Grrl Power #627 – Vulcan 2nd base grip
In the stinger for this page, I joke about Sciona getting lightheaded if she keeps using her own blood for her spells, but if one of those super syringes she shot herself with (whoops, just realized I forgot that mark on her chest) had a regeneration power in it, she could potentially fire her blood out like a hose and then animate it like Green Lantern, and attack them with blood blades and other blood constructs, all the while forming sigils to cast spells. Hmm. Maybe she just hasn’t thought of doing that yet.
Sciona watched the press conference, and knows Achilles is invulnerable, but of course it’s one thing to hear it and assume that while he is in fact pretty tough, it’s like any other defense and can be overcome with application of enough force. In that first panel, she’s trying to either crush his arms or rip them clean off, when really she should just grab one of his arms and use him as a projectile against one of the squad. He’s not actually strong enough to hold onto her right now if she was a remotely experienced grappler.
I also slightly messed up the art in that first panel, his hand was supposed to be right on her boob. Maybe I’ll fix that if I find the time to fix the missing mark on her chest. In a life and death struggle, any part of your opponent’s body is fair game, eyes, ears, testicles, but when you’re sparring, it’s probably bad form to tie your opponent’s testicles in a square knot or grab a woman’s boob. In the Amazon vs. Valkyrie war, I imagine there’s probably going to be a lot of injured boobs, but Achilles is a superhero, and he’s trying to beat up Sciona politely.
Edit: Fixed the hand and the missing mark.
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Someone needs to just aggressively heal her. Every time she tries to do that little trick the blood just won’t come out.
She doesn’t have to use her own blood…
Stoneskin spells for everyone!
Huh, so she could go full on Deadman Wonderland if she wanted to because of the Regen? Not the Wretched Egg though… Maybe?
Question. Is the ‘top 100’ messed up or something? This is normally in the top 5. And the top 1 quite often. But now it’s way down at 17?
Start of the month, reset day
Yup. We get the majority of our readers check in on comic update days. So those webcomics which update Tuesdays (or daily) will have a considerable head start.
It is swings and roundabouts. Some months we get the advantage and, if there is a recent vote incentive, can usually keep the lead all month.* Other times another webcomic will be in the lead, which invigorates their readership to maintain that. So making it harder.
But if everyone who checks in, before the update, votes, we can narrow the gap considerably. As at the time of writing this we are up to eighth place. TIED! So the next voter could tip the balance. Always fun, this time of the month, as there is a good chance for your vote to take us up a place!
* As we did last month. Thanks everybody who voted.
Okay she is trying to draw this out, I am predicting Maxima will pulverize Sciona real soon an it won’t be pretty, Sydney will probably try an sort out what is coming through the portal.
Until I read disclaimer I thought the joke involved stone boners.
I think Sydney’s onto something about Wolverine being the one who winds up getting injured more often just because he can take it.
In this page, the two females escape being crushed by pillars even though one of them would in no way be bothered by this. Both of the males are pinned to the ceiling by pillars. Achilles has True Invulnerability and Hiro has, I’m assuming the second best damage resistance on the team next to Maxima.
This also suggests that Hiro lacks any sort of enhanced or highly-trained reaction time because he got smashed to the ceiling just like Achilles, which Dabbler and Max avoided.
I’m not even sure Max avoided it, unless she moved backwards as her pillar arose – she’s still standing on the ground. I think Sciona either missed or perhaps sent her pillar at an angle to push her back?
Yeah, Maxi didn’t avoid it, she smashed it with her face
Actually, it looks like Max is shattering the pillar that tried to get her.
Smashing the pillar yes, but with her hands and/or face and not her boots – this isn’t ‘avoid’ so much as ‘counter’. To me this says that Sciona brought the pillar up in front of her and not directly underneath.
Perhaps the spell has a limited area within which it can summon pillars? The circle used to summon it, may hint that it has a radius. Which would explain why it could not quite reach Maxima’s feet, as she was the furthest from the centre.
Also it would imply that Halo was safe from that attack, being even further again.
One symbol for multiple summons does make me think “She isn’t making multiple summons. She’s summoning a ruins, and those are the pillars that remained of that building. The blood magic circle is just where the center of that building was centered.”
Mmm, interesting take. That would take considerable skill, to orient the summoning in such a way that the pillars were in just the right spot. But Sciona is very smart (she has mastered copying super powers, where the Twilight Council has failed to even understand them, with generations of testing), so that is plausible.
Best of all though it would explain why there was one which was off-target, as Sciona was having to work with a pre-existing floor plan, and could not get an exact match!
Plus, of course, it gives wonderful mental imagery, far better than just a mundane spell.
*awards a pillar of gold stars*
To me, it looks like she was hit in the same way the others were, she was just able to ‘anchor’ herself and smash it (with her face) rather than it smash her into the ceiling
I agree that bracing does appear to be taking place. In essence, as Maxima clearly has nothing to brace herself against,* Max must be applying counter-force. Of which there is only one way (with a static position, rather than a punch). She must be flying towards the blow, in order to maintain her position!
Obviously requiring balancing her flight with her defence.
For interest, we know that all of Max’s force-field powers are always on at a minimum strength. Which includes flight. Even though we see her on the ground most of the time. So Max must habitually fly down, in order to simulate walking, whilst amongst muggles!
Only not so hard that she leaves footprint-craters, as she walks. Which means that her default station-keeping flight would not be sufficient to counter this attack. Hence having to dump a lot of power into that.
* With a horizontal blow, her stance is fine to brace herself from being pushed backwards. We saw the same with her resisting being knocked back by Vehemence’s punch. But this attack is from the ground, so the pose is just reflex muscle memory, but not actually helping, in itself.
Quite a crushing turn of events.
Hopefully they can squash this pressing issue before she levels the playing field.
Achilles. The man Worf thinks needs a good victory.
@Dave You know the mark is also missing in page 626.
Here’s an invulnerability question.
He’s in the middle of a portal or something that separates two points of space. The thing is either collapsed, or ended before he gets from a to b.
Since space literally ends and thus one part is at a and another at b. What happens to the two parts?
This is a good question.
My thought is that if the device worked like a Star Trek or Stargate transporter, in that it separates your molecules across space, it simply would not be able to transport Achilles at all.
If it literally warped space to connect the two points, like Star Trek warp drive or the TARDIS, he’d end up stretched across the intervening space, but instantly snap back together harmlessly at one point or the other (harmlessly to him, less so to the planet at either end).
If it involved another dimension, like Nightcrawler (X-Men) or Harem (maybe) he might end up technically but not actually separated, with his body parts fully functional in both dimensions although separated (you might see a walking pair of legs in one dimension and a floating torso in the other)… or he’d ‘snap together’ in one or the other, tearing through dimensions to do so.
A fascinating thought experiment. For which I will proceed on the assumption that he is absolutely invulnerable (as opposed to the pretender who claimed that his claws could cut anything and that his skin was invulnerable). This is supported by the fact that he is the only super with a power rated at six stars, and because we have never seen anything to contradict that. Whilst noting that it may not turn out to be absolute.
My feeling is that it simply would not be able to close. I could cop out, by saying that he may be ejected out one way, or the other. However that would be wriggling out of the (implied) instantaneous nature of such a closure. As transiting, either way, would take time and the presence of a dimension to traverse, and neither would exist (in the middle) such movement would not be possible.
Anybody else caught in the same situation would simply be cut in two, no matter how tough they are. But that could not happen to someone who is utterly invulnerable. So, whatever would be causing the portal to close, it would be resisted, by Achilles’s presence.
If he is in perfect equilibrium, he would remain in that spot, and the portal would be kept open until he went one way or the other. Alternatively (depending on the forces involved) he might be squeezed out, one way or the other. So still ending up with that being one of the potential results, but only after following the line of thought, as opposed to trying to evade it.
__________________________________________________________________________________
Alternative, less satisfying option:
This only applicable if whatever is causing the portal to close is itself an absolute irresistible force. As it cannot be resisted, yet nor can Achilles’s invulnerability be overcome, the result could be that it is not just the portal between the two points, that ceases to exist, but the entire universe! Whilst Achilles would remain, unaffected. Essentially forming a universe comprised of nothing but himself.
This being from his subjective point of view.
Whilst, from the point of view of the rest of the universe, Achilles would just vanish.
Yep. I personally when thinking about this. Was thinking that there are tons of portal types. Much like you, when it comes to portals that have a point of time of opening, and closing (aka worm hole and portal gun). I was wondering if his body would prevent such closing from happening.
But then I wondered about portals that happen by linking two points in time together so that they are in essence linked. The closing is less, a circular closing, as much as points a and b being brought back to a and b. So would that stretch him out? Pull him one place or another? If nothing about him could be destroyed, what’d happen between the interveening space as time and space decides where he needs to go (Since he has invulnerability, but normal human strength)?
Or those that when closed, literally cease to exist. No real closing, as much as they are there, then not.
The question I really ran into was. When the atoms that make up him, between two points, ceases to exist what happens? Your answer really is the more accurate feeling answer. Although the fridge logic of the less satisfying answer really does have a bit of fridge horror to it. *High Fives*
It really is an interesting thought experiment (and brought to mind since I keep seeing the last frame as a portal type effect with the sound effect of him being tossed happening in two different areas.)
Achilles† can be stretched, but only the few centimetres that any normal person could be, on the rack, before being injured. But no further.
What we do additionally know though is that time and space can be stretched. We observe this happening in gravity wells around planets and stars. And, at an extreme, around black holes. In fact it is this property which even allows the concept of wormholes to be feasible. You stretch space (and/or time, as you say) from point A to point B.
So spacetime is elastic, whereas (beyond that tiny distance) Achilles is not. Meaning that the universe will conform to Achilles, rather than vice-versa!
*returns high five, using raised paw*
† Just to show how weird my brain is, I started typing Sciona. This despite not having thought of her for this reply, nor for various before it. It often decides to throw me a random name. This is just an extreme example, as normally there is some theme to it (female person I know, for same, A-list film star for A-list film star, and so on).
I must point out though that, although relative to his point of view, Achilles will not stretch out, if time and space are themselves stretching out, then everything withing them is too. This happens with objects falling into black holes. They get stretched out infinitely. But only from an external point of view. Subjectively they will not.
So the same will apply to Achilles, given that he exists within timespace, if he fell into a black hole. Relative to the rest of the universe he would appear to stretch out. But, relative to the individual atoms within his body, he would not.
Not that anybody externally could observe this apparent stretching out, as it would occur beyond the event-horizon of the black hole.
For less extreme stretching of time space though, much like we can see light being distorted if passing a star’s gravitational field, an external observer would think that Achilles had stretched. But his actual proportions would be unchanged, when he looks at himself.
Phyziks is weird.
Is Achilles the only superhero who practices joint locks on himself?
Heh.
Looking at the symbol Sciona drew, there are a couple of interesting features.
One is that it has various elements in common with the one on her chest. But misplaced. For instance, instead of the triangle being inside the circle, the one on her chest has most of it outside, with only the tip penetrating it.
The other is that the spell inscribed in the air, although at first glance appearing to be a conjuration circle, does have interesting associations. From one angle, it appears to be a pyramid, with a doorway (or door symbol) at its base. With a moon in the background.
Let’s see if we’ve seen that symbol somewhere else…
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/1166
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/2447
Heh. Nice try.
Maybe a smaller version of Halo’s orb system. ;-)
Much much punier.
*Yorp stomps puny non-god Sciona*
Achilles would be the perfect drinking buddy for One Punch Man.
So – super toughness falls prey to super strength. Or, maybe some of her blood supply came from “Lee Press On Nails”? Or is the formula wearing off some?
At first glance, I thought that Sciona had scratched Achilles’s arm, in panel 2. So I can understand why you may have thought that. But if you look again, you will see that it matches her skin colour, rather than his.
Achilles is more than just super tough, he is invulnerable. So even though he has been shoved through the ceiling, by the rising pillar, he will be completely unhurt.
He even has (low grade) super strength, himself. So may be able to free himself, if there are enough cracks, in the ceiling, to push blocks out. However we saw that he could not even dig free from the rubble of the collapsed restaurant. As such it is likely he will remain stuck up there, until someone rescues him.
Yorp –
There is a misunderstanding here. When I referenced “Super Toughness”, I wasn’t indicating Achilles. It was actually something printed on one of the vials that Sciona injected herself with.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/2838
So – using her super strength, she scratched herself, overcoming her super toughness. Thus, my original comment.
This actually leads to an interesting speculation regarding can Achilles overcome his own invulnerability, by utilizing one part of his body (teeth) on another (thumb).
Ahh, gotcha. But, yea, super toughness is not invulnerability, so it can be overcome. Plus those powers are likely stolen from various supers (or other things which have super-like powers, such as the troll she referenced, regarding her regeneration). As such each of the powers will very likely be of different strengths.
So strong super-strength would overcome moderate super-toughness, as an example.
Achilles only has 150% of normal human strength. So would be unable to harm himself, no matter how hard he bit.
But he would insult a Montague!
That’s nice, but i’m pretty sure Sciona should have be through into the ceiling too, considering how Achilles has an arm under her own for exemple…
Mmm. Not a bad point.
Looking at it though he does not have a grip with the relevant hand, so his arm is just loose under Sciona’s. Meaning that him being propelled upwards, at a significant speed, would have just made that arm slide loose. His super strength barely qualifies as such, so he would not be able to resist that, or hold on to her.
Likely Sciona will have received bruising under her arm mind, as you are right that her arm would be blocking his ability to rise. And hers is the weak point that would suffer, given that Achilles’s arm would not. But she is so tough, at the moment, that will not bother her overly.
As an aside, in the panel where he is being pushed up, it looks like Sciona may be making use of her wings. So possibly she anticipated that being dragged up, with him, was a risk, and simply countered that force by flying down, to maintain her position on the ground.
She could purposely lure Maxima in to splatter her with a punch, just to be able to use all the blood/gore to be animated. But… that may too gross of a scene to do.
All Sci needs to do is smush Ms Perfect’s nose and drain her like a Capri
Dave has recently announced a change in policy. Previously we even saw a pixelated severed arm (when Sydney imagined the consequences of blasting a hole through a building wall). But when he needed to depict Cooter wallpaper he decided that gore was OK.
So that threshold has already been passed. :)
hmmm does anyone else seem to have an issue with the shape of the ceiling? i’ve seen diagrams of military underground structures and wherever they are holding up rock or dirt, the ceiling is not flat. it’s a dome or a round tunnel(distributes the load to the sides so you don’t have collapses in the middle, where the stresses on the unsupported ceiling are greatest) or it goes all the way to the surface(actual silo, entrance and escape hatch)
i can see this type of ceiling having cave ins in the middle due to all this. once again as with the bridge we see dave doesn’t have the greatest understanding of engineering.
though i suppose this could be a “lower floor” but then i’d think they would have been shoved up through the ceiling
don’t get me wrong. i still love the comic. i’m just too much of an engineering minded nerd. i watch a bunch of videos and read a lot about this kind of stuff. it’s really interesting to me
Good observations. It depends on the width of the ceiling. If it is not a huge room, then it can be flat (like a normal house). As it gets bigger it would need reinforcing, thus requiring pillars.* As it is I am in a room smaller than the one depicted and I have not one but two pillars, along with numerous supporting rafters. So your instincts are pretty good.
However mine is a stone and timber build. Whereas there are extra tricks that can be pulled with concrete. Just outside I have a balcony that is actually wider than this room, just made out of concrete, not to mention that the upper floor of the building is several feet wider than the ground floor, but rebar reinforcing obviates the need for pillars.
Military bunkers are designed to withstand additional forces though. Not just the use of bombs and the like but also including supporting all the weight of soil or concrete above. Hence needing far more over engineering than civilian structures.
Here we do not know if there is much above this room. Some of us envisage a whole mountain. But, at this point it may just be a bit of topsoil, concealing the building below. With the entrance point being on a hillside, as that is convenient for a flyer, but would reduce the risk of accidental discovery.
Likewise, although Sciona clearly favours austere military-like architecture, and has vault-like doors, the engineering may not be to military spec.
Finally she can cheat. Sciona has access to exotic non-Terrestrial building materials. So she does not need to use mundane reinforcing like iron, in her rebar. Hers could be adamantium or unobtanium.
Plus she is a mage, so there is no upper limit to how much she can cheat! ;-)
* See Sciona has just realised that and provided some. ;-)
When Dabbler was lining up her fuel-air-grenade attack on the constructs, we saw that that chamber had a triangular-arched roof with reinforcing beams. On this page, we see similar beams, and a significant angle between the planes of the ceiling and floor. The triangular arch might not be as efficient at spreading load as a curved arch, but it’s better than a flat span – and may well be an acceptable compromise, if the additional expense of building a more efficient geometry is much more than the additional capability it would provide.