Sorry for the late post. I forgot what day of the week it was. :/ Well, first week of summer break. That’s my excuse anyway.
So yeah, it’s a bit of a telegraph here, even if you don’t guess exactly what Sciona’s looking at, but it’s just the way the pages break down. So have fun guessing!
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"Mature"Mature subject matter and occasionally something explicit but usually safe. Can't guarantee the ads are safe though.
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Dongs Ahoy!Full frontal and backal. Lots of skin, sex on some or all pages, explicit or otherwise.
A: Corpses corpses everywhere
B: A statue of some other alien conquering her world while she was gone
C: Abandoned empty skyscrapers
D: A giant hole trough the whole city, from some sort of black hole bomb
E: A giant billboard, ‘DEUS INDUSTRIES GALACTIC HEADQUARTERS, OPENING JULY 2037’
Hah hah!
Signed in to say this was the best comment ever.
SPACEBALLS: The Theme Park
Ancient being I plan to bang. Commissioned by Deus Industries 1985.
“I only regret I have no Upvote or Like to give for your comment.”
~Almost, but not quite Nathan Hale
Seriously, this board needs it.
All right, this comment wins the internet.
That’s the kind of comment you drop the mouse after making.
drop the mouse…watch it begin to run away…the cat goes after it…you begin to wonder “when the (redacted) did I get a cat?”, all the while your brain refusing to process the fact that your computer mouse was actually a real, live mouse…
You don’t get a cat, a cat gets you!
F. A giant “out to lunch” sign, hung about the entire city.
My vote is for C. An empty city, ruined. Bonus points for a lone vault-dweller looking up with a surprised expression.
G: a sign on a gate saying “All dead, do not enter”
H A giant tower with the sign “Doofenschmirz Evil Incorparated – Remote Office Alari”
I. Large rusty battered sign:
Disneyworld Alari – Coming Soon
Property of Disny Inc.
Do Not Enter
Sort of related to the conquering comment-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4Mwt0XIw00&t=1s
Wait for it. Waaaaaait for it….
Honestly, the tipping point for me is Maxima’s expression. It’s not one of anger anymore – she looks genuinely concerned, which is a HELL of a thing considering what Sciona has done in the past hour or so.
Some sympathy for the alien who just found out her entire species is dead is an acceptable emotion :)
Just needs a half-sunken statue of liberty.
Yeah, Sciona’s expression at the end there leaves me with that impression too.
S:”… You did it. You finally went and DID it! YOU BASTARDS!! DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL!!!”
S: “Yeah, yeah, stop cribbing Charlton Heston and help us fix yer damn portal..”
H: Subway. Get your Draugr foot long here, it’s to die for.
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Entire planet sealed with a layer of glyphs on a wall of shield – err, floor and ceiling? Or is it on the planet surface sealing everyone underground?
I was wondering if the portal had only brought a pice of her homeworld to earth instead of moving the team.. but Sciona’s face last panel looks like she is in pain, so maybe her world really is dead.
Intergalactic Ossuary? Oversized Post-It with “Ascended to higher plane of existence to get milk. Back in 6e32 years” written thereon?
C/D
Look at her left eye, look at the reflection in it. It looks like the skyline of a ruined city.
No, that’s just how DaveB does the light reflections, it’s in all of their eyes in all of the panels
A ship being late for over 900 years.
I’ll vote for “A”, with one revision…
…not corpses…
…bones. Stretching out to the horizon, & beyond: Alari bones. Not even disheveled-enough to indicate getting picked-over by scavengers. Every living thing that you can see, having dropped dead in its place, & left undisturbed, to crumble-away, leaving behind only dusty bones.
That’s what they’ve been breathing — the dusty remnants of Alari legions, out-lived by nothing other than the “way-station beacon” that locked-onto Sciona’s portal.
Personally, I’m thinking a huge statue of Maxima, with a cheesy “Witness the future! The Super-Soldier that will lead us to ultimate victory!”
And not a drop, for a vampire, to drink.
Nah. Close, though.
It’s actually the Smash Ball.
It’s now confirmed that Sciona is in Super Smash Bros Switch.
Make it so, and will actually buy the game (and the console to play it on)
So, did you make her color scheme look like Illyria’s just for this reveal?
How did I not see that?
boah, another cliffhanger. I want to know where they are, right now!
otherwise, love the comic
We already know where they are: the Alari home-world
Are you sure sure?
we never saw a lot of the planet, just some floor and a statue. Well… maybe some Alari tourists or emigrants placed them on Vulcan or in Bielefeld.
I’m guessing those runes on the cobblestones are in memorium for fallen soldiers. They fought a war and lost.
Harem is having trouble. I doubt they’re still on earth any longer.
Oh another German.
The world is a small village.
Maybe a small village, but still bigger than Bielefeld ;-)
(Hi from Baden-Wurttemberg!)
Hallo aus Bayern!
Back to the topic: What could scare Sciona in such a way? A dead world, I’d guess – but how did Sydney know or guess that?
Baden-Baden.
Sydney spotted something whilst holding her Truesight orb. We know that the orb does not allow X-ray vision (such as seeing through Peggy’s paper mask or any mundane disguise). Which would render dust an impediment to her sight, even with the truesight activated.
So perhaps Halo was making out auras (magical or otherwise) of whatever was beyond the dust? Or she could have projected her telepresence self far enough away that its field of view was not blocked by the dust?
The latter is the more likely, given that Sydney was confident that the dust was only in their immediate area.
Let the speculation continue!
I’m going for the option that they’ve been invaded by another race.
Makes sense. But it seems like that other race may not have bothered to stick around.
Here’s the kicker. If the Alari Empire were strong enough and threatening enough that a nuclear armed planet with supers, monsters and possible alien alliance assistance was going to be easily conquered… what does that say about something that could conquer the Alari?
They knew how to sneeze
There is always a bigger fish.
The team better be wary about casting “Summon Bigger Fish”!
As for Sciona’s boasting, she is known for having unrealistic expectations of her own capabilities. Even after she had been shown to be significantly inferior to Deus and Vale, Sciona still had delusions of enslaving him.
However ‘nuclear armed’ is not much of a threat against any advanced civilisation, in the galactic community. At an absolute minimum, those who have representatives present on Earth know all Earth technology. Aliens have been covertly studying such, as part of the Twilight Council, for over 3000 years.
On top of which they have access to whatever technomagic allows them to get to the Earth, in the first place. So, if we exclude any barbarian races who only get there through paying a travel agent, all such foes will be more advanced than Earth is.
And many will be far far more developed. Nuclear weapons would be easy to overcome in numerous ways. For instance we rely on shooting down rockets with other rockets. Any aliens with beam weapons can do so much more easily with those. Rendering our nukes all but useless, for any ranged attack.
Whilst that still leaves the option of using it in ambush roles, against enemies on the ground, we would be blowing up and irradiating large chunks of our own planet. Not to mention that if we do that too much then the radioactive dust thrown up, into the atmosphere, would risk triggering a nuclear winter. So potentially worse than the threat of invasion!
Inferior to Valeur (maybe), NOT SmugD!
My guess for Harem is that her mind link works at light speed, so there’s a delay on it, causing a psycic echo across her stretched link to earth
If her link is true quantum entanglement, shouldin’t it be instantaneous regardless of distance?
That could actually be the problem. If her brain is thinking instananeously, but part of it is displaced through a wormhole which is janking up time, she’s gonna have issues.
The portal (probably) lead to a whole other reality. So it isn’t just a matter of distance, but the whole of space/time being different. The only reason she is still somewhat connected to the rest of her is because the portal is still open.
All speculation until confirmed of course.
I am cautiously agreeing with LV on this.
Yeah, even though there hasn’t been any scientifically-consistent reason to determining the <i<cause of super-powered humans, at least it seems like the most logical reason for this. What I’m wondering is how bad it would be for Harem if the portal closes while she’s still “divided” on both sides of it. I figure it would be similar to, but worse than, if one of us had our head cut off & preserved (still alive & conscious)…I mean, let’s face it, that would suck.
She is just taking the opportunity to rub up against Hero… ready excuse and great chance to talk about it with the girls back home…
Was thinking the same thing :D
I sure hope it’s not Lightspeed! Given that something as “close” as pluto is already between 4.25 to 7.4 lighthours away from the sun, and our next closest star (proxima centauri) is 4 lightyears.. that would REALLY mess up poor harem…
It’s a safe bet that Alari isn’t the closest planet to earth either, if it is even in the same plane/dimension.
Just imagine if one part of your brain took 4 years to reach another part!
Ask a politician a question requiring an honest answer, see how long it takes them to answer :P
Eh… You can make it up to us with a cool new vote incentive
There’s a Reinforcements Store right behind her, but the sign on the door says ‘Closed’ and the hours say they won’t be open until Monday! Le gasp!
Good! It’ll be open just in time for the following comic then :)
Why does this board have no Upvotes or Likes?
It was heavily discounted.
What is worse than a cliffhanger? Three of them in a row!
I was wondering what unseen thing it could’ve been that Sydney saw that made her pause all the action. But then I realized she also has a setting that shows the energies of people (what she used at the council meeting to detect the mannequins). So maybe the question isn’t what she did see, but rather what she didn’t see, namely no life signs whatsoever anywhere except for them.
Actually, the setting you refer to shows MAGICAL auras, not living ones. She was using it to check out the items in that little loft room at the council chambers when she saw the blood golems walking by beneath her. It was their magic she saw, not living auras.
It’s the same one that showed her Vehemence’s Violence Sigil at the parking lot battle the first time she used it after the upgrade she got at the press demonstration.
I meant the magic of people when I said energies. Chalk it up to typing too fast and no edit feature.
The outcome stays the same though. With Sciona’s race being highly magical they should be spotted via the orb, if they are there.
If you check out the scene in question, it probably does both. Clearly the items near to her were magical. However Halo could also make out all the individuals in the Council chamber next door.
Possibly they may all have had magical effects on them. For instance the Veil could account for all of them glowing (even though they were in their true form the spell would probably still be affecting them, on standby). However, if that was the case, then they should all have had a similar aura (due to it being a common source).
Yet there were many varied shades. With enough groupings amongst similar creatures (for instance undead) that it is reasonable to conclude that their personal auras were being detected.
Uh oh….
Uh oh again…
All is dust and ash. There is nothing left but a single Starbucks.
Or a shoe store.
If there are a lot shoe store here (even if all in ruins), then there must also be the Total Perspective Vortex nearby.
***Warning: If you see the TPV from the outside, use it as a navigational point of reference only. By no circumstances should you enter it.***
Unless you’re hungry for a piece of fairy cake, that is.
If you’re hungry enough, even stale fairy cake will do.
BTW, the general rule for not going in? That excludes Zaphod Beeblebrox. But since he’s already been there, no one else will find any fairy cake either.
Actually, since it was all part of the editor’s private reality, the stale fairy cake should still be there, along with a working TPV. If you remember, he was told that if he had exited through the door, instead of the window, he would have seen his real position in the universe.
That didn’t bother him afterward, though. He still believe he was the most important being in the universe.
Shoe Store, with Al Bundy as the only employee, aka HELL.
That brings back memories. From the time of TV.
If they can’t go back, I wonder if they will reenact some of their favourite scenes from film and TV, to pass their time, between snacking on shoes?
In the surrounding ruins we see a small square robot on treads dutifully collecting the debris and compressing it into little cubes.
Closed for company wide pan-reality species sensitivity training
Boy does Sciona need to attend that!
TRAINER: Now, Sciona, how would you feel if some alien told you that the Alari would be enslaved?
— some time later, in the next course, on employee relations —
TRAINER: When trying to foster team spirit, it is not a good idea to take employees blood by force, nor to turn them into bombs, nor to shove their heads into death fields. These actions can foster a sense of unease in the workforce, and the loss of morale might impact on productivity.
This sucks!
Butt hay! All the haters get to party!!
A huge Arlington-like cementary filled to the brim, sitting on the backdrop of a ruined desolated city… that image will be headcanon for me until Monday!
Every light on the floor is a grave marker.
A dead world, the unfortunate but predictable consequence of basing a society on a ‘technology’ that can be consumed faster than it is replenished. Sciona was using literal TANKS of blood in her work in our world.
Resources got scarce, and if Sciona is any example her people aren’t exactly team players. Infighting on a planetary scale ensued.
It was a bloodbath.
Here you go – real life people with super powers (and demons?), here and now:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zn1sY8zB87E
#4 @ 1:40 and #1 @ 6:19 are especially hard to explain. The rickshaw driver himself seems to be totally discombobulated as he leaves his cart in the street and limps to the curb to sit and digest what just happened.
There are lots of other videos in the adjoining clip bait claiming to show superpowers but they’re blurry and/or subject to manipulation.
====
If you have trouble sleeping perhaps you shouldn’t watch this one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKyOaDh5USI
It is very disconcerting (especially to the judges!). Although (to me), she looks like a teenager she is actually 25. She has absolute control of the judges and audience beyond anything I have ever witnessed. (Talk about a super dom with no safe word!)
Lots of mind boggling events here. Some of the better ones:
• (time travel?) @ 1:28 Riana takes a picture of Anggun (the female judge) and @ 3:25 when Riana herself is in the picture that she took
• (teleportation?) ~14:00 leads up to 14:18
Food for thought (or nightmares?),
I’ve seen the first one before. It’s repurposed advertisement footage. I don’t have the time and patience, right now, to watch the magic act.
I’ve seen the clips of Riana’s acts (auditions & performances) going through the whole Asia’s Got Talent show. Yeah, sort of like watching a train wreck…creepy as hell to watch, but too interesting to stop.
The “Sacred Riana” is a stage magician. I’ve seen a video where most of her tricks got explained.
And haw about the “security videos” being all staged, too?
In the background, a guy in a Vault 111 suit and a dog walks by…
I going to go with …
A giant memorial statue … saluting the valiant fight that their race put up …
A giant memorial statue … showing the conquering race standing above a pile of bones that was once the Alari race (https://wallpaperswide.com/conan_the_barbarian_2011-wallpapers.html)
Still would love a Plane of the Apes revel though (^_^)
Oh … Oh …
With all the runes on the floor (ground) … I just though … a Giant Statue and there entire race imprisoned in a series of giant tombs (or magically sealed coffins with their bodies on display) stretching out as far as the eye can see.
I think you just came up with an alternate reality movie, “Plane of the Apes”, starring Charlton Heston. We all remember his famous line “I’ have had it with these damn dirty apes on this damn dirty plane!”
POST-IT NOTE LEFT ON STATUE READS:
“Gone to neighboring galaxy. Back in a millennium.”
A dead world. The unfortunate but predictable result of basing a society on a resource that can be consumed faster than it can be replenished. Sciona was using TANKS of blood in our world for her magicks.
Demand outstripped supply, and if Sciona is a representative example of her culture the Alari don’t exactly ‘play well with others’. Infighting on a global scale ensued.
I hope, though it probably won’t happen as DaveB doesn’t seem to be at the point of pulling back the curtain on Deus yet, that Sciona gets a line like ‘He didn’t want to **** ‘an’ Alari, he wanted to **** the LAST Alari..’
And yush, double post. But refreshed the page repeatedly after my first one and it didn’t show, so figured the dark horrors lurking in the matrix ate it.
Halo’s comments seem to indicate that something wiped out the Alari.
So it was a bit unclear to me when they tunneled to what we presume to be an Alari occupied world – was this a transit just in space, or did they actually hop to another dimension?
I ask because, given the difficulties in the portal opening, it seems possible that they dialed the wrong Alari reality (ie, the one in which the Alari got TPK’d) while Sciona’s actual home reality might still be out there somewhere.
Indeed, it could even be that they wiped out themselves.
“It was the monsters from the Id !”
~Lt. “Doc” Ostrow, The Forbidden Planet
Well at least we know that is one planet that they cannot be on. It is forbidden!
Or a shoe store.
the Statue is memoriam of their fallen homeland, or the only thing left of their race/empire.
Well if you look at the statue it’s not even in all that good shape, the head is gone and most of the wings on one side are missing.
Next Monday: Sciona Has a Sad
Sign post pitted with rust ” WALLY WORLD- CLOSED FOR RENOVATION- SORRY FOR ANY INCONVENIENCE.”
Calling it right now: pillsbury doughboy
Where did Sydney’s green life support orb go?
In her hand
Maybe her cities lie in dust? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsOHvP1XnRg
Also just noticed, is Sciona actually crying in that final panel?
We then see a ruined Statue of Liberty, buried in sand up to her waist, on a beach.
Artistically, I love the last panel close up of Sciona. She looks like someone who has put herself through hell and high water only to find out her goal was a complete waste of time. Can’t wait for the reveal.
I was hoping someone would mention this. That last panel is stunningly gorgeous art.
Stunning is most apt. Likewise the previous panel, and the transition in expression, combined with zooming in closer. An emotive technique, which helps draw out the feels.
Built up nicely by the panel prior to that also having great portraits, and helping to build the scene nicely.
Yeah that’s some top tier facing in there. Great work Dave!
Oh boy, looks like you can’t go home again…
…Especially when you find that “home” isn’t there anymore…
Sciona= Why am I crying? We alari never cry.
Halo = Hormones?
Dabbler casts soemthing= yep hormones… Congratulations are in order? You’re not the last anymore
Sciona- WHAT? That bastard!
Harem to Hero – She talking about Deus? What did I miss? (Still fondling hero’s pecs)
Dabbler: “Hey, no worries. I’ll just conujre up a GECK out of Hammerpsace, and…”
Max: “You seriously have a GECK?!”
Syd: “Of course she does…”
Hiro: “What a GECK?”
Max and Syd: “Nevermind…”
Technically, its a thingy.
Made by the McGuffin Corp under license from VaultTec.
GECK: “Did you know you could save 15% on planet insurance by switching to- oop, nevermind.”
Is it just me, or do the blood stains on Sciona’s face keep jumping around?
I know she’s a blood mage, but that’s an interesting special effect.
DaveB has made a comment about that effect in the previous series with Pixel Panther and said that he gave up even trying to keep the spots consistent between panels.
It’s been maybe 1-2 minutes tops since the blood got on her – not stains, still liquid.
One of her ‘donors’ was a certain Walter Kovacs. This isn’t the universe where he investigated the death of a Comedian and former team-mate, but perhaps some things are trans-universal.
The headless statue a few pages back was probably a big clue.
question about the cast page:
will there be an update on that one? all I can see is the navigation bar and the site background. no character information.
Probably no.
The info is on the wiki so Dave should just update the link (that’s a quick fix).
https://grrl-power.wikia.com/wiki/Cast
WOW. The coloring on this page is AMAZING. The nitty gritty detail on her bloody face is GREAT.
Anyone see the look on Sciona’s face?!? What does it mean???
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OhCrap
It could also be the realization of slowly dawning horror. Alfred Hitchcock is well-known for that.
Nice expression on the last panel.
Anyone else zooming in on her eyes for any clues in the reflections? :)
Poor Scifrigh a day late and a dollar short give or take a couple of centuries