Grrl Power #658 – Round 1 Fight!
Sydney should have known better. There’s no way that dude has just the one attack. If nothing else he could swat at her. She just doesn’t appreciate what she’s up against yet, even though it’s the only thing she’s ever encountered (in the week she’s been a superhero, lol) that’s strained her shield.
Yes when Sydney shoots her beam she starts falling. She complained about that on the previous page, but she can deal with that when she’s really high up. The quickswap wouldn’t work if she was chasing someone in between buildings at relatively low altitude. At best she could angle up before swapping and try and take the shot before her arc starts dropping her to low, but she doesn’t need that stress.
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sydney should just learn contact jugging so she can hold more than one sphere per hand.
She actually tried that and it didn’t work. Was explained pretty early on.
It doesn’t allow her to use more than two spheres at once, but maybe it would allow her to switch between them quicker?
Darth Squiddly-Duiddly is a lot bigger than I thought he was… Yikes!
Yeah, I thought the same thing O_o
I vote to rename the ppo (pew pew orb) to the skree ball.
I second the motion. Skree ball has one fewer syllable and softer constinants.
and only one more letter than Skee Ball
You are aware it is McSquiddly doing the “KREE”ing, aren’t you?
Never mind, it was me being the idiot, hadn’t scrolled back up far enough to see the “SKREEEE”
It’s the Skree vs KREE attacks – KREE is currently in the lead with 3 Sydney-ball pings vs the Skree miss via a cheat ability.
I have to say, I really love the visual effect of the giant spacething doing what looks like folding space around itself, much as you might imagine a camoflage system might fold light around itself to appear invisible.
Mayhap it can also disappear this way?
The other four Squidzillas are using their shields in cloaking mode while the move into position behind Sydney.
What other four?
Exactly.
Well that will probably not have any depressing consequences for everyone involved and noone would see it coming.
Especially since, strong as this thing is, it doesn’t look like it could destroy this planet on its own if it was populated by weaker versions of Sciona with interstellar portal technology.
Interesting. Anyone else notice that the ‘input’ beam did not ‘exit’ the distortion field directly in line with the input beam? May not be significant
Snap out of it Syd! She might experiencing an ‘illusion’ of the real thing. Similar to “The Menagerie” ya’ll.
Best defense, no be there.
Or it might be like the displacer beast. Just a little next to where it seem to be.
No, if it was a displacer beastie, the spitball would have gone through it
Well in panel 67 that is what it appears to be doing. Slow motion scenes are hard in non animated media
Oops panel 6
No, it’s hitting something and being deflected, if it was displacer beastie-like the beam wouldn’t have encountered anything and just kept going, like as to an illusion
The last panel makes me imagine Sydney implanted with the same chip that Zodon has to control his foul language in PS238.
Sydney is in fact in one of those situations superheroes occasionally find themselves in; like Spiderman looking at Galactus. She’s a bit tougher than Spiderman, but compared to this Big Ugly, she’s still pretty much just an armored cockroach.
“Boxing out of your weight class”
its why Richard Rider didn’t even try to fight Galactus and instead focused on evacuating the people of the planet being fed on.
Galactus might be tough, but he was ‘beaten’ by Squirrel Girl
Technically she just ordered him takeout.
Also, everyone gets beaten by Squirrel Girl. It’s a law of the universe, quite possibly written in mile-high stone somewhere.
In the same manner most heroes beat Galactus (hey there is an even tastier planet over there), heck its the Silver Surfer’s back story and how Mr. Fantastic warded him off a few times.
Besides Squirrel girl is an awesome power house.
Is it just me, or is is Squidward a lot bigger then he was a few pages ago? Or maybe the ship dropped him much farther off then it looked when he first impacted the scene.
We don’t saw his head when he first beamed down, but we did see him blurry in the background walking into the crater when Sydney flew up into space, he was pretty huge considering the size of the crater.
Not LARGER, just CLOSER. It is already reaching miles high and could cover a large part of North America. Sydney should be scared shitless that is is gaining on her and it isn’t even flying! Just extending its huge ineffable bulk to swat the arrogant dust mote in its line of sight.
The giant guy shooting at her and the ship are two different things.
hmms now logic says to have that kind of shield must swap back forth from power to defence to attack. what if alien squid here is the maker of the rock stuff that changed maxima. but while its attacking its defences could be lower and thus the chance to attack is while its attacking
Why do I get the feeling that is the only life form/AI in the whole shp?
So, I’ve been wondering about this for awhile, and I’m not sure if anyone else has asked this, but what would happen if Sidney held a single orb in both hands. Would the sacrifice of two-abilities at once perhaps boost the power of the one orb being held? Example, if she dropped the light/shield orb, and held the PPO in both hands, would she be able to make a super mega blast a-la Dragon Ball Z?
Best anyone knows is that the hands thing is about control, not power… Which also doesn’t make sense considering they’re linked to her nervous system… So she should be able to multitask by just controlling them with her brain…
I never thought of this.
+1
Are you thinking of Skyrim’s dual-wield spells?
Maybe Sydney can get through its defenses if she flies rapidly past and shoots at him from a variety of angles. You know what they say, “better strafe than sorry”.
Punderfully said. Also, you’re fired.
Has Sydney tried things like duct-taping the spheres to her arms, legs, etc… some portion of exposed flesh?
I honestly cannot remember if it had been said that she tried that and it did not work.
She even tried with her butt, nothing but her hands work.
Dang I was hoping she could fly “by the seat of her pants”, while controlling Off/Def with her two hands, you know like gamers.
gamers use a butt rocker Wii switch?
Related link: https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/589
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https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/589
This page shows her trying a few different appendages.
Will brown ball get tested out of frustration here?
Also she knows all the TROPES.
Sydney “So it can deflect direct attacks around itself? Okay, dodge AOE Mother——”
It used AOE on her before. She probably can do the same thing. Wait till she finds out she can do an attack similar to Maxima and Squidly too… just too dangerous for earth. Meant for deep space, desolate moons that are no danger when they turn to asteroid belts or planetary rings or for areas where there is no other life… like this planet currently.
Now does seem the time to try pressing all the buttons to find out what they do.
What could possibly go wrong *Flashback to mars/wars factory teleportation*
The real danger here is, ironically, if she SUCCEEDS in her level grinding. Having the orbs go into upgrade mode mid fight (or mid-flight) amidst fighter lasers and SquidlyTitan could end VERY badly. Hopefully they wait until ‘post combat’ to finally apply her perks… and I seem to remember a strange 3-slot series of rings in the middle of the upgrades, with only 2/3 filled I think…?
You’d think there’d be a safety built in to them to stop that XD
Everything else has failed to work with this guy. Break out the googly eyes!
The important thing to note here is that it only has 2 hands. What we thought were its tentacle hands were apparently just face tentacles. It is also pretty fucking huge seeing as how its face alone is the size of a skyscraper.
Looks like the intergalactic version of pinball: Sydneyball.
Someone needs to collect all of Sydney’s cuss streams into one list and then get someone to read it (edit it so that it’s done w/o pausing and a continuous stream!) and then post video with proper images of nuns and sailors being shocked or blushing….
sailors, boxers, fishermen, oil rig workers, and yes, nuns, all aghast, but one single nun nodding and thinking ‘atta girl!’
ha, yes. This needs to be a thing. Even better if you can get a woman to do the reading and mebbe some live reactions ( either real nuns, sailors, etc or people in costume )
Sung to the Lyrics of Pinball Wizard
Ever since she hit Atmo, she’s been played like a silver ball.
Touched base down on Alari she has been shot at by them all.
But She ain’t seen nothing like it, in any Raid or PUG.
That Tentacled monstrosity sure plays a mean pinball!
It stands like a statue, maybe it is part machine, feeling all the bumps now,
Lets hope her undies are clean.
She shoots by intuition, the drones they did now fall.
But She ain’t seen nothing like it, in any Raid or PUG.
That Tentacled monstrosity sure plays a mean pinball!
It’s a Pinball Wizard
There has to be another gun.
A Pinball Wizard’s going to have some fun .
How do you think it does it? She don’t know!
What makes it so good? ADHD distractions she can’t hear no buzzers and bells.
She see’s her shield a flashing * Parp * Oops what is that smell.
She wont get a replay, If it doesn’t fall.
But She ain’t seen nothing like it, in any Raid or PUG.
That Tentacled monstrosity sure plays a mean pinball!
She thought Mr Bubble was invulnerable,
She thought she was Battle king
She may have to hand PPO to him.
She rolls for initiative, Looks up on the damage table, still cant scratch that zit,
Even rolling a 20, she still didn’t get that hit,
And she just wants to rest, get those crazy hands on orbs.
Never seen her fall…
But She ain’t seen nothing like it, in any Raid or PUG.
That Tentacled monstrosity sure plays a mean pinball!
i was wondering how long it would take for the diverse fanbase of this comic to start making Skinhorse style page filks. took quite a bit longer than i expected, honestly.
It might just be aesthetic, but its Trinity Beams look a little similar to the PPO beam. The scout reacted to Sydney’s orbs by summoning this guy and his Death Spire ship, I am wandering if there is some relation between him and the orbs.
Like that Shimmer Blast could be something her PPO can also do, with the right upgrades.
Sorry miscounted, I see three off the face but five hitting her so…a Tetrad Blast? or is it using all its eyes or most and we only see some in the range of the panel?
I read all the comments today just to see if anyone wrote exactly what you did, so I knew whether or not I should.
Yeah, that thing has Sydney’s shield and beams, so I’m thinking that the 6 known orbs are its own powers, and Brown7 is the system that turns its powers (from another individual of whatever it is) into the orbs.
Sydney’s basically fighting herself.
So why is it attacking?
– It sees Halo in the same regard as a mother bird sees its chick. (maybe)
– It sees Halo as a thief or some other criminal that stole its abilities or desecrated its dead. (maybe)
Oooo… Squdward is definitely going into THE LIST
Had a girlfriend that would “use the alphabet” as I’d joke when she got ticked.
G-D-M-F-C-S-B
That’s all I can remember at the moment. You can figure out what each letter stands for on your own ;)
Unlike Sydney, she didn’t have ADHD or super orbs of power.
You get bonus points for the ones you can do with the same letter times the length.
(Double for single letter) X (length)
Eg.
Wishy-Washy-Wooly-Worsted-Wimpy-Wasted-Whining-Weaselly-Wusses! W(9)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htSNvFo3CWo
This is a few pages late but: I recall a thing from star-craft where my cousin did a mix of all three races joining forces to make a super ship. I think it’s name might fit the alien ship here too: The super-omega-behemoth-battle-cruiser. (at least if I’m remembering it right)
Heh. That describes it nicely!
Hmm, I don’t think we know the nature of Sydney’s beams, other then they explode dramatically a moment after they hit. But thinking about it, that actually is similar behavior to Squidward, though his beams drilled further before blowing. Then on this panel he used a new beam that has similiar art to hers.
I wonder if there is a connection between the orbs and these aliens. They (probably) aren’t the same group, because the orbs (look like they) are more advanced, but there is some seeming similarity. Also the orbs have a whole ‘any sufficiently advanced’ thing going on with them, while these aliens have a whole mythos look.
It’s nothing definite. Just a bunch of things that feel or suggest simliarity without confirming it.
I have thought about what kind of morphology would be needed to operate all the orbs simultaneously. Rather like for the plastic educator of Forbidden Planet and the the door shapes suggested a possible body design for the Krell.
Without getting to see a very embarrassed Sydney pulling down her pants to wedge the flight orb in her butt, we have to think of what kind of mental strength would allow the person to operate the orbs in toto. One is a projecting from of neural energy another would be more arms and maybe even a prehensile tail.
To me they were always survival gear for a very advanced species so that they could survive, even if their ship is breached in space. But they would have to have access to all 7 of the orbs as needed seamlessly.
Also suspicious, all up close shots are just its head, full body is from a distance and blurry, but its leg sections and shoulders look awfully orb shaped.
What if an often dismissed theory is correct, the orbs are themselves a life form and this thing happens to be a big member of the same Eldritch sub-species.
I was thinking more Covenant to the Orb’s Forerunners myself. Like, the orbs are tiny, but they showed power enough to mass murder the drones. Squidward seems something like a dozen times as destructive then the orbs, but it’s like…
Hmm, going by one of the backgrounds we see ruined skyscrappers. We know have a good perspective on it, and that could be distorting, but lets call it twenty stories tall, or roughly 200 feet. The orbs or about the size of tennis balls, we’ll call that 2.6 inches.That puts squidward as roughly 923 times as tall.
Of course the orbs are spheres, wall squidward is significantly taller then he is wide, so it’s not an even proportion. Still, he’s solidly three orders of magnitude bigger then the orbs. Compare that to something much closer in size, like a derringer to a navel artillery piece.
So I can only see the orbs as way more advanced.
Squidward, panel 5: “Plasma lance directly to the face, huh? That’s cute. You are new around here.”
It’s been mentioned several times that she should fly into the ship and try damaging it from the inside – this seems like a horrible idea to me. Yes, it’s a clever trope to shoot your way out from the inside, but so far she knows:
a) This ship has a very non-human arrangement – she has no way to pick a safe entry point, since tell the command deck from the brig. Or the trash compactor. Or the focusing lens of the main weapon.
b) They have shields and weapons that are tougher than hers. Yes, stuff usually isn’t armored from the inside, but you have to get in first, and that means you have to get past the shields and weapons.
c) This ship is capable of interstellar travel (possibly FTL) with only second of notice, and she is not. Even if she could take them down, if they jump while she’s on board she’d never get home.
She’s currently totally lost on unknown planet. Sure, Dabbler MIGHT know where it is, but I still think if this ship will take her somewhere else she wouldn’t be any more lost than now.
At least everybody knows that Sydney is here, even if they don’t know where “here” is. They know what to look for, which is a starting point to finding her. If Sydney leaves, then from Max and Dabbler’s perspective she could literally be “anywhere in/around the universe”. Especially if she leaves in the manner described above, because then she couldn’t leave behind an indication of where she went.
Felchmaster? Lordamercy, the mouth on this woman
Ahhh, been way too long since Sydney’s foul mouth has made an appearance. One of the things about her character that always makes me giggle like a little kid.
Also, looking forward to what munchkinry she’ll pull outta her ass…ets to pick off this guy ( assuming Dabbler doesn’t manage to *YOINK!* her outta there before things get bad.
rolled a nat 1 on attack i see
Someone oughta remind Sydney that initiative is rolled at the start of combat, which was like, three pages ago or something.
She is, as John Cleese once said, a “true vulgarian.”
7th Dan Blackbelt in Obscenity-Fu, according to Math.
Sheesh, boss fight 101: Shoot when the boss fires to get past it’s shields.
Though I suppose she might not have known about the shields? :(
I just realized something – what’s a bet that whatever race made the orbs has four or six arms, They should totally give Sydney some mutagen that adds more arms when they get her back!
There’s been some discussion on this before, e.g. getting Dabbler to do some tricky bio-prosthetic etc, but I just realized – no one else has ever handled the orbs, ever.*
We saw the orbs circle Varia, but nobody else has had them in hand. Unless I’m forgetting a early strip or a Word of Dave, everyone (characters and readers) is just assuming the orbs only work for Sydney, because that’s How Things Work™ in sci-fi. Presumably there’s a safety feature to prevent an enemy grabbing them, but who’s to say Sydney can’t allow someone else to activate an orb?
Just Halo and Dabbler could operate all of the know orbs at once; given time, Dabbler might even be able to cast from within the shield. They’d make a very imposing strike team, if you could keep them focused.
* Aside from some Halo-induced blunt force trauma, which doesn’t count.
It is also possible they could instantly kill anyone else who touches them. Probably why no one has wanted to experiment. :)
Dabbler: “Hey you, in the red shirt. Come over here for a second.”
why oh why do the newbis always hit the hard parts first? look you got a giant squid that just called a huge ship in and had it attack you and it stays standing out in a field with zero cover. this indicates it has defenses that it is very confident in. so you dont hit it in the jaw, you hit it in the heel or you hit it in a way that it cant defend against. that open field is a nice thing it is also made of something she can destroy so you remove it from under the space squid then dump it on top of said squid. probably wont kill the thing but it will give you a bit of time to think of the next move and you never know dumping a million ton of rock on top of the thing might be its weakness. sheesh i am a big guy and if i see an opponent that isn’t showing any signs of looking for cover when the bombs start dropping i look for a different solution. hitting things head on might at times be satisfying but it also can cause you a world of hurt. fight smart you aint maxima who can shrug off a nuke.
Had a thought… what would happen squidwards beams were crossed? I mean she is so small, beams are large… if she got close to the face, the beams could cross… perhaps a total protonic reversal kinda thing?
That… wouldn’t be too healthy for Sydney, if she was right next to the resulting explosion, even if Mr Buble was able to shield her, she could still end up being jettisoned from the planet, and once in space, there may not be a way to properly stop her momentum (at least not until she was a loonnngggg way from land)
Whenever a giant space monster fires a laser the sound my brain hears is the BWRENNNNNN that the reapers make in Mass Effect
Fortunately, have no intent of ever playing that (hate games that are basically a movie and you are just along just to progress through the fighting cut-scenes), plenty of hentai images out there though :P
Looking back at Scuba Sydney, it appears the orbs were embedded in what she likely thought was Coral and prised them out (Naughty there, damaging Coral). Maybe it was they were part of a Squiddly diddly crashed onto Earth centuries ago and Coral grew over them covering it up with just the orbs poking out a bit like the film Sphere. Then Sydney sticks her knife in to get them out of the long dead skull. They now turn up, scan Sydney and assume she murdered one of their own and took their sacred orbs from its corpse and naturally either want them back………..which usually means reducing her to sub atomic particles.
Link to the archived page: https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/comics/2012-06-11-GP0094.jpg
Your idea is not impossible, based on that image!
Why doesn’t she just teleport, like she did before?
Because LightBee takes time to move somewhere else, and she has to concentrate on where it is going
Scaling between characters is an issue. Check out the bottom left panel and we can see Squidward and Sydney in relation to each other – admittedly zoomed out, but the scale that we see suggests that Sydney is bigger than Squidwards head area, but still smaller overall. Panel 3 makes Sydney minuscule in comparison
That linked image barely shows Sydney as speck, whereas we can clearly see Tentacles McGlee
I kinda saw this coming, didn’t realize how big that guy WAS though. But personally I would of attacked the ship the fighters were coming out of not the big boss himself. Would of probably attacked the ship’s propulsion systems and drop that damn thing on top of it, that or using the one orb see where the tentacle freak’s weak spots are or the weak spots on the ship to exploit it better.
She has no way of knowing where or what the propulsion systems on that ship are. It just appeared out of thin air with no shockwave or portal appearing, so time/space super-position tech seems to be at play, in which case its propulsion system could easily be in the center of the ship and heavily armored.
The drones being peanut brittle compared to the big guy may have more to do with Sydney’s beam looking similar to the big guy’s beams. But he also has a distortion field around him, chances are the ship would have something like that if not better. A capture field or warped folded dimension field defenses would be one hit KOs if she tried to ram into them *the first teleporting her where it wants like a holding cell with auto-stasis…or an incinerator, the later being we may see the ship only because the image is being projected along a dimensional barrier around it giving the impression it is occupying the same space while trying to hit it could be absorbed or sent into a between space thanks to the buffer dimension between the pocket dimension the ship is in and regular space.
These guys took out the home world of an alien “Empire”, best not to try and think of them in conventional means and aim for the more likely to be vulnerable/possibly holding the remote guy…and not the many miles high physics defying craft showing to no signs of using thrusters to not crash down.
So target the drone and the whole lot of them could vanish is what you are saying?
No,
if the big guy is controlling them then he is a priority target. But the ship is something alien to her, and how it appeared is outside conventionally logic, as is how it is maintaining its position without any clear signs of thrusters or distortions like a forcefield. So we can assume it is very advanced, especially as we are under the impression it took out the Alari planet *who themselves are an expansive imperial culture in space*,
So she has no way of knowing what the propulsion system even is or where it would be located. Attacks on a ship that sized and this advanced could be pointless as it likely has advanced defenses, relative to its mass produced drone fighters. If she for example attempted to ram it with her shield, she could encounter defense systems able to bypass her shield or negate it all together; like she’d vanish and be transported elsewhere, or thrown into subspace, or any direct attacks on the ship could be diverted around it, redirected back to her, absorbed as a power source *one idea of advanced alien tech is the ability to recharge at suns using plasma collectors (and no that wouldn’t damage a sun, movies like Star Wars have no clue how much power is really in a sun) so a forcefield that doubles as a power collector is reasonable, among a lot of variations.
So rather than bother with what could be an endless supply of mass produced drone fighters from a ship that is miles high, or risk a direct conflict with something that just by being that big and staying upright where it is like that has to be operating under some conventional physics breaking technology; it was her best option to target *that guy* on the surface who might be behind this.
In that case, maybe she should try role-playing at it :P
Talking is a free action right?