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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Look at the ground. They are standing in a graveyard.
Endless series of names on tiny pieces of granite with a little candle magic glow thing next to each one. Think Arlington Cemetery.
Lots of people suggesting graveyard, but those generally need someone or something to build them even if it’s some type of automated system.
It is rare for any catastrophe to kill everybody, in an instant. Even a 100% fatal disease will have a few folks who could escape it by being anti-social and having a good supply of food. When the a-bombs went off, in Japan, there was one guy working in a sewer directly below the blast. Which was sufficient for him to survive. And go out far enough and quite a few people in the outskirts of the cities survived the initial blast, albeit that many died, as time went by. Some fast, some slow.
Kill enough of the global population though, fast enough that breeding amongst survivors does not compensate for the losses, and they are on the path to extinction.
However the rate that they died off could, in a variety of realistic scenarios, still allow enough manpower to bury the dead. Even if each survivor had to bury dozens, before they succumbed too.
Zombieland, World of Warcraft.
There is also the case of Yamaguchi Tsuomu, the man who survived both of the Atomic Bombs that were dropped on Japan to end the Second World War. His story just goes to show that no matter how seemingly impossible survival may be, there is inevitably someone who manages to beat those odds.
Yes, I was talking in context of all the others saying they’re all dead, which would be difficult to cause, considering that Alari can fly and that nobody has suffocated or been poisoned by the air yet. That would take relentless swarms of killbots or something, though they might be what shows up next.
In the case of a few being left, if their chances of survival are low I’d think they would have bigger priorities than building monuments. They may be well enough alive but still in such a shape that they won’t be conquering anything but their own planet anytime soon.
Flying critters are just as vulnerable to disease as land crawling ones. And are actually more vulnerable to atomic explosions, as they are less likely to be in a spot where there is something shielding them from the blast.
Although if Alari can predict one, in advance, they have a good chance to get to a safe distance, due to their supersonic flight speed. And could even outrun the shockwave (but would be exposed to, probably, lethal radiation travelling too fast to evade).
Plus some have suggested that Maxima herself (from another time or if this is an alternate version of their universe) could have been the cause of their demise. In which case their flight capability would not have aided them, beyond delaying things, if they scattered wherever she appeared.
However you are right that an entire populace, with considerable flight speed, would be able to avoid many conventional threats, such as an invasion by human armies, through portals. Likewise as for your concluding comment, regarding present day priorities of any scattered survivors.
Prioritising honouring the dead though, that is a cultural thing. Even on Earth there is big variability in that. Some will go through considerable hardship to ensure a fitting burial. Whilst others (especially in extreme times) will not bother at all. As we only know the one Alari, we cannot say for sure which end of the spectrum they might generally fall.
Although, if Sciona is a typical example, you would be right (unless they have different codes for Alari versus non-Alari, which is possible). She just left Wyrmil’s body where he fell, without even a token gesture, such as covering his corpse, or closing his eyes.
Except, if you look at the last panel, Sci does care, except for those who piss her off
And there are plenty of nice and kind and gentle pleasant people, who would match Sci’s actions in every way (and then some) if someone pissed them off or hurt their family or close friends
Except we never saw her care about those who didn’t piss her off. Just apparently some tiny group of people.
Never saw anyone in her group do much to anger her (except Cooter being a fool, and her argument with Cthillia at the end – and there were a more than just them), yet she showed no care whatsoever. Just passing value, and a cessation of it.
Never said that she did care for Wormie, and it seems not many else did, just that she is capable of caring (besides, why would she care about individuals from, to her view of point, ‘inferior species’?)
While true, that only makes her more of a nasty piece of work. Going above a little, “And there are plenty of nice and kind and gentle pleasant people, who would match Sci’s actions in every way (and then some) if someone pissed them off or hurt their family or close friends”
Considering how many of the people involved were UNRELATED to what happened to Sciona/her people/whatever, and she went after them, ANYWAY, I’m going with: no, there are 0 nice/kind/gentle people who would do what Sciona has. Because her actions went after unrelated people, going after them (Wyrmil, Cooter, the Vampires, the people she had strung up in her lair) would invalidate claims to have any of those terms apply.
Except, you are forgetting what the Oh So Benevolent and Wondrous Secret Twilight Council did to Sci
And again, never said that Sci herself qualified under those terms, just that there are people who would do the same
Which is my point – there are NOT any people who are nice, kind, and/or gentle who would do those things to UNRELATED people. (No, not the Council. I specifically avoided mentioning them). Because the soul of those acts is mutually exclusive with the definitions of those terms.
I thought that was a function of the armor and she has a more modest innate flight speed.
That is an interesting take.
Those wings are a natural part of her, we saw them when she was au-natural
And even some buildings and infrastructure will usually survive any destructive event, assuming the planet itself does, which this one clearly did. Right at Ground Zero in Hiroshima, there’s this one wooden arch that was left standing atop a pile of rubble.
One man survived, both bombs.
Actually, a bunch of people did. Just that one guy was particularly recognized for it.
If anything, those who’d survived the first bomb were more prepared to avoid the second. One man, maybe the recognized one, was actually in the middle of describing the burst to family when the second went off, he yelled “Just like that! Take cover!”
She stares into the fourth wall and realizes she’s a fictional character, and tis but the brushstrokes of the mad artist what secretly licks the pages…
I like it, but more fun:
The part of the fourth wall she looks through, is to Dave’s notes to himself on her history and importance in the story.
And she’s a minor annoyance for a single arc that dies and goes unmourned.
Grant Morrison’s Animal Man, on a peyote high, staring straight at the panel: “I SEE YOU!”
Bracing for sads in 3… D:
Hmm, time for ruination and/or a sea of bones, I’m guessing!
To quote from https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/2869
1. A runaway wormhole is bad
2. The portal transposed them without them having crossed the event horizon
3. The event horizon is not contained (within the wormhole)
I would guess that the incomplete and unstable wormhole portal alongside the blood rune base destruction boom caused this end of the wormhole to break loose from it’s fixed point and do some serious event horizon damage to anything living there.
They are currently unaffected as they are still on the near side of the event horizon albeit off the earth.
Situ looks bad for all, but Sciona may end up having to help them close the wormhole rip, due to it being her wormhole that wiped out every living thing on her own planet!
Those are really interesting eyes.
Especially so in that they do not feel ‘wrong’.
Yeah usually any colour other than white looks wrong.
Usually as long as the pupils themselves are black and the iris is distinct it’s usually doable, if you pay attention to the colour palate’s relationship to the character.
if the eyes are the windows to the soul, our lady Sciona has stained glass, her soul is a sepulcher, or a cathedral, and all who gaze within are either lost…or saved
Nice
It would be interesting to see that the statue is depicting the Alari Conqueror and that Conqueror is none other than Max herself
+1
Panel 1:
Hello pot? Kettle calling.
I looked at the last panel and the first thing that came to mind was: “Where will you be when diarrhea strikes?”
for some reason that fits your avatar so well…
:-D
And you want to hope that there is not a fan blowing, to make things worse.
Better stop Dabbles then… butt everyone knows, it’s not easy stopping Dabbles once she gets a good blow going :P
The reality explosion caused the alari homeworld to get stuck in a permanent slow-time effect. The reason Harem said it sounded like an echo isn’t because sound is bouncing off of something and back, it’s because sound is moving so slowly that it hit each of her ears at different rates.
We see a wall of a building near Sciona, so the world isn’t reduced to flatland.
Either that or they’re in a pocket universe of some kind.
And Dabbler is blowing away the lint.
rimshot…
I think her issue is she’s soooo far way from her quantum mind. She’s discombobulated.
One of the weird things about quantum entanglement is that the distance separating entangled pairs is irrelevant. They have the same properties, at the same time, regardless of how far apart they are.
And the even weirder thing is… no one knows how that affects a living sentient (sapient?) organism like Daphne
While we have notably spent two pages leading up to what Sydney noticed …
I’ve noticed Harem totally falling apart in the background. Since some people posit entanglement to be instantaneous (as opposed to merely superluminal), does that mean that her powers are not related to entanglement? Or that entanglement follows different rules? Does it mean that they have transited to a different dimension in addition to traveling in space (and time)? And, most importantly, will this one of Harem’s bodies be able to integrate back into the whole (if)/when they return to earth?
* See the rest of the paragraph, in the link, for the explanation.
No. Dabbler specifies that is how they work, in Dabbler’s Science Corner #2.
That is plausible. Super powers can bend any rules. Whilst Dabbler is trying to describe complex matters, using the approximations that are available, in primitive ape languages.
If her link had severed, that would seem to be a likely cause. The fact that she is getting an echo though, rather than a loss of all contact, considerably complicates any interpretation.
If her quantum entanglement has been severed then no. Quantum entanglement does not allow that. However if she does not follow the normal rules then maybe. At the moment though it seems the entanglement is still working, but Harem is just having difficulty in interpreting her senses, for reasons open to much speculation.
Or, that was simply how Dabbles believed it to work, remember, while she may be very smart, she doesn’t know everything, and we have already seen someone like Sydney correct her on something she simply overlooked
We still don’t know what ‘echo’ or those other feelings Daphne has been experiencing are, or even if they have anything to do with her condition, might simply be that she was bit by a space-squito
Under most circumstances, such as when Dabbler has answered questions, at a debriefing, yes. In this case though, “Dabbler’s Science Corner” is a presentation made direct to the audience, about how the comic works. Which is something that we would normally expect to be authoritative. In such a role Dabbler is presenting canon, rather than her opinion.
I’m willing to bet the distance is playing a part but not because of her entangled mind. Remember how she couldn’t teleport through Sidney’s shield? Her teleporting (and presumably unteleporting) are a separate thing from her quantum mind, but still something she can feel since she was immediately able to tell she couldn’t telepprt through the shield. I’m willing to bet whatever she’s feeling is related to her teleporting, whether it be distance to her other bodies, or distance to wherever un-teleported bodies go.
Mmm. Plausible. We know that Harem has a sense where she can tell if an area is occupied by some object, or person, such that she has time to abort the teleport, if it is. Possibly she routinely, even subconsciously, ‘pings’ potential teleport spots.
Be that her childhood bedroom, to check that she is still in range of it (Harem can teleport much further to very familiar places, but the range is still finite). Or, as you say, any spot that she is looking at, such as inside the shield. Likewise when she was seeing the ambulance, at the staged bank robbery, she was probably checking to see if she could go there, even before she was asked.
So, if something is throwing her subconscious ‘pings’ off, each time she tries to gauge if her other bodies, or familiar locations, are in range, that could account for the echo.
If though it is nothing more than the fact that she is out of range, then I am not so sure. As Harem will have experienced the feeling of it having failed previously, even on Earth. So should be familiar with that sensation.
However it remains plausible that the sensations, for such vast gulfs of space, are significantly different, thereby making it hard for Harem to recognise it for what it is.
Mmm, and we get received wisdom from Trekkies, that teleportation cannot occur faster than the speed of light. So it is plausible that the same may apply in the Grrlverse. So any teleportation and senses associated with them, may have lag. And with lag comes the possibility of an echo, under the right circumstances.
Hmmm, maybe the ‘echo’, is the finally arrived 6th Harem, and this is possibly what all the Daphne’s experience at that time until they get use to the extra input
Sciona: “Ah, Glud’vor!
What waiting as on next pages? Unexpected team-up with murderous villain?
Heh. Possibly. Only if she wanted to save her own hide though.
my gravatar doesn’t work
Fixed
The half-buried statue of intolerance?
Heh, nice turn of phrase.
Hopefully (future) history will allow the original title to be justified.
*sigh*
I really should make an intense effort to break through my depression and finish preparing my social engineering proposal, for publication. It could help alleviate some of the stresses, in society, which aggravate intolerance. Further it reduces the ease with which intolerance can be turned against segments of society.
It is like trying banging up against a black wall though, every time I try. But time is fast running out, so I must persevere!
Maybe the unexpected portal opened up to the Atari homeworld instead.
Or, the Irata planet (loved playing that game :D)
I thought to myself, the black mist is probably smoke, and where theres a planet covered in smoke, theres a lot of burnt out cities. Sciona probably thought the smoke was from the portal malfunction, but I am betting there are smoldering cities in the background. Think nuclear winter, but with fire magic maybe, otherwise they would probably already be taking a heavy dose of radiation, and would be less calm about it. A worldwide firestorm, blocking out the sun, and the still smoldering remains… probably happened fairly recently maybe.
I’m calling it here: It’s Godzilla. She’s looking deadass at Godzilla.
Ooh, within the bounds of possibility!
Godzilla and relatives have already been stated, in canon, as not existing. However that was in the context of ‘on Earth’, which they probably are not anymore.
I think that is less likely though, given the unconcerned expressions we see in panel 2.
More to the point, would Sydney be able to contain herself if Godzilla were standing there? She’d be more of a wreck than Harem is atm.
:-D
Truth. Sydney would be flying towards it, begging Gojira to give her one of its eggs!
Somehow… doubt Sydney could fit one of its eggs!
Race of universe conquerors who finally irritated someone that didn’t intend to be conquered.
We have all these stories about conquering everything due to relatively recent experiences such as Alexander of Macedon vs the known world or the US Calvary vs American natives and so forth. Such stories generally ignore huge differences in both technology and technique when it comes to war.
Trying to conquer everything means your species is actively seeking out every fighter in existence, intending to prove you’re better fighters than anyone, including races that took war to the ultimate ages ago, realized they were gaining nothing, and sealed all their weapons away in the case of future need. Including ultimate weapons such as truly versatile teleporters (Star Trek drives me crazy, with a weapon like that they need little else, and they don’t even use it that way), devices that convert matter to antimatter, really fast normal space drives (KE=.5MV^2) and so forth.
If that’s the scenario, I’m just surprised she found a planet still there. Or a star.
That’ll do for speeds such as you get when smashing a comet into a planet, but a “really fast normal space drive” is probably going to be relativistic, and so will pack a much bigger punch than pretty much anything. Since it takes infinite energy to get matter to go at the speed of light, an acceleration device capable of producing arbitrary relativistic speeds has no fixed upper limit on how much kinetic energy those projectiles will have.
Except that it is known that there are ways to BLOCK Star Trek transporters and when you are talking about intersteller distances (up until old Scotty’s retroactive send information back to his younger self made it feasible) it was next to impossible to ‘land’ the landing.
So transporters are not the ‘be-all, end-all’ that people make them out to be in the real world.
Even if you could transport a ‘world-ender’ weapon, what would prevent the people on the planet you were sending it to from transporting it off their planet, assuming they could detect it?
Does that thing in the background of the first panel look like a creature to anyone else too? or maybe head of a creature? with comically large round eyes and a big mouth and either arms or bunny ears hanging from the top?
At first I thought it was a building or a smoke machine or whatever.
Well maybe both.
I’m guessing the structure is actually part of Sciona’s base on Earth… the portal didn’t teleport them, it teleported a part of the destination to Earth. The portal is still open, and it’s showing a singularity consuming the Alari homeworld in the distance.
And that’s one of the ultimate weapons I didn’t mention, the ability to move and control point masses large enough to be stable.
It’s the Deviant Arts logo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyxeESXBJcs was playing when I read this page.
Somehow, I find it fitting. At least to where I expect them to be standing in.
I call that the portal is encircling them, so no reinforcements.
As for the theory of everyone being dead… well, if the runes were graves, then sciona would be shocked by looking down and not by looking the other way. But she could still see something that implies that they’re all dead.
Excellent art here, the expression on Sciona’s face in the last panel is quite haunting.
I do feel like the last pages, starting with the chase of Sciona, have been kind a case of: archon members brashly do something, collateral that Sydney points out. Or Sydney is the only one to notice, multiple times, that something is going on that the others do not.. It somewhat makes the supposedly more experienced Archon members feel like they are recruits themselves.
That aside though, I am loving this comic and am very curious to see what is going on and how if Harem is recovering or is still.. wobbly.
Archon members do something brashly without awareness of the result? Say it’s not true!!!
If, as it is appearing to be likely, Sciona has just discovered that she is the last of the Alari, she might just turn suicidal. She attacks the Arc-SWAT team, forcing Max to put an end to her. Sort of an inter-dimensional version of “Suicide By Cop”.
This could be a huge deal for Maxima if it is the first time she’s ever had to take a life. It’s one thing to fly about saving lives, but something completely different to take a life even if it is to save more lives.
Maxi has blood on her hands, and taken the lives of others before
So did Spike and Andrew, and Willow, and Faith….
Maxima has served on the front line in two wars, so probably has had to kill quite a lot. Plus she indicated, at the press conference that she had killed the only (non-team member) who has been able to beat her. Albeit that we believe he (or she) actually survived.
That said she has gone to lengths to avoid any fatalities in the first huge battle. Likewise Maxima has tried to get Sciona to surrender, despite the ongoing deadly threat that she posed.
Therefore Maxima has not become a war-weary cynic, who is blazé about death. So even killing an enemy is something she clearly does not take lightly. Although we have seen, at the bridge, that she will not hesitate, if she believes that is necessary.
If Blood magic is the norm amount her people maybe somebody used the equivalent of a wish gathering power improperly so it consumed everyone on her homeworld and that stuff Dabbler is clearing is the only thing left of them?
Just want to mention the art in this comic is BEAUTIFUL DaveB.
+1
Civilization is destroyed confirmed.
Pretty much so.
I feel like there’s a Gimli/Moria moment coming.
In spite of everything Im kinda feeling bad for Sciona when I think about what’s coming next. All the centuries perhaps of struggling to get home just to find everything in ruin. Damn.
Timing is everything.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHxw9-zg7ro
Supposition.
Harem’s brain is casting about for her normal quantum links.
A lot of dead here, who had magic powers.
Harem is suddenly going to become the radio/voice for the Dead Alari.
Scolding Sciona for not being there when she was needed…one more drop of blood could have saved the race.
Harem being Harem takes the opportunity to say more than the dead are saying.
The dead area amused.
Halo talks to the dead and distracts them..
She saw this: https://youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ
Hot Spam! Haven’t seen the full version in decades!!
The trailer for Bumblebee shows that death, by decapitation, is the penalty for doing that!
Yeah, and the non-Bey ‘Bee movie will be betterer than all five BeyFormer movies put together!
Classic BumbleBee (still with the skorked vox-box though) and classic StarScream?
Just wondering if the dimensional(?) trip might have left this version of Harem alone in her individual head for the first time ever? She can usually sense what all the others that are current in existence are seeing, feeling, doing and so on. So could this have taken her away from that connection or made the relay so long that she’s not receiving signal, as it were?
That is the common assumption. But note that she is experiencing an echo, rather than being unable to sense the rest of her.
Yes, but when you scream into the great wide open of your mind and can’t reach the others… would it bounce around in your head?
Final panel reminds me of the splatoon reveal for the next smash bros game.
So, they all died of AIDS?
Ahh, so you too think Deus has been here then?
I know Deus has aides, but AIDS? Do his aides have AIDS?
Or worse. He did not appear to use any protection and he has sex prolifically with different partners. To cap it all he favours different species. AIDS is a species-hopping disease.
Whilst alien biology is probably too incompatible for that, such an assumption is based on completely separate evolution and no contact between eco-systems. However we know that, at a minimum, aliens have been on Earth for 3,000 years (and possibly always).
Plus succubi regularly have inter-species sex, on many planets. And manage to procreate (albeit with artificial assistance). So there are many and regular vectors which could allow such diseases to evolve. Further the alien species in the Grrlverse may actually be related to each other, given that close contact, for such prolonged periods.
They’re dead Jim.
It’s a theme park.
Bet.
That’s why no help is coming: they’re all too busy on the tilt-a-hurl.
100% guaranteed.
But what is the theme? Machina Industries galactic enterprises?
Has anyone noticed that when Syd first mentioned new information she was hold the yellow comm ball? The magical field overview is where she got whatever information she came up with. It is quite possible the whole world is devastated for an unknown reason, or all the magic/power is gone. It is apparent she does know that no one is home.
Just so.
If they are trasported to an alt-reality, then a Harem echo could be alt-selves. Sydney’s vast nerd knowledge has spotted a ‘not our universe’ telltale.
If they are in a bubble of ‘I want this to be my homeworld’ a tiny finite bubble with edges that but up against RL. snapped by intwnt
You can say that again.
My guess is a huge field of petrified Alari, because you beat blood mages by removing their blood.
Granted that is effective on other things too, but it’s important here.
It is not unreasonable to suppose that the basis of Alari civilisation is a mastery of blood magic. Indeed it may even be that they, like Sciona, routinely combine it with ultra technology (for instance the laser cutter, used to penetrate the vault door, was powered by blood magic).
This would explain why Sciona appears to be a genius at technomagic, yet is slow-witted in other ways (such as how to treat employees, and allies, in order to retain their loyalty). She could have just been using off-the-shelf items along with a bit of jury-rigging. And her spells could be those taught to all Alari from high school upwards.
As for becoming petrified, we have already seen one such individual, if you are right.
Can they legally make an arrest there?
Will she get of with such a technicality.
Archon’s officers are actually federal agents, not cops. Maxima introduces herself as such. Federal agents can make arrests anywhere in the United States, or wherever the USA claims sovereign powers of arrest.
The U.S. Code allows the federal government to exercise “Special Maritime and Territorial Jurisdiction” over:
Note that a nation must be formally recognised, before it would affect this law. So if you find a bit of territory, not claimed by any nation,* and stick your flag into it, you must then get the USA to officially recognise the existence of your new country. Fail to do so and you can be arrested by US federal agents, for any offence you commit against persons of the United States.
There has been no public recognition of the Alari empire, by the USA.
* There are a couple of acres just between Canada and the United States, if any of you want to stake a claim. Go to the most northern point in mainland USA (it is next to a lake and sticking into Canada). There is an isolated US community there. Follow the map along Eastwards a few miles and you will see a bit of Canada jutting down into the same lake. Much of it is subject to territorial claim. A little corner is not.
Go grab your flag quick! If you choose to make it a sovereign nation, count me in as applying for citizenship. I am already a dual national and would love to become a tri-national, to match my brother.
TL/DR: Yes they can arrest her. She has committed offences against U.S. citizens (Sydney, Maxima and Pixel, to name a few), and is not under the protection afforded by being in a recognised jurisdiction of another country.
But no on the technicality.