poison.
As I recall, Captain Caveman would often reach into his voluminous hair and pull things out that turned out to be useful (I can’t recall if he ever reached behind himself to do this, I only recall from the front and sides of his… fuzz. Which is good, as that joke might have been a bit too much for the censors of kid’s TV at the time).
soooooo i love the comic but i just want to mention a few things i notice about the comic, sort of like a bunch of small writing… weaknesses? let me try to list them out:
everyone being on “the same page”: this is a little hard to describe, sort of like people using sometimes obscure terms and everyone knowing exactly what they mean. it kind of gives me the feeling like everyone is just an extension of everyone else. it isn’t require for writing but considering how much exposition and character building there is, i think it would help a lot if you sort of though out who would know what terms and words
disconnected dialogue: when people start talking the comic has a tendency to sort of “ignore” what’s happening at the time. the focus is shifted, which is fine, but like on this page well, if we didn’t know there was a battle going on we could almost assume this was minutes afterwards in a different room all-together. the urgency and tension just sort of disappears. i don’t know too much about making comics but i think this could be fixed just by showing the destroyed constructs, maybe changing some stances/poses here and there, visual stuff. it’s like everyone just relaxes all of a sudden, even though that girl pulls out an assault rifle which clearly shows there’s still danger present to some degree
uhhhhh that’s all i can think of for now. sorry for being a jerk, this stuff’s been on my mind for… well, years now
Your comment about the action is totally fair. I’m not super sure how to interleave this sort of cavalry showing up stuff with an ongoing battle. If this was a comic book and not a 2 page a week webcomic, and you could just turn to the next page right away, I could use at least one panel on each page to show Dabbler or someone squaring off with an opponent while this stuff is ongoing. The problem is, if I did it on this page, I’d have to cut panels to make it fit, so what do I lose? Ellie helping Gault, or helping Kat, or move the bit with the assault rifle to the next page.
From a critical editing standpoint, I think losing the part with Kat makes the most sense. That way you still get the “clause” of Ellie helping Gault, him being frustrated about headstrong pupils, and cap it off with her not paying attention as she pulls out the assault rifle.
The problem with that is I set up Kat needing help on the previous page, so a grander edit would be required.
Really I think my issue mostly is that all the battles I’ve had in the comic so far (all 2) just involve way too many people. Most comic book fights involve one or two characters, three at most, vs either easily dispatched hordes or a single boss. The other kind of comic book fight is the team on team, but in those, everyone goes down in a single hit, otherwise any team battle would span 2-3 issues. The good news is that I know the next fight in the comic will definitely involve smaller groups, and I hope to make those more action packed and focused.
While straight up action pages are cool looking if done right, they don’t leave you guys much to comment on. The other edge of that coin is the exposition laden Naruto type fight were every battle takes 3 episodes. (At least that’s my experience from watching season 1 of the show) I’m leaning closer to the Naruto end of things now but I hope to find a happy medium.
In Naruto – those early battles had a reason for all the talking and sitting around between/during fights. In order of the fights:
– Training sequence (you need to explain to the kids why the stupid thing they did was stupid)
– Armed Strike (except the “money” was the one striking and the workers hired the Ninjas – negotiation not fighting required for the win)
– Final Exam Tournament (the goal is to show off to the examiners, not kill the opponent)
There is a reason why Naruto is often said to use “Talk no Juitsu” as his special move. Very few of the objectives in world are/can be achieved by simple punching. Although I will give it this – any fight where assassination is the goal is over very quickly. (One way or the other)
I’d say one other thing to beware of is character bloat, don’t introduce too many characters/storylines less you bog down your main story.
It may be too late for that…
I repeat my request for as many new characters as you want. A rich source of NPC and/or back ground characters is always a good thing.
I think it was too late when there was about 30 or so supers show up at the Steak House, even though there was nearly a dozen more supers already inside…
;)
You can introduce as many characters as you like, but you don’t have to flesh them all out. Keeping a bunch of background characters around can be a great source for future adventures. As we’ve been seeing most of this from the view point of Sydney we will not know everything about everyone from the beginning. Sure she will ask a lot of questions, but if there’s some kind of crisis then the answers will be short with little detail.
– “So, who’s that big dude in the corner?”
– “Jones, a flying brick. Now concentrate on these mugshots. We need to know if that invisible “dude” you saw came with the government group.”
I guess you are the one to know if bricks can fly, or not.
Moo… mee moo mowr!
Say that again and I’ll come and camp out on your keyboard…
I tried to think of a witty retort, but came up with a complete block.
I’ve expanded the business and taken on some new staff. I’m now able to offer several choices of blocks, such as the Lightweight Writers Block, the <a href="https://i.imgur.com/Ninbatn.jpg" title="Heavyweight Writers Block"Heavyweight Writers Block, and the Slightly Incontinent Writers Block.
Arrrhg!
I’ve expanded the business and taken on some new staff. I’m now able to offer several choices of blocks, such as the Lightweight Writers Block, the Heavyweight Writers Block, and the Slightly Incontinent Writers Block.
One each of the lightweight and slightly inconvenient flavours please. I don’t think I could cope with a heavyweight writer’s block!
“And then along came Jones
Tall, thin Jones
Slow-walkin’ Jones
Slow-talkin’ Jones
Along came long, lean, lanky Jones”
Totally fair comments, but I think the format of the comic (twice weekly) heavily influences the points you make. I have a feeling this would parse much better if it was in dead-tree format, coming out in a single (albeit very large) issue.
That said, I like your comment – you gave concrete examples and suggested options that might help DaveB deal with an acknowledged issue he’s had with the work.
See if she can pull out DaveB’s next comic…
I guess it’s true what they say: You can find anything in the yellowed pages. ;)
+1
I wish this comments forum had an upvote button.
Mmm!
Although ai_vin‘s comment is deserving.
Okay, I love Elsbeth even more now!!! Making sure her Master is okay, giving the lapine an anitdote (complete with emergency indcution port) and then pulling out a boom stick to help out.
I love characters (and players) who play to their strengths instead of worrying about being super-effective in combat. Even better are ones who role-play out things that make sense (worrying about their teammates and mentors).
DaveB, are you familiar with the anime/manga Eat-Man? Elsbeth reminded me quite a bit of the main character from that series. He would materialize things straight into his hands, but the limiting factor was that he had to eat them first, whether they were whole or disassembled. There was even an instance of him catching a bullet in his mouth to load the gun in his hand. An interesting concept, though I’m not sure if he had gunpowder already or not.
Surprised you went with the Scar 16. Almost all of ArcSwat could shrug off a 5.56 round with little difficulty.
You go with what you know, and it really comes down to the ammo. Besides she isn’t fighting Arc-Swat, and she knows where the chips are now, at least until the magazine causes a mis-feed….
‘Almost all of ArcSwat’? Umm, no, only a few, most of them are still squishy
But as Knuckles said, she’s not fighting ArcSwat
It’s good this that she is not Dyslexic. She could have wanted a Gun, and out would have sprung a Gnu.
How would you find something in the book if you did not know how it was spelled? What if a word has more than one meaning? If she ran out of ammo and wanted a new ‘magazine’ could she open the book to find the latest copy ‘US Weekly’?
An Assault Gnu?
How much do I have to Patreon to make this happen?
or a “Ass-laut Gnu” AKA a gnu with farting problems?
You don’t seem to be familiar. Are you new here?
Darn it, why did it give me “a salt rifle”?
*Shakes rifle over his eggs* Thanks!
It’s bugged. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTVn6OhATaI
That’s the good thing about a dictionary: you typically have a vague idea how the word is spelt, so you go to the general area and start looking and reading the descriptions slash definitions
Have you heard about the dictionary for masochists?
It’s not in alphabetical order.
*rimshot*
Or the psychic’s dictionary. Where the words are in the order you need to look them up, with the bookmark always lying next to the one you need right now.
“Mind-blowing”
Or if you are really bad at spelling, there’s this.
There are actually Reverse Dictionaries out there, for when you know what the word means but not how to spell it
People tend to think they look in a dictionary for how to spell a word, but they are wrong: you look in a dictionary for what it means
coolest dictionary ever
Until you find the Kama Sutra version of it. With a complimentary Playboy folding mansion bookmark.
No, that would be the hottest dictionary.
Dabbles has the signed first edition ;)
So just to be clear The Book generates objects of that description or Stores an object and looking up its description retrieves said object?
Yes.
;)
OH MY GOD! IT’S A BOOK OF MANY THINGS!!!
:-D
All bar the fact that it lacks any random element. So hopefully will not summon Death. Well, not unless Elsbeth flips through the “D” section at random.
Bursting onto the scene just as the heroes are finding their footing and she has everything they need? My genre sense tells me to be suspicious.
I took it as being Gwen who burst in, rather than Elsbeth, as the effect was closely associated with the former (and was clearly still entering the room). Whereas Pixel and Mysterious New Character #2 appeared to have just been hanging around in the room, anyhow. As such I grouped Elsbeth in with the lurkers rather than the burster.
However you may be right that it was both Gwen and Elsbeth. And you are certainly right to have your genre sense tingling. In fact it should be doing a conga dance, carrying a flashing “SOMETHING SUSPICIOUS, THIS WAY COMES” sign overhead all set to the theme music from Jaws!
IT’S A TESTICLE RIFLE (the dual-drum magazine makes it look like it has balls).
I thought of a combo that could be interesting. Team up Elsbeth and her book with Thomas the guy who can infinitely refill anything. https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/2239
He can only refill with liquids. Maybe he could have refilled containers that once had a mana potion or a venom antidote, but that would only work for the next time they might be needed. He could do nothing non-liquid objects, such as the rifle.
However, he could be quite useful for filling bottles of acid to splash at the SWATonatoms, though.
Or healing potions and broad-spectrum magical antidote potions, say.
Only useful if the book is just storing things, as opposed to creating them on demand (unless the latter has some kind of limit*).
* In D&D terms it might be 200 lbs of equipment, and no more than 1,000 XP’s worth of magical items, per day. So you could create lots of flasks of acid, as that only impacts the mundane materials weight limit. But you would only create a few magical potions, before hitting the enchanted items limit. So getting Thomas to refill the empties, at least allows spare potions to be made and stored in a pocket (or a suitably padded container).
Have him refill the fuel bottle for a flame-thrower. Somehow Jamie still has the flamethrower he built for the Fire vs. Ice episode, but he has used it for other things, like testing nozzle designs.
And interestingly enough there is still no proven explanation (that I could find) for why a bucket of thermite would explode when on ice, rather than just burning.
Shame Mythbusters is not still going. It did contribute positively to science. In that instance confirming that the YouTube video was not a hoax, and that proper scientific study should be conducted into the effect.
Shame that Science has not taken up the invite. Bad Science, no Yorpie Snax™ for you!