Grrl Power #617 – Meet violent
Don’t worry that Sciona got away here, we are getting close to the end of this arc.
In the superhero world, the stratospheric head kick is the equivalent to reading someone their Miranda rights. Ok, not really, but at some point, Maxima really should identify herself as a cop. It’s not like she’ll be taken in front of a regular human court. If she’s taken alive, she’ll have to answer to The Twilight Council. They do have an actual legal system, but Sciona probably wouldn’t be able to justify most of her actions.
Speaking of which, I love all the debate on the previous page about whether or not Maxima was in the right about attacking Sciona, and how she did it, and who is culpable for the bridge. I could totally see lawyers arguing all the points back and forth. Did Sciona attack the bridge? Was she going to? Did she mean to deflect Maxima’s attack into the bridge? Was it self-defense? Can’t it be both? Coming up next on Super Law and Super Order. BUN-BONNNN.
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“Meet violent”? Is that a new ship on the horizon?
I think it’s a joke on “meet cute”.
:)
Can you explain? What does Meet Cute mean? Never heard of that before.
Meet Cute: Scenario in which two individuals are brought together in some unlikely, zany, destined-to-fall-in-love-and-be-together-forever sort of way (the more unusual, the better).
Thank you. I just learned a new trope.
Wait, you mean Sci-fright and Maxi are going to become a ‘thing’? Maxiona? Scioma?
What, you think Maxima is not good enough for Sciona?
Didn’t say that
It’s actually a Super dating app. It helps arranging battles between Supers who haven’t fought before.
Tough angry singles in your area!
Wow – those wings marked Max’s arms!
Perhaps she wasn’t focusing on armor enough? I don’t have a clear idea of how fast she can transition her stats (clearly not instantly, or else she might be able to mimic having all of them at once just by constantly cycling them all, like superarmor for the one frame of an impact while superstrength immediately after that to follow up a punch), but I imagine she still wanted to be able to fly and maybe have some strength to not get knocked back like a paper weight. And have enough speed to react to any further surprises.
she had a lot in speed to move like that, and once on the ground was probably equalizing them again for the fight… that would explain why the blades even fit her… cause she had just turned her speed down… IMHO
Another problem with Max’s power allocation (and, while I think it’s come up a few times in the past few pages’ forum discussion, I did go back to the Vehemence fight to double-check) is that super speed and flight are *separate*. By necessity, if Max is *really* pushing flight speed, her reaction time suffers.
So, it could be that Max had a lot in flight to close with Sciona rapidly and therefore *not* very much in super speed, leaving her open to Sciona’s unexpectedly fast attack.
And she probably wanted to hit Sciona hard with her super strength for a heavy first strike.
No, that would require a lot of armor instead of strength as she comes in at +Mach speed and leads with a stomp. Going for strength wouldn’t add much to that while going with armor would make sure she didn’t take damage from the rather rapid deceleration.
Sciona isn’t providing much of a crumble zone when Max is arriving at the speed of a bullet.
Champions rules, that was totally a Max speed Move Through action!
Those can get real ugly on the total damage numbers!
As to the paper cuts Maxima later takes in that page, that’s pretty impressive, even if her armor wasn’t on full at the time. (I have no idea what it was at, but even it’s standby rating is pretty amazing!)
Honestly I have to think she would need to put a fair bit into armour.. Just to make her properly dense because she was using herself as an impact missile.. So likely switched from flight and speed to mostly armour on impact so she could maximize the damage on sciona and not on her.
So it turned out that those wings were able to harm even Maxima. Who would have thought?
Didn’t seem to harm her all that much, actually. I don’t see any blue blood.
Or to quote the Black Knight…. ’tis but a scratch!
(and here, it actually is just a scratch!:) )
But Maxima didn’t know how much wich is why she chose the less risky fireball over melee before.
1) Well heck, why didn’t she use it again! Did she suddenly know how much it would harm her? Nope.
2) Also the plasma blast was obviously not less risky.
Yes, if she used it a second time now that she *knows* it can be reflected/redirected that would be reckless so she had to go with the more risky option.
Burnable area too.
Yes that too, if she missed she could start a forest fire instead of just making some steam.
Though I doubt that would stop Max since they could stop a forest fire before it got going too big (like they did for Syd’s scattershot).
Mike…. just admit you were wrong. She could have tackled or kicked Sciona when she was over the water instead of using a bridge-destroying plasma blast.
Just admit it now. :) She didnt use it a second time now. This was the FIRST time she struck Sciona directly. The first time COULD have been over the water instead. Like the hypothetical perfect reasonable expert person.
Admiiiiiiit it :) Just say you were wrong. Come over to my side. Let go of the stubbornness and embrace the legalese side of the Force.
She could have tried that (I doubt it would have worked but she could have tried) but it would be the choice that put more people in more danger.
” (I doubt it would have worked”
You literally see that it WOULD have worked, because it worked here, just a few seconds AFTER Max’s bridge ‘incident.’
“but it would be the choice that put more people in more danger”
No….. Sciona getting knocked into the water = no bridge collapse. Sciona being fired at with the plasma blast = bridge collapse.
The choice to just tackle or kick her into the water would be the choice that put NO people in danger.
Seriously Mike, it’s over. You’ve lost the argument. Just admit it and we will have punch and pie.
No this is a different situation with different distances/timings and an enemy who is running away not towards bystanders.
If Max couldn’t intercept in time their fight could have easily destroyed the bridge the same as her fight with Kevin destroyed that over-pass. She took reasonable action to stop a villain before they got in range of harming civilians. The fact that a completely unforeseeable event happened to still endanger the civilians doesn’t change that.
I’m not going to drop this defense and allow you to railroad her into criminal charges she’s not guilty of just for punch and pie :D
Also time frame aside: as we can see it didn’t work at stopping her. Max either hit her or hit something near her and knocked her down but she was right back up again. If this was next to the bridge she could have made a dash for a cable or hostage rather than teleporting.
“No this is a different situation with different distances/timings and an enemy who is running away not towards bystanders.”
So let me get this straight. Maxima was CLOSER to Sciona when approaching the bridge, and you don’t think she would have been able to slam into Sciona. But when Sciona has a brief head start and is FARTHER ahead, then you don’t have a problem with Maxima being able to slam into her?
The ONLY difference is that before the bridge incident, it would have been EASIER to slam into her. And it was already easy afterwards. Just. Admit. You’re. Wrong.
“I’m not going to drop this defense and allow you to railroad her into criminal charges she’s not guilty of just for punch and pie :D”
For the last time, NEGLIGENCE IS A TORT, AND TORTS ARE DIFFERENT THAN CRIMES. And she is definitely guilty of the tort. How many times do I have to repeat this until it sinks in that torts and crimes are different?
“Also time frame aside: as we can see it didn’t work at stopping her. ”
It would have stopped her from getting to the bridge though. And without the bridge blowing up.
Ok I have had enough.
You keep forgetting that the that Country depicted is not the US you live in now.
In fact you further blatantly ignore the fact that That US has a fictional US President Because the creator has openly stared that if Trump was President, Max would have resigned.
You also forget That US has Tital 57 and 58, laws that cover Crimes comited by supers, and the creation of ARC-SWAT, Laws that literaly do not exist, along with a history of dealing with persons with unusual ability’s since at least the 1860.
In fact the past history of US and aparently every other country on the planet was to rather Blandly admit that up untill now, they have been suppressing any news on such incidents.
We have nothing that realy compares to it. The Closest we have is the US Coastguard.
We realy don’t know how *that* US or anyone else has delt wit this over the past century or so.
Or in otherwords, on our planet they could not cover up Watergate. The press clued in that shooting down that Iranian passenger jet was a screw up within weeks,
Tepot dome blew up in under 2 years, Tuskegee dragged on for decades, along with the crap that the Council for Tobacco Research Tried to pull, The Dreyfus Affare blew up in 4 years, and so on, but somehow, In *that* US they managed to keep a walking Gold Goddes Of low level nuclear destruction and her amazing friends in the middle of the war in Afghanistan and or Iraq under wraps….never mind the fact that Supers existed and worked more or less with the goverment for over a century beforehand….
“You keep forgetting that the that Country depicted is not the US you live in now.”
Except they’re using the same laws as the US we live in now. The Constitution is the same. Civil and criminal codes are the same. Even laws which most people are not aware of, like the Posse Comitatus Act are the same!
But no, you want to say ‘well in this world, negligence doesn’t exist’ or some ridiculousness like that. No, it just means you aren’t able to argue your side well enough.
“In fact you further blatantly ignore the fact that That US has a fictional US President Because the creator has openly stared that if Trump was President, Max would have resigned.”
Obama’s fictional? You do remember the time period of this webcomic is not present day, right? It’s years ago. It’s a flashback basically.
“We have nothing that realy compares to it. The Closest we have is the US Coastguard.”
It’s like every argument against me is someone being intentionally ignorant. The only difference so far between that world and this one is that there are supers in that world. It seems to have all the same laws that would be in this world, IF THERE WERE SUPERS. In fact, even Archon’s formation was done in a way which would be plausible in the real world, from a legal perspective.
In fact, most of what DaveB has done in this comic is to continually point out the tropes in comics compared to how it would work in the real world if there were really supers, including Maxima’s little lesson to Sydney in the restaurant.
Not only that, DaveB spells out how a lot of the tropes in comics won’t stand up to other REAL WORLD actions, like forensic investigation. There was an entire strip about that as well. He’s gone out of his way to make it painfully apparent that this fictional world does operate with real world laws and police methodology, and just takes into account that, in the Grrlpower world, supers are real.
In all ways save one, the presence of super powered individuals in the world, the setting is indeed the real world.
And even so, declaring that things are different does not give you carte blanche to decide how things are or should be different. You need to either back up your differences with citations from canon or at the very least provide a plausible theory as to exactly why they should be different. Otherwise you’re just bullshitting, and while that might be fun it doesn’t make for much of a discussion since I (and I am sure many others) can bullshit just as well as you any day, and twice on Sundays.
Your convinently forgetting a successful century long ongoing coverup of the fact that Super powers exist. Not just in the US but literaly around the world. In fact they also admitted that news of super power incidents was somehow suprised…
Please explain how on earth you can do that without somehow blatantly ignoring the US Constitution, Seriously they could not even keep unredacted transcripts of waterboarding interrogations from being made available to Congress for review.
Oh yes, the “veil” which never realy provided full coverage to Supers, And was more more less failing all along when it came to them, and will probably increasingly continue to fail for those others still getting coverage from the veil, because of a combination of the internet, and other national governments becoming increasingly unwilling to look like they are not keeping up with the super power race. Seriously ARC has existed for over a century now, and somehow a organization that again, has never existed in Our US, has continues to receive funding despite doing a job that aparently does not exist and would therefore be done by literaly every other existing US goverment agency?? Despite decades of politicians dedicated to slashing and even eliminating the budgets of “useless” and “redundant” agencies like NASA, FDA, CDC, HUD, NOAH, USDA, the USGS, And so on?
right…..try another one on. Clearly for the basic concet here to even start to work, ARC would have to be a literal Stat chamber unlike almost any other such organization running for literal decades, at a level that would make most conspiracy nuts heads literaly explode with enough lethal force that you would gave to put up billboards next to each nut with rediculously large Print that sayers “if you can read this you are too close.”
All that stuff you laid out? It all falls under the header of:
We are only a few days (/weeks) since supers were publicly recognised as being real. Do give them some while for research and development, let alone getting products produced and to the market, before you start reaching for the noose to lynch our author.
Just to give one example of something that has changed, and that is the super kevlar that is being produced by the Archon tailor. Whilst we have only seen that being produced for Archon units, there is no reason why such armour cannot be supplied to other elite units, secret service agents on presidential guard duty and so on.
The limits being the super tailor’s time and whether he can be inclined to devote a significant amount of it to non-creative channels. Such is completely within his remit to decide. He will be able to make a very comfortable living even just supplying Archon. So may opt for quality of life, over further increasing profits.
However it would surprise me if he did not produce enough surplus for the limited markets that I mentioned initially.
And that is just one person who Sydney has bumped into in the line of her work. She has been briefed about the Geomancer, and how his actions could legally allow him to produce vast amounts of gold, with all the implications that follow from that.
Again being held in check by the desires of the individual. Not being a super villain he does not want to destabilise the world economy, so is content to limit himself to modest sales. And swimming the odd lap or two around his pool of gold, of course.
Also calling it a “bridge destroying plasma blast” is disingenuous at best, it was a small shot only slightly larger than the one she used as a flashbang. If that blast had acted as they always have in the past (explode on impact) it would have been zero danger to the bridge.
Even as it is it only hurt the bridge as much as it did because it landed in the perfectly wrong place. If it had hit one vertical cable or the surface the bridge it would be stable still (though they’d probably still close it until repairs, engineers don’t like running with one redundancy down).
“Also calling it a “bridge destroying plasma blast” is disingenuous at best”
I don’t think you understand the word ‘disingenuous.’ Calling it a bridge-destroying plasma blast is not disingenuous – it’s factual. I called a plasma blast that destroyed a bridge, a ‘bridge-destroying plasma blast.’
Also the plasma blast does NOT explode on impact. Look at what happened with the tank, for example. Look what happened at the target practice in Archon. It bounces or drills through FIRST…. THEN EXPLODES.
You’re doing it again – you’re trying to change facts in order to suit your beliefs, rather than taking the facts as they exist. You are wrong. You know that you’re wrong. But you’re being stubborn.
“If it had hit one vertical cable or the surface the bridge it would be stable still”
At best, Sciona could have only hit one vericle cable with her wings, assuming she was even going to do that. With Maxima’s plasma blast, even if it just cut through one cable, it then EXPLODES afterwards, which would take out several cables, or even the main cable. In any situation, Maxima’s plasma blast does more damage and she shouldnt have used it – she could have used a tackle or slammed into her.
Repeat after me – Mike is wrong, Pander is right. You can do it…. it’s not that hard.
Pander, if we assume that Maxima’s blast was *never* deflected, not once in her life, and therefore there was literally no way for Max to suspect that it could do anything other than
1) hit Sciona (and cause a fireball whose size Maxima had determined to be well away from the bridge) or
2) miss Sciona, and thus safely hit the water
Doesn’t that change things somewhat?
Because I can’t find a single example in which Max’s beam was deflected before, and while Dave only said that Maxi didn’t know Sciona could deflect her beam I suspect he meant Max didn’t know that it was in any way possible for her beam to be deflected.
To put it differently: if you were asked with defending Max during the trial, would that fact help you?
“Pander, if we assume that Maxima’s blast was *never* deflected, not once in her life, and therefore there was literally no way for Max to suspect that it could do anything other than”
Aside from the fact that it HAS been deflected and has has a period between when it hits something and when it explodes, again – it wouldn’t matter because, as I’ve now described repeatedly in the previous strip’s forum, the standard of care for someone of Maxima’s expertise, as opposed to the standard for a layman, is incredibly high in a negligence case, and she does not meet that standard. However many times you argue, I’m just going to keep saying that same thing, because that’s how the law works when it comes to a negligence tort.
” there was literally no way for Max to suspect that it could do anything other than
1) hit Sciona (and cause a fireball whose size Maxima had determined to be well away from the bridge) or
2) miss Sciona, and thus safely hit the water”
The fact that something ELSE happened means that you are incorrect. that there was literally no way. Again, check what I’ve written about the standard of care required. She didn’t meet it. She’s gonna get sued (or more likely Archon will settle out of court because of the massive bad PR of losing a court case like this).
“To put it differently: if you were asked with defending Max during the trial, would that fact help you?”
If I was asked to defend Max, I’d suggest they settle out of court because on the law, she’s going to lose. The only decent strategy would be to try to get as many rampantly fanboy pro-superhero jurors on the jury in hopes that they’d ignore the law. Sure, I’d try to argue about her meeting the standard of care because I’d be trying to zealously advocate for my client, but I’d lose that argument against any semi-competent attorney who didn’t sleep through the first year of law school.
I went on an archive binge most of Sunday after reading your posts on last week’s comic, but I couldn’t find any case where the blast was explicitly deflected, only cases where it went through a target and cases where it was absorbed by the target. Would you mind posting the link/page number?
To clarify: Maxima’s beam, to Maxima’s knowledge, had never been deflected prior to the incident with Sciona.
Thus, Maxima had no way of knowing that her beam being deflected was a possibility.
I’m not saying that the beam’s being deflected was impossible (seems like a losing argument, given that, you know, it happened), I am saying that, in Max’s opinion *prior to this incident* it was impossible for her beam to be deflected.
Now, since Maxima’s beam is entirely unique, and she is the foremost expert on it, and she believed it could not be deflected under any circumstances, doesn’t it make it sufficiently reasonable that she considered the beam a *safer alternative* to bullets?
Remember that Max didn’t have the benefit of hindsight: her prior knowledge told her that her beam would either safely take down Sciona or harmlessly splash into the water. Thse where the only two possibilities Max could conceive before discovering that her beam can be deflected.
I don’t know if this changes her position somehow, I imagine one would have to consider previous instances of something that seemed perfectly safe at the time and turned out to be much more dangerous than anticipated… Like, say, shoe-fitting fluoroscopes. Was there a flurry of lawsuits after that particular debacle?
Pander, I asked you this before and you failed to answer:
Most of the comments I see from you are critical (“Vehemence is boring / OP / whatever”, “Maxima is “, “Dabbler is a rapist”, etc). Why is that?
If you check the previous page’s comments you will see Pander saying how she loves Cooter. Likewise she is the greatest champion of Deus. And praises amusing comments and things in the comic which catch her fancy. Not to mention being very generous with Yorpie Snax!
She is just not shy in speaking her mind about flaws or failings of characters. Usually deservedly so.
Although I doubt that she grew up reading 2000AD, otherwise she would appreciate the worth of a true cop!
“Pander, I asked you this before and you failed to answer:”
I don’t recall you asking that, must have been lost within the novels of other things to which I’ve been responding (usually for the fifth or sixth time at least). Lets see the question.
“Most of the comments I see from you are critical (“Vehemence is boring / OP / whatever”, “Maxima is “, “Dabbler is a rapist”, etc). Why is that?”
Because, with the exception of Vehemence, most of my comments tend to be about how the law applies to a certain action being done. And Maxima has had a couple of times where she’s violated the law or opened herself up to a tortious lawsuit, so I’ve mentioned that. I’ve also mentioned when people were PROTECTED by the law as well – most of the time Deus, since he’s brilliant. When I don’t have any pre-trial discovery work to do, I have a lot of free time on my hand sitting in front of a computer and I like this comic, so I comment on it.
With Vehemence I just consider him an annoying character, partially because the fight took 6 months and partially because he kept pulling powers and knowledge of things out of his butt to extend how long the fight went. He probably would have been a decent villain if he had some actual motivation behind what he was doing – any motivation beyond ‘I wanna fight.’ – it makes for a boring character, at least for a ‘big bad’ with all the buildup involved. I very much prefer how Sciona has been as a big bad, because she has an actual goal behind ‘I want to fight.’
Seriously, almost all of my criticisms, except for with Vehemence, were ALWAYS from a legal standpoint (my criticisms about Vehemence are because of the extreme length of the fight and the ‘powers as the plot demands’ nature of him, which is not my thing). And they’re what I”m the most verbose about – because I’m a lawyer and it’s easy for me to explain why I am taking that stance. Not to mention it’s not all criticisms. In fact, most are praises – like everything I’ve said about Deus (the hero of the city, all praise Deus), my predictions about Vale (which I was quite surprised turned out to be pretty true), Krona (who I just think is awesome), and my sympathy for that lovable redneck, Cooter. I mean…. all the hate poured on him. The guy’s been a universal butt-monkey, losing his family, getting blown up, getting merged with an earthworm, getting sliced up – poor Coot!
Also, I make plenty of non-criticism comments as well – usually jokey stuff. It’s just not apparent when i get into a legal discussion/debate/argument – especially when the other side starts getting rude or insulting.
Although I’m not sure I’ve said Dabbler is a rapist. I’d have to check on that. Pretty sure I didnt say that, but responded to someone ELSE who said that.
@Yorp: AW thanks Yorpie. here’s another Yorpie Snax.
I appreciate the character defense :) And no I’ve never read 2000AD with any regularity. I’m more of a DC girl. Sometimes Marvel (much less nowadays), sometimes Dark Horse, sometimes Broadway. If I’m going to read about a cop in a dystopian future, I’d be more into Robocop than Judge Dredd :)
Although I have to admit I liked both the original Judge Dredd movie and the remake (although I actually liked the remake better because, as EVERYONE knows….
JUDGE DREDD NEVER TAKES OFF HIS HELMET!
Precisely!
And Schwarzenegger would have made the better Dredd, for the first movie, as he has the jaw for it. And probably would have insisted on keeping the helmet on, as he values the craft above his own ego (what other A-list action hero would take on a movie where he gets pregnant?).
But I daresay his politics clashed with the totalitarian police regime setting.
Still enjoyed the movie mind. The second guy captured the role better though.
That would be Karl Urban. I totally agree… no matter what else I may think about the movie, he was the perfect actor to cast for the role. (Actually, I rather enjoyed both movies, albeit for different reasons, but even if I had hated the second movie, I would still have approved of Karl Urban as Dredd.)
(Responding here because we’ve hit max quote depth and I can’t respond to the actual message.)
Thanks for the detailed response about why you post the way you do. I’m sure you’re right and my perception of your posts is simply down to confirmation bias.
“I’m sure you’re right and my perception of your posts is simply down to confirmation bias.”
I appreciate that you’ve acknowledged that. Thank you.
@Yorp:
“And Schwarzenegger would have made the better Dredd, for the first movie, as he has the jaw for it.”
I mean I liked the first movie too – but it was very campy. But I like campy sometimes. I just know, from my limited knowledge of Judge Dredd in the comics, that he NEVER removes his helmet, and the fact that he had it off for most of the original movie irks me :) I understand the rationale that producers would have – you have a big name star like Stallone, you’re going to want the audience to see his face. But I think that’s also why the second movie was better.
“And probably would have insisted on keeping the helmet on, as he values the craft above his own ego (what other A-list action hero would take on a movie where he gets pregnant?).”
…. okay you’ve got me there. I can’t think of anyone that comes close to doing that other than Arnie.
“Still enjoyed the movie mind. The second guy captured the role better though.”
Definitely.
@MSpears:
“That would be Karl Urban. I totally agree… no matter what else I may think about the movie, he was the perfect actor to cast for the role. (Actually, I rather enjoyed both movies, albeit for different reasons, but even if I had hated the second movie, I would still have approved of Karl Urban as Dredd.)”
I did like both movies also. I just felt the second movie was better because Urban was a LOT more stoic and never removed the helmet. I think Stallone is in general a fun actor to watch also – Demolition Man is great. :)
Actually gonna correct you two times: in the comics, Dredd does take off his helmet, you just never see his face (and one time someone did, they almost threw up, kinda like with Deadpool)
Same in the second movie (which was more of a prequel, set at the start of the Judge system and the beginning of the Mega Cities), Urban took off his helmet butt you never saw Dredd’s full face
Can remember at the time of the first movie, reading a 2000AD and Tharg was giving Stallone a tour of the office and Stallone complained about someone putting superglue in the helmet :D
@Guesticus:
“Actually gonna correct you two times: in the comics, Dredd does take off his helmet, you just never see his face (and one time someone did, they almost threw up, kinda like with Deadpool)”
I’ll take your word on it :) I havent read a lot of 2000AD comics to know that, so thanks for the info :). At the very least, you don’t ever see Judge Dredd’s face in the comic, but you see Stallone’s mug for about 3/4ths of the movie.
“Stallone complained about someone putting superglue in the helmet”
That’s hilarious :) :) :)
Maybe the “scratches” are soot from the wingtips being on fire last page.
Would make sense. We can see that they haven’t recovered yet.
Or, worse, she DID penetrate Maxima’s skin, albeit in very thin lines, and was able to get a little bit of her blood on her wings, taking a sample of Maxima’s blood with her. Being a bloodmage, that could prove very dangerous in the future.
That… would be dangerous, yes. REALLY good point.
Ooh. Nastily good point.
The one plus being the centrifuge effect that Sciona herself created. Hopefully that should have spun off most of the blood. Then it is just a matter of whether Sciona’s magic is capable of making use of trace amounts.
I didn’t consider the centrifugal effect. Nice point :).
In either case, if DaveB wants to use it as a way that she got some of Maxima’s blood, it’s definitely within an acceptable suspension of disbelief from a narrative sense.
That’s definitely possible. But at best, it’s a scratch that doesn’t seem to even draw blood.
Also I should mention that Maxima DOES know that Sciona could be beaten up. Because she knows that Vale was able to do it, and I’m assuming that Maxima knows that she’s more powerful than Vale.
Which is kinda the definition of a scratch, something that just scratches the surface area without drawing blood, a cut is something that goes beyond the surface level of skin and hits the blood vessels
Agreed.
and looks to have perhaps cut her hair a little as well.
Could be just soot from her burning ether-wings… just saying :)
So… why fly when you can teleport?
Standard teleportation rules might apply, in that she needs to know, in detail, the location she wishes to teleport to
This is totally a guess, but it could also take a lot out of her to teleport, so she only does it as an emergency move.
Or maybe she can only do it once a day. With the same conclusion.
It’s a possibility. I’m just making guesses here, like everyone else, on why she doesn’t use it all the time.:)
Never took it any other way.
Whilst were at it though, here is another option. Sciona had been without her wings for a long time. After raiding the Dark Reliquary, she was underwater, so teleporting was convenient and the situation offered no pleasurable alternative. After that though …
Right, I agree. She didnt have the OPTION to use it when in the troll/orc/whatever body because she didn’t have the wings, which are apparently needed for non-blood tunnel teleportation. Just trying to come up with possible ideas for why, once she does have them, she wouldn’t use them constantly. My main guess is that it might take a lot of effort and tires her out.
Well there is that. But I linked to a page showing (and entitled) “the joy of flight”. We all would love to do what Sydney experienced there. Yet it would be that much more intense for Sciona. She is a member of a winged race. For her flying is as fundamental to quality of life as walking is to us.
Deus had no doubt that Sciona was going to fly away, despite having seen her teleport. She had endured years of stomping around on the ground. Now she can fly again!
It might not be all that intense for Sciona specifically BECAUSE she’s from a winged race. When everyone around you can do something that you can do, the act seems a lot more ordinary :) Sort of how most people probably aren’t overwhelmed by the fact that they can catch a ball thrown at them and throw it back, because most people can do that from childhood onward, but as far as it goes in the animal kingdom, the ability to catch AND throw a ball is something almost no other animal can do. :)
*throws a ball for you to go fetch it*
Yeah, butt we don’t know how long exactly she had been trapped with that Orc body, once she got her original body back (with a minor adjustment), of course she is going to want to ‘spread her wings’ a little >.>
Judging from how she agreed to Deus’s offer, she wanted to spread her wings for a lot of things since she hadn’t for a long time.
Sorry, that was coarse humor :) :) :)
*brings ball back, and places it at Pander‘s feet*
*tail wagging*
That… wasn’t her wings she spread :P
Bow chicka wow wow
That still leaves the question why she didn’t teleport before (like right after cutting wyrm-cooter to shreds) instead of flying all this way here?
My guess for that though would be that teleporting costs more energy than flying and Sciona didn’t feel the need to do that until she was pressured into a fight.
I’d be willing to guess that the Alari(or possibly just Sciona) aren’t used to having something in their weight class or higher around.
Or she may have been tracking something via her HUD, and now needs to start from scratch?
(Of course, uness the object blocks it, just use several teleports to triangulate a position, then teleport much closer to your target)
I agree –yet that leads to another question. A few comic-pages ago (#609 / archive #2791) Sciona talks as if she thinks she can make the world kneel before her –yet she already encountered and did not defeat Vale, and she knows that there are other supers in this world (#601 and #602 / archive #2754 & #2756). She might not know just how powerful they are (in #186 / archive #1189 Sciona is not one of the villains portrayed there, after the public display of the forces available to the new type of military police), but if she couldn’t defeat Vale, what is the basis for her thinking she could conquer the world?
And now that she has met Maxima, and did not slice her to chunks with her wings, and got seriously singed by Maxima’s energy blast, I’m thinking Sciona might start doing some reconsidering. To me, teleporting is an admission Sciona knew she was over-matched. It’s kind-of like sneaking about –but why should a world conquerer need to sneak about? (Which is my guess why she didn’t do it before.)
You don’t have to be single handedly strong to rule the world.
A large army with good motivation and tactics could do it. Or a combination of the right magical artefacts and a good plan.
Take over the right way and you get the people to restrain the supers for you. You might even get them to restrain themselves or do your bidding.
It probably has something to do with the ability to have your head (mostly) chopped off and still survive. It may be her power isn’t so much strength in battle as it is sheer unkillability.
Or she had allies who were able to keep her brain alive long enough to attach it to the ogre’s body – maybe Dr. Chuckles?
I was under the impression that Maxima and Sciona have fought before (Sciona had her head cut in half).
No, that’s just how the Twilight Counsel defeated her last time she got uppity. And obviously that didn’t work.
Correct. Although Maxima was once beaten by someone, who is now ‘presumed dead’, it is purely a coincidence that Sciona was also believed to have died. For the reason you said.
Further Maxima had no idea who Sciona was, and had to be briefed by Ingsol about her history. Something that would not have been necessary if she had fought her previously.
The most likely candidate for the unknown one is the guy we saw wrapped in bandages, like a mummy, and speaking in an Arabic language. On the page of super villains responding to Maxima’s challenge to the villains of the world, with her nuke-like attack as a backdrop.
Who may or may not be related to Lia (who believes herself to be the last, or only one, of her kind)
It was just a flesh wound.
Heh.
Her head wasn’t ‘cut in half’, it was cut off from the jaw down
Which actually raises the question: what did they do with the rest of her body? o_O
My running theory on how she survived is that Dr Chuckles or some other ally preserved the top of her head and then sewed it to the ogre to keep her alive. Dr Chuckles does seem like the most likely suspect, given he seems like a mad scientist and was after something called the Lazarus Scalpel.
Yea, I had assumed the same, in general, but your more detailed line of thought is persuasive.
I really must pop down to the shop for more gold stars!
That explains how the top of her head (and what amounts to her brain :P) survived, butt what did the Council of Evil do with the body?
Most likely ally to acquire her head would be that Vamp in league with Gunnie
Have a nasty thought that the Lazarus Scalpel doesn’t heal or bring someone back from the dead, butt simply, and nastilier, keeps someone alive while being ‘operated on’
No idea what the Lazarus Scalpel does, although the name does give a clue, since Lazarus of Bethany in the Bible came back to life after being dead for days, so it probably has something to do with resurrecting the dead.
But for it to be in the Dark Reliquary, rather than the Light Reliquary, it is likely to have some sinister aspect to it, and likely of a world-endangering nature. Army of Undead, being the term that springs most readily to mind, for that property.
Raising an army of the dead seems like it has a lot of dark potential, Yorp :)
We’re assuming that she’s even teleporting to where she was flying. She could be teleporting to one of her old hide outs. That would fulfill the familiarity requirements.
It might be short range. She ported out of a chamber in the vault, but that could have been to another chamber to raid it or straight to her blood portal.
That’s a good possibility also.
maybe she didn’t teleport where she was flying to but somewhere else just to get away from Max? So she couldn’t teleport where she wanted to go so she had to fly?
She probably knows that teleporting can be tracked after the fact, but might not know that the humans have got this new thing called NORAD.
(New by elf standards.)
Her armor appears to be technologicaly based rather than the cross of medieval and magic which is so common in “Looks like Yea Olde to better suit the elf like looks” which is so common in fantasy. You don’t get a clear plexiglass face shield on most 12th century armor, after all. So she is probably not at all ignorant of Earth’s tech level. After all, ruling a world has its perks, but ruling Earth in the middle ages would not be terribly appealing. To me, at least. I like flush toilets and people who shower daily.
:) :) +1
Perhaps she didn’t want her enemies to know about it. It’s good to have that ace in the sleeve for a emergency like fighting one of the strongest superheroes like for example Maxima.
Quite possibly range and resources.
Maybe it’s like blink with a very short range but good for getting away from a fight.
Almost positively she can only do it within a certain range, a certain times per day.
or. Also very likely. she used an item and she didn’t want to use items
If she has a proper long range, it could be charging time between shots. I have a hero in mine that can open a window to other places but can only do it every few hours. His team usually travel by jet should they need to get out of trouble quickly, though sometimes use it to the fight zone if something is time critical or need to arrive by stealth.
Good reflexes for Sciona there. A well practised NOPE-away.
Silly Dave, it wouldn’t be “Super Law and Super Order”, it would be a subtitle.
Something like:
Law & Order: Super Victims Unit
Law & Order: Supervillain Intent
And Sydney’s already come up with the format for the show – probably also a full casting and first season arc, by now. Someone get Favreau on the line!
In the criminal justice system, super-based offenses are considered especially disastrous. In New York City, the dedicated detectives who investigate these vicious felonies are members of an elite squad known as the Super Victims Unit. These are their stories.
+1
I keep thinking about all the criminals that were “gently coerced” into sex by “alien” succubi.
Or undead superheroine that tends to fall apart during fights and goes “You grabbed my breast!”
“No I didn’t!” “Look it’s still in your hand!” “EWWWW!”
Or the… I just realized i’ve never watched Law and order…
Anyhow I think it would be funnier if the bridge wasn’t built up to code and the investigation into the superhero fight would reveal that and Maxima goes “Phew dodged the bullet there” And Sydney goes “But it’s headed for me now!”
Undead Superhero that falls apart. Have you heard of Zombina yet?
How about a living hero that falls apart? Mr. Jigsaw the man of a thousand parts!
https://superheroes.wikia.com/wiki/Mr._Jigsaw
Coming home from the club, with a date, and he left his willy in his other jeans.
That’s just…. so wrong.
And I thought Arm-Fall-Off Boy was bad.
Eh, ‘e is mostly ‘armless.
I would give you a hand, in supporting him, but I am somewhat deficient in that department myself.
Why the puns. Dear god, why.
Would it be disarming to say “Because the hand of God reached down and armed us with the wit and the will”?
…. my brain hurts from that one.
Arm-Fall-Off-Boy? A fourth string hero at best.
Check out Visual Eye, one of the members of the Golden Age superhero team in The Tick universe:
Rocket from the sockets!
I missed that episode apparently =D
At least the Tick was trying to be funny. Legion of Superheroes was being serious…. and they came up with Arm-Fall-Off Boy. :)
Sorry, I’m just reminded of one of the /silly quotes from World of Warcraft:
“Of course they’re real! They’re not mine, but they’re real!” (Eww.)
That was the initial picture I had. Although playing Undead in WoW is… difficult. I mean… “Pumpkin” farms?
Love the intro read. But voting for Supervillain Intent because there is already an SVU.
Also the victims aren’t super the perps are.
Law & Order only has two rules…
1.The Rich White Guy is ALWAYS the bad guy(even when he didn’t commit the crime)
2.Jack McCoy is always right.
I don’t know the subtitled ones that well…8-P
Hmm probably a play off NCIS is morel ikely.. because they are military.
Am I the only one who thinks Sciona used a glamour spell instead of a teleport to fool Max?
Possibly, but I don’t think so.
So you think… she flashed her?
I saw what you did there.
Probably not a good idea to try some flavor of invisibility or illusion against someone with a clear temper and willingness to fill the entire battlefield with fireball.
Plus. Unless Sciona’s glamour hides sound too, like X, Maxima could easily just track her by heartbeat.
And even if it does… If Dabbler can track an invisible X by their sound-occlusion enough to put a fireball in their general area, so can Max.
“Plus. Unless Sciona’s glamour hides sound too, like X, Maxima could easily just track her by heartbeat.”
[nitpick]It’s been lampshaded that we don’t know whether or not Max has super hearing, so she might not be able to track by heartbeat.[/nitpick] That said, I can’t imagine that Sciona is being absolutely silent — I’d imagine there’d be some panicked breathing, some noise from her wings and/or equipement, etc.
The author told us that Maxima does not have super hearing, but that her elf-like ears do give her enough of an edge to pick up a conversation on the other side of a room, or across a pool. Hearing heartbeats is more likely something the vampires or lycanthropes (especially the bunnies) are likely to be able to do. Or, you know, supers with super hearing.
That is highly likely, as we don’t know Max’s resistance to magic is. Like, we know she can take her own fallout. But can she take a Phantasmal Foe? For all we know, her mind/brain/spirit is the only thing that isn’t superfied by her stat dump powers. And she’s probably just considered a well mentally trained human.
She resisted the vampire powers of Sciona’s robot.
Only because the lens was cracked, far as I recall.
Even corroborated by WoD
Why…. look at that! Maxima TACKLES HER!
But I could have sworn people were telling me that Maxima would never tackle, because that would not be reasonable to do! Surely Maxima is not nearly fast enough to TACKLE!
Oh look! Sciona is able to teleport! I’m pretty sure that someone said that would be impossible too!
OH MY! Sciona’s wings were not able to slice Maxima to ribbons!
I swear …. this comic is wonderful vindication. :)
Judging by the “Innocent Bystander Justice Stomp” sound effect, I believe that was more of a kick than a tackle…
It was something she COULD have done over the water instead of a plasma blast. :)
she was trying to “taze” her or turn her away from the bridge. it was obvious what Sciona was going to attack the bridge. She had the ability to use Max’s power against her, but Max was totally within escalation of force protocols.
You don’t ‘taze’ someone with a damn plasma-ball!!
+1 :)
Depends on the someone – Denise the Menace not so much even though he would deserve it and a large number of people would be more than happy to see them ash-shamed – Ultron may or may not be annoyed – Sciona as a high powered magic wielding murderous sociopath falls within the parameters of acceptable force levels. Too bad the plasma balls have a dellayed blast effect instead of on-impact. Something to save for next time.
That’s still not tazing
You do use plasma-balls as a taser when the opponent has already proved she can survive decapitation.
Where are you getting that plasma blasts are tasers? Have you ever seen a taser? How many tasers do you know that melt through tanks, solid steel blocks, and bridges and cause EXPLOSIONS?
Call that a Taser?
This is a Taser.
1) She was not trying to taze Scionawith a blast powerful enough to blow up a bridge.
2) Plasma blasts blow things up, they don’t electrocute.
3) Maxima was totally able to do a stomp of justice INSTEAD of using her most powerful attack, the plasma blast (despite her only using it at 15 percent of it’s power, which was still enough to blow up a damned huge suspension bridge).
4) She does not have the ability to use Max’s power against her. Not sure where you got THAT from.
I’m not actually sure that Max’s blast is actually her most powerful attack. It’s clearly very powerful, flashy, and wonderfully dramatic for demonstration purposes, and when used in an explosive manner, quite possibly her least discriminate attack, in that explosions don’t care about any detail of those in their area of effect.
However, on an individual basis, she might be able to do more damage by doing a super-speed spearing of the target with a 200 pound tungsten carbide drill, or similar high-strength, heavy pointed object.
Her Plasma Balls are (is?) her most powerful attack, just because she is able to adjust the force doesn’t stop it from being her most powerful attack
First, even Max has said that she didn’t do that attack at full power, and presuming she’s actually smart, she has kept her most powerful abilities secret. The Air Force or Archon might know about more powerful abilities she’s worked on, due to their involvement in testing them, but that’s at best uncertain.
The plasma attack is simply the biggest boom that she’s made public knowledge, and clearly, one of the hardest to keep secret if used at a high power level. It’s flashy, spectacular, and has easy visual and emotional parallels to nuclear weapons, which to date are the most powerful weapons known.
But there are situations where other weapons can accomplish what nuclear weapons can’t, such as the destruction of relatively deep bunkers, where the GBU-28 bunker-buster deep penetration bomb would shine. It’s not always the biggest blast, it’s how much of that force is delivered precisely on target. Any force that splashes away from the target is a waste.
Like said, just because she can adjust the level doesn’t stop it from being her most powerful attack
Oh my god, not this again.
“You were holding a knife, a .22 pistol, and a bazooka, and you shot someone with the .22?! That was clearly your most powerful attack, because firearms are your most powerful attack!”
I’m not even sure Max *has* any ranged powers aside from the plasma balls.
Might be worth noting that to-date, I think her plasma-energy attack is her only ranged ability we know of.
… do you not know that a bazooka is more powerful than a .22? Also that they’re different weapons not the same weapon? Your comparison makes absolutely no sense.
A more accurate comparison, would be a grenade launcher and swapping out the Big Boom-Boom for the Bean Bag
The grenade launcher could still be considered the most powerful weapon they have, they can just adjust the rounds to be less lethal (can still die from a high velocity bean bag, or even rubber bullets)
I don’t understand if people are being intentionally obtuse or if they genuinely don’t understand what’s being said, because several people DO understand what is being said and have described what it means for the plasma blast to be her most powerful attack (regardless of the fact that it can be of a variable intensity) and a few people KEEP ON SAYING THE SAME INCORRECT MISSTATEMENT.
Why not just let people ramble on about what they think, and just plain have fun? Why not let people enjoy something without your teeth in their ankle, huh?
🐼 🐼 🐼 🐼
🐼 *GNAW, GNAW, GNAW* 🐼
🐼 🐼 🐼 🐼
“Why not just let people ramble on about what they think”
Hey I’m not stopping them from rambling on. I’m just pointing out when they’re wrong, and when they’re doing an awful job of responding to my posts by ignoring what I said, misstating what I said, launching personal insults and ad hominem attacks, and just plain making stuff up. But I’m not preventing them from making statements which I consider to be ignorant.
” and just plain have fun?”
They honestly don’t seem to be having fun when respondingi to my posts – they seem more angry, as if when I’m giving legitimate criticism of a fictional character, I’ve insulted their mothers (with a few exceptions like Yorp, who’s generally adorable).
“Why not let people enjoy something without your teeth in their ankle, huh?”
I’m thinking that my comments and reasoning to them are too far over their head to be down at their ankles. Okay that was more a pun than an insult – I needed to say it because it’s clever wordplay.
@Yorp;
See? He’s adorable.
Pander, stop using your words correctly, people don’t like that :P
:)
Is that Panda doing a “Eugene” and biting that handlers sausage? o_O
No it is a cute baby panda playing with its keeper’s booted feet, and nibbling gently at the wellingtons.
Oh, thought that was an adult panda gnawing on something a lot higher (and the keeper would have been screaming about three octave’s higher :P)
Sorry to ruin your victory but now that Max know the Hadoken don’t work on Sciona she have to use a different tactic even though it means going into range of those choppy wings. When stopping dangerous individuals like Sciona you must accept risks like that.
doesn’t work? it singed her wings when she even blocked tbe thing
Maxima knew that Sciona was vulnerable to physical attacks already. Remember Vale’s attack? Maxima knew that was effective. Not to mention she could have done this stomp attack 10 seconds earlier, when she was over the water heading towards the bridge.
You haven’t ruined my victory at all. The sourness of the grapes being served provide a lovely contrast to the sweetness of the victory I’m tasting.
Was just about to point that out as well
With the added benefit of kicking her into the bottom of the river, any word on Sci-fright’s water-breathing abilities?
She hasn’t breathed a word about them.
I see what you did there and will grudgingly give you a +1 for it.
The 7th ‘Wearing the Cape’ book is about to become available.
In the fan preview Astra saved hostages but injured the suspect who later died.
She will go before a review board to determine if her actions were justified or constituted excessive use of force.
I’ve heard a lot of good things about ‘Wearing the Cape.’
I read the fan-preview; and I didn’t see any mention of a review board. Only that it would become a media problem.
Blackstone already confirmed that extracting the criminal, that was holding hostages, as quickly as possible was an approved order.
‘Just following orders’ doesn’t carry the weight it used to.
The Trolley Dilema supports the logic of sacrifing one to save many.
(She was using less than lethal force.)
The board will probably not recommend censure in this case.
Haven’t read Wearing the Cape.(But I did see the preview.)
What she did was rough, and probably didn’t help that guy’s chance of survival. But it was perfectly legal.
That guy’s power was incredibly dangerous and was holding civilians in an unstable environment. He needed to be removed from the area as quickly as possible.
They make those light up shoes in adult sizes??
Oops….I’ve replyed to the wrong thread. ^Disreguard^
How can I, with such an intriguing line?
Are those ‘glow in the dark’ socks?
Luminous underwear worn with short skirts?
I … uh … don’t have any more suggestions, and need to go somewhere … dark.
Yes. Yes they do
https://www.kohls.com/product/prd-2969561/skechers-energy-lights-parkey-mens-light-up-shoes.jsp
You would not catch me with those on my feet.
That was cruel, hope that puppy pissed in her shoes (and then took a crap in her bra!)
Yea, I don’t approve of abusing animals for people’s amusement. It clearly was having difficulty walking. However, at the end, it was standing calmly and not showing signs of distress, which mitigates the degree of their cruelty.
However it could very easily have severely distressed the animal, and could have led to an accidental injury, in its panic. Further such may have happened after that clip, had it tried to run around again. Whoever did that should not have endanger their pet.
Seemed to me the clip ended before the puppy could voice his displeasure, it was like he was standing there, stunned, thinking “you made me where this crap, and tossed me a scrap, like i’m some human child?”
Nah, the doggy seems happy and got a treat :)
Mmm, rewatching I still don’t think the doggy was happy. The tail had no hint of wagging.
I would say that it was used to such (mild) abuse and was carefully watching its owner to see how they took it. Importantly, even after getting its treat, and being told that it had did good, it still did not react any differently.
Whilst bearing in mind that no dog will like stumbling around, because of having something tied on its feet. So we should not assume that its initial state is that of a happy dog, just because we could hear people laughing.
Not all dogs are tail waggers mind. My late Jack Russel did not, so I had to be very good at picking up peripheral clues. For instance if I had given her a treat, to make up for something (say taking her to the vets), I would expect her to relax, knowing that the ordeal was over. Which is easy to spot.
I could not see anything other than the dog carrying on looking very wary.
And it took miles of distance to catch up and do that. She wouldn’t have been able to do that before Sciona got to the bridge.
You are forgetting (or ignoring) the fact that Maxi was following Sci-fright to see where she was going, not out to catch her until she was detected and blew up the bridge
Yes, she would have been able to do that before the bridge. This stomp of justice literally happens within 10 seconds after when she could have stomped her the first time.
Honestly, first you and others argue that Maxima couldn’t have stomped her or shot at her with a bullet because they were just going too darned fast before the bridge…. now the argument is Maxima COULD do it BECAUSE they’re going fast? More consistency in your arguments please.
Not to mention you’re again making up numbers. There’s nothing to say ‘miles and miles of distance’ at all. Not to mention Maxima HAD miles and miles of distance BEFORE the bridge anyway. Your argument is refuted twice.
Go back to last page, with the streak of Sciona fleeing, and two panels later the streak of Maxima in pursuit.
10 seconds is all they need to cover “miles and miles”, and the bridge was closer than that.
I love how whenever anyone argues with me about ANYTHING, they always use rampant speculation instead of what’s actually in the comic.
No, it’s not miles and miles. It’s mere seconds after what happened, and Maxima spent a few of those mere seconds doing her patchwork on the bridge. So which is it – is Maxima fast enough to easily catch her before she hit the bridge, or not?
Pander, you are speculating when you say:
The comic has no time stamp on the panels. The time could be as you say, or distance could be as they say. We know that Sciona can fly at supersonic speeds, so travelling miles is entirely plausible.
In fact 10 seconds, at Mach 1 would cover over 2 miles (2.1313 ignoring acceleration time required to reach that speed). Whilst 10 seconds at Mach 4 would be over 8 miles! (8.525 likewise ignoring acceleration required). Meaning that you can both be correct (as regards when and where this scene takes place).
We have no context, so the time frames are up to us to interpret. Should I wish to take it as an hour having passed, and Sciona having started to relax and slow down, then there is nothing about the scene which would prohibit that interpretation.
Note I am not proposing this, as the action would flow better if it was shorter. However I am pointing out that, as they are not in sight of the bridge, the scene could take anywhere, so people are free to speculate as they choose.
However you have chosen to say that it “literally” happened within the time frame you chose. You cannot substantiate your speculation.
“The comic has no time stamp on the panels. The time could be as you say, or distance could be as they say. We know that Sciona can fly at supersonic speeds, so travelling miles is entirely plausible.”
It’s not ‘rampant’ speculation – it’s an educated guess based on existing information. The bridge has not collapsed yet, so it’s within 30 seconds She’s over land now instead of water, so it’s probably more than a few seconds afterwards. From a narrative standpoint, it can’t be closer to 30 seconds than to 1 second because then there would be no time for Halo and the others to get there in time to do anything. So I made an estimate of 10 seconds, which fits nicely into the ‘first half of a 30 second interval. I also based it on that Sciona only was able to get 7 1/2 words out before getting stomped, and happened exactly one panel afterwards.
See… my estimates are based on what actually happens in the comic
“In fact 10 seconds, at Mach 1 would cover over 2 miles (2.1313 ignoring acceleration time required to reach that speed). Whilst 10 seconds at Mach 4 would be over 8 miles! (8.525 likewise ignoring acceleration required). Meaning that you can both be correct (as regards when and where this scene takes place).”
While POSSIBLE, it’s unlikely to be 8 miles away. It’s also unlikely to be 2 miles away because for the first few seconds, Sciona would not be travelling at Mach 1 or higher, as she was dousing her wings to put out the fire, which would slow her down.
So yes, there’s no time stamp, so I used all the other relevant evidence to guess on how long it took Maxima. Not ‘rampant’ speculation.
“We have no context, so the time frames are up to us to interpret. Should I wish to take it as an hour having passed, and Sciona having started to relax and slow down, then there is nothing about the scene which would prohibit that interpretation.”
It is EXCEEDINGLY unlikely that Sciona took an hour before she bothered to say anything. It’s also exceedingly unlikely, from a narrative standpoint, that DaveB decided that the bridge collapse was so unimportant that we didn’t need to see what happened when it happens.
“However you have chosen to say that it “literally” happened within the time frame you chose. You cannot substantiate your speculation.”
I can definitely substantiate it, but it’s a guess, based on the best available evidence that is in the comic itself, rather than any assumptions not taken from what’s actually happening. If I wanted to be EXTREMELY exact on it, I would say ‘it happened any time between 1 second afterwards and 30 seconds afterwards, although the likelihood is it’s within the time frame it takes Sciona to utter 7 1/2 words, and within a time frame allowing for Halo to get to the bridge, based on the 30 second window of opportunity that Maxima stated.’
But that’s really wordy, and I’m wordy enough when it comes to explaining the law – so I just said 10 seconds, because I timed myself on how long it would take for me to say what Sciona said.
Talking is a free action. ;-)
But not bad guesses.
I would write an entire diatribe on that response that you just made, but it was too cute.
Wait, you are actually agreeing that Maxi could have physically intercepted Sci-fright before the bridge?
No Guesticus, there is nothing about Rakaydos‘s statement which implies that.
We could see that Sciona was very much closer to the bridge than Maxima. At those speeds Sciona could have reached the bridge in heart beat.*
If Maxima is 3 times further away, she would need to have at least 3 times higher top flight speed than Sciona. If she is 4 times she needs 4 times more. We know that Sciona can travel at at least Mach 1. Which means that Maxima needs to be able to travel at Mach 3 or Mach 4. Which we know she can do.
However note the “at least”. In the briefing Maxima indicated that the target (which we now know to be Sciona) was supersonic. Which is not quoting any mach number, so Sciona could have been travelling at any mach speed. Picking a nice non-contentious one, say 4, that would mean that Maxima would have to be able to fly at Mach 12 (if 3 times the distance) or Mach 16 (if 4 times the distance).
Those are far far above the speed that we have observed Maxima flying at. Maxima however knows what speed the bogey had been going at, and has been following Sciona since. Plus she knows her own maximum speed. So it is reasonable to say that she has a far better understanding of whether she could cover the distance in time, than we do.
* Figuratively speaking but, if you crunch the numbers, potentially literally. However that would require estimating the distances, which are under dispute, so I will stick with the safer descriptor.
TLDR: Maxima could be twice as fast as Sciona yet still be unable to save the bridge by using a melee attack. However could still catch up after the incident.
Except, Maxi was able to catch up to Sci, after Sci had a huge head start
How big that head start was depends on how much time Maxima spent repairing the bridge. We have no idea how long that was.
Likewise Sciona’s overconfidence could have meant that she was not flying at her full speed. We have seen several examples of her overconfidence, and her dialogue in the first panel shows that she was very much in that mode again. Not proof that she was being tardy, but it is suggestive that she may have been.
But, regardless of how big a head start she had, if Maxima is twice as fast, she would catch up in due course. Unless Sciona got over the horizon and Maxima lost sight of her.
That by the way, I should point out, would only take a few seconds, at the speeds she could travel at, ‘with her pedal to the metal’. So there is an upper limit to how much of a head start Sciona could have had. Unless Sciona stayed in a nice straight line, and Maxima noted her bearing, whilst continuing to work.
We could see that it was at least long enough for Sci’s wake to die down, butt not go completely
This is true too, and part of the reasoning I had for my estimation of how much time passed before Maxima caught up. :)
So you get to assume time frames and use them as fact and I don’t? That’s a nice double standard there.
I’m basing it on the fact that Maxima said the bridge would hold for only about 30 seconds, and Sciona did not manage to get out a complete sentence before she tackled her. So it’s some amount of time that’s less than 30 seconds, and more likely the amount of time equal to what it takes for Sciona to say her partial sentence.
So no, I’m not making up a time frame like you did. I’m using what happened in the comic. It’s not a double standard – I use a basis of fact represented in the comic, but you made stuff up as you went along.
So what you’re saying is you’re assuming that she started her partial sentence immediately after leaving rather than, say, catching her breath before saying it (I mean, she WAS just on fire)
No, I’m saying she started her partial sentence after she doused her wings and Maxima took off. Because that’s what happened in the last strip, and that’s where the timer would ‘start.’
And since no timeframe between the pages is noted, you assigning a timeframe other than “within a couple of hours, seeing as it’s still nighttime” is, as you put it, “rampant speculation”.
“And since no timeframe between the pages is noted, you assigning a timeframe other than “within a couple of hours, seeing as it’s still nighttime” is, as you put it, “rampant speculation”.”
Methinks you don’t understand what ‘rampant speculation’ means.
It doesn’t mean an educated guess based on the specific things which have happened in the comic.
Maxima said Alpha team has bout 30 seconds before the bridge patch job fails. The bridge has not yet collapsed, so therefore it’s under 30 seconds. Since Alpha Team is going to need at least SOME time to stabilize the bridge long enough to get people off of it, it’s a safe assessment to say that it would be significantly under 30 seconds. Since Sciona only managed to get a partial sentence out before Maxima caught up, we’re probably talking the low end – how long does it take a person to say 7 1/2 words? 10-15 seconds is therefore a reasonable assessment. Especially since you see in the previous panel yesterday Maxima zooming after Sciona, and then you see the result of that in panel two HERE, giving Sciona exactly one panel to say her 7 1/2 words.
Saying a few hours would NOT be a reasonable assessment, since that would mean the bridge had long since collapsed. You’re not logicking hard enough.
How do you know the bridge hasn’t collapsed yet? Why do you think Maxima’s estimation of how long her patch will last is at all accurate (especially considering you believe her judgment to be terrible considering you think that using the energy attack was unreasonable)?
Why do you think that Sciona tried to say her partial sentence only seconds after leaving? A perfectly reasonable course of events would be that after leaving she had to catch her breath, let adrenaline die down (or whatever Alari’s equivalent is), considering she was just lit on fire. Then, after a while, mid-sentence, she gets attacked in dramatically convenient timing (almost entirely ineffectively, I might add, which would be WHY Maxima tried to blow her up instead, because it was pretty likely that tackling her not only wouldn’t be very effective, but could result in a fight that could involve the bridge, especially since that was her intention in the first place. Whereas neither of them had any clue that Sciona could deflect the energy attack).
And of course “a few hours” isn’t reasonable, but if you’re talking about what’s supported in the comic, literally the only thing that isn’t speculation is that it’s still nighttime, and thus it occurred within a few hours of the last page. Any other timeframe is speculative.
If you’re going to berate people for speculation then don’t do it yourself. You have no basis at all to say that this occurred within 10 seconds.
Tell you what – lets wait for tomorrow’s strip, and when you see that the bridge did not collapse by the time Maxima hit Sciona, I will accept your gracious apology and admission of you being horribly, completely wrong.
“How do you know the bridge hasn’t collapsed yet?”
Because it hasnt happened in the comic yet. When coming up with an opinion, I tend to base it on what I see or don’t see, or some sort of circumstantial evidence of what would have happened or not happened, to establish the burden of proof of whether something happened or did not happen. You know…. logic.
“Why do you think that Sciona tried to say her partial sentence only seconds after leaving?”
Because it happened one panel later, with no time skip. Why are YOU assuming a huge amount of time happened, when there was no time skip, nothing denoting the passage of time, etc? Because you’re making an assumption NOT based on evidence, because you want to make up facts to support your argument (or in this case, to support your argument AND to try to dispute mine) You’re not doing a very good job of it.
“And of course “a few hours” isn’t reasonable, but if you’re talking about what’s supported in the comic, literally the only thing that isn’t speculation is that it’s still nighttime, and thus it occurred within a few hours of the last page. Any other timeframe is speculative.”
So…. in your incredibly odd world, Sciona flew away, and for minutes to hours after, she said nothing until she decided to say 7 1/2 words, at which time Maxima stomped her. During which nothing happened to the bridge, no reports came in on Maxima’s headset, no storytelling was done by DaveB to denote what happened to the bridge. What an odd world you live in, with no narrative structure or coherence of what normally happens from one panel to the next panel timewise, especially since we were given a MAXIMUM amount of time during which Maxima could have caught up before the bridge collapse (30 seconds) – which would mean Maxima not only let people die from one reckless act, but then let them die from the second of chasing after Sciona instead of saving those hundreds of people.
But again – lets wait until we see what happened with the bridge, probably in the very next strip, and I’ll wait for your apology, which you’ll of course not give since you’re going to be stubborn and double down despite being wrong.
“It hasn’t happened in the comic yet” doesn’t amount to much when flashbacks are a thing and simultaneously occurring events can’t be shown together very well.
I’m not assuming a huge amount of time elapsed. Maybe you should actually read what I wrote. YOU, on the other hand are assuming that very little time has elapsed, with nothing but speculation to support that.
There is nothing unreasonable about 1 minute occurring between last page and this one. As for “reports on Maxima’s headset”, this page was entirely focused on Sciona because narratively appropriate sentence interruption is funny, and doing anything involving Maxima prior to that would detract from it.
And I most certainly will not apologize for accusing you of hypocrisy, regardless of whatever the result is next page.As a matter of fact, I don’t even doubt that it was 10 seconds. You’re just a hypocrite and I came to inform you of that.
You’re still wrong about Maxima using the bomb instead of tackling her before the bridge though, for reasons unrelated to being able to do so. The JUSTICE STOMP didn’t do anything to stop Sciona from escaping, which as evidenced by last page is more important to Maxima than ensuring the safety of the bridge. It was entirely reasonable to use heavier ordnance to both protect the bridge and prevent her escape, neither of which were likely to occur if she tackled her instead.
““It hasn’t happened in the comic yet” doesn’t amount to much when flashbacks are a thing and simultaneously occurring events can’t be shown together very well.”
1) And yet you people argue (incorrectly btw) that the plasma blast always explodes on impact until now
2) At the point in the timeline of the comic, you can’t use future events that are not part of that generalized point in the flashback.
“I’m not assuming a huge amount of time elapsed.”
Actually yes, you are.
“Maybe you should actually read what I wrote.”
I have. Maybe you should read what you write before hitting ‘Submit Comment.’
“YOU, on the other hand are assuming that very little time has elapsed, with nothing but speculation to support that.”
It’s amazing. I’ve actually given a detailed reason why very little time has elapsed, and you still say it’s ‘nothing but speculation.’ It’s not rampant speculation – it’s based on what’s been said in the comic, the fact that it’s one panel after, and that there’s no supporting evidence that the bridge has collapsed, meaning it has to be significantly below 30 seconds. I don’t think DaveB is a poor story teller that he’d just have the bridge collapse without even MENTIONING it. He’s been extremely detailed and excellent with the narratives so far, in fact.
“There is nothing unreasonable about 1 minute occurring between last page and this one.”
Then Sciona is the slowest talker on the planet. Also the bridge would have collapsed, or we would have at least seen Alpha Team trying to stop that from happening before breaking to Sciona again.
“doing anything involving Maxima prior to that would detract from it.”
I am so looking forward to the next couple of pages just so I can point and laugh at you being wrong.. Figuratively that is. I’m not sitting at my computer pointing and laughing.
“And I most certainly will not apologize for accusing you of hypocrisy, regardless of whatever the result is next page.”
Wow :) After you are proven wrong you won’t apologize. That seems to imply that you’re the hypocrite, and you’re not arguing because you think you’re correct – you’re arguing because you’re just being a troll.
“As a matter of fact, I don’t even doubt that it was 10 seconds.”
Because…..? Do you have evidence-based reasoning for why you think it’s less than 10 seconds? Because I did – and I explained why. The fact that you don’t agree with the reasoning just says something about your inability to understand my reasoning, not the credibility of that reasoning.
“You’re just a hypocrite and I came to inform you of that.”
Lets see… you agree that it’s less than 10 seconds… but you’ve argued it’s not. You seem to be the hypocrite here. I’ve based everything on evidence presented and facts.
I understand though. You’re on the internet, you’re anonymous, and it feels good to be able to try to troll, do your little virtue signalling of calling others hypocrites and whatnot, and start an argument and namecall. It …. just doesn’t make you look good, man. Mainly because I’ve been consistent on how I come to my reasoning, while you are not consistent at all.
“You’re still wrong about Maxima using the bomb instead of tackling her before the bridge though, for reasons unrelated to being able to do so. ”
I am not wrong about that. She does that exact thing in the above panels. Nothing has changed on her ability to do that since when they were over the water.
“The JUSTICE STOMP didn’t do anything to stop Sciona from escaping,”
But the justice stomp WOULD have prevented Sciona from getting to the bridge, which was the entire point. THAT would have ensured the safety of the bridge, without opening Maxima up to negligence by her plasma blast hitting the bridge, since there would have been no plasma blast in the first place.
“which as evidenced by last page is more important to Maxima than ensuring the safety of the bridge.”
Whether or not Maxima cares more about a criminal escaping than citizens dying from her actions does not HELP Maxima’s case in a lawsuit – it hurts it.
“It was entirely reasonable to use heavier ordnance”
It was not. And especially not as the first move. Police don’t immediately start using explosives. In a hostage situation, they don’t immediately rush the building. Police actually are supposed to care about not getting civilians killed from their actions. If Maxima is putting that secondary, that’s bad for her in a lawsuit.
“to both protect the bridge”
She didn’t protect the bridge. She destroyed/massively damaged the bridge to the point where it is basically destroyed, and endangered all those people as a result.
“and prevent her escape”
She didn’t prevent her escape anyway. She can’t even argue successfully that, at least, she stopped the bad guy. Which wouldnt have been a defense in a negligence case ANYWAY.
“neither of which were likely to occur if she tackled her instead.”
Actually the safety of the bridge WOULD have occurred if she tackled her into the water. And as for whether Sciona being submerged in the water would have done anything to prevent her from teleporting or flying away, THAT would be speculation, which I’m not doing. Unlike you – where your entire post has been speculation for your belief, while ignoring the fact-based reasoning of mine.
Talk about hypocrisy :) :) :)
“1) And yet you people argue (incorrectly btw) that the plasma blast always explodes on impact until now”
Which I haven’t argued. Please don’t assign others’ statements to myself.
““I’m not assuming a huge amount of time elapsed.”
Actually yes, you are.”
Please quote any point I have stated that a significant amount of time HAS elapsed, rather than stating that there’s no hard evidence to support a short timeframe.
“It’s amazing. I’ve actually given a detailed reason why very little time has elapsed, and you still say it’s ‘nothing but speculation.’ It’s not rampant speculation – it’s based on what’s been said in the comic, the fact that it’s one panel after, and that there’s no supporting evidence that the bridge has collapsed, meaning it has to be significantly below 30 seconds. I don’t think DaveB is a poor story teller that he’d just have the bridge collapse without even MENTIONING it. He’s been extremely detailed and excellent with the narratives so far, in fact.”
1. It’s speculation because there is no definitive proof.
2. It’s the next PAGE not the next panel.
3. You still haven’t answered why you think Maxima’s 30 second guess is correct in any way.
4. He skipped Sydney’s first level up to go to the restaurant before using a flashback to go back to it.
““There is nothing unreasonable about 1 minute occurring between last page and this one.”
Then Sciona is the slowest talker on the planet.”
Reasonable course of events: Sciona gets lit on fire. “Shit!”. Douses wings and leaves. Between last PAGE and this PAGE, pants for a while while the adrenaline rush of being LIT ON FIRE wears off. Then, laughs to herself about heroes getting distracted by innocent bystanders easily and gets cut off with comedically appropriate timing. This can easily be longer than 10 seconds.
“Wow :) After you are proven wrong you won’t apologize. That seems to imply that you’re the hypocrite, and you’re not arguing because you think you’re correct – you’re arguing because you’re just being a troll.”
One can’t be proven wrong if they aren’t arguing in favor of anything in the first place.
I’m arguing that you’re a hypocrite, and the easiest way to do that is to play devil’s advocate, because it demonstrates your usage of your maligned speculation.
Also, even if I was arguing in favor of some amount of time passing, rather than the possibility of such, and was proven wrong on the next page, there’s still no reason why anyone ought to apologize. Apologies are for moral wrongdoing, which incorrectly speculating is not. Admitting incorrectness would be appropriate, though since I’m not arguing that it IS the case, and instead am arguing that you’re being a hypocrite by stating your speculation to be fact, that wouldn’t be warranted by myself either.
“Lets see… you agree that it’s less than 10 seconds… but you’ve argued it’s not. You seem to be the hypocrite here. I’ve based everything on evidence presented and facts.”
I’ve argued that it might not be, because there’s no conclusive evidence that it’s within that short of a timeframe. Instead of definitively stating something based entirely on speculation (“This stomp of justice literally happens within 10 seconds after when she could have stomped her the first time.”).
“But the justice stomp WOULD have prevented Sciona from getting to the bridge, which was the entire point.”
How would it have stopped Sciona from dragging a melee over to the bridge? She wasn’t immobilized or disabled, or even significantly harmed by the stomp that she DIDN’T see coming. One that she DID see coming would have fared even worse.
“Whether or not Maxima cares more about a criminal escaping than citizens dying from her actions does not HELP Maxima’s case in a lawsuit – it hurts it.”
A criminal with a WMD and a desire to use it, which would most likely harm a lot more people than are on the bridge.
“She didn’t protect the bridge. She destroyed/massively damaged the bridge to the point where it is basically destroyed, and endangered all those people as a result.”
Due to unforeseeable circumstances. It’s not like she fired at Sciona with the bridge behind her, which has a very foreseeable circumstance of missing and hitting the bridge. Which, as I mentioned below, is why she wouldn’t be convicted of criminal negligence, because a reasonable person could not have foreseen the outcome, given there was no reason to believe that Sciona could deflect it.
“Actually the safety of the bridge WOULD have occurred if she tackled her into the water” … “THAT would be speculation, which I’m not doing.”
Stating that the bridge definitely would have been safe with no hard evidence is literally the definition of speculation.
“Unlike you – where your entire post has been speculation for your belief. Talk about hypocrisy :) :) :)”
Except, unlike you, I’m not decrying speculation, which means myself speculating isn’t hypocrisy.
Btw, please no Cathy Newmanning :)
If you don’t know what Cathy Newmanning is, google Jordan Peterson Cathy Newman interview, or Cathy Newman memes.
We don’t know relative positions. It could easily be Sciona was gong to intersect the bridge before Maxima could tackle her, so she “sent the shot on ahead”. In their second encounter there was no split-second time pressure and the knowledge her ranged attack is unreliable.
I mean, if you want to keep arguing Dave ‘s an idiot-author, sure. But at the end of the day I’m not seeing him deliberately make his central tactical badass out as inept no matter how vehemently you try to cast her in that role.
Believe you meant to quote someone else, we have been on the same side (so far) about what Maxi could or should have done
Yes. I wasn’t arguing with what you said. Pretty sure I meant that as a response to Mike. The replies are getting pretty long.
Long, and frustratingly annoying :D
Amen!
Yes and that’s why she was so far back and wasn’t able to catch up (or at least didn’t think she’d be able to catch up) before they reached the bridge.
Taking the shot was a perfectly reasonable action to stop a villain from endangering bystanders.
“Yes and that’s why she was so far back and wasn’t able to catch up (or at least didn’t think she’d be able to catch up) before they reached the bridge.”
She was CLOSER before the bridge than she was when she caught up to Sciona AFTER the bridge. Seriously, why are you doubling down on this when the facts simply do not support your argument?
“Taking the shot was a perfectly reasonable action to stop a villain from endangering bystanders.”
Again, no it was not reasonable. I’ve already stated, multiple times, exactly why it wasn’t reasonable, and you never bother to actually refute any of my arguments with any sort of detail –
you just say no. Also the only person who wound up endangering bystanders was Maxima.
If it took miles to catch Sciona all that proves is that Sciona had no intentions of attacking the bridge.
Hardly. Her reaction after being attacked says nothing about how she may have behaved prior to that.
Whereas travelling down one valley, then noticing that she was being tailed, and suddenly diverting to another, leading to a bridge, does imply that she is up to no good. Throw in the facts that she is a homicidal maniac, and has made a terrorist attack on a political body, and the police again after that, and that she is believed to be in possession of one or more WMD and it would be irresponsible not to assume the worst!
Giving the benefit of the doubt is something that we do when the lives of people are not on the line. When they are, and there is no time to explore the alternatives, it is quite right to make a call ‘on the balance of probability’.
And that scale is very heavily weighed towards Sciona having malicious intent.
However it is not ‘beyond the shadow of a doubt’. So you are right to point out the potential for her having innocuous reasons. But the lesser likelihood of her ‘suddenly divert for a bit of sightseeing at a bridge’ (to give a strictly facetious and hopefully humorous example) should not be given weight over the risk, to the lives of the people on the bridge, from the more likely alternative.
You’ll note that the JUSTICE STOMP was almost completely ineffective, and it was foreseeable that it would have minimal effectiveness (and could very well have evolved into a melee that would take the bridge with them). Whereas it was not foreseeable that she would be able to deflect the plasma bomb.
Umm, no, it knocked her out of the air, so, in fact, it was completely effective, and would have prevented her from reaching the bridge if used above the water
And this would have stopped her from moving on to the bridge… how? She’s not immobilized, and is still close to the bridge. This wouldn’t do squat to reduce the danger to the bridge.
Whereas, the plasma bomb would have prevented her from attacking it if it worked, and there was no reason why she would believe it wouldn’t work (Sciona didn’t even know she could deflect it)
She would be in the water, and having to dodge hundred of mini-plasma bolts
Also, from last page we know that Maxima prioritizes stopping Sciona over ensuring the safety of the bridge, and CLEARLY tackling her failed at accomplishing that goal, whereas vaporizing her would have worked (provided she didn’t leave the top 1/3 of her head un-vaporized).
What part of it doesn’t matter that “vaporizing her would have worked” do you not understand? Pander has been trying to point out that Maxima could be charged with negligence.
You said it yourself: “Maxima… prioritizes stopping Sciona over ensuring the safety of the bridge”. That does not help her defense at all. If she tried to use that as part of her defense, any court in the U.S. would convict her of negligence, and possibly manslaughter too, if anyone who was on the bridge died as a result.
It does not matter in the eyes of the law or in the eyes of any competent jury that Maxima could not have known that Sciona could deflect her plasma blast.
It does not matter in the eyes of the law or in the eyes of any competent jury that Sciona didn’t know that she could deflect it.
It does not matter in the eyes of the law or in the eyes of any competent jury if Maxima apprehended Sciona or not.
She was criminally negligent. If this ended up in court, any competent jury would have convicted her. If I were on the jury (and I have been selected for my fair share of juries), I would’End of discussion.
Not sure how I got cut off like that. The page just refreshed for no reason. The last sentence should read, “If I were on the jury… I would’ve convicted her.”
Totally appreciate the support :)
Just want to mention, about the last point, that mostly I’ve been arguing she’s negligent civilly. In a criminal case (involuntary manslaughter), Maxima would have a better defense available. Negligence is the civil case. Involuntary manslaughter would be a criminal case (assuming someone dies) and while that’s still winnable, it would be a more difficult case.
Still possible to get a conviction there (especially if she was to say things in court like ‘she considered it more important to catch Sciona than save the people who she endangered’), but not nearly the same ease as winning a civil case of negligence.
Maxima has sovereign immunity to protect her from any tort, in any event. She is a member of the military, engaging someone who is believed to be in possession of a WMD. As such it is a matter of national security, and she automatically has that protection (to the best of my knowledge, extrapolating from snippets of information I have in this area).
Only if the government chose to waive sovereign immunity could the tort be enforced.
“Maxima has sovereign immunity to protect her from any tort, in any event. ”
No, she does not. The United States government, and most states, have voluntarily removed the sovereign immunity from negligence (and a few other torts, like wrongful death, torts against independent contractors, and administrative law torts) because of the Federal Tort Claims Act.
But good try, Yorp! You did make a legal argument that would have made sense if NOT for the FTCA!
That deserves a Yorpie Snax.
Yummy!
There are exemptions.
So Maxima could use this as protection provided it could be proven that:
1) she was acting not as a law enforcement officer (who are specifically included elsewhere) but in her military role, in defence of the nation.
2) acting in defence of the nation was her primary duty of care and that protecting the people on the bridge was, by virtue of that, reduced to a discretionary function or duty, when in conflict.
3) she was “exercising due care”.
Note though that point 3) would be argued on its own merits, in the context of this act. Importantly it would not use the standards defined under tort law, as this judgement has to be made before it could be examined under tort law, and may prevent it reaching that stage.
Except, the conflict started via Maxi’s actions, not Maxi’s actions were a result of conflict!
“There are exemptions.”
Yorp, seriously – why are you arguing with something that’s specifically stated.
It’s extremely irritating when I give the exact law, and you intentionally ignore it.
Government officials are NOT immune against negligence torts due to sovereign immunity. Period. I gave you exactly what the FTCA covered, and you still ignore it and continue with an entirely facetious argument.
She could not use that section to protect her from a charge of negligence. She could not use sovereign immunity as a defense. The federal government specifically removed their immunity from those types of torts a LONG TIME AGO.
The section you stated does not even remotely say what you’re claiming it says. That section is giving a government official a defense against being accused of a tort if the law happens to be unconstitutional or violates someone’s rights, so that the government will be sued INSTEAD of the government agent. That doesn’t even apply in this scenario.
Well it is because I know that the military cannot be found negligent, and I had to look up under what circumstances, as that was not something you mentioned. As it is that is only during wartime, so would not be of use here.
But it did getting me looking at if there were any of the exemptions which fitted the bill for peacetime, and that one looked like it would do the job. Maxima being a government employee, the one I cited seemed to be applicable. And I figured that she must be executing a bunch of military regulations, when conducting an action in defence of the state.
But, if I got the wrong end of the stick, I accept that. Thanks for clarifying my error.
No problem. Yes, you got the wrong end of the stick :) Never heard that phrase before btw.
Like I said, it was actually a decent argument you originally made (about sovereign immunity, not the exemptions), if not for the fact that there was a law specifically passed in order to limit how much sovereign immunity the government can have when it comes to certain torts – mostly negligence torts. If we were talking intentional torts, strict liability torts (I think i actually said something about how the government had sovereign immunity against strict liability torts last strip’s forum), etc – you’d definitely have had a good argument.
“It does not matter in the eyes of the law or in the eyes of any competent jury that Maxima could not have known that Sciona could deflect her plasma blast.”
“It does not matter in the eyes of the law or in the eyes of any competent jury that Sciona didn’t know that she could deflect it.”
Actually, that is ENTIRELY why she wouldn’t be convicted of negligence. Negligence requires that a reasonable person would been able to foresee the outcome. If there is no reason whatsoever a reasonable person would expect that it could’ve been deflected like that, then she wasn’t negligent.
“I didn’t know!” has never been an acceptable or valid excuse
It is when you hit someone with a car when that person suddenly jumped into the street from out of view. You’re the one who hit them, but you could not have foreseen the danger, because you didn’t have the information to do so.
No, that’s not the same thing at all
If they had driven through a hedge and ran over a family having a picnic on the other side, and even then, “I didn’t know!” would not have been an acceptable excuse as you shouldn’t have blindly driven through the hedge in the first place
Driving through a hedge would be more analogous if she had fired at Sciona with the bridge in the background. It’s obviously a possibility of hitting someone through the hedge or hitting the bridge when it’s behind your target, whereas there was no reason to believe that the shot could be deflected into the bridge.
The deflection is not in any way foreseeable, especially considering Sciona didn’t even know she could do that. As such, it’s not negligence. It’s as simple as that.
Ignorance is not an excuse.
Ignorance of the law maybe. But not of facts that nobody on Earth knew.
And seriously if US negligence law does require that experts have mystical knowledge of things that have not been discovered by science, my respect for it will go down. I can see the benefit for a million dollar payment for a spilt cup of coffee, for various reasons.
But punishing someone for not knowing something that has never been discovered? That is just dumb.
“And seriously if US negligence law does require that experts have mystical knowledge of things that have not been discovered by science, my respect for it will go down.”
It’s not mystical knowledge, but it’s a very high bar to reach for an expert. You also need to remember there are three OTHER elements as well. Usually people argue about proximate cause/cause in fact or the harm caused, rather than the breach when it’s a expert. There are just soooo many examples in case law of things which experts at the time did not expect to happen that did wind up happening, like DDT poisoning, big tobacco (at first they had NO idea), and the dangers of asbestos (which can take decades to see symptoms).
Also just wanted to mention the spilt coffee lawsuit wound up being $90,000, not a million dollars. :) I’ve actually heard some compelling reasons why that lawsuit was NOT outrageous.
“But punishing someone for not knowing something that has never been discovered? That is just dumb.”
DDT. Asbestos. Cigarettes. :)
Any reasonable person could foresee dangers related to poison, smoke, or inhaled particulate. Releasing them without investigation into the dangers is negligent.
Though foreseeing the unknown is pretty irrelevant in those cases, considering they were sold KNOWING that they were dangerous. DDT was known to have some level of toxicity to creatures that weren’t insects from the start (and obviously there’s the issue of bees dying, since bees are really important for us). Asbestos was found to be harmful in 1899 (and miners have always had it really shitty) and yet peak production was in the late 1970’s. Tobacco was positively linked to serious health problems in 1948, yet successful punitive litigation didn’t really start for 50 years after that.
All 3 of those are much more a case of deliberate obfuscation of the dangers rather than not knowing about them.
Thing is, Asbestos has been around for hundreds of years before 1899, tobacco has been used for a good couple hundred years with very little side-effects
And they weren’t found negligent for stuff happening before that, so it’s hardly relevant.
All the things you are citing are products which companies could research before producing. Or investigate suspicions that get raised that their product was causing illness.
Likewise we have all sorts of products now that use nano particles, which are too small for the human body to filter out. So it is easy to foresee that there will be medical issues, and they should investigate these, over and above complying with regulations not designed for such product.
However to apply that to a snap judgement having to be made in the field is a very different kettle of fish. You claimed that Archon should have found out about the power, but that would only be a reasonable assertion if Sciona had ever used it before, in a situation where Archon could have discovered the fact, with thorough investigation.
But, as even Sciona was unaware of the fact, there is no way that it could be found. Even by a perfect expert. It is not a matter that with a few million more dollars in the R&D budget, it would have cropped up. Nor that hiring more detectives would have done the job. Until Sciona discovered the ability, it was unknowable!
“All the things you are citing are products which companies could research before producing. Or investigate suspicions that get raised that their product was causing illness.”
There was literally no way that the companies producing asbestos could have known what would happen in 30-50 years with the slow-to-arise symptoms of asbestosis, mesthothelioma, shortness of breath, and lung cancer. Trust me – I actually worked on some of the interrogatories for the settlements. They settled because the standard of care was so unreachably high because they were experts in the field, despite the fact that the field, despite the fact that asbestos was first used in the 1920s, and wasnt widely used until the 1950s-1960s until the 1980s… and most of the symptoms didnt start showing until 30-40 years later (and even when it did start showing up. It’s pretty much identical to the standard that Maxima is being held to. Higher, actually, since Maxima’s only had her powers being studied since she was a teenager, which means 10-20 years.
The point is, they had no ‘reasonable way’ to know what would happen, if using just the ‘hypothetical average reasonable person standard.’ Unfortunately, they weren’t being judged at that standard. They were being judged to the hypothetical expert of perfect prudence standard instead. Just. Like. Maxima. Would. Be.
“But, as even Sciona was unaware of the fact, there is no way that it could be found.”
Doesn’t matter if Sciona was unaware of it for the standard of care.
” It is not a matter that with a few million more dollars in the R&D budget, ”
The government and Archon has millions in R&D as well. Just like the people who created DDT, and the people who created asbestos.
“Until Sciona discovered the ability, it was unknowable!”
I feel like I could repeat my answer to this a couple dozen more times, and you’ll still keep saying the same thing, as if I didnt answer it. It doesn’t matter as far as the standard of care for Maxima is concerned.
As I already stated, the health dangers of asbestos were first documented in 1899. They knew about it for a VERY long time before litigation was done about it.
She could not have known that it could be deflected, period. There is no reason why she, or anyone else, would believe it could be. She would EASILY be absolved of negligence.
Thank you gimmethegepgun. Likewise Pander mind. You work hard to educate us, despite our ungratefully not accepting it all. Your frustration at that is appreciated. Despite the contradictory answer, you do make a compelling case for the utility of the law.
I do though still have forebodings for applying a principle used for industrial R&D to a decision having to be made in a heartbeat.
And no amount of research by Archon could have uncovered that ability. That is an absolute. No value judgement on my part.
Whereas, as gimmethegepgun points out, there were early clues that the asbestos producers could have followed up sooner and with more vigour. Or they could have decided that ‘there is no smoke without fire’ and opted not to produce the stuff at all!
Neither Archon, Maxima nor Sciona saw any smoke, because there was no fire. Not until the parry.
I’ve actually quite enjoyed this arc. :)
So have I but dammit DaveB stop dragging out the cliffhanger!
WHAT HAPPENS WITH THE KITTIES!!!!!!ELEVNTY!!!!!!
(Oh right no way they ain’t gonna save them…Though If they don’t….the people suing Max should TOTALLY hire Pander DaveB!)
I’d work pro bono because I happen to care about cuddle kittens.
Me too!
You’re a good doggo.
It’s certainly been… interesting
You have to admit, Sciona’s a lot more interesting a big bad than Vehemence, right? :)
Vehemence was a drug addict chasing a fix. His big plan was “let’s have a big fight because I want a big fight.”
Sciona’s plan is more complicated than that.
I don’t KNOW what that plan is other than the part about regenerating her real body, but ANYTHING is more complicated than that.
Good description of Vehemence :)
Seconding the designation of Vehemence’s description as “good”.
I would like to amend “insightful”, providing there is no objection.
I’ll allow it ;)
:):):)
In the back of my head I can’t help thinking that this happens next:
Sciona: (gets back to her lab and sinks into her chair with a dejected thump).
Minion: “Sorry to hear about the setback. What are we going to to tomorrow?”
Sciona: “The same thing we do every night. Try to take over the world!”
NARF!
Time to take the
spongeslug/redneck for walkiesWhat? You don’t know who “Pinky and the Brain” are? o_O
This is the reference:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_mPrhwpZ-8
This.
Sciona and the Chuck.
Sciona and the Chuck
One’s an Alari, the other’s a creepy schmuck
They’re Council refugees
Steal and kill as they please
They’re Sciona
Sciona and the Chuck Chuck Chuck Chuck.
:D
It appears Max might know a certain Seyruunian martial arts style…
What is Seyruunian?
I think it’s some sort of anime.
Sounds kinda “Whovian” to me…
Some sort?
Some sort?
It is the granddaddy…well uncle after Record of Lodoss War, of Fantasy anime.
Slayers. Mixing comedy, action, and little touches of tech, just enough to spell out its an alternate reality and not the past. Which later similar anime would have more tech and magic mix.
My apologies! Forgive my lower-tier nerd knowledge! I only watched a few episodes of Slayers and the name escaped me. I humbly beg your forgiveness to not be cast out of nerddom.
I will, but will lina LoL
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oh-MRrl41RY
Seyruun is a country in the Slayers anime. The royalty seem to possess an odd form of martial arts, some of the following are known moves: Pacifist crush, Goodwill towards men smash, Benevolent giant swing and Joyful reunion bear hug.
Slayers anime, the royal family of Seyru, use a weird martial arts with attacks named for their kingdom’s pacifism.
here is King Phil to show you:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhF30HwUvtM
and as I can’t edit and no one has the whole fight scene up, this should help to.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmdhsPsfrIU
For the record, I’m one of the people who got banned from the Strong Female Protagonist comments sections (this got mentioned in the last page’s comments). In my case, I believe it was because I protested attempts to circumvent my putting someone on ignore for being abusive. As in, they wouldn’t stop being abusive (because I was a horrible person because I… disagreed that it should be legal to physically assault “nazis”), then responded to my putting them on ignore by discussing how horrible I was with others.
At least, that’s my main theory. It might also have been because I, and others who were also banned, couldn’t help but comment on how ridiculous some of the story elements were getting. I’ve been checking to see if the latest story arc improves before I give up on that comic entirely… but at this point even the bulk of the people not yet banned are pointing out that the “strong female protagonist” is just spewing pseudophilosophy presented as psychiatric expertise. While performing a sort of lobotomy. And is apparently going to be shown as having done the right thing: being a privileged white woman telling an abuse survivor to get over it, while inflicting violence.
I’m actually very pro-Maxima. In no small part because a lot of what Maxima has been doing in Grrl Power seems to be “look at what Allison does in her own comic, and then do the opposite.” (Including constantly communicating with comrades instead of relying on ex machinas. No “it’s okay that the dam got destroyed, because it’ll just flood an uninhabited valley” here)
I totally agree with you about everything you’re saying :).
Strong Female Protagonist is what happens when people drink a bit too much of their cool aid after an echo chamber forms. :(
+1… million.
The wings look scorched. That’s a pretty literal interpretation of “mana burn”.
Max’s plasma blast burned them, you can see them on fire in the previous page.
I know that, just didn’t expect something that appears to be somewhat ethereal to look burned.
Well they may not be all that magical to begin with. She did show them when she first reconstituted herself so they are more likely a natural part of her physiognomy in some way.
I side with [N0083rp00F], in that we don’t know enough about Sciona’s wings to be sure.
While they might well be ethereal expressions of mana-energy, the ability to set them on fire raises the question (in my mind) of whether they might instead be tangible, & merely FUELED by mana.
There’s just SO VERY MUCH that we don’t yet know, & may never get around to knowing…
1)__Did Sciona teleport, or just use the spin-attack to conceal some form of trick? She might simply be “glamour-ed” into invisibility, & waiting for Max to zoom-off in search-mode, before she sneaks away.
2)__If she DID teleport, why not do so before? Perhaps it’s too difficult a power to be casually used, unless she’s in an emergency situation, or it might be tied to only locations that she’s previously set-up, or it might be too easy to TRACE by others, or it might be limited in distance to merely “short hops”. She’s NOT using any (visible) blood-runes here (unlike her Vault break-in), so it might be subject to any number of limitations that we don’t yet know about.
I could go on-&-on, but my overreaching point is, there’s a METAPHORICAL METRIC TON of pertinent detail that we’re not yet privy to…
…& that’s a GOOD thing…
…because the alternative is to be permanently bogged-down in a morass of background-detail, instead of MOVING AHEAD with the story. For the record, I feel that the current direction is an EXCELLENT storytelling path to take. The speculation in the comments have consistently been every bit as entertaining as the story itself. I’m on-record in previous posts as saying that reader-comments have doubtless been a VERY fertile source for providing DaveB additional plot-ideas. These unexplained uncertainties also allow the Esteemed Author the flexibility to adjust the plot “on the fly” if need be.
To me at-least, as long as it’s not been explained so far, then nothing is “canon” until DaveB MAKES it so, either in the story itself, or via Author-commentary. It’s all up to his judgement, as to what he feels will be the best way to tell his story. It’s been a very fun ride so far, & I look forward to more of it!
The *WINK* and visual is consistent with how it worked the last (and first) time she used it, so heavily implies that she did port-out, still raises the question of why she didn’t use it after mugging Wyrmoot though…
I wonder if this universe has their own versions of our TV shows that discuss how supers do what they do? But in this case, they can actually get real data to go by.
https://nerdist.com/videos/because-science/
They do in RPG games like Abberant. :)
The big supers-coming-out event is pretty recent, but seems like if they didn’t before, they certainly do starting this season.
Yeah, Sydney kinda talked about Supers being a real thing before the Bank Bust, just didn’t really have any proof, or at least no public awareness
Maxi could have “Plummeting Boot To The Head” to Sci-fright over the river, if she hits the right spot, snapped head, threat neutralized (with extreme prejudice!), if not, Sci-fright has just been driven into the riverbed, or at least into the water, Maxi follows that up with hundreds of 1% energy Plasma Bolts to keep Sci-fright on the defensive, possibly boiling the water around her
+1
Definitely. And no bridge would have gotten destroyed. It’s almost as if Maxima was reckless in what she decided to do instead. If only that was pointed out last strip :)
Also, after kicking her into the drink, Maxi could have re-positioned herself so that even a deflected or missed retaliatory attack wouldn’t go anywhere near the bridge
Moving between Sci-fright and the bridge would still put the bridge in the line-of-fire if Sci-fright was able to project an attack, whereas going to the side would put the river bank and forest to both of their backs
The plasma/cosmic blast was obviously nonlethal. Neck snaps? Not so much. It’s almost as if the plasma blast was the logical move – note the massive distance with a bridge *that near* to them – being faster doesn’t mean fast enough if there’s a bridge full of innocents and the enemy has a massive head start. And remember the restaurant? If Maxima had started a FULL fight that close to the bridge, the damage would have been much more lethal to the people on it.
It’s almost as if Maxima made the right call both times. Note that she’s still using nonlethal (for her target) force – this isn’t a kill mission, but a disable mission. Anyway, Sciona’s dialogue here makes CLEAR she was attacking the bridge – just the how got changed from her plan.
/sarcasm
Yes, those bridge destroying plasma blasts are absolutely harmless.
/end sarcasm
“It’s almost as if Maxima made the right call both times.”
It’s seriously sad that you can see that Maxima was capable of doing an attack which would NOT have resulted in a bridge collapse beforehand, and then claim that Maxima made the right call. Pretty sure the people on the bridge do not think that Maxima made the right call. Pretty sure even Maxima’s superiors will not think she did the right call. And definltely sure that any attorneys that sue Archon, and the judges overseeing the negligence cases (and possibly the wrongful death cases), will most definitely not think that Maxima made the right call.
“Sciona’s dialogue here makes CLEAR she was attacking the bridge – just the how got changed from her plan.”
Actually no, it does not. Her dialogue is “stupid superheroes, always getting distracted by innocent bystanders.” – which is because she thought Maxima was going to stop her pursuit to fix the mess that MAXIMA CREATED.
Might Sciona have been planning on snapping some cables? Possibly – although she would not have been able to do nearly the same damage that Maxima did. It’s also very possible that she was planning on flying under the bridge in order to do a teleport without Maxima or the satellites seeing, so they would have no idea what happened or how she escaped. Despite her hotheadedness, Sciona DOES seem to be good at making plans.
I never said harmless. I said nonlethal GIVEN HER TARGET. Who is a menace. And which was aimed to, if it missed, hit the water to only hurt some fish.
And no, 1) she was NOT reasonably able to make a different attack. Starting a superpowered melee next to a bridge would have damaged it even WORSE. 2) She’s confirmed to have not known Sciona could deflect (nor did Sciona).
People on the bridge and right call: they lack the training to MAKE that call in the first place, and disasters happen when people with this power level fight each other.
Yes, it does make clear she was going to attack the bridge. She was that utterly smug about that happening, and actually did rebound it. And Sciona is mage, there’s no telling how high the damage she could do is beyond: look at the things she artificed. Remember the monsters she sent at the council? The four that individually could have wiped the entire council if they’d detonated? She could have obliterated the bridge, at least. Much worse damage is a MINIMUM assumption.
And that is a risk that was unacceptable. Maxima made the right call both times, given the information she had.
“I never said harmless. I said nonlethal GIVEN HER TARGET”
1) Did you not see the /sarcasm thing?
2) Her plasma blasts are not ‘nonlethal.’ Her plasma blasts are lethal. That’s like saying a fragmentation grenade or C-4 is non-lethal.
“And which was aimed to, if it missed, hit the water to only hurt some fish.”
Have you …. like…. not been reading the comic? Hint… a bridge got destroyed, not just some fish.
“And no, 1) she was NOT reasonably able to make a different attack”
She literally makes a different attack SECONDS after the bridge debacle! She could have done the SAME EXACT ATTACK before the bridge debacle. How is this concept difficult to grasp?
“Starting a superpowered melee next to a bridge”
A superpowered melee of kicking her into the water…
“would have damaged it even WORSE.”
Okay at this point I’m pretty convinced that you have not looked at the comic. The bridge is collapsing.
“2) She’s confirmed to have not known Sciona could deflect (nor did Sciona).”
Please go back to the prior page, in which I’ve written about 3 novels worth of repeating the same series of descriptions on how negligence, recklessness, proximate cause and the standard of care for an expert works in tort law. I mean… you must be reading the comments, even if you’re not reading the comic. Not going to repeat everything I’ve written AGAIN.
“People on the bridge and right call: they lack the training to MAKE that call in the first place, and disasters happen when people with this power level fight each other.”
Actually Maxima DOES have the training to make the right call. She made the wrong call. Unless you’re somehow saying the people on the BRIDGE have anything to do with this, which makes absolutely no sense.
“Yes, it does make clear she was going to attack the bridge”
No it doesn’t. I already explained why in the above post. Of course, instead of trying to refute it, you have done what a lot of people do when trying to argue with me – you just say ‘nuh uh’ then don’t actually address what I said. Because you can’t. Because what I said is quite plausible. Not to mention what actually wound up happening was Maxima, not Sciona, blew up the bridge.
“She was that utterly smug about that happening”
She is smug because she’s evil and thought the fortuitous circumstances would be letting her escape. She wound up escaping anyway, by the way…. so Maxima blew up a bridge and then left it to collapse with a shoddy patch work for NOTHING.
“And Sciona is mage, there’s no telling how high the damage she could do is beyond: look at the things she artificed. Remember the monsters she sent at the council?”
Literally has nothing to do with here. She has no mannekillers here. They have to be built. She doesn’t keep them in her pocket.
“The four that individually could have wiped the entire council if they’d detonated?”
Where exactly are those mannekillers anyway? Oh yeah… destroyed. Not on the bridge. Not on Sciona’s person.
“She could have obliterated the bridge, at least. ”
With what? The non-existent mannekillers which were already destroyed? With her wings? Even if her wings could snap a couple of the cables, that wouldn’t destroy the bridge. What Maxima did – THAT destroyed the bridge.
Again. Negligence tort. Loser = Maxima.
“Much worse damage is a MINIMUM assumption. And that is a risk that was unacceptable.”
It’s like I’m arguing with someone who’s read a completely different comic. Sciona was utterly incapable of doing worse damage than what Maxima did.
“Maxima made the right call both times, given the information she had.”
Maxima has yet to make the right call during the entirety of this chase. You aren’t even remotely using anything that’s actually happened in the comic in your … for lack of a better word… ‘reasoning.’
1) Did you not see the /sarcasm thing?
2) Her plasma blasts are not ‘nonlethal.’ Her plasma blasts are lethal. That’s like saying a fragmentation grenade or C-4 is non-lethal.
1) I did see it, but you were clearly using that as a point.
2) remember her target. Sciona is NOT a normal person. She can take a lot more than anyone else.
As for the rest of it: the mannekillers represent something she can do. We must assume she’s capable of similar on her own, since it was she who made them.
And you are utterly ignoring logic and facts and substituting your own. I’m done. I’m not arguing any longer with someone who does that.
“1) I did see it, but you were clearly using that as a point.”
But you responded to the words used as if it wasn’t sarcasm.
“2) remember her target. Sciona is NOT a normal person. She can take a lot more than anyone else.”
Maxima has enough power to be able to take her down physically. She’s significantly more powerful than Vale, who was able to temporarily lay her out (by which I mean knock her down so that she was not getting up quickly) with one punch. What Maxima did NOT need to do is use a bunker buster-level plasma blast. As for why it was reckless, look at the previous strip, I made the same response, with increasing descriptiveness, at least a dozen times.
“As for the rest of it: the mannekillers represent something she can do. We must assume she’s capable of similar on her own, since it was she who made them.”
Yes, the mannekillers represent something she can do. Something she can invent. Which takes time. Which she can’t do with no materials on hand. Or a lab on hand. Or weaponry to arm them with on hand. While flying with Maxima in close pursuit.
“And you are utterly ignoring logic and facts and substituting your own.”
I’m ignoring logic? You’re the one claiming that she’s a danger because of mannekillers who are not there, as if she has them stuffed in her pocket ready to throw them full size at the civilians on the bridge. You’re the one ignoring logic. As for fact, I’ve done nothing but use facts, the law, and exactly what’s occurring in the comic strip, rather than what people WANT to happen.
“I’m done. I’m not arguing any longer with someone who does that.”
Buh-bye. Also I didnt do that anyway :)
The buh-bye might be a bit much, but you’re acting like very immature about this, especially considering you’re claiming was ignoring any facts and substituting my own, when my entire argument has been based entirely on facts, all of which can be pointed to – either in lawbooks or in the comic.
Pander: “It’s seriously sad that you can see that Maxima was capable of doing an attack which would NOT have resulted in a bridge collapse beforehand,”
Do you see the part on this page where, after the kick, Sciona goes flying through a tree? Had this happened near the bridge, why do you assume she wouldn’t have gone through some part of the bridge / the bridge traffic?
Seriously, you are massively invested in this debate and refusing to acknowledge anyone else’s points. Multiple people have pointed this out dozens of times now and you keep ignoring facts and/or choosing the worst possible interpretation in order to justify your position. On this page you’ve started getting into playground taunts (“Just admit you were wrong! It’s not hard!”)
I mean, sure, you can obviously make a case for Maxima being negligent here if you’re willing to assume certain facts that everyone except Guesticus disagrees with. The rest of us don’t agree with those facts and hence we obviously come to a different conclusion.
Partial list of things that you need to assume in order to think that Max is being negligent:
1) Max could have shot Sciona with a bullet instead of a plasma blast. (No. Out of range.)
2) Max should have considered that the plasma blast could bounce and, through million-to-one bad luck, endanger innocents. (Why? We’ve literally never seen evidence of her blasts being deflected and it hit the bridge almost solely through authorial fiat.)
3) Max could have caught up with Sciona before Sciona got to the bridge. (We have no way of knowing their relative speeds or how far Sciona was from the bridge.)
4) Had Max engaged in melee, she would have disabled Sciona with her initial attack, or at least prevented her from disengaging and getting to the bridge. (Except that’s not what actually happened.)
5) It would have been perfectly safe for two supers on this power level to have a melee near the bridge. (Why in the world would you think this?)
6) If Sciona had reached the bridge she could not have done significant damage to it — as you put it, she could only slice a cable. (Why would you assume that? My assumption is that her wings and/or strength and/or magic could have destroyed one of the main supports. They’re only concrete.)
It’s a *lot* of assumptions. I know you keep saying that you’re a lawyer and that the standard of care for an expert is super-high and so on and so on, but I have a great deal of trouble believing that (a) any court could hold Max responsible for something she had every reason to believe could not happen [her blast bouncing] and (b) that lawyers of the quality that Archon can hire would not get the charges through out in minutes.
Well argued.
Point 3) though we could see a long shot where Maxima was far away versus Sciona being pretty close to the bridge, by comparison. Which does work against Pander’s insistence on melee being the ideal option.
Actually, we had a panned shot showing that Maxi was relatively close to Sci-fright before Sci detected her Golden Tail and diverted towards the bridge, we also saw that Sci did not change her speed, butt after the shoddy make-shift repair we can see that Maxi can go instantly hyper-sonic, which means, we have a good idea that in the time it took her to charge up her plasma bolt she could have switched to super-speed + super-strength (or maybe speed and durability) and drop-kicked Sci into the water
Sciona’s relative position prior to Maxima realising that she was diverting towards a bridge is irrelevant. It is only once Maxima has realised that, and made the decision to intercept, that these issues come into play. At that point Sciona had a considerable lead. She was a tiny figure in the far distance!
There is nothing in the pictures which gives us an indication of the speed Sciona is travelling at, at any point. Unless she was almost at wave height no supersonic wake would be visible disturbing the water. Without time stamps on the frames, or a speedometer appearing on screen, these are things we simply cannot say, or even estimate, one way or the other.
The only clue we do have is that Sciona can fly at supersonic speeds. Which means that she can close the distance incredibly fast.
Now moving on to the bridge repairs. Note that Maxima has four different powers that all share the same source: 1) Defence 2) Strength 3) Speed/reflexes 4) flight.
With Sciona having fled the scene Maxima could floor her defence and dump most of her pool into speed/reflexes and flight. Sacrificing one or the other when needing to increase her super strength. Which we see in action when Maxima looks to be hovering (she no longer has any zip line behind her) in order to punch away the falling block.
So you are not judging like-for-like in comparing her action repairing the bridge to the powers that Maxima would need to survive a close quarters melee with Sciona.
Yes she can floor her defence, to her minimums, as you propose (by virtue of stipulating switching to super-speed plus super-strength), but at the risk of being killed by those wings!
Given that we saw Sciona deploy them fast enough to deflect an energy bolt, and that she was able to land various blows on Maxima above, my point is demonstrable. With what I contend is a strong defence Maxima only suffered scratches. However with her defence dropped to her minimum defaults, Maxima may have lost her head!
Except, we saw, on this very page, that Maxi was able to connect with Sci without coming into contact with her wings, the contact with the wings came after when she had time to switch to a more defensive load-out
“Do you see the part on this page where, after the kick, Sciona goes flying through a tree? Had this happened near the bridge, why do you assume she wouldn’t have gone through some part of the bridge / the bridge traffic?”
Because bridges are not right over the water. When a person jumps off a bridge, the water isn’t RIGHT THERE. It’s a long distance down still. Also things in water sink when pushed down into it. Because water is not the ground.
“Seriously, you are massively invested in this debate and refusing to acknowledge anyone else’s points.”
Oh, if someone gave a point that made sense or actually refuted any of the points I’ve made, I’d definitely acknowledge it. But the reasoning I’ve been presented with has been rampant speculation, personal insults, ignoring how the law and the elements of negligence work for an expert, and changing the facts to meet their arguments instead of sculpting their arguments to meet the facts presented.
“Multiple people have pointed this out dozens of times now and you keep ignoring facts and/or choosing the worst possible interpretation in order to justify your position.”
Actually I keep giving the most advantageous position (steelmanning) before I refute it, usually because their reasoning doesn’t change the result of a negligence tort. On the other hand they (including you) tend to strawman instead.
“On this page you’ve started getting into playground taunts (“Just admit you were wrong! It’s not hard!”)”
That’s just being playful, because they’re doubling down on their already refuted arguments even when the comic itself is showing they were wrong last strip. I’ve also referenced Star Wars a few times :)
“I mean, sure, you can obviously make a case for Maxima being negligent here if you’re willing to assume certain facts that everyone except Guesticus disagrees with.”
I can make a case for Maxima being negligent because of facts that are shown in the comic, and also because of the definition of each of the elements of negligence, which you don’t seem to want to read or acknowledge. There’s no need to assume ANYTHING, in fact.
“The rest of us don’t agree with those facts”
Not agreeing with the facts make you wrong, dear.
“and hence we obviously come to a different conclusion.”
Yes, when you ignore facts, you come to a wrong conclusion.
“Partial list of things that you need to assume in order to think that Max is being negligent:”
Let’s see what you’ve got…. I’m betting I can refute or show why each of your points are incorrect or irrelevant to a case of negligence.
“1) Max could have shot Sciona with a bullet instead of a plasma blast.”
She could have – and a bullet would be less destructive if there was some accident that happened, like what did happen.
“(No. Out of range.)”
It’s not out of range. I’ve actually discussed this, and even the math behind it, last strip. Go read it. Go on, I’ll wait. I’ve also given multiple guns which can easily make the shot, and Maxima is a massively trained military commander with over a decade of experience.
Next?
“2) Max should have considered that the plasma blast could bounce and, through million-to-one bad luck, endanger innocents.”
Already discussed this as well. For an expert of Maxima’s training and experience, the standard of care required for the hypothetical perfect expert DOES get to this level. This might account for almost half of the posts I made last strip, none of which people like you bothered to read. It’s not an assumption – it’s established law for the cause of action in a tort.
“(Why? We’ve literally never seen evidence of her blasts being deflected and it hit the bridge almost solely through authorial fiat.)”
We actually have both seen evidence of her blast hitting OFF an item (Hex’s shield) and we have also seen examples of a delay between hitting an item and exploding (the tank, the bridge, the target, and the steel block that Sydney was hiding behind).
Next?
“3) Max could have caught up with Sciona before Sciona got to the bridge.”
The fact that she caught up to her AFTER the bridge, when Sciona had a head start, proves that she could have caught up to Sciona when she was MUCH closer. Yorp mentions this too apparently.
“(We have no way of knowing their relative speeds or how far Sciona was from the bridge.)”
Actually we do. Aside from that Sciona can only go supersonic and Maxima can go faster than mach 4 (which means if she goes Mach 5+, it’s hypersonic), Maxima is capable of flying so fast that she is a blur of motion, while Sciona is not.
So while we don’t have EXACT numbers for their speed, we do know that Maxima is significantly faster than Sciona. This is also supported with how, even while Sciona was speeding away at a fast speed, Maxima caught up with her within a panel, fast enough for Sciona to not even be able to get out a full sentence of 8 words. Maxima is faster.
Next?
“4) Had Max engaged in melee, she would have disabled Sciona with her initial attack, or at least prevented her from disengaging and getting to the bridge.”
Because if Max had engaged her in melee, we see in the above strip that it would have made Sciona crash…. and more importantly, Maxima would not have used a plasma blast, which means a plasma blast would not have blown up part of the bridge, which is where the proximate cause comes in.
Next?
“5) It would have been perfectly safe for two supers on this power level to have a melee near the bridge. (Why in the world would you think this?)”
Aside from them NOT being on the bridge when in melee, it’s safer for two supers to be in melee over the water near a bridge than firing plasma blasts near a bridge. Because melee is localized attacks, and plasma blasts are ranged attacks
In addition, it’s an irrelevant thing that you’re mentioning, since the question involved is ‘did she have to use a plasma blast’ – she did not have to. She had other less destructive options available. So that is what would be applied to the negligence tort.
Nexxxxt?
“6) If Sciona had reached the bridge she could not have done significant damage to it — as you put it, she could only slice a cable.”
Because her wings took time to even destroy a single pedestal, and her wings do not cause explosive damage. Explosive damage is bigger than slicing damage. Also basing it on the length of her wings and the diameter/length of a central pylon of a bridge.
“(Why would you assume that? My assumption is that her wings and/or strength and/or magic could have destroyed one of the main supports. They’re only concrete.)”
Actually they’re made of steel and concrete, and also quite large. And again, it’s irrelevant to begin with, since Maxima’s reasoning on WHY she wanted to stop Sciona does not matter in judging if Maxima was relevant in HOW she tried to stop her.
Next? Oh wait, you have nothing left.
“It’s a *lot* of assumptions”
As I’ve shown, I haven’t made any rampant assumptions, and the only reasoning I’ve given have been based on the law, ignoring the irrelevant arguments you (and others) have made as excuses. The excuses given are irrelevant, and I’ve actually written a few posts on why as well. Go to the last page and read some of those posts as well.
“I know you keep saying that you’re a lawyer”
You could literally look up the law yourself, looking at what I’ve presented, and you’d get the same answers I’ve given. But hey, feel free to disparage whether I am or not. Even a person who finished their first year of law school would know this stuff.
“and that the standard of care for an expert is super-high and so on and so on,”
Because it is. It’s nice that you listened to that, but not so nice that you then ignored it.
“but I have a great deal of trouble believing that (a) any court could hold Max responsible for something she had every reason to believe could not happen [her blast bouncing]”
Umpteenth time, it’s still within the standard of care and it was possible that the plasma blast would go awry and hit the bridge. Remember back in the bank, when the guy said ‘what would have happened if you didn’t catch the bullet’ and Maxima was ‘you were all safe’ and was all threatening about it? She could have been charged with negligence there as well IF there had been cause-in-fact/proximate cause and damages. There wasn’t there, so there was no negligence here. Here, there was also proximate cause and damages.
“and (b) that lawyers of the quality that Archon can hire would not get the charges through out in minutes.”
Having lawyers doesn’t get the charges dropped. Pretty sure Big Tobacco figured that out.
Having expensive lawyers just helps – but it does not change the law. Moreover, this is horrible PR to have Archon in a lawsuit defending their commanding officer who is accused of negligently causing the destruction of a bridge with hundreds of innocent civilians endangered as a result of her actions. I would LOVE to be in a lawsuit against Archon like that. If Arianna is even a marginally competent lawyer, which she is, she would almost certainly immediately give a very attractive settlement offer to make sure that it never gets to trial.
“Oh, if someone gave a point that made sense … I’d definitely acknowledge it.”
How about this, to see if you do.
If an event is impossible, could a perfect expert be held negligent if that occurred, despite it being literally impossible?
“If an event is impossible, could a perfect expert be held negligent if that occurred, despite it being literally impossible?”
No.
If something is literally impossible, rather than improbable, even an expert will not be negligent, because if even the hypothetical perfect expert cannot stop something that’s impossible. In short, if it’s literally impossible, then the perfect expert could not be held negligent. Of course, if it occurred, I’m curious about how it’s literally impossible.
In the comic’s scenario, it was not impossible, merely improbable. In fact, with more study, they could have determined this WAS possible, since they do know that Maxima’s plasma blasts are not able to go through EVERYTHING – case in point, Hex’s shield. I don’t use Sydney’s shield as an example because a plasma blast never hit DIRECTLY against Sydney’s shield – it hit a block of steel first there. Also, in real life, plasma and other explosive forces can be deflected as well. I believe Boeing actually created something that can do that. :) Simply put, they need to come at it from the perspective that it’s possible.
Yay! We have a first step. I am proud of you Pander!
Dave has stated that he has not decided yet how Maxima’s blast works. Thus, even if someone in comic had described Maxima’s blast as being a plasma blast, we can take it that was just their way of describing it, as opposed to it being scientifically accurate.
Do try running with this, rather than arguing the toss. Comics can be interpreted many ways, and I am working to make this plausible, rather than stretched.
Should you agree, then we are left with the remainder of what Dave said as being our clues. Namely it is likely (when compared to any other specific option) to be something “cosmic”. As each of the terms he was toying with included that.
Of the options listed one of them is a real thing, which we can look up. The others are not, so do not actually help us. Therefore we may as well explore the one we can. Namely “cosmic beams”.
The additional justification for this is because it is the real world energy. Given that the comic strives to stick to the real world, where possible, this feels like a good choice.
All of which brings us back to the option I raised on the previous page:
We now have a check against the first part of that argument.
I look forward to your thoughts on the second.
“Dave has stated that he has not decided yet how Maxima’s blast works. Thus, even if someone in comic had described Maxima’s blast as being a plasma blast, we can take it that was just their way of describing it, as opposed to it being scientifically accurate.”
Again, it’s literaly a moot point. What happened was not impossible. Her plasma blast can be blocked and it can be deflected. Plus her plasma blast does not explode on impact – there’s been a delay almost every time, having something to do with the intensity of the blast apparently (it seems from what I’ve seen that the lower the intensity of the blast, the shorter the delay, the higher the intensity, the longer the delay).
“Namely it is likely (when compared to any other specific option) to be something “cosmic”. As each of the terms he was toying with included that.”
Saying something is ‘cosmic’ is literally a meaningless term. Sort of like when Marvel says ‘The Power Cosmic’ or the Fantastic Four’s ‘Cosmic Rays’ (which is just an example of Stan Lee not knowing what the heck he’s talking about when it comes to science – ie, the trope ‘Sci-Fi Writers Don’t Know Physics’). Not to mention plasma bursts would be something that happens in the cosmos as well. Quasars cause them, magnetars cause them, black holes shoot them out when they’ve gorged too much matter, stars arguable shoot them out as solar flares, etc. Plasma blast, on the other hand, is something that has been mentioned and is NOT a nebulous phrase.
Given how much DaveB seems to try to make his story universe ‘real’ (but also incorporate supers, aliens, and mythological creatures in it) – and I’m taking this into account because of how he keeps acknowledging RL laws and statutes, RL science limitations (heck, the comic STARTED with Sydney making a RL science limitation argument even), and pointing out the flaws in popular tropes in comics and sci-fi, I have no reason to not think that he’d do the same with Maxima’s powers. After all, he’s explained a few powers already in Dabbler’s Science Corners so far.
“It is impossible for a cosmic ray to ricochet.”
It actually would not be impossible for a cosmic ray to ricochet. For one thing, Maxima’s ‘cosmic ray’ is a plasma blast. Those can be deflected or blocked. Boeing has already created a shield like that. In RL. Science Fiction becomes Science Fact.
“God has stated that no one knew that Sciona had an ability which could do the impossible.”
You are also right now misstating what DaveB said. Let us see his exact words, shall we?
DaveB: “Maxima didn’t know Sciona could deflect her shot, and to be fair, neither did Sciona. Maxima might have had more luck with a beam weapon, but to be fair, neither of them knows if she could have deflected that either. I don’t think I’ve ever drawn Max doing a beam attack, have I?”
DaveB: “I’m not entirely sure how her powers work. Do cosmic beams have watts even? Or cosmic particle beams?”
DaveB: “I like how non-specific “cosmic energy” is. What is that, energy that’s in the cosmos? Isn’t everything in the cosmos? So really all we’re saying is that the beams aren’t made of matter. Unless it’s a particle beam, and then it’s… kind of matter? Little tiny bits of matter. Like a super hot sandblaster, except a much finer grain. So like a super hot powdered sugar blaster.”
So as you can see, DaveB seems to be leaning towards the idea that cosmic energy, as it states, IS a nebulous term, and he then starts to narrow it down a bit. We can see the wise author’s mind in motion here. He states, correctly, how pretty much ALL energy is ‘cosmic energy’ before refining it to say it’s probably more like a particle beam…. or a superhot sandblaster of tiny particles of matter, except a much finer grain.
He just basically described a plasma blast. But even if it’s some type of ‘particle beam’ instead – particle beams can also be deflected as well. Matter can be deflected. Energy can be deflected. It depends on what it hits.
So yes, Maxima is negligent.
Good try though. A for effort.:)
OK so you chose to argue the toss, rather than examine the proposal on its own merits. I shall let your reply stand as is. I am sure the rest of the community can judge whether you examined the proposal or evaded it, to suit your agenda.
Not that I am pretending that my proposal was not constructed to suit my agenda mind. The one that could show Maxima to be blameless, if Dave chooses to say ‘it is a cosmic ray’.
For information though here is the info on cosmic rays.
“OK so you chose to argue the toss, rather than examine the proposal on its own merits.”
Absolutely no idea what you’re saying here.
“I am sure the rest of the community can judge whether you examined the proposal or evaded it, to suit your agenda.”
Yorpie… you’re the only one that’s been ignoring data. I just refute things when they don’t mesh with facts. A proposal of ‘accept my flawed premise so that my flawed conclusion works’ is not something I need to accept. I can examine is, then dismiss it as wrong. Mainly because it’s based on flawed reasoning.
“Not that I am pretending that my proposal was not constructed to suit my agenda mind.”
Right. You used a proposal based on flawed data not representative of the current scenario, in order to justify an incorrect conclusion. I have no reason to agree with that because it’s an attempt to drive things off on even more of a tangent than you and others have done with the ’10 seconds afterwards’ estimate.
I never drove things off with the 10 second tangent. In fact I pointed out that you could be right. Or that there could be different interpretations. My reason for entering the discussion just to point out that your insistence that yours was literally correct was not the case. It is a fair estimate, but contingent on a bunch of assumptions, which could be disputed, on various grounds.
I chose not to because there was nothing to be gained over arguing the toss for the sake of it.
Here though, yet again, you are insisting that your interpretation is the only one that can possibly be right. And you choose wholly unreasonable arguments to support your own insistances and to shoot down alternatives.
Sorry that gets boring.
I prefer to debate with folks who keep a more open mind, and allow flexibility of interpretations. Where such is applicable.
I have no problems with you sticking to your point of law. I do though have problems with you forcing your interpretations of the comic on every one else, with no give, but only take.
“I never drove things off with the 10 second tangent. In fact I pointed out that you could be right”
The whole idea of arguing the 10 second guesstimate is a tangent though. It’s meant to divert attention from the fact that Maxima could have stomped her BEFORE the bridge, since she was able to stomp her immediately afterwards as well. People just seem sooooo anxious to say I’m wrong that they’ll go on a long argument about something which is relatively unimportant, trying to shout ‘HYPOCRITE!’ or ‘RAMPANT SPECULATION!’ even though my guess was entirely reasonable and based not only on what was happening in the comic and in line with the narrative, but also was convincing enough that most people admitted I was probably right – yet they still argue with me about it anyway. Basically trying to have it both ways.
“Here though, yet again, you are insisting that your interpretation is the only one that can possibly be right”
No, I was insisting that my reading of the LAW was right. Because it is. It’s rather settled law, in fact. The 10 second thing, I’ve admitted was an estimate, but it was an extremely reasonable estimate based on logic, what’s happening in the comic, and narrative consistency. What I will argue is that it couldnt be more than 30 seconds, and most likely would have to be quite a bit less than 30 seconds, since otherwise Alpha team would not get there in time at ALL. So most likely, it’s 10-15 seconds. It’s probably not LESS than 10 seconds because Sciona needed a few seconds to put out her wings that were on fire and say her partial sentence.
“And you choose wholly unreasonable arguments to support your own insistances and to shoot down alternatives.”
Actually I chose very reasonable arguments to support what I was saying. I shot down alternatives because most of the alternatives were ridiculous, like saying it was hours later. I’d have shot down your ‘speaking is a free action’ because that’s a trope, and DaveB tends to show how tropes in superhero comics are inaccurate, but you said it in a cute way so I didn’t bother to do so.
“Sorry that gets boring.”
It’s boring for me to have to repeat the same thing over and over again, to people who don’t bother reading what I write, and make the same flawed arguments about something on which I’m pretty experienced. At least more than the other people arguing with me.
“I prefer to debate with folks who keep a more open mind, and allow flexibility of interpretations.”
I have an open mind. But having an open mind does not mean I will accept flawed arguments. I will not use hypotheticals that require me to incorporate flawed data in order to get someone else’s viewpoint. I will accept REASONABLE arguments that are not based on flawed data. That hasnt happened here for the most part.
“I have no problems with you sticking to your point of law.”
Thank you?
“I do though have problems with you forcing your interpretations of the comic on every one else, with no give, but only take.”
When it’s not a legal argument, I’m fine with ‘giving’ on an argument. But when it’s a legal argument, I only ‘give’ in an argument when the other side makes an argument that’s consistent with the law. That didn’t happen here. Look elsewhere in my posts – the ones that are not legal arguments. I give and take on THOSE arguments all the time. I’m not forcing my interpretation of the comic. I’m explaining the law.
Except for with Deus. Deus is the true hero of the comic.
God bless that magnificent David Xanatosian paragon of excellence.
Darn it. “cosmic beams” = “cosmic rays”
You are assuming that the bridge wouldn’t have been destroyed. Max literally destroyed a bridge in the Vehemence fight by punching him.
Um… no she didn’t. She destroyed a construction site, and it wasn’t from one punch. Also you can’t ricochet a punch. Also a punch has a far smaller surface effect and shock wave than a plasma explosion.
Seriously guys…. arguing that Maxima was in the right despite all the evidence compounding together against that notion is just making you seem stubborn and fanboyish, rather than basing your argument on what you actually see happening in the comic (and, at least when arguing with me, based on the legal definitions for negligence which I went over soooo many times last strip’s forum).
I like Maxima as a character too, but lets face it… .she dun messed up with the bridge.
It was from someone being knocked back by one attack. And the construction site was an overpass. Which comes to the same thing.
You’re the one who’s being stubborn. She was right to go after the monster with magical WMDs, and she was right to try and stop Sciona with the most expedient route possible. Both actions failed due to incomplete information, but given what she knew at the time, both actions were the correct option – the most expedient answer to solve the biggest threat with the least total risk. In neither case did it work, but hindsight and having days to work things out does NOT translate to anything for making the call when the situation happens. General rule is, don’t judge the one running point, not the way you are anyway.
“It was from someone being knocked back by one attack. And the construction site was an overpass. Which comes to the same thing.”
It’s not even remotely the same thing. And it was not an overpass, because it was not completed. It was a construction site. There were no cars on it, because it was incomplete, and there were no innocent bystanders driving on it. Unlike the bridge.
“You’re the one who’s being stubborn.”
Stubborn about being correct and having been proven to be correct? No. You’re being stubborn. You’ve already been shown that your opinion was utterly wrong – that Maxima was totally capable of using a physical attack instead of the plasma blast – which a several ill-informed people were continually arguing, without ever being able to refute a single thing I’ve stated, except to make up facts which were not in the comic, make personal insults and ad hominem attacks, tell me to ‘shut up,’ and claim that it was IMPOSSIBLE for Maxima to tackle Sciona or shoot her… despite that Maxima does EXACTLY THAT…. One. Page. Later.
You’re wrong. Swallow your pride. Deal with it. Go onto a future argument where you might actually have facts on your side.
“She was right to go after the monster with magical WMDs,”
Every time you say that, you’re reinforcing that Maxima acted with negligence (legal definition of negligence).
“and she was right to try and stop Sciona with the most expedient route possible.”
If only she instead tried to stop Sciona with the smartest route possible instead – one that does not involve massive explosions.
“Both actions failed due to incomplete information, but given what she knew at the time”
It’s like you want to give more and more evidence of negligence for anyone to use in a lawsuit against Maxima….
” the most expedient answer to solve the biggest threat with the least total risk.”
I love how you’ve used ‘magical WMDs’ and ‘least risk’ in the same paragraph, and actually are thinking that sounds consistent. Her plasma blasts are very obviously not the least risky route – the stomp was. Her duty is to protecting the citizens. She failed to do so. She endangered them instead.
“General rule is, don’t judge the one running point, not the way you are anyway.”
Absolutely no idea what you’re saying here. … don’t judge the one running point? Dafuq?
Actually going to dispute you on one thing (and believe you will agree)
Maxi was right to ‘go after the monster with (alleged) magical WMDs’, she was not right in how she did it
I’ll give you that. I agree. She chose the wrong way to try to take her down, pre-bridge.
My point is that the result of a physical attack did more damage to a similar structure than the plasma ball did at the level she fired it. Attacking her bodily was more reckless than the (up to this point) un-deflectable plasma ball. The only reason she did it here is because she has more information (namely that the plasma ball is actually deflectable) that she didn’t have before. Even so it is potentially more reckless, since who knows what a blood mage can do with Max blood if the wings actually drew any.
This is the equivalent of a sniper firing a single shot at a target (with a safe backdrop), only to have the target whip out a magic bat that makes the bullet ricochet into a fuel tank and blow it up. Even an expert would not reasonably expect a thing that has never been proven to be possible to happen. And since she did stop to mitigate the damage enough for backup to arrive and more permanently fix it, I don’t see how you can claim she was negligent.
If her judgement on the temporary fix on the bridge and the abilities/arrival of the backup ends up being inaccurate, then you would have a better point but that is not in evidence at the moment. If her blast had been deflected before, you would have a better point but that is not in evidence either.
“My point is that the result of a physical attack did more damage to a similar structure than the plasma ball did at the level she fired it.”
No it does not.
First, a punch cannot be richocheted.
Second, a punch has a limited field which it can strike, while an explosion has a much wider field.
Third, the plasma blast gives off FAR more energy than a punch. We actually saw this with Vehemence. When Maxima was going to kill Vehemence if he did not comply…. she was preparing to fire a beam at his head… not punch him in the head (which makes me realize that would have been REALLY BAD FOR EVERYONE EXCEPT FOR SYDNEY unless they all – except Achilles – went in her shield before Maxima did that).
In short, 15 percent power of a punch is going to do less damage than 15 percent power of a plasma blast.
“Attacking her bodily was more reckless than the (up to this point) un-deflectable plasma ball”
How many times do I need to explain how the word ‘reckless’ works in a tort? How many dozens of times would I have to repeat it before people stop saying the same incorrect thing over and over again? Attacking her body was NOT going to open herself to a charge of negligence, because it would not be considered reckless for the breach of the standard of care required.
“Even an expert would not reasonably expect a thing that has never been proven to be possible to happen”
It’s seriously like no one reads anything that I write. The standard for an expert of Maxima’s experience is for a hypothetical expert person of perfect prudence. I will again point to three words – hypothetical and perfect prudence.
“This is the equivalent of a sniper firing a single shot at a target (with a safe backdrop), only to have the target whip out a magic bat that makes the bullet ricochet into a fuel tank and blow it up.”
No, it is not. It is the equivalent of an expert sniper with years of training, who is NOT in a war situation (since there are different rules of engagement and protections in place there) firing at a target (who is currently fleeing a crime that happened a significant while ago) and the target ducks behind an object at the last second, and the bullet ricochet’s off the object, hits a fuel tank, and explodes, taking out a classroom of children.
“And since she did stop to mitigate the damage enough for backup to arrive and more permanently fix it, I don’t see how you can claim she was negligent.”
Mitigating the damage only helps with the element of damage, it does not help with the Duty, Breach of Duty of Care, or Proximate Cause. At best, it might allow for a reduced amount that the plaintiffs receive. MAYBE. The fact that Maxima flew off after the shoddy patch job hurts that sort of mitigating defense (because it shows she had the ability to actually fix the problem or save the people, and did the absolute minimum instead.
“If her judgement on the temporary fix on the bridge and the abilities/arrival of the backup ends up being inaccurate,”
It’s not her judgment – it’s what happened. One way or another, the bridge was severely damaged. People on the bridge suffered damages. If people die or are injured, then it makes the damages even WORSE. Not ‘if Alpha team gets there in time, no harm no faul’ Nope. It’s ‘if Alpha team gets there in time, she doesn’t get sued even more than she already is getting sued’ because of the Damages/Harm element of Negligence.
First, the destruction of the bridge in the Vehemence fight was literally Vehemence ricocheting away when Max punched him. The damage done was larger than the damage done in this instance by the plasma ball. And we have no idea what percentage of a full power punch that was.
Second, why is Max being held to a standard of a hypothetically perfect expert (that knows things that are literally unknowable as they have never happened before) with regards to magic? I could see an argument for Dabbler being held to that, but where is the evidence that Max has that kind of knowledge about magic?
Third, by your argument you can only say the the tackle would not have been negligent because it didn’t actually happen. If she had tackled her over the water and there was similar damage done, she would have been just a negligent. You have no way to know that there would not have been damage done since the situation is different, specifically Sciona was aware of the attack in that case. In fact you don’t know if there has been damage by the tackle that was actually done and if there is Max would still be negligent for doing the exact thing you keep saying she should have done. Again, greater damage has been done by a simple punch before in the comic.
Fourth: ‘No, it is not. It is the equivalent of an expert sniper with years of training, who is NOT in a war situation (since there are different rules of engagement and protections in place there) firing at a target (who is currently fleeing a crime that happened a significant while ago) and the target ducks behind an object at the last second, and the bullet ricochet’s off the object, hits a fuel tank, and explodes, taking out a classroom of children.’
Except in that case the sniper would have had to have actually shot at the object to have hit it (bullets follow physics in the real world). Max shot at an object that there is no way for even a hypothetical expert to have known could have deflected the blast as it has never happened before. Thus the ‘magical bat’ part of my example.
The standard you are holding Max to is basically, “she can be sued if anything negative ever happens as a result of her action.” Which might be the legal standard, but it is also terrible and would make for a really boring comic. Basically the only way for her not to be negligent would be to not ever do anything. I guess that means that she just needs to get some superhero malpractice insurance and say ‘This is a super fight, stuff is going to get broke’.
“First, the destruction of the bridge in the Vehemence fight was literally Vehemence ricocheting away when Max punched him. The damage done was larger than the damage done in this instance by the plasma ball. And we have no idea what percentage of a full power punch that was.”
Maxima was using a LOT more than 15 percent of her punching power against Vehemence, you realize right? She was going all out, in fact.
“Second, why is Max being held to a standard of a hypothetically perfect expert ”
…. because that’s the standard used for an expert in a negligence tort. As I’ve stated in most of my posts on the subject. There have been a LOT of posts I’ve made now on it. Are you telling me you havent read any of them? Not even one?
“Third, by your argument you can only say the the tackle would not have been negligent because it didn’t actually happen. If she had tackled her over the water and there was similar damage done, she would have been just a negligent.”
That did not happen though. And you don’t get into a ‘what would have happened if’ scenario in a negligence case – you get into a ‘did I do something for which something bad happened as a result of my reckless action’ scenario. Which is then judged by the standard you were questioning in your first ‘challenge.’
“Except in that case the sniper would have had to have actually shot at the object to have hit it (bullets follow physics in the real world). Max shot at an object that there is no way for even a hypothetical expert to have known could have deflected the blast as it has never happened before. ”
Anything can be deflected if it follows the laws of physics, whether a bullet, a particle beam, or superheated plasma. It depends on what it hits.
“The standard you are holding Max to is basically, “she can be sued if anything negative ever happens as a result of her action.”
Actually the standard is ‘she is held to that standard of care, as one of four elements of negligence’ – she can get SUED if she meets all four elements of the tort. Not just a duty and breach. There also has to be proximate cause and damages. Both of which are also here. Also, I should mention that with Vehemence, it’s easier to show that Maxima was not the proximate cause, because it was during the commission of a felony started by Vehemence, not Maxima. She still might get sued for negligence, but at least it would be possible to argue about causation in the Vehemence fight, whereas here it’s not (you need all 4 elements to succeed in a charge of negligence). Here, it’s Maxima who was the proximate cause.
“I guess that means that she just needs to get some superhero malpractice insurance and say ‘This is a super fight, stuff is going to get broke’.”
Actually… yes. She should get some superhero malpractice insurance EXACTLY because of how often she’s going to be sued for negligence when people or things are damaged as a result of her actions.
It’s very easy to figure out the perfect solution to a fight when you have days of time to think things over and full knowledge of Sciona’s abilities.
But yeah, Max should have known before hand that the only way to stop Sciona is with a super-powered neck stomp.
Maxima already knew that Sciona was vulnerable to a physical attack, because she knows that Vale used a very effective physical attack against Sciona earlier.
Not in time. Look at the background in panel one, she’s far from the bridge, a lot further than she was when Max decided to attack. Max couldn’t have intercepted her before she got to the bridge.
You are forgetting how fast Maxi can go
We don’t know how fast Sciona can go either.
It amazes me that people are naturally jumping to the worst possible interpretation. To me, the conversation feels like this:
A: Max is totally negligent and using too much force! That was her most powerful attack!
B: No it wasn’t. We saw her emit a kiddy-sized nuclear explosion back at the demonstration, this was way smaller.
A: Well, okay, but it’s the same *kind* of attack and therefore her most powerful!
B: But…that makes no sense. If you’re carrying a pistol and a bazooka, the pistol isn’t your most powerful attack just because they are both firearms.
A: Well, okay, but Max should have shot her with the pistol instead of the plasma blast!
B: Max was *waaay* out of range for a pistol and even aside from that would have been firing on a downwards angle at near-supersonic speeds. It would have been a nearly impossible shot.
A: Well, Max should have tackled her instead of shooting her!
B: First, that’s not how soldiers are trained to do things and Max is a soldier. Second, she was probably about half a mile or a mile away from Sciona when the fight started and we don’t know how fast they each are. She may well not have been able to catch up with her before Sciona got to the bridge.
A: Of course Max is fast enough!
B: Do you have any evidence for that?
A: But it was her most powerful attack! And of course she’s fast enough!
B: I think I need some tea. And a couple aspirin.
“It amazes me that people are naturally jumping to the worst possible interpretation. To me, the conversation feels like this:”
It amazes me that people will bend over backwards to make up facts not shown and make up excuses for Maxima despite the facts presented. Then try to claim victory amidst the smouldering ruins of their failed arguments.
“A: Max is totally negligent and using too much force! That was her most powerful attack!”
She was negligent. Do I have to give the definition and elements of the tort of negligence again? There are literally pages upon pages of me repeating it last strip. And yes, she used too much force because of the collateral damage which occurred. It fits recklessness of the heightened standard of care for someone who is an expert.
“B: No it wasn’t. We saw her emit a kiddy-sized nuclear explosion back at the demonstration, this was way smaller.”
Doesn’t matter. She could have done even smaller an explosion, like she did against Hex or at the gun-range in the Archon building. Or she could have just NOT done an explosion, and tackled or kicked her into the water. Which she clearly can do. Because she just did it. Plus she knew it would be effective, because Vale’s done a punch that sent her flying from one building to another as well, and Maxima knows about that incident too (even if not the specific details – Harem was there, remember, and also Deus said ‘Vale did her thing’ – Vale’s thing is being a bodyguard and beating people up)
“: Well, okay, but it’s the same *kind* of attack and therefore her most powerful!”
WOW… Strawman argument much? it was her most powerful attack. Not ‘her most powerful attack at the highest possible setting. Seriously…. I’m trying to not call people dense, because I think they REALIZE that their argument doesnt work and are just repeating it because they know they’re wrong, but are too stubborn to admit it, but it’s not putting you in a good light. How many times must it be repeated that the plasma blast is Maxima’s most destructive and powerful attack without you thinking that means ‘but it wasnt at its highest setting!’ is in any way a coherent counterargument?
” If you’re carrying a pistol and a bazooka, the pistol isn’t your most powerful attack just because they are both firearms”
Actually, a bazooka and a pistol would be different weapons. They arent the same weapon. A plasma blast is a plasma blast. Regardless of how it can be done at different levels, it was her most powerful option available, and less destructive means, like an aerial boot stomp into the sea or a tackle or a punch, would have been effective without the risk of collateral damage. Not sure why this is difficult to understand.
“A: Well, okay, but Max should have shot her with the pistol instead of the plasma blast!”
She could have. All the arguments made by people of how she couldnt were not only refuted, they were pretty poor to begin with.
“B: Max was *waaay* out of range for a pistol”
She was not out of range. Not even slightly. Plus she’s a trained soldier with a decade of experience and a giant hand cannon that she calls a gun.
“and even aside from that would have been firing on a downwards angle at near-supersonic speeds.”
First, she was no longer at supersonic speeds when she was spotted. Second, doesn’t matter – almost all bullets are supersonic as well, and relativism doesn’t affect the speed of a bullet. Third, a downward angle HELPS with firing bullet, it doesn’t hurt while firing a bullet, because gravity is working with you instead of against you.
“It would have been a nearly impossible shot.”
Incorrect for the reasons I just listed above. You’re making up facts, then using those made up facts to support your argument, and even then, your argument doesn’t work.
“Well, Max should have tackled her instead of shooting her!”
Your honor, I direct your attention to the CURRENT STRIP to prove that Maxima could have, and should have, tackled her or stomped her instead. I will take the damages payout in crisp $100 bills, thank you.
“First, that’s not how soldiers are trained to do things and Max is a soldier.”
She’s also law enforcement, and is not operating in a war setting, she’s operating in a law enforcement setting. War has different rules of engagement than law enforcement. Look up ‘pit maneuver.’
“Second, she was probably about half a mile or a mile away”
You really love making up false numbers to support facetious arguments, don’t you? She was not a mile or a half a mile away. Plus Maxima is faster than Sciona.
“and we don’t know how fast they each are”
We know that Maxima is faster than Mach 4. That heavily implies at least Mach 5+ (hypersonic).
We also know that Sciona was traveling at supersonic speeds (Mach 1+).
We also know that Archon knows at leas the basics about Alari from the Council, and from Dabbler, which means that it’s a reasonable hypothesis that they likely know how fast an Alari can fly.
“Do you have any evidence for that?”
See the above reasoning.
“But it was her most powerful attack! And of course she’s fast enough!”
More strawmanning, and not even good strawmanning. Awful, condescending (and not even correct) post from you.
“I think I need some tea. And a couple aspirin.”
Making up stuff, making arguments that have already been thoroughly refuted, and creating all those strawman arguments would give me a headache too.
I don’t think Max actually connected with anything besides the ground here.
Sciona shouldn’t have been able to tank a direct hit like that considering what we’ve seen before.
“I don’t think Max actually connected with anything besides the ground here.”
Look, I realize that it hurts to say you’re wrong. You have a lot of pride. I get that. But you’re wrong. She stomped her.
Also Sciona HAS tanked (if you call it tanking when you get knocked around without actually dying) superstrong attacks before, namely with Vale. She has special armor on which I’m guesing helps protect her from dying – but it doesnt prevent her from getting hurt or knocked around and into stuff.
Everything that David Storrs said was complete strawmanning, as I pointed out point-for-point. I’d say it was just BS (and wouldn’t be wrong) but strawmanning and obnoxiously condescending without any justification for his attitude (especially since everything he said is outrageously false) is a lot more exact a description.
I think Max missed because otherwise the panels don’t make sense.
Why would Sciona go flying horizontally if Max landed on top of her?
I could be wrong; but it looks the shockwave sent her flying.
+1
-2
Sciona was already travelling horizontally, and speed and motion together would result in something landing on top of her moving along with her, although possibly the vector would be downwards at an angle or an arc, depending on the weight she can carry during flight, etc.
Not with that kind of impact force, even at super-sonic speeds Sciona would have been buried into the ground.
Maybe Max clipped her though.
Seems more like an aerial pit maneuver than a shockwave deal..
Pander: “Everything that David Storrs said was complete strawmanning,”
I was literally quoting you, just with the additional of dramatic punctuation.
Actually, I suppose I shouldn’t say *literally* quoting, since I was writing it from memory instead of copy/paste. Still, everything in there is perfectly representative of things you’ve said that I and others have then refuted. You’ve ‘clarified’ the meaning of “most powerful attack” to claim that when you said “that attack” you didn’t mean **that** attack but simply that her plasma blast **in general** is her most powerful attack, but that’s simply moving the goal posts. Any reasonable person is going to hear “that was her most powerful attack” and assume that you’re talking about **that** attack.
The rest of the ‘refutations’ you’ve made to my points have been thoroughly debunked.
“I was literally quoting you, just with the additional of dramatic punctuation.”
No, you were misquoting me, then compeltely rephrasing what I say as something easier for you to dispute. That’s the exact definition of strawmanning. Especially what you keep saying in response to my accurately saying that the plasma blast is her most powerful attack.
“The rest of the ‘refutations’ you’ve made to my points have been thoroughly debunked.”
No, saying that you debunked my refutations does not make it so. You just tend to ignore what I say and make up different things so you can argue against that instead.
ie, strawmanning :)
You are also assuming things, the difference is you’re assuming very weird things that go counter to past actions by Sciona and the knowledge we have about Max’s abilities.
Literally not assuming anything. You’ve been assuming from the first post you’ve made, on the other hand. I’ve continually used what happens in the comic itself and the law. She did the aerial version of a pit maneuver. Which she could have also done before the bridge, but didn’t.
I never understand people who do what you’re doing. You were shown to be wrong about how Maxima had options OTHER than a plasma blast, but instead of just admitting it and moving on, you double down on being wrong. And of course you continually ignore that she had other options than the plasma blast, although you were very vocal about that last strip.
You’re assuming she could catch up, you’re assuming the super fist fight wouldn’t endanger the bridge (history doesn’t back you up there), you’re assuming (for some reason) that Max should have known the unknowable and assumed her plasma shot was a danger to the bridge.
From my point of view that’s what you’re doing but worse. We’re showing you clear and ample evidence that the choice she took was the best balance of risks and not only do you deny that but you double down and claim it was such a bad choice that it constituted criminal recklessness.
I could agree to disagree over the hindsight best actions Max could have chosen but to claim that what she did was out-right and obviously wrong is just claiming something that’s provably false.
“You’re assuming she could catch up,”
It’s not an assumption. She literally showed THIS STRIP that she was capable of catching up. Because she caught up. I really need to explain how certain words work – words like ‘disingenuous,’ ‘negligence,’ ‘recklessness,’ ‘assume,’ the list is getting longer and longer. You keep using them wrong.
“you’re assuming (for some reason)”
If only I gave a reason last strip, in extensive detail based on the tort of negligence and the elements of that tort, and how it fits exactly into what occurred. Oh wait, I did. A dozen or more times. You just ignore it though.
“that Max should have known the unknowable and assumed her plasma shot was a danger to the bridge.”
It’s not unknowable. It’s the standard of care that she’d be held to as an expert of her level in a negligence tort. So… how many more dozens of times will I have to repeat that in THIS strip’s forum before that sinks in? Just wondering.
“We’re showing you clear and ample evidence that the choice she took was the best balance of risks”
She did not, and again, go back on strip, read any of my posts where I extensively describe how a negligence tort works.
“and not only do you deny that but you double down and claim it was such a bad choice that it constituted criminal recklessness.”
Okay for the …. 20th or so time? Including several times in today’s forum? NEGLIGENCE IS A TORT AND NOT A CRIME! THERE ARE DIFFERENT STANDARDS!
“I could agree to disagree over the hindsight best actions Max could have chosen but to claim that what she did was out-right and obviously wrong is just claiming something that’s provably false”
Adding the words ‘provably false’ to the many words that I need to make a note to explain to you. It would help if you actually bothered to read what I write, instead of apparently gloss over it. Maybe then you’d stop saying that negligence is a crime that I’m accusing Maxima of committing, and maybe you’d finally understand what standard of care an expert is held to in a negligence case. Probably not though – you’ve shown yourself to be VERY obstinate about ignoring what I write, then doubling down on the exact things I utterly refute that you argue. Which I then have to refute again, and because the first refutation was correct, I have to say the same exact thing, but then try to explain it simpler because I had the good faith belief that you just don’t understand what I’m saying, rather than that you do understand what I’m saying and are being disingenuous (see, that’s the proper context for that word) and ignoring it so that you can keep making your argument, which has already been thoroughly refuted.
Me: …Max was about half a mile away…
Pander: “You really love making up false numbers to support facetious arguments, don’t you? She was not a mile or a half a mile away. Plus Maxima is faster than Sciona.”
*facepalm* Look, I’ve already spelled this out for you but I’ll do it again. Here’s a quote from DaveB on this page https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/2809 : “To be fair to Max, she was at least</strong half a kilometer above Sciona…." (Emphasis added.)
Now look at the angle that the blast comes in from: https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/2811
The blast is coming in at about a…30 degree angle, maybe? Do the geometry. You've got a right triangle with a height of 0.5 km (500m, ~1/4 mile) and an angle A of 30 degrees. That means the hypotenuse (i.e., the range to Sciona) is 1000m = 1 km = .62 miles = more than half a mile. Note that this is a minimum distance, since as DaveB said, Max is “at least” 500m above Sciona.
Also, why would you imagine that one shot from a mere pistol would be capable of rendering Sciona unable to reach the bridge? Or are you assuming that Max is somehow going to hit her multiple times?
Me: …Max was out of pistol range…
Pander: ” She was not out of range. Not even slightly. Plus she’s a trained soldier with a decade of experience and a giant hand cannon that she calls a gun.”
…I honestly don’t know how you’re arguing this. Go google for “effective range of handguns” — here’s one random link that came up at the top of the search for me: “https://www.calguns.net/calgunforum/showthread.php?t=29660” tl;dr: Effective range on a handgun is 30-100 yards, not 0.62 miles. Yes, handguns can be lethal outside that range if you happen to hit, and yes, there have been examples of people hitting from much farther than 100 yards when shooting from a bench with time to line up the shot, but those are not the conditions here.
More importantly Maxima is not a marksman. The cast list shows us their capabilities. Peggy is a high rated sniper. Maxima does not even have a single star. Her marksmanship is no better than any human cop.
Whilst Hollywood might like propagating the impression that handguns can take out someone out that far away, it clearly is out of range. And, even if it was within the weapon’s maximum range, an average shooter simply would have no chance of hitting even a stationary target that far away. Let alone one moving at anything up to and including supersonic speeds!
“More importantly Maxima is not a marksman”
She most definitely is a marksman. If she can fire her plasma blast at that range, she can fire a gun at that range. She might not be on PEGGY’S level, but Peggy’s the type of person who can probably shoot a person from 1-2 miles away, not 500 yards. Hell, a bolt from a CROSSBOW can go 500 yards, and that’s a lot slower and less powerful than a bullet.
“Whilst Hollywood might like propagating the impression that handguns can take out someone out that far away, it clearly is out of range.”
Yorp, hon… it’s not out of range. Even a crossbow would not be out of range at 500 yards (about a quarter of a mile).
“And, even if it was within the weapon’s maximum range,”
It’s not even nearly the weapon’s maximum range, there are guns that can fire at over 2200 fps even. It’s not like Maxima’s carrying a 9mm glock or something.
“an average shooter simply would have no chance of hitting even a stationary target that far away.”
Yes, they would. They HAVE. In real life.
“Let alone one moving at anything up to and including supersonic speeds!”
Bullets travel at supersonic speeds, and Maxima is able to keep up with Sciona (and in fact can go faster than her). So the fact that both are travelling at the same speed (at least) means there is no effect on the bullet. For example, if you’re on a plane and you fire a bullet from the back of the plane to the front of the plane, the bullet is not actually moving faster than it would it you were on the ground and firing a bullet. If you measure the velocity of both, they would be exactly the same. Einstein already taught this as part of a thought experiment involving being on a ship going nearly the speed of light and firing a bullet from the back to the front, which was just a reiteration of an earlier thought experiment about relative speeds on a train.
Oh, one more point that I forgot to address:
” If [Max] can fire her plasma blast at that range, she can fire a gun at that range. ”
The two skills wouldn’t overlap at all. Under real-world physics, a plasma blasts would have effectively zero deflection — that is, they don’t have “bullet drop” due to gravity. We don’t know that those are the relevant rules for Max’s energy blast, but I don’t recall any evidence to the contrary.
Separate question: You’ve asserted that Max’s blast has been shown to bounce off of Hex’s shield. Is this the page you’re referencing? https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/1384 If so, I can’t see it — the downward-pointing thing to Hex’s right, and the marks at the corners of the shield, are her Buster Buddies, not Max’s blast. Am I missing something?
“The two skills wouldn’t overlap at all.”
Both skills involve firing a projectile – aim is the same.
” Under real-world physics, a plasma blasts would have effectively zero deflection”
Actually plasma blasts do get affected as well.
” — that is, they don’t have “bullet drop” due to gravity.”
She is not nearly far enough away for bullet drop to affect things significantly, if she’s only half a kilometer. Quarter mile. 500 yards. This was not a sniper-distance. Literally, a crossbow bolt can travel 500 yards. A bow and arrow can travel about 400 yards even. Also, her bullets would be travelling at a high velocity, especially with the type of gun she has. It’s not like she carries around a peashooter.
“We don’t know that those are the relevant rules for Max’s energy blast, but I don’t recall any evidence to the contrary.”
You also have no evidence that Maxima’s ability to aim is different for a plasma blast than it is for a gun. Especially someone who has over a decade of military training. She isn’t a sniper like Peggy, but this was not a sniper shot.
I should also mention that a warning shot could have been used as well to make her veer off, as a possibility.
“You’ve asserted that Max’s blast has been shown to bounce off of Hex’s shield”
Panel 3 of the page you linked to. Not panel 2.
I second David K. Storrs‘s point that they are completely different. To the degree that I was using your patented “DFUQ” response when reading your attempt to do that. By applying your logic Maxima should be able to pick up any gun, of any type, and use it better than Peggy!
Moreover I have first paw expert skill at direct-fire laser weaponry. I was on a team of regional champions, at Laser Quest. And had by far the highest hit ratio of any of the competitors (nearly double the next highest)! Which was maintained consistently across every match, hour after hour, under gruellingly fierce competition.
Yet that did not give me any competency at all even just firing an air rifle, under ideal conditions. Nor would it with a firearm. As David says you need to be able to compensate for drop (varying over range) crosswind and a bunch of other stuff that a direct fire energy weapon simply gives you no experience with!
Looking up pistol ranges, I concede that the bullet could reach. However there is a big difference between getting a bullet that far and actually hitting a person.
Fortunately we do have figures for that:
For the pistols it is 50 meters. Which Sciona was far beyond. And that is not even factoring in both the shooter and the target moving at up to supersonic speed, which would challenge even a highly skilled marksman!
Frankly you are being delusional in thinking a hand gun could be used under those conditions and at that range.
“I second David K. Storrs‘s point that they are completely different.”
They are not. The ability to aim is constant, and Maxima is trained in the use of firearms (and is an expert, even if not the same level of expertise as Peggy).
“o the degree that I was using your patented “DFUQ” response when reading your attempt to do that. ”
Dafuq :) Also technically not mine. I took it from South Park.
“By applying your logic Maxima should be able to pick up any gun, of any type, and use it better than Peggy!”
Nope. Peggy’s a sniper. That’s a special type of training. Maxima can shoot someone from 1/4 mile away…. Snipers like Peggy, if she’s really as good as it’s been claimed in the comic, can do the same shot from 1-2 miles away. The world record distance for a sniper was in 2009, in which a sniper hit two Taliban insurgents, one after the other, from a distance of 2707 yards…. 2.5 kilometers a way. Five times farther than DaveB said Maxima was from Sciona. And they did it twice in a row. I’d be willing to give the benefit of the doubt that Peggy can as well. Maxima doesn’t have to be at that level of expertise – she just needs to be the good shot that 10+ years of being in the military special forces would train you to be.
“Yet that did not give me any competency at all even just firing an air rifle, under ideal conditions.”
An air rifle isnt like a normal rifle, or like a handgun. It fires far slower, and a much slower distance. If Maxima was firing an air rifle, I would agree that she can’t hit Sciona. She is not firing an air rifle.
“Nor would it with a firearm.”
Yes it would. I’ve given a list of different handguns, not rifles even, which are more than capable of making the shot. And Maxima’s gun is that huge handcannon she carries around.
“As David says you need to be able to compensate for drop (varying over range)”
For 1/4th of a mile, that’s a very minor distance to be affected by bullet drop. This isnt a sniper shot.
“crosswind and a bunch of other stuff that a direct fire energy weapon simply gives you no experience with!”
Plama blasts would also be affected as well – with a similar minute effect for a distance that short (it’s not a half mile, it’s not a mile, it’s not 2 miles).
“For the pistols it is 50 meter”
Handguns can fire a lot further than 50 meters. A normal handgun firing a 9mm bullet can travel up to 2200 meters. Do you think Maxima has a 9mm pistol? Check out the size of her gun. And no I’m not making a sexual double entendre.
“Frankly you are being delusional”
I’ll let you apologize for the personal insult.
“in thinking a hand gun could be used under those conditions and at that range.”
It can, and has, in real life. From people with far less training than Maxima has, with guns firing bullets with far lower velocity than Maxima’s. Not delusional. Logical.
A criticism is not an insult. A delusion is a mistaken belief that is held with strong conviction even when presented with superior evidence to the contrary. I have provided superior evidence.
May I, with the utmost respect, suggest that you take the chip off your shoulder.
I am glad that you have testified that my laser gun experience is exactly comparable to firing a pistol, at those ranges. Because that then allows me to directly testify as an expert. It is not credible to reliably hit at that range. It would take a fluke. Even as a champion I would not risk people’s lives on me being able to hit a target as tiny as Sciona was, from Maxima’s perspective!
Precisely. Shooting an energy blast out of your hand is also a special type of training. Which is completely different to firing a handgun. I know of no tabletop game which allows skill with an energy attack to translate to skill with firearms (ignoring games which do not use skills, or try to approximate reality, as some would
allow anyone to do anything).
Likewise, using real life skills, the military will train one person in how to use a shoulder fired rocket. Whereas another will be trained as a sniper. If the heavy weapons guy has to switch to using a pistol he is using a completely different skill set. Likewise, as you say, when the sniper has to use a pistol.
And each of those has to be practised separately. Time spent on one is lost to practising others.
I am afraid that argument is just too leaky, on multiple counts.
Besides which if that is the way it worked then Maxima would have a free ranking in firearms skill. She does not. Her skill, with her pistol, is that of a normal cop.
Handguns do not shoot themselves. The gun has to be fired by a person and we need to know the range at which they can effectively hit another person, with any degree of reliability. Your evidence is unfit for purpose.
According to the chart I linked lists the maximum range as 1800 meters. It does that for a good reason, because beyond that it is not likely to be lethal.
You however completely ignored the key part, so I shall quote it again.
So I reiterate, as per that chart the ‘maximum effective range on a point target’ is 50 meters. Beyond that range Maxima, as an average shooter, would have less than a 50% chance of hitting Sciona (under perfect target shooting conditions, not under these high speed flying conditions).
For information the Olympics uses pistol targets set at either 10 meter or 50 meter range. That should give you some idea that it is challenging enough, even for the best in the world, to be accurate at the longer range. Of course they are all good enough to hit a torso sized target, so theirs are smaller. But they are champions, not average cops.
No. No need, I know it. I suspected that the higher the calibre the harder it would be to hit with the same reliability. However I was willing to assume that Maxima would be able to control her gun as easily as a normal person can a 9mm weapon.
However if you wish to supply similarly well sourced figures for higher calibre weapons, please feel free to do so. I was unable to locate such. Recall though that the maximum range is irrelevant. We need the one defined in the quote I have supplied above, as it is that which shows the range at which Maxima might credibly hit Sciona.
“A criticism is not an insult. A delusion is a mistaken belief that is held with strong conviction even when presented with superior evidence to the contrary.”
No, calling me delusional is an insult. Don’t do it, okay?
Delusional – characterized by or holding idiosyncratic beliefs or impressions that are contradicted by reality or rational argument as a symptom of mental disorder.
Not only are my beliefs NOT contradicted by reality, they are supported by it. They are also EXTREMELY rational, since I’ve been doing nothing but quoting the law. The same law, in fact. Repeatedly.
“I have provided superior evidence.”
You have not.
“May I, with the utmost respect, suggest that you take the chip off your shoulder.”
You’re doing it again, Yorp. You need to stop doing stuff like that if you want me to treat you with respect.
“I am glad that you have testified that my laser gun experience is exactly comparable to firing a pistol, at those ranges.”
I have not said that, and you are again making up facts and strawmanning.
“Because that then allows me to directly testify as an expert.”
You are not an expert. I’m not sure if you’re making a joke here or not.
“It is not credible to reliably hit at that range.”
Yes it is.
“It would take a fluke.”
No it would not. If you’re going to just state things and act like it’s the truth without any evidence to back it up, I’m just going to state that you’re wrong. I’ve already given more than enough evidence and reasoning in the past several days that you can go back and read again.
“Even as a champion I would not risk people’s lives on me being able to hit a target as tiny as Sciona was, from Maxima’s perspective!”
1) Maxima would be able to hit her with her already-existing decade+ of military special forces training
2) She’s not a tiny target.
3) Maxima can always speed up and fire closer. Not that she even has to, since she can make the shot as is.
“Precisely. Shooting an energy blast out of your hand is also a special type of training.”
1) Aiming is aiming.
2) Maxima has over a decade of aiming with both guns and her plasma blast.
“Which is completely different to firing a handgun. I know of no tabletop game which allows skill with an energy attack to translate to skill with firearms”
Both require aiming. One fires from your hand. The other fires from an object…. in your hand.
“Likewise, using real life skills, the military will train one person in how to use a shoulder fired rocket. Whereas another will be trained as a sniper. If the heavy weapons guy has to switch to using a pistol he is using a completely different skill set. Likewise, as you say, when the sniper has to use a pistol.”
Maxima doesn’t use a shoulder-fired rocket. Or a sniper rifle. She uses a handgun. She’s trained, for at least 10 years. They arent training you on how to see things, they’re training on how to operate the different weapons. Now if you’re saying that Maxima does not know how to operate a handgun, I think your reasoning is quite leaky.
“According to the chart I linked lists the maximum range as 1800 meters. It does that for a good reason, because beyond that it is not likely to be lethal.”
Since you seem to not want to look at my past posts (see, I could have said you were too lazy to look at my past posts, but that would be insulting, and I decided not to stoop to that level), here is the chart I used. I also pointed out several guns which can fire even FARTHER than the distance needed.
17 Hornady Magnum Rimfire = 2040 fps
30 Carbine Handgun = 1790 fps
500 Smith and Wesson = 1950 fps
460 Smith and Wesson = 2200 fps
454 Casuli = 1900 fps
https://www.gunnersden.com/index.htm.handgun-ballistics.html
I’m right. You’re wrong. Okay?
“You however completely ignored the key part, so I shall quote it again”
No, your ‘key part’ was incorrect.
“So I reiterate, as per that chart the ‘maximum effective range on a point target’ is 50 meters.”
And I reiterate, you can definitely fire effectively farther than 50 meters.
“Beyond that range Maxima, as an average shooter, would have less than a 50% chance of hitting Sciona (under perfect target shooting conditions, not under these high speed flying conditions).”
Not only are you again making up facts, you’re also calling a decade+ veteran special forces-trained military commander in the field an ‘average shooter.’
“For information the Olympics uses pistol targets set at either 10 meter or 50 meter range.”
This is akin to saying that a tournament karate match is like a real fight.
“I suspected that the higher the calibre the harder it would be to hit with the same reliability.”
You would suspect wrong. Maxima literally sometimes forgets that things HAVE WEIGHT. She’s admitted as much in the comic.
“However if you wish to supply similarly well sourced figures for higher calibre weapons, please feel free to do so.”
I just did. See above. I also already had posted that on the last strip as well, which I mentioned and you didn’t bother to look, so I looked for it myself so I could post it again – you’re welcome.
“I was unable to locate such.”
Then you didn’t look particularly hard, or were using confirmation bias when looking.
“Recall though that the maximum range is irrelevant. We need the one defined in the quote I have supplied above, as it is that which shows the range at which Maxima might credibly hit Sciona.”
Which is why every gun I mentioned can not only shoot that distance, but significantly BEYOND it. Reliably.
You are entrenched in your delusion. However I do stipulate that I do not consider you to be suffering a mental disorder (that is not mandatory in the term, it is an optional, and it does not apply as you are otherwise rational). On this point you are demonstrably delusional though.
I have provided documentary evidence that 50 meters is the range at which an average shooter can hit a man sized target with a 50/50 chance of hitting. I gave you the option to provide counter-evidence for larger calibres, which you elected not to.
Your chart, which I read every time and mentioned in my post, does not take that into account. It is still unfit for purpose, even copying it here again.
As stated previously the distance a bullet can go is irrelevant. It is the ability to hit someone with that bullet which is the pertinent thing. All the rest of your argument does not negate the fact that I have provided proof to back up my assertion. Whereas your supporting documentation is not relevant to the task at hand.
Do note that under most circumstances I allow for ‘this is a comic so we can interpret things how we like’. However the point of whether a pistol can effectively hit at ranges beyond 50 meters is well established and you are and remain delusional in thinking that it can.
I say this not to provoke you, nor to insult you. You know I very much respect you. It is though a plain truth.
Rethinking, even a truth, plainly spoken, can be hurtful. I should protect your feelings.
I apologise.
Allow me to replace the word you are sensitive to, with “wrong”.
“You are entrenched in your delusion. However I do stipulate that I do not consider you to be suffering a mental disorder (that is not mandatory in the term, it is an optional, and it does not apply as you are otherwise rational). On this point you are demonstrably delusional though.”
I’m going to ignore this because you apologize for the rude insulting in a later post.
“I have provided documentary evidence that 50 meters is the range at which an average shooter can hit a man sized target with a 50/50 chance of hitting.”
I have provided documentary evidence which contradicts your documentary evidence and shows your evidence to be incomplete. Which you have elected to ignore.
“I gave you the option to provide counter-evidence for larger calibres, which you elected not to.””
Now you’re just lying. I did provide counter-evidence, and a webpage link. Shame on you. :/ Bad dog.
“Whereas your supporting documentation is not relevant to the task at hand.”
Yes it is.
” However the point of whether a pistol can effectively hit at ranges beyond 50 meters is well established and you are and remain delusional in thinking that it can.”
You can state and restate that no one can hit a target with a handgun (no matter how powerful the handgun is) from more than 50 meters away as often as you want – you’re still incorrect. I’ve shown evidence of this several times now to contradict your claim.
“I say this not to provoke you, nor to insult you. You know I very much respect you. It is though a plain truth.”
It’s a very odd way of showing it.
“Allow me to replace the word you are sensitive to, with “wrong”.”
I’m not wrong, but I appreciate the apology.
Yet again you have failed to provide any evidence which shows that a higher calibre handgun, being fired by an average skill user, can hit a man-sized target, more than 50% of the time at ranges greater than 50 meters.
Despite your assertions to the contrary. Keep on posting the maximum firing range all you like, that says ZERO about the chance of hitting a target.
You clearly have ZERO understanding of the topic and are too obstinate to realise that. I hope you realise that this is a polite way of describing your lack of knowledge and unwillingness to learn.
By the way, I do still think you are a great person
You can’t help it that you believe it when you see Hollywood action heroes shooting anything that they can see, with a handgun, regardless of the range. It is alluring. And all of those numbers that show how far and fast bullets can go. Very impressive. It makes guns seem so wonderful!
They still need to hit someone to kill them though.
“Yet again you have failed to provide any evidence which shows that a higher calibre handgun, being fired by an average skill user, can hit a man-sized target, more than 50% of the time at ranges greater than 50 meters.”
I’ve literally given you a website to prove my point. Not going to keep repeating that.
Also Maxima is not an ‘average skilled user.’ She’s a military commander with over a decade of experience at war in special forces, who is powerful enough to never have to worry about things like kickback from powerful handguns when aiming, and superhumanly fast reflexes.
“You clearly have ZERO understanding of the topic and are too obstinate to realise that.”
I seem to have at least enough understanding to understand basic math, and how the table I showed proves I’m correct.
” I hope you realise that this is a polite way of describing your lack of knowledge and unwillingness to learn.”
Not agreeing with you is not the same as having an unwillingness to learn. It just means I don’t find what you’re saying to be correct, and I don’t think I’m learning anything from you on this discussion. It’s a bit of hubris what you’re assuming, honestly.
“By the way, I do still think you are a great person”
I think you’re a great person also. You just irritate the hell out of me sometimes :) But you’re a great person and generally adorable.
“You can’t help it that you believe it when you see Hollywood action heroes shooting anything that they can see, with a handgun, regardless of the range.”
I don’t use hollywood for my reasoning. In fact, according to Hollywood, someone can get shot up mulitple times and keep fighting like nothing. Couldnt stand Die Hard with a Vengeance for that reason.
Which is WORTHLESS. It does NOT have any data on the hit probability at any range. Not for an average user. Not for an expert user. Nothing at all to prove is that Maxima could reliably hit Sciona at that range.
All you have done is offer your opinion on that matter. NO proof.
Whereas I have offered proof.
1) the comic does have a category for marksmanship. Maxima does not have any superior skill listed. Without that she has, at best, average still with handguns.
2) I provided a well sourced website which does show the actual range that someone with average skill can reliably hit people, when firing a handgun.
Yet you keep choosing to ignore FACTS and try to counter them with your OPINIONS. Given how much you complain about that, you are being HYPOCRITICAL!
“*facepalm* Look, I’ve already spelled this out for you but I’ll do it again. Here’s a quote from DaveB on this page https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/2809 : “To be fair to Max, she was at least</strong half a kilometer above Sciona…." (Emphasis added.)"
Half a kilometer is not half a mile. If you're going to use references, use ones that don't refute your own claims.
Half a kilometer is a little more than 500 yards. Maxima would be capable of making the shot. Not to mention she can fly closer before making the shot.
"…I honestly don’t know how you’re arguing this. Go google for “effective range of handguns”"
I did, check last page – I brought up a website that has a list of a bunch of handguns and which ones have a range of more than 1500 feet (actually I used the guns that had more than 1700 feet, because while you strawman to make your opponents arguments easier to deal with, I steelman so that my arguments have greater meaning than yours).
“Half a kilometer is not half a mile. If you’re going to use references, use ones that don’t refute your own claims.”
I’ll assume that you didn’t read my entire post instead of that you deliberately quoted out of context. Let me sum it up for you:
Based on what DaveB has said in the author’s notes, Maxima is AT LEAST 0.62 miles from Sciona in that shot. References below. Proof: per DaveB, she was >= 500m above Sciona and her attack came in at a ~30 degree angle. Right triangle, height of 500m, angle A of 30 degrees means the hypotenuse = 1000m = 1km = 0.62 miles. Hypotenuse is range to Sciona, and this is a MINIMUM since height of triangle may be more than 500m.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/2809 DaveB: “To be fair to Max, she was at least half a kilometer above Sciona,”
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/2811 Angle of incoming plasma blast ~30 degrees
Regarding range of handguns: I think we’re having a miscommunication. You seem to be looking at *maximum* range, whereas I’m talking about *effective* range. Maximum range is how far the bullet will go before it hits the ground if nothing stops it. Effective range is the distance at which a skilled marksman can reliably hit a human-size target in average conditions based on the accuracy of the weapon, aerodynamics of the bullet, etc. As I stated above: Yes, there have been pistol shots made at beyond 100 yards by expert marksmen firing off a shooting bench with time to line up the shot. (Although I’m not aware of any cases where those shots were made against anything other than a stationary target — not saying there haven’t been, but I haven’t seen them.) That was not the case here. The relevant number in this case is the *effective* range of the weapon. 1,000m or more, the distance to Sciona, is far, far beyond the effective range of a handgun. Not critical, but point of information: Professional snipers try to shoot from ~600 yards (source: personal conversation with a FMR sniper)
As to whether Max is a good enough markswoman to make that shot, it seems exceedingly unlikely. A 10mph full-value wind (i.e., coming from 3 o’clock or 9 o’clock) is enough to deflect a bullet 54″ when shooting a .308 at 1,000 yards with 2600 fps muzzle velocity. Max is flying at Mach speeds, so the bullet is dealing with effective winds that are some fraction of that based on the angle fired and Max’s horizontal vector. Even if Max stopped to make the shot, estimating wind at night is difficult since you can’t see details of tree movement etc as clearly, making it hard to guess how much your bullet is going to deflect. Also, at that range you probably have multiple ‘layers’ of wind, some of which are blowing left and some of which are blowing right, making it nearly impossible. That’s ignoring the fact that Max is moving at Mach speed and therefore generating pretty significant wind of her own — remember that the bullet is going to leave the barrel with a vector that contains Max’s horizontal movement, so the bullet is getting relatively pushed on by a Mach-speed wind.
You’ve asserted in prior post that firing down is easier; it’s not. Firing down at an angle makes it harder to adjust for bullet drop since you’re trying to adjust for parallax. I’ve fired .50 sniper rifles at 1,000 yards; it was a difficult shot even though I was prone, had plenty of time to aim, was firing horizontally, and there was little wind. Those are very much not the conditions that Max is facing.
“because while you strawman to make your opponents arguments easier to deal with, I steelman so that my arguments have greater meaning than yours).”
Please stop claiming that, because it’s simply not true. I have not strawmanned any of your arguments. I have quoted you and addressed specific points that you’ve made. If we’re really going to get into this then I’ll note that your post that I’m responding to utterly failed to accurately represent my point and quoted me out of context in order to make your argument work.
David K. Storrs:
“Half a kilometer” is nowhere near “half a mile”.
Half a mile would be 2,640 feet.
Half a kilometer is a little over 1,640 feet.
A 9mm handgun has an effective range of about 5,900 feet*
Don’t try to tell me that Maxima’s hand-held cannon, which is way more powerful than a 9mm, can’t hit a target at that range. Now I will grant that with the speeds involved, accuracy would be an issue. But the entire point is that Sciona was well within range for Maxima to have used a different attack that wouldn’t have endangered civilians on the bridge.
* If you define “effective range” as “the distance at which a shooter can hit a man-sized target” and don’t take other factors into account.
Ok, I will partly retract my previous comment because you’re right about the angle of approach. It still does not change the fact that Sciona was well within range of Maxima’s gun instead of using an Armor-Piercing High Explosive plasma bolt.
““Half a kilometer” is nowhere near “half a mile”.”
Yes, I’m aware. I did this math on the previous page and again just now for Pander, but I’ll put it here for you as well:
500m is not the distance to Sciona, it is the height *above* Sciona. Distance to Sciona is AT LEAST 1000m = 1km = 0.62 miles = more than half a mile.
Based on what DaveB has said in the author’s notes, Maxima is AT LEAST 0.62 miles from Sciona in that shot. References below. Proof: per DaveB, she was >= 500m above Sciona and her attack came in at a ~30 degree angle. Right triangle, height of 500m, angle A of 30 degrees means the hypotenuse = 1000m = 1km = 0.62 miles. Hypotenuse is range to Sciona, and this is a MINIMUM since height of triangle may be more than 500m.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/2809 DaveB: “To be fair to Max, she was at least half a kilometer above Sciona,”
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/2811 Angle of incoming plasma blast ~30 degrees
David, you’re making up facts again. Maxima is not .62 miles from Sciona.
Please. Use math.
If Maxima is half a kilometer from Sciona, and also behind Sciona, then it’s going to be, at most, about .31 miles. And THAT is assuming half a kilometer up AND half a kilometer back, which isnt the case since she fired at a 30 degree angle. It would be half a mile back and LESS than half a kilometer up.
But lets assume half a kilometer up and half a kilometer back, because I like to steelman my opponent’s arguments to give them the best possible chance.
The way you calculate the angle is length * the square root of 2. Not length * 2.
Go ahead and plug that into a calculator.
+1
Pander, the comic’s comment section isn’t really designed to be searchable, so I will try to ask a very specific, very limited question:
For the sake of discussion, please assume the following four points are true:
1) Max is the best (only?) possible expert on how her beam works; it had never been deflected before, ever (*), and she had no reason to believe it could be..
2) Max was convinced that the *safest* way for her to disable Sciona was a plasma beam (she was certain the plasma , beam was *entirely safe*, whereas she had been injured in melee confrontations before).
3) Max gets the chance to explain her reasoning clearly to the jury. The jury understands it, finds it plausible, and considers it an expert opinion. They can separate this opinion from Max being the defendant (otherwise I’m just asking you to assume that she convinced them that she’s innocent, which is kinda moot) and take it as having the same weight as an expert opinion presented by the other party.
4) For whatever reason, you decided to accept her as a client. Maybe you wanted a challenge :P
Given all that, would you still advise her to, essentially, settle out of court or prepare to lose badly?
That is, does the fact that she had no reason to believe that she was factually wrong change anything WRT her responsibility – and the presumed result of a potential lawsuit – given that she was factually incorrect in the end?
Again, please remember that I am asking you to assume all the above 4 points as being factually true.
(*) I know you said multiple times that her beam has been deflected before, but I couldn’t find any of the examples you mentioned. It seems it has only ever been absorbed, or, alternatively, that it cut through the target before exploding. Word of God also explicitly said Max had no way to know her beam could be deflected.
“For the sake of discussion, please assume the following four points are true:”
I can’t make that assumption.
“1) Max is the best (only?) possible expert on how her beam works; it had never been deflected before, ever (*), and she had no reason to believe it could be..”
She is not the only expert on that. We know that she’s been tested, and experimented on about her powers. We also know that other supers have energy blast powers. We also know that her blasts have been deflected or blocked before, including within the last few weeks. Possibly even more since she’s been fought to a standstill at least twice before, but I’m not going to assume facts that are not in evidence since we havent heard much about that other than that one of those two times was Dabbler, who does use magical/technological shields.
“2) Max was convinced that the *safest* way for her to disable Sciona was a plasma beam (she was certain the plasma , beam was *entirely safe*, whereas she had been injured in melee confrontations before).”
You are making an assumption. Far more likely that she wanted to use her most powerful attack to stop Sciona, and was not concerned about the safety of that attack, which seems in line with how Maxima has treated her plasma blasts in the past, given her regular sense of overconfidence. Also we’re not talking about MAXIMA being safe – she’s in a dangerous profession…. we’re talking about the CIVILIANS being safe for the matter of negligence.
“3) Max gets the chance to explain her reasoning clearly to the jury. The jury understands it, finds it plausible, and considers it an expert opinion.”
Maxima is not the hypothetical expert person that the standard requires. That’s why the person is ‘hypothetical’ for the standard of care.
“They can separate this opinion from Max being the defendant (otherwise I’m just asking you to assume that she convinced them that she’s innocent, which is kinda moot)”
This is not a criminal case, it’s a civil case. It’s not innocent beyond a reasonable doubt – it’s proponderence of the evidence. And the standard of care works against her BECAUSE of her extreme expertise.
“and take it as having the same weight as an expert opinion presented by the other party.”
Again… the standard of care is of a hypothetical expert of perfect prudence. You’re not understanding the standard used.
“4) For whatever reason, you decided to accept her as a client. Maybe you wanted a challenge :P”
I prefer winning a case to losing a challenge. Honestly, if I had to be saddled with her as a defendant, I’d recommend settling, and if I had to go to court, I’d be constantly reminding the jury that Maxima saves people’s lives all the time and hope that they’d ignore the law. It’s not a good case for her attorney to have. At best, I’d try to minimize the damages because she did do something to try to keep the bridge from collapsing AFTER her negligent act. But that won’t win the case – that will just, at best, minimize how much the court rules against her.
“Given all that, would you still advise her to, essentially, settle out of court or prepare to lose badly?”
Yes. Also, your assumptions that you want me to see as correct are not correct. You can’t ask me to assume false things being true, then make a judgment based on those false things.
“Again, please remember that I am asking you to assume all the above 4 points as being factually true.”
But they are NOT factually true. I could tell you to assume that eating Tide Pods will make you healthier, but that doesn’t make it true, and you shouldnt just assume it’s true if you know for a fact that it will kill you and melt your insides.
Well, I’m asking you to assume four hypotheticals to be true. Surely that is not beyond your capability as a human being. You are akready assuming her state of mind just as much as I am.
I’m just asking you to let go of one set of preconceptions and embrace another one in its stead :P
That said, since you mentioned I don’t understand the standard being used, which seems to be true…
How does one *determine* what constitutes perfect prudence? Logically, “perfect” cannot mean “omniscient”, so surely it has to mean “the best possible option given available information”.
Which means an actual expert has to be able to give an opinion as to what the best available information was at the time of the events.
Or am I wrong, and actual experts are held to a standard that actual experts cannot actually determine? Because that seems weird.
Please explain.
Had Max been correct that her beam could not be deflected, only dodged or absorbed, would that have met the standard?
Also, you keep saying:
“We also know that her blasts have been deflected or blocked before, including within the last few weeks. ”
I went through the full archive binge looking for a page where Max’s beam actually bounced off a target, and I couldn’t find it. Would you please give a page reference? I did go through the archive trying to find evidence of something *you* had asserted,
“Well, I’m asking you to assume four hypotheticals to be true.”
Why would I assume that four FALSE hypotheticals are true? If they’re false, then they’re going to lead to an answer that doesn’t correspond with reality.
“Surely that is not beyond your capability as a human being.”
It’s not beyond my capability to make assumptions based on false data. But that just gives a false answer. I prefer using accurate data, since I’m arguing what will actually happen.
“You are already assuming her state of mind just as much as I am.”
No, actually I’m repeatedly saying her state of mind is irrelevant to how the hypothetical expert person of perfect prudence would act. Repeatly. As in… I’ve been saying the same thing for days now. I havent had to alter my statements and come at it from multiple angles, like Yorp did (he’s tried at least 6 different reasons, all of which were flawed in some way – the most recent one being about sovereign immunity). And I haven’t had to alter the hypotheticals to represent something that is not true (ie, I’m not introducing facts that are not in evidence).
“I’m just asking you to let go of one set of preconceptions and embrace another one in its stead :P”
But that wouldn’t be how the elements of that law works. Or how a lawsuit works in general.
“How does one *determine* what constitutes perfect prudence? Logically, “perfect” cannot mean “omniscient”, so surely it has to mean “the best possible option given available information”.”
Not quite. It means ‘the best possible option given ALL possible information that could have been discovered with enough time.’ – it’s an incredibly high standard, and one of the reasons that negligence is one of the most often used torts in civil liability, especially against people who are considered experts.
“Which means an actual expert has to be able to give an opinion as to what the best available information was at the time of the events.”
No. Again, it’s not about their opinion. This is not expert testimony. It’s about the standard at which someone who is an expert is held to to show that there was a breach of the standard of care required.
“Or am I wrong,”
Yes, you are wrong.
“Because that seems weird.”
You have not even begun to see some of the caselaw. It’s not weird once you do :). It’s protecting the defendant from an expert feigning ignorance.
“Had Max been correct that her beam could not be deflected, only dodged or absorbed, would that have met the standard?”
Had Max been correct that her blast (not beam) could not be deflected, then she would have met that standard. Also, if she was correct, then the accident would not have happened in the first place. But she was incorrect.
tl;dr – Maxima dun messed up.
“I went through the full archive binge looking for a page where Max’s beam actually bounced off a target,”
Deflected, not bounced. But apparently Maxima’s blast has a latency which is at least somewhat in line with the intensity of the blast – the less powerful the blast the shorter the latency; the more powerful the blast, the longer the latency.
“and I couldn’t find it. Would you please give a page reference? I did go through the archive trying to find evidence of something *you* had asserted,”
I’ve actually shown the page link elsewhere on this very strip’s forum, but one sec. I’ll find it again and post it here so you don’t have to search my other posts here.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/1384
Panel 3 – note the cracks in Hex’s shield where the plasma blast hit off of before exploding.
Right. That page does not show what you think it’s showing. Max’s beam explodes on contact with the shield, it doesn’t get deflected.
This makes point 1 presumably true, since, again, Word of God stated that Max couldn’t have known that Sciona could deflect her plasma thing. Points 2 and 3 refer to Max’s state of mind, not the state of things, so when you say “they are false” you are making just as much of an assumption as I am asking you to make in the other direction.
The only point that I’ll concede being provably false is you taking Max’s defense: you appear constitutionally unable to do so :P
That said… If the standard is “he best possible option given ALL possible information that could have been discovered with enough time’”, why would points 1-4 being all true change *anything at all*?
Even if Max was *absolutely certain* that her whatchamacallsit could not be deflected (because of 20 years of previous experience had told her so), the 20 seconds that followed proved her wrong.
Doesn’t that mean that “given enough time” Max would, as she eventually did, find out that blasting Sciona out of the sky was not, in fact, the safest option, thus making her guilty?
Or does the “given enough time” apply only to information that was available prior to the events? In which case, Dave said Max couldn’t have known, so the information was not in fact, available to her.
To clarify what I mean about point 3: if experts are not allowed to testify as to what the best available information at the time was, how does the jury know?
Alternatively, if the standard is not best available information at the time, but rather the best available information today (which the jury is aware of, after the result of the events the trial is based upon has become known), doesn’t that hold experts to a standard of omniscience? I’m not saying that isn’t how the law works, I’m just asking if it is.
As an example, does that mean that the experts that originally synthesized DDT can be considered negligent in in the whole resulting mess (assuming that they were among the ones that prayed people with it as a demonstration of its presumed safety at the time)?
They couldn’t have known at the time, but they most certainly found out later. Does that make them retroactively negligent?
“Right. That page does not show what you think it’s showing. Max’s beam explodes on contact with the shield, it doesn’t get deflected.”
You are incorrect. The epicenter of the blast is clearly not on the shield.
“This makes point 1 presumably true, since, again, Word of God stated that Max couldn’t have known that Sciona could deflect her plasma thing. Points 2 and 3 refer to Max’s state of mind, not the state of things, so when you say “they are false” you are making just as much of an assumption as I am asking you to make in the other direction.”
Again, read exactly what DaveB said, because it’s not what you just said. I actually quote, word for word, what DaveB said in one of my responses to Yorp.
“The only point that I’ll concede being provably false is you taking Max’s defense: you appear constitutionally unable to do so :P”
1) That makes no sense – saying i’m ‘constitutionally unable to do so.’
2) Taking her defense would be a losing case against anyone who has even minimal legal knowledge.
Also, you cannot give hypotheticaly which are provably false…. then tell me to come to a conclusion, then think that any conclusion I come to from FALSE hypothetical points would ever lead to a correct conclusion. It’s poor debating.
“That said… If the standard is “he best possible option given ALL possible information that could have been discovered with enough time’”, why would points 1-4 being all true change *anything at all*?”
I literally have no idea what you said here. This made no sense.
“Even if Max was *absolutely certain* that her whatchamacallsit could not be deflected (because of 20 years of previous experience had told her so), the 20 seconds that followed proved her wrong.”
She could not be absolutely certain that it could not be deflected, because energy CAN be deflected. And her energy blasts have been both deflected and blocked before. What you’re describing is not certainty – it’s overconfidence.
“Doesn’t that mean that “given enough time” Max would, as she eventually did, find out that blasting Sciona out of the sky was not, in fact, the safest option, thus making her guilty?”
The fact that she was able to stomp Sciona AFTER the bridge gives credibility to the fact that she could have done the much safer (to civilians) option of stomping her BEFORE the bridge.
“Or does the “given enough time” apply only to information that was available prior to the events? In which case, Dave said Max couldn’t have known, so the information was not in fact, available to her.”
DaveB said Max did not know, not that Max could not have known. It’s a distinction to someone who studies law. Ignorance is not an defense to a charge of negligence. And just so I don’t have to repeat it again, when I say charge, I mean for the tort. Not charging her with a crime. If I was talking about a crime, I would be saying involuntary manslaughter (a crime), not negligence (a tort).
“To clarify what I mean about point 3: if experts are not allowed to testify as to what the best available information at the time was, how does the jury know?”
They are supposed to judge based on a hypothetical person of perfect prudence. If the jury does not understand, then the judge can explain what that means. He or she would explain what I just said. Maxima’s only chance would be if some of the people who are on this forum who keep not understanding that happen to also be on the jury and don’t understand the standard no matter how many times the judge explains it.
“Alternatively, if the standard is not best available information at the time, but rather the best available information today (which the jury is aware of, after the result of the events the trial is based upon has become known), doesn’t that hold experts to a standard of omniscience? I’m not saying that isn’t how the law works, I’m just asking if it is.”
No, it is not a standard of omniscience. But it is an extremely high standard Please don’t strawman.
“As an example, does that mean that the experts that originally synthesized DDT can be considered negligent in in the whole resulting mess (assuming that they were among the ones that prayed people with it as a demonstration of its presumed safety at the time)?”
Hate to tell you this, but there were lawsuits on that, and the people suing the DDT creators and sprayers won. There were actually MANY lawsuits. The plaintiffs won every single one. They kept winning these negligent lawsuits to the point that various states started setting up DDT settlement funds to pay out so they’d stop having to go through the massively expensive lawsuits. The lawsuits went from 1979 to 1992, from Alabama to California. The defendant argued, among other things, how they could not have known. They were told they should have. Guess what standard was used?
These were multi-million dollar settlements. $42.2 million. $73 million. $112 million.
The EDF (Environmental Defense Fund) was created almost specifically BECAUSE of these lawsuits.
Would you like to know about the asbestosis lawsuits also, because the same thing happened there as well. I actually worked on some of the settlements for some of those cases in fact – DECADES afterwards. The defendants were all claiming how ‘they couldn’t have known that people would develop lung cancer, asbsestosis, mesthophilioma decades later. They saw they were going to lose anyway. They settled to cut their losses.
“They couldn’t have known at the time, but they most certainly found out later. Does that make them retroactively negligent?”
It’s not ‘retroactively negligent. It’s just ‘negligent.’
You don’t have to hate telling me, that’s literally *why I asked*.
When you say the standard is incredibly high, you have to live with the consequences – namely, that it’s so high that is will strain credulity. That’s what “incredibly” means.
Which is why I asked: if the legal standard says that yes, they should have known, that is what the legal standard says, and Max is guilty.
Done, end of discussion.
“You don’t have to hate telling me, that’s literally *why I asked*.”
No problem. My apologies – i’ve just gotten really used to, in the past few days, repeating myself over and over again to people who seem to hate the facts that I’m telling them.
“When you say the standard is incredibly high, you have to live with the consequences – namely, that it’s so high that is will strain credulity. That’s what “incredibly” means.”
I know. We used to try to come up with scenarios in torts class where we did the same thing with our professor and it annoyed her as well. I might sometimes forget that most people don’t think like lawyers.
I guess that’s a good thing. (ha…. self-burn).
“Which is why I asked: if the legal standard says that yes, they should have known, that is what the legal standard says, and Max is guilty.”
Yep! Someone else mentioned that there should be superhero malpractice insurance. That would be a really, really, really good idea until/unless there are laws included to provide a separate standard of care for superheroes as opposed to other experts.
Umm, actually, while the comment section itself may not be designed to be searchable, most browsers have a feature that allows you to search for almost anything, including multi-word phrases
Doubtful that a “justice stomp” into the water would’ve made it all the way to the riverbed – just look at any YouTube video on how a bullet in water behaves. They would’ve stopped after only a few feet, or perhaps even skipped off the surface. (The biggest shot into water I’m aware of is Mythbusters firing a .50 cal sniper rifle – bullet stopped in just a couple feet).
That’s not to say it wouldn’t be effective, just that they wouldn’t be carrying out the rest of the fight under water. It would’ve done just as much damage to Sciona as being put through a tree though, and we’ve already seen that being held underwater doesn’t necessarily keep a super from breathing if they’re juiced up; a magic user isn’t necessarily any different.
I see no reason to make the assumption that magic users do not need to breathe. Or most supers either.
For one thing, we don’t know how deep that river is, just because it’s wide doesn’t mean it’s deep, and for another, did say “or at least into the water,”, followed by Maxi firing hundreds of 1% Plasma Bolts rather than get into a fist fight
Kevin still needs to breathe, the problem was his being ‘juiced up’ meant he was able to repair any ill-effects from the attempted drowning faster than were being inflicted, plus taking way longer for him to burn off the rage-energy (which was being replenished by his subduers) than Sydney expected
It probably IS fairly deep in order to support the pylons/tower of bridge that big. Just a guess, based on how deep the Hudson River is (about 200 feet deep, 315 feet wide) and how high the tower/pylon/whatever its called of the George Washington bridge (the suspension bridge which spans it) is in height – roadway is 213 feet above sea-level, and with a height of 604 feet over the water (for a total size of about 820 feet high from the base).
Usually the longer, wider, and higher a bridge is, the deeper the waterway happens to be to require that. But I’m not a bridge-builder – that just seem to be how it works out.
The dimensions of bridges (including supports) is typically determined by both width and depth of the river
The wider the river the more supports you can place, which means they can share more of the load meaning they don’t, individually, have to be as big if using less supports
I’m just making an educated guess for this based on real bridges spanning across real rivers in places like New York, Boston, and San Francisco. You might be right though. I just think it’s unlikely that a river is going to be both shallow AND support a huge bridge. But I see what you’re saying and it’s definitely possible.
That’s possibly where you are failing, you are just imagining bridges spanning rivers within major metropolitan cities, and that bridge Maxi damaged is only a two-lane bridge (if you go back you will see one line of lights going left, and one going right, they just happen to be on the wrong sides of the bridge :P)
You know what? You’re right. Two lanes.
I might be overestimating the depth of the river as a result after all.
Point is… we don’t know! It could be a two lane bridge over a hundred meter gorge with a river that is 90 meter’s deep, or just a 5 meter river
Seems like a big waste of money to have a suspension bridge over a river that’s only 5 meters deep, instead of a beam bridge or something less difficult to build :)
But yeah – possible.
Pander is right on the principle here – the exact depth isn’t knowable from depictions thus far, but no state transportation department is going to fund a suspension bridge when a simple beam bridge will do at a fraction of the cost.
The only reason to specifically go for height is to allow shipping passage, but even in this case, if your ships are tall enough to need a drawbridge or considerable height, the river still has to be deep enough for them to navigate freely. The exact depth depends on the size of ships you want to accommodate.
The Suez Canal, for instance, allows a maximum draft of 66 feet, but a depth of 79 feet – a minimum of 13 feet of clearance. It’s not just about not hitting the bottom/sides, you also need enough space for the water to move around the boat with minimal disturbance to the riverbed and other boats. Even barges (which are designed for low clearance) operating on ‘smaller’ rivers have a draft of 9 feet or more, implying a river depth of at probably 12-15 feet minimum, likely with a greater max depth.
Haven’t seen any boats yet anyways, but I would expect the river is at least 20′ deep based on the hilly terrain and the scale of the vehicles and bridge. The river isn’t terribly wide for how tall & bulky the bridge is, but having 2 towers vs 1 would support the idea of larger shipping traffic through the center section where the flowline (side note: this has a very weird name) is naturally deeper and thus doesn’t require excavation or reinforcement of the channel to support bigger ships.
Ooh, thanks. Another interesting nugget of international law. I love collecting those.
*scoops it up and pops it in the legal trivia pouch*
I agree with you totally about the Kevin needing to breathe part, btw.
I’m a say i’m not 100 percent certain how she did it but teleporting me attack gotta give scifright some props for that . Even if the teleport turns out to be misdirection.
Okay, so NOW Max is going to fly back to the bridge and help save civilians, right?
One would hope so.
Nah, she’s going to waste time by following the direction Sci-fright was headed in, maybe she will find the giant flashing “Sci-fright’s hidden super-top secret base!” sign
Probably, but my bet is the rest of the team already has that in hand by now.
the rest of the team has not reported in yet so hopefully this only took ten seconds max(tough to be sure)
Guessing Maxima’s a fan of Slayers PACIFIST CRUSH!
+1 for the Slayer’s reference.
However, Crown Prince Philionel (“Call me Phil”) would more likely call that first move “Kindness to All Creatures Kick!”
Thank you for making me smile first thing in the morning today
Thank you for reminding me of that series. I used to love it. I wonder if I can find it on Netflix these days.
Sciona joins the “winks club” lol. Or is that just a clever invisibility spell? Probably not, because Sydney is plot-forced to be part of it of course. (-;
I’ve run many a Supers game over the years, and there are several rues I remind folks of at the beginning of the Campaign.
1) You are going to lose sometimes – failure on the part of the heroes will be scripted into the plot. The villain may succeed in the robbery, you may thwart the villain’s plan but the villain escapes, you thwart the plan and capture the villain and his allies will break him out of custody somewhere, you may thwart the plan, capture the villain, accompany him everywhere only to find out the original objective is carried out by his allies while you’re baby sitting and can’t prove he had anything to do with it. It’s a genre trope – try not to get too frustrated.
2) You get points for taking disadvantages/vulnerabilities/problems/what have you. As the Game Master, it’s my job to punch one or two of those buttons on occasion. Yes, I am, in fact, out to get you from time to time. Again, genre trope – you can role-play being pissed, but don’t take it personally. Remember, that person sitting next to you s going to be taking it in the outside-shorts relatively soon.
3) Don’t take disadvantages/vulnerabilities/problems/what have you that you can’t handle when those buttons are pushed or can’t role-play.
I mention all of this because that last panel reminds me of so many players, good and bad, and the “I HATE teleporters!” moment. This is either great role-playing or horrible role playing.
Enough of the meta.
Personally hate fighting healers, damn bastards refuse to die!
We refer to those that will not “Stay down, baby! Stay down!” as “cockroaches”, but the sentiment is both succinct and accurate.
They may not do much damage, butt they tie you up long enough for their friends to come see what the noise is all about
A good example of a OP character with obvious weaknesses would be from Thundarr The Barbarian – Mindok – was outmaneuvered at the end of the episode.
So those wings are strong enough to knock Max back and cut through her skin with minor effort.(But not very deep.)
So not as damaging Vehemence.
And apparently Sciona is also fast enough to negate any super-speed advantage Max had.
Which puts her way above Vehemence in terms of speed.
We don’t know how much force Max put behind that stomp. But considering the circumstances, I’d say it’s within the realm of “substantial” for her, and Sciona still shrugged it off fast enough to recover.
So she’s pretty tough too.
And I’m guessing there’s a reason Max didn’t try to bear hug her, that we’ll find out later.
I think bearhugging someone with supersharp wings is a bad idea.
Those wings are strong and sharp enough to cut through Vale’s head. They be plenty sharp!
We don’t know what Valeur’s shell is made from, we do know her head is fairly hollow :P
Not hollow so much as filled with something not of this realm…
So many assumptions. Keep ’em guessing, Vale!
It was a (lame attempt at a) joke, hence the tongue-poking-out at the end
Yap, those wings sure are neat, and she was quick enough on her feat to cast something before Max could react.
But consider the fallowing. It’s a conscious, and not instant, decision on Max’s part when allocating her “points” to her different skills. Someone did point out that super speed and flight where different things Max had to balance out when she was tailing her. Since Max managed to catch up to her relatively quickly, we can assume Max put a lot more points into flight so she can catch up with her. She probably didn’t go as strong as she would Vemi or anything like that, preferably taking Sciona alive. Max probably just hit Sciona a little bit harder then she would a super. She saw the attack coming and raised her toughness, which to Sciona’s credit, still left a mark. And while she was busy juggling all those stat points Scionajust casted a simple instant spell to do something. Not sure if she teleported, charmed Max into thinking she did, or just went invisible.
None of this is to discredit either. Just pointing out everything that happened in probably a second.
And this is why any decent magic user always has a cloak.
You can’t turn in place to teleport if you don’t have a cloak to swish.
Why didn’t Max just grab her?(I guess the wings might have been more dangerous than predicted.)
Looks like she tried in the last few panels
That looked more like gearing up for a haymaker.
Are you seriously trying to claim victory when you’ve been proven wrong from the last strip’s debate?
Maxima was able to tackle or stomp her after all. Because she did so 10 seconds later, after the bridge. She could have done the same thing before the bridge,w hen Sciona was over the water..
Mike…. Vtech… Yorp? (gives a quick Yorpie Snax to Yorp)…. just admit you were wrong about your arguments about there being no other way for Maxima to stop Sciona, and that she had no ability to do something other than a bridge-destroying-capable plasma blast.
Go on. I’ll wait. I’ll serve punch and pie. :)
Oh wait, you mean why did she not grab her AFTER the stomp.
Probably because she was ABOUT to, but Sciona teleported away.
Sciona was very close to the bridge, Maxima was very far away. Just because Maxima was able to subsequently catch up, over an unknown distance, in an unknown time, does not mean that she could have done so previously. It simply was not worth risking the lives of the people trying to close, when she had a faster attack.
Plus we saw that Sciona is able to draw Maxima’s blood, in a hasty counterattack, even having been surprised whilst monologuing. This is something that Vehemence could only do after charging himself up with dozens of supers fighting in a prolonged battle! So Sciona is a significant danger, even to Maxima.
Now consider how thin a margin Maxima has in her power balance, she needed flight speed to catch up and strength to inflict damage, yet only had enough defence to just keep her safe (and then only relatively so). Plus Sciona looked overconfident and was clearly certain that Maxima had stayed behind to rescue kittens. So may well not have been exerting herself to her maximum speed.
So now reconsider the bridge scene. Had Maxima been pushing that power triangle more to the speed, to close that significant distance faster, before Sciona could cover the far shorter distance to the bridge, that would have left her defence lower than we see in this scene.
The small cuts we saw here could very easily have been fatal slashes under such circumstances.
Please note that this is not me biasing my judgement, to fit a narrative. It is my honest assessment of the risks involved. I have no compunction against admitting an error or reversing a decision, when I have been convinced that my judgement was wrong.
“Plus we saw that Sciona is able to draw Maxima’s blood, in a hasty counterattack, even having been surprised whilst monologuing.”
Technically she didn’t draw blood from what I’ve seen, but maybe. Even if she did, though, she can’t both do that AND keep flying -she had to be whipping around, using her wings as a defensive weapon, which did not seem to give her any way to continue a glide or flight. When she made her attack, it didn’t matter because she was already on the ground. In any case, Maxima is essentially a cop. A cop under the DoD, but a cop. If she was to be so squeamish as to not want to risk even getting scratched, she shouldn’t be in her position. But she DOES risk getting hurt, as we saw with the restaurant fight, so the reasoning that she was for some reason too squeamish to risk it in order to prevent Sciona from getting to the bridge doesn’t wash. Not to mention, as I’ve said many times, it is irrelevant – the relevant issue is that she had an alternate option, which she did not use when she could have.
“The small cuts we saw here could very easily have been fatal slashes under such circumstances.”
You’re again making up facts to meet your argument, Yorpie hon. They’re clearly not even remotely potentially fatal slashes.
“Please note that this is not me biasing my judgement, to fit a narrative”
It sort of is. I don’t think you’re doing it intentionally or with any sort of malice though. I just think you’re doing it without realizing it.
“I have no compunction against admitting an error or reversing a decision, when I have been convinced that my judgement was wrong.”
I know, Yorpie. You’re still my favorite person to argue against. It’s even better when we’re both agreeing on something, of course.
Okay actually I’m thinking of this. Technically you arent making up facts here. Apologies for that. You’re just misinterpreting what happened or, as they’d say in court, you’re assuming facts not in evidence. That’s not exactly ‘making up facts’ – that sounds more malicious than what you’re actually doing.
That is ridiculous. We saw that Sciona had no problem turning around and using her wings to parry the energy attack, whilst in midair. If she can do that, then she could hit Maxima just as easily.
*sigh* It is hard to tell if you are deliberately misinterpreting me, as a debating tactic, or if you just can’t follow a simple argument.
IF Maxima lowered her defence (read above for why that would be the case) then the teeny cuts she has here (with a higher defence) would NOT be teeny cuts. They would be BIG life threatening slashes.
Your points about ‘being squeamish about being hurt’ are yet another nonsense again. Sciona, and her minions, have repeatedly attempted to murder police officers. Maxima is not obliged under any rules of engagement to put her life at risk, in order to protect Sciona.
We need to agree to differ on the bridge being endangered, by an energy attack. Maxima’s judgement was that it was not in danger (from her attack), regardless of what opinions you may have on the subject.
As such the only relevant considerations are ‘what is the most effective way to kill Sciona, without exposing herself to a risk of death?’ Which is the route that Maxima took.
A SWAT sniper would not be expected to run out into a street and attempt to taser an armed subject, who was known to have attempted to kill police in the past. Even though they have body armour which could mitigate the personal risk somewhat. So why should you apply a different standard to Maxima?
“That is ridiculous. We saw that Sciona had no problem turning around and using her wings to parry the energy attack, whilst in midair. If she can do that, then she could hit Maxima just as easily.”
1) She had more warning because that was Maxima’s SECOND attempt at an attack, not her first. In the first attack, Maxima DID stomp her… without any injury.
2) In her slash attempt, she was on the ground. It’s easier to just put up your hands reflexively than to make an attack while still doing a second task (ie, flying)
“*sigh* It is hard to tell if you are deliberately misinterpreting me, as a debating tactic, or if you just can’t follow a simple argument.”
Please read my follow-up statement Yorp.
“IF Maxima lowered her defence (read above for why that would be the case) then the teeny cuts she has here (with a higher defence) would NOT be teeny cuts. They would be BIG life threatening slashes.”
If, instead of using her power for 15 percent of a plasma blast, she used that power for a stomp and keeping up her invulnerability, Sciona would have been stopped. Also you are again assuming facts not in evidence when you say ‘they would NOT be teeny cuts.’ You literally have no basis for that.
“Your points about ‘being squeamish about being hurt’ are yet another nonsense again.”
You really need to try to be less insulting hon. I’m just showing that your assumption that Maxima is worried about her own safety MORE than that of the civilians does not make sense, given her profession and her regular massive levels of confidence.
“Sciona, and her minions, have repeatedly attempted to murder police officers.”
I’m assuming you mean Sydney, because that’s the only example I can find. Also a different event from what’s happening currently.
“Maxima is not obliged under any rules of engagement to put her life at risk, in order to protect Sciona.”
No but she is obliged to do so to protect the CITIZENS. Instead, she endangered the citizens.
“We need to agree to differ on the bridge being endangered, by an energy attack.”
We can agree to differ on that, but not if you keep arguing about Maxima using her energy attack for how a negligence tort would work. They’re linked.
“Maxima’s judgement was that it was not in danger (from her attack), regardless of what opinions you may have on the subject.”
It’s not my opinion. It’s how a negligence tort would work. You keep ignoring that for some reason.
“As such the only relevant considerations are ‘what is the most effective way to kill Sciona, without exposing herself to a risk of death?’”
NO. that’s NOT the only relevant consideration. If you’re going to ignore actual elements of what happened under the ‘agree to disagree’ excuse, ignoring any threat to bystanders then you can’t argue about if Maxima was right or wrong to fire her plasma blast at Sciona. You’re ignoring the crux of the legal problem involved then!
“A SWAT sniper would not be expected to run out into a street and attempt to taser an armed subject, who was known to have attempted to kill police in the past.”
1) this was not a sniper shot
2) Assuming the SWAT sniper is firing at someone who is fleeing from a crime that is already completed, that SWAT sniper is expected to not take a shot on his or her own judgment until he knows that it will be safe, and if he or she misses and hits an innocent civilian, that SWAT sniper is going to be negligent too.
“Even though they have body armour which could mitigate the personal risk somewhat. So why should you apply a different standard to Maxima?”
I’m not. Look at what I just said above. Same circumstances, same negligence applies.
A perfect example of a cop putting their own life in risk for the sake of a civilian just recently happened in France: a cop took the place of a hostage, and actually died as a result
Oops, that was supposed to b a reply to Yorpie :(
No problem, I agree.
And that cop made a heroic act. But it is not one that is required under their duty of care.
Plus, despite that heroism, other hostages did die.
Do you think that French people will sue the cops for attempting to save the hostages? The fact that people died does not automatically mean that the officers making the call did not use sound judgement. Sometimes, even with that, things go wrong in such rescues.
A sane legal system judges whether they made reasonable judgements, based on their expertise and the information known to them at the time. It does not work from the basis of ‘people died ergo you were negligent’.
Note that I am talking about France here, not America.
Yes, while one may not be obliged to put their own life on the line for the sake of others, it would have to be a very callous individual who, when faced with a similar situation, would not, because, for most people who join the police force, that is why they do it (and of course there will be the exceptions who join for selfish and self-serving reasons)
It would not take a very callous individual. Just one who wanted to ensure that their children got to see their dad that evening.
Plus that police man was a senior officer. At that rank, likely the lead negotiator or officer in command (at a guess). Meaning that the police at the scene will have lost a key person, at a critical time.
Potentially loosing time in either finding a replacement, or them getting up to speed. And, at the very least, they are not the best person for the job, because the one deemed to be that, is now in the hands of the hostage taker!
For Maxima it is far more serious than that. She is irreplaceable. If she dies there is no other flying golden elf of destruction, to step into her boots. It is not just her (hypothetical) children who would be deprived of her, it would be the whole unit.
Leaving them leaderless (with the same implications as listed above). And also depriving America (and the rest of the world) of its most powerful super.
We have had accusations that Maxima likes to grandstand. The temptation to do so, and in a heroic fashion, must have been tempting to her. However she cannot give into such temptations. Maxima’s duty, to her subordinates, her superiors, to the nation and to the world, must outweigh her selfish desires to appear heroic.
Rather she must be ruthlessly effective, and minimise the risk to herself, in the process. If she dies all the ‘she could do this’ or ‘she could do that’ cease to have any meaning. Maxima would be dead and would not be there to oppose the more powerful villains, like Sciona.
Okay, so what you are saying, is it would be okay for Maxi to stand back and do nothing because her value as a Super Cop is worth more than some delivery driver? o_O
At no point did I say or suggest that Maxima do nothing. She has a duty of care to the public. But she is not required to unduly risk death. Certainly not when there is an option that she can take which does not expose her to that risk. And doubly so when the melee alternative would risk Sciona destroying the bridge before Maxima arrived.
So Maxima was acting:
1) In the interests of everybody on Earth in trying to kill Sciona with the most effective means at her disposal.
2) In the interests of the people on the bridge, as Sciona would likely reach them before Maxima could.
3) In Maxima’s own best interests, in avoiding risking dying. Which would also leave Sciona at liberty to harm whoever she wanted to, at her whim.
Plus do consider that even with Maxima knowing that, should anything go wrong, she would be subject to a tort, she would still keep to those priorities, as saving human life is more important than the consequences of a potential negligence case.
Unless it results in her not being allowed to continue her duties. But that would be down to political reasons, should it come to past, not legal ones. As a negligence tort would only have financial consequences, and would likely be born by Archon or the government.
She missed here.
Do they shout the names of their attacks like in anime? I think it would be awesome. Not realistic or useful, but awesome nonetheless.
“Sneak Attack!”
That’s the thing about sneak attacks – no one ever sees it coming. Especially if you’re sneaky enough to win initiative.
I love that last one. The pun gets me every time.
I loved that strip of OOTS also :)
Haven’t read OOTS in years, probably a decade or so, believe last time was when Elan and his gang attacked them in the city (well before the second page you linked)
The update schedule is pretty slow, but OOTS is still a lot of fun (and has lots of new material if you haven’t read in that long!).
I use a RSS feed reader (specifically Feedly) to keep up on OOTS; I initially started using RSS specifically for comics that rarely update, but now use it for absolutely everything I follow, including Grrl Power.
Yea, I tried out Feedly, when Google threw me out in the wilderness, by cutting off their version. They were having problems coping with the new traffic volumes and it caused my feed not to function properly. Then it stopped responding all together. So I decided to leave it for a while, as I hate dealing with tech problems, and they had announced it would take time to stabilise things.
Then I had other problems, both with my computer and my ISP. Once those had been resolved I had long fallen out of the habit of using RSS.
But you give a good reminder. When I have some time to spare I should check out Feedly. They stood out as being the best of the crop (for my needs, as at that time).
I can see Sydney doing that. And magic casters might have a condition to certain spells that need a verbal component. We know Dabbler does.
And I can imagine cocky supers thinking of all kinds of names for just punching someone really hard.
I can see sydney doig it becasue she is a comic nerd and well sydney…
She’s done it before for Anvil’s attacks.
A piece of advice for Sciona. When you are trying to evade pursuit or detection at night it is probably not a good idea to wear a suit that has big glowing red lights all over it.
This reminds me of a drug dealer in the 90’s who was trying to get away from some police at night by…
1) smart: running into a heavily wooded area.
2) not smart: wearing the then-popular shoes that lit up every time you took a step.
https://articles.dailypress.com/1993-04-07/news/9304070163_1_alfred-e-acree-shoes-four-minute-chase
Oh yeah. I’ve actually got a pet theory that “gangsta fashion” was popularized by undercover police officers to make things easier for the cops.
“Okay, here’s how to be cool – this is what all the legit O.G. killas are doing. First, you wear your pants down around your hips, nice and low slung, with the belt just barely holding them on. Then you wear your shoes with the laces untied. Every time the Man said you should tie your shoelaces and pull up your pants, you do the opposite just to show everyone you don’t play by their rules! And then you hold your gun sideways – gangsta style! It looks so badass!”
Result: criminals who can’t run and can’t shoot straight… :p
They make those light up shoes in adult sizes??
I think they actually mean the club kid shoes with the always lit soles(basically a strip of leds around the base)
video link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRZYONF6hik
nope he really did have the heel light up shoes…..fads are weird….
That isn’t the only case of a criminal whose shoes were his downfall. When I lived in a small college town by the name of Commerce, there was one robber who held up the E-Z Mart and fled on foot. The police just followed the flashing lights, because he forgot he was wearing them.
Having said that, Commerce also had a few smart criminals. Another robber actually held up the E-Z Mart wearing nothing but his underwear… on his head. The police never found him. (I’m assuming he had some clothes stashed somewhere nearby, and he was able to put them on and walk away before the police arrived.)
The other smart criminal that I can think of, robbed the Whataburger… he used a stolen bike, pointed a stolen gun through the drive-through window, and pedaled around the corner to where he had a stolen getaway car. The police never found him, either, though they did find the stolen gun, stolen bike, and stolen car.
I see in Panel 1 that Scioni is flying with her anti-collision lights on, not that it helped that much. That mid-air collision is totally Maxima’s fault.
If Sciona was flying with a blinking red light on one arm and green on the other, I would have giggled all day.
Somebody’s gotta do it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LukyMYp2noo
Anyone ever notice how much Cooter looks like the Ragnar mascot of the Minnesota Vikings? Or at least a couple of the guys who played him. You can see him at 4:03 in this video. I will not be able to un-see this now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OY7E8ES9ubM
OK I see an emergency visit to Berbarian coming up.
Barbeeberan? Berberarian? Bar-bar-baararanian?
Barberian?
Beer-bar-ian.
Don’t you dare start the pun war on that name again, or no Yorpie Snax for you.
Barabaspeon?
I’m blaming Yorp for this pun-thread. It’s entirely Yorp’s fault.
Bearpandererer?
I hate you with the power of a thousand exploding suns.
Beerpeddler?
A million exploding suns.
Hanna Barberaian
A million… billion…. googleplexian….graham’s number exploding suns.
*collapses from the raw hate in my heart*
Yorp… with my dying words…. death by puns… this is your faul- *gasp* *ded*
Oh noes!
*sniff*
I shall miss her.
*starts looting pockets*
Such restraint, rifling her pockets rather than eating her remains :)
He he.
*wags tail proudly*
(✖╭╮✖)
*whilest piddling on the corpse*
Barbackbringingbeerin.
My ghost is going to haunt you. Both of you.
Now I know not to use puns, sheer Pandermonium has ensued
*covertly slides a heaped tray of Yorpie Snax™ towards brichins*
Mmmm – tasty! And surprisingly filling!
It looks like Maxima missed Sciona entirely with that stomp.
The close proximity to the shockwave seemed to have been what sent Sciona flying.
I guess it’s hard to dive-bomb a relatively small super-sonic target?
Yeah if there wasn’t ground there to make a blast it wouldn’t have hurt her.
Interesting point here, does Sciona even know who Maxima is? Or that she is a military agent of the United States and not the Twilight Council or alien assassin sent by one of the alien travel companies upset their ambassador was nearly killed, or some other x-factor? Yeah she’s mentioned supers and superheroes, but one wanders how in the know Sciona is on human affairs, like while down in her blood draining dungeon working on her massive spell and building those blood powered assanoid-golem, assasanolems…whatever…did she see the news conference that these are official publically recognized superhero law enforcement, and not just clandestine secret identity vigilantes or mercenaries hired by the Twilight Council playing out superhero.
She knows who Max is.
It was revealed right after the attack on the council.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/2364
Ah, I had forgotten this page.
A magic user that can teleport? Say it aint so!
This is going to make Maxima’s choice of leaving the civilians on that collapsing bridge rather problematic for her.
Everyone has been saying that Sciona has run off back to her base. We may not be giving her enough credit. This encounter may have shown her the error of her ways and she has gone back to the bridge to help the imperiled motorists escape their impending doom.
Or at least gather up the kittens. (It is a long way back to the base. She will need a snack.)
Naa, if she did that it is because she is on her way to a poker game with some demons.
wonder if that was a teleprot
or an illusion spell.
if nothing is around might be warrentable for Max to do a small low key nova wave to check for invisible.
though potentially could warp any traces that magic folks could follow
wonder if that was a teleprot
or an illusion spell.
if nothing is around might be warrentable for Max to do a small low key nova wave to check for invisible.
though potentially could warp any traces that magic folks could follow
also..
so now Sciona has some bits of her skin, maybe some blood from previous time, and has possibly left a hypnotic effect on her.. Maxima might be having a bad day once Sciona gets a moment to Artifice and Blod magic up some items specifically against her.
Maube Sciona will make a evil clone of Maxima.
Don’t worry Guesticus, I will post this one for you. “Don’t you mean a MORE evil clone of Maxima?”
Redundant: can’t get more evil than Maxi already is :P
I’m going to assume it’s a teleport because of the type of onomatopoeia used.
Yea, eye of newt and onomatopoeia tail are well known material components for that spell.
lol. I just mean ‘wink’ heavily implies teleportation :)
Here’s a yorpie snax for being adorable.
Yummy yummy, in my tummy!
You’re lucky that you’re adorable.
Okay this is getting ridiculous, she runs away EVERY single time. That an she has a freaking ego that makes me want to use an RPG to her face at close range.
We had to fight someone like that in a D&D campaign. It. Was. Infuriating.
Hello, my name is Inigo – HEY, get BACK HERE!
Ooh, ooh, I know how that ends!
“You have to know when to strike and when to retreat” – John Oates
“He will win who knows when to fight and when not to fight” – Sun Tzu
“If your oppoennt is of choleric temper, irritte him.” – Sun Tzu again
So I guess Sciona’s a fan of war strategy and American Rock/R&B guitarists.
“You’ve got to know when to hold, and know when to fold;
Know when to walk away, know when to run” _ Kenny Rogers
You might be my favorite person right now.
Or as my pappy used to say, “He who fights and runs away… can run away another day.” (backup quote link)
:-D
Nicely quoted. That had the cinema roaring in laughter, when I first saw it. And it has not lost its appeal over the years since.
Oh look, the wings ARE glowing.
She can’t have gone far! A wink is only half a blink.
Let’s see…
Sciona max speed is less that Max max speed. When a superior foe is distracted, you leave at ultra top speed. Despite the lead, Max still caught her, and was going so much faster that Sciona doesn’t even seem to know Max was pursuing.
Sciona takes minor damage, at least from massive attacks, but seems to recover fast. She may have some form of regeneration.
Well, we don’t know if Sci-fright was going at her max speed, or, because she believed Maxi was being distracted by the imminent bridge collapse, going less so as not to attract too much attention from the satellite spies
Agreed. Or just out of arrogance and overconfidence. That is something which we have seen Sciona is prone to.
“Video not available”, but may be a regional thing.
Just do a search for the name (always thought they were an Ocker band) or the song “Destiny in Motion” (the lyrics kinda match with this page, better than the original choice: “It Must Be Love”, as that would be too soon :P)
Arrogance and overconfidence are things one is short of after being beat up twice in one day, rather casually too. No matter how great Sciona deems herself, it is time to beat feet. and thinking Max is going to be distracted long is just too risky. Now she might have figured she could hide in the forest and slowed down to avoid the trees, but she still has her lights on and I just read [again] about the druggie who tried to hide in the bushes while wearing flashing shoes. [Spoiler alert. He ended up in the slammer.] The lady has not impressed us with her ability to quickly make new good plans, but she is still well beyond the druggie level.
Note that Max piles into her at a high rate of speed. We are talking Sciona ++. And we are talking about very soon after the bridge fuss. Again, Max must be moving much faster. And Sciona would surely check back before she slowed down. So at the least, she had a huge lead, which was rapidly eliminated.
So the assumption is still strong that Max wins any race.
Sciona teleported with similar FX out of the Black Reliquary, after having had to pull extreme shenanigans to get in, even though she knew where it was. She teleported hundreds of miles (?) to some place where she could easily access a suit of powered armor.
I am thinking her teleport is a Word (albeit not actually verbal) of Recall, and furthermore that wherever she was flying to is NOT the same location that the Word takes her to. Also, probably not the same place the Blood Portal leads to.
That makes sense. Also good recall.
That reminds me of something.
I loved that movie. I love most 80s action movies.
I thought the bunbonn in the author’s comment was a sound effect from the law and order show, but it made me think of Bub-Bun, the mini lop rabbit, from the Sluggy Freelance Webcomic. Can you imagine Bub-Bun presiding? That case would be over gadget than you can say “Baywatch”
Oboy…don’t let Bun-Bun know you called him…*whispers* Bub-Bun. Or else you’ll be over faster than we can say Baywatch.
Too bad the swirlymagicwingees o’death didn’t hit maxima’s clothing.
Or did they?
Might be until thursday delay on this… about the time Dabbler and Halo show up… about to give her an update when Maxima shifts and her clothing blows open…
Shipping or wishing… it’d be awesome fan service and funny.
Nip slip, blood drip?
:-(
Not related directly but mentions of Maxima’s training and my own about a degree led me to work up an impromptu timeline of her possible career.
1994- Aug 2001 Earliest she can join (17 with waiver) roughly 6-7 years possible of general training
(super or non) or 4yrs degree program (Hey DaveB the AF Academy in Colorado
does Civil Engineering 8-P) +2-3 years general training.
Sep 2001- 2003 9/11, Afghan Invasion, Iraq War Minimum 2 yrs straight up combat or combat related
training.
2004-2006 3yrs of a possibly rotational combat duty…or other duties (general Training/Officer
Training) with combat missions still be carried out.
2007-2010 Earliest I could see them excusing her from combat duties enough to begin Archon
Training. So roughly 4 yrs of recruiting and training to get ARCHON ready
for stand-up.
2011 ARCHON Stand-up
Feel free to critique….try to provide refs though so I know where to look for corrections.
Looks good to me. No mention of her Olympic athletics mind. ;-)
The final point though:
“2011 ARCHON Stand-up” should be “Fly up”.
Better than having your fly down :P
At least, for those who wear garments that have flies…