Grrl Power #600 – High level machinations
Normally when Arch Villains face off you get a lot of monologing and grandiose scheming but little action. I thought I’d mix it up and show some petty bickering.
If Sciona actually wanted to inconvenience Deus, she would have smashed his fish tank. I’ve barely ever shown it (You can see a bit of it there in panel 6 – it’s on the left side of the big conference table as you look out from Deus’s desk) because if I did, in addition to all the other background stuff I draw, I’d also have to do fish. And probably a little castle. But there’s not much more inconvenient than water damage. Sure, acid damage or toxic waste damage, but Deus doesn’t keep stuff like that around his office. Probably.
I had to change the font and color of the text on Harem’s shirt, and even still it’s kind of hard to read. Apparently pink is a bad color to write text on. Anyway, it says “You had me at “I’m a terminally ill billionaire.”” Don’t read anything into the state of Deus’s health. Harem just thought it was a funny shirt.
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Also impressive. Looks like Vale wasn’t all bluff after all.
Now I want to see her and Max spar, but I suspect she’d be smart enough to take a fall rather than give away what she can do.
I think a more even fight will be Vale vs. Math.
I never thought of Vale’s presence as being a bluff of any kind.
Would you put your own personal safety entirely on a bluff? Probably not, especially if your skin is on the line & neither would I. If Dues has a bodyguard, he’s got the resources & contacts to find, assess & hire the best bodyguards around. Dues is the kind of guy who can put his money where his mouth is & he can afford to mouth off a lot. Dues talks a lot of bluster, sure, but he’s not the type to bluff. When he says something he fully intends to back it up.
The fact that he finds Vale, in & by herself, to be sufficient for guarding himself is enough testimony that Vale must be supremely competent for the job. I never considered her to be standing in as a mere “bluff.”
I’ve bluffed with my life on the line. Only thing you CAN do when you’re surrounded by armed people and unarmed yourself and also sitting down.
But do you have the same kind of access to resources that Dues has to ensure that you’ll never be caught alone? Every bluff you make is subject to the chance that someone will call out the bluff…Dues doesn’t have to rely on a bluff.
So you’re saying Sciona should give
the DevilDeus his dues?Yes, his copy of “Little Women” is long overdue from the Angle Rock Municipal Library
No. No. No. That’s “Petite Babes”, and it is a magazine subscription. Still, an easy mistake to make.
No, that’s something else (not nearly as embarrassing, plus, who still buy paper porn?)
Not entirely. Just say things properly to the one who looks like they have the most willpower/intelligence/physical strength, and insult them. That’s the leader.
State things so if he attacks, he looks like an idiot who can’t defend himself verbally, and if he doesn’t attack, he looks like a wimp.
Make it so every possible choice is ‘they lose’ and no one will question you. Works every time.
But be wary, that tactic only works if the individual is behaving rationally. Mental illness and drug abuse are far too common for it to be a good idea to provoke someone. If you have had a good chance to assess them, then you may be able to judge their current state. But there are many conditions that simply would not be apparent in the brief time available in a tense situation.
If it works for you fine. Just please do not over-rely on it. Have a plan B ready, even if that is just ‘run like crazy’!
Physically disabled, and can’t walk very well, even aided. If my one tactic doesn’t work, nothing I can do will.
There are always alternatives in conflict avoidance. Keeping a very close eye on body language and other subtle cues can allow you to be ready to de-escalate a situation. Taunting someone will have been heightening the tension, so if you do not see them laugh it off or otherwise relax, you need to pick another option.
Given your inability to escape, and my concern at the potential backfire for your preferred defence, I would suggest checking out your local library (or some online resources) to find a book on ‘conflict avoidance’. They will be able to offer a wide range of suggestions, improving the odds of finding ones that are compatible with your needs.
Up front avoiding getting into such situations in the first place is by far the best.
But such is not always possible, especially if leading an active social life. Taking avoidance too far can impact on that, after all. So if a heated situation does look about to get out of hand, one example of another route out is comedic self-depreciation.
Bear in mind that at this point you have tried taunting the boss of a group, and have a feeling it has failed. In which case turning the focus of attention away from him, and towards yourself, in a funny way, allows him to ignore his loss of face. If he finds it funny.
So avoid trying to make it too clever or using references that they might not get. So working out a few generic one-liners, with these sort of aims in mind, in advance, will give you a plan B.
On the plus side it is also a way that some folks have ended up becoming professional comedians. If they learn the art of judging the audience (/mob), perfecting the timing, having good delivery and, of course, having material that works.
Unless aiming to go on the stand-up circuit, there is no problem in going to an online jokes website and memorising a collection of good ones there. Some of my favourite ice breakers come from such (but a bit long winded for conflict resolution, so of no use here).
Laughter is evolution’s best social development for conflict avoidance.
That would only work, if you were able to survive any attack they decide to throw your way
Disrespect the wrong person, leader or lackey, and no one will care how ‘smart’ you think are, because you will have shown to everyone just how stupid you really are
Higher than human strength, easily. Willingness to get close to a pissed-off supervillain, maybe some form of unobvious defense, regeneration, or really big chutzpa.
Chutzpa the size of a Winnebago…
She is not ONLY strong. She is Really strong and heavy. Sciona cand fly AND crush metal/stone with her wings while fling. That is a lot of grip. A LOT.
I do not know if Dave took it to acount or if Sciona did more than just… ruin the velvet carpet. But if he did… she is probably as strong as Bulwart. [Or my depiction of him]
Bulwart? Do you mean Stalwart? The dapper chap in the swanky business suit who has his balls shuttled to the moon during the Restaurant Rumble via a Hiro-footjob?
Stalwart, not Bulwart.
You don’t bluff with someone like Vale. She looks too much like someone whose duties involve making Deux’s life enjoyable, not longer. Now Deux deals with a number of clever people who might fall for a bluff of “the reason she looks like a wimp is so you will think she is a wimp, until too late” but the current case shows that Deux also deals with those who aren’t that clever, at least when they are angry, and Deux is in most need of a guard. So you want to bluff with somebody who looks like King Kong. That still won’t stop things like Max, but everyone will at least pause.
Of course Deux is in love with his own cleverness, and would definitely enjoy being at the mercy of an enemy who is too scared of a trap to actually do him any harm. But his plans have been deeply thought out so far. When our late unlamented dictator declined Deux’s “generous” offer, he had already made plans to remove the objections, but had scouted Junior enough to know how to get his agreement. [Children of brutal dictators tend to be of the “Whaa, you said I could slaughter the next batch of helpless innocents” school or otherwise make the old man look like a statesman. Even the best are apt to think “Dad may have been a horrible monster and his death cause for a national holiday, but he was still my dad, and I am going to hate you forever.”] So he is not going to bluff when there is much chance of it being called.
Yeah… I read that one of Saddam Hussein’s sons made it a hobby to rape the wives of recently married men, on their wedding night. He and his goons would just show up and with all the guns and muscle on one side that would be that. It led to more than one of the poor women committing suicide.
Of course, I don’t recall where I read this, but I tend to avoid news sources which have a reputation for hysteria or Fake News, so I believe it is accurate.
“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
Give me absolute power, and it won’t corrupt me.
I’ll remain completely karmically clean.
Yes….
Nothing to worry about…
Heh. Well I know I would not escape unscathed. Not unless my first act was to set up an ethics committee and ensure that I only issued orders through them.
I am far too prone to solve problems with ’round up all the ones causing trouble and shoot them!’
That’s why I respect you! *scratches you behind the ear and gives you a plate of Yorpie Snax*
That ‘tradition’ goes all the way back to forever (remember “Braveheart”? the English ‘lords’ felt it was their right to rape brides on their wedding night, the Royal Wedding gift from the King: a literal English bastard)
Guesticus, you’re referring to the fabled “ius primae noctis”, that never actually existed according to the contemporary historiography.
The concept comes from a XVI century work of fiction, written by Hector Boece, and during the Renaissance many scholars tried to discredit the previous centuries in any way they could.
Ahh yes, modern scholars attempting to discredit scholars of previous centuries in any way they can. ;-)
*moves tail in a never ending circle*
Actually Primae Noctis never actually happened in Scotland. Consider it literary embellishment on history. Braveheart then used it to show how evil Edwards Longshanks really was. :)
If you’re talking about Mel Gibson’s film, that’s only one of very many instances of story over history. Consider it a diverting fantasy if you wish, even one loosely based on true events. But very loosely.
I didn’t think Vale was even a little bit of bluff after that scene in Africa…
Her body type does seem to imply possibly being a super. Although she’s sort of short for a super. Hence why I was also wondering about android or cyborg, or maybe some other sort of enhanced human.
To paraphrase Terry Pratchett: the tighter you compact something, the more likely it is to explode.
Don’t underestimate shorter characters. Just look at Wolverine. Or Halo…
Yes, but we sort of have a standing rule already for supers in THIS world – that they tend to be several inches larger than normal. Harem is the shortest and that’s mainly because she has 5 bodies, according to the conversation in-universe. Wolverine is not from this universe. Also, Halo is not a super, technically speaking. She’s a normal person (first time anyone will ever describe Sydney as normal, I’m sure) who has superpowered items that gives her powers.
Vale doesn’t seem to have the height of most supers, except for Harem, which is why I keep getting hesitant to say that she’s a ‘super’ as they define it in the comic, rather than some other classification with access to superhuman powers.
Sort of like how Spider-Man isn’t a mutant/metahuman, he’s a mutate. Or Starfire isn’t a mutant/metahuman – she’s an alien. Or Raven isn’t a mutant/metahuman – she’s a half-demon. Or Cyborg isn’t a metahuman/mutant – he’s a cyborg. Or Valkyrie isn’t a mutant/metahuman – she’s a demi-goddess or whatever valkyries are. Etc etc
I will say she definitely has the physique that supers have though. Which is why I don’t outright dismiss the possibility that she IS a super. I’m just hesitant.
Wolverine is fictional.
*shakes head in amazement*
I dunno. Some people believing everything they see in the cinema. If he was real, Sydney would be camped out on his doorstep, in her wedding dress! ;-)
Halo is a super by virtue of devices she found. So possibly Vale might be of similar ilk. However the majority of supers in this setting appear to be natural-born ones (or mutated by some incident like Maxima). All of whom tend to become taller, as well as becoming fitter and more generously endowed.
Not that Vale is so short that she should be dismissed as potentially being born a super. But she is short enough to make that less likely.
Oooo, maybe Vale is related to Pixelicious: an extra 20% height would still put her on the ‘short’ end of the Super-index, Vahriah needs to touch them both and see, as much skin contact as possible, for… science?
She’s not a ‘super’ though, in the sense that she has certain innate powers by birth or that genetically alter her in a way that are different than the members of the Council. She has items which GIVE her super powers, but she is not, herself, a ‘super,’ if you can call ‘supers’ a race or something like that.
That’s what I’m meaning. Pixel is an odd situation. On one hand, she’s not just a ‘super’ because she’s a lycanthrope. On the other hand, she IS A super because she’s a lycanthrope who is ALSO a super. Not really sure how that works, but I’m suspecting that if she had never become lycanthrope, or whatever werepanthers are called (felinthrope?), then she would still be a super who is NOT a shifter instead. There does seem to be some genetic component to being a super, based on the conversations Sydney’s had with different people in ARCHON, although it’s clearly NOT just a ‘mutant gene’ since that’s not how genes work, which Sydney did point out.
I suspect that with Pixel it is her virus that got the super mutation (or whatever it is that creates supers). Viruses are alive after all, so if something can affect humans to make them super, then (in principle) there is no reason why other living organisms cannot get affected too.
Vance being our best hint (depending on which way Dave takes it) that non-humans can also be affected. Although there was that Canadian super, with his bulldog. But that may just have been the human who was super, rather than both of them.
Oddly Dabbler (and the other aliens and supernaturals) are not, given that their various powers stem from other, known (to them), sources, such as super technology, magic and psionics.
My cabbages!! Oh wait sry wrong movie – My marble!!
I’m sending some men over to violate your cabbages now, so we can make your first reference good.
No. No. No need to thank me.
So long as Dues knows it’s your men violating his cabbages & not on BlackIkarus’ initiative, then that leaves him/her off the hook…s’all good.
“Never rub another man’s rhubarb.”
~Joker, right after shooting Bruce Wayne
;)
“I don’t care who gets the blam…er, credit; I just want it done!” ~Town Crier
I was going to see if I could find a cabbage based alraune to link to,
googled “Sexy Cabbage”
huh…I found much more disturbing things. I leave you with that knowledge and no links for the sake of decency.
This is why we can’t have nice things. Oh, congratulations on 600 pages!
Time for another “stuff is going to get broke” super-fight???
If this comic was happening according to the Marvel Superheroes RPG, then there’s going to be Karma loss due to property damage…
That only applies to heroes, since we’re looking at villains they’d gain karma.
Well Deus would loose some, as he has lost his precious newly pointed marble. Not to mention being on the hero side of the equation.
*uses teeth to pluck a hair out of tail*
*dangles the hair between the dividing line and Deus’s position*
It applies to villains & even any heroes who are present that failed to prevent the property damage. I have only the v1 rules, but they also indicate that Karma doesn’t go below zero; Yet, that also helps explain why villains very rarely (if ever) spend Karma on a FEAT roll…They just don’t have much (if any) to spend.
The villain who causes the damage also takes a Reputation penalty…But villains actually gain more “street cred” when their Reputation gets into negative numbers.
Villain, in general, gain karma for actions that would cost heroes karma (except for things like murder, the one thing that they can’t gain karma for) in the Marvel Super-Hero RPG. They don’t lose karma for destroying things that’s their thing, just like it’s the hero’s thing to stop them while avoiding destroying things. It wouldn’t make any sense for a villain to lose karma for doing a common thing for villains like destroying property.
Popcorn: Ya know it’s gunna get gud™
I’m taking this as a clue to refresh my popcorn supplies & make sure I’m ready for Monday.
Yeah, but Harem’s not even watching the fight, just staring at her phone. Millennials.
Probably playing Elf-Boy Stripper. Games like that are ADDICTIVE.
… she’s RECORDING the fight…
Phones are also cameras these days,
Finally. Somebody who realises that Harem is recording material to make her own version of Elfboy Stripper. Flying Elfgirl Stripper (original body flava).
Unless you have … ahem … specialist tastes you would not want the other game variant.
Ahh, so looks like Vale has some flavor of inertia-based powers. Immovable object, all that. Guessing that she doesn’t so much have super strength so much as ‘stuff gets moved’. Probably also very resistant to physical harm, as bullets, blades, and punches can’t actually move her skin.
Not… quite, she pushes Sci-fright back, even if slowly (which might just be for show)
Right, but I think it is less ‘bulging muscles’ sort of super-strength, and more amplification of her own inertia when moving. ‘A body at rest will stay at rest, and a body in motion will stay in motion’.
Basically, she’s the Immovable Object AND the Irresistible Force.
They are technically the same thing. What we have here is a Juggernaut moment. The problem is the opponent isn’t the Hulk.
So the Juggernaut?
Now all she needs is the attitude to match his famous quote.
She’s the bitch, Juggernaut?
May the youtubers who popularized that enough that a movie ripped it off and made it a common phrase for him have their tongues eaten out by angry hummingbirds.
Yup, Vale is very able. Also showing her ability without going full bore. Really at some point a bodyguard has to “put up or shut-up” So, I doubt her power is just for show or bluff.
Vale vs Anvil: depending on the nature of the former’s powers, it’s unclear who would win…
For that matter, this also says something to the strength of Sciona’s neck. A shove on the forehead that pushes her back a step and doesn’t bend her head back at all?
I’m sorry, but that slow shove would’ve been more effective, in my eyes, against the top of Sciona’s chest. Where the collarbones meet.
You just wanted to see Vale grope Sci-fright, sicko :P
… just, no.
:-D
Why not? Sci-fright is super-hot
Unlikely they’re inertia powers, plus there are a number of other options. Maxima for example demonstrated one when fighting against Vehemence, she used her Flight powers to prevent him from moving her back with his punch making it look like she was immovable (or close, she was pushed back like a step while she bluffed about his punch being almost adequate while berating herself for her grandstanding internally). It’s even something Spider-man can do depending on the opponent, by using his ability to molecularly bond to objects to bound to the ground to remain immobile (lacking body armor he doesn’t do that particularly often though).
AKA: excuses for writers and illustrators to ignore the laws of physics regarding the ground a character is standing on and how even if the characters has more resistance that doesn’t mean the surface they are on does. Even if its not a case of breaking said surface but it being too slick for someone to brace against it without being pushed back.
Even if it does no damage to you, the average opponent and onlookers still think the character is weak for being pushed back, so it does more to hurt their ego and awe the audience to have a means of not being pushed back.
Sadly most series don’t give a good excuse and we who know how this stuff work are left eyerolling at the screen/page as a beam decimates the ground around someone but doesn’t push them back off the ground they are standing on.
i am not disagreeing with the cat, i just want to point out one thing.
Sciona had not tilted at all, suggesting the force is applied equally across her body in the same direction.
and that’s assuming it even IS a force, and not a gimmicky form of spatial manipulation.
as to the above reference to maxima’s grandstanding, maxima was doing it intentionally. sciona, i would rather expect her to be caught off guard by it. she wouldn’t be “playing along” with it, she isn’t that kind of character.
*Thinks of Futurama*
The engine doesn’t move the ship at all! The ship stays in place and the engine moves the entire universe!
Maybe something like that. Sciona can’t be moved, so everything everywhere else was.
Or she might have density increase, one of my favorite powers from Champions. It gave you strength and physical resistance to damage all at the same time, as well as making you resistant to knockback. Enough levels and you weighed as much as, well, perhaps a space shuttle.
there is already a weight manipulator on the team. and it deasn’t work like shown here.
if one of them simply manipulated weight, one of them would have fallen frough the floor by now, probably.
Do not become Legion of Super-Heroes were they can only have one of any particular ‘type’, which then forces people to get ‘creative’ during recruitment drives, and then mercilessly mocks the people who aren’t ‘flashy’ (and yet they keep Bouncy Turd on the roster… )
Probably. Unless one of them worked for a multi-billionaire who knew what his body guard’s power set was and who might see the cost of reinforcing places she might need to guard said body as a trivial, and wise, expense.
Also, what team are you referring to? Because I don’t think Vale is on the team I think you are referring to…
Probably just meant ‘cast’.
Although if you split the cast into good guys and bad guys…
well although I do like to put Deus in the good guy camp, he and Vale did actually murder someone. Soo… not that good. But, as far as can legally be proven, anyhow, they are allies of the good guys.
As shown here
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/1500
also, “cast” page seems to be down… cant open it.
Well remembered. I had assumed you were referring to Sydney’s gravity manipulation powers. But you are right that Stalwart was using precisely the power stipulated.
Although I would not rule out Vale using that. At the moment we have several theories but not enough evidence to narrow it down.
The cast list has been broken for a while and may take some time to fix. In the meanwhile I suggest that you bookmark the Grrrl Power Wiki, which has all the info the cast list did, and more:
https://grrl-power.wikia.com/wiki/Cast
Some people (won’t name names to spare them the embarrassment) believe Deus is a good guy and thus part of Archon
well… “formally” he is… related, to the archon.
ofc, not at all in spirit. he just does it cause convenient.
And because he can make money from them (or their remains)
Those first 2 panels… Is it just me, or is Sciona staring right down Vale’s cleavage?
Wouldn’t you? o_O
Maybe she thinks that’s where D keeps whatever it is she wants.
What I’d want is right there anyway, even without storing anything else there…
I hate to sound picky, but I really don’t like the way Glasses Harem is sitting on his desk. She seems off balanced like she’s about to fall off of it. It just seems unnatural.
I do like the way the other Harem popped in to deliver popcorn though. That’s clever.
In the Sydneyverse, Orville Redenbacher could diversify into a delivery service to compete with FedUps
FedUPS – When Fedex and UPS combine into one mega delivery system that has packages delivered within the hour you order them because we know what you’ve been browsing. We control the add to cart button. Summon the Yorp.
The only competition would be TARDIS Express. TARDIS Express: When you absolutely, positively have to get it before you sent it.
Missing a word there. TARDIS Express: When you absolutly, positively have to get it there before you sent it.
Sister company / competitor / child company would have to be the one from Saturday Night Live. In Living Color? Kids in the Hall? Whitest Kids U Know? College Humor? Not sure. Anyway…
It was a company that would beat up your packages you forgot to send, so when you get in trouble with a boss for forgetting to send something, it would be so beat up and repeatedly mislabeled that it would be believable that you actually did send it on time and it got lost in the mail and got delivered right before you were fired, or got dumped for forgetting birthdays/holidays/etc.
Clever, but unnecessary. Harem could have had any one of her eating the popcorn and still enjoyed it without exposing a second copy to potential damage from a super-brawl.
Of course, it does continue the ‘taunt Sciona’ theme, so maybe that was the goal.
True, it has taunting potential. Although it could also be viewed as a calming tactic. Eating popcorn is not a threatening behaviour and Harem is not looking at Sciona. Introducing an element of everyday mundanity is not a bad way of diverting attention from blustering and potential fighting.
Mind you both that and the showy way it arrives do also serve as a useful distraction. Either from whatever Harem is up to on the device she is holding, or to keep Sciona’s attention occupied whilst Arc-SWAT make their way here.
I do agree that it is risky having two bodies there. That said Harem still does not know whether one dying will kill all of her (especially if there is direct damage to her brain, given that quantum linking should do the same to all of the brains). So there is merit to any tactics which reduce that danger.
If Sciona takes it as being a taunt though, then you are spot on.
Gothamer is already *VORP*ing out before anyone even realized she was there
Deus “Young lady, where did this popcorn come from?”
Abby “It was already there when I sat down, Mister D”
The former is likely right, granted. Albeit taking a chance as Sciona may well have super reflexes whereas Harem has none.
The latter claim would not appear credible though as Sciona is directly seeing Harem delivering the popcorn. No matter that she promptly pops off again, her presence has been noted.
Of course Harem can claim that, as a wind up. With appropriate consequences for pissing off an arch-villain. Whilst she can teleport to safety, that would put her out of the fight that would then ensue. Unless she sticks to somewhere in sight – which basically limits her to this room, pretty much all of which is in wing-chopping range!
Abby doesn’t seem ‘off-balanced’ to me (and the other Harem is ‘Gothamer’)
I agree about the sitting being a bit off, but it seems more …. off-jointed by the thighs than off-balanced.
Sooo… you are saying Harem should fall backwards off the table in the next page.
I’m guessing you are into flashing of panties then? ;-)
Who isn’t?
But is she wearing any?
Well, after the way Arianna had been instructing Archon personnel about not letting “your clams flap in the breeze,” Harem would be wise not to go without panties. Then again, second to Dabbler, Harem would be the most likely to go commando anyway…
It would allow her to avoid a certain form of NJP from Max.
Maxi is fast enough to brief her before debriefing her :P
Shouldn’t Max buy her dinner first?
With that skirt? If she isn’t wearing panties then there are already 10,000x more pics of her muff on the Internet then Brittany, Miley, and any other 100 starlets and pop starlets you might care to name.
Is this the first time one of the other Daphne’s have shown up in
Vale’s LairDeus’ Office?2 things scream out at me from this comic. 1 she’s pointing at deuce with the impolite finger while making her demands and 2 vale is strong maybe not maximum level strong but strong enough to make me think she can give superhero a run for his money if not outright beat him.
This makes her panic frustration at having to Deal with Sydney even more hilarious erect respect
There is a polite finger to point with? She’s pointing with her index, not her middle
Who said she wasn’t a super? o_O
I’m typing on my phone so sometimes it changes the words and I don’t notice. And by super Hiro I’m referring to the 2nd in command on Ark. Swat at least I think hes the 2nd in command. Max suggested that his rank was only just below her’s and that he was accepted as the second strongest on the team.
Oh, thought you meant super hero in general
Super Hiro tries to claim that he is the 2nd strongest. But Stalwart is actually the physically stronger.
Overall power wise Super Hiro beats Stalwart though as he has extra powers beyond super strength and toughness. Being able to fly being the more versatile than his sonic absorbtion.
But, agreed, Vale is demonstrating that she is probably super-strong, and is being casual enough about it that she may well be well up the ranks of that, as you suggest.
Doing stuff like that is the super hero equivalent of trash talk. Like when Maxima just let Vehemence hit her in the nose as hard as he could while she just took one small half step back.
Na… Super hero trash talk involves many boasts about what they COULD do without any activity. This is fully in the “Take a step back, ” and you can feel it.
Also note that vale doesn’t lean forward when she shoves Sciona back. She’s not only super strong but also super immovable (and a quick yoinker of samurai swords, so she’s not super heavy… Hmm, control over inertia? At least over her own?)
Her own AND others. She’s not pushing Sciona back with raw muscle, she’s countering her inertia. She doesn’t even have to step back to brace herself, either.
Basically, she’s got Juggernaut AND the Blob’s power sets.
Hmmm.. wonder if she can flip it the other way. Immobilize with a touch, or reduce her own to allow super leaps?
Its a common comic book trope that superpowers ignore physics. Superman pics up a building but it doest fall apart for some reason. This sort of thing would be explained by John Byrne writing on Superman after the Crisis on Infinite Earths as part of Superman”s powers actually being mental and was further extrapolated into Super Boy’s tactile telekinesis.
So in the comic book world where things work as needed Vale might just be superstrong or she might indeed have supplimentary powers to make this scene more “logical”.
they call that Touch Teke (Telekinesis)
For a moment I thought Halo was coming in, and I wondered, “Wait, can Harem teleport other people too? I don’t remember that…”
Then I realized it was Goth Harem. I guess those bangs on the front threw me.
And the skull-clips
Hmm, makes me wonder: who had the bangs first? Sydney or Gothamer? And why did Berry make that comment about Sydney’s bangs all those years back (unless it was jealousy or envy)?
Halo had bangs on panel one of page #1, even in rpg. and she didn’t even know Harem then. so it’s a coinkydink that both have bangs.
Remember, those first few pages actually come “several months” after everything else in this comic…DaveB refers to those first pages as a “flash forward” for the story. The question about “who had bangs first, Goth-Harem or Sydney” would mean going further back years of time to see when both of them were first growing or styling their hair that way.
Butt, she did have the bangs during the flash-back before she went to the Bank
It was more of rhetorical joke comment (Sydney is older than Daphne anyway)
Huh.
Its almost as if being an asshole needlessly has consequences.
May all the other questionable decisions Sciona has made come due with interest.
“Its almost as if being an asshole needlessly has consequences.”
NO WAY! (hint sarcasm)
All consequences are needless to assholes.
*curles tail up tight*
*looks behind warily for any cacti*
that’s need-less not needle-ss yorp. you’re safe enough (not totally safe as some a**ho**s will send there consequences to the morally superior).
Small picky detail. Harem is wearing lace up white stockings in the previous page, but they are missing here(or they have become flesh toned).
Nope, they are white here, the laces are on the back
For some reason I thought that columns were made of malachite, not marble.
Crimes against marbility! Call Marble Maiden!
Well, ARC-SWAT is incoming there in seconds, and MM is wanted for vigilantism…
Harem wardrobe is clearly made of funny, but her best one still is the pants with “Gratuitous fanservice” written on it
I thought that was Anvil.
Didn’t someone predict/request Vale display her powers?
There you go!
Has Harem deceived Deus into thinking her “clones” are individuals?
It seems they’re all in on it.
Of course they are all ‘in on it’, there is only one Harem, if one knows they all know, that’s how Berry was able to report to Maxi so quickly
“Has Harem deceived Deus into thinking her “clones” are individuals?”
Well considering that she explained her powers at the press conference I think that cat is well and truly out of the bag.
Are Arch Villains always this petty in the Grrl Power! universe or is it just Sciona?
How many Arch Villains have we met? So far, just Deus and Sci-fright…
How dare you call Deus an archvillain! He’s a good and virtuous person who occasionally dabbles in evil laughs and killing tyrants. :)
Btw, you forgot Vehemence as an archvillain.
If you don’t count Deus as an Arch-painintheneck, then can forget Kevin (he wasn’t a villain, he was just looking for a free dinner)
Deus is a hero to millions. How dare you. I say, again, how dare you! :)
Kevin, on the other hand, is guilty of the worst crime of all – making a fight drag on for over 6 months RL.
LOL!
Note changed Deus to “Arch-painintheneck“? Trust me, anyone who has any dealings with that man will agree with me :P
He’s an arch-awesomemcawesomesauce.
Well, what he got was all-day Kirby cartoons & the munchies…
Sounds like an acceptable trade :D
He was playing Kirby’s Epic Yarn, not watching a cartoon.
Just Sciona,She has a mental disability…..well…..ok maybe several mental disabilities,Maybe getting the top of her head lopped off gave her braindamage so bad even eldritch artifacts couldnt fix it.
Blood magic tends to skew ones view of the world, i.e. blood donors everywhere…
please don’t remind me how easy it would be to snack on people who upset me.
If she is a kind of fae it makes sense, orange/blue morality.
Heck we saw an allied vampire (I think “Scarlet”) I’ve lost track on the names, tried to sneak into Archon to pull a “batman entrance” as she under-estimated humanity and feels that as a vampire she has every right to enter any human area she wants *supernaturally sense of entitlement* over those weaker, much shorter lived mortals. It is one of those things we see in a great deal of fairy tales that comes back to bite them.
*I am the all powerful magical ogre king…and you are but a puny mortal…huh…sure I can shape shift into a mouse and climb inside this box….hey! Let me out! What? You won’t? Know your place mortal I am the powerful ogre king if you don’t let me out I will kill you! Well…what…But…*
-lesson never learned, keeps ranting threats while chucked in a dark walled in crate-
Umm, no, you only partially got it right, butt mostly wrong
Crimson snuck in because she was going there to get Maxi’s help with the Reliquary anyway and thought it would be ‘fun’ to pull a ‘Batman’ (she has only been a vamp for about 40 years, which means she would have been born around the 40’s or 50’s, so relatively young), she just forgot how resourceful and clever hyu-mons had gotten in the last 40 years (she totally slept through the Space-Race)
the middle part was referencing her, but the first and last are mostly referring to Sciona’s potential mindset, that while Crimson was just that little bit egotistical, Sciona could be and given this page very likely is full blown *Evil king Ogre* territory.
Super? Cyborg? Android? Alien? Goddess? Demon? Taking all bets.
I’m betting all of the above and then some with most of them cancelling each other out. Like a fey with cold iron cyborg implants.
Clever pyschological move Deus. Get Sciona’s attention focussed on destroying property. We saw with Wyrmil what she would otherwise try to do with a person, to vent her frustration.
Respect.
No more bottom slapping though! Keep delaying Sciona by keeping her off-balance, with other tactics.
Sneaky. That aspect hadn’t occur ed to me. Of course, he is enough of a megalomaniac that he may have genuinely expected Sciona to respect his wishes. On some level.
When you stack the deck, you expect to win the pot. Max is the joker in the deck though….
Also establishes intent to harm him in a demonstrateable way, when the cops (ArcSWAT) show up.
“The crazy fairy elf was break my marble and threatening me most dire.”
I wonder if Harem is streaming this direct to Archon? The camera angle seems a bit low, but a wide angle lense may be picking up the scene, without clueing Sciona in by pointing it directly at her.
Or maybe she is just downloading Elfboy?
How could Sci-fright not see what Abby is doing? She’s sitting, right, there! On the desk, beside a fresh bowl of popcorn (oh, and beside Deus as well)
As for what Abby is streaming: Vale’s butt in full 4k HD glory!
A fish-eye lense (or similar effect handled by the technical wizardry of smartphones) could capture the whole scene, including Sciona.
I know because I borrowed a camera about that size. Which had the fish-eye effect turned permenantly for some reason. It drove me crazy, as I just wanted to take normal pictures, and those have a weird look to the edges.
Eventually I found that there was another menu that could be accessed in a really unintuitve way. So managed to turn it off.
Then found that a really massive tree had grown at an old house of mine, one that had been planted after I left. So I then had to turn it on, to capture that. Without the fisheye I would have had to back up half a block to get everything in shot. With it I could stand the other side of a small garage carpark.
Importantly you could see everything in the (undistorted) middle of the shot very clearly (compared to how small it woudl be in the alternative long shot). I think Sciona would still be within the less disorted parts.
Even if Vale’s bum was getting the best coverage.
“Even if Vale’s bum was getting the best coverage.”
Of course, Harem should be applying the techniques of basic photography here. ie – Concentrate the field of focus on the primary subject matter.
Oh, and yea, I don’t think Sciona would be concerned precisely because the lense is pointing more towards Vale’s butt. And Harem is making a good job of trying to look nonchelant (popcorn and all) that she is doing something trivial.
Even as a non-mobile user, I am familiar with folks eternally toying with their phones. And Deus is doing a good job of keeping Sciona’s attention elsewhere.
Well, Sciona must be underestimating Vale something fierce.
It looks like if she’s expected to just knock her over to get at Deus since it does not look like Vale moved to avoid whatever spike Sciona’s holding. I don’t think its a finger since it’s placed too low on the hand for that.
Anyway, how smart/stupid is she….
previously she broke into a high end vault (sorry, Black Reliquary), got what SHE wanted and left (pissed off/angry) because Deus shows up and that without even checking her ‘grocery’list.
She should have known Deus would empty the place when he showed up with a shopping cart.
Besides, pulling off such a heist and not taking everything you can carry/transport is a bit shortsighted.
That ‘spike’ is Sci-frights’s finger, she is wearing gloves, with nasty knuckles
edited:
You’re right, the top part of her glove must be at least 1 cm thick
and that is what fooled me.
Dont forget she also tried to murder one teammate and screwed over all the others by tripping the disintegration spread security feature on purpose.Oh and now shes apparently trying to solo the place where at least one minion on site-whos also in front of her is implied to be at LEAST as dangerous as she is……Annnnnd theres doubtless many more there who now have access to doomsday weapons,Scionas……special….I hope to god she brought a legion of hurtbots with her or something or shes going full Sciona and you should never go full Sciona!
Or it might be that she really is that dangerous, and they are underestimating her. Remember, being beheaded by the council didn’t stop her, never mind that everyone is overlooking the part where she somehow grafted her own head onto a troll’s body after her own execution, possibly having removed the trolls own head first.
And she has a council of literal eldritch monsters concerned enough that they want her gone.
ALMOST beheaded…
Nope, full beheading, just thought made the rookie mistake of thinking that that would be enough, or that having the body and not the head would stop her, such rookie amateurs :P
that’s “mostly”
Yes, an important scemantic difference. Anybody can survive ‘almost being beheaded’ (i.e. the blade missed). Whereas having most of the head chopped off would be … challenging to humans.
Could you please continue with the petty bickering? I find it most intriguing. – Data
So now what,another Harem delivers a bowl of popcorn and when will Archon get involved with this???
Unless Maxima wants nothing to do with Deus?!?!?
Well, we don’t know how far away Machina Inc. is from Archon (doubt they are next door), and, shockingly enough, Harem can’t carry anyone butt Vahriah’s butt (and the rest of her)
At mach 4 it ain’t too far. After Max and Sydney stopped by as a side trip….
Yeah, and then they would have Maxi (possibly Queen Rookie) in a situation they can’t control and result in several complete fatalities (with a few incomplete)
I think we can take it that Archon are scrambling as they speak. Maxima can cross the city fast. But, unless she thinks her ex will die without her, I imagine she will want a unit to respond, rather than handling it solo.
Jiggawatt is another teleporter, albeit of a more limited flava, who got to the car park fight fast, from across the city. But she is only a rookie. Super Hiro is a fast flyer, but it is not wise to risk the commander and second in command of a unit.
So I think we are looking at Osprey response time. Which very much depends on just how close the two buildings are. Machina Industries does supply Archon though, so it may not be far.
So is it just me or is Harem gonna have to explain why, exactly, she was hanging around in Deus’s office after the team has dealt with Sciona? I don’t think she’s very good at this double/triple agent stuff.
Although now you’ve got me wondering if the butt smack last page was a deliberate attempt by Deus to prod her into getting Archon involved. He may not be as confident about the Vale/Sciona match-up as he let’s on.
No. Yes. Unless, as Deus suspects, Harem is actually a sanctioned triple agent here under orders from Archon. Yes. If Harem is a triple agent she was not doing a good job in convincing Deus that she was only a double agent.
That is plausible. True, he may be bluffing. Vale is impressively stopping Sciona without any apparent effort though. Despite Sciona having been upgraded by a powerful artefact!
I suspect that Deus would just like Archon to handle dealing with her. They are a major client of his and making them look good is in his best interests. Whereas having his staff involved in an altrecation does not generate good PR.
The more Archon are seen to be taking down major threats, the more secure their new position, the better budgets they may be allocated and the more profit he can make by being their preferred supplier.
Only the Shadow knows, muwahaha… ;-)
But unlike the Shadow, Dues is expecting some kind of profit-margin from what he knows…
But he also seems to take a long view about when that profit arrives… he’s the type to give freebies to build relationships, collecting favours rather than cash…
My feeling is that while Max is preparing more than a solo intervention, Archon is still wildly underestimating sciona. She entered the picture a largely beaten schemer and artificer. After her restoration, they still really have no idea how devastating she may be personally. Deus thinks he’s taken her measure too, but he seems poorly qualified to have a truly accurate reading on her, as she seems to have been out of play for a while, and mostly sheltered by the viel before that.
I expect Vale to give an excellent accounting for herself as this escalates, but I also expect Sciona to rapidly ramp up to “Hurricane made of Blood”-class rolling shitstorm.
Deus hasn’t really done anything that would warrant involvement from Archon.
He slapped a super on the butt!
Ok, no, that would not really warrant their scrambling of a SWAT team. Although technically he was assulting a police officer, if they wanted an excuse.
But they do have every right to go there because of a known criminal having been reported as being there. Especially if (as she almost certainly is doing) Harem tells Maxima that Sciona broke in throught the window, is behaving in a threatening manner, and has also just destroyed a marble pillar.
With lives at risk Arc-SWAT are entitled, nay obliged, to respond. Under the normal rules for SWAT teams of course.
“There I was, sitting innocently in my office, when a super battle broke out.” Sounds good to me…
You mean, other than Sci-fright being a wanted criminal? A criminal who already assaulted several members of Archon? Yes, you are correct, nothing happening here that would warrant involvement from the Super Police :rolleyes:
Deus is a nerd. His fish tank is full of miniature figurines reenacting a famous fantasy battle.
Maybe the aliens chasing Sigurney Weaver, Wynona Ryder and Hellboy through the water?
I seem to recall either an an alien skull or something on display in Deus’s collection implying he was into the Alien/Predator documentaries. I bet you he has his teams digging up the remains of that pyramid, underneath the ice, to see if there are any useful goodies or bits of alien dna that he can pick up!
My own headcanon would be something from Cast a Deadly Spell:
“That’s NOT a squid, Mister Lovecraft.”
My favorite throw-away line in the film.
My vote is for a miniature ARCHON HQ in the fish tank. With a large goldfish as the main attraction, because he likes to tweak Max.
Why not goldfish/catfish? I think it needs whiskers to really piss off Maxima.
“Here are some almond roca and turkish delights. I’ll leave them on the desk for you, if you like. But please spare me one moment.” He gets up and taps fish food into the aquarium, feeding his giant golden catfish, while staring intently at Max.
I have only once seen a box of confectionary in Bulgaria labled as “Turkish Delight”. Given that Turkey occupied Bulgaria for hundreds of years (right up to quite recent history) most things Turkish are frowned upon. Yet that type of confectionary is much beloved here and you can find a wide variety available.
For instance I know of several specialist shops devoting half or more of their display space to it. My dad loves the stuff, so I have to keep track of where to get it, as it is always his first choice for a present. Always joking that I have gotten him “Bulgarian Delight”.
This month, for the first time, I saw a box labled with precisely that!
*tail wagging uncontrollably*
The store-owner knew their most loyal customer :D
:D
It may not imply anything about Deus’s health, but there is a big implication that they have a relationship. Which would be a big part of the LOLs, as far as Daphne is concerned, whether it is true or not.
So, especially combined with the arse-slap on the previous page, it becomes harder to call whether Harem and Deus are in a relationship, and Daphne is teasing him because it is substantial enough to take that. Or if she is just teasing him because he needs her.
Besides which she would only wear it in their secret meetings. So it is not like she intended it as a statement to the rest of the world.
Harem does look pretty comfortable on that desk though. Kind of like she is used to draping herself over furnature close to Deus.
I’m not entirely convinced that they have a relationship, even on the “friends with benefits” level — at least, not yet. I do believe, however, that they have similar senses of humor and outlooks on life, which is an interesting start.
Then again, my view of Deus is a little bit twisted. I see him as a big ol’ nerd at heart, who figured out how to scratch his nerd itch AND do good in the world by “playing the role” of villain. Why? Clearly, because villains have more fun. And this way he can collect the stuff he lusts after and gloat over it without falling out of the trope…a “hero” wouldn’t do that, but a “villain” would. I’d see him as tremendously entertained by subverting the stereotypes.
Not everyone wears a message-shirt for the one they are with (well, not unless it’s “I’m with stupid –>”), they typically wear it because it’s funny, and in this case, it’s probably because Daphne has a *VORP*ed sense of humour, not because she’s sleeping with
ValeDeusThere’s also the possibility that them having a relationship is a cover for her spying for him. No need to explain to Max why she’s there if she’s dating him.
Oooo, that would get Maxi’s golden thong in a knotted mess, proceed :D
True.
The military do have restrictions on who they can date. For instance often being required to ask permission if overseas in a warzone. Otherwise they could face a charge of ‘fraternizing with the enemy’ (or whatever term the military use to cover that nowadays). Likewise I am sure there will be something to prevent such relationships with members of a hostile government.
Plus we know that Dabbler does have a blanked ban on dating any team member. However Deus must have pretty good clearance to be the chief supplier of super toys to Archon. So he probably does not fit in any restricted category.
Well, other than ‘the commanding officer’s ex-boyfriend” (sortof).
Who knew that General Faulke had such a side to him :P
Is Sciona wearing a face mask? It just seems to appear in panel 5.
If you look at the previous page real close, and I mean nose-to-the-screen close, you can see there is something transparent covering her face which reflects the light or is a mini hud.
In the second panel Vale’s hand isn’t quite reaching Sciona’s face either.
If it’s a mask, and not some random reflection, then it would have been put their by Vale (don’t you just want to lick that hand? even if it’s just to see how it tastes just before it squeezes your brain out of your ears?)
Kind of hoping to see Archon’s reaction to Daphne’s spying, but I hope even more that the next page is Sydney just poping in out of no where (teleporting in when no one is looking) and just watching as well. Then big Archon fight!
In the military it is theoretically possible to be given a medal and court martialed at the same time…
…AND also stand in civilian court for the exact same offense. No, that’s not “double jeopardy” because the two different courts are entirely different jurisdictions.
Sadly it is even worse in the UK as they have gotten rid of double jeopardy in recent years. A sad loss for justice. Just because politicians and newspapers had decided that some people were guilty, despite courts not finding them so.
So now any time a powerful politician or journalist (or media mogul) wants to harm someone, they can keep pushing for a case to be re-tried. Over and over. Making the accused’s life hell, even if they never get convicted!
Even if it does not get back into court, they will not be able to get on with their normal lives. They will always be fretting that the campaign might put them back in the dock. Plus there will be the ongoing hounding by the public, generated from the publicity that the individual is guilty but just not convicted.
Whilst there does need to be flexibility, if major new evidence comes to light, the equation does need to have balance, on the other side.
Ahh, we now have an interesting case (but nasty, so DO NOT CLICK if you don’t want to read about serious abuse of a child). It (legally, if in no other way) paralells the long-running debate about whether Pixel could be considered guilty of the harm she inflicted, whilst attempting to do good.
Reading the details I, as a common ‘doggy on the clapham omnibus’ would expect the charge to be upheld. But I see that her lawyer is trying the same ‘lack of mens rea’ defense that our resident senior lawyer puts forward for Pixel.
I am not wishing to re-open the debate mind you. There is no point at this stage – I shall wait until there is a verdict, before being tempted to do that. I am just pointing out the case if anyone else is interested in following it. Before Pander educating me I would have just dismissed the case as ‘of course she is guilty’. But now I would not be so confident in calling the result!
The fact that it is also allowing a perportedly genuine belief in the supernatural as part of a legal defense also elevates this to the point where I think various members of the community might likewise be intrigued.
If I remember my High School law class correctly the motive for an action can change the severity of a crime but not the crime? Like if you honestly thought you were helping someone by tackling them out of the way of something that wasn’t a danger to them it would be negligence rather than assault?
The laws tend to vary with location. Just look at the strange laws in the 50 states…
Yeah so specifics it might change but in general motive matters (eg it’s what differentiates manslaughter from murder).
Unfit is still unfit.
I assume you are referring to ‘mentally unfit to stand trial’? If so that is not applicable to the case in question, as the defense team have not made such a plea. Presumably the individual does not check enough of the boxes for an applicable mental illness. As such I assume they chose this route because of the influence of extreme cultural/religious practices.*
* I include both because the way a given culture interprets a religion can radically change how it is practiced in certain particulars.
No, some parents are simply unfit to be parents, certainly not fit to raise a child to be a healthy, positively-contributing member of society
Oh no argument of that in this case.
Although, if we look at the principle, it becomes less clear-cut. Many modern treatments have severe side effects, including pain and physical damage. Some of which for only margional returns. Others of which may, in due course, be proven to be ineffective.
So if we were to apply that same conclusion to such cases, then we hit the problem that they were acting in what they genuinely considered to be the child’s best interests.
The only distinguishing feature being that one is based on scientifically tested medicine (if potentially flawed) and the other on religious beliefs. And the only way that we can make judgements on whether those are flawed is by declaring our beliefs to be superior to hers. But without being able to difinitively prove that.
Whilst in secular society we are free to make the judgement that demons and possession are not real we are doing so based on our beliefs, rather than scientific proof.
Of course we can fall back on philosophical arguments that it is not possible to prove such things. But equally if there really had been a posession, which had been exorcised, there would be no way for the defendant to prove that. Meaning that both sides would be facing a similar lack of evidence for a part of their claims.
On the plus side it should hopefully not be hard to prove that the kid was exhibiting the symptoms of a known mental condition or just falling within the expected range of behaviour from an unrully child (assuming that the claims of possession did have some basis).
As such being able to say that any reasonable member of society, regardless of their religious beliefs, should have sought expert diagnosis and treatment.
Mind you if those avenues had been attempted, and could not offer a diagnosis or successful treatment, then we are back into the grey area of unknowns again.
Have… no idea about that case, was just explaining how some parents can be unfit while still fit to stand trial
Actually, the motive for an action does change the severity of the crime charged, yes. There can be mitigation, and there can be different crimes dependent on the impetus for the action. For example, if you are in a car and see someone you hate, and decide to run that person over, that’s murder. However, if you’re in a car and you accidentally run over someone because you did not see that the light turned red, that’s more likely vehicular manslaughter (there are other crimes as well that it can fall under, but not murder). If you are in a car and drunk and run someone over, then in some states, it can be considered multiple different crimes depending on the state and the details – it can be vehicular homicide, negligent homicide, aggravated DUI (which would be essentially still a misdemeanor like DUI is), DUI manslaughter, or murder (or more specifically felony murder, since it’s a death that occurs while in the commission of another crime, even if a misdemeanor- like in Nevada)..
I’m so happy that you’ve been paying attention to my lessons on law :) And arguing a lack of mens rea tends to be a good universal defense to try to use, but it depends on the crime that they’re being accused of. In this case, the ‘mens rea’ defense is essentially ‘not guilty by reason of insanity’ if it was in most states in the US. It doesn’t mean she’d go free, but would instead spend her life in a mental asylum.
I wouldn’t actually say that the crime (I havent actually read the article in detail mind you) you mentioned has any result on Pixel, since that was in the Netherlands and Pixel is in the US. The Netherlands have some significantly different laws than the US. Such as with insanity pleas.
This next statement is ONLY about Pixel, not about the psycho woman who stuffed her kid into an oven because of evil spirits. Because she is not someone who provided ‘reasonable assistance’
There ARE good samaritan laws in the US though, which do offer legal protection to people who give reasonable assistance to those who are, or who they believe to be, injured, ill, in peril, or otherwise incapacitated (depending on the state). But it usually doesn’t involve intentionally hurting another person in the process (especially the person being ‘helped’) – it usually is meant to protect the samaritan from unintended consequences that might result from their assistance. Key word – unintended.
(a good universal defense to use if there’s any way to legitimately argue a lack of mens rea, I mean)
The thing is that the Netherlands do have the option of an insanity plea. Moreover they actually have their pick of a number of different grades of insanity:
I would not cite a Netherlands case as precident for the US. I was more interested in the fact that they were submitting such a counter-intuitive plea (from the layman’s perspective). It seems to be far too open for abuse. In this case it is literally ‘my religion says it is OK to torture people because it will make them better’.
But if that is brought successfully (without reverting to a ‘not guilty by means of insanity’ plea) then it would be very hard for me to dispute the parallel defense you make for Pixel. If it fails though, I would just note what reasons they base that on, to see if they might be applicable under relevant US laws too.
“The thing is that the Netherlands do have the option of an insanity plea.”
Most countries do. It’s just that the standard for insanity is sometimes different between countries. Heck, the standard for legal insanity has changed even in the United States several times since it first started getting used.
” I was more interested in the fact that they were submitting such a counter-intuitive plea (from the layman’s perspective). ”
“But if that is brought successfully (without reverting to a ‘not guilty by means of insanity’ plea) then it would be very hard for me to dispute the parallel defense you make for Pixel.”
I don’t think that this particular case is using the same reasoning as what I was using for a lack of mens rea. It really does look like they’re essentially going for insanity as a mitigating factor. That an insane person with her particular form of insanity cannot possess the mens rea to commit the intentional murder.
“In this case it is literally ‘my religion says it is OK to torture people because it will make them better’.”
Actually there’s case law on that, in the US. Religion cannot be used as an excuse to torture or murder people. (Isa, 1989, Almaleki, 2010, Altameemi, 2012, Hassan, 2011,Yasser Said, 2008, Chander, 2007).
However, it CAN (and has) be used as a legal defense for other activities which would otherwise be considered illegal – usually involving drug use (Gonzalez v O Centro Espirita Beneficente Uniao do Vegtal – 2006).
It does NOT, however, allow the parent to abuse the child though, or fail to provide medical treatment for children. Prince vs Massachusetts (1944). In that case, the Supreme Court ruled that the right to practice religion freely does not include liberty to expose the child to communicable disease, ill health, or death. And that would be applicable to the Netherlands case as well, if it was taking place in the US.
Interesting information. Thanks.
*wags tail appreciatively*
Quick check: am I the only one who hears all of Deus’ dialogue delivered in, basically, Clancy Brown’s Luthor voice?
Nah, Commander Riker’s “Xanatos” voice
Trevor Moore.
Well, either Moore or Glengarry Glen Ross.
No idea who either of those are, butt Deus has been likened to Xanatos on several occasions (not mentioning the giant ‘X’ signature between his eyes :P)
Arric Barrin plays Glengarry Glen Ross, who is the extremely NSFW business auditor: https://youtu.be/elrnAl6ygeM?t=5m35s
Trevor Moore plays the defense lawyer: https://youtu.be/V3yuto9xjEE?t=58s
But like I said its all NSFW
I would, if his build wasn’t so much bigger than Xanatos. Feels he should be a little more Goliath but not so far.
HA … that a good shirt … You had me at “I’m a terminally ill billionaire,” … what a powerful show of women’s hypergamy. You should put that on tee spring (if it’s not already) … I’m sure more than a few will buy it … =P
I know being over-confident is Deus’s schtick, but he really can’t know for sure the full range of Sciona’s abilities. What if she can fill the room with instantly poisonous gas, or something else Vale can’t protect against? He’s starting to make “kill me and my employees no longer have anyone cutting them checks” seem like the solution to an awful lot of problems.
I’m sure he is smart enough to have thought of that and even has a clause in their employment contract entitling them to a nice large chunk of money for seeking painful revenge on whoever causes his death.
Equally though Sciona has no idea about Deus’s capabilities. Hence why she took it out on Wyrmil before and the pillar now.
The latter probably not being co-incidental as Deus may have mentioned that purposely to give her something to vent on, other than him and his employees.
We do know Deus is ripped, and has secret information (though not all of it) so I’m sure he is a super. To be that confident, maybe it’s a resurrect-type ability. Constantly come back to life but not in the ‘get kidnapped and murdered endlessly’ but ‘get murdered, be a ghost, go somewhere else, then re-manifest’.
Deus has so many ways of obtaining secret information that I could fill your screen just listing the categories! Only one of which would be him having super powers.
Plus anybody can work out. I am perfectly willing to bet that the next time we see Comix! guy he will have done just that. Having seen what kind of competition he is up against, if he is serious about wanting to date Maxima, it would be a logical step to take.
Deus is Maxima’s ex. His money will not have impressed her. Seeing him doing some sport topless may have caught her eye though.
I am very surprised that nobody has offered the single biggest reason why Deus may be a super though. Which is that he is Maxima’s ex. And she is both responsible and aware that she forgets that people can be squishy. Any relationship with a squishy human has got severe problems for Maxima.
Not ones that are impossible to overcome mind. But dating tough supers is far less likely to result in needing a bucket and sponge to pick them up!
Both Maxima and Deus though though have easy access to super-enhanced protective gear. Some of which could be made aesthetically pleasing for bedroom wear.
Money and contacts can find a solution to most problems.
u win
Oh not necessarily. I should have concluded with ‘but one of those options is still that Deus has got super powers’. I was not trying to ruin your picture of him. I really wouldn’t want to do that! Rather I was only aiming to point out that we do not have certainty.
What does stack things heavily in your favour is that this is a super genre setting. And there are an awful lot of tempting powers which Deus could have unobtrusively. Not to mention the scope for innovation in that area. Mighty hard for Dave to resist the temptation, even if he did aim for ‘money is his super power’.
I just realized Harem has the BEST power for a lazy person….you can watch TV, play games, use the bathroom and get snacks, nap and do your chores all without ever getting up… kinda….
You can also eat 5 times as much for taste reasons but only have 1x the calories (per body).
She still has to do five times as much laundry as the other team members. Does she at least get a fivefold increase in the purchasing allowance for her combat and dress uniforms? Does she qualify for her own group rate when buying health insurance? (on the policy for who to contact in case of emergency does she put ‘Me’?)
To be honest, I am surprised the blood mage would risk showing up at all for the next few years. She just killed, so far as she knows, her entire team she went in with. That means anyone who was their ally would be coming for her with a vengeance. So it is a huge risk for her to be doing anything other than loitering a beach someplace for a generation to cool down. She may think she is a major power, but if you think you are a supervillain you likely are not. If you think you are the hero of the story and everyone is fighting you, THEN you are the SUPERvillian.
That suggests that whatever she’s missing is something very important to her.
As Megamind so eloquently stated, https://youtu.be/JQJJjcrwXQE?t=8s
Deus is all about his marble and yet he lets Harem put her combat boots all over his desK (mahogany)? Oh wait, she’s super hot and lets him slap her ass, nevermind.
Side note – does anyone remember what that necklace is behind Deus? I remember the other two being the unicorn horn from Legend and the crystal fragment from Dark Crystal, but I can’t place the pendant.
Here’s where we last saw it: https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/2052
But I can’t find anything in the comments where someone identified it.
Looked up Ramses’ Necklace from Mummies Alive and Yu-Gi-Oh, but nope.
Thought maybe one of the necklaces Quark wore when he posed as a woman, or something Lwuxana Troi would wear, or maybe the necklace Q wore when he pretended to be a judge, but nope.
Thought maybe some necklace you get more as an achievement in WindWaker (I don’t have it) or one of the costume parts you get in one of the Tales games, but I’m not confident on that and doubt it could be image searched.
There was a show that SHOULD HAVE BEEN THE GREATEST THING EVER but it was made in the 1990s and by Saban, so it sucked and was forgotten. But not by me. Anyway I watched a bunch of that to see if the necklace showed up, but no, it isn’t in Big Bad Beetleborgs either.
So my unsubstatiated assumption is it’s from a Tales game. It only makes sense, if we can assume that by Deus having the actual items, NOT ‘replicas’, that the rules of at least those items, if not franchise universes, are valid. That would mean that a necklace owned by say, Yuri Lowell, would make it so that the abilities of a unique weapon’s user could be learned by anyone using a copy of it. That would definitely mean every weapon in the Archive would be stupidly powerful, since say, Renji’s Zabimaru (Bleach), Lion-o’s Sword of Omens (Thundercats), Link’s Master Sword (Legend of Zelda), Gandalf’s Glamdring (all of which Deus has) and others could all have their powers not TAKEN, but COPIED by anyone using any of them in combat as long as they wear the necklace.
Possibly.
Bird Hat from the Labyrinth didn’t wear it.
A few people had necklaces in Pirates of Dark Water, but nope.
The Mariner’s necklace in Waterworld isn’t the right one either.
Tried to see if anyone from Farscape was wearing it, since I thought it was somewhat similar to that evil picture Chianna bought that was actually a portal, but I forgot what I was doing because Chianna is so hot, so someone else has to check that.
Not the necklace of House Atreides.
Not Snik’s necklace from Little Monsters.
I didn’t think anyone wore a necklace in House of 1000 Corpses, and I was right.
My first thought was the Vulcan IDIC symbol but that has a circle. It definitly looks like something that the Star Trek costume/set designers would come up with.
Doesn’t it? It seriously looks to me like it should be made of gold-pressed latinum or maybe clay (from something claymation).
I can’t see it very well even on my monitor, if there were a blown up image it might be easier to identify.
Here you go.
I think you *mis-linked* there.
I am seeing some expressionist splattered rose rainbow painting.
It is an explosion of an image. That is what you asked for isn’t it? ;-)
Hey Dave, got some tips for you. There’s a couple of ways to make writing on T-shirts stand out, so I thought I’d share them. First and possibly the easiest way is simply to include an outline of the words in a darker color- in this case, hot pink. Then there’s the trick of only using dark colored writing on light colored backgrounds. Finally, and possibly the most difficult, take a page out of the brand p!nk’s book, and make the lettering a different texture than the shirt. As always, love the comic, can’t wait for the next page.
Sincerely,
The Gentlebastard
“There’s a couple of ways to make writing on T-shirts stand out”
…Seems to me that the writing already stands out quite well, in a couple of places anyway…
:P
(didn’t read all comments yet)
So, is it just me, or does that green marble look strikingly like the Marble Maiden’s marble? Is it maybe possible she also works for Deus and doesn’t show off all her powers? Only shows off that she can become/plate herself in rock, but can manipulate it in other ways?
Like the fact that she’s stoneplated is just a trait of her petrokinesis, and isn’t limited to armor but any shape, and she was the one that fixed/etc Deus’ pillars?
Interesting idea, but the easy answer is Dave only has so many marble textures, so eventually they will get reused.
But he also loves us, and reads comments!
Am i imagining this or is Sciona fliping the bird in panel 1 and 2?
Index, not middle, and unless Spidey-ham is on the ceiling, that’s not how you flip the bird
Actually, now that you point that out, it looks more like a weapon, than a finger, when you look closely. Either sprouting out of the knuckles, Wolverine-claws style, or one held in the palm of the hand, with the barrel poking between two fingers
Only an optical illusion mind, as on the previous page we can see that Sciona has got gloves on, which correspond enough that I am happy it is just a gloved finger.
Originally thought it was one of them ‘rebar’ thingies, butt then was wondering: why would she bother carrying around something like that?
If you look closer at her fist, her pinky is similarly patterned (or as similar as one would expect a curled armoured digit to look)
Given Vale’s display of power, anybody else suspect the other half of Max’s geode has something to do with her?
There may very well be something to your theory. I suggest that a very close examination of Vale would be in order.
:D
not unless the color change part of the metamorphosis has a randomizer on what body part(s) and color to choose. (maybe she has a gold spleen!)
Maybe she drank it or injected it rather than had it pour on her.
I’m thinking the residue left over from whatever Max was exposed to. You can’t tell me it wasn’t experimented with after it was analyzed. “Here, Vale. Lick the inside of this geode half.”
Let’s hope Deus never learns of the existence of “Tom the refiller guy’ or he will be able to create his own super army.
+100
Just as well Deus doesn’t know anyone on The Council…
Yet he seemed confident enough about his knowledge of mages to make a categoric statement about how many illusionists there are on Earth (very few). Whilst that might be considered bravado there is the far more damning evidence that Deus had in depth knowledge of both Sciona and the Dark Reliquary’s defenses (and its contents).
So he is aware of things that only the Twilight Council should, theoretically know. Of course he could have found that out by means other than knowing a Council Member. Such as through leaks (somebody had to build the vault, and they may have lacked discretion), a mole on Sciona’s team, an invisible super following Sciona, rubbing a magic lamp and getting a genie to tell him stuff, and so on.
It was a (poor) joke, because he obviously knows several individuals on The Council
Maybe that’s Deus’s power:
Information.
He’s a seer, and he made his initial fortune playing the stock market.
Nah. We’ve seen plenty of other supers display superhuman strength, and we don’t know where Sciona and Vale rank on the scale.
That’s true. Just because the two are matched doesn’t mean either are even up to Hiro or Kenya’s level let alone Max’s.
Is it sexist of me that I am surprised a woman conventionally vain enough to have used energy from an artefact that claimed 99 lives to restore the life of one to give herself a boob job would wear such heavy boots?
And hey. That is an impressive display of power on Vale’s part…
No.
Yes.
*wags tail impressively*
Hey, at least she doesn’t have a kid an isn’t wearing combat boots, then her kid could get mocked in the schoolyard about her mother wearing combat boots (okay, that’s an Olde School joke, long before the prevalence of females in combat roles)
Who says Sciona doesn’t have a couple of brats running around…?
Scary thought, huh?
Sciona’s race is a custom one. But it appears to have elf-like features (or dark elf at least). Given that they do exist in this setting it is possible that Sciona’s race is related to them. Meaning she is likely to be very long lived. Although, given how much more powerful her race seems to be (taking the pillar smashing wings to be standard issue), they might well be immortal (not dying of old age type).
As such Sciona may not just have a couple of brats. She might be an ancient matriarch with untold generations of offspring. Whole spiral arms of the galaxy might be populated with her decedents!
But given her inclination to betray anybody, on a whim, even if she has quadzillons of decedents, I suspect they would be perfectly happy to see her meet a sticky fate!
What if she’s the sociable one? o_O
She’s wearing armor from the looks of it, she wasn’t stupid enough to enter Deus’s lair without any sort of protection so naturally she’s got armored boots to go with the rest. She’s vain enough to want to keep that new more filled out body protected from harm now that she’s finally got a full body of her own instead of someone else’s.
At least she’s not wearing Uggs.
Ugs are betterer than crocs!!!
Of course a Hobbit would say that. Although I am surprised that you have abandoned the ancient ways and have taken to footwear!