Grrl Power #485 – Miniboss fight music record scratch
Time to wrap up that fight! And yes, Pixel likes the occasional spank, but we don’t know if Elsbeth likes being cuffed or doing the cuffing.
There’s no real female equivalent of “Bro.” Obviously there’s “broette” but that’s just tacking a feminizing suffix onto a word as a stopgap since there’s not a real word for it. Someone can be your sister in a way that doesn’t mean a literal relative, the same way someone can be your brother (he’s not heavy) but “bro” is still different.
There should be, it’s not like groups of female friends don’t get together and do dumb things… I should explain, in my head, being a bro with someone usually involves the phrase “hey, watch this…” If you have a friend you catch the occasional movie with, or have dinner with, that’s a friend, it’s not really a bro. If you’re ever doing anything that involves diving in after them, or tell the girl he’s trying to pick up that he’s the world G-Spot finding champion, or ask “does this look broken?” then they’re a bro.
Horsing around, I guess, is how you define a bro, and it’s not like girls don’t do it. They’re generally not as renowned for it though, especially in popular media, where women are either catty with each other, or only have male friends, or are incidental characters.
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That was impeccable timing on Maxima’s part.
Now was it intentional or coincidental?
You seriously implying that Maxi is the one responsible for this attack? o_O
I think he’s implying she was waiting for just such a moment to dramatically intervene, rather than intervening immediately.
Seeing how pissed Max is, I seriously doubt if she was trying to make a grand entrance. She more than likely wants to rip someones head off for making her have to dig out…
If the opposition is so obliging as to move all your targets within one blast radius, why interrupt them?
I really like Max’s “I’m not playing anymore.” face.
Definitely stung, remember her outer layer defence also protect clothing.
So yeah, she isn’t playing around.
Alternatively could be her “That was my favourite jacket, you ruined” expression.
Considering that she was point blank with an explosion, she should be lucky she still has any clothes at all…
We don’t know if she was at ‘point blank with an explosion’, just that she was (obviously) caught in the blast (most of that damage could have come from being buried under a few feet of mud and dirt
Given the length of delay before Max’s reappearance, I would probably amend that last to “several TONS of mud and dirt”
My parents always said…”Good friends will bail you out of jail. Best friends will be sitting next to you, laughing and saying, ‘I told you that’d be a riot'”
I suppose that goes for Bros as well. XD
The version I heard was: “Good friends help you move. Best friends help you move bodies.”
A good friend will bail you out of jail, a true friend is sitting next to you in the cell….
A good friend will tell you not to do that stupid thing. A true friend will show up to bail you out of jail and say “I told you not to do that. What kind of a moron punches a cop?”
and then there’s friends like me who would be looking in through the jail cell window telling you to get down and cover your ears…
:-D
Could you make a wallpaper version of the last panel? Pissed off Maxima is just too cool.
And soooooooooo that’s teh sexiest she’s been, yet!
best friends will be there in the cell with you, saying ‘hey dude, i got us a lawyer’
First off, most people who like to do the cuffing aren’t embarrassed about it, which leaves me to think Elsbeth like to be the cuffee rather than doing the cuffing.
Second off, how does Elsbeth know that Pixel likes to be spanked? I doubt that that’s your normal “girl talk” type of confession.
Ellie doesn’t seem embarrassed to me, her face in panel “OOPS!” (aka panel two) is more alike to “Did I just say that?” with Pixelicious’ smirk leading to panel “red face” :D
Maybe one of Pixel’s former boyfriends or girlfriends subsequently became one of Ellie‘s ‘sepcial friends’ too?
Oops! “special”, not “sepcial”…
DaveB: sounds (reads?) to me that there is a high call for a wallpaper of the “Mad Maxi” image (seriously hoping you saved that separately)
win. and I was right, soot stained max is hot.
And I maintain that Pixel is the best thing on two legs.
Maybe not the best thing, but in the top 1% for sure.
That is a bit insulting, the top 1% of humans (much less *anything* on two legs) is still 800,000,000 people.
You’re out by a factor of ten: It’s 1 in 80’000’000.
So, Wertsir is in the bottom 1%. He gets insulted by not understanding basic math.
Insult? Where? o_O
Come on, I misplaced ONE zero.
Supers must be a bit galling for some of the Council – they are powerful beings, but supers like Maxima can out-power them all. And it is very different from hiding from normals because normals in large groups are dangerous – this is danger with a face and in-your-face.
* puts on nerd glasses and pocket protector *
Well TECHNICALLY, Max is a human-alien hybrid due to being exposed to meteor goop, and not just a human ‘super’. The Council has aliens on their roster, so she is not that far off of what they have dealt with before. She fits more into the category of ‘the chosen one’ since the meteor only cracked open for her.
Sydney could also fall into ‘the chosen one’ category for her bonding to the orbs. Let’s hope DaveB does not subscribe to the Highlander motto ‘There can be only one!’
I don’t think so much hybrid as enhanced….
Geode not meteor, so most likely terrestrial, but I could be wrong.
It was mentioned there were some traces inside the remains of the geode that showed it did not come from Earth. So it being a meteorite is very plausible.
I love qualifiers.
Meteoritic Geode, perhaps? Or the non-terrestrial material may have infiltrated the geode during its formation, meaning that the substance was around on a geological timescale, though mostly contained in the geode.
I think how scary she is to the Council depends partially on what magic can do, and how magic resistant Max is. She’d lose some of the intimidation factor if some wizard turned her into a teddy bear and set her on fire.
I think Max’s ‘defense field’ makes her very resistant to many types of magic, in the same way Sydney’s forcefield can block magic auras.The thing I’m wondering right now is how affected she was by Vehemence’s aura. She obviously kept a (relatively) cool head when Dabbler was introduced and pushed her lust aura to max, so she’s got some resistance. The question is, how much of limbing vehemence was tactical decision, and how much was aggression aura? The answer to that would determine if you could turn her into a teddybear.
However, I think the thing that makes her most immune to magic is the fact that it takes some time to cast.
I think only the reality-altering magic we saw a few panels ago could catch her, and then only if she didn’t know it was being used on her.
“Control” does not equal “Resistance”, control is what you have when your resistance fails
Soups has the same type of ‘defence field’ Maxi has, but he is highly susceptible to magic, the only magic Maxi’s field could potentially protect her against would be contact (or ‘touch’) magic
I’d heard that he’s actually no more resistant to magic than the common man, but when all of his other defenses (with the exception of Kryptonite) are so strong, it highlights his lack of exceptional resistance in comparison.
Well he does have one common resistance to magic in a sense. While he can be stabbed or otherwise harmed by magic and magic weapons, the very second the magic source/energy is removed his body starts to heal immediately (same deal with kryptonite weapons and energy blasts), it hurts him and could potentially kill him, but he heals so quickly that you’d probably have to leave a magic sword in his chest forever…of course then his body probably wouldn’t even rot and the second you’d pull it out he’d start to heal again or something..
Can his regeneration help him heal the memory of being mind-controlled and killing his friends?
Oh wait, that was Old Man Logan
Well at least the [pre-Crisis] Earth-Two version of Superman was [i]canonically[/i] more vulnerable than ordinary people are to magic: That’s why he was among the heroes seen to be affected by the WW2 spell (cast using the Spear of Destiny in Germany, and the Holy Grail in Japan) which switched their allegiance if they entered Axis-held territory.
My personal theory is that the Kryptonians weren’t really native to Krypton (where the evolution of such Human-like beings [as well as their associated Dog-like beings, and Monkey-like beings] under the local conditions and alongside the fauna’s more “monstrous” elements seems improbable to me), they were actually descended from explorers from elsewhere — maybe even explorers from pre-sinking Atlantis, who’d acquired spacecraft from visiting aliens, which I think also happened canonically at one point in pre-Crisis history — who’d become stranded in that stellar system and had used magic to adapt themselves [& their pets] & their descendants to the planet’s conditions. This would potentially explain the existence of those few Earth-like species in such an alien environment, the vulnerability to magic, and even some of the peculiarities about how Kryptonite works: The fact that despite Kryptonians’ general resistance to harm this material affects them so much more seriously than it does Earth-born humans, and the fact that (at least according to some stories…), Kryptonians are still only vulnerable to Kryptonite from their own universe‘s version of the planet, could then be explained as being because as they were mystically-genetically attuned to the COMPLETE planet bits of the BROKEN planet — under the laws of sympathy & contagion — “break” them; and the general weirdness of ‘Red’ Kryptonite is hard to explain on any “scientific” basis, after all…
Heh. And then maybe we could even say that the House of L/El’s apparently innate talents for leadership & for excellence in whatever careers they chose to follow were inherited [and partly magical] from a leader of those explorers, so that the post-Crisis story saying that Power Girl was descended from Arion simply altered the number of generations involved…
^_^
Oops! My formatting slipped twice or thrice in the post above…
**
A friend and I were talking and we love this comic, but we do have a minor concern that Max leads to a Superman syndrome.
Trouble happens, Max can fix it.
Remove Max so other heroes can shine.
Shit get’s bad, Max returns to fix it.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s fairly realistic, but it does keep us from getting to see some of the other people’s big options. And as some were saying, this whole fight and introducing sooooo many new characters at once and so much info so quick, that I have been wanting us to move on a little. But this does feel a little deus ex machina.
So, I’m really not sure how I feel about it.
Counter argument: Vehemence. Max was getting her ass kicked by Vehemence, while Sydney’s smarts took him down.
It’s been my private (now public) theory that Dave may be building up to a scenario like in Irredeemable or Worm – build up a hero to be totally broken, and then have them turn on the heroes.
While it’s tough to imagine Maxima turning EVIL, persay, the seeds have been well-established that she could go rogue or vigilante. She’s been shown to have issues with the way her superiors run things at times, and she’s even been shown to outright disobey them in (so far) minor ways. She has pretty strong no-tolerance view on wrongdoing which could lead her to eventually part ways with her team.
If Maxima becomes an adversary, then yeah, the stronger they make her, the more dramatic and potentially hopeless her turn would be…
I still won’t believe that DaveB is setting Maxima up to be an antagonist. I simply think he’s going to make all the actual big bads stronger than Maxima (or simply, capable of countering her directly. Think ForWhomTheDeathTolls).
And remember that she’s not actually THAT strong. Sydney could have done this exact thing with her PPO, if she knew how to use it. And Sydney’s shield is a perfect 5star rating (cast page). That’s the strongest that exists, and may even be able to fully stop Maxima.
If one of the heroes was going to go bad, wouldn’t a more likely candidate be Harem? We already know she’s spying on the team for Deus, after all.
I’m not sure very many people in Arhcon actually know about the council/ Sydney was brought in because o her com ball, but or the average team member ‘need to know’ would make it unlikely…..
but she might be doing so as a triple agent, with Archon’s knowledge & consent.
According to the cast page Daphne is only 19. She’s in it for the thrills as much as anything, and ‘spy’ certainly sounds thrilling…..
So does being a triple agent
You know, the old “You know that I know that you know, but… do you know that I know that you know that I know that you know” Gambit :D
Seems a bit much for a comic that was pitched to us originally as being more focused on the little moments and “human” bits that happen between fights. (basically having chunks that are like the “slice of life” genre )
Not that these things don’t occasionally evolve into another genre than the author intended.
But even if Dave managed to keep a large percentage of it in the slice of life ballpark they could have Maxima die or disappear (“we never found the body” or “it must have been completely disintegrated”) and Sydney has to take up a lot of the slack from her missing mentor in a superheroine coming of age moment.
We know from the framing sequence that Maxim is still around in a few months’ time, on the character’s timescale, and if Dave continues at his present rate then it’s going to be a lonng time before we reach that date…
… unless she disappears fro a while during the intervening period, but still comes back before that scene, of course.
Sydney has to be trained, gain real on the job experience, etc… with her mentor around before it would be appropriate to separate them for the whole “coming of age” thing so I meant that IF it happened (and I’m not rooting for it by the way) it would be a long ways off yet.
The short disappearance you speak of could be interesting though. I wonder if Max would fake one for testing purposes?
While the ‘deus ex Maxima’ pun has been joked with a few times, even in comic, I don’t think you can call Maxima being in this comic a deus ex machina.
A deus ex machina is when a seemingly unsolvable problem is suddenly dealt with by an element from outside the story narrative. For instance if some random previously unheard of super just happened to walk by and fixed everyone’s issues.
As overpowered as she is Maxima is very much so a part of the cast and the story, making her not a deus ex machina.
I remember when I, and others, tried many times to spread that definition back when the deus ex thingie was being said every so many comments on every post. And maybe it even has some effect for those few who actually came back and looked at responses to their rants. But we always have so many new commenters here.
Maybe we need a permanent link to the definition/trope added to Maxima’s who’s who text? (next to a note saying she’s not one and read the link to find out why)
I’m fine with this. I’m not one of the people who (wrongly) believes Superman is a shallow hero.
You don’t have to be some edgy, tragic backstoried personage or amnesiac, or half-loco anti-hero, or villainous defector, or going-to-become-a-villain Benedict Arnold in order to be a good hero, but for some reason people can’t come to terms with the idea of a superhero who isn’t at least half-bad guy or edgy as a box full of razors.
Used to be a time those were the odd man out and only interesting because they were rare. Now people conflate ‘nigh-villainous’ with ‘depth’ somehow and try to use every bit of wording they can to support and justify it. So, Max can be the big-stick-problem-solving-good-guy and I won’t complain in the least. The others will show their big guns when the situation is big enough that they need to. If we just started running through everyone’s trump cards right at the start (we’re still at the start of the story), then what are we going to do? A two-years-later timeskip that was also a training arc so they have new skills and powers because the bad guys know everything they can do now?
Dude, even Batman says that Supes is an overgrown Boy Scout. And he should know, because… he’s Batman!
And then Superman says that he used to agree with this verdict… until he met Captain Marvel.
^_^
This is why Superman is better than Batman.
Today I learned that brooding is synonymous with edgy.
“Let’s re-make _______, only this time it’ll be ‘dark and edgy’… ”
More than a few re-made characters and TV show re-boots displayed this kind of thinking. As far as I am concerned, no good ever came of it – the result was depressing dreck every time.
When they get enough threats across great enough space to have to split up into teams then at least one team will have a bit of delay when hitting the Maxima button. Assuming they can get a spare moment to do so and communications are not blocked.
The next few comics should be interesting since Max will have questions and isn’t in a diplomatic mood. The damaged sigil is now much more important. Likely it was bait so a meeting of the council would be called. Someone with a lot of power is involved and Ma won’t want to fly blind. Most of the council bugged out, but Gregor, Ingesol, and Gault is still around. Looks like time for executive action…..
The Fwoosh reminds me of a certain sadistic warlock named Richard :D
Ah yes, my mentor and inspiration.
Such a delightful person and an absolute wizard in the garden.
I’m not sure about in general (probably changes depending on the group) but “Not cool dude” would work just fine between women.
Wow…. Maxima is kind of scary hot
for all the power Maxima has she has to consciously use her powers and she said to use one set she has to weaken another. Her default is powerful but to tango with stronger heroes like Vehemence she had to alter her skill set to equal him, leaving her vulnerable. but that pic she is AWESOME.
Well, to use any of her powers to its absolute maximum extent, she has to weaken others. How far those others get weakened is up to her, though I’d find it hard to imagine her putting absolutely everything she has into a single offensive power, since that might render her vulnerable to her own back-blast.
For example, she might be personally immune to her own blasts, but back-blasted air heated almost to the point of being plasma might still cook her alive if she weakened her defenses too much.
Or flying debris (such as boulders, vault doors, or engine blocks) could hit and squash her in that same scenario.
BROS! BROS! BROS! BROS! BROS! BROS! BROS! BROS! BROS! BROS! BROS! BROS! BROS! BROS! BROS!
(Said in a chant with one fist in the air and a drink in the other.)
BADGER! BADGER! BADGER!
Brian Blessed is Santa Claus, around Xmas he does that whole red suit gift making then giving shtick, then every other day he does every other thing possible, or at least the legal ones, or maybe more specifically the more dangerous legal ones
Hopes that you don’t get mis-heard…
(https://glorantha.tumblr.com/post/97703013943/what-are-the-broo)
Well she just unnecessarily burned evidence. Seriously, they came up with a plan involving teamwork, and Max went in and melted what looked like a unique helmet. Way to go.
Looks to me that she retrieved evidence: by melting the outer shell and grasping the shard, preventing it from flying off for a start
The shards only started flying after getting some blood on them and only to assemble, though it is possible there was a safety written in to fly away once all bodies were too damaged to repair, we don’t know that (yet).
Either way though, it looks like the shard(s) that Maxima is holding on to is melting so she might have destroyed any evidence on it by doing that. If there will be anything left at all depends on how quickly her hand cools down again.
You can bring metal to white hot without melting, though it tends to ruin the metals quality. ….
Yes, but this piece appears to be dripping…
That dripping could be from the helmet
She´s perfect.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/1189
(Last panel)
“Sis”. That’s the equivalent of “Bro”.
Yeah, you’re not used to it. Still it’s right there and easy.
Broette sounds just stupid.
Problem is, ‘sis’ is not normally used with non-relatives
This is probably the most badass Maxima has been yet. Although the punch to the face panel might be close, I think the art is way better on this one. The depth and scale of her pose and forward hand is about perfect, and the reflection and lighting on max are very good as well. Nice work.
Deus is my current suspect in all this. I don’t know if he knew Max was going to be there–his goal would vary depending on that knowledge. But he certainly has enough magical artifacts in his little collection to be able to pick out a Shattersword of Mannequin Control.
If he didn’t know Max was there, this (and the disruption of the network) was an attempt to disrupt a potential threat to his own world-domination plans. The Council are powerful, but a great amount of that power comes from being in the shadows–forcing them into the light would disrupt their scheming.
If, OTOH, he DID know Max was going to be invited to the meeting, then he likely figured she’d handle the threat, coming out of it looking like a hero. He obviously regards Archon in general positively (even if it’s just because he thinks he can manipulate them), so having the Council ‘owe’ Max would raise his allies’ status in relation to his rivals–never a bad thing.
Why does every one believe that Deus wants to rule (or dominate) the world? Do you have any idea how much work that is? And how often idiot heroes (or other ‘villains’) interfere? It’s just not worth the hassle or stress, leave that to the flashy idiots
I have always thought someone should write a story where the would be world conquerer wins, and after six months on the job, buried under a small mountain of paperwork asks “Exactly why did I want this job again?”
More than 500 comments. Congratularions on your popularity Dave.
So that’s where my hairbrush went! … that’s OK, you can just, uh, keep it.
Can’t Maxima just burn off all the mud and stuff ?
While her skin is resistant to pretty much everything, i doubt the mud sitting on it benefits from the same protection.
Greatly depends on how immune she is to her own powers, and before she manages to ‘burn off’ the mud, she is more likely to have burnt off the rest of her clothes
Naked Max covered in flames. Me gusta.
As a female who has done the occasional stupid thing, I think the word you’re looking for is ‘dude.’ At this point, it seems to be pretty gender-neutral. Love Max here. Really diggin’ Clover.
I wonder why Bridgette knows that.. but lil smarty doens’t know about her handcuff thing?
Like.. what situation involved bridgette learning the spanking.. but not learnign the other
You mean Ellie
To me, it wasn’t so much news to Pixelicious, but Ellie realizing what she just implied and diverting the embarrassment to an easy target
Good! Now that that whole thing is over we can find out what “they were really after”.
I’ve used a lifeline to a friend who lives in a more populated area nearer the west coast. (which seems like a more the sort of place terms like “bro” spring into existence) But in the mean time it could be either “Sistah” (mentioned on previous page of comments) which seems to have a similar historical origin or one of the variations of girl, gurl, grrl, etc… (also mentioned previously by someone else) that I have often heard used in a manner similar to “bro”. Up to and including hearing it used by a woman to address a male buddy that she feels tight with or at least a lot of affinity with it at the time of usage. (the same way that men will apply “bro” to a girl in their crew they feel that way about though while a straight female will use bro to describe another female its pretty rare for a straight male to do something similar with “girl” but that’s got more to do with our cultures views on how far the male gender is “allowed” to bend gender lines. *shrugs* )
While Dave could say that “girl” is often applied to friends/acquaintances of a lesser bro’ness level then he describes there are also plenty of people who overuse bro because they don’t see it the same way as Dave does.
When/if the time comes that such a more feminine form of “bro” is needed the short and sweet girl/grrl/gurl will probably slide smoothly in to take up that role.
Posting a comment just to test a feature (something messed up my web browser’s setup and I’m trying to fix it).
For some reason, the Javascript for Greasemonkey has completely stopped working for me. Greasemonkey and the Grllpower script are both Enabled, but new comments are not being highlighted.
This is Max with her aspect upon her and her attributes fully manifested.
(Trans: This is Max at max.)
AND she’s pissed.
To me, Pixelicious using ‘broette’ may simply be a Pixel-thing: in real life, not everyone speaks ‘proper grammatical English’, and it really annoys me when English-Lit dropkicks try and force all comic characters to speak perfectly
Most people have their own idioms and ways of speech
I agree. I do sometimes correct people, but (mostly) over missing commas. There is a major difference between “Let’s eat, grandma!” and “Let’s eat grandma!” I try not to correct people over minor stuff (though sometimes my OCD just won’t let me NOT correct it), because I certainly don’t speak ‘proper grammatical English’ either, especially when a Jesus Clip (aka circlip, c-clip, Seeger ring, snap ring) has just gone flying across the room.
Ooooh the last panel reminds me of Iron Man 1 when ironman slowly exits the crater.
“… best outcome if …. Or destroy her jacket.”
Hmm…. I wonder if Maxima was a fan of Arthur Fonzerelli?! ^_^
Can that last panel be made into a poster? Love to have that as a screen saver.
is it weird that i’m even more attracted to Pixel now?
Well she is looking cute in panel 3, cutely embarrassed in panel 4 (and likely evoking interesting mental imagery too, from her dialogue) and authoritarian in panel 5.
So she sure is working hard to push as many buttons as possible. Well, maybe that is a side-effect of working hard at her day-job.
What happened to stuff not sticking to Maxima’s skin very well, especially if it’s not oily, as we saw in comic 334? Mud isn’t very oily. Shouldn’t it just slide off her?
Some girls will use the word ‘dude’ for guys and girls, so whether Pixel is the type to or not, it seems more plausible than ‘broette’. ‘Broette’ sounds like an awkward neologism improvised by a guy who doesn’t know how to adapt his speech patterns, moreso than ‘dudette’. But maybe Pixel is that type of awkward when her secret shame is outed.
I don’t know what it is about black, purple, and gold but Maxima looks good like this.
Pink fuzzy handcuffs are like, the single least sexy form of bondage. No clue how they got so popular