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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Hey Dave, I just thought of something Sydney should request from the quartermaster/outfit maker/whoever makes the McGuffins: Some sort of wrist guard-like thing, probably just a molded plastic bit with padding and straps, that will passively hold an orb against her palm so she doesn’t have to worry about accidentally letting go. Of course, she’d be able to tilt her hand up to let it fly free and swap out, but with her hand resting down straight in line with her arm, it’d keep an orb held comfortably against her palm.
At the very least it’d prevent her from having to tape the shield orb to her hand all the time. Ripping all that tape off seriously can’t be good for her delicate, pasty skin.
She carries a roll of tape in her utility belt for that very reason. Also other miscellaneous tape use reasons.
I think Gadget is meaning that just having a little plastic ‘holder’ on the front of her hands, attached to the wrist would negate the need for tape, and would be a lot faster and more efficient for quick changes of the orbs used.
If my life and safety depended on me not dropping the ball in my hand, I’d trust duct tape over just about anything else. Duct tape is so good at holding things together, you could use it to tape water to other water.
why not FlexTape
That crap wasn’t invented at the time of Grrl Power, plus it’s just a blatant rip-off
Because that would take her skin off. FlexTape really is as strong as it claims to be, from what I’ve seen.
Yeah, basically this. It works the same as tape, but she can swap them out quickly and not have to tear her skin off with the tape.
Still, taping an orb to her hand IS sort of a Sydney thing to do.
I would agree accept it would be impractical for two reason. 1: She is eventually going to be issued and have to use a sidearm, and 2: the orbs are directed by her thoughts so they wouldn’t be dropped unless she wanted them to be dropped. Though admittedly with her attention span it could be problematic if she went off her meds but certain death does tend to focus her quite well as we have seen so I don’t think she would have to worry about that too much and if she was unconscious I think she wouldn’t be able to direct the orbs what to do anyway and they would either go into a hibernation mode or emergency protocol of some kind. I believe what happens when she gets knocked out hasn’t been seen yet in the comic.
It’s about to get hollowed out and used as a candelabra!
By the way, anyone else notice it’s still sweeping an array of beams like a freaking light house of the apocalypse? It really must have no idea where Sydney is and is just blasting everything in the hopes of flushing her out.
I’m beginning to wonder if it’s partially panic firing.
No, not panic firing, like meerling said, it is sweeping the area in the hopes of flushing Sydney out
The term is “recon by fire”.
The other option is “suppressing fire”, as it can be attempting to demonstrate the difference between cover and concealment when you have insanely destructive weapons. (A concrete and steel reinforced cinder block wall is “Cover” against infantry but “concealment” to an armored vehicle like an M1 Abrams’ 120mm cannon, or an M2/M3 Bradley’s API-T-firing 25mm chaingun rounds or TOW missiles.)
At this point the squid thing should get its own title card, so we can learn more about this
He will need to speak for that. Maybe a death cry will be enough.
Panic firing is what it does in about 3 seconds … if it;s still able to fire.
That’s the feeling I got the moment that smal drone scanned Sydney. It had scanned Dabbler just a second before and did nothing even though she tried to block its scan. Then it scanned Sydney and went ape shit! Squidward went nuclear on Alpha Team, but when Sydney ran away it let her go. Only after she went after the mothership did they send out the drones. Squidward didn’t start firing again until Sydney turned her attention towards it, and it has been doing its damndest to make sure she dies. Panic sounds right to me. Whoever the orbs belong to, the Squiddies know them (him/her/it?) and are scared shitless! Considering how powerful Squidward is I really wonder what will happen if the original owners find out about Halo.
A side note: Squidward was litteraly SHOT DOWN from orbit! A very fast way to land your troops, but it means Squidward was tough enough to survive hitting the ground like a meteor and walk away without a scratch! Let’s hope its ass IS its weak spot or Sydney has just put herself in a world of pain.
Nailed it, August 16, 2018 at 5:19 am.
Feel free to rag on me if it still bounces.
I’m line 99% certain there’s a filter in Photoshop that will essentially make a bunch of random scribbles look like rubble. I’ve done that accidentally enough times.
If you procedurally generate a whole page full of rubble and just copy paste in the bits that fit whatever ground you’re showing, you could probably save yourself a few hours of hassle. Nothing about the rubble in the 5th or 7th or 8th panels here seems hard to just let a computer do for you.
Also, are the 8th and 9th panels switched? Seems like if she was going to announce the teleportation, it would make sense to do it before actually teleporting than after, but maybe that’s just my exposure to anime talking.
Sydney’s image appears first, then she uses the teleport.
Wait … image first, then teleport? Got a link back to when this was explained?
Three pages starting here. Notice the “poit” sound effect. It’s never definitively stated she can’t teleport if the image isn’t active, but the lightbee does need to be out.
Well, Sydney cannot see through the light bee unless she’s projecting an image. Whether or not it is necessary to deploy telepresence before teleporting, it is a good idea to reconoiter before beaming in.
Initially thought the same thing, butt then remembered her only experience with Haloporting was Holo-Halo being deployed first (after Lightbee being moved into position), maybe back on Terra Prima she can add that to the list of “Things to Experiment With My Balls”
“The next supervillain lair I’m going to design might look like an igloo designed by Apple or something.”
I’m sure they’d come up with a completely original name for it. Just kidding, they’d call it an iGloo.
like the device made for pets, the iPawed.
but seriously iGloo would be hella funny :)
You mean Yorp’s tablet?
Well I have added it to my list of things to eat before I die.
Whilst this seems like a good place to eat the forbidden fruit.
Of couse it would be made of iCe and have iCicles
My only advice for Sydney here would be, be a professional, and DOUBLE TAP (dat ass!?).
Correct me if I am mistaken, but isn’t the shield around this beast closer to its body rather than like sydney’s bubble? Perhaps she is close enough to the leg to be inside the shielded area for that but certainly not near enough to affect the nether region she mentioned.
We don’t know if it is a shaped-field or a bubble slash dome shield, Sydney is going with the ass-umption that it is like Mr Buble
At the least, it might make it jump, maybe even shoot it into orbit
I was under the impression that it didn’t even have a shield and was simply evading by grabbing and distorting the space around it.
That’s also a possibility, butt, Sydney has to go with the (limited) knowledge she has, which is: she believes it to be a shield similar in composition to Mr Buble, if differing in effect (Mr Buble deflects, whereas Squiddy did something… ‘weird’)
Don’t think the shape of the shield will matter much, if it’s body hugging, there’s going to be God’s own ricochet and it gets shredded, if it’s a bubble or dome, it’s going to punch through the things body and take down the shield before there’s a ricochet.
Either way, it’s toast unless it’s body is way tougher than a tank. Given the critter is flexible, that seems doubtful.
Heh. Achilles is flexible enough, but way tougher than any tank, so we already know that’s possible. I just hope it won’t be a curbstomp from here on. I really like Squidward. I think he’s incredibly cool and I would hate for him to end like that.
If she beats that thing, she should get more than just one ding.
So, are we seeing a lightbee trail as artistic representation, or is there a tether maintained all the way back to Sydney? A tether would make sense for a teleport transfer pathway, but a visible trail back to her would really blow her cover.
Sooooo. I think Syd is going to be even more of a pain in the ass then before … I’m starting to think they were justified to attack the pink skin with unscannable orbs. Because she can probably F- them up proper.
If this really is in the future, maybe they have met a more experienced Halo before, and didn’t like it? Woould explain their reaction the moment they saw her.
“..and then it turned out that Sydney’s assumption that the alien being’s shield worked the same way as her Orbs’ would, was incorrect….as the ‘how fortunate for her’ gawdz finally tosses Sydney a TRUE curveball…” Kinda hoping ol’ Syd DOESN’T get out of this thanks to her ‘amazing good guesses’ and the backup team of not main characters abilities and knowledge actually come into play a LOT more to save her…
I think that it would be way too easy for this to take it down.
I’m actually hoping for something completely different, like a mysterious hero in a giant mech appearing out of nowhere…
Me too. I know I keep saying that, but I just think Squidward is really cool and I would hate for him to suddenly be blown up like that. Especially since I still think they mistake Sydney for the original owner(s) of her orbs.
Regarding the order of the two bottom leftmost panels, remember:
1. Sydney’s lightbee has to travel somewhere.
2. HoloSydney then has to appear so she can “be” in that location, otherwise she might “bee” there, but she’s still merely flyin’ around (pun intended, this is Sydney Scoville Jr. we’re talkin about)
2.a. I suspect this is necessary to prove that there is ROOM for Sydney to exist.
2.b. The lightbee can slip through cracks, but Sydney herself cannot, hence requiring enough room for HoloSydney before proceeding to:
3. Once HoloSydney has the room to exist, boom, teleport!
(optional) 4. NEAT! (Napalm Enema Attack Time!)
Remember too, the light bee cannot see. It is not a good idea to teleport in blind.
She is up against a major boss or what some might call and eldritch planet wrecker abomination from the nether spheres of dark entity. Good thin Sydney and the rest are immune from the psychological aspects of such things.
If it is all biotechnology, after a fashion, it will be part of its make up and boom that it may injure it for a time. (If it can perform anamorphosis like the Cthulhu spawn it will be coming back sooner or later.) However it would give Sydney a breather.
Probably not immune, just either a) she’s proving uncharacteristically capable of compartmentalizing information for now, or b) she was so terrified her brain just couldn’t register it, and she will have a city-destroying panic attack after it’s all over
Why do we assume Squidward is a boss? He is the very first attack unit sent down from the ship. Squidward could just be what they sent down to test out the enemy before they get serious. The boss might be a indestructible pink kitten that meows out mustard gas.
I would think anyone born after 1950, especially fans of sci-fi and comic books would be immune to the psychological aspects of such things.
Sorry pet peeve moment here: Games try to treat the psychological side as a psionic passive affect from such entities; that isn’t what Lovecraft wrote. The psychological affect was from the revelation of what such beings represented.
HP Lovecraft’s sci-fi horror is, outdated now. It was written for people born in the late 1800’s and grew up in the early 1900’s. This was a time when ALL horror was based on the concept of “good and evil” it was a common belief humans were the center of the universe, God’s perfect creation, and the forces of good would never allow anything to happen to humanity as a whole. Lovecraft presented to a wide audience a different outlook not commonly seen in media at the time; that humans didn’t matter to the universe, that there could be beings that aren’t good or evil and simply regard humans as humans regard animals.
In (The Mountains of Madness) what drives that one guy insane isn’t some psychic attack from a space squid, its the sudden revelation that humans aren’t alone in the universe, that alien life is ancient and already was on Earth, and humanity’s history, religions, culture, didn’t really matter in the grand scheme of existence. Today such concepts are fairly common place for readers of sci-fi and horror; but back then…this was terrifying to people, and made sense that people couldn’t understand it and seeing such things would drive them insane.
Like Dagon, read that short story again, a man is marooned on a hellish landscape and sees a giant thing bowing to an obelisk and making weird noises, this terrifies the man, and for back then with the ocean’s depths a pure mystery *yes we know little but back then they knew nothing really about the deepest oceans*, this was mind numbing, imagining that the ocean could be filled with giant ancient beings.
Make that story today, and its USOs and Kaiju. We are jaded, and while seeing one for real would still be a “woah” moment, unlikely for someone like Sydney already having lived a few and her cultural experience to go insane from the revelation of giant world ending space aliens existing…although a little shock should be in order for something like that actually existing, but not a totally out of the blue no precedence how dare the universe be so cruel as to not put humanity at the center of everything and have more powerful beings out there who don’t care you exist.
Very well typed and explained
Also, we’re talking about Sydney here. She has a VERY modern view of the universe – when it was revealed to her that many of the monsters that parents had used to scare their children in the past were real and standing in the same room with her, her immediate reactions were, “OMG SO COOL!!” and “OMG SO FLUFFY!!” She is not the sort to innately fear ANYTHING. She may learn to respect and even be wary of nasty forces, but fear is not a big thing with her.
10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, enema countdown!
I should be the last one to criticize, seeing as circles l draw tend to have a sharp corner, but…
Sydney’s glasses this page and last, the frames look rather pixelated, not something that I recall them ever doing before.
I get it, the lighting is weird, so perhaps a new style is at work?
Dunno, but now that i’ve Noticed this, it looks odd to me.
Her glasses were damaged by the shrapnel a few strips ago, thus the jagged bits on the one lens.
Either A: She is inside the field and firing up at it, or B: The field wraps around its body like a defense aura so either she’ll fire out of it and still not hit it, or she is inside the defense aura field and firing inside it much like the piece richocheting in her bubble will make the beam bounce all over the place slicing up its leg and possibly up the field turning its body into gorey confettie. Given its size and standing over rubble and the fact any world it is invading would likely have things shooting up at it I’d wager against a large field she can shoot from the leg over empty space to its crotch, and more a defense aura type field tight around its body.
“Particle ma’am, particle ma’am
Shootin’ her particles in that can
Where’d she come from? It’s not important
Particle ma’am…”
…what??
Is that sung to the tune of an old Spider Man Cartoon theme song?
TMBG – Particle man
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsAiCs66l40
And the Starspawn fails it’s surprise roll. Needless to say it is going to feel that one in the morning.
Whooosh… erm… Flooosh, imminent.
To ensure satisfactory results, instead of firing from that position (near one of the legs), I would fly and introduce myself up Mastersquids ass-hole (with the shield orb active, of course) and then change from fly-orb to PPO. Chop and fry that thing from the inside.
Except, she has to ‘make a hole’ first
The Mastersquid must have a hole in the point of convergence of the four legs. Or are you trying to tell me that the Mastersquid sits its face instead of its arse on the toilet to have a shit?
Hmm so she is going to attack from under it, if I can guess right. The shield only activates if it SEES the attack coming, since it’s blindly firing trying to draw her out that means it wouldn’t know where she is and will blast it before it could raise its defenses. I think its safe to say its going to regret making her a target.
Wait, does this mean in the first comic she knows she’s BSing (cause that’s something I’ve totally never done in an RPG).
The first comics take place later in time than this one, by 6 months.
How does she know the random dot she picked upgraded her flight speed?
For all she should know, it let her perform lasting skywriting, or let her preprogram directions, or switched the fuel source from unobtanium to a more environmentally friendly but less energy dense alternative (for the conscientious six-armed alien thing).
No, No! Not another enema!
They need to make her an infinity gauntlet for her orbs…
It will turn out that the reason for the planet destroying armada is revenge for Sonia’s people’s destruction of a primitive planet called Earth, which they invaded in the recent past :o
Is Sydney sure it’s a particle beam? Everything about those orbs seems to defy every explanation the character try to apply.
What else could it be…and still make sense for it to cut, burn, explode, and not be terrifying to have an alien being warp it around themselves?
I mean even Cyclops’ optic blasts (which are concussive energy) while made of extra-dimensional energy, still have a mass in physical space, thus are made of particles.
If not particle, then it would need to either be exotic energy waves that don’t produce mass with particles, extra dimensional distortion, physics breaker god power, ect….
I just want to mention how cool Sydney’s shield is. You see a lot of beehive barriers made of tesselating hexagons in fiction, but not many go beyond that. Sydney’s shield is made of hexagons that are themsevles made of parallelograms arranged around triangles, which makes it just a bit cooler than every other shield on the market.
Did anyone else read Teamups and Crossovers by Marion G. Harmon? After Hope (Astra) gets returned to her own reality thanks to Aztec, the last story is about the “capes” in the Virginia Tidewater area, who get an assist from Astra on vacation. The heroine of that story is a fish-morpher, who attacks a giant animated statue from just such an angle. Successfully. Then it falls on her. Astra catches it.
I hope Max arrives in time to catch the collapsing Squiddley Diddley, so Halo isn’t buried in mountains of smelly squid.
Surprise butt laser!
The thought occurs to me. She probably shouldn’t be able to hit him from there either. Looking at the spot where she attacked from the first time, it looks like it’s shield is wrapped fairly tightly around it’s body, rather than being a large orb like her shield is. Unless it doesn’t actually have a shield at all and just deflected her beam with psychic powers.
You know, a quadruped of that size with that leg configuration. . . The amount of leg strain and torque near it’s hips has to be immense.
Assuming its muscular structure and skeletal structure is anything like that of terrestrial animals and this thing is some massive collection of woven tentacle like cellular fibers that use growth and absorb as a means to produce movement *plant like locomotion sped up*, or something else equally different from traditional earthly organisms that would allow the three cubed law to not be as strict against it as it would be with something with a skeletal, muscular, and connective tissue structure would be. It could just be a giant series of fluid filled tubes using hydraulic pressure to move, as well as distributing the force of pull not on the central connective point but down the opposite legs as they pull each other to move.
it could have a cellular crystal carbon structure making it both light and incredibly durable…which if that option could give Sydney an eye twitch moment of…she got in the shield but still the most she did was the equivalent of sticking a stick pin in its butt.
See? The lightbee orb CAN go through things :) Since it’s really just a projection of the actual orb (which is why it’s not bound a certain distance from Sydney unlike the real orbs).
… What did it go through? And it’s a physical projection, just like the Hentorb
Remember, Sydney had to find a window with broken glass to get it into the Wars Factory
“… What did it go through?”
The rubble around Sydney. And the alien’s impenetrable shield.
“And it’s a physical projection, just like the Hentorb”
No, it’s not a physical projection. And in fact it cannot touch anything, just like Sydney’s projection cannot touch anything until she teleports. Also the hentorb is not a projection at all.
“Remember, Sydney had to find a window with broken glass to get it into the Wars Factory”
Remember that DaveB mentioned that he forgot that the orb could go through things back then.
You… do realise the rubble Sydney was sheltering under had huge gaps in it, don’t you? o_O
And Sydney is making an ass out of herself and you that Squiddy even has a shield
Hentorb is a projection: when it is not in use, you can see the tentacle curled up inside, and when it is deployed… no coiled tentacle, plus, it has to manifest outside Mr Buble
Don’t remember DaveB saying that at all
And, if Lightbee wasn’t physical, how would Sydney be able to sense when there is anything obstructing it’s path? Sydney said she could ‘feel’ if there is something in the space she wants to enter, kinda like how the Daphne’s are able to detect if it’s safe to *VORP*
“Hentorb is a projection: when it is not in use, you can see the tentacle curled up inside, and when it is deployed… no coiled tentacle, plus, it has to manifest outside Mr Buble”
I don’t think you realize what a ‘projection’ is, at least as it compares to an actual hologram projection like what the comm orb does. The Violator is basically a solid energy construct. It’s never ‘not’ solid when it’s made. It never goes ‘through’ things.
“Don’t remember DaveB saying that at all”
And yet he did.
“And, if Lightbee wasn’t physical, how would Sydney be able to sense when there is anything obstructing it’s path?”
She wasnt able to describe how she can feel if there was something there. She’s mentioned that already as well. It had nothing to do with anything being solid. It’s not solid. It’s a projection, just like the projection of her. Can see, hear, but can’t touch, as she described it to Ariana.
Again, Lightbee didn’t go through anything, notice panel five with it going around the building?
Go back to the Wars Battle, when she is describing that to Daphne. You are getting Holo-Halo mixed up with Lightbee
Also in this very comic, Sydney already outright shows that the comm orb’s ‘projection’ is just harmless light. Not a ‘solid’ object. Because a solid object would not be harmless.
So, “Dr Scoville, Proctologist” sounds like 2 things to me:
1) a Dr I never want to meet in his/her professional capacity. (There are places I don’t want capsaicin, and that’s one of them), and
2) a really weird reimagining of that Dr Quinn show. Maybe not quite hentai… maybe.
Am I alone in this?
Not wanting to be a downer, but I’m going to be disappointed if Sydney severely injures or kills McKree the Mechathulhu in one or two shots.
Don’t get me wrong, I love the characters, the comic, and the writing… it’s just if the theories and assumptions about McKree being familiar with Orb-users are correct, it’s going to be ready to defend itself from any angle, just in case of a teleport into a blind spot. And an one shot takedown at this point would feel cheap.
Agrecian with you: Sydney taking down Squiddy with one shot would be boring and even more unrealistic than fairly much half of what we have already seen
It would be hardly one shot; the battle has been ongoing for quite a few pages now.
But yes, it probably won’t be just one shot from here on, not unless there’s a whole load more of these guys or there is a way to twist things towards communication (which would be a good way to use lots of comic panels). She will likely hurt it though.
Was talking about towards Squiddy, which, technically, this would be the second shot, butt if it connects with it’s butt, then it would be one shot that hit, and that is all that matters
I dunno, part of me would like to see Sydney be able to take down Squidward….. just to have two more Squidwards beam down. Ie, Squidward is just one of the thousands (or more) of aliens on that ship.
But I also don’t want this to become another year long battle like the restaurant parking lot and Vehemence. :)
In the next thrilling installment…aliens come out of nowhere….
AND JUST IN TIME….
Rescue Squidward!
Teleport? Or should it be Tele-poit?
Halo-port
there’s also the possibility that it does block teleporters, but most teleports tend to exceed a certain threshold of energy signature when they’re moving, whereas sydney’s teleport seems to happen so quietly that it probably doesn’t register, and i wouldn’t be surprised if it’s cheating somehow to be that efficient
either way, the point is about to be moot in a few seconds
`Depends on whether or not said teleporters are “glyph-readers” (like Monica) or if they are using the “Library’s” teleport/transport system.
Oops!
I wish I could delete this. It was supposed to be a response to someone on page-1 of these comments for this page.
interesting, the question of if this thing is a living being not withstanding, this will be the first time she has actually killed something mano y mano. the fighters don’t count, they could have been drones and it was impersonal. she will be able to see the light die in it’s multifaceted eyes, he the death rattle in it’s throat equivalent and perhaps hear it cry for it’s brood neuter and cresh mates.