Grrl Power #660 – Armored on the inside
To be fair to whoever made the orbs, this is a pretty unusual situation to account for.
I’m not… too sure what else to say about this page. I didn’t plan on having her glasses break, admittedly a detail that’s easy to miss on this page, but now I get to draw broken glasses on her for the next however many pages. She could take them off. She really only needs them for reading, but it kind of doesn’t quite look like Sydney when I forget them. I guess I’ll have to decide if I want to stick with the big round ones when she gets her next pair. I’ll experiment with that maybe when she goes shopping next.
Panel three I straight up didn’t draw clearly. It’s supposed to be building across the street from Sydney blowing up. Like the beam went over the top of the one Sydney is hiding behind and blew the top off of it. Instead I drew an explosion and a wall.
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Plot armor allowed Sydney to take the hit where she was wearing body armor vs an arm, leg, or head.. other than the dramatic ‘for effect’ near miss to start things off.
Isn’t she wearing armor everywhere but her head? Sure she probably doesn’t have on her arms/legs, but the suit itself is resistant to “everything short of armor piercing rifle rounds”. The torso does also have a larger surface area than for example her arms, so it is the most likely place to get hit.
I cede that the fabric her uniform is made of is resistant to everything short of armor piercing rifle rounds.. but its still, where there isn’t an oobtek panel backing it up, a flexible fabric or it wouldn’t be comfortable enough to wear on an all day basis. Granted, most of ARCSWAT probably don’t even notice wearing armor, other than outliers such as Heatwave and Harem…
‘Yay, the bullet didn’t pierce the fabric, but the force of the round just pushed that fabric six inches into my body’
It’s already been pointed out on the page that Kiaraka linked that Achilles totally ignores oobtek. As in, he ignores it to the point that he doesn’t even use it at all…Much to the detriment of any clothes he does wear, for however long it lasts.
;)
True, but wearing packages of ‘peanut butter’ under your clothes sounds kinda uncomfortable and I guess he just thinks it’s just not worth it just for saving his clothes. (Which he can replace easily on his salary!)
Well i fucked that link up now didn’t I.
Assuming that you didn’t just make an error, a href need to be ended with a backslash a enclosed in less-than and greater-than braces. I’d type it out for you but the damn site takes it as hypertext. Here’s an attempt using whitespace to try to fool the system:
\ a
{ \ a }
[ \ a ]
Bracket \ a bracket
Hopefully one of more of those survived.
The one where I used the less-than and greater-than braces got vanished during translation.
It really should be extremely unlikely/impossible for that bit to hit her in the center of mass as it’s ricocheting around the spherical bubble and should deflect at an equal angle to its approach. The only way for it to reach the center of the bubble is for it to start from the center of the bubble. I’m saying it really should have hit her in an extremity.
If she flyes while the thing ricochets, it will change the relative angle.
It would be if it was not jagged and maybe more aerodynamic.
The more strange thing is, that it neither shattered and not started to spin like a fidget toy on crack.
I am asking rather, which of the two things is the flexible one. the shield or the Item. To reflect that much at an angle the kinetic energy would be gone rather fast.
True, but I think there’s more than a little artistic license going on here.
Talking physics in a supers Comic is all fun and games… until someone gets a shrapnel to the ovaries. :P
yeah I was thinking this too… but I didn’t think she had moved, that would make sense if she had moved…
3 weeks to go to #666.
Sydney goes to Hell.
Earth :-)
That would explain all of the fire.
Nope. All wrong.
Detroit.
Cleveland?!?
Mexico!
Houston
Wait! We all missed the mark.
High School. Anywhere!
Sydney should be ok, if she remembered to use the Oobtek inserts for her uniform.
Maybe, explosion shrapnel can have a lot more kinetic energy than a bullet.
The point of the Oobtek inserts was that they got better the more kinetic energy was applied to it. Would it still hurt more then a stubbed toe? Probably. Does it have diminishing returns after a certain point? Possibly. Can shrapnel be worse then a bullet? Only in large quantities. Granted it would have been REALLY bad if it hit anywhere else on her body. She’s probably winded and bruised at worst though.
Oh yeah no matter what the Oobtek will help.
With the spinning and the distance, she’ll get off with a bruise. Not the right shape or anything to pierce kevlar.
I simply don’t believe that Sydney does not have a spare pare of glasses in her utility belt.
Absolutely the kind of thing she’d have in her utility belt. Specifically, low-profile style that fit easier. hint-hint
As an extremely myopic person, losing my glasses is one of my greatest fears.
Like librarian glasses? I figure she would have a few cosplay dress up sets so either a subtle reference or straight up recognisable goggles.
Two things that might be important to consider.
First is, those squid blasts have more power behind them than Maxima, or so it seems. Even if Maxima did not want to risk vaporising her newest recruit and held back (and let’s be honest here, her method of testing the strength of Sydney’s shield orb is way beyond irresponsible), she still did not come close to the point of stressing the shield integrity. Which means that that shrapnel really should be plasma and high energy radiation and that bullet resistant vest should not be the optimal protection …
Second, much as it may gall Dabbler that somebody else knows more than she does, these squid controllers apparently know about the orbs and are (justifiably) terrified of it. They went from ‘who’s knocking at the door, let’s take a quick peek’ to defcon 1 in the blink of an eye when they noticed the orbs (which they, too, could not themselves scan beyond black circle of doom).
They also were willing to throw hundreds of drones or low level fighter ships at Sydney just to try and wear her down. That’s the kind of firepower you normally throw at battle fleets and planets, not at a single opponent. They clearly rate sydney as an existential threat to their entire invasion fleet all by her little lonesome. Something they clearly did not do with an entire planet full of evil pseudo angels…
The shrapnel did not penetrate her shield, iI got trapped inside the shield when she raised it (like the sand and water in previous instances).
That’s how I took their reaction as well. It’s like they took one look at her and panicked!
Oh, it also explains why they didn’t try to follow her when she tried to fly away; they didn’t even send out the drones until it was clear she was going for the ship. If you’re facing something you’re terrified of and it tries to run, you DON’T try to go after it, you breathe a sigh of relief!
This video should prove 3 things: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=v7X5WUYZUmw
1. Force = mass x acceleration, and the actual force applied by the tip of a bullet/shrapnel is divided by the surface area of impact (which, due to being 0.00…1, is multiplying).
2. Should Oobleck be pierced, it’ll lodge the weapon in, meaning bleeding will be reduced.
3. In order for Sydney not to bleed at all, she needs super oobleck.
sorry, I’m just remembering RWBY, and now I’m left imagining what a “Super” Dr. Oobleck would be like
Here’s hoping unknown ball heals the user.
At least she won’t have to have Maxima sneak up on her with a sharp edged piece of paper now… * shivers *
If so, its got a sick sense of humor about the spicy eye ball event.
realistically though, with the way blood drawing attacks have been done in this comic..
all previous blood events showed blood on the panel of impact that drew said blood. Such as the face here, and previous when Max took a hit from Vehemence.
Syd’s gut shot drew no blood. so her light armour took it fully, so she just got the wind knocked out of her, likely because of the shield’s nature of absorbign impacts applies even to the inside (and it was bouncing a few times).
Or i guess. it is possible the creator changed their style for dramatic effect in this one.
And there’s the Checkov’s gun of her bullet resistant clothing going off…
Having semi bullet proof armor isn’t exactly a chekov gun. It’s expected for supercops/soldiers. Had she only worn cloth fatigues people would’ve been freaking out over lack of realism.
The Gun is the discussion about bullet proof stuff, and is for her getting shot. Here it is.
Lots of commenters are guessing that we will see if the mystery orb will now kick in with emergency medical aid. Medical aid designed for ALIENS. “Beep. Injury Detected. Deploying disinfectant sulfuric acid spay. Beep. Applying silicate paste wound sealant.”
While that could be amusing, I think the going theory is the orbs can detect what would be harmful to apply to Sydney(See Bubble Untrouble) and respond accordingly.
I’m hoping “Thuk” means it’s bouncing/getting stuck in a metal plate in her uniform and that’s why it’s not “thud”.
Does anybody else r/grrlpowercomic/ subreddit?
I do sometimes internet. How about you?
Reflections inside spheres can be weird. Unfortunately for Sydney…
*These reflections are affected by gravity
*Sydney is not occupying only the mathematical point at the center of her sphere.
Sydney’s may have luck on her side, however. ‘Thunk’ is not a common piercing sound effect used for fatal injuries.
Does anybody else use the r/grrlpowercomic/ subreddit?
whoops, I didn’t think it went through the first time
Thank goodness for passively super power enhanced Oobtek insert filled military uniforms.
I was wondering, when you came up with the “I’m a spaceship” line, when you would possibly get to the “med-bay” portion of the ship line up. I am betting that one of those orbs can heal serious wounds.
Augh, ow!
Sydney is going to owe Ashley big-time for this.
I think the art’s possibly starting to improve out of its awkward phase? Though this wouldn’t be the first time I’ve said that, only to be disappointed a few pages later… It’d be nice if I was right this time.
Oh shit, I just realized that piece of shrapnel cut Sydney’s face in panel four! Owie!
Re: glasses, there are places online where you can get a bunch of prescription glasses for cheap, I did that so I could experiment with styles and now I’ve got like five pairs that I regularly switch between depending on my outfit. Sidney could do the same. Glasses are a medical necessity but they can still be a fashion accessory! Or a cosplay prop!
at this point, i don`t think she`ll care about getting cheap prescription glasses. she might still want(will) to keep her current model but, let`s be honest, she`s filthy stinking rich now. she can afford the highest superpowered end made glasses or lens for practicality on the field.
Well don’t use glasses.com. I bought a pair from them and both nose pads fell off in the first week. I contacted them about replacement parts and they first just sent me their warranty disclaimer which states that after 2 weeks all they will do is give you 50% off a pair of glasses. And they run 50% off sales all the time already… So really what they are saying is that if they break after 2 weeks you’re on your own.
It took me issuing a credit card reversal to get them to honor their ‘within the first 2 weeks only’ warranty. And then they did just send me the replacement pads and pins and I had to do the work of installation for them on my own time and it was a pain in the ass. Not as much of a pain in the ass trying to get some customer service out of them, but still a pain in the ass.
Am I the only one to notice that bit of shrapnel gave her a nasty scrape across the cheek?
I noticed in an earlier comment but it was at the end of the first comment page so no one saw it. Not only was it a nasty scrape but it looked perilously close to her eye.
My best guess on the upgrades is, it’s a built in tutorial thing. Her first upgrade was the Lightbee teleport thing. Once she used that and understood how it worked, she got an upgrade and got the PPO machine gun effect. Now that she’s used that in a fight, she gets an upgrade. The balls wait until she understands the new ability before letting her activate a new one.
But didn’t she use the PPO machine gun effect right after she got it? Why wait till now to unlock a new upgrade if that was the requirement?
My guess is that the orbs understand when she has really absorbed the knowledge of how to use the new ability to its full potential.
I think the teleport was a power she already had but had never worked out the combination to trigger before.
She spent her first point on the PPO and immediately saw a new option.
No, the greyed out “mystery Button” only appeared after she got the Lightbee orb upgrade. If it had been there all along, she would have noticed it and found out that it lit up the moment she activated the Lightbee. She only upgraded the PPO by accident and then immediately tried out the “new control” that had appeared on the orb.
Regarding the speculation that the currently unknown powerball can’t be a form of life support, due to it not acting when Sidney tried it for minor injuries, my response is that it may have actually acted with an anti-septic field to clean whatever wound was present, but that its triage routines essentially did a shrug and went “It’s a papercut (or whatever), no significant injury, threat level: essentially zero. No immediate response needed.”
Essentially, it didn’t do anything significant because there was no significant need at the time. Cleaning the inside of a cut doesn’t have to be dramatic to be effective.
DAMMIT, I catch the obvious mistake just after I post… Life-support ball has been identified, (the air-maker), I meant to say that the unknown powerball may be medical support, or generalized healing.
Not a fun way to find out how effective the uniform is.
Everyone keeps saying her oobtek packets will protect her but they seem to forget that these are packets of liquid being impacted by a sharp object.
I don’t think Sydney’s dead, especially with the fabrikinetic-upgraded cloth, but I bet that packet is gonna be leaking soon at the least.
Umm, you might want to look into this a bit further. Yes they are liquid at slow speed, but at high velocity they are a solid, event then in armor they are surrounded by kevlar, inside a puncture resistant pouch. The likelihood of being pierced is rather low. However, broken ribs, whiplash, etc… those are rather high. There is a reason maces were the best weapon to use against plate armor.
That being said the kinetic energy of the shard will determine how much damage she takes. The multiple reflections off her shield should reduce some of the kinetic energy, Unless the shield has a unusual reflection property. In theory even a object with little density could in theory reflect infinitely off her shield. Which could result in an object with little kinetic energy impacting her. In both of these cases we could get away with seeing her take little to no damage. But if the object is ultra dense it could have a lot of kinetic energy and even oobtek would just shatter as the object passes right through her.
Agreed. While the shrapnel is clearly bigger than even a large bullet, it’s (probably) going slower. Even if it has much more momentum, it’s being distributed into the oobleck and spread across the plates.
I suspect this hasn’t penetrated and drawn blood, but it’s pretty like to have broken a rib – she’s going to have some major bruising. Probably not internal damage though since the force is being distributed across most of her torso.
Apparently she didn’t even need to point at the pip she wanted to select, just grabbing the flight orb was enough. Do the orbs read her mind or is the order in which she can pick her upgrades fixed for evey orb?
I think that since she had already decided which to fill in when she grabbed the flight orb, it acted on the decision immediately..
When she did her post press conference upgrade, she didn’t know the upgrade procedure, and hadn’t made any decision, once she grabbed the telepresence and truesight ball, she couldn’t let go, then was able to decide which specific node to fill. (an orphan node, which it appeared enabled teleportation.)
The orbs clearly have at least a degree of mental interfacing to them, or Sydney would have driven herself into insane distraction learning to use the light-hook orb, which she clearly has a good basic control of, since she was able to use it to form an improvised neon sign for the comic store. Also as evidence, Sydney’s deliberately aggravating flight demonstration. Also, the telepresence orb couldn’t relay what her duplicate sees/hears if it couldn’t interface with her senses of sight and hearing.
True. Makes it strange that she can’t simply control them mentally, but maybe her human brain simply isn’t advanced enough? (Of course, if she could do that, she could use all seven of them at once and become the most powerful super in the world, so probably not. )
I don’t find it strange, given that first, there are lots of upgrade nodes left to fill, and second, there may be physical reasons why the relevant control impulses don’t propagate over a distance, and third, the orbs may be common enough among their creators that having them ‘hands-free’ mentally controlled could be a real problem. Imagine that you’re concentrating on manipulating something both delicate and valuable with your own lighthook orb, when your buddy comes close enough that his orb picks up your mental focus and intent. Since you didn’t know he was coming close, you don’t know to prevent his orbs from ‘assisting’, so his might reach in and ruin what you’re doing, since he didn’t know you were focusing on something delicate. Essentially orb to bare hand contact makes sure there is no signal bleedover or crosstalk between users and sets of orbs.
what i want to know is how well Syd will cope with her glasses broken
Pretty well last time.
and now we get to see how good ARC light armour is.
Given how there is no blood in her gut. but it showed in the same panel for her face.. It implies that it did not get through her light armour (case we all know Max would still make her wear at least the minimum)
Assuming things are drawn consistantly anyway.. whenever we’ve had impacts taht drew blood. We always saw the blood in the same panel as said impact. There be no blood here.
Or i guess, change of art style for sake of drama is indeed possible.
Her face was unprotected, the blood on her belly would have to pass first through the oobleck package and then through the cloth, so it’s still possible. ‘Urk!’ sounds to me more like she only felt the impact, not the shrapnel itself. Could still mean a huge bruise and internal bleeding though… what’s keeping Max & Co.?
Called it… well ok i just said “She should hurry up… no shield until done…”
I hope she is not hurt to badly or the unknown orb has to be healing… that reminds me of the game Silver – the healing orb was also a brown tone if i remember it correctly (could be wrong – haven´t played it in aprox 12- years)
Am I the only one titillated by the fact that the Squid blast makes the sound BOOB twice. :D
Sydney may be in some trouble here. Sure she has body armour but taking that gut shot made her drop the shield orb, and it seems there was a fair amount of rubble that is falling on her.
Looks like she kept hold of both orbs during that hit.
(Good reflexes. Tighter grip = Good)
Those fragments are probably outside her forcefield.
Introducing the ‘Heal Orb” – is my guess.
But that’s soooooo obvious!!
Two ‘Ding’s in panel 3.
Two upgrades??
Thats the upgrade (Ding) and that enables that new “path” (other Ding) – i think a whooommmm sound of powering up would do great there…
Aaah! Right in the ‘ol Gazorpazovum!
Wasn´t her sanguine humor located there? Above ?
Assuming the shield is inelastic and therefore reflects all the energy, every hit will deform the projectile, which depending on it’s composition will either shatter it (if it is too hard to deform) or deform it into a flattened pancake, (most likely a combination of the two). This will result in the initial energy being converted from kinetic (motion) to heat and smaller fragments which will quickly lose energy due to air resistance. With as many ricochets as it took and considering it is a piece of debris that was undoubtedly moving at subsonic initially (it was propelled by an explosion, not from the barrel of a gun), means it was probably have very little energy left when it hit Sydney as well as be in a flattened shape. That means the fragment will probably be easily stopped by her body armor. It will still feel like getting hit in the stomach by a fastball, and knock the wind out of her (and probably leave a nasty bruise) but she should be able to recover fairly quickly. Hopefully she won’t lose her grip on the shield orb, but even if she did, unless there is an immediate follow up, she should be able to get it back in hand quickly.
Oh and additionally, you can see that the projectile was tumbling after one of the ricochets meaning it undoubtedly did not hit with the pointy end (which shouldn’t be in any way pointed after the ricochets). Judging by the size of the object (about 10cmx3cmx1cm, so 30cm^3), and without knowing what it is made of, either stone (2.3-2.8 g/cm^3) or metal (guess that steel is most likely as a construction material at about 7.8 g/cm^3) so the mass is between 69-84g for stone and about 234g for steel. Since it doesn’t seem to be traveling supersonic, we can safely assume it’s initial velocity is less than 344 m/s. by the time it reaches Sydney, it is probably moving much slower considering it is not an aerodynamic shape. Let’s just say 300m/s to simplify. That gives us a Kinetic energy before the first ricochet of 3.78 kJ for stone and 10.53 kJ for steel. Now to consider that the shield is inelastic and doesn’t deform at all, then all that energy goes into the projectile. in order to ricochet, it has to flex and then release the energy back. Some energy will be lost as heat, more will be lost in the deformation. In the case of stone, it is very hard and will not deform without shattering, meaning that it is a bad candidate for the object. Steel used in construction is usually they type of mild steel that can bend at a 90 degree angle and back without cracking. Therefor you can assume that the projectile is a mild steel that will deform easily without breaking. That deformation will absorb energy with each ricochet.
I count 6 ricochets. I am going to take a wild guess and say it losses 30% of it’s energy with each ricochet. That gives us an energy after 6 ricochets of about 1.3 kJ That is roughly equivalent to being shot by a .44 magnum, but with a much larger surface area, making it much more likely to be stopped by her body armor.
Please, feel free to check my math and assumptions.
The normal for bullets at the angle in question is about 80% of their energy lost per bounce.
https://blog.warningsciencecontent.com/2012/05/13/bouncing-bullet/
Also don’t forget that Sydney’s shield does absorb the majority of energy from things that hit it.
I was trying to be conservative since I couldn’t really find a good reference online. If we up the energy loss to 50%, then the energy left when it hits her is 164 J or about that of a .32. that converts to a velocity of 37.5m/s or approximately 84mph, roughly equivalent to getting hit by a fastpitch softball.
If we go to the 80% figure, the energy becomes .67J or a velocity of 2.4 m/s or about 5 mph.
When considering new glasses, please don’t forget that the first few pages of the comic, which took place a few months into the future, had Sydney wearing the current round glasses. So for continuity’s sake, even if she does choose a different design, she should probably also have the current ones repaired.
Given her new celebrity status, she might even be talked into some glitzy frames for her official duties while she wears the round ones casually. That would help explain why she was wearing them for the game without having some big in-comic explanation.
They’ll be her Clark Kent glasses. It doesn’t matter that her identity is public knowledge.
That piece of shrapnel must really hate Sydney given it violated several laws of physics to stab her in the stomach.
I mean, it didn’t lose any energy across multiple 90 degree bounces and it somehow stayed perfectly straight so the sharp pointy bit always impacted the direction it was traveling.
Look at its trajectory compared to the other rubble, its coming in much faster. What if its some super advanced projectile rather than shrapnel and is actively orienting and propelling to try and hit a valid target.
I find it funny every one seems to go on about physics and stuff when the chosen sound affect gives a hint.
its thunk often used for things like hitting armor
If the broken glass is too much of an issue Sidney can just pop out the (broken) right side lens.
*wince* oof, even if that suit of hers is bullet resistant the impact will probably break a rib or two.
Time for her to find out the last orb is regeneration. (Engineering?)