Grrl Power #528 – Sneak escape
“On death, eject control cortex; leave behind sleeping cat-like floppy body”
I’m not sure what the Super Husk’s directives were exactly. Probably something like “buy me time to escape.” But after that, who knows what its programming defaulted to. It does seem to have some self preservation instincts though.
It’s been a while since I’ve read a Wolverine comic, but I don’t recall if he had super hearing or not. I know he had super smell. Or uh, super smelling. Maybe he stunk too, but in either case, Pixel has super smelling, hearing and superior night vision, though her color perception is somewhat muted in hybrid form, and more so in cat form. A quick googling reveals that cats are trichromats like humans, (except for the super rare woman who is a tetrachromat who I’m totally jealous of) but the ratio of rods and cones in their eyes is the inverse of humans. Conversely, dogs are dichromats, and like red/green colorblind humans, mostly see red and green as yellow, and do okay with blue.
The issue with exceptional hearing is being able to filter out noise, pun intended. In a scenario like what’s left of the Mars warehouse, there’d be people trudging about, Sydney would probably be badgering the survivors still, the Osprey would be making all kinds of noise as it settled, wind in the leaves, etc. The trick around people with super hearing probably wouldn’t be making no noise, it would likely come down to not making any distinctive noise. If their hearing was so good they could track individual heartbeats or something, then you’d be screwed almost no matter what you did.
Unrelated to this page, but dang, you guys had some mixed reactions to Maxima’s handling of Krona last page. That’s ok, it’s the sort of thing that people generally won’t agree on anyway. It’s a tough situation morally. If a guy’s got a nuke in his pants and you can’t take his pants, but he hasn’t exhibited intent to explode his pants, do you trust that he’ll continue to not explode his pants, or is the risk so great that you have to trample that one guys rights, or is trampling his rights the thing that makes him want to blow up his pants, or can he be bribed or blackmailed one way or the other, etc etc. There’s no right answer without being able to see the future. Max made a call, and opted for semi-polite caution.
I’m trying something new with borderless comics. Makes the page feel more roomy I think. Well, there’s still a bottom border cause I want to keep the stinger and credits easily legible. The panel divisions on this page are a little muddy cause the background image extends over the whole page, but I’m still experimenting with it.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. $1 and up, but feel free to contribute as much as you like.
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.
Yay timer fixed! – meanwhile, the page needs some study…
Ah – the false trail – read a webcomic once re:an alien AI who had a large body but it’s Life Matrix was in a a deliberately designed crumpled smoking wreckage thingy made of Unbelievium (From Joshua Quagmire’s Cutey Bunny, her nemesis Master Criminal Mad Scientist Doctor Gelving Shavinsky’s robot Hilda was made of) so when the large body got destroyed people would ignore the crumpled smoking wreckage thingy, and it would be recovered by it’s pre-programmed drones later.
“I got that reference!”
This page is on time.
Calling that tentacled abomination a squirrel in a grievous insult to his Exalted Radiance. May his stashes be every overflowing with acorns.
Something like this? https://youtu.be/cZkAP-CQlhA?t=18
It’s more like comparing these two in the same comic:
https://nerdist.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/20160705_n_nerdistnews_squirrelgirl_feature.jpg
or Exiern:
“All hail the all-squirrel!”
Paragraph four:
“There has to be people….”
Ahah! The evil squirrel overlord finally makes his move! I KNEW IT!
Big Squirrel has always been nefarious.
How’d the tentacle thing know that Pixel heard it?
Also when are we getting the vote incentive coloured and uncensored?
Whats the censoring? they are trying on bras.
But dat Pixel doe… does the bra change with her? Does she have a separate wardrobe just for her werecat form? That’s got to be crazy expensive. Good bras aren’t cheap and good bras in THAT size, wowzers.
The A-cup (maybe B) size of her human form should fit off rack bras ($15 at Sears). It would need to be a very large rack to fit her rack when in her hybrid form, so customization it is.
By Uncensored I mean No Bras
umm try never here for uncensored as children could then in theory access it, and Davie doesn’t need that headache, and we don’t either, might cause the site to go down, get booted off the voting site, etc. Backlash can be really rough. Or maybe you want those things… in the internet you can NEVER tell!
All Dave has to do is slap a mature content warning on it and he’s in the clear. He’s done uncensored voting incentives before, people need to stop getting so uptight about boobs.
No, he has done uncensored alternate versions, that you have to find on his dA account, after you prove your age
It’s easier to do a naked image and add clothes later than it is to do a clothed image and remove the clothes later
Prove how, exactly? By saying so? Do you really consider the word “proof” to be satisfied in this case?
You continue to prove that you were dropped on your head as a child.
Some children do not want to be exposed to adult content. Such filers provide adequate protection for them. Similarly for heavily supervised minors. For others, especially those who intend to seek out adult content, clearly it would not stop them.
However, as it does a good job for the former, it is worthy to take such precautions, for their benefit. Parents who have concerns, over the latter, would need to use some of the measures which severely restrict access to the net altogether
Therefore, if this website avoids including adult images, then it may be deemed acceptable to remain listed as a ‘safe’ site, for such applications.
Have you actually checked the dA site? A lot of the more ‘adult’ art is behind a ‘Mature Rating’ system, which admittedly is very easy to get past, but it’s there nonetheless
And you continue to prove that you are a trolling arsehole
I’m confused on what you’re both arguing about right now, since last strip’s argument is over
Never mind. Just noticed the argument isstill ongoing
Well nobody seemed to be concerned about the squirrel menace! Clearly more important than the fate of the universe.
But, no,as it happens, this thread is nothing to do with the last strip either. It is to do with the team stripping, in the lingerie shop!
*pays it close attention*
This is about the invotive, and how dA (that’s deviant Art) has a(n easily bypassed) Mature filter to protect those of a ‘delicate nature’
I think the regular (and I use that word tongue-in-cheek, as it were) female members of the Arc-Swat would be regular patrons of Monica’s specialty Bra-maker from Wapsi Square (Who I think might be related to Archon’s own specialty tailor, come to think of it…)
https://wapsisquare.com/comic/no-weakness/
https://wapsisquare.com/comic/elite-bra-guard/
https://wapsisquare.com/comic/what-the-frig-newtonians/
https://wapsisquare.com/comic/the-donut-test/
Heh, most apt.
Crap! It wasn’t a design FLAW, it was a design FEATURE! (https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/2487)
It wasn’t an self destruct so much as a distraction.
Possibly referring to the easily detachable tentacle, although the self-destruct distraction works fine too.
What, Peggy gets to drive a freshly painted Osprey?
No tail number, unless the graphics are obscured by the foreground.
Black Ops don’t have no steenkeeng tail numbers
Which sort-of gives away the fact that they are ‘Black Ops’ craft…
:D
They should have tail numbers that leads to a rickroll site when you try to trace them.
Sure it has a tail number. You can see into the ultraviolet, can’t you?
Yeah I forgot the markings. The first time it showed up it had an “08” on the side and I can’t remember why I put it there. I think just cause I thought something should be there?
given that the markings tend to be low-visibility and fairly small, i doubt we’d easily see them at night.
this isn’t a black ops thing either, most military craft have switched to such markings. the markings are mainly there for logistical and legal purposes, but large or highly visible markings tend to be detrimental in combat.
but if you need a guide for markings on a V-22? https://www.ainonline.com/sites/default/files/uploads/2015/07/v-22_150705-n-xe158-064c.jpg
A Note on Flight ops….. Don’t land near an enclosed corner the Prop wash creates a backwash that has a tendency to explosively push back and flip the craft….. Reason chopper pads and heliports a VERY exposed…
Next page, we see Pixelicious waiting at the tree line: “Going somewhere? I owe you for this hole in my side!”
Wolverine has generally slightly superhuman, “animal-keen” senses. His hearing’s better than standard human, but not akin to Daredevil’s, still less superman.
Have to factor in, Logan’s nose, which seems to be what Pixelicious is finally using in the last panel
A couple of things…
What you need is some sort of audio filter like in Shadowrun and also in an old issue Punisher where Microchip had had a helmet with the filter built in. As for someone who can hear your heartbeats the only defense I think would be intangibility.
Also the nuke-in-pants is a somewhat flawed analogy. A nuke (especially one small enough to fit in pants) may destroy a city, but it won’t make reality itself crash. Krona just might.
I think the borderless comic is fine and I think it is great that Dave is experimenting with the form. Trying new things is the only way to make things better.
@Guesticus Is it a Black Ops ‘copter? Also how fast do weres heal? I thought Pixels injuries healed up more or less instantaneously once the weapon that caused them was pulled out?
The signal processing you can do with your ears and brain is already really good. Or it is if you’ve not damaged your hearing with lots of loud music/noise.
The signal processing remains amazing even if you’ve damaged your hearing. That’s physical, not neurological, damage. It does make your hearing worse, because the signal processing can’t do as much with less clean signal detection hardware, but it doesn’t diminish the signal processing power, only the results you can get from that power.
What is interesting to me is the advances we’ve made in cybernetic hearing, namely Cochlear implants. They’re not as good as real, biological ears, but they ARE literally cybernetically transmitting digitally-detected sound to the audio center of the brain. I wonder what could be done with similar technology that is used on healthy people without digging out the middle ear. (Which they do with it now because that’s where the hardware goes.)
I also find interesting the experiments being done, occasionally, with alternate sensory inputs. Things like electrode-laden retainer-like mouth plates that receive input from cameras and have specific patterns that play out on the electrodes, detectable by the human tongue. Reportedly, people have managed to learn to detect shapes by that alone.
Regarding the “nuke in pants” conundrum, Maxima may be stepping on the line of legality, but what she could legally do would be to annoy Krona into submission, and that would probably be more morally wrong. Maxima seems to be in the NG realm, alignment-wise, willing to bend or break the rules where she really, truly thinks it necessary to be on the up-and-up.
What she COULD have done was have ARC operatives watching Krona’s every move in public places, had Dabbler “hang out” around her and try to study her magic every time she used it… really, anything short of what could be made to stick on a harassment charge.
I also imagine that, if Krona had not given the sheepish “yeah, I guess…” reaction she did, but had stood up for herself, Maxima might have gone into a negotiating mode before she tried out-and-out intimidation. (I mean, really, she might be MAXIMA, but is she sure she’s immune to having her dex stat set to zero, for example? And that doesn’t even get into the fact that they are worried that Krona’s magic might break the universe, so provoking her to use it to defend herself is NOT what they want.)
As for the nukes-in-the-pants: why? Why would they willingly have nukes in their pants? There is only a couple reasons: they intend to detonate it (for various reasons) or they intend to hand the nuke (with or without the pants) to someone else who intends to detonate it
That bit about the Osprey being black ops, was a joke
Well… In supers cases it’s kind of a case that “nukes in his pants” might mean testicles of mass destruction that you were born with… in Krona’s case it’s kind of like someone discovering she CAN build WMDs on her own and she accidentally did but disarmed it just in time. All accidental and unintentional… but damn that was a close call.
Sydney’s detainment by Maxima at the beginning was more controversial IMHO. I mean, all she had to go on was a container somehow linked to Sydney that even Maxima’s awesome strength couldn’t move.
Exactly! And no one made nearly a tenth of the fuss over that!
Are you kidding? Didn’t you hear all the screaming that Sydney did the first time she came to Archon?
Was talking about the anti-government arsehats who have shown up recently
Actually Sydney’s detainment was even more obviously necessary then Korona’s. In the bank all they knew was that Sydney might have some form of minor telekinesis. So Maxima stuck around to interview her and offer her a job. After all, powers are rare and even minor ones are useful. During that interview she overpowered Maxima IN THE CONTEXT OF A JOKE. That shows knowledge and control of a top tier level of power. Combined with her freakout under stress and the absentminded/unconscious use of her power Maxima witnessed in the bank… Sydney went from “potential recruit” to “potential nuke”. A polite psych eval and through “what to do in emergencies” training course immediately required. Handle gently AND with a powerful super supervising until she has finished her stress training.
Karona on the other hand… has shown a high level of power and control with no “unconscious” use of said power. She HAS demonstrated a lack of awareness of long-term consequences, personal rights violations, and legal ramification of her actions. Suggest more of a “Drill Sargent” or “official warning” approach to drive home the seriousness of her potential screw-ups.
To warn someone you need to be able to credibly threaten them. They lack that capacity with Kroma. If they ever try anything she’ll just time loop out of it, and turn off their hearts.
Like, you can’t drill sergeant Q.
Is that because he is straight? Or because he is from the quartermaster continuum?
I would have thought Krona would want to win their hearts, not turn them off of her, by the way. She seemed pretty lonely by herself in that box, in the Council chamber. We saw plenty of other delegates getting out, to socialise with other faction members. Plus even the ones who did not were chatting with their peers in their box.
In fact if it were not for the construct attack, Sydney may not have gotten to even meet Krona. But it is interesting to see what the first thing that Krona said was:
Not to mention the fact that they both found immediate common ground in being unique and also not being supers. But also note that, at the end of the page, Krona is playing a prank on a senior member of another faction! In the middle of a battle!
I doubt such behaviour endeers them to her. Plus it is indicitive (taken in addition to her lack of mingling) that she is not too keen on the stuffy diplomats she is surrounded by. Seeing them getting along may have been a reason for Maxima to assign them both to the same team. Not to mention allowing Pixel to keep an eye on each of them, and also to learn more about their powers.
Plus I bet the council members breathed a sigh of relief to see Krona being sent out into the field. Given how frequently we have seen her casually tinkering with reality, and violating people’s privacy, in the most intimate of ways, I am sure the other delegates will have been fed up with her.
As you say though, Krona is incredibly powerful. So they have had to put up with it.
However this situation does allow them to get her out of their hair for even longer. Plus reduces the risk of her poofing one of them out of existence or accidentally destroying reality!
As for Krona though, from what she said, it sounded like she wants to join Archon. But was too shy (or proud) to ask. She could clearly see Halo was being allowed a lot of latitude in her behaviour, even as a just signed-up recruit. So Archon’s new poster girl may have tempted her first supernatural to join up.
Seems to me it was made fairly clear that they have the right to detain and examine supers that might present a danger to the community.
As for the “nuke in his pants” guy, do you want to live next door? Especially while he’s a horny, moody teen? Prejudice be damned, I’m not going near anyone who has testicles that turn to antimatter if he gets mad.
And thats your choice to stay away from them… If you know who does and doesn’t have nuclear testicles. There are people in this world who prefer to stay away from others of certain differing beliefs or personal lifestyle choices, sometimes because they could be harmful to them and sometimes because they believe they might be harmful to them… But they don’t necessarily know who those people are.
So should a government force the people it governs to reveal all these details about themselves, record it and possibly even force such people to disclose personal details and/or wear something that allows them to be identified in public so others can make informed choices to avoid them?
Oh! That guy has skills in computers! He could do hacking! That guys has chemistry skills, maybe he’ll build a deadly virus or mix a toxic substance! This girl has knowledge of explosive substances because she works with pyrotechnics. She might build bombs! This guy is a member of a gun club and world champion shooter! Assassin sniper!!!
All people who “might present a danger to the community” but who are left alone in most western nations until they DO.
Computer dude is left alone unless he shows up in hacker circles/forums and starts contributing. The chemist isn’t bothered unless he actually starts dealing with dangerous and restricted chemicals or high level viruses outside authorised areas and procedures. The fireworks engineer is likewise left alone unless they start operating with restricted substances outside authorised areas and procedures while the gun champ is ignored if he doesn’t own a firearm and follows all government regulations if he does own one and anyone of them or others cold be detained if they start making threatening public statements that they are able to actuate (evidenced by some christian extremist who made detailed threats against an abortion clinic and owned the firearms to actuate his threats).
Krona, may have been left alone despite her capabilities, but she put her skills to use in a way that threatened other’s safety. Sydney is on much more murky ground. Sure she has a container with something that she appears to be secretive about, and sure it resisted being moved by the government’s strongest super… but Sydney hadn’t really done anything threatening to others with it (THAT THEY KNEW OF! *cough* forest fire *cough*). So their reason’s for detaining her are somewhere along the lines of “we noticed we can’t seem to take your container with your personal possessions away from you due to a supernatural tether you appear to have, so we want to know whats in it.” They claimed they could make the argument for a warrant to search, but I suspect its more a case of getting the warrant signed off by an on-side judge and searching the container before the warrant can be legally contested. I claim no expertise on U.S. law but I suspect they’d struggle to really enforce that warrant if it was properly contested.
Ok – maybe we should make a direct parallel to driving. (Ignore the driver’s license part for now) You may own any car you like – even ones with stupid levels of top speed and acceleration. Even the monster truck kind. A cop won’t care UNLESS he sees you driving recklessly or weaving. Then he will pull you over to check if you are drunk or injured. Obviously “injured” won’t get your license pulled but rather an ambulance called.
Same is true of any OTHER reckless/dangerous action a cop witnesses. (like attempted suicide) While arrest is technically an option, most cops will give a stern warning, explain why the stupid thing you did was stupid – and maybe a fine to motivate learning. A Drill Sargent does something similar when he hands out push-ups for stupidity.
Looks like Maxima is trying the “scare you smarter” technique.
+1
Although I do not think ‘scare’ is appropriate, at the end. If Maxima wanted to scare she has far more effective options, than putting a hand on someone’s shoulder. As she pointed out to Sydney people often do not realise the power that she has in her hands. So if she wanted to make a threat, she would do so in a way that nobody could mistake, like a gun to the head.
+1 on all charles81‘s points.
Do note though that it never was Maxima’s intent to detain Halo. She suspected that Sydney might be a super-in-hiding, and wanted to find out if that was the case. Primarily because she saw how very erratic Sydney had behaved in the bank, and (correctly) assessed that if she were a super, and one keen on intervening in bank robberies, she was looking at a potential vigilante. Perhaps an active one.
This is a legitimate police concern, and one that might justify an application for a warrant. You are correct though that it would probably be turned down as ‘a fishing expidition’, given that ‘a willingness to confront armed robbers’ does not necessarily equate to being a vigilante.
Maxima would need to provide some kine of link to a super who had committed vigilante-type crimes. Which clearly she would not have.
However that has never stopped cops from bluffing. Maxima deserves a slap on the wrist, for doing that. But it did save her a lot of time having to persuade Sydney a slower way. Of course all Sydney needed to do was say ‘OK, go ahead, get a warrant’.
At which point Maxima would have had to back down. Either opting for social diplomacy or passing on her suspicions to Arc-Light and letting them take over.* But the fact that she did not, helped to convince Maxima that Sydney was on the level. Although her curiosity remained.
* I have a different ethical view to Americans, of the pre-wikileaks era. They felt it was appropriate for police to collect information, on private citizens, whilst I do not. However Maxima and Archon are acting within the boundaries that American security services had, at the date the story is set.
Actually, not exactly true on the cars. Street legal varies from state to state, but every state has restrictions on what can go on the roads.
Dave,are you taking a hint from Bill Watterson(Calvin and Hobbes creator)and doing comics with NO panels???
Actually, not counting the main page, there are nine panels
sound to focus direction and then movement? Cats track movement very well in their vision range, even if they can’t focus on said target.
Thus mr I’m immitating a cthuloid squirrel running away is likely going to ping visually if in her arc of hearing and line of sight…even peripherally.
Thing is, how much instinct will she allow to the fore in this situation? In full cat form, maybe a chance…as she is right now, probably thinking and dismissing because human thoughts.
Then again, human side knows big fight, stuff blew up, bad guy fled… something moving…I know I heard it…what could it be?
Monday’s comic should be interesting…
Plus that half-lidded “Hmphh” makes me believe she has spotted it and is thinking “Mr Robot wants to play? Kitty wants some payback for this injury!”
My take on her expression the last panel was ‘I guess it was nothing’. This would follow the standard comic tradition of:
1) Big Explosion.
2) The observer saying ‘No one could have possibly survived that’.
3) Don’t actually search to confirm your claim.
4) The hero and/or villain is free to come back in the sequel.
5) In the event of a confirmed death and there is a push from the studio for sequel anyway invoke one of the following: clone, time travel, magic, alternate reality, alien regeneration tech, the ‘death’ was actually just staged to fool the bad guy.
5) Continued: Use alien regeneration biology to allow you to cast another actor in the part (RIP William Hartnell, Roger Delgado, etc.), accidentally resurrect your crewmate and friend by putting his body on a planet in the process of being created before ripping itself apart (RIP Lenard Nimoy).
I am sure more will come to me.
A pun may have been intended, but as far as I can see there’s no actual pun there.
Signal noise vs actual noise. Took me a while too.
I think the border makes the comic better to read, just my feeling. Maybe it is not the lack of border but more the feeling of lack of white around the picture. I am not a real fan about it. I prefered the normal style you used. It can also be that the page layout came out wrong on my browser, but that might be totally on my side. who’s who is at the bottom instead of the side for instance.
Personally feel that pages like this will be, just like huge two-page ‘splash pages’, by infrequent and only used sparingly, like to show off a nice big outdoor scene (even if half of it gets covered up :D)
Whelp, is that maxi blood? or Hiiro blood?
That last panel, I hope she took notice of it, if thats a “meh i don’t care” face it looks too.. clever
What blood? Don’t see any blood, but if any, it would most likely be Pixelicious’ blood
What blood are you talking about? Looked at the comic a few times and not sure where the blood is? Which panel?
Actually, looking at it again, the only to be seen is in panel eight with Maxi and Hiro playing with a tentacle, and a bloody Pixelicious
It looks to me like she’s exasperated at the ambient noise/professionalism failure over by the osprey.
I wouldn’t feel too jealous of a tetrachromatic human. Mostly, their spectrum is stretched so that UV appears blue, turquoise appears green, yellow appears orange, and orange appears red. Not that trichromatic humans aren’t able to see UV, btw, it’s just our corneas are opaque to those wavelengths. People who’ve had cataract surgery, my Gran for example, can sometimes see some UV light as a blueish-white.
Unless you are a bird *chirp*
Although it makes the plumage of some look like they are at a rave.
Bees see things with weird colors too.
Heh! So this turned into a lecture about the birds & the bees, huh?
I’m…kind of thinking that I might BE one of those tetrachromatic humans, after a little research. No way of being certain without a genetic test, of course, but all of the visual perception things these articles mention, I fall on the side of tetrachromatic. I wouldn’t say that my spectrum is stretched, though, just that I can perceive a lot more shades of things. It would explain, honestly, why I had a lot of trouble with color-mixing with paint–I wasn’t mixing the EXACT same proportions twice, so the color wouldn’t look the same to me, and then I would wind up with muddy paintings, even though my teachers and classmates were telling me it was fine. So yeah, UV appears just faintly indigo, actually, on the basis of handheld UV lights I’ve seen, while blue still appears blue, and turquoise isn’t green, it’s very distinctly its own color, yellows and oranges and reds are all very distinct, too. Infrared, on the rare occasions that I’ve caught it, is a ruddy brownish color. And black isn’t black, usually. Nor is white white.
Oh, and the sky is a gradient of different shades of blues and purples (even at midday) and greens. No two spots are the same color.
But I also have “super” hearing, in that I can hear slightly outside the typical human range–specifically, into the ultrasonic range. Please DO NOT envy me this. I inherited it from my father and as far as I can tell the only thing it’s good for is causing massive headaches and making dentists’ offices and hospitals places of torture, because ultrasonic goes right through soundproofing and walls. And my brain, apparently, too. Like a knife made of FIRE. Dad says the same thing.
“Muddy” painting is an art issue. Means you are using too limited a palette and/or over-correcting until everything mixes to brown. Do your highlights and shading in DIFFERENT shades. Aka – if you have a red ball, put a little purple in the shadow and maybe orange or blue in the highlight. Or even pale green! And don’t be afraid of a lot of different colors on an object.
Also – without chemically precise measurements… you’ll never get the same shade twice. Just go with it, its not a photograph.
I can feel you on the hearing range thing. Mine was not that bad but it extends into the high end too. Let’s just say I am very glad cathode ray tube televisions are not used as much anymore, which makes life so much quieter for me.
Nothing there says “tetrachromat” to me but then, while I know the mechanics of the condition, I do not know the symptoms and have never met someone with it. As far as I am aware, though, the real proof would be in whether TV yellow looks like real yellow to you, since the extra colour perception of a tetrachromat is generally derived from the single red/green midshade (yellow) of your typical dichromat, while most artificial yellows simply trigger the standard red and green cones.
If the two yellows look significantly different to you, I’d take it as proof but, since your average dichromat can still see artificial yellow to some extent (there is crossover between R, Y and G detection) and your average tetrachromat has little skill in actually using their extra colour sense (possibly upbringing, possibly brain wiring, IDK), I wouldn’t take the lack of a difference as negative proof.
Either way, you definitely have some serious perfectionist traits and a strong sense of colour that most people seem to lack. I, myself, despite my love of colour, tend not to see the variation in whites that I do in blacks but it does bother me at times that I can never colour coordinate an all black outfit.
Soundwise, I suffer from a pitch sensitivity known as “hyperacuisis” which also comes with significantly “improved” distance hearing and, while my actual hearing cuts off towards to top end of human norms, I can still feel sounds a good way above it sometimes. It’s not fun.
Most handheld UV lights, however, are what is known as UV-A, not UV-B and only emit a small amount outside the human visible spectrum, with most of their emissions well within it and rather purple looking.
Errm just how would anyone know this? If someone holds up a ripe banana and says ‘this is the colour yellow’ then that particular shade is what you call yellow. Even if you can only see in black and white, you would still pick out that particular light/dark combination as being the yellow ball, on a snooker table.
The only proof would be in being able to distinguish something that nobody else could. So where everyone else sees moths as being a plain brown or grey, if you see them as being covered in vibrant shimmering patterns. Basically moths are as pretty as butterflies, but only if you see them in ultraviolet.
As far as I’m aware, the only recorded case of fully functional tetrachromatism and atleast the majority of non-functional or semi-functional cases (remember, the condition may be in the eyes but the brain doesn’t always process it properly so it can essentially exist uniplimented) have been RGBY, not RGBU.
I have not previously heard of them having visibility where others do not so much as four colours in the same range, most notably making yellow a different colour to red+green. Hence why I brought that up as something that they might be able to differentiate where a regular trichromat could not. Creating otherwise visually identical samples where one is red and green and the other is actually yellow shouldn’t be too hard with modern science.
Yes, to all points.
Whereas just looking at something yellow, on a TV, outside of a controlled experiment would not do the trick I fear. What you see as yellow, I might see as orange. But because we agree to both call it yellow, there would be no distinguishable difference, in our day-to-day lives.
Quite an easy experiment, once you have created the colour samples described. Far hard when trying to do the same with animals mind.
*holds up yellow card, in one paw and slightly off-yellow in the other*
OK fishy which one is true yellow? Come on, you are a goldfish, this one should be easy for you! No, stop looking behind the castle, there isn’t any treasure in the chest!
*pecks at the one in your left paw*
Well done!
*presents a Yorpie Snack™*
ok,, lets review the posibility of her actualy thinking its some kind of animal noise;
1; there was a huge fight just a few moment ago with a huge explosion,,there would be pretty much no anilmals that would stick around in that case
2;there was a forest fire,, another case of something that would clear out any animals in the zone
3;not sure but didnt they comment that there was almost no animal noise in the area when they got there
4;it has a crystal that emit light,, if it enter her field of vision in any way its caught.
My cat would probably stick around because he is fearless.
My cat would stick around too, but not because she’s fearless. “Ooh, scary noises! I should hide! Is there someone here that will pet me or pay attention to me? Okay, I’ll stay.”
WHERE IS THAT LIGHT SOURCE COMING FROM? Granted, it’s a good shadow, I approve (not that you need my approval… ) but man…. that’s some strong light to make such a defined shadow…
From the angle of the shadow, it’s probably field lights to help with the survivors, maybe to help with clean up
Also, it makes the shadow of the Osprey look awesome. And don’t for one second think that sort of thing doesn’t enter into Arianna’s thinking — if there’s an opportunity to make the team look imposing and awesome, she’s going to take it. There’s probably a section in the ArcSWAT manual: “Shadows, imposing; villains, for the intimidation of.”
Hoboy…..If that thing has kept the regeneration and suchlike on file that could cause some serious problems in future(Think an army of them loaded up with several of the better powers available in the world at once).Given that it was shown to be sentient I was kinda expecting it to still be alive in some way but this one caught me off guard =).
“Sydney would probably be badgering the survivors”
No wonder somebody dropped something in the plane. I would too if a hologram suddenly appeared in front of me yelling ‘BADGERS!”
A pun AND a callback. Kudos. +1
+1
I never really considered the sensitivity/processing thing with regard to hearing until a friend of mine went in to see a specialist because he was having trouble hearing people in conversations. As it happens, his hearing *apparatus* was good, borderline exceptional — he could *detect* sound really well. *Processing* the sound — to, for example, isolate one person’s voice in a noisy room — was what he was having issues with.
I have that sometimes. I have a hightened degree of distance hearing but it just comes with more to filter most of the time.
I’m rather surprised there was enough of the SuperHusk left after it’s self destruct for them to be having trouble moving into the Osprey. If it was hot enough to burn off Maxima’s clothes through her force field, we’re probably talking in the thermite+ temperature range (3000+ degrees)
Other than the arm that was cut off and NOPED! into the forest (and the CPU which just escaped by being a sneaky tunnel rat) it should be a useless pile of slag. Archon might want it for various reasons, but the point of a self destruct is to leave nothing left for your enemies to use against you.
To be honest though the competency of the Husks creator is kind of up for debate its self destructing was more to do with its core being torn out(Huge design flaw if you ask me to make that such an easy thing to do) so the huge detonation took place externally and weve already seen that the superhusk was surpringly tanky-or at least enough so that Halos rapid fire mode did mostly just surface damage to it at point blank range.
Chances are there is almost nothing useful in its remains after that level of heat but at the very least Archon will want to take any evidence of its existance back to base with them and probably want to make sure that the wreakage is safely disposed of.
And just how many are there with the brute strength to simply rip out the power core like that? o_O
Among supers or among the supernatural community where even a mere vampire is likely several times stronger than a human with the exact same build?Maxima isnt superman strong and as much as I like Hiro hes at the very least an entire magnitude weaker than Maxima is which makes his strength level a lot easier to mimic-especially since he didnt even have to strain to rip its core out which implys that the core rippage was a casual thing to him.
Well, we don’t really know just how secure the access panel was, and to Hiro, it probably was a casual thing
My point exactly =)
I think the protracted disagreements regarding Max’s actions in the last comic is a sign of good storytelling. This was *supposed* to be a difficult situation, which nevertheless required an immediate decision and the will to enforce that decision if it became necessary. Max didn’t have time to ponder it and ask around to see what everyone thought — she had to act (or not). She made her decision, and committed, and will be held responsible for it — because that’s the CO’s job, and I doubt that this will be the only time that it sucks eggs.
I still hold by the old adage by Benjamin Franklin – “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”
In X2, it’s implied that Wolverine heard the police before he could smell them.
To be fair, X2 sort of ignored a LOT of stuff from the comics. In the comics, Wolverine does not have superhuman hearing, he has a superhuman sense of smell.
Actually, Pander, he does. Or he’s supposed to, but most writers ignore it because it’s more dramatic for him to sniff out his enemies.
From the Marvel Wikia:
Can he smell pink though?
I don’t think synesthesia was part of the package, no.
Depends on when she last bathed >_>
Wolverine does indeed have super-hearing, as well as a super-human sense of smell. There have been several issues where Wolverine was taken down by a sonic attack that other members of the team fared better against. Furthermore, he and Banshee don’t get along well, at all, and it isn’t JUST Wolverine’s personality that’s the problem.
Hey if pixels difrent shifted forms have diffrent superpowers does her human form have powers and if so what are they?
No, no powers beyond that of kawaii in her human form (that’s why she is an honorary member of the A-Team)
Cats love to chase things. All cats, even 7 foot tall humanoid pink jaguars. Just saying. The next page is going to be “fun time” for Pixel.
Mega happy fun time when she catches part of the thing that came close to killing her
I kept thinking that they should have had Sydney scan the whole area with the comm ball in magic detection mode. Not necessarily because they expected the thing to survive, it just seems like a good move to really clean out the area and detect other threats.
A good idea but Syds so far off her meds at this point itd be a nightmare to get her to pay attention long enough to get her to understand the request,Especially with all the just rescued and incredibly anemic races that shes getting the chance to offend/harass right now
One would think she’d keep a spare bottle in her belt. Guys with similar issues in Iraq kept spare meds. Just talk to the guy at the military dispensary. They really do understand that problem, and they WILL keep track of how much of the stuff you have.
That’s actually what she’s using now. She took a dose of generic ADHD meds back at the restaurant. It was presumably an immediate-release dose, which should last about 4-6 hours, but she was worried about it making her loopy. At the meeting, she described her ADHD state as Defcon 2, even with the meds.
So:
Dose at restaurant – t=0
Finish meal – t=0:20
Travel to meeting (local, with two very fast flyers) – t=0:25
Meeting (with Sydney shenanigans and an indefinite, but probably fairly short wait) – t=1:25
Fight at meeting (Max indicates it will take a few minutes to dig herself out) – t=1:35
Aftermath, cleanup, and assignments – t=2:00
Travel to warehouse (Not really known, but Sydney asks how Harem go there so fast, so probably not long. I’m going to guess half an hour.) – t=2:30
Pixel scouts (Stated to be ~10 minutes before Sydney gets antsy) – t=2:40
Sydney goes to find Pixel, gets reset – t=2:50
Fight on the roof, Osprey transit time – t=3:10
Naked Time, cleanup, sweep – t=3:30
If my timeline is reasonably close, it’s just now time for the meds to start wearing off. Given her (justifiable) concern about side effects, taking another one now might be a bad idea. Getting her focused enough to do a scan is of limited value if she can’t trust what she sees.
Possibly… But Sydney is the kind of person you want to keep busy. If she’s idle then the nightmare is in the tasks she might assign herself. Plus Max has plenty of subordinates there right now who she can put on Sydney’s case to keep her focused rather than take on the arduous task herself… Its good to be in charge.
It’s also possible that Max hasn’t had a full debriefing on how Sydney’s magic/supernatural vision with the comm ball works, so she might be unaware that Sydney can actually see magic through walls. Depending on magical residue in the automaton’s components, it could be invaluable in tracking down all the pieces, saving time on sifting through rubble, and might help them find some hidden rooms and/or items… Really, I might have even gone as far as to say Max should have flown around with Sydney and the Comm ball in an attempt to track down Sciona in case she hadn’t gotten far.
We get another good look at the front of the warehouse. We saw the inverted ‘M’ to ‘W’ on the sign at the start of this stakeout. It turns out to be not just a sign of disrepair (pun intended), but an actual bit of foreshadowing.
Hey there, just wanted to say, partly in response to the comment from Dave regarding guy’s with nukes in their pants and Maxima’s handling of Krona on the previous page: I distinctly remember the scene with the news people where Archon representatives explicitly said that the mere possession of a certain power doesn’t mean that you have to be controlled, yet, that seems to be precisely the case here. And that’s just before you consider that the authority Archon gives itself when supervising members of different organizations is dubious at best. It reminds me of the Civil War comics, where the question also was: Should the government have the authority to do whatever it wants because superpowers can be dangerous?
Archon was created to protect people from extraordinary threats, and Kronachrome unfortunately falls into that category, specially when she herself isn’t fully sure how her powers work, that’s why she was requested (forcefully) to return with them to Archon HQ rather than back to wherever she calls home, just like Sydney was after the bank stunt
And Krona had just had a “wtf am I capable of?” moment, so I wouldn’t have been at all surprised if she had ASKED for Archon’s help figuring it out… the main argument against that being that she doesn’t know what resources Archon has that might be useful.
She knows Dabbles, and the head of Arc-Light is on the Council
If she had asked, nobody would even mention it, it’s the fact that she effectively didn’t have any say in that matter.
She is kind of a overtly threatening and special case.
It occurs to me that this may actually be part of whatever agreement Archon has with the Council. We know they have strong ties to one another, it wouldn’t be out of the question for them to have a “We get to evaluate any of your members with dangerous powers and in exchange we send you any patents or other research into technology that could be a threat to the Veil or your membership so you can adapt to them” kind of agreement.
That would actually be a fairly good explanation, because it would be based on cooperation instead of enforcement.
It also fits in line with what they actually do, as regards the assessing of threats. Check out Maxima’s dialogue on the page in question.
Clearly Archon are considered to have the right to carry out their mandate. However they trust the Council enough to accept them vouching for somebody as being safe.
In Krona’s case though they have obviously failed to assess her competence correctly. Hence why Maxima is confident that she can deal with them. The Council do not want the universe being accidentally destroyed any more than Archon!
” I distinctly remember the scene with the news people where Archon representatives explicitly said that the mere possession of a certain power doesn’t mean that you have to be controlled, ”
They lied about that. Big shock, the gov lies.
You are both wrong in your interpretation of this scene. Just read what Maxima says:
Maxima is being polite here, in not outright saying “You have shown yourself to be incompetent”. However that is what the word “accidentally” is pointing out to Krona. And she knows that, having had Pixel chewing her out about it already. Plus Krona acknowledged that her code was not working the way it was meant to.
Having the power is not the problem. Using it in a manner likely to destroy the universe is.
Note that she is only being told not to use her powers until they have been checked out and she has been helped to use them safely. This is all exactly in accordance with their public policy statements. Krona posed a clear and present danger to the universe and Archon have acted to eliminate that threat.
Without the need to kill Krona, or drop her in a bottomless pit, or dark laboratory to be experimented on. Those are the practices of other governments and super settings, not this one’s!
Once Krona has been taught how to use her power competently (and I hope morally, so no more effing around with people’s intimate parts, without their permission) she will be free to do whatever she wants to. She can sign up to Archon (which she hinted at wanting to do the first moment she spoke to Sydney), remain just a Semper Vigilantis or go and work in the private sector, as she chooses.
She will still have her power. It still will not be illegal for her to use it. She must just not do so in a way that might kill everybody in the universe!
The fact that people can find such an enlightened policy to be unreasonable is an extremely sad reflection on our society. We are so used to governments behaving in a corrupt fashion, and being portrayed in that way in fiction too, that we cannot recognise an organisation which is morally upright and keeping to its word.
To be fair this is an organisation backed by Deus and one whos primary gameplan is to arrest superheros who arent already under the government thumb.Those are two strikes against their enlightened policy already.Oh and theyve already shown that staging bank robberies for publicity isnt beneath thier moral code either.If Joe public in this universe knew more about Archon in general theyd be rioting within 6 months.
Umm, Deus is not backing Archon, where did you get that idea? o_O
As for that bank robbery stunt, that was entirely on Ari, and Maxi chewed her out about that
Oh so Machina Industries ISNT one of their suppliers?Silly me I guess Sydneys gear was a birthday gift then and oh my Deus and Maxima know each other awfully well-mustve been online dating.I have NO idea how i could believe that Deus is benefiting from the existance of Archon no siree bob.Im sure his companies must just handle Archons stationary,Theres big bucks in custom stationary these days.
So Ari commited a crime without Archons blessing eh?Why isnt she in jail?
‘Supplier’ isn’t the same thing as a ‘Backer’
We will have to wait and see on that one wont we?=)
Yes, we will, personally prefer to think of him as being an eccentric nuthammer, you prefer to see him as Lex Luthor (the real one, not that ‘junior’ freak from the last crap DC movie)
Actually I prefer to see him as a mix of Lex luthor and Lord Vetinari.
He may play the role of supervillain but unlike Lex Luthor Deus is smart enough to keep mostly within the lines of the law for weath and profit and realises its more profitable to make the world a better place for everyone rather than just padding his own bank account (For example-Luthors historically bragged about being able to cure cancer yet has never gotten round to it,If Deus COULD cure cancer hed sell the hell out of it for a modest profit and reap all the PR benefits of being the guy who cured cancer….possibly while wondering if he can get away with asking for a 20 foot statue of himself to be erected in washington just for funsies.
No idea who Lord Vetinari is, but that still doesn’t indicate that Deus is backing Archon, that is vastly different to simply profiteering from it being public
And as for why Ari is still free to wander around and get into punch-ups with the press, you will have to ask General Faulke
The Diskworld leader of Ankh-Morpork.
The bank robbery thing was early in the comic’s start, before Dave realised that he would get a huge audience, who would examine every scene, from every moral and legal angle, rather than just going with the spirit of it. So I do not read too much into that.
They have their nominal legitimacy from the fact that were there, at the invitation of the bank, to run a security test.
Further, as we are talking about Maxima’s morals, it is worth noting that the test was being run, as a publicity stunt, by Arianna, rather than as a police operation. Notably keeping Maxima in the dark about it, because Arianna knew that she would disapprove. And Arianna specifically chose two ex-vigilantes, to do it, knowing full well that they would not mind ‘bending the rules’.
That said though, yes, despite being there legitimately, the details of what they did do not stand up to ethical scrutiny. However please give the author a break on that, on the grounds of ‘rule of funny’. It was a good way to dramatically introduce the principle characters and provided many comedic moments.
Turning to your point regarding Deus, he is a legitimate businessman, as far as Archon know. If he has some kind of nefarious agenda, he is conducting that without their assistance.
Barring that of the foul traitor Harem!Although Deus is of the opinion that Harem, despite the fact that she pretends to be a traitor to Archon, is actually working for them, as a triple agent, trying to infiltrate and investigate Machina Industries.We are talking about the same guy right? The one who liberated a country from a brutal dictator and is now so beloved that little girls spontaneously give him presents, in thanks? The bloke who went to extreme trouble to locate Maxima’s geode and offer it to her? The altruistic fellow who gave Halo a purpose-built cutting-edge rebreather?
Here we are, on a page where we see one of the evil squirrel overlord’s minions up to no good. Yet you would rather cast aspersions on one of the pinnacles of capitalist democracy!
They where only technically there legitimately. Since I am quite certain that no civilian in the bank staff or using the bank had given consent to be a part of a live fire exercise. Operating a training drill in a area is one thing shooting in the general direction of a civilian is quite another they would be sued to the nines for said stunt if not jailed on the reckless endangerment charge that keeps being leveled at Krona. Also making it acceptable because it was the beginning of the series doesn’t mean we should ignore it. That is a poor rebuttal.
Despite my arguments I know this is supposed to be a light hearted comic with some cool action stuff so I really don’t take a lot of it seriously. However it does irk me how Krona is being piled on for being a reckless and dangerous when that seems to be pretty par for the coarse in Archon. We have Dabbler you know the person who regularly roofies people with her Succubi aura. Her Aura makes people wish to have sex with her and then lets them down easy so that they feel OK about it later it is questionable how a person could honestly give consent with that going on. As an example they even let pretty much all the other people go that didn’t have outstanding warrants because of the hate aura thing that Vehemence had on previously and I won’t even go into the many other questionable “jokes” she has pulled all the other times.
Harem who performs similar pranks on people using her powers ow and is acting as a double agent just for the lolz. Math who is like the biggest horn dog in the world. Is so focused on the ladies that he can’t even keep it in his pants for a potentially life and death fight and as much as I hate using this word but is just so creepy most of the time.
Then there Maxima who has some real anger management issues. she has on several occasions threatened directly or indirectly civilians as well as other team mates so much so that the others on the team have made a game of it. Honestly Hiro or possibly Anvil seems like the safer choices as leader in a more serious comic. Though even Anvil got into a fight with Math which as what the third highest ranking officer on the team she should not have done period. I am uncertain about her rank in the team because the bio and rank symbols are a little flaky but what ever.
I bring this up because we have seen Archon team members that aren’t the newbie Halo act recklessly, perform pranks and demonstrate terrible judgement in the name of comedy for the comic. So it seems a bit judgemental to jump all over Krona and saying that she is dangerous for doing the same kind of stuff for comedic purposes. As for how much danger her actions could potentially cause that is very debatable since aside from a lose of several minutes and Halo’s life being saved there is no other discernible effect.
I hope you apply the same degree of scrutiny to Sergeant Bilko? Or any of the Loony Tunes cartoons? Clearly very bad entertainment because they do things which would not happen in real life.
But, yes, you make a lot of good points, if ignoring the rule of funny. Just like a character cold not paint a tunnel on a wall and expect a train to come out of it. That would not make sense, in the real world. This is a comedy webcomic though, so do expect silly things to happen, at times, for no other reason than because it makes people laugh.
At other times though Dave does like to explore serious issues, such as sexism and morality. One of the basic tenets, which Archon established is that the possession of a super power is not a crime, nor is its use. Unless of course what it is being used for is a crime.
So when looking at Krona’s power, she alters reality at a fundamental level. At the push of a virtual button she can change things from one state to another. Which is fine if turning a grenade from ‘armed’ to ‘disarmed’. That is a moral and legal thing to do in self-defense.
However there is no reason, in principle, why Krona could not change, say the galaxy from ‘existing’ to ‘not existing’, or the universe or that matter.
Why do we (as in me, Krona, Pixel, Maxima and the Council) all consider that to be a viable risk? Because Krona claims to be able to manipulate time, and the other uses of her power show that she is not delusional, so we need to take it at face value.
f you turn back time ten minutes, you are doing that everywhere in the universe. I.e. this is showing that the scope of Krona’s power is universal in extent. This is what Krona was expecting to happen, when the reset occurred. However it did not. Maxima (and likely others) did not go back in time.
Clearly, from her reactions, Krona was not expecting this. Something serious went wrong with her code. Yet she remained convinced that she could fix the bug. Meaning that despite the evidence that this time it only had a local affect,* Krona still believed that she could correct it to work for the whole universe.
As such the authorities must still assume that she is correct in her belief. Krona knows her power better than anyone, and even seeing her casual use of her power, we see that she is able to alter reality at her whim.
Which means that they are facing someone who has the power to affect the entire universe, who can change universal laws by a button push, or line of code, and yet clearly does not do her programming well enough to avoid having a fundamentally different result to the one she intended!
Any time your computer crashes, that is because some programmer made a mistake. You can fix that by just turning it off and on again. No biggie. If Krona does that to the universe, that is it, game over. There would be no one left to turn it off and on again, including herself.
This is why they are taking action. Because she has recklessly endangered the universe!
In terms of why the comic is doing this, it is because it is exploring the morality of these situations. Halo has not (yet) been told off or punished for using her PPO, because she was only banned from that because it would pose a risk to the public. Here they are in an abandoned warehouse area, so there was minimal risk, and Halo was fighting for the lives of herself and her teammates.
This did result in a forest being set on fire, which is clearly dangerous. However there is mitigation in that Sydney was hitting her target, but it unexpectedly raised a shield, deflecting the shots. Overall Halo’s actions were reasonable.
Krona however clearly wants to carry on using her powers (we saw her in the process of doing so, when Maxima spoke to her), despite realising that her coding is sub-standard. Requiring her to make it safe is not an unreasonable thing to do!
* Although how local we have no idea, half of New York State might have been affected and the rest of the world not. If half the cars in a freeway are jumped back in time ten minutes and the other half are not, you will suddenly find a lot of crashes occurring. Plus potentially icky results of cars reappearing in spots now occupied by other vehicles!
Depending on how that works, you could end up with a release of energy greater than an atomic bomb! So even just having a ‘local’ power could result in millions of deaths!
And, don’t forget, what she was examining, was one of the crystal power core thingies from the NotABot, the same CPT that exploded powerfully enough to vaporise all of Hiro’s clothes and most of Maxi’s
By the way, when I said you raised a lot of good points, and then moved on to responding to the core issue, it is not my intent to be dismissive. I simply knew the post would be very long, so did not have the luxury of addressing them specifically.
However clearly we do have similar morals, as I agree with many of your points. I have to get on with other things now, so still cannot give them full attention, but can pick a couple of the easier ones to address.
Several of the points you picked up are character flaws. Everybody has them. The more interesting characters, in stories, have very strong ones. I always like to cite Sherlock Holmes as an example because so many of his are even worse than any the characters here have, yet he is still beloved and considered to be a good person.
For example he is a big time drug addict. Likewise, with only one exception, he very much looks down on women, and certainly would not wish to socialise with any or even contemplate getting married.
Whereas Math is simply randy, and overtly so. Which, yea, is creepy. Certainly not someone you would choose to employ. However he does have a unique capability, in having super-like powers, yet not being a super. Should they come up against the evil squirrel again, he would be an ideal choice to fight it, as it would not be able to copy any powers from him.
So, to work with him, Archon have to accept his flaws and try to steer him down a better path. Bopping him on the head with an orb was a good start! Albeit not a particularly politically correct reaction mind.
Again this is another way that Dave is exploring morality. Most people have sexual urges, and some people are very open about expressing them. This character is a good way to explore that issue, how to deal with it in the workplace, how it affects the job and whether anything can be done about it.
Doubtless we will see some clash with Maxima, at some point, because of her extreme feminist stance. But she does have to handle such situations very carefully. Math obviously enjoys acting this way, and they only just barely got him to join in the first place. So trying to get him to stop would be extremely counter-productive.
So Maxima will just have to contend with ensuring that he restricts his behaviour around those who dislike it. Sydney, for example, clearly did not. However they managed to resolve the issue between themselves, and now have a budding martial arts master & student relationship. Clearly a far more healthy one than their initial meeting.
Normal workplaces have the option of turning down anyone who does not check all the boxes as a model employee. Archon does not have that luxury. But nor does any organisation that wishes to employ extraordinary individuals. There are far too few supers, to be picky, for example.
Likewise the supernatural races will have a huge range of hang ups. Vampires having a thirst for blood being an obvious example. And Ingsol had to specifically warn Sydney about this. Some of the monstrous-looking creatures also have monstrous instincts and behaviours, to go along with them.
So having an organisation which is working to accommodate extreme personalities and behaviours is not actually a negative, if looked at from Krona’s perspective. It means they will be able to cope with the conditions they actually face.
And Maxima herself is no different. As you say she does have anger management issues. But she has good core morals so we are unlikely to see her destroying another mosque, for example. That previous one was (mostly) an accident anyhow.
Although the guy taking snaps of her being angry will be able to fill a photo-album. Having anger management issues does not make her a bad person. The very fact that she could kill anyone, with a single slap, indicates that she does actually work very hard to keep it under control. Given that she has not killed anyone, despite any provocation.
You seemed a little condescending with the Sgt Bilko’s/ Loony Tunes crack but I won’t hold it against you since its hard to judge tone in writing.
The comic does deal with issues and has comedy I was trying to say that it blurs lines between humor and real world issues. I was pointing that out because of the style people should give Krona the same benefit of the doubt that Archon usually gets when they pull silly/ stupid things during moments of action like playing make Maxima say the word of the day in a fire fight. Using that against Krona as proof she is a dangerous criminal is silly since you see the same kind of stuff being done with many of the other characters as part of the hijinx of the comic.
The only real difference might be the scale that she can get away with. Since the only characters that can come close are Dabbler and Harem because of there powers. These powers make good fodder for comedy, pranks and hijinx which is almost certainly why they have those powers as well as the personalities to go along with them. Nearly all the more serious characters that have the straight forward powers like strength, invulnerability and similar are the straight man to the situations created by these characters most of the time. So its no wonder that Krona is written as whimsically as she is.
Finally the 2 primary reasons I am crying foul on the follow up reaction by Maxima/ Archon over Krona’s “mistake” is one Krona used her powers and something happened that wasn’t expected. That happens in super fights like Jiggawatt nearly killing everyone with gamma rays or Heatwave going over board with her fire powers during the big brawl caused by Vehemence after taking a hit. Krona was concerned with her program when it acted up and shut it down when she found out it wasn’t working the way she expected it to. That seems like a reasonable and responsible reaction on her part.
Two the program had minimal observable effects to warrant a charge. Only one person was able to for certain observe the phenomenon and that was Halo. Who is the newest and most spastic recruit they have. Harem might have as well but it might have been some kind of effect from her powers. Really the only thing that any one else can go on to indicate anything might even have happened let alone be wrong is Krona’s reaction. So it is pretty flimsy to take such a hard line with an agent from a different group on the possibility it might have been a dangerous situation when it can’t be certain what happened.
Any ways I am looking forward to the explanation for things which I assume will come from Dabbler. I wouldn’t be surprised if it has something to do with Harem being a part of the save point causing the program break down or something like that. I am hoping that Krona becomes a reoccurring character and if this is how it happens so be it. Will be looking forward to how this works it self out I am expecting at least a few fire works at some point.
Eloquently argued. Amusing that you are asking for more exposition, given that many folks complain that there is too much! Albeit not myself.
In this case, although it has stirred up a lot of controversy, we have already had that. Whilst you may choose to dismiss it as being an overreaction by Pixel, you seem to be forgetting what role she has here.
Pixel is the expert that Archon chose to appoint to investigate Halo’s orbs. Given that Archon has been assembled from the best talent in the country, this means that Pixel is the foremost leading authority (probably in the world). Plus we found out that the orbs programming language is actually more fundamental than Krona’s.
Ergo Pixel is more than qualified to render judgement on the dangers of Krona’s activities. Which she has done. Further she has clearly briefed Maxima, on the matter, given that she is preaching from the same page (along with other things, indicating that Maxima has been put in the picture, such as being told about the hostages, as they have clearly been rescued).
Dave followed the maxim of “show don’t tell”, in that we have seen all the facts. All Pixel needed to do was to point out the conclusion. There is not much Dabbler would be able to do, except explain the fairly obvious that ‘messing with time can doom the world!’ But as many people have not followed the implications, it may be worth DaveB doing this.
Although I suspect that he will leave it to be handled organically, as Pixel is cleared for her basic use of her powers. There would not be much point in, say, devoting a whole page to a Dabbler’s Science Corner, for something where there are no new facts to be presented. She would just be joining the dots, on the blackboard.
One final point, regarding your crying ‘foul’, is that there is a big difference between Giggawatt’s mistake and Krona’s. It is not a matter of scale. Giggawatt was a soldier engaging the enemy, in the manner she has been taught. It is unreasonable to state that she should have known that the unique phenomenon they encountered would react dangerously with her lightning.
Whereas Krona was not reacting to a surprise attack by an enemy force Her checkpoint power is one that she has programmed, in advance, and had used before.
Further Krona was unethical in choosing to use that on the team, without their concent. Especially given that Pixel is an expert, so (just like Dabbler was able to warn Giggawatt, about the dangers of her action) Pixel could have ordered Krona not to do that.
The single most obvious flaw being that they could have, very easily, ended up in an inescapable time-loop.
For example they were in sight of an enemy compound. Had a sniper been lining up on any one of them, as the checkpoint was created, that individual would die a moment later. Checkpoint reset. Die. Checkpoint reset. Die. And so on, forever.
There would be no way to change the outcome, as the individual has no time to react. They would be in a living hell of knowing they are just about to be shot, through the head. Over and over, for all eternity!
It would not just be them though, everybody else in the universe would be stuck in the loop too. If the power worked the way Krona thought it did.
This is not just a difference in scale. It is not ‘some people dying’ versus ‘a lot of people dying’.. It is the difference between life carrying on as normal (with some people dying) and all life ending everywhere. Forever. Nobody ever getting to do anything again. Not even the prospect of the cockroaches evolving and eventually rebuilding civilisation!
Plus it shows that Krona is fundamentally unsafe in using her powers. She has to attend ‘How to avoid committing mass-genocide 101’!
Sorry if the page ended up a little weird I am not that familiar with this websites features and was trying to bold the points you where making Yorp. So that I could respond to them in a concise and logical manner.
Eloquently argued. Eloquently argued. Amusing that you are asking for more exposition, given that many folks complain that there is too much! Albeit not myself.
Thank you, I try to reread the points in the comic I am talking about to make sure that I am not misremembering things so it takes a bit to type stuff up. I do believe there are some bits that are a little sketchy in how people are delineating the difference between Archon and the people Archon has teamed up with. Which is likely the main issue. I mean whats the difference between the sanctioned supers and the people the sanctioned heroes have tapped as support in an operation.
In this case, although it has stirred up a lot of controversy, we have already had that. Whilst you may choose to dismiss it as being an overreaction by Pixel, you seem to be forgetting what role she has here.
Pixel is the expert that Archon chose to appoint to investigate Halo’s orbs. Given that Archon has been assembled from the best talent in the country, this means that Pixel is the foremost leading authority (probably in the world). Plus we found out that the orbs programming language is actually more fundamental than Krona’s.
Ergo Pixel is more than qualified to render judgment on the dangers of Krona’s activities. Which she has done. Further she has clearly briefed Maxima, on the matter, given that she is preaching from the same page (along with other things, indicating that Maxima has been put in the picture, such as being told about the hostages, as they have clearly been rescued).
Dave followed the maxim of “show don’t tell”, in that we have seen all the facts. All Pixel needed to do was to point out the conclusion. There is not much Dabbler would be able to do, except explain the fairly obvious that ‘messing with time can doom the world!’ But as many people have not followed the implications, it may be worth DaveB doing this.
Pixel waffled during the incident when Halo was all we will be the masters of time. Even stopping for a moment to consult Krona to ask if it was possible to grind through the mission and Krona is the one who shut her down. Also her expertise isn’t cosmic programing its artifacts that does not give her some automatic insight into Krona’s powers in particular especially since they can’t even see the code. Krona is the only one able to see it since it only appears when the panel is from her point of view.
Also the only person that could honestly be able to give an expert opinion on what specifically happened with the Krona “incident” is likely someone with a background in time science what ever that might be called. Pixel doesn’t automatically gain cred because we found out that there was some connection between Krona and Halo’s coding language. I mention Dabbler as the likely one because she is the resident science person. On a side note I personally assume that the people that have there powers know how to use them however that doesn’t mean that they know the comic book science behind its operation. Like a natural reflex.
One final point, regarding your crying ‘foul’, is that there is a big difference between Giggawatt’s mistake and Krona’s. It is not a matter of scale. Giggawatt was a soldier engaging the enemy, in the manner she has been taught. It is unreasonable to state that she should have known that the unique phenomenon they encountered would react dangerously with her lightning. Whereas Krona was not reacting to a surprise attack by an enemy force Her checkpoint power is one that she has programmed, in advance, and had used before.
Why is it unfair to Jiggawatt to bring up a mistake that could have killed pretty much everyone in the nearby area? Its an aspect of her power that she should have been aware of right or at least it is if we are using the same standards as we are using to condemn Krona. To clear things up Jiggawatt was not reacting to a surprise attack she called Glowbug out saying she was the best lightning user. You might be confusing Glowbug with Breakpoint who did use a surprise attack on her.
Further Krona was unethical in choosing to use that on the team, without their concent. Especially given that Pixel is an expert, so (just like Dabbler was able to warn Giggawatt, about the dangers of her action) Pixel could have ordered Krona not to do that.
That is hardly holds up again when you look at Dabbler and Harem. Harem teleported gear onto her partners. Things like armor etc she didn’t ask them before poof it was basically on them. Setting a save point to keep your team mates alive is in the same vain. Then there is Dabbler who uses her seduction aura all the time you could say that it is always on but she certainly has the ability to adjust the level and has not to mention reading Archon members minds. There is no example you can give that I can’t turn back on Archon doing pretty much the same thing or worse.
The single most obvious flaw being that they could have, very easily, ended up in an inescapable time-loop. For example they were in sight of an enemy compound. Had a sniper been lining up on any one of them, as the checkpoint was created, that individual would die a moment later. Checkpoint reset. Die. Checkpoint reset. Die. And so on, forever.
There would be no way to change the outcome, as the individual has no time to react. They would be in a living hell of knowing they are just about to be shot, through the head. Over and over, for all eternity!
It would not just be them though, everybody else in the universe would be stuck in the loop too. If the power worked the way Krona thought it did. This is not just a difference in scale. It is not ‘some people dying’ versus ‘a lot of people dying’.. It is the difference between life carrying on as normal (with some people dying) and all life ending everywhere. Forever. Nobody ever getting to do anything again. Not even the prospect of the cockroaches evolving and eventually rebuilding civilisation!
Plus it shows that Krona is fundamentally unsafe in using her powers. She has to attend ‘How to avoid committing mass-genocide 101’!
Krona indicated that she had hard limitations set into that power to prevent the issues you bring up. 3 loops only and a limit of 8 hours. 3 time loops complete person is dead any ways after being head shot by sniper end of story. Also as I mentioned before her powers don’t affect the whole world let alone the universe, heck its hard to say it would be able to cover a county sized area considering how fast the osprey got there.
No probs. The format you want to use is as follows:
<b>Text_you_want_in_bold_goes_here</b>
Alternatively, if you want to use the pretty quote format, then you use this:
<blockquote>Text_you_want_to_quote_goes_here</blockquote>
Displaying like this:
Or you can add quotation marks manually.
<blockquote>”Text_you_want_to_quote_goes_here”</blockquote>
Looking as follows:
This is a sandbox, where you can test out such things safely:
https://www.w3schools.com/html/tryit.asp?filename=tryhtml_links_w3schools
This will only work if Krona’s programming is adequate. It is not.
I happen to have quite a few American friends, I really would not want a bunch of them to end up poofed out of existence, due to a programming error by Krona. So even though her bugged program did not affect the area it was meant to it is still incredibly dangerous. As explained previously.
The fact that they did not is proof that Krona is incompetent, because it was meant to. As I explained. It also means we are starting to argue in circles, so are reaching the point of diminishing returns. Yours is not an effective counter to my argument and is thereby ignoring that very important point.
Krona;s code was bugged. She needs to get it checked out.
It is totally different. Because that was a practiced maneuver which everyone had consented to and been drilled in. Any problems, such as teammates not expecting her and shooting her, will have had amended methodology introduced. As summarised by Maxima telling Harem to do ‘resupply’ and ‘lightstorm’ (or some similar codename for her flashbang attacks). So clearly things they have practiced.
I won’t get drawn on the Dabbler side because that is straying too far from the point of ‘is it OK to use a super power in a manner likely to destroy the universe?’*
Whereas Krona, in failing to mention the checkpoint, did prevent her team mates from being able to speak out against it, in advance. Note that it is acceptable if a team member has to improvise sometime, in an emergency. But this was not, such a situation. In fact Krona actually chose to be vague about it, to avoid mentioning the power!
Because it was something that only Dabbler knew. Even physicist commentators disagreed that it should be a problem. So Dabbler knows stuff that Earth science does not.
Besides which Giggawatt has gone through debriefing. Whilst Dave spared us all the boring bits, we saw enough to tell that it was comprehensive. Dabbler will have taught her all that she needs to know if that situation crops up again. Plus will have briefed Giggawatt on any similar interactions, with her lightning, which she might expect from unusual phenomenon.
In other words exactly the same kind of thing that they are getting Krona to do!
I was referring to the entire battle, not the single event. Here Krona had the opportunity, before the fight started, to speak up. She chose not to. Whereas Giggawatt heard about the surprise attack, travelled half way across the city and entered the engagement, without the opportunity of a briefing.
Granted she is out of her speciality. However her remit obviously included ‘stuff that nobody has encountered before’ or she would not have been leading that research team. Which implies a broad enough understanding of super powers, and the like, to make an informed judgement.
Which, as you pointed out that Dabbler would be a good choice. please bear in mind that Pixel was chosen even above her. So Pixel is considered, by Archon, to be better than Dabbler, for such investigation!
All of which is moot, in any event, as Krona conceded that she needs the help, even if you refuse to.
* Dabbler was told in no uncertain terms that her mind-reading is not acceptable.
Archon behaved morally. As for the seduction, her species does that to stay alive. If you want to see the debate on such it was covered comprehensively on the page where she uses the memory hammer on Barberian.
Since the comic has moved on I won’t belabor the points further but I did want to say thanks for the info on navigating the site.
My pleasure. And thanks for an interesting debate. Although we have different views you argued your case well, especially on the moral aspects.
Don’t think she will end it/him right now. The moment he verbalised that he is not a robot and got Sydney intrigued, he got upgraded from random encounter to a mysterious character with a background yet to discover.
well if krona brings up being able to see the code behind the orbs, they might get permission to borrow her for some mutually beneficial stuff (they could help krona understand her power more, and she could help sydney understand hers more, mutually beneficial
Dave, actually, tetrachromacy is not rare, the test is rarely done. Studies seem to show it’s a good bit of the population, mostly women.
Only mostly? I thought that the way the colour vision genes linked to the X chromosome meant that you could only have all 4 colours if female.
Males have the ‘X’ chromosome as well. Whereas females have it twice. Hence why you would expect more females to express the trait than males.
Hearing is a weird thing. Yes, loud noises can drown out other noises, but depending upon your hearing you may be able to pick out other noises despite loud noise. Every vibration that hits our ears is processed – as long as it is within the range for us to process, not too high or too low, or too weak – but we don’t normally know it. For example, in a crowded room we would go insane if we tried to follow every conversation, so our brain filters most of it out.
Obviously some of that conversation becomes white noise by running into each other and the molecular vibration becoming indistinguishable. But your particular hearing sensitivity will determine where that occurs. But as we can’t follow it all, we don’t, instead our brain filters, trying to focus on what is important. We can choose to focus on specific sounds – the person we are talking to for example – and attempt to filter them from background noise, and certain sounds will automatically draw our attention. What those words are varies according to how we have programmed ourselves, most people focus on their name, plus other things they find interesting, or important to them. We also respond to other sounds, cats respond to things that sound like the movement of prey animals, prey animals respond to things that sound like the movement of predators. Women who are pregnant or have young children respond to crying babies. Screams of terror – real screams of fear, you will know it if you ever hear it – automatically get our attention and can trigger adrenaline. And so forth.
You will probably find that you may actually know what was said for a few seconds before you started paying attention to something as well – even though you hadn’t been paying attention until the trigger sound was heard. You had heard it, but your brain had ignored it – merely ‘buffering’ it – until it suddenly became relevant and pulled it out of the buffer.
The ‘Rain Man’ concept is that some people’s filters are broken, they hear and see too much, and it overwhelms them. But they are aware of all these things so they can tell you far more than seems reasonable, if you can get them to pay attention to your little piece of the overwhelming noise of the world.
On the other side of that is many interpretations of Sherlock Holmes. He also sees and hears a lot more than other people do, but inversely is capable of processing it all and determine what it means.
Computers can process sound, highlighting some sounds – isolating out particular wave forms – reducing others, it is possible that the brain can do the same thing, completely automatically. Super hearing would be more about having wider ranges of hearing, more sensitivity to smaller vibrations, and most likely the ability to filter sounds better – in fact it would be the most useful function, to automatically isolate out certain wave forms so you can focus on them.
Now… whether it is possible to be in New York and hear a specific sound in Tokyo as it seems various Super beings can do…? Probably not. Simply on the grounds that it is very unlikely that most sounds would disturb the air enough for *any* molecular vibration of the air to propagate that far. Some absurdly loud sounds might – in 1961 the USSR detonated the largest nuclear device in history, the shock wave went around the Earth twice, although most people would have only noticed a wind and not known what it was, so a super sensitive ear might have been able to translate that into BOOM – but most sounds simply won’t cause enough molecular vibration to be distinctive over a particularly large distance.
One thing I used to enjoy doing as kid is listening to the filters shut down. It didn’t happen all the time, but it was frequent on car trips the family took. I’d stay up way late, then before sleeping, I would hear all the noises rush in, I could hear everything but understand little of it. I could hear the grownups talking and laughing in other rooms, but couldn’t understand words. Dogs barking and crickets chirping were indistinguishable; I always thought it was cool, but didn’t know what it was til I was an adult and was diagnosed with a rather bad case of adhd.
The brain definitely does these things. It’s processing is a little bit different to that of a computer, but we are able to do astounding things, such as picking out intelligible speech in an incredibly noisy environment, or noticing the rustling in the reeds at the edge of the clearing where the lion is sneaking up on you. Plain old ordinary humans have actually got rather amazing senses… but only when they bother to pay attention to them.
I have no clue what’s happening here.
Some part of NotABot survived and started to regenerate, Pixelicious detected it and attempted to track down what exactly she heard, and where it was coming from, somehow NotABot pulled a Groot and stopped moving, the grunts moving the majority of NotABot’s body were making too much noise and pulled Pixelicious’ focus, NotABot-remnant used that distractive noise as cover to hop-it to the tree-line, Pixelicious may or may not have dismissed the unusual noise
Hope that helps
Called It!
Fun fact: cats are LESS able to determine where a sound is coming from than humans. That’s why they’ll go into ear-flicky mode to try and zero in on a sound.
As far as the husk’s programming… I wonder if it’s creator even really knows what it will do. It certainly seemed to have a measure of independence and thought. Does it need to return? Is it now a free agent? Will it go and live a peaceful life, feeding ducks?
feeding ducks to what?
(heh heh heh)
I see a couple possibilities here, including: (1) It ends up in Deus’s hands; (2) it tries to join the Council (it is a construct, after all) or even Arc-SWAT!
I think it will seek out and steal nuts for its dark creator, the squirrel overlord!
What, you thought it was Sciona’s creation maybe? Nope, she is a blood mage. Whilst she was the one who animated it, however somebody else built it. We can see, from its distinctive gate, the tell-tail locomotion of its squirrel creator!
As long as it limits itself to the kind of nuts that grow on trees, I’m okay with that.
What about ground nuts? No, not those, the ones who grow in or on the ground, like peanuts
Those are okay too. (Botanically speaking, a peanut is not a nut. It has more in common with lentils & beans.)
it’s a legume
(another word for vegetable)
((well.. a TYPE of vegetable))
Yeah, but that’s why they put the warning on airline peanuts… “Warning: contains nuts”, or “Warning: processed on a production line that also processes nuts”, because people can have an allergy to one but not the other.
(So this is one of the cases of a “stupid warning” that is actually NOT stupid, if you are aware of the context.)
WARNING: This comments thread contains nuts.
*licks bollocks*
May you never get the dreaded disease of Cotton Balls.
I hope you are asking permission from the owners before licking.
Cool,I wondered what thought process produced that warning. Perhaps you could explain another stupid warning for me. Frequently, on Houston freeways, you’ll see a sign that says “Guard rail damage ahead” as if drivers choose guard rails to hit like they choose parking spots. “Oh, great, someone beat me to it. Now I’ll have to bounce off the NEXT guard rail when I had my heart set on this one.”
A couple of thoughts spring to mind. A wise person might choose to slow down, if they know that there is an extra hazard ahead.
For example if there is a big section missing (presumably in the centre of the freeway) then any oncoming vehicle that strays over (say a driver who has nodded off) will be coming at you head-on, without being woken up by bumping the rail or being deflected back into his own half of the road.
Other types of damage could directly pose a danger in its own right mind. If you have a chunk of bent metal projecting towards the road, then anyone getting too close to it could have tires shredded or other serious damage.
Here in Bulgaria the most you usually get is a stick that has been poked into the ground, for instance in a deep pothole. I honestly cannot recall having seen a single warning sign this year, other than the permanent ones, such as near schools or dangerous junctions.
Even an apartment building immediately adjacent to the main boulevard in Varna, which clearly had chunks of masonry falling off it (being able to see the remains on the pavement) only had some sticks stuck in the ground, with a single line of string tying some of them together. Which remained like that for months!
Of course they got the repairs done before the tourist season though. It would not do to have a tourist squished.
@Garbler: Actually, I can answer that one. Obviously, it DOES seem stupid on the face of it. “Boy, I am sure glad they warned me, because I had planned to crash into the guard rail on the way home. My face would have been red to have crashed into a safety guard rail that has already been recently used!”
The warning signs are really there for two reasons:
(1) Liability. It is a warning that the “lifesaving guardrail” is damaged, and might not save your life if you were to strike it. It protects the government from being sued by family members of people who struck the “lifesaving guardrail” and died.
(2) I have seen guard rails that were so badly damaged that part of the rail was actually missing. At night, someone might think it’s an off ramp or the end of a bridge, and try to drive off. So, the warning signs are there to prevent the kind of accidents like the one below, where the truck struck the end of a section of guardrail, and it impaled the truck:
https://static.fanpage.it/socialmediafanpage/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/guard-rail.jpg
Yeah…And it had better keep its tentacles off my beer nuts too!