Grrl Power #662 – Interstellar proctologist
These things, whatever Sydney is fighting, apparently don’t fight a lot of enemies that can teleport. Or at least they’ve decided their shield technology is really good against everything but teleportation, and making it work against teleporters would compromise it in other ways that are unacceptable for 98% of their other conflicts.
If you follow me on Twitter, (where I post insightful stuff like how I don’t understand the difference between clam digger pants and capris) you may have already heard this, but man I dislike drawing rubble. It’s so tedious. It does make me respect those crazy splash pages in mangas of bombed out cities and general wreckage. Of course, manga artists have people for that. There are guys who all they do is draw backgrounds and architecture. There are definitely some kind of artists who would find work like that very satisfying, but all my background work is because I want the characters to feel grounded in the world I’m creating. Some of those earlier pages of the comic have literally no background on the panels. Artistically, that can fly if you’ve established an environment, but still a shadow across a wall or something or a gradient or some cross hatching just to avoid a white panel, at least certainly in a color comic. A black and white one can swing that easier.
The next supervillain lair I’m going to design might look like an igloo designed by Apple or something. That should be easy to draw. I can tell you it definitely won’t be disguised as a freshly destroyed building. :/
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"Mature"Mature subject matter and occasionally something explicit but usually safe. Can't guarantee the ads are safe though.
Dongs Ahoy!Full frontal and backal. Lots of skin, sex on some or all pages, explicit or otherwise.
or, the PBE, if you’re hip
Do not call it that unless you can provide credentials.
He has a desert punk gravatar, He’s good.
Completely
Invasive
Butt
Checker
Colonoscopy
Oscillating
Orfice
Laser.
Budda-budda-budda-bidet!
Prostate
Probing
Orb
Proctological / Anal Invasively Nasty Fully Unpleasant Laser
+1 to PAINFUL and the PPO. Those both got me to giggle. got
You know a part of me wants to rib Sydney for this. Now that it’s been brought up.
Because she rule lawyered like crazy for the laser to hit Kopy Kap’s crown. But her shield, and this guy’s shield prove Kopy Kap wouldn’t be hit with a laser attack. At least not with the reason Sydney was using.
On the other. Kudos on conning a DM into letting that slide, and getting a set up to anal wreck a world ender boss.
She wasn’t aware her own shield worked like that when she rule lawyered, and I believe she’s brought it up herself a couple times already. In fact I think one case was even a sudden realization that her rule lawyering was wrong.
This is like 6 months before the D&D game. We’re still in the flashback. THAT’s why she was able to con the DM “She’s got a shield, she’d know how it works better than I would.”
Actually, she WAS aware, as the game (not D&D, evidence is that it was Mayfair’s DC Heroes or a variant thereof) was taking place *after* these events right here.
Nope. This is the Flashback still. She just recently got the hot twin (like a few days ago in story) into comics and working in the store. Oliva hasn’t popped her nerd cherry yet.
And the intro ended with her standing in front of the Archon building. And going into her orgin story, and the events leading up to the intro.
So yeah, months in the past still. And she’d know how shields work. Seeing as how she spams it like no tomorrow.
Actually kinda disappointing. She convinced both the GM to accept a weakness to Kopy Kraut’s shield, which meant that the same weakness now applied to her team mate’s shield (Syd herself called it ‘throwing her under the buss’), while knowing all the time that real shields didn’t work that way. Basically, she used her authority as the only owner of a real life shield to con her fellow gamers, and all just to score a point. Not cool, Sydney!
Umm, no, the weakness was not to the Shield, butt to Kopy Kraut’s understanding of how the shield worked: reasoning being, as he had just kopied her teammate’s ability to make the shield, he wouldn’t have the knowledge to make it selective
That was in response to Lumina saying she could make her forcefields opaque. That was the kind of power stunt Kopy Kraut didn’t know how to perform. But Sydney’s shield is ALWAYS selective about what it allows through, which is what KK claimed for his shield. And that’s what Sydney conned the GM about to the detriment of her own team. At least, that’s what I make of it, though YMMV.
Like said, Mr Buble and Lumina’s shield act differently: Mr Buble is automagically selective, whereas Lumina’s shield is, well, different (as Sydney pointed out), it stops physical attacks, not light
That little bit of information should have been fairly easy to detect with a little bit of surveillance, as it is, the only people ‘in game’ who know it are Sydney (who probably shouldn’t been using OOC knowledge), Kopy Kraut and Lumina. Lumina should already have known how her shield works (unless she’s never been attacked by light before, in which case, that would be a good learning experience, specially seeing how someone else learnt it first hand :P)
That… doesn’t change anything Pufnstuff said: the intro included the game, which included Olive in the game
BUT WAIT! Sydney! What if his/her/its forcefield is skin-tight?! That would still explain the deflection before!
It’s still worth trying. It can’t retaliate without nuking the ground it’s standing on. From the look of things, its neck isn’t designed to let it look straight down like that. So if it works, great. If it doesn’t work, then the worst thing Sydney has to worry about is if it tries to sit on her or step on her.
I just had a thought. That’s specifically what she used the Lightbee for. She wanted to see if its shield would let non-harmful amounts of light through.
So if the lightbee was ‘deflected’ like her PPO, then she would know this tactic wouldn’t work and she could simply abort the teleport (the advantage of being able to send the lightbee first.)
And if it wasn’t deflected? Look where she teleported, within inches of its foot. She’s inside its shields.
As gruesome as it is, she could still try to teleport inside of some cavity in Squidward and then shoot it from the inside… in a life or death situation it should be considered.
On a sidenote, I wonder if Lightbee can be felt as it’s moving. If not, she might be able to determine if the shield is indeed skintight. She went around the ‘foot’, not trying to go through it.
As her holographic projection is intangible
despite the impossibility of hearing or speaking through it
I think we can assume the lightbee to be intangible as well.
Nope, Lightbee is solid: she had to find a physical way into the Wars Factory building for it, she couldn’t even go through the grimy window
Sydney see what is around her, she can only tell what isn’t, seems to work like echo-location in order to detection where something isn’t (like a hole in a window)
We don’t actually know that. It might just be that Sydney can only think of going round things, not through them. We do know that the main holographic projection can go through things like Arianna’s head (which isn’t what a normal hologram would do without fancy extra projectors) so… well, who knows?
Fairly sure Sydney would have tried to go through the skylight, rather than go looking for a hole
Actually, yes, that is how a hologram works: it’s not solid, it’s just light projections, unless you get an upgrade to a HardLight Projector ala Ace Rimmer
Butt yes, most of this is simply what Sydney believes (like the belief that Squiddy has a similar shield around him, and invisible shield that doesn’t even react when hit)
Yes, and she is aiming for its ass, which is way above her. If the shield is as close to its body as it looks, either her particle beam will bounce off the inside of its shield, causing havoc to one of its legs, or it will pass through it and then hit the shield protecting its ass from the outside and be deflected like before.
THAT assumes it’s a shield at all. From what we have seen it could just as easily be a field (meaning it occupies all the space from the edge of the field to squaddies armor. Meaning that the PPO shot will deflect as it exits the orb and still go around.
It’s also possible that it’s an active defense system that intercepts the PPO’s beam as it propagates with an area of warped time and space (which fits what we saw). Obviously, it would need to be able to detect the beam faster than lightspeed and react even faster… but super future alien tech… who knows.
Is it just me, or has anyone else noticed that Sydney’s shield I up, but she’s not holding her shield orb?
If you look at the first panels you can see that the shield orb is not over her head so she has ist (not visible) in her left hand.
So no hoping she enabled the shield toggle so she doesn’t have to hold it all the time?
Way to go Sasha! I totally missed that fountain.
Still have to agree with David though, I’m not sure how she (and the A-team) lucked out that the atmosphere was comparable to Earth’s but that might not be a _water_ fountain. It could be an acid fountain or something.
They weren’t THAT lucky – the native was dealing with Earth’s atmosphere just fine, meaning the reverse should be true as well.
There’s no luck whatsoever involved. Earth was (presumably) explicitly chosen for invasion by the former residents of this planet because it has a compatible atmosphere. Why would you seek out a planet to conquer and colonize if you have to wear a space suit all the time?
Unlike the War of the Worlds aliens, these guys are smart enough to at least pick a place with a similar atmosphere, so of course the reverse also holds true.
To be fair to Wells’s Martians, they weren’t exactly picking from a long list of candidates. And given the state of knowledge at the time, I’d let the assumption of equivalent atmospheres slide. Their problem was their own previous success: it was so many generations since they’d eradicated all diseases from their own planet, that they didn’t have any defence against such an ‘attack’ from Earth.
If Sciona, could survive on Earth, so Halo can survive in Sciona’s world.
How about a rusty sword? She should get a rusty sword, swing it with the lighthook and practice her interstellar proctology.
or a herring. a red one.
DaveB, as an idea for the next villian arc, perhaps an “eraser” power would be in order… so instead of drawing rubble when they “break” in, you just draw the hole made. No mess, no nonsense!
Next, all villains use disintegrator rays. Or vaporizers. No rubble is ever seen again.
Sydney could find herself ported into the LEGO-verse. All the rubble from battles would be made from identically shaped and colored blocks.
So basically Man of Steel, then?
…Yeah, I went there. By the end of the movie, I was numb. I literally sat there thinking, “So this is what the comedian Gallagher (famous for smashing watermelons and other things with a massive mallet) would look like if he ran rampant through the Batman Grays/Blues section of the Legoland Empire…”
I always knew that Sydney could be a pain in the butt, but this is going to be rediculous!
Sydney Scoville, Proctologist to the stars!
That thing is going to need tanker loads of Preparation H!!!
In case of counterattack, at least Sydney will find out what the shield upgrade is good for.
She upgraded the fly orb not the shield orb.
“Sweep the leg.”
Oh no Sydney! That would be a low blow, certainly not allowed under the Marquess of Queensberry rules.
.
.
.
I approve, go for it and rip him a new one!
Or a first one.
Just be careful of the aftermath…it could be rather crappy…
Looking back a few strips, it’s pretty obvious that Sydney, sitting between the toes, is within Squidward’s shield based from how far away from Squidward it was that Sydney’s attack was deflected. Now, it’s possible that the shield follow’s the form of it’s body and the line of fire between Sydney and Squidward’s butt has a shield in the way, but even if that happens, the shield deflects, not absorbs, Sydney’s cutting beam. In all likelihood, if the shield is that tight, when Sydney fires, it will funnel the beam up the leg and into the main body. Sound’s like rotisserie tonight!
Well if she shoots straight up it is just as likely to bounce around the inside if its shield too. Eg like the shrapnel did in Syds bubble
Ooooh, good catch! That shrapnel in Sydney’s shield is TOTALLY a Checkov’s setup for that!
I’ve got to believe that when Sydney fills out her AAR (After Action Review) there’s going to be a lot of ROTFLMAOs at Arc-SWAT HQ.
And a lot of ‘no way am I getting into a fight with her’ from the rank & file.
In all fairness, the “Rank-&-File” have TONS of Combat-XP over Sydney, so they could probably overwhelm her with highly-practiced well-coordinated firepower. On Syd’s side of this equation, the “pro” is her incredibly overpowered shield, & unpredictable, “outside-of-the-box” strategic thinking. Meanwhile,her “con” is that her LACK of combat experience would lead to LONG, SLOW response times, which allow the enemy to piledrive her with lots of firepower.
Also, some pointed questions from Max about when she learned to teleport, and when she was planing to tell everyone she could teleport.
I thought Sydney already debriefed Max on that power.
We didn’t see Sydney mention it to Maxima.
Saving it for the unlikely event she needs to
use it against the team?
Here’s Sydney’s thought process.
What if its defense field isnt a shield but a gravity field? The way the beam bent suggests that could be the case. A gravity field could theoretically stop any energy weapon simply by trapping or redirecting the particles.
Konohagakure Hidden Secret Taijutsu Technique: One Thousand Years of Death, Laser version
Dynamic ENTRY!
*Musical Jingle*
PORN HUB!
I wonder how many experience points Sydney could earn here?
Enough to buy the next level of flight (the one with all the connections) one hopes.
sadly, i don’t thing all that many. games from diablo to classic D&D all give diminishing returns on overleveled encounters, to the point that a foe 7 or more challenge rating above is supposed to be a “DM wtf are you doing? something’s broke!” reaction, not exp. or it could go the other way, and be just within her acceptable target range, and prompt like six dings simultaneously.
boy howdy, am i hoping for the latter. even though the reaction for “nope, nuttin” would be hilarious.
as would her reaction if this turns out to be a(n) simulation/alternate universe/bubble dimension/psychophisical construct/dying dream of Sciona.
Usually if a party is fighting something 7 CR above them there are 3 reasons 1) DM’s going for either a Climatic showdown set piece (party are the ,possibly unknowing, distraction for instance) Team Wipe (with or without Party consent depending on circumstances) or 2) Party did something immeasurably stupid. or 3) Party is Epic, after a couple Epic levels CR starts to become less and less meaningful since many GODS aren’t too far into the Epic Scale
Not to mention that a realistic upgrade from an enemy this powerful would make Halo seriously overpowered, so I kinda doubt that’s the way DaveB will go with this. Then again, it wouldn’t surprise me if the next episode cuts back to Max & Co, and by the time we meet Sydney again, it turns out things went completely different from how we expected. He likes throwing us a curveball from time to time.
Blood!Caleb Sydney: “It’s like a spiritual enema… in a good way.”
Are the bottom left two panels in the right order?
No, they’re in the left order. Obviously.
I thought the same thing. But after thinking about it, the top one is the ‘image’ of Sydney appearing where the light bee traveled. The bottom left one is Sydney still under the rubble getting ready to port herself to the new location. Sydney in the bottom right is her about to shoot right into his bottom.
Unlike Saitama, Sydney is probably going to be bothered by the eventual chunky fallout of her own attack.
Unlike Saitama, Sydney will probably be bothered by eventual chunky fallout of her own attack.
You clearly misunderstood the doctor. When he said you might feel a slight cramp, what he meant was, “It’s possible that, despite the seemingly overwhelming sensations you are about to experience, your senses might be acute enough that you will actually notice one of the slight cramps your body will have around the periphery, in addition to the major cramping you will experience throughout your abdomen and legs. Medical science hasn’t figured out yet why such inconsequential details can sometimes be noticed while the nervous system appears to be saturated with feeling like you’re about to experience, but we’ve determined it’s normal, and you should not freak out about it.”
Why do I have a feeling the next few comics will not be about the Laser enema?
But it being a flashback to earth to see what is going on there so the Writer can listen to us all scream when we read next week comics?
That sounds like DaveB’s style, doesn’t it?
I thought that today’s installment would be on Earth after it was revealed Sydney was essentially uninjured by the shard caught in her bubble.
Maybe something like:
Vale enters Deus’s office and hands him the Skybreaker.
Vale: “Here. What do you intend to do with our ‘guests’?”
Vale’s chest splits open, and a bunch of Alari ghosts spill out, visibly disoriented and unsettled.
Deus: “Sciona, is that you? You’ve lost weight! …again.”
Sciona: “……”
Deus: “Don’t worry, I’m sure our… lab… can whip you up a suitable replacement in no time. For the time being…”
Deus opens up a closet full of spare fish tanks.
Sciona: “……”
Later…
Deus: “You have fun out there, Vale?”
Vale: “It’s a start. It isn’t often you get to make ghosts squirm.”
Deus: “Good point. I wonder if there’s any cute ghosts tangible enough to-”
Vale: “Forget I said anything.”
Assuming she makes it back home,should Sydney make a list of the things she wants to do?
Umm, we know Sydney makes it back home
At this point I’ve heard about the flashback circumventing the plot tension so often, I’m almost hoping Dave annuls it somehow. Maybe a strip with Max and Arianna discussing the promo video they shot with Halo and friends on day 2.
Dabbler can be casting something in the background with runes that translate as “Retconjuration”.
… as if you actually need to be afraid of main character dying in any other comics. Well, ok, there are exceptions, but usually you can be sure if main character die they will get better.
and shouldn’t holding light bee also be showing stuff passively like weakness or scanning back? passively when held?
in hologram mode Sydney can’t use any of the other settings of the light bee just yet. plus the true sight seems to be the default setting and unless sqiudward is hiding something that wouldn’t have help. so she would had to use those options after she teleported over
That and Sydney doesn’t get True Sight while using the Light Bee separately from it’s Orb.
Is it bad that my first thought was to wonder whether or not Giant Squid Wrecking Machine even HAS an anus?
If it didn’t already, it’s soon gonna get one :P
in all fairness to your post, I hope that Dave decides the squidward is actually a creature called an UR.
(give it time, you’ll get it.)
Boooo! Evil pun detected.
If it was your first thought after reading today’s comment when the idea of giving it an enema was explicitly invoked? No.
If it was your first thought weeks ago when we first saw Mecha Squidward? That might be something to worry about.
Squidward, squidward, squidward… If there is any real analogy to a Giant Squid, Sydney’s next action is likely to result in being inundated with thousands of gallons of sticky black ink. She’s still shielded, but visibility is about to go away.
‘He’s gonna have a burning ring of fire when I Scoville, pepper spray his ass!!!’
I wanted to remark that while I enjoy the funny stuff. I really like to see Sydney get to be serious. I mean perfect characters are boring, but sometimes I think her weaknesses and follies are pushed to the point of fatigue. She’s obviously an intelligent person and getting to see her ability to adapt and mature is a real treat for me. I don’t want to lose the humor, but I do want to see more of her potential as a hero. Obviously, just being in the current situation without wetting her pants is testimony to having way more grit than she’s displayed in the past. Kudos on that.
I’m kinda hoping she mops up pretty good on her own, kills Squiddy, drives off the mondo starship, and by the time Max and the others come back for her, she’s sitting on the field of battle smoking pipeweed or something. I’d love to see Max’s jaw hit the ground. Especially when she sees the dead Squiddy body and the remains of all those fighters.
She has to earn the “Big Guns” nickname sooner or later, plus earn her Corporal’s rank
Odd thought- what if squidward is an orb user too. but he went ppo shields and BROWN orb to max? enough sensors to scan but not much else?
Also what if PPO doesn’t work? Time to give it a case of worms with the light rope? or see if it is ticklish?
Then the sensors do nothing: if it can’t even detect a lifeform on an otherwise barren planet
there is 2 different lines, in the PPO skill tree, with 2 dots in one and one dot in another. Why don’t you try out number two and see if you can “ADHD-powers-activate!” the words to make the acronym for it P.I.T.A.??
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This is a callback to the first pages of the comic right?
This is a callback to the first pages of the comic right?
Haha! Callback!
Technically, a call-forward? o_O
The real issue I feel is if it has skin tight ‘deflectors’ or a bubble like ‘shield’. However, those will be a moot point when we find out it has diamond like ‘armor’.
If the shield was skin tight she would have seen that when she zapped it. She knows where the shield is.
You know the old cliche about aliens coming to your world? How they always start off by sticking a probe up your a$$? Payback!
Good one. Given what was going on at the club that Halo went to, maybe there was some alien a** probing, both ways.
I wanna take a moment to say I REALLY like how you drew sydney in panel 1. I think I said it before, but the way you draw her when she’s not spazzing is incredibly detailed (and fairly attractive)
Since wheb can Sydney Teleport with the Telepresence orb?
Or can she fire beams from telepresence?
It was the upgrade she picked after the press conference. It’s in number 183
Remember the introduction of the super werejaguar (not pink panther) invisible ability and laser claws?
Nah that was the gatling upgrade for the pew pew orb.
She learnt to do both during the same event: Haloporting first, then Gatling Pew-ing
Correct. Teleport upgrade bought at end of press conference, then discovered on top of the warehouse after her near-death experience. Sometime during the time loop (or just after?), she earned another upgrade point, which was used to purchase the PPO gatling mode just minutes later.