Grrl Power #66 – Hero Baiting
Hmm, looks like Max isn’t the only one who slipped up on this page. No one’s quite had a chance to catch on yet though. It would seem Syndey’s unofficial list of superpowers, besides super swearing and spice tolerance, are super hero baiting and summoning pom poms for comedic effect.
FYI, there’s a really good artist that I… well, I don’t know her, but I’ve been following her art on DeviantArt for a long time (and she draws, among other things, sexy elf gals) and it turns out she needs a kidney. I saw someone tweet about her predicament, the link lead to a Tumblr page with a giveaway contest to help generate donations. I haven’t quite figured out what Tumblr is for myself, but I’ve had an account there for a while, so I reblogged it, the details are there. If you’ve got $10 to spare you could literally be helping to save her life. You can hold off on buying a shirt for a few weeks.
Okay that I didn’t expect, but it was still very funny!
ok,,, i certainly didnt expect that the thetering worked just one way in its way,,,, it can stop movement,,, but not cause it ,,,, and this page is just great
Me either and that seems like a significant clue too. Then again we are dealing with comic universe physics and/or magic plus the fertile imagination of a very good writer. Guessing would be more futile than resisting the Daleks. ^_~
don’t you mean the BORG? they’re the ones that are impossible to resist.
Considering the Borg get easier to resist every time you see them and the Daleks just get scarier, he probably doesn’t.
The wink emoticon is a good clue it’s being mangled on purpose, too.
Just when you think you’ve killed them off, next thing you know they are back and scarier than ever. Now guess which one I’m talking about.
… Timelords?
There’s this concept, this theory, that the Borg practice technological agriculture.
That is to say, they send in invasion forces semi-regularly against species that have shown technological innovation capabilities, but they aren’t intending to actually succeed with every invasion. They’re trying to provoke resistance. They’re trying to push cultures to technologically innovate in order to confront the challenge they’re presenting. They want those cultures to get better at resisting them, and put up a better and better fight against their single-cube invasions each time until the subject culture no longer feels that they need to develop new technology to ward off a single cube.
Which is when the Collective would send in a 10,000 cube assimilation force and take the planet to absorb the technology they’ve grown
I waited a bit to see if someone would guess or remember, but the Borg are Knockoff copies of the Daleks. ROFL No I’m not speaking heresy here. There are too many similarities in the original Daleks storyline and the Borgs for it to be coincidence right down to the total ripoff of their tagline. From the very first season of Dr Who back in the 50’s the Dalek’s have been saying “Do Not Resist!” which the writers of Star Trek re-wrote as “Resistance Is Futile!” These similarities have been pointed out before in many places and in fact Star Trek has quite a reputation for borrowing ideas from other stories. That’s OK though, usually the writers who borrowed the ideas are the writers of the original stories anyway, an example is the episode Tinman.
It’s a great point shikome kido mi makes about the Borg getting easier to resist and the Daleks harder. That’s not the reason for my wink emote though. When push comes to shove, have you ever known the Doctor to FAIL to resist the Daleks?
Yes but some of us have seen every single episode of all Trek series and not one episode of Dr. Who (or Torchwood, since I know that show is based in the same “fictional universe”) nor do I have any desire to ever see a single episode of Dr. Who. If you like it more power to you, besides I think the Daleks look stupid and not the least scary (no offense, just MHO).
The Daleks are like… when in the Justice League cartoon (or any DC cartoon) they have to deal with Gorilla Grod/Gorilla City. The writers are saddled with fiction from a prior age that, quite frankly, doesn’t hold up in a non-gorillas-are-cool era. The Daleks were designed in a pre-star trek era (I’m pretty sure) when shopping at the hardware store took care of most of your special effects. The original cybermen were literally cardboard boxes and dryer vent tubes for arms. The Daleks at least look like something other than a human with a lumpy forehead.
If you can get past some of the old baggage, there’s some pretty entertaining content in there.
The really scary Dr. Who monsters are more subtle than the daleks. Take, for instance, the weeping angels or the vashta nerada.
Remember we’re talking a show that started as a low budget children’s series in the mid 1950’s and went on to become the longest running Science Fiction TV series in the world period. A show watched by children and adults alike because of it’s storylines, not it’s special effects. In it’s heyday you could budget an entire season for less than the cost of one special effect in the original Star Wars movie and that was shot on a shoestring budget.
Of course the Daleks look like pepper shakers and there was a running joke that the best way to escape them was to run up a flight of stairs. For all of that there are more than 30 seasons worth of episodes and more than 400 books. It’s shown in more countries than Star Trek was in it’s heyday, sad to say Gilligan’s Island holds the top record there though. I’m sure the producers would love to get rid of the clunky looking daleks and update them, that wasn’t my point. My point was that the Borg were ripped off from them.
Don’t worry though. The new Dr Who movie is supposed to re-invent the entire Dr Who universe so Who only knows what it will be afterwards. At least they’re getting one of the directors that did Harry Potter to do it. Rumor is that it’s Yates but I’m not sure which Potter film he directed.
I didn’t intend any slight of the good doctor, I read the DC Heroes writeups for various incarnations (made by members of the yahoo group I am a member of) some of which are up on our website writeups.org (currently close to 5000 characters available to read and ready to use in a game, 11 of them by me and some guest-writers/collaborators from the group and all of these are part of a very large world setting I have constructed called Universe AZ [cause I’m Azrael don’t ya know], they currently have a cumulative total of about 10000 unique views, plus I am a contributor on hundreds of other characters), and I helped build the DCH stats for the Tardis (mostly because I love Tesseracts). I am also well aware that the good Doctor precedes Mr. Roddenberry, who also precedes Mr. Lucas, and I do get a kick out of seeing it still on the air, I just never got in to the show, I did read a couple of Dr. Who novels that I was given by people over the years (cause I will read damn near anything, from A. C. Doyle, Jules Verne, and Mark Twain, to Robert Heinlein, Arthur Clark, Andre Norton, and many, many, many, others I have over 15,000 books in digital form, and I have read better than half of them, then add in comics :)).
Anyways I will stop boring you guys and let you get back to Sydney. :0
I wouldn’t say the Daleks look scary but they really do look better than ninety percent of the other aliens out there, Trek or Who because at least they don’t look like people in make-up.
Your right there, I’m tired of all the aliens looking like humans in costumes. Give me a six legged qualla any day. Go Stix! I realy liked those squid robots in the matrix movies too. Something that will suprise you when you see it . Thats all I ask for in a movie or comic book. I’m done ranting now…
Not quite. The Borg have far more in common ideologically and thematically with the Cybermen than the Daleks.
Sydney… Stop tickling my funny bone. If I laugh any harder I’m going to have an asthma attack!
i wonder,,,, did harem dye her hair purple on the uniform wearing version as a way to get back at max for forcing her to have a copy always in uniform,,, or as a kind of mark of respect,,,,altough judging by the grin and tghe conversation with ariana,, i would say the former is more likely,,,
She specified that one copy always had to be in uniform. She neglected to mention anything above the neck, hence the piercings and the multi-dyed punk hair.
:D
So… many… funny… panels :)
I’m loving smug!Sydney.
I was slightly unclear about what “they” refers to, though.
I recalled later that there were several artifact thingies in that poster tube, but it might not be all that clear to everyone. When Sydney was speaking to the poster tube before, I had assumed by default that she was using the singular form of “you”.
should probably add spoiler tags on this.
Where is this information coming from?
Sydney as much as says what’s in there in a general way on this page.
Or maybe she’s lying. This was back before I was compelled to do backgrounds on every panel. :P
::grin:: but no other info.
I’ve been laughing almost nonstop for the last 2 pages
*tries to hold his laughter and fails miserably before he begins*
HAHAHAHAHA!!! This is one of the funniest pages yet! I salute you, sir, for you have made my week! “Hippie says what?” is the line of the comic!
Sydney’s face in panel 3 is avatar-worthy, I think (just not mine, I suck at making avatars).
And nice touch on the collars in the cast side bar, too.
I’m beginning to think that Sydney’s abilities are “cartoon powers”. That would mean folding and moving holes, walking through lifelike pictures, able to stand in mid-air as long as she doesn’t look down, etc.
Hippy says what? HA! HA! HA! Seriously very good stuff. I can just imagine what the girls in the TV room are on the ground laughing their asses off.
And Sydney scores a 3 pointer from the far court! :)
Too funny! Though I don’t understand it when Sydney says “Now you know why they’re on the list.” I’m hoping that’ll be explained soon.
I think the ‘list’ Syd is talking about is a reference to the second last panel of https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/171 and the last panel of https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/184 :D
Many thanks for this comic DaveB XD
Ah, I see! I had totally forgotten! ::Grin:: So looking forward to this story playing out and learning more about Sydney (and the rest of the girls as well).
To see the actual list in use, https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/317
Too good! Of course, this made me go waaaaayy back and reread all the strips to date. :) What I’d give to read The List.
look back to when she tried to go into the restaurant and got stopped like a half inch from the door.
well i guess we know that villans cant kill sidney by throwing the case in an elevator it would just rip a hole in the elevator or the elevator wouldn’t be able to go. though im still not sure what would happen if she was in an elevator and left the case outside.
Ohhhhhh, dear. :D
Y’know, I am actually feeling kinda sorry for Max.
The same sort of thing has happened to Sydney. She saw it coming and was probably glad to see it happen to someone else for a change, hence the “Now you know why they’re on the list” comment!
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
This was number one on my top three possibilities of what could happen on this page. Number 2 was Maxima actually being pulled by the tube as Syndey pulls it towards her and number 3 was Maxima’s trick working and pulling her out (which may later result in throwing the tube very hgh in the air so that Syndey would have to sho her super powers to survive altough she would never be in real danger because if she didnt do anything maxima would fly and catch her….which would have been hilarious.)
The power to push anyone’s buttons is a great responsibility indeed. Good thing for us, she doesn’t take it seriously.
That’s a very good thing, because if she did take it seriously, it wouldn’t just be pushing the buttons, it would be jumping up and down on the buttons screaming “WHY WON’T THIS &^$%^$ THING WORK?!?!?!” as a stormcloud forms around her victims head. (In the case of Maxima, maybe even a literal one.)
Can’t………Stop…………Laughing……….That was friggin awesome. LMAO :D
so far from what i understand of the tube’s contents is it has rules: 1. if sydney tries to leave it behind after a certain distance it will exert a gravitational pull knocking her over 2. if it is thrown while in said radius sydney will also be thrown 3. rendering the tube immobile will cause the radius to become fixed triggering 1 and 4. no one can pull the tube out of the established radius
that’s what i understand of the tube’s contents behavior, or it could just be the contents are sentient and just do whatever amuses them most(in this case bonking max on the head)
Actually Syd has thrown ze tube and it reacted as if it hit a gravity wall. As it it stopped and fell straight to the ground.
That is exactly what I was going to say.
It seems that the best way to put it is this:
One may not leave the other. So sydney gets yaked when she forgets about it, and the case can never be pulled away from her.
you’re wrong on number 1. The times that Syd has been stopped by the tube have only been when it was stuck. Twice by forgetting it in the car, where it gets stuck on or against something, once by Max stepping on it, and once by Max putting it under another car to limit Syd’s movement. In the bank it hit the length and was dragged along the floor.
I guess my questions from an earlier comic got answered. You can’t use the tube to move Syd as Max has kindly demonstrated.
Yet for some reason Maxima, a super who could probably lift a car with no trouble, can not move the tube by exerting force on it. Depending on your (physical) frame of reference, the car exerted force on the tube – probably less than Maxima’s.
My guess is that sentience makes the difference here, and it can only be moved by an “accepted” user.
Of course, this is making the assumption that Maxima can exert more force than a car (probably) and that physics play in here somehow – considering Sydney’s arguing about the way physics work way back in the first couple of strips, I suspect there are some fairly simple and consistent rules.
It is not about exerting force. You are making the fallacy of applying physics to the comic. It’s simple. The tube can be stopped from moving, but not forced to move beyond a certain distance from Sydney. If the tube is stopped, so is Sydney, if Sydney stops, so does the tube (Within the generous tolerances for distance between them). Max janked it, probably harder than she should have, and when it stopped (Dead STOP) as the sign said, she couldn’t stop exerting force on the tube fast enough, not being prepared for the posibility, and therefore janked her own face into it, loosing her balance. Humor!
It’s entirely possible that if Sydney had Max’s strength, she could have yanked it out from under the car just by walking away.
It’s posible that while in the bank it was going, ok she pulled us this far then stoped,, so we will stay this close for now.
For some reason highlighting spoiler are still really hard to read. Pink on light grey is a beast.
Gonna have to copy-paste into notepad to see what that says.
you just click on the gray area. it’ll turn the text into a white/light grey.
I Notice you put Harem’s insignia on her who’s-who Dave, were you going to do that to the others?
And could someone make an avvy of Max in panel 2 please? It has that perfect combination of disbelief and confused irritation.
Only the field heroines have chokers. The guy supers will have ‘logos’ as well, they just wont be chokers. Maybe armbands or something? I’m sure there are people out there that like the look of a choker on a guy. I am not one of them.
Eye patches. The guys need eye patches! :}
I agree about chokers not looking good on men.
How about a patch on the left side of the chest (where the pocket on a dress shirt is).
I think eye patches might obscure vision too much, and make them look like pirates! :)
So no piratey heroes? :P
Belts?
A belt would make sense.
I was thinking of suggesting something like a Dog Tag, but the belt makes a lot more sense. I like the idea much better than the armband as well so count my vote in for that.
I’m thinking armbands, something like a choker that wouldn’t easily fall off. Especially given the comidic slant of this comic, during a wardrobe malfunction, like a belt would/might. An wrist or forearmband would work well too.
How about the sleeves of their uniform jackets? Like oversized versions of military unit flashes.
I would go with belt, shoulder, or chest for the guys. All are natural in feel, maintain a level of “uniform” standard, and can still be slightly unique.
I’d go with a patch. shoulder or chest Dave B’s call. With the ladies complaining about how they have to wear the stupid chocker which some idiot in marketing thought up and the guys get to have a nice simple patch. I for one can’t stand to have something like that around my throat, feels too much like sonething is trying to choke me. Never could stand to wear tie’s either.
Some sort of headband or circlet, Lots of supers have them.
if chokers are desticly feminine, than the male equivalent might be a tie. Or failing that a cod peice >:D
In spandex a codpiece might be gilding the lily (assuming at least normal equipage). Also too much “Eyes up here” problems. Looking at someone’s face is considered respectful (at least in our culture) which is why most rank insignia is in that general area. Not to mention Max would not be amused!
Nah. I can hear max saying “Now you know how I feel a$$hole!”
how about head chocked instead of neck chockers,,,that way the,,,, insignia or identification is still in near same area
like a bandanna?
Bets on what will happen next: Cloud Blocks Sun, Ambulance Moves, or Something Else? :)
I always wondered what the exact opposite of a hippie was. Now I know.
I too, am so happy now! :-)
Good to know her pack can not work against her via an outside power.
Other then stopping her dead in her tracks.
Haha way to immortalize Skyrim in your comic. sweet tag line breh.
“Crap I just realized I forgot to draw the glare coming off Max from her exposed skin. ”
Would this count as a Sydney-repelling force field? :D
So when a probably-not-as-strong-as-Max-bankrobber-who’s-secretly-a-super pulls Sidney, our lovely tube just rolls along. Max pulls the tube, faceplant. Is it possibly inconsistent? Yeahhhhhh, but it’s funny so I don’t care.
Sydney can pull the tube, the tube cannot pull Sydney. The tube can stop Sydney however.
Why?
An alien did it.
It’s actually pretty simple, the (contents of the) tube won’t stray further than a certain radius, or allow her to stray. It’s not a tether necessarily, I just use that term in her Who’s Who badge cause I was trying to force myself to stay as terse as possible. Basically if she moves away from it (them) they follow, if they can’t follow, they stop her. If something tries to move them away from her, they stop at a certain radius. Basically the tether only kicks in one way.
Maxima is super strong, but she wan’t applying much of it on this page or she would have cracked the poster tube. We haven’t seen a situation where the tube is locked in car that speeds off, or in a safe that’s tossed off a building. You can be sure that all sorts of situations involving people trying to separate Sydney from her tag alongs will come up though.
From what I have seen so far I can see a safe floating in mid air if it was thrown off a building with the tube in it and sidney some where inside the building or on the roof.
FWIW (not much; I’m just saying…) the tagalongs’ behavior violates relativity. Not the newfangled Einsteinian stuff, but the good old Galilean notion that X moving away from Y is the same physical situation as Y moving away from X. Thus, if they tether Sydney when she’s moving away from them, they “should” (in some sense) tether her when they’re moving away from her. Of course, perhaps nobody told the tagalongs that…
But it does raise the question of what happens in ambiguous situations, when both Sydney and her tagalongs are moving. If Sydney and tagalongs are on a moving train, and she leaves them tied down to her seat and walks away down the aisle, is she tethered? How about if, by coincidence, the train is moving at Sydney’s walking pace, and so she happens to be staying at the same point along the track? Basically, how do they decide who’s moving and who’s not? (One possibility, of course, is “whichever is funnier”.)
(grumbles) you just had to bring physics into this didn’t you… (slaughters a couple of goats), now who’s up for barbecued lamb?
Physics and Superheroes *really* don’t work that well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuVpwjYgvgg
Dr. Jim Kakalios has a series of semi-comedic lectures and a book or two using superheroes to teach about physics. All are well worth the watching and reading.
One of his better extended clips
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXd5Y0RXLb0&feature=related
Short version – You have to give supers one ‘ignore physical laws’ cheat or they can’t be any more super than Batman or James Bond. The fun parts happen after you give them this cheat and force them to interact with the normal physics of the rest of the world anyways, so who really cares about why/how the cheat works.
Good example is Iceman. He can change his entire physical form into ice, but he has to react to the rest of the world within the limits if Ice. Like needing moisture in the air to form his ice constructs. He and Storm can make a devastating duo when they work together like that.
The “magic artifacts” violate the laws of physics. Gasp! Shock!
It’s magic. It only needs to be internally consistent, not consistent with anything else. That is to say, it should have rules and obey them, but they need not even begin to resemble anything else’s rules (turning someone into a frog violates conservation of mass, for example).
I will however, be displeased if stops being internally consistent.
generally, the turning someone into a frog thing requires a lot of energy, and usually results in a lot of smoke, or even an explosion. Where do you think that smoke comes from? :D
Insufficient mass as smoke and energy as explosion released considering the amount lost.
Good try though. Most people that try to scientifically justify that kind of thing use excuses like “the mass is shunted to another dimension”, except for odd cases like the manga version of Envy who is a shape-changing giant monster who always weighs as much as a giant monster, even when he’s human sized. Being so dense makes him really tough, too, though he has to watch his footing.
internal consistancy is no problem if the rules are never explained, “yeah my magic wand of awesomeness could always transform giant mountain size meteor like objects in to cute little fluffy bunnies while ignoring conservation of mass it just hurts a lot so i never do it.”
That’s what makes it fun.
Just be sure to show that it hurts every time they do it.
Arianna is probably thinking “Recruit Sydney immediately. Give her whatever she wants!!!”, just to have someone who can drive Maxima up the wall. This could be how Sydney goes from private to corporal in a short time.
or the fact that, you know, she is really good at using her powers, and they are really strong to begin with…
Or the simple fact that all supers – past their basic training – will be at least corporals, so they can lord it over common soldiers. (Common in the sense of: not superpowered.) They are after all, a military branch, not some private enterprise which ranks only function internally.
She has not found out about her other power yet…. swearing like George Washington.
OK, hold on. Pulling the tube can’t drag Sydney (according to today), but pulling Sydney can drag the tube (according to this). On the other hand, if the tube is tethered to something strong enough to hold Sydney back, it won’t be dragged along but will hold her back instead (such as here and here).
So apparently: Maxima can’t drag Sydney out by the tube, but she could stop Sydney from running away by simply holding on to it.
As seen here: https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/268
Hence the solution to Maxima’s problem. Put the car back on the tube’s handle, then pull the ambulance away from Sydney.
Wow, I honestly wasn’t expecting that.
Perhaps there’s a simple explanation there. I’m assuming, for the sake of argument entirely, that Sydney was honest when she said the tube held “ancient artifacts that give her superpowers.” Leaving aside any argument as to whether those artifacts are magical or alien in origin until this is revealed, it’s reasonable to assume some kind of built in safety feature.
The way I think it’s working is this. The artifacts are locked onto Sydney and won’t move more than a certain distance from her. As long as they can move freely this means they will follow her or tag-along. If they can’t move freely they act like a leash preventing her from moving beyond that distance. Effectively you can jail her just by locking the artifacts up. It also seems she must be in direct physical contact with them to use whatever powers they give her.
The flip side of this though is that they will not place her in jeopardy. The safety feature I mentioned above. The artifacts “lock” themselves into position, probably relative to the Earth itself, wherever they happen to be and they aren’t going anywhere. If my guess is right Maxima could have used her full strength and she would have just torn the tube apart, Sydney wouldn’t have felt a thing because Maxima would have been trying to lift the planet. In the Helicopter example mentioned several times that would mean, assuming it didn’t tear through the floorboard, that the helicopter would be stuck when it reached it’s limit because the artifacts are geo-locked and Sydney is hanging in midair because she’s reached the tether limit. At least until someone lowers a rope, If they try to descend to get her she will descend too because of the tether limit. That might work. I assume the artifacts would allow movement in any direction toward her during a geo-lock.
Guesswork here of course. Dave will eventually explain the artifacts I’m sure. Please note that nothing in this explanation says these artifacts are intelligent in any way. They may or may not be, that’s up to Dave. I’m just explaining my theory about how the parameters might be set up to protect whoever the owner of the artifacts is.
I really like this explanation! And, it doesn’t require the artifacts to be sentient. What you describe is easily within what a simple programming script could do.
A Pseudo-code example:
Let distance to owner = D
Let velocity of owner = Vo
Let velocity of artifacts = Va
While (artifacts have an owner)
If D > Limit
then if Vo == 0 # If the owner isn't moving
then Va = 0 # Lock artifacts in position
else if artifacts can move # If artifacts can move
then Va = Vo # Move with owner
else # Failing that....
Vo = 0 # Lock current position.
This is similar to safety mechanisms built into most household dishwashers. (Although those just turn off the water… they don’t change the laws of physics… SIGH.)
I wonder, if there are indeed “Artifacts” in that tube, is it only one of them that has this distance relationship with Syd, or all of them? So far, it could be either, since they are all in the same container, if one stops, they all do….
Gah! Stupid comment system removed all my careful indenting that made the Pseudo-code readable! That is not supposed to happen inside <code> tags!
… It’s on the list….
DaveB, see what you have done! Now everyone is going to start a “LIST”
Now there is something that would be an interesting thing to buy, Sydney’s List Book.
I hurt from laughing.
I loved the confident “I stand by my epithet”
A one way kinetic connection, that’s actually awesome. You’re doing an amazing job at breaking superpower tropes ^_^
Ya know I wouldn’t be surprised if Maxima didn’t just open it now.
In front of a camera? I give her more credit than that.
Never mind that she doesn’t know if we are dealing with an Ark of the covenant type artifact, or worse, a Sextoy Of wonder.
So now Maxima goes to plan B and lifts the ambulance?
it’s more like Max did not brace herself for any resistance, She thought the tube would pull Sidney as easily as Sidney pulls the tube.
Is max strong enough to drag Sidney via the tube, probable. is the tube strong enough to survive the attempt intact, probable not.
I think the tether’s reaction depends on a few factors:
1. the weight of containment unit vs Sidney’s weight
2. Range of motion provided by containment unit.
3.the contents of the tube also seem somewhat sentient,
Which is why while it can be moved by Sidney walking around, if it becomes crapped by something it can not move over or break Thur it will stop Sidney.
fact 3 is proven by page 27 as the tube is still sitting on the passenger seat, instead of resting on the dashboard by the windshield, like one would expect in hidesight given the reaction of the tube during pages 39 and 40.
So if the the poster does get stuck in say a helicopter it would be pulled back to the groud or not get off the ground at all unless sydney is in it.
that or Sidney will find herself flying underneath the copter.
No if My guess is correct the helicopter could lift off but only as far as the tether limit. It will never be able to drag Sydney around under it because of the safety Geo-Lock. If the helicopter could drag Sydney then Maxima should be able to as well.
I can just see the poster tube rip through the helicopter floor and fall back towards Sydney, too.
and then bean her in the head.
Yes, Newton’s fourth law: “whichever alternative is funnier will happen”.
You know, for Sydney going to such huge lengths to keep the contents of the tube secret she certainly seems blase enough about having their power (or a perhaps more accurately a ‘super-natural side-effect’) demonstrated on TV.
I’ll admit she thought about using them in the robbery, but when push camed to shove she didn’t. Not at all. I only partially chalk that up to Syd’s crazy, the other part I call ‘tease’ on the writter.
Given Sydney’s attention span, she’d probably completely forgotten about the TV crew before she was a quarter of the way to under that ambulance.
Dam your good. I laugh my ass off every times I read it. Read about 20 times. I really like the mad look in panel 2. Very good.
You should have an unofficial list of superpowers for EVERY character :)
I’m still inclined to say the tube anchor is not acting consistently. However, the rule of funny seems to trump consistency here.
Maybe ‘The Rule Of Funny’ is one of the principles that The Tube works on anyhow.
Seems to me that, at this point, even Arianna has forgotten that this is being broadcast live to the public, not just being shown in the base… As this spectacle, while funny to watch, probably doesn’t help the team’s image of being professionals. :P
On the other hand, I guess these antics probably only help supers in general, by showing the public fairly clearly that they’re people too, unlike Maxima’s military/standoffish attitude. :)
(Well, that’s what the optimist in me says anyway… The pessimist has other ideas.)
Arianna may be distracted but Leon is taking care of business and he is almost as good as he thinks he is.
Wasn’t the first thing that Max did when she noticed the interview was call in to have the transmission intercepted? I think this broadcast is being jammed and is only being seen at HQ. (Or at least that’s what MAX is thinking.)
Arianna is happy right now because Max isn’t pissed at HER, she’s pissed at Sydney now!… as well as the fact that as soon as she can get her paws on Sydney, to *explain* the new facts of life to her, she’ll have someone who could (in theory) stop Max if she turns evil, rather than having to just try and deal with cleaning up after her. though i foresee MANY hilarious moments when Syd get’s Max riled up, just because she can! kinda like Harem and her shoulder-boobing Leon intentionally.
According to the cast page, Maxima is 50% more powerful than Halo (that is, Halo is only 2/3 as powerful as Maxima). Even if Maxima can’t move Halo’s … halo, away from her, doesn’t mean she isn’t stronger overall. Further, Arianna already has Dabbler, who is more powerful than Halo.
On the other hand, those power levels probably don’t take account of Halo’s effect on Maxima’s power level as she gets distracted by the crazy. Probably Sydney could be almost as effective as Mermaidman’s Orb of Confusion.
Arianna is not in the least concerned about Max being mad at her. She is fully confident that no matter how furious Max [or anybody else for that matter] might be at her and no matter how determined to twist her into a pretzel and set a new discus record with her, she can talk her way out of it, or have some scheme to make things go her way. No, she is just pleased to see an annoying boss/co-worker take a tumble.
It is much too early for her to making a plan for Sidney [a dozen plans, maybe, but then she can’t smile until she knows which one must be used.] Right now, Sidney is a wild card, and quite possibly too wild to be useful and maybe even something to contain as a major danger. We know Sidney will work out, but right now, she is merely a person of interest and Arianna doesn’t know if Sidney will be useful, useless, and/or dangerous.