Grrl Power #603 – Schtooping with the frenemy
Deus is the kind of guy who would keep $600 million in a duffle bag somewhere in his office just for the gag. Well, he would if there weren’t a lot of better things you could do with that much money besides having it collect dust in a cupboard. There are gags, and then there’s just being a dummy.
If Deus has designs on “dating” Maxima, revealing that he’s “dating” one of her subordinates probably isn’t doing him any favors. But he is the sort of guy who likes a challenge.
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Ooh ooh! How… sorta… romantic.
I wonder if Harem has already figured out how to make his death appear natural?
I believe she’s already prepared four innocent bystanders that can all attest to her whereabouts at the time of his death. They’re also all members of the military so they’re considered to be of strong moral standing.
Albeit that they have a noticeable conflict of interest.
…entanglement of interest.
That’s what Harem is doing with Deus. It’s everyone else who is interested.
That’s a quantum entanglement of interests…Five bodies but only one mind, remember?
;)
Not romanitc, Yorp. CHILL. It’s how the kiddies like to do it these days. No pressures, no commitments. Just… fun.
Yeah, I don’t get it, either.
It’s like your mom if your mom was a federal agent.
…And a higher ranking officer…
I would be more into Harem. For… multiple reasons.
I see what you did there. Well played, sir.
Nothing like having your own personal orgy…
So this brings up a delicate question. Harem has the same mind in multiple bodies. It’s been established that being goosed will cause her other bodies to jump because sensation (particularly intense sensation) is felt across all bodies. So what happens to the other four bodies when one of them is “chilling”? Does she have to wait until the other four are somewhere private? (In order to avoid a “When Harry Met Sally” situation.) How difficult would it be to arrange that? Seems like it would preclude “afternoon delight.”
Also: What would happen if a second body was “chilling” with someone else? And assuming her other bodies were alone in her bedroom, what would they be doing? Just close their eyes? Help themselves? Help each other (which is arguably the same thing with a better angle)? Or would they all, as implied by a comment above, all come in the same room? (Assuming her partner is aware of her powers.)
“Don’t want to step up to the mike and do a Meg Ryan in “When Harry Met Sally” to the U.N. Assembly.”
-Actual quote from Engineer (The Authority, 2003 run), who can construct remote-controlled bodies
Harem’s powers are part of the public record, so it would take someone who does not follow the news, or any celebrity gossip, or talk shows etc, not to be aware of her and her abilities.
OK she does have the advantage that she is not the only one. But she was one of the first brought out in front of the world’s press and TV. Plus does have a fascinating enough power set, and provocative name, to almost certainly have gotten masses of individual coverage.
I think Daphne would be wise to take the precautions you suggest. Although I imagine she would want to make use of as many bodies as possible, rather than just go into an empty room. If only to prevent boredom from some bodies sitting around doing nothing.
But she could be having ice cream with one, a cigarette with another and perusing the Karma Sutra with a third, and still have a spare for on-site assistance.
Harem has don’t a Playboy spread, it’s cannon from VDSD a few years ago.
*done
Has it ever been established if the buffer overflow effect and Harems reaction to it is affected by her level of surprise?
I know the initial reaction early on she got caught out, so would it have been different if she’d known it was coming in some way?
I don’t remember but was she strongly effected when she initially broke/reset one of her arms? (although the scale of the input would effect things, arms hurt like hell)
If surprise does factor in perhaps “afternoon delight” wouldn’t be as disabling as expected.
From Wikipedia : “The physiological response of surprise falls under the category of the startle response. The main function of surprise or the startle response is to interrupt an ongoing action and reorient attention to a new, possibly significant event.”
So, yeah, it makes a lot of sense that it could screw up multiple lines of thought there. The response causes a system-wide reaction. But, certain, er, positive stimuli also cause a system-wide reaction as well, so keeping that separate would probably be extremely difficult.
Oops, meant to reply under Flatman’s post.
Harem: “You’re not my supervisor!!!!”
Maxima: “Uhhh….Dangerzone” ~_^
Please consider yourself upvoted.
I get the vibe that Maxima’s at least considering it..
And is that jealousy in panel 6?
It was implied that Max and Deus had a “thing” going on years ago when Max and Sydney visited.
Yea, poor Maxima. And she was not quite over it.
Still Super Hiro would be better for her. If she could sort out that chain-of-command problem. He really needs to head up the New York branch, or some similar post, where he would be her peer, rather than subordinate.
I really think it’s more likely Maxima’s feeling the duty of a friend/close acquaintance to warn off from naking a bad mistake.
Which is a bad mistske, given Harem’s view of their relationship and Harem’s subverted problem with authorit figures.
They did not had a “thing” going. Deus was throwing around money to get her in the sack. She rejected it.
That’s a ‘thing’. Short lived and unfulfilled. But significant enough that Maxima thought they were dating!
Max only thought Deus thought they were dating.
Remember, it was hinted at VERY strongly(pg. 130-131) that Harem was a triple agent spying on Deus for Archon. So, that may be just Maxima maintaining Daphne’s cover.
And yes, it’s possible Harem’s just a double agent playing Archon dirty. But I would be “burn it all the f*ck down” shocked if Archon(specifically, Arc-Dark) wasn’t aware of the possibility that “yep, one of these supers could be a spy…especially the one who can be five places at once” and wasn’t keeping tabs for that possibility and thus, wasn’t aware of Daphne showing up at Deus’ giant, ostentatious headquarters building multiple times….
So, yea, I’ll go with maintaining Daphne’s cover by pretending not to know she came there often. Final answer.
True. I actually would like to see more hints of Arc-Dark here and there… despite the silly name I guess I find them quite an interesting concept… though that is true for the entirety of Archon. :)
Liking Deus more and more as well. XD
I always just assumed Harem even being allowed on the team (or ANY government team) to be a big handwave thing. Can have 5 (that we know of) duplicates of herself, can teleport anywhere she has seen in a manner that is completely unblockable, and due to that is completely untraceable at any given point in time, and has shown hedonistic and narcissistic tendencies (neither of which makes for particularly strong loyalties past whatever serves them best at any given moment).
“Hey, there’s going to be a raid on one of your bases in three days. Just FYI. Now make sure to keep those deposits coming in my Swiss bank account.”
So what are the odds that the agent with the forgettable name, who makes Sydney’s ninja senses tingle, could penetrate Deus’ lair without Vale knowing? Wouldn’t they have brought him in with them when Syd and Max visited last?
I think Vale would spot X easily. The question is what she’d do about it.
Not completely unblockable, not now. Halo’s shield prevents her teleporting.
Apart from the extra bodies and the *VORP*ing, you described half the team (Les, Heatwave & Morph were all vigilantes before being caught and given the option of join up or jail time)
Unless it’s been retconed she can’t “teleport anywhere she has seen”. As it’s been described she can teleport anywhere she can see, and to places she’s where spent a lot of time and is very familiar with.
So standing on a building she can teleport to any place she can see from there, but she couldn’t vorp directly to an alley where her sight is blocked by the buildings. And even if she’s seen the alley once or twice she wouldn’t be familiar enough with the place to do a direct teleport to it.
She could however teleport directly to the farm where she grew up. She could probably port to any schools she attended and to the homes of friends and family where she’s spent a lot of time.
The Archon buildings, including the armory, the offices and meeting rooms are also familiar enough she can do a direct teleport to them.
Exactly how well she has to know an area is a question though. If I remember correctly it was said that the farm is the place she can teleport to from almost anywhere. It’s also where she lived for most of her life so she knows it very well. Lesser familiarity means she has to be closer to teleport there.
This limit on distance and line of sight is however something she has learned to work around to a degree. If she needs to port to a place she can’t see from any of her current positions she can send one of her bodies to a place where she can get eyes on the area and then vorp in directly to the spot.
If it’s a place beyond the horizon she can vorp into the air over the horizon and take a new bearing while falling.
All in all it’s a very powerful ability, but it’s not overpowered to the degree of being able to vorp to any place she’s been or seen from anywhere.
Yup.
Many long years ago, read a fantasy book about a guy who could short-range teleport (to any place he can see or has been), can’t remember what limitations he had, butt can remember one scene where he was attempting to free a prisoner shackled to a wall: it… didn’t quite work as it took part of the wall with him, don’t believe it was specifically mentioned, seeing how it was fantasy book, butt believe he was able to extend a ‘forcefield’ around anything or anyone he was touching to ‘bring them along’ and in this case, he accidentally extended it to the shackles and the chain (they were still shackled, butt at least they were no longer attached to the wall :P)
I think you’re overshooting by one agent in your arguments.
She is reporting on Archon activities to Deus, making her an agent for Deus within Archon.
If she is also reporting on Deus to Archon it makes her a double agent for Archon.
In the off chance that she also reports to a third agency, then she is a triple agent. For example if there is a secret sixth body she uses to leak info to the Russians.
Incorrect. Very early on in the comic Maxima indicates that she is a federal agent. This is absolutely vital for any cop who is expected to be able to make arrests, and carry weapons, anywhere within the United States. Of necessity the same will apply to all the members of Arc-SWAT.
Every one of the full members*, including Harem, have to be special agents (the ‘special’ being what grants powers of arrest etc). So every single one of them are law enforcement agents, in a literal sense.
Plus the same terminology is used for any government employee, when talking about spying. They are (linguistically speaking) automatically agents in the sense that they represent their government (and are thereby agents of the government). So a traitor, providing confidential information to the enemy, would be referred to as a ‘double agent’.**
What status Harem is in we cannot say at the moment. It had looked like she had blown her cover, in calling Maxima. Now though we are back to the original status quo in that she appears to be a double agent, but even in this scene may only be playing the part. If she is actually a treble agent working under Maxima’s (or General Faulk’s) orders.
* The rookies may or may not have received the power to make arrests yet. The comic has not mentioned this. I hope that DaveB does cover this soon though. Much like Halo getting her gun, or her uniform, being issued her badge, and the powers of arrest that go with it, would be a defining moment!
Even the alternative, of being told ‘not until you finish basic training’, would be an emotional moment. And, needless to say, would affect what actions Sydney may and may not take until she has graduated.
** This is what both Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning are, by virtue of their actions. Even though neither were actual spies or accredited agents. The former was an IT worker and the latter an intelligence analyst. However they were both employees of the government.
With appropriate acknowledgement that one person’s “traitor” is another person’s “whistleblower”. Although in this case they are both. Had they found a legal way to expose the government misdeeds then they would only be the latter. However the route that both took found them to legally be the former.
I think there is some mixing of non-identical uses of the word ‘agent’ in there. A secret agent (in other words, a spy) logically poses as if they were legitimately working for the one they are spying on, they would be bad spies if they didn’t. Them working normally for one party (in this case by being a federal or special agent) doesn’t make them a double agent when they start reporting to another agency, it makes them a secret agent.
The definition of a double agent is: A spy for one party who poses as a spy for the other.
So: A spy for one party [Archon] who poses as a spy for the other [Deus].
And from the wiki page: A triple agent is an agent who works for three intelligence services, but is usually truly loyal to only one of them.
So as long as it is just between Archon and Deus that her loyalties are split it remains some form of being a double agent, not a triple agent.
I did specify that I was talking separately about having the title of ‘agent’ versus the linguistic use. The key issue depends on who they are ultimately loyal to and who they are betraying.
It can help to check more than one dictionary. For instance:
Here it is making it clear that the act of betrayal (and shifting their loyalties to the organisation that they are providing the information to) is what makes them a spy, for these linguistic purposes.
Using either version the math is the same. The first betrayal (of the organisation which employs them) makes them a double agent. The second betrayal (for whatever reason) makes them a triple agent.
Meaning that your interpretation for double agent is flawed (as noted by the strike-through).
It should read as follows:
Maybe. Or maybe Maxima asked a perfectly good question in a neutral manner (see her expression in panel 5, it’s not stressed) and got back ‘teenager with attitude’, which set off her ‘I’,m your CO, show some respect’ reaction.
I hereby dub thee Maximom.
::groanworthy::
One heck of a superheroine brand of gential hygiene products there.
See MsMelee.
Have been meaning to check that out
Someone seriously needs to off Smugdouche!
I think he’s already getting off on the (lack of) “love triangle”.
Why? Because he is smug? As pointed out elsewhere in comments, Deus hasn’t done anything that Indiana Jones hasn’t done. Grab some artifacts (for profit) from a trapped room, check. Kill off a murderous cult leader/ dictator, check. Catch the attention of some 19 year old girls, check. Deus has arguably been more beneficial to humankind over all with lifting an entire third world.country into industrialized nations status, vs returning one starving village from famine back to subsistence farming.
+1
That indicated though Deus is now holding a number of dangerous artefacts, and concealing that fact from the authorities. Bearing in mind that he had full knowledge of the vault, and its contents, so he knows that every one of them is considered a apocalypse risk!
Maybe he has some cunning plan on how to eliminate that risk (such as destroying those those which can be, converting dangerous ones into useful items, and safely storing the others). Provided he is not endangering the world, in the process, and is ultimately making it safer, then he is doing good.
If though he is actually just planning on selling them to the highest bidder, then the possibility that the world might end tomorrow rather outweighs the economic improvements to a single nation!
But is a person “not good” because of other peoples worries about what they might do, or because of what they have actually done? Yes, Deus has dangerous artifacts that he’s keeping secrect from the US government, but that was equally true of The Council. Does Deus have a world wide network dedicated to psycologically and visually manipulating the entire global population in order to obsecure fundemental truths from them? Because The Council sure does.
Deus’s morality is based on his actions, not those of another group. Currently he is knowingly concealing dangerous items from the authorities tasked with protecting the nation from all extraordinary threats. There is no speculation about that.
And incidentally the instant that the Council found that the items in their custody had been compromised they informed Archon. Bearing in mind that they had been granted the authority, to hold those items, by the assembled representatives of every race present on Earth. Including various factions with humans in them (Zephan Zoeng being an example of one human delegate). Specifically for the purpose of avoiding the planet being destroyed!
As for “obscuring fundamental truths” you say this as if it is evil. Yet all of our governments have ‘official secrets’. Where they keep such information from the general public. Sometimes out of selfish reasons. But in principle they have the powers to prevent harm from befalling the nation. The most obvious being something which, if generally know, could cause a war. Especially when it is a war that the government believes will devastate their own country.
If the Veil were to collapse suddenly, and humanity found that it is living along side aliens and monsters, you can be sure that there would be massed vigilante attacks against them. Trouble is that these races are far more technologically advanced than humanity, have powerful magics and can be reinforced from across the galaxy. Plus are well practised in the art of war, through their own in-fighting.
So they are unlikely to meekly sit by whilst atrocities are committed against them. Unless supers did manage to tip the balance, humanity would stand no chance against the forces arrayed against them.
That secret is being kept to stop human extinction!
One of the ad-banners is showing an ad for a dating site, how fitting for today’s comic.
Love the Die Hard reference just tossed in there. Love this comic in general
Where’s the reference?
The bearer bonds. Strictly speaking $640 million rather than $600 million. They were put into bags, albeit more than the one referenced in the author’s blog.
So much for Smugdouche being a ‘good’ guy and working with Archon!!!
He is out for himself and to grab as much as he can before someone finally ends him
pretty sure deus is too smart to “just get ended” through on the opther hand, he did apear on “that page” implying him top be the final boss of sorts… on the other hand, sciona was nowhere to be seen on that page.
that page: https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/1189
He’s in it for himself, and walking as close to the legal cliff edge as he can get. Only time will tell if he makes a fatal slip…
Maybe Harem’s T-Shirt isn’t just a “funny”.
He DOES work with Archon though.
He just doesnt work FOR Archon. Important difference.
Yeah, that’s why said ‘working with Archon’
Oops. So you did. I read your post wrong, lol
Is “good” based off of intentions or results? Because “the good guys” have only succeeded in destroying a restaurant while catching 1 big-bad at a cost of (presumably) hundred of millions of tax dollars (that aren’t funding education or infrastructure) vs Deus turning a third world dictatorship into an educated industrialized nation, with considerable improvements in education and infrastructure.
Ahh but that big-bad was intending to turn America into his own personal brawling pit. Starting with the White House. And he clearly was powerful enough to defeat practically any super, given that he was easily soloing all of Arc-SWAT (and Suzy News)! With the prospect of him only getting even more powerful as he inflicted more and more damage and destruction.
The way his power works he would become exponentially more powerful, once he started causing whole cities worth of citizens to fight one another. The author indicated that he could even draw power from hurricanes and similar wide-spread natural disasters.
So results wise Archon saved the United States (and likely Canada) from being plunged into anarchy and suffering.
Again, are intentions or results the more important in determining quality? Sure he says all of this grandious stuff after fighting with the federal agents who had just televised a not so veiled threat/challenge to all other resident supers. If his goal had actually been to topple the US government he would have started by throwing punches on Capitol Hill, not the ArcSwat office party. If he really wanted exponential power growth based on suffering and violence, he could have just moved to Syria. But all he did was try to start up Fight Club.
* after some consideration, I realized that I should not have used the real tragedy in Syria as part of a discussion about comic super-villians. The context would seems to trivialize the real human suffering and loss there. I apologize deeply.
Archon represents the combined super force of America. Defeat that and America is yours for the taking. Attacking them by surprise, when they were all gathered together for a meal, got really close to defeating them en masse.
Had he won, Vehemence’s bum would have been parked in the Oval office the following morning, watching Washington riot outside. Vehemence did make his intentions to continue to cause ever more widespread violence and destruction plain.
The reason why Vehemence did not simply go stand in a hurricane (or go to somewhere with ongoing war or civil war*) is because he enjoys being the one creating the violence.
* Don’t sweat it about Syria, we all say things that we regret at times.
Yeah, it’s like the difference between a 5-course Michelin-Starred meal… and a child’s Happy Meal (vegan edition)
“Actually Colonel, I’m not planning on doing any of that. It’s just the sort of thing a guy like me is supposed to say.”
Heh. OK OK. You got me. America is not big enough for him. He wants to have the whole world as his playthings.
Wasn’t it implied he only got stronger from the violence of others not his own actions, he didn’t mention natural disasters as far as I can remember, only human ones such as riots and brawls.
on that during the fight he seemed to be reaching a point of diminishing returns, he was indeed very powerful when he reached that point; but nothing to indicate he has no upper limit; and I would also give Dave the benefit of the doubt not to write something so lazy and cliché like that. The idea of a Hulk, Doomsday, Scorpion (MK), who just keeps getting stronger indefinitely is kind of…goofy.
Actually, conspiracy theory time… is Maxima old enough to be Daphne’s mom?
I’d say theoretically. Daphne is what, 19. Twice that is 38 which gives a minimum age for Deus. Almost certainly older given Max’s phrasing. Given their history if we assume that Max is relatively close in age to Deus (an assumption) that gives Maxima a similar age range. Her military rank lends credence to this since even if she was on an accelerated promotion track due to her powers, it takes time to reach those ranks.
So yes, Max is very likely to be old enough Daphne’s mother. Is she? Almost certainly not given than we know that she got splashed with space geode stuff while she was still in high school and its unlikely that any hypothetical offspring would not show some effects from that, even if its just pointy ears.
If teen mom nealy. I think she stated to be 26? Lt.Col need 16 years from joining. Maxima is an overachiever with combat experience so she probably was young when she joined. But would say she is in her very late 30s or early 40s, depending on how long she is Lt.Col., but less then 6 years because then she would have been promoted.
Almost by definition: I think she and Deus are within a year or two of the same age, since they went to school together, and if Deus is more than twice her age, then Max is real close to the same.
By the way, the rule of thumb is that you can date down to “half your age, plus 8 years.” The More You Know!
What? Where was it stated they went to school together? o_O
Errr… um … the school of involuntary abdication?
Actually however many years ago that scene occurred Deus and Vale did not look much different to today. Pointing to them both probably being middle aged, unless that really was a school outing.
Not SmugD and Vale, SmugD and Maxi
Oh dunno. But we have Maxima’s age in the cast list. Namely 34. Which is probably comparable to Deus’s age.
Plus we also have Harem’s as being 19. So Maxima could be Daphne’s mum, from back before she acquired her golden skin.
Hopefully that was long before Maxima met Deus. Otherwise, if they really did go to school together (check the background in the geode class expedition, maybe there is a hint of him lurking) then Deus could be Harem’s dad!
Which kind of makes the above scene icky.
Are those ages still accurate? How long has passed in-comic since start?
Less than a couple months.
Actually it has only been a few days (although we have skipped a bit recently, so possibly weeks now). But it will only be ‘a few months’ by the time that Sydney has finished basic and we catch up to the ‘flash forward’ that the comic opened with.
Either way though those ages are correct.
Butt that doesn’t mean they went to school together, SmugD probably went to some rich private school
what ever vale is, I’m not sure she does age at all.
Now that I think about it, I could easily be wrong about that. Maybe I just assumed that from the implication that he used to try to date her some time (years ?) ago?
Fairly sure they were only ‘dating’ recently, because one of SmugD’s ‘gifts’ was a diamond and ruby choker to match her ‘official’ choker ID
Max is 34, Harem is 19.
(Cast page is currently non-functional, but apparently someone transcribed it to https://grrl-power.wikia.com/wiki/Cast)
so she joined the air force at 18 (16 years of service required by law for her rank). That is really early for officers.
It is possible for her to be an O-5 as young as 31 years old. (O-5 is a Lieutenant Colonel, but they are addressed as “Colonel”.)
Between the ranks of O-4 through O-6, there are three ways to be promoted: Below-the-Zone, In-the-Zone, and Above-the-Zone. Below-the-Zone means you got promoted early (usually a year early). There is a hard cap: not more than 10% of the promotions in any given year can be Below-the-Zone.
So, if she started college at age 17, if her college had an AFROTC program, and if she got her degree in four years, she would start as an O-2 (1st Lieutenant) at age 21.
Then, it would take 4 years for her to get promoted to O-3. However, she may skip some ranks or receive accelerated promotion through the ranks based on her Air Force Specialty Code and civilian world experience. This is usually, but not exclusively, limited to members in the professions, such as medical, legal, and chaplain career fields. So, let’s assume she became O-3 at age 25.
Then, if she got Below-the-Zone promotions every time (which is highly unlikely even though she is a super), it would take 9 more years for her to reach O-6 (3 years from O-3 to O-4, 3 years from O-4 to O-5, and 3 years from O-5 to O-6). She would be 34 years old.
More realistically, she should be between 38 and 40 years old.
EDIT: Actually, now that I think about it, it’s possible for her to be an O-5 or O-6 even younger… if she is so smart that she “tests out” of a couple of grades of schooling and starts college early. (In 2015, Tanishq Abraham of Sacramento, CA graduated at the age of just 11 years old!)
So, if she graduated college by age 17 (which is absolutely the youngest age at which you can join the Air Force), she could be an O-6 as early as 30 years old.
*dismissive sound* Yeah, right… she should still realistically be 38 to 40.
Ahh, I see Scar got there before me with their respective ages from the cast/wiki page.
As for MSpears, you are starting with a college entrance age of 17, but there is actually no minimum on that (unless there is some odd regulation unique to the USA). Alternatively Maxima could have gotten her degree at that age! Even leaving time for a gap year before going career military.
Not that such is necessary, given that Maxima has already served in two wars, and is clearly capable of winning whole battles solo! I think that accelerated promotion would have been the norm for her, regardless of what average promotion speeds might be. Battlefield promotions can skip the normal progression, by advancing in weeks what would normally take years.
Sir William Robertson joined the British Army at age 17, and rose all the way up to being a Field Marshall. Truly remarkable as in the era only gentlemen were considered eligible to become an officer, let alone rising to such a peak!
You must not have seen my second post in which I pointed out that there are records of people graduating college as young as 11. However, you absolutely can not enter the Air Force any earlier than 17.
There are a few ways to become an officer:
(1) You can enter an AFROTC program.
(2) You can attend the Air Force Academy.
(3) Obviously, you can start enlisted, and work towards becoming an officer.
(4) After earning your college degree, complete all the requirements for officer training.
Well, as for #1: You can NOT enter the AFROTC before the age of 14, and you sign up for AFROTC when you enroll as a freshman.
As for #2: You can NOT enter the Air Force Academy before the age of 17.
If Maxima entered the AFROTC, the earliest she could’ve entered the Air Force as a 1st Lieutenant is 18 years old. If she attended the Air Force Academy, she would not graduate until 21.
Missed a qualifier:
“If Maxima entered the AFROTC, the earliest she could’ve entered the Air Force as a 1st Lieutenant is 18 years old and that’s assuming she was a college freshman at 14“
Oh I am sure she was taller than that.
Don’t forget the President can promote you up to Captain(AF,Army,Corps), and LT.(Navy) without given a crap about any “time in rank” or qualification BS. And up to Captain(Navy) and Colonel(AF,Army,Corps) with Senate approval….functionally that just takes the Senate passing a bill…..soooo it’s possible that Lt. Colonel was simply her first “normal” promotion.
That would explain the plethora of superheroes with captain In front of their name. But not the villains.
Well the morality of the person promoted will be assessed by the president. So a villainous president would ensure the balance you desire.
Not to mention that villains have no qualms about claiming a false title just for the heck of it. Whereas a hero would respect the institutions and not attempt to give a false impression (in settings where such titles are bestowed upon costumed heroes).
What about Captain Alberta? Or Major Bison? Or even General Mayhem?
Canadian. Video game character. Car.
No, that’s General Motors :P
You saying Canadian’s can’t be villains? o_O
Dismissing the great M. Bison like that is bad for your health, he may send Wednesday after you (or Lurch)
Canadians are far too polite. But the important thing is that they can’t be promoted by the president of the United States. Well unless they move south and sign up with Uncle Sam.
Weirdly though the last British field promotion (or at least the first one since the Korean war) was made by a French general! Although the news article I had been reading did not state it, I assume that the general must have been detached and serving with the British. Either that or they were under joint command.
Thought this was just about villains with rank who are bad (as opposed to rank villains, who simply smell bad)
Mmm, somehow missed out the “joined as a private” in that.
*ears droop*
Sigh.
“highly unlikely even though she is a super”
I find it interesting that you have a point of comparison for what degree literal superpowers would sway the odds of special circumstances and early promotions. It’s almost as if there’s real world experience you’re applying to the situation.
This train of reasoning is just plain silly. In war, promotions are made to fill vacancies, and **** *** if you give a **** about time in grade. The point is, ARC-SWAT was a newly created unit, and it needs a commander. For reasons of dealing with other groups (including brass at the Pentagon), is is unrealistic for the rank of the commander to be less than O-5. The US policy is to draft all active supers. While it is entirely possible that she was in the AF for 10-15 years, it is also entirely possible that for whatever reason, she was a civilian until the time that ARC-SWAT was being formed. Her rank is commensurate with her responsibility and authority.
Yes, this
A promotion to fill vacancies is often called a “dead man’s shoes” promotion. The problem with that, is that the most recent war in which anyone received a “dead man’s shoes” promotion was in Afghanistan, when Marine EOD experts were promoted to fill losses.
Looking specifically at Air Force losses, they lost one pilot in 2013, two in 2009, one in 2007 and one in 2006, all O-3 (Captain) or O-4 (Major). Nobody was promoted to fill the vacancies, because there are about 13,000 Majors in the Air Force (yes, I have statistics). So there was no shortage of pilots to replace the 5 that were killed.
Point is, if DaveB is using real-world history as a baseline, then if Maxima was promoted to fill a vacancy, it was because someone retired, not because someone died. If that were the case (promoted to replace someone who retired), she would have been expected to have time-in-grade and all the other qualifications for the position.
However… you are probably right. If she wasn’t already O-5 when ARC-SWAT was formed (remember: I admitted it was possible, but unlikely, for her to be O-5 by age 34), she may have received a promotion because ARC-SWAT needed a field commander, and Maxima was the best qualified for the position.
Dave does use real world as the baseline. But that would be modified by the presence of supers on both sides. Maxima is not omniscient, so can only react to an enemy super’s actions (ignoring any tactical predictions she may make). As such there would likely be a LOT more fatalities than in the earlier war.
Iraq is a fully industrialised nation, so would have had just as high a concentration of supers, per capita, as with the United States. With them all being there in the country where the fighting was taking place. Whereas most of the American supers would still have been leading normal lives in the States.
So, even though the military were keeping the presence of supers in the battles as a secret, they will have had nasty losses when any enemy supers initially engaged. In the Grrlverse the battlefield will have been a lot more equal, as the opposing supers would reduce the technological and military advantage that the U.S. possessed.
Meaning that Maxima’s actions would have been absolutely vital in tipping the balance back towards our historical outcome! And she would have been doing that in dead men’s shoes.
“… a LOT more fatalities than in the earlier war” —>
“… a LOT more fatalities, than in our world, in the earlier war”
The most powerful super that America has wasn’t fast-tracked, no, not at all. That was sarcasm – the military has very good reason to provide extra benefits to her, including rank.
There are ways to shorten time in grade for promotion, but have to be considered exceptional, maybe even ‘super’….
To be fair, she’d rise up pretty quickly.
“Maxima, I want you and your A-team to take out that sniper nest, I want it taken care of by…”
“Sniper nest neutralized sir.”
“Oh-Five-Hun…. will you at least let me finish my sentences before you finish objectives? Winning this engagement will require proper team cohesion at all…”
“Objective of engagement achieved sir, may I request leave. For team morale purposes, I will request that half my medals be distributed among my team.”
“… times and you’re un…. you know what, fine, I should stop giving you orders. I’m just going to push you for promotion so I can claim to be the one that recognized your talent first.”
Yaknow after reading this….its strikes me that this entire ARCHON thing might have grown out of someone trying to find a unit where Max wouldn’t be bored and yet could actually command. I mean Her rank is about the last stop where she could get the time in to learn how to do all the things that make one truly an officer. You know. Paperwork and Bureaucracy!
Seriously though with her powers she would have little chance to effectively learn command unless they had a “supers” unit when she was in the sandbox as well.
Which is possible…I suppose a lot of them could have stayed in that unit…..woulda had to be a combined service unit though. Unless that 400 number way back when was mostly the military ones.
Archon secret guidebook:
“Objective Number 1: Do not allow Maxima to see the secret guidebook. Pages are made of edible ricepaper, please eat after you read it.
Objective Number 2: Entertain/Distract/Fluster or otherwise occupy Maxima. We don’t want her ever taking the time to consider that in five minutes of effort, she could conquer the world and institute her ideal world.
Objective Number 3: Be the most ‘rag tag’ group you can be. Keep Maxima focused on keeping everyone in line while remaining as out of line as possible. Any and all non-violent infractions will be forgiven.
Objective Number 4: Collect any embarassing intel on her you can. She has a lot of pride. The more dirt we can get on her in the event of Maxima going rogue, the more we can leverage that to save the world.”
So, Archon is the new 4077th? Who is Radar and Hawkeye? :P
Mmm. Dabbler and Peggy.
Dabble representing the rebelliousness and rule breaking. Peggy being the cynical career military person, with unconventional approaches.*
Although not being a direct analogy, and having a huge cast, other aspects could be represented by other characters. The super doc for her healing, for instance. Or Sydney for her play-acting and mischievousness.
* Think back to her exorcising Sydney’s preconceptions, plus using Batman to give her inspiration, and even allowing her to try to use the minigun.
I could also see Heatwave as Houlihan, Math as Klinger, and Arianna as Frank Burns.
Nah, Ari is Hot Lips (just ask Suzie :P), Brooke is Lt. Baker (the blonde one, not the brunette, hmm, seemed to have had a few nurses named ‘Baker’…)
The bureaucracy would ensure that the paperwork got done. “Sorry Captain, new orders cannot be issued until you have completed…”
However do not forget that someone who can disarm a grenade in the blink of an eye can fill out a stack of forms just as quickly. Maxima’s force field would grant the paper sufficient structural integrity that it would not get ripped apart in the process.
“The bureaucracy would ensure…”, Ok NEVER trust the bureaucracy. Honestly the idea behind that is so you can get an idea behind all the bullcrap duties that are necessary for a fully functional command. If Maxima wants to put on stars she’s gonna have to get experience at the bullpocky as well as everything else…..or else the Bureaucracy wins….
Seriously though thats one of the things you pick up at the rank stops normally. Ideally she would have had collateral duties when she was a butterbar like “Motorcycle Safety Officer”, or would have been doing the STD reports. Also you learn to deal with bureauacracy outside the CoC as well. Believe me some of those people don’t actually get intimidated by “I can snap you in half like a twig”. Not that I may have ever had reason to say something like that.
(On a side note…..I did the math and realised that if Max actually joined when she first could we would have joined up about the same time…..feels a little surreal that…I keep having images of a fictional version of me in the comic now…lol.)
He he.
Still please don’t make out that Maxima is quite THAT old. I am sure they did not need to use single shot muskets and Napoleon was not tromping round Europe!
Hey forty shillings was a LOT of money back then!
So technically possible for Maxima to be Daphne’s mom (anything over 10 years of age difference is possible if an author is willing to go there… Apparently even 5 years old has precedent, but yuck), but would require her to get pregnant in high school around the same time she was getting goldified.
But it does say that Daphne is a natural strawberry blonde, and Maxima was a blonde, too…
People do tend to exaggerate age differences in the heat of the moment. Not to mention that relationships are often confusing.
I have a daughter who is old enough to be her sister’s mother, who is also old enough to be her sister’s mother, and also old enough to be her nephew’s mother, though she isn’t.
Which is all perfectly true, but confusing. Does it help if I tell you they were a bit spread out, and that’s why I can’t retire, despite never making anything low enough to be remotely close to “average family income” for the states I’ve lived in?
Cast page has been broken for about four months, which makes me wonder if anyone has brought that to Dave’s attention.
Yes they have. Quite regularly. Dave was aware of it before anyone else mind. But he is just kept too busy writing and drawing the comic, along with all the other ancillary roles (such as most of the inking and all of the tech support), to get around to fixing it.
He has though indicated that the Wiki is good enough that he may link the cast list page to that, as a temporary fix, until he gets around to redoing the main cast list. Which is a major project, as the old version is no longer compatible with the latest version of the program WordPress uses. And was long out of date for that matter.
I think that one of the three things Deux mentioned actually is what Sciona was after.
Two if we don’t include the bonds.
This would make his statement truthful which is probably wise when speaking to Federal Agent Maxima.
Agreed. One, actually: I’m pretty sure she wasn’t after the *deed* to any site.
Now if the sword she is after is the one that restored her body, wasn’t that supposed to go to her previous henchwoman? Of course, she may just want *all* of the previous contents of the Black Reliquary, which probably included a number of swords, all of which are now non-exclusively chilling with Deus..
No, if Smugdouche is lying about one thing (knowing who Sci-fright is), he is lying about everything, he is counting on Harem not ratting him out, and if that is the case, Daphne Daphne Daphne Daphne and Daphne is off the Christmas Card list!
Technically, his answers aren’t lies (depending on how you define “lie”).
Max asks where Sciona is (which Smuggy could have simply answered, “no”, since he probably doesn’t know where she is at that moment). Then she asks him to guess what she was after, which he then does (simply not mentioning the fact that he knows exactly what she was after).
In other words, he’s not merely a liar: he’s a politician.
Really, the more interesting intercourse will be when Maxima debriefs Harem on exactly how much and how many of her secrets she has been sharing with Deus. Maybe their little spat in front of Deus is itself an act?
Actually they are both totally lying right now. Deus implied that he was selling something of interest to her and also implied they have met before. This is possible collusion and is a very serious offense. Maxima is way to smart for this and should know something very serious is going on at Machina Industries. It is way too suspicious.
He claims he has no idea who Sci-fright is (“You know, she never formally introduced herself?”)
Statement of tangential fact and non-answer/answer to a question that wasn’t asked.
The fact that Sciona never introduced herself has nothing to do with whether or not he knows who she is, or the actual question, *where* she is.
Max isn’t asking the right questions, such as, “May I please borrow your cell phone and any recordings you have of any and all of your interactions with Sciona?”
I get that he *implied* he didn’t know who she was, but that only flies if you believe in implication, rather than inference.
Someone you already know, and have had dealings with, do not need to formally introduce themselves when they break into your office demanding you return something you stole from them
He is ‘inferring’ he has no idea who she was or why she attacked him
Inferring is done by the listener, implying is done by the speaker.
Then he is implying he is Sergeant Schultz
That’s my thinking. He’s kinda pulling Max’s chain, forcing her to squeeze every bit of info out of him without actually squeezing him.
“Oh, that’s right, I forgot I met her at…(some banal magical whatsit conference in Podunkistania umpteen years that isn’t where he met her at all)”
Nope – that was the truth. You assumed that he meant that he did not know her but he did not say that.
At one time, “he’s not merely a liar: he’s a politician” would have implied superlative skill to me; but in the last year, it has come to mean “brazen baldface transparently ‘no the sky is NOT blue’ not even trying to be convincing or clever” kind of lying.
The skill bar for political lying has been lowered to oceanic trench levels.
one of the worst things agent orange has done is to lower the bar for acceptable politicians at least in the western world.
Oh that bar was at subterranean level for a long time already. It is just that those ones obeyed their handlers better. Just look at what has been spouted by Pai or any on the oversight committees. Heck George jr spouted some real humdingers and still does.
No, it’s not that high up at this point.
you are right. Technically he didn’t lie. He didn’t answer the questions in panel one, but hey technically he didn’t lie.
So what he told Max was true, from a certain point of view.
You need to understand Deus’ obligation to protect his business. He’s more Machina now than man.
But is he a master of evil? In which case he could join the Masters of Evil?
Deus does seem to have an aversion to commitment. But, I guess if you are so rich that you could buy a country you do have to be careful about that. Especially bearing in mind the T-Shirt slogan sentiments expressed in the scene.
Still, even if he is playing it cagey, insisting on ‘non-exclusive’, when he already literally has a harem with her, is not nice.
Oh he’s deeply committed,…to being the richest man in the universe….
I thought that was the guy with the underground vault full of gold.
He actually only has modest desires and voluntarily limits how much he sells.
But you still want to be able to swim in your pool of gold, from time to time.
So shiny!
Funny, I always assumed that Harem hung out with Dues because she worked for him. Or maybe her job is to be another decoration in his office, eye candy.
“Dating him” its her covert for the spy thing.
No, she is a quint-agent
Actually, a decatuple agent. (5 bodies x double agent=10 times an agent, ergo decatuple).
But if she’s a triple agent… what is that? Penta-decatuple?
At that point, I think a better term is “a free agent that gives delusions of loyalty.”
Harem heard everything, so she is bound to know what Sciona was after. Maxima probably has a good idea of what Sciona is after, though not how Dues ended up with it. The danging around seems somewhat pointless.
But Sciona never said what she was after, she simply said that D. knew what she wanted, Hence Harem probably still doesn’t know that. Oh, there are other things she could tell such as D. apparently knowing Sciona from somewhere…
What’s more deuce manages to say a whole bunch of things without saying anything concrete. . While he Stinks that she did not introduce herself he does not state that he did not know who she was. While he gives options for things that she could have been after he does not state specifically that he does not know what she was after even though I do not believe that she stated specifically what she was after. One top at that while he States that she unveil disappeared across the rooftops he does not state whether or not they were still fighting at the time nor does he inform her that the went across the rooftops to whatever location by his orders. There is assuming the sigh fright decided to take Deus up on his offer rather than continue to try to fight Vale in what was likely to be a losing battle.
Something i noticed after looking back at harem in the earlier comics in this office
Her shirt changes where the words are they still say the same thing though
Yeah, because the lettering was too faint to be read, DaveB stated that and said he would fix that in the following page (which he did)
Can be explained away as harem porting and changing into a similar shirt to see if anyone notices change blindness
Now, here’s my question… What if Harem is actually a triple agent? What if Maxima knew full well she was there, to try and get.. oooooh…. Okay. Got it now.
Harem THINKS she is a triple agent. What is ACTUALLY happening is that both Maxima and Deus are using her to convey information to the other. Because sometimes it’s useful having a supervillain who doesn’t deal with red tape, and sometimes bad people trust you to tell them actual… Oh…
Oh CRAP.
Deus isn’t a villian, is he?
Oh sure, he has power, wealth and ambition, and a moral code that will let him kill a king… But is he a villian?
The aforementioned king was horrible. Options for removing him without a coup, civil war, or other violence was minimal, and replacements would likely be just as bad.
Breaking into the vault? He came in AFTER Sciona proved that they were not safe to those with a certain skillset. Those dangerous artifacts are now very likely safer than they were before. While he might be inclined to give access to them, he may also be vetting his clients, or letting Maxima know that certain people have a nasty macguffin.
Yeah… Deus is a lightning rod. He’s collecting up various talent and resources, getting henchfolk who wouldn’t work for the heroes. This makes it harder for those whose plans DO include smashing the planet into Neptune, or world domination, or whatever. He may be a horrible person, but he’s not an antagonist…
Nope, SmugD is completely a villain: he did not ‘save’ the items from Sci-fright (she was only after a few items or maybe just one specific item), if he had, he would have informed Maxi at the least about the attempted break-in
He is not just an antagonist, he’s a smug-tagonist, of the doucheiest order!
Deus is a super-criminal as I define the terms. He is also a little evil. However, he is not *yet* an antagonist.
Supervillain: someone who uses super powers or similar extraordinary means to alter the status quo for the worse for thousands of people or more (usually easily determined by polling said populations). Deus’ proxy takeover of a nation would qualify if he then made things worse for the common folk, which we are not sure he did. However, straight up murder and coercion was involved, which makes him a
Super Criminal: someone who uses super powers or similar extraordinary means to commit crimes. Since has never clashed with a protagonist, nor does he seem to be working behind the scenes to make things worse for our heroes, he does not qualify as an
Antagonist: someone who actively opposes and attempts to harm the protagonist. Note that an antagonist is not necessarily villainous, criminal or
Evil: delighting in and deliberately causing the dismay, discomfort or injury of others when not necessitated by combat or a similar adversarial necessity. Note that it takes a pattern of major evil acts to qualify as an ‘evil person’: many otherwise good people dabble (heh) in the occasional schadenfreude, trolling, teasing, or similar acts of very minor evil.
These personal definitions are still works in progress, but they suffice for my purposes.
I recommend re-watching the 1st “Die Hard”-film on DVD, with the commentary-track turned on.
It has a very good discussion concerning the roles of “Antagonist Vs. Protagonist”, & how the film reverses them.
Too many people (including some scriptwriters) conflate “Protagonist” with “Hero”, & “Antagonist” with “Villain”, & “Die Hard” is a great counter-example.
Teal Deer version: Deus is being the villian so nobody else can. He is occupying an ecological niche, and preventing competition.
Let’s see:
—Owns his own country. And corporation. Check.
—Kills people. Check. (Yes, corrupt rulers count. And that can’t have been the first.)
—Megalomania. Check.
—Has a lot of shady to criminal supers on payroll. Check.
—Lair. Check. (Penthouses in skyscrapers count and that’s probably not the only one.)
—Collects dangerous artifacts. Check.
—Masterminds plans like taking over countries and collecting dangerous artifacts. Check.
—Hiding lots of stuff from the heroes. Check.
—Tries to seduce the heroes. Succeeded at least once. Check.
How is this guy not a villain? The only thing he is missing is an odd pet of some sort.
You are right, of course.
But, just to play Devil’s advocate, consider one of the most common answers given to the question ‘if you could travel in time what would you do?’ Namely ‘go back and kill Hitler, before he started WWII’. Setting aside the counter-argument that he would probably have just been replaced by someone more competent, there is a good moral argument to support that. Saving many millions of lives, at the cost of one evil man’s life.
Plus it is worth noting that Deus did not interfere with the line of succession and, although Deus is the one calling the shots, the dictator’s son is now living life as ‘the richest man in Africa’. Not to mention having brought the rest of the nation up from a state of poverty to having a high standard of living.
The difference between Deus and a simple villain is that they would only make the claim that they would do such things, in order to justify their usurpation of power, and looting the country until it bled. And not stopping at that. Whereas Deus actually upheld his promises.
And they were only made in private, so he would not even have risked his reputation (assuming he killed the son and kept his minions well paid for their silence – or killed them too).
The liar bit by the way is incorrect. He has only ever lied by omission. Not once has he actually said anything that was an untruth.
Even the weapons from movies are likely to all be genuine. Either from the actual races that have been fictionally recreated in films and TV or, for the ones that are pure fiction, he will have the original prop, not some replica, as Sydney assumed.
I wouldn’t go back to kill Hitler, or any of his antecedents. in 2875, Frustra Spheara of the Polytemporal Institute pubslished research showing that time attempts to “heal itself”, so time travelers going back to kill the mid-20th century megalomaniac that started WWII would merely kill a person. Time threads associated with other people would result in an otherwise harmless person getting shit on until he became crazy and megalomaniacal enough to seek and win power, and WWII would start anyway. This is how a failed artist and minor soldier named “Hitler” came to be the one we know as Der Fuhrer. Spheara’s study that in fact, more than 18,000 German dictators rose this way, each to be killed off by a different time traveler. There were also a lot of collateral casualties – in fact, almost every person outside the concentration camps that died as a result of violence in the various war theatres was either a would-be dictator, a time traveler, or an incident casualty. The original wrong doer was a petty thief shot by a jealous husband while burgling his house.
This research led to the creation of the Temporal Non-Interference patrol, which completely blocked time traveler’s access to Earth during a 2-century period around the mid-20th. This hasn’t stopped attempts to interfere, however: spacecraft pushed back in time to kill Hitler are now routinely shunted to the late 20th century (or after), where their activities (including attempts to communicate using crop circles) are rendered insignificant as the work of crackpots.
The trick is to go back before the interdiction period and alter the events which lead up to his being able to rise to power.
But without Hitler to serve as an example, making every citizen wary of the more extreme ideology, the next tyrant turns out to have access to nuclear weapons, and, without being opposed, successfully enslaves the world!
Which is where temporal inertia kicks in. The TNIP bounded the span carefully enough so that such a huge effort to shift the history of the 20th so drastically from such a temporal distance would make it impossible for any but a planetary govt or better. Contrary to “butterfly effect” proponents, temporal inertia dampens paradox-causing interactions. Just as modern humans think a little event farther back in the past can create greater ripples, inertia has more time to damp out those ripples, so the butterfly effect is actually more like proposing the further you are from the battleship, the smaller the torpedo needs to be to sink it. This does not rule out the “rogue wave” that occassionally happens despite ststistical unlikeliness – instead it puts the temporal rogue wave in its correct place – yeah it happens, but it won’t change the shape of the ocean.
Frustra Spheara thesis was only correct when dealing with brute force attempts at temporal engineering, Per the doctoral thesis of Retributus von Longview in 5049. He showed how a succession of “needle” sized interventions could destroy a mighty empire, see documentary “The Fall of At’Lanthis” ,To make it understandable for lay beings, One does not drop a boulder to change the rivers course, One drops a hundred pebbles to cause the landslide to change the rivers course.
Just for the record, if I gained the ability to time travel reliably and controllable, my task wouldn’t be killing Hitler, it’d be rescuing the works of the library of Alexandria.
Oh just pop on round and check out the Alexandria section in my library. It is next to da Vinci’s lost works. I tell you what the little model space ships, dangling overhead, are inspiring even approaching that area!
Interesting, but you should visit my hyper reality simulation, In which the copied minds of philosophers, inventers, and other persons of noteworthy intellect converse and debate. Please be advised to check back regularly as ne individuals are added hourly. at least.
*hurt look*
You mean I am not already in there?
*cries*
You are not dead.
YET.
You are scheduled for uploading upon your passage.
Err, thanks.
Umm, just checking that you are not into cattle mutilation and crop circles too?
No, thought not. Butt …
*curls tail protectively over bum hole*
Cattle mutilation? That is a waste of good steak.
Crop circles? On occasion for fun.
As for the last. Only to those who merit it.
“Slow head turn in Yorp’s direction”
*runs away, yelping*
Maybe Vale counts as an odd pet. Definitely qualifies as odd.
Probably the best way to put it is that Deus is not a villain YET. He’s a third party in the present heroes/villain dynamic, with unknown motives… but he’s definitely being set up as a xanatos figure to be positioned in a likely future antagonist role.
Vale. Odd pet. (kidding Vale, kidding, please don’t find me and hug me)
She wants to hug you, and pet you, and squeeze you!
“…, and call (you) George”?
Deus isn’t a villian, is he?
I said so last page:
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/2756?replytocom=626917#respond
Nope. He’s a hero. A gosh darn hero.
Deus is niether hero nor villian, he wants huge amounts of money and power but also recognizes that stable, safe, somewhat eglitrarian society, high functioning society is necessary to produce and contain the levels of power and money that he wants. He needs to raise the world up enough that it is worth owning.
:-)
You changed Abby’s glasses? o_O
All hail Vale!
Worship her in darkness.
In the shadow of the Dale.
There the shall find Vale.
Praise her in the gloom.
Even the mighty shall quail.
In the presence of Vale.
Appearing as from the shadows.
Fearing no flail.
No twilight shall overpower Vale!
The Queen of Dusk.
All hail Vale!
One weird thing I just thought: Deus says he has ‘faith’ in Vale. From what we just saw last week, Vale appears to be a shell for something whose natural state is gaseous, liquid, plasma, or otherwise fluid. There were a lot of people speculating that she might be an Old One (Great, or otherwise), or something similar. Remember, such beings are often revered as gods, hence Deus’s statement perhaps being even more apropos than it sounds.
and some gods stand out as fitting the description nicely.
Seen a number of people mention Greek mythology over the last few pages, but seem to miss a few points.
1: Greek gods and titans can’t be killed only imprisoned. While they can be injured no amount of damage is permanent and always heals away. The titans had to be sealed inside Tartarous (which isn’t simply a land of the dead but a primordial god), and Chronus himself had swallowed his kids, all of which survived the ordeal, heck Zeus tried that with Athena due to a prophesy only to have her crash about in his skull eating his knowledge till Aries split Zeus’s skull open with an axe allowing Athena to break out…yes Zeus had his skull cracked open to relieve a headache which was another fully formed god busting out.
2: Malleable forms, possibly due to the inherent contradictions as Hellinistic tradition combines various faiths from the region so we have gods with variable physical forms, transformations, stretchy bodies, and odd moments where they have “true” forms so terrible mortals are reduced to ash in their presence or overcome with some specific emotion.
3: Poison blood, doesn’t come up much, but the Olympian gods were described as having an ichor type blood that is poisonous to mortals.
So yeah perfectly reasonable for humanoid eldritch to be worshipped as gods, or some ancient gods to be regarded as such by today’s standards.
Re: the last part: The Kardashians, ’nuff said :P
If it turns out Deus and/or Vale are Elder Gods, I’m gonna flip my shit.
if Vale is NOT a super,as hinted in the previous comic,then is she….
a cyborg?
on some strange performing enhancing drugs
has bionic implants
WHAT???
Keep coming back Mondays and Thursdays, to find out. In due course.
My guess? Not super but extra.
Not super powered human, though alien or other supernatural creature are viable options.
I’m thinking along the same lines of that tentacle monster regarding location of origin.
If anything that could be a symbolic clue,
also if people want to talk cracks on the face, go back to the meeting with Sydney when we are first being introduced to what is in the poster tube and what a certain mage was imagining could be in the tube and Sydney’s face in his imagination *also one of the tentacles he imagined coming out looks like Trent*.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/468
IMO she is a Komainu, a Dvarapala or some other sort of Protector semi-deity. Notice how she does not act until a direct threatening movement is committed toward Deus.
And then she only start by a gentle harmless repulse, and keeps on the good side of maim all the way through precedent page.
she is certainly VERY dangerous to mess with (even for Sciona), but (so far) does not go full tilt over what was meant to be a killing stroke.
something akin to this:
https://www.ffxivinfo.com/images/screenshots/ffxiv-2258.jpg
or this:
https://www.spritestitch.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/profound_darkness_violetvalhalla_by_violetvalhalla-d8383zp-e1413675718312.jpg
Based on accumulated life experience, Harem is 4 times older than Deus.
Ahm, 4 times older?? Your math skills cant be great, do you want to try again?
Well if assuming 5 bodies x 24 years = 120 years old. Making Deus 30. So not an unreasonable estimate.
Harem did not start out with all five bodies though, as we actually had the chart in comic. Not in the mood to look it up but experiences wise she is indeed a lot older than him. Probably only about one and a half times his age though.
Oh, and only age 19 physically at the moment. Before anyone jumps on that.
She didn’t get her powers until teens I think? And she didn’t start out with all of her duplicates. There’s a strip a while back that explains this. So she hasn’t actually experienced five times her age.
Add to that, she has one mind despite running several bodies, so it is questionable whether she is actually maturing or just accumulating extra memory. And considering her general behavior, she isn’t maturing that fast.
Yea, I agree on that line of thinking. Harem has not had to experience child birth, raising a kid, or alternatively the angst of getting to an age where that opportunity is sliding by. Nor had the variety of life from coping with adversity.
Rather she has experienced life as a California beach-babe studying different courses. So lots of variation on a narrow theme. All aided by the perks of being attractive and otherwise advantaged. Not to mention being able to teleport out anytime there is a problem she does not want to handle.
Plus being able to sit with a bunch of reference books, an internet hooked up computer and chatting with experts in a subject, whenever she has to sit an exam!
So even the experiences she has had will not have pushed her as much as those who have struggled to achieve their success. No wonder she is bored!
I mentioned earlier that she may be due for an additional life.
Probably ‘poofs’ one up rather than giving birth.
Her other bodies don’t LOOK like sisters.
Could the next one be black?
It was stated somewhere that they would look identical if she didn’t customize them (tattoos, makeup, hairdye,wardrobe) after tjey poof into existence the more interesting question is she going to keep poofing out more bodies?
If I’m remembering correctly she mentioned in a previous comic that she has about 50 years of experiential life.
Yes, it was 50 for total body years
My question is whether Deus had already hit the vault once and swapped in something to replace it. Sciona’s expression is when she realized the thing in question is Valencia herself.
Damn spellchecker :Vale herself
doesn’t match the wording,
“all of it”, assuming whatever he has that she wants is part of a set or has a quantity.
Maybe-random prediction: if Deus planted decoy artifacts, Vale constructed them.
No Fair! They pre-empted the battle royal for the Dating Game….
Well, this sort of throws a wrench into Harem’s plans to be a double agent for either side, assuming those were plans in the first place.
Not if Harem is lying here. She needed an excuse for why she was present here, when Sciona arrived. She had a good one.
And the t-shirt implies that they anticipated Sciona making a ruckus at some point, so had prepared for that eventuality. It is a good way of showing that they did not just make up a cover story. Even though they have never been seen (sorta) dating together in public.
Well, he’s less then her combined age….
At least Max said he was “cute” – as if he needed anything else to boost hie ego.
I think Deus is the sort of guy to find the lowest-value currency that still can be bundled into impressive bricks of bills, and then get $600 million (or whatever symbol it is) of that in a duffle bag. Maybe $600 million Zimbabwe Dollars.
That way, he can pull the joke, and not sweat the $6 plus the price of a duffle bag he loses if he gets it stolen, nor that $6 is collecting dust rather than growing interest.
Bearer bonds can have very high dollar amounts, and nearly untraceable, are perfect for Deus…
Zimbabwe is a false country, and it’s money worthless
The currency is no longer legal tender, and they use the USD, so yea, it is not even worth the paper it is printed on. And it had such extreme hyper inflation, before it collapsed completely that Deus would not get a duffel bag full of money, for $600 million Zimbabwe dollars.
Even before the final revaluation there were notes for $1,000 trillion Z dollars. The last one devaluing it further by making one new Z dollar worth 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 of the previous ones! That is 10 to the 25 for anyone who does not want to count the zeroes.
If you wanted to have $6 in Z dollars, you would need a duffel bag the size of an Olympic swimming pool!
“I can date who I like!” Yeah, that line’s gonna make a return appearance at the next ARC-SWAT refresher training on “keeping information secure!” Or the next review of her security clearance.
OH FOR GOD’S SAKE JUST TELL US IF HE IS A VILLAIN OR NOT!!! It’s like you’re trying to include morally ambiguous characters in a webcomic about superheroes.
“He’s more than twice your age!”
“I would argue I’m more than twice HIS age.”
Feels like a Harem thing to say.
So, like, 95?
About Deus dating Maxima, there is that one faerie tale about the hero who has to climb a glass mountain.
Even as I kid, I thought that one was silly. A hammer, a face shield, gloves, a few pitons and a rope, and any fool would be at the top in a few minutes and rappelling down with the girl clinging to his back.
Being raised on a farm by practical people does make fairy tales a bit less “magical” to a kid.
Being raised on Bugs Bunny cartoons would make me first think of suction cup shoes, a catapult, or an Acme hot air balloon.
Not familiar with the fairy tale, but it sounds a bit trickier than that. Glass breaks if you drive a piton into it, and you can bet that if it is a challenging mountain that it is not nice smooth glass to start off with (except where that is hard to climb) but has a lot of jagged edges and broken bits. Making the rope highly vulnerable to being cut. Not to mention the climber (who may not have mountaineering experience) and his doubtless frail damsel in distress (she has to be to rely on some guy to rescue her).
I’m sure the refractory quality of good clear glass would also play a part in the danger.
I would say nearly impossible to climb.
Especially if the sharp rocks of Madagascar are anything to go on that prevent much of anything in the way of explorations in the area. Mountains made of glass would be likely very sharp, jagged, slippery, and hard given the compressed nature of a mountain.
So yeah, extremely dangerous to climb a mountain made of glass, add in the refraction of sunlight and the mountain will feel like its on fire ontop of everything else and blinding…and pretty much a death ray to anything around said mountain…heck a skyscraper at a bad angle can melt the inside of a car with the windows.
in real life this would likely be obsidian, which does happen, I mean its very sharp, natural occurring glass and covers mountain sides.
https://c8.alamy.com/comp/D9TRT5/usa-oregon-newberry-national-volcanic-monument-big-obsidian-flow-obsidian-D9TRT5.jpg
Note: the madgascar rocks are not glass, and I assume a myth is meant to be more artificial glass and not natural ones.
Magical usually in fairy tales, but one naturally just lying around handy is just as plausible for a folk tale. Mind you so is some crazy king building one.
Nice photo you got of Mount Alamy though. Weird how the letters formed on natural obsidian. Is that proof that God writes in English? I always thought that the copyright notices would be in DNA, but it would be funny if the electron microscopes found them in English!
Did Opal steal a certain item that Sconia herself stole?
Or is this advancing the plot with mentioning the next location of importance?
The item clearly worked so the vault didn’t contain a fake.
Actually? Considering that bearer bonds gain value while you possess them…that would be a VERY good gag…(It’s basically stock in the government…Oversimplified heavily.)
He might leave a bag of counterfeit money lying around.
That is what people without limitless wealth would do. Anyone who could stack their money up in hundred dollar bills, and be able to climb to the Moon on it, does not have worries about a mere bag full getting stolen!
For some reason, I always hear Dues sounding like Clancy Brown for some reason.
“But it just reminds me how much moar there is to own.”
Not Charlie Brown?
He absolutely WOULD have a duffelbag with $600 million. But he would probably have it in a non USD denomination. Like possibly 600 million rupia or something. I don’t know enough about foriegn currency to be sure.
600 million Venezuelan Bolivars perhaps?
I somehow find it more funny that she’s “dating” him then I would if she had betrayed ArcSWAT
Wait..
How old is Harem?
How old is Dues?
I was thinking harem was like 22ish.
and Dues I figured maybe 35-28 tops.
I clearly know no ones ages
We do for Harem, it is in the wiki cast page. Which is 19.
Deus is probably 35-38, as you say. But Harem has actually lived enough, in her different bodies, that she is mentally older than him (albeit emotionally still closer to her physical age).
Older, low to mid forties most likely. Max said “more than twice your age” so absolute minimum would be 39.
Good deduction and conclusion.
Daphne’s ‘life experience’ age is based on the combined ages of Daphne prime (why couldn’t her parents name her Optimus?) plus the ages of each addition copy. She got her second self around age ten or eleven, then the next three around each year thereafter.
DaveB posted the sum total in a comment section thread sum years ago. My guess without doing an archive dive is 19+8+7+6+5=45.
While everyone is wandering about Harem I am wandering something else
WHEN is this conversation happening?
Given Harem told Maxima, Maxima can fly several times the speed of sound, Sciona is a priority target, Deus seems to be nearby, same city even as Archon.
From the looks of it the Sciona x Vale battle was wrapped up very quickly, however if Maxima flew right over, not quickly enough for any deals or anything to continue. Maybe for Vale and Sciona to get out of sight, unless Deus’ dialogue implies they might still be fighting and Vale has yet to call in (in which case Maxima not seeing the conflict from above is odd if she didn’t get there fast enough, so chances are this is right after the last page and Sciona and Vale are both still nearby).
Machina Industries is the primary supplier of advanced tech to Archon. So it is pretty logical that Deus would have an HQ in the same city as theirs, and probably fairly close.
We saw that even going into a hot zone Maxima was not so arrogant as to solo it. When reinforcements were sent to fight Sciona at the Mars factory they travelled at the speed of the ospreys. With Maxima going in with the second wave (very wisely as it turned out, otherwise she would have been defeated).
So time wise it is how long it takes to scramble the team we see, and arrive by helicopter. So not long.
But they are flying over a crowded city. Spotting two individuals, even on roof top, is not a trivial matter. And that would only be possible if they happened to have been travelling in the direction of the Archon HQ. Which does not seem to be the way Sciona would want to go.
So somewhere, maybe still within a few blocks, the fight could be continuing (and not necessarily still on the rooftops). Yet even if the Osprey is overhead Peggy would not be able to see it, unless she happens to look in precisely the right direction and nothing happens to obscure her view. And even then it is likely to just be two people on a rooftop, unless they are doing something that creates a flash or glare.
A search pattern and putting out an alert to the local police department is now likely to happen. But without a clue which direction to go in Sciona could easily escape, if Vale is not seeking to apprehend her.
Deus has already called her one time during this fight. He might do so again now to check up on her. He could at least ping the GPS location of her phone to get a rough idea of her location*
* if the phone is still working and still with her.
I am noticing Super Hiro looking out the window, possibly trying to get an idea of where the two might be right now.
I’m kind of confused about that too. Maxima doesn’t seem to be in that much of a hurry if she has time to argue with Harem.
Besides that, didn’t Harem keep watching the fight? I can’t imagine there’s at least three things more interesting than that going on at the moment.
Ever seen a super hero movie where the hero zooms off to answer a call for help, only to find out that it is a dastardly trap? Oh? You have? More than once? Yea. That does seem to be what happens when you have extremely powerful supers, who cannot be taken out in a fair fight.
Maxima is the unit commander. She avoids being the first responder, when there are alternative options available. In the last fight she deployed Anvil as the first strike, with Peggy providing oversight. Before committing herself.
Had she flown straight in, as you seem to want here, then she would have found an undamaged construct, with a mind-control beam. One that, without being cracked by Anvil’s attack, would have overcome Maxima’s strong will and either taken her out of the fight, or even worse mind-controlled her, to fight for Sciona!
Harem did, but here Maxima is interviewing a civilian witness. She can debrief Harem separately, but has probably been updated in-transit. However Maxima is conducting good interview protocol in not revealing the things she already knows, in front of the person being interrogated.
The point of Max’s argument appears to be WHO is ‘debriefing’ Harem.
Heh.
Well at least you need to “debrief” Harem. Unlike Dabbler who would “debrief” everyone.