Grrl Power #663 – Executive class
I wasn’t sure what to have Vale watching there on the screen for a while, I went back and forth between something metal like the club scene from Blade 2 or Hellraiser, but that felt a little predictable. Of course, having her watching a cutesy cartoon is nearly as predictable as it’s a straight reversal of the trope. Maybe I should have had her watching something super brain dead like The Bachelorette or a daytime soap, but then a lot of you would have been all “anyone know what she’s watching?”
If you’ve never heard of a solar updraft tower, they’re a pretty cool ideal. I have a wikipedia link there for you, but the short version is, build a hollow tower, the taller the better, like 500-1000 meters, and since the upper atmosphere is always cooler than the lower atmosphere, even at night, wind travels up the tower, since heat rises. Put some wind turbines in there, and you have constant power. To make it more efficient, put a huge greenhouse at the base to really collect the hot air, and we’re talking about something in the order of 1/10th of the Hoover Dam’s output.
You can even use some of the greenhouse space as an actual greenhouse, of course, you’d have to shield most of the plants from the constant wind, so you lose efficiency there.
The point is, I wonder what Deus is planning on doing with the Skybreaker and a ton of power?
Edit: Wow, I had no idea Teen Titans Go was so reviled. Maybe I’ll swap the screen out with something else. On the other hand, she is a bad guy(?).
The vote incentive is updated! I have another mock cover I painted, but I’ll give you guys a break from that stuff and put up a portrait of Max. Mostly just painting practice. I think it turned out pretty good, but it’s still not… there. But it’s an improvement, and that’s the important part. For some reason I like drawing Max wearing t-shirts she would probably never actually wear. Maybe on laundry day, but never around the base or the press.
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Cool I love that solar stuff. AND Titans!
Coulda been PONIES! Why wasn’t it PONIES?
I know. Ponies would have been 20% cooler.
And about 2000% less controversial
I mean, MAN is Teen Titans Go! hated!
*meh* my young children love Teen Titans Go. I mean, they just couldn’t keep with most of the other hero stuff at their age but give ’em some basic, self-contained episode storyline with some crazy antics that all adhere to the core of the characters in loose ways and heck I’ll happily feed them it as gateway [s]drug[/s] comic hero material.
If you haven’t already, you should introduce them to Justice League Action. It’s also meant for younger watchers and has self-contained episode storylines, but also has a lot of wit! I watch it on occasion, it’s a little cringy sometimes (again, meant for little kids) but they have some hilarious jokes in there. Best of all, no twerking!
Justice League Action is a great show! Just wish they’d release new episodes…
or at the very least longer episodes(I can’t watch stuff shorter than 15 min usually)
Because Titans GO! is shit enough, you want to cause tears of blood as well as vomiting?
Because Vale is an eldritch horror?
I can’t be the only one who actually likes Teen Titans Go!, can I? I don’t believe I’m the sole & solitary target demographic for TTG – is there anyone else in the comments who’ll admit to enjoying it?
Possibly. You might need to make like Titans and GO.
I like Go but only if I get the black stones.
Having never watched the original Teen Titans (“Gasp! You monster!” Yeah, I know, I’m trying to fix it), I don’t feel the hate directed at it is deserved either.
At worse, I’d describe it as mediocre. There are definitely some episodes that are better off not existing, and due to the ways some characters act it feels like the only reason they get in a relationship is due to the original show. That said, there is some genuinely entertaining creative material, and most of the episodes that don’t focus on someone emphasizing their flaws (yes those exist) are decent or better.
It’s definitely good as shut-off you brain or watch while you work material. Their songs that aren’t basically one word are often well thought out and entertaining (especially the parodies, but some orginals as well) and as the seasons progressed I found myself looking up a number of them for their artistic value. The show is also self aware in how bad it can be, and does occasionally take steps towards improvement and diversity of content.
Ultimately, I personally find the show enjoyable if far from perfect, and there are tons of worse shows out there. In a world of equal good and bad content it’d be middle of the pack, but in this world, I feel it can easily be considered more than that.
P.S. I also enjoy their attempts at parodying abridged material and bad concepts from other shows (such as the common filler-esq plot of characters getting stuck inexplicably in a location e.g. an island, because the writers are probably running out of material).
I would agree that the vast majority of people who hate TTG hate it because we watched the original, but it’s a little deeper than it being a ‘redheaded child’…The main reason I hate TTG so much is simply that they mock the characters I grew up with. I know it’s a parody show, but it almost feels like they hate the characters in the ways they portray them, and it’s frustrating. If they had made completely original characters and gave them those eccentric personalities, I wouldn’t mind. But instead they are reusing the characters I grew up to love and respect and openly exaggerating their worst traits. To add salt to the wound, when a lot of us older fans heard there was going to be a new teen titans, we got excited because we thought that CN was going to finally finish the original series, which had never actually had a proper finale. Instead we got twerking.
If you can enjoy the series, I don’t see anything wrong with that. Just understand that not everyone can bring themselves to enjoy it under the circumstances…
That’s fair. I personally relish the idea of people parodying my beloved childhood characters (not, I should note, that any of these characters are childhood characters), but I can totally understand if someone doesn’t appreciate that. There are other kinds of decisions in shows/movies/books that my friends and family would brush off that stuck with me. And yes, the timing of the show’s release does seem poor, in relation to the events that lead up to it (especially if they never provided closure).
I merely wanted to share a critique/opinion based on the show’s own merits, rather than the events surrounding it, because from what I’ve read here and heard elsewhere, it is being judged on the merits of it’s predecessors instead.
As I’ve said previously, these characters are not a part of my childhood, and most of my knowledge of the main cast is secondhand at best (minus a little info about Robin, and a… three panel comic about Cyborg (not even sure if it was the same person)). I knew the villains a bit better, because they tend to get around, but that isn’t saying much.
Despite that, I’ve found that due to my general knowledge of the characters and their quirks, my entertainment was amplified, and my interest in other materials grew. There are many shows and movies which operate under an IP that adds nothing to their value, and gains nothing back, content which would have been just as good unassociated from the IP.
I know you said you wouldn’t mind if they had used original characters with the same personalities, but do you think you would have given them any of your time if they had been original? Would people like me?
I’m unashamed to say the first season was bad, and the main reasons I stuck around were that it was parody, and a vague interest in the one character who, at the time, seemed sane. I probably would have dropped it and lost the chance watch it grow, were it not for the first reason. I feel it produced some genuinely good content, and created interest in the source material because it was parody. I feel it served a purpose. Drawing new people to a fandom you love, and that they may too.
That’s fair. I personally relish the idea of people parodying my beloved childhood characters (not, I should note, that any of these characters are childhood characters), but I can totally understand if someone doesn’t appreciate that. There are other kinds of decisions in shows/movies/books that my friends and family would brush off that stuck with me. And yes, the timing of the show’s release does seem poor, in relation to the events that lead up to it (especially if they never provided closure).
I merely wanted to share a critique/opinion based on the show’s own merits, rather than the events surrounding it, because from what I’ve read here and heard elsewhere, it is being judged on the merits of it’s predecessors instead.
As I’ve said previously, these characters are not a part of my childhood, and most of my knowledge of the main cast is secondhand at best (minus a little info about Robin, and a… three panel comic about Cyborg (not even sure if it was the same person)). I knew the villains a bit better, because they tend to get around, but that isn’t saying much.
Despite that, I’ve found that due to my general knowledge of the characters and their quirks, my entertainment was amplified, and my interest in other materials grew. There are many shows and movies which operate under an IP that adds nothing to their value, and gains nothing back, content which would have been just as good unassociated from the IP.
I know you said you wouldn’t mind if they had used original characters with the same personalities, but do you think you would have given them any of your time if they had been original? Would people like me?
I’m unashamed to say the first season was bad, and the main reasons I stuck around were that it was parody, and a vague interest in the one character who, at the time, seemed sane. I probably would have dropped it and lost the chance watch it grow, were it not for the first reason. I feel it produced some genuinely good content, and created interest in the source material because it was parody. I feel it served a purpose. Drawing new people to a fandom you love, and that they may too.
[Hopefully this won’t double post, my browsers was having issues, and I’m not sure the comment was sent]
That’s weird, considering all the reviews that go into any detail at all, say that the characters have been made so two-dimensional, that any one of them could be delivering any line you hear in the show, and it would still “make sense” to the audience.
Maa… I disagree, for the most part. There is some interchangeability, and heck, I’m pretty sure they push some gimmicks (of the Naruto, “Believe it” level of gimmicky-ness) so hard to cover for the fact that characters are somewhat two-dimensional, but I wouldn’t refer to them as such in their entirety. There are moments where their actions remind you that they are not static, and they aren’t as shallow as a kiddy pool. Those moments may be far and few between, but considering the level of some other cartoons in recent years, that’s practically amazing.
Like I indicated in the past, I feel it rates mediocre to good. Not great, but not trash either.
TTG has moments of absolute genius between the overall hyperactiveness, random nonsense and nihilism.
I readily admit to enjoying it a lot. It rightfully skewers hard a series that took itself far too seriously and was deep into the “let’s make it gritty and depressing and everybody mumbles” territory.
That said, I do enjoy the original (200x) series. TTG just brings some needed balance to the force. And for anyone who thinks they’re not representing the characters faithfully or whatever, no, of course it doesn’t. TTG isn’t any kind of canon, it’s not even necessarily consistent with itself — how many episodes have everyone just died or been irrevocably altered or whatever, and then hit the reset button hard off-screen between episodes? It’s a room full of 70s writers just having the laugh of their life, the Teen Titans Tree House of Horrors, and we’re invited to join.
Touche and Dix, Nostalgia Critic actually did an Old Vs New on Teen Titans and TTG. He made compelling arguments for each about how they were good in their own way (granted we all know that the Original TT is better).
@ TheUnplanner – I’ll admit, that made me chuckle.
@argentplus – the original show does have a lot going for it (even if I’m only getting in to it now – it never made it to Africa in my youth), but I find TTG makes a nice antidote to day to day life and office work. I’ll have to look up that Nostalgia Critic review.
What makes me hate TTG is that one of the things I liked about the old show was the characters and relations between them. They were interesting and their friendship was a big part of the show. In TTG we have the same characters, voiced by the same actors, but their personalities were completely twisted. Robin’s especially bad – in the old show he was a real leader, in TTG he’s an obsessed, paranoid control freak. As for their friendship – in TTG they don’t even LIKE each other! There are still funny parts, but – the episode that permanently soured me on TTG was the one where BB and Cy have a staring contest that leads tot them ending up in the future where they find their teammates have al grown up into responsible adults. That horrifies them so much they change history – the Titans are still as immature as ever, Earth is in ruins after being overrun by aliens, and their teammates are desparate. BB’s reaction? ‘I can live with this.’
Isn’t Robin an obsessive paranoid control freak in the original show too? I think the main difference is that the original show leaned more towards serious material in that regard.
Well, Robin is Batman’s protege. Paranoia and control-freakery had to run off on him at some point, despite his best efforts.
Send those stupid ponies to the glue factory!
Is that a Stripper Pole on the plane?
It IS Deus’ plane, after all…
Could also be a bat pole
At first I thought you were talking about the striped pole on the plain.
+1
Could be there so Deus can recreate scenes from Ghostbusters. Go to plane level 3 and slide back down.
I was thinking the pole dancing stewardesses from the first Ironman movie.
Fireman’s pole?
The emergency exit.
Google image search “VP-BPZ”.
Wink, Wink, Nudge, Nudge…
She’s watching Teen Titans Go?
Truly she is evil.
That´s not evil that is just sick. More crazy than the Joker…
I realy gave it a chance about 5 different parts but every time in under one minute i had to pound my head on my desk. I don´t understand how that excelent old show could spawn this and who thougt it would be a good idea. Every part i saw robin was an idotic assh*le making fun of beast boy and that instantly kills it for me.
Periodically, this idea comes to certain people in the comic industry, that nobody is really serious about the superhero genre, so lets make fun of the whole thing and we’ll make a ton of money.
Examples abound. Myself, I’m so old that I remember “Herbie”. And sometimes they sell the crazy stuff to TV or movies.
And then DC or Marvel has to declare certain things “not canon” and pretend they never happened. Though it’s usually DC.
Herbie the Lovebug? o_O
H.E.R.B.I.E. was the Fantastic Four’s robot when Johnny ‘Human Torch’ Storm
wasn’t available due to contractual obligations.
(Thanks for nothing Google! Even with the periods H.E.R.B.I.E. fetches a VW.)
Google fu is not strong with you:
Simply adding on Fantastic four….
https://www.google.com/search?q=herbie+fantastic+four&oq=HERBIE+Fantastic+&aqs=chrome.0.0j69i57.8487j1j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
Ah me, the Fat Fury, Herbie. And then there was Grue.
And, there are certainly plenty of examples from the majors. Jimmy Olsen as TURTLEMAN! Always wondered if the TMNT had some connection.
So the original Herbie is forgotten?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbie_Popnecker
Even TTGo makes fun of how bad it is, compared to the old show. The writers know it’s awful.
And they know how stupid the viewers are, while they (everyone connected to the shit show) cash in their paychecks laughing
What i don´t get why anyone views that crap – No funny jokes, stupid dialog, bad character design, incredible bad visual (ok maybe there are some funny elements or good dialog hidden in this pile of crap as i said i haven´t watched it only short parts). Problem seems to be that many modern shows seem to be like that. Where is the quality in animation, good writing and so on. There are still good shows out but in my opinion the total quality took a dive.
And that, in a nutshell is why ponies inexplicably took off among an unexpected demographic. Everything else was just what you described, even far too many live action shows.
I know what you mean. I’ve always preffered the older cartoons when I was growing up (Hey, I’m talking about the late 1960’s here). Plenty of silly stuff was out there (Groovy Ghoulies, Underdog, for example) but there were quite a few that were well-written & well-presented, even given that every show was limited to hand-drawn cell animation (Jonny Quest).
It is only successful because the target audience has an attention span of .0015 nanoseconds and the writers would rather go with quick jokes than a thought-provoking plot to keep that sub-nanosecond long attention span on their show.
And, as other commentators have said, people just turn it on as background noise or as a ‘child minder’ and ignore it
And now to wait another six weeks. (sigh)
Liking the thermal power power.
That new Teen Titans series is an abomination and not funny. I would have gone with some classic Tom&Jerry for funny or maybe the classic 90s Batman. Hm I think my age is showing.
Almost any of the 90s superhero cartoons (which I will stretch slightly to include Justice League) would be a good choice, in my opinion. The Teen Titans cartoon from early 2000s would work as well.
They where all really good and well made. I just think that Batman was the best of the bunch. Not that I didn’t like Spiderman, or X-Men, Pinky And The Brain,… I just think the Batman series was the best and aged best of them. I do like the various Justice League, Avengers the old Teen Titans and the Young Justice series.
I liked The Zeta Project, that would have probably stumped a few people though.
Zeta Project, Batman Beyond and static shock where good as well. A few years ago I made a point of watching all the old series in order.
Agreed, all three were good, sorry Zeta ended so soon especially, though the other two had pretty good runs, as far as cartoon series went…
I am surprised that there is no mention of Cyber-6, Beast Wars, Reboot Shadowraiders[passable] Rupert.
Mind you most new animation is minimalist flash based with lazy writing, one dimensional characters and high levels of stupid + not-funny
Tom and Jerry should have all of it footage permanently tosssd into a black hole.
That is just after the mouse gets eaten. It became non-entertainment once you realize that no matter who starts the action, the mouse always wins.
I’ve lost all respect for her, watching that hideous thing.
She’s a non-human in a human skin, so who knows what she likes. Maybe TTG bores her in such a way that she is kept interminably awake, or it entertains her skin while her brain-equivalent rests. (OR she’s watching the interference patterns of the screen refreshing.)
I’ve lost all respect for her, watching that trash.
Same
The vote incentive is quite nice. I think she would only wear neutral, ARCON, AIR-FORCE T-Shirts or maybe something from a national park or something like that. She is aware that she is the representative or a government department.
She might wear that in the presence of a guy she respects her for things other than her looks.
…Is it just me, or are my comments going AWOL?
Oh, here it is. Just being… weird then.
I think that you need to reload twice nowadays.
Since the (wink,wink) upgrade months ago comments posted
won’t be visible to the commentator until the Grrl Power page is
closed, a different page opened and closed, and the
Grrl Power page opened again.
More likely this is an issue with your browser’s cache. Most web browsers retain pages in memory so they don’t have to refetch content they already have. This behavior was crucial back in the days of dialup Internet. Still valuable today if you have metered Internet service.
The problem of course is when the content of a page has changed since the last time you fetched it. Generally you can convince your browser to refetch rather than use it’s cached copy by navigating completely away from the page and then back again. This will of course depend on what sort of cache settings you have configured on your browser.
I use multiple devices to view the Grrl Power pages, and they all seem to have their own different ways of dealing with page caching. What I’ve found to be a reliable method of ensuring I’ve got the most current updated page loaded, is to use the navigation buttons on the Grrl Power web page to go back to the first page, then back to the latest. A pain in the keister I grant you, but it does work everytime.
No, as Random Wanderer said, the comments are just being ‘weird’: sometimes they will load straight away, some times they take a few minutes (and a couple refreshes) before they show
Is he planning to funnel updrafts trough another dimension or something?
Or is he just planning to open portals to cut on power transport costs by cutting holes between here and a fake power plant?
No, he’s using those Funnels to power the Cosmic Canopener
Obviously he’s going to use it to stop global warming, or global cooling, or whatever they’re calling it nowadays. Or something else equally virtuous and noble.
Something he started in the first place, so he can be the ‘hero’ and solve the problem (and make money off of it)
Although he did that in order to cure world hunger. And now he’s solving the problem caused by solving world hunger, thus fixing all problems for everyone forever.
He is planning on using the power to power SkyBreaker to … (wait for it) … to BREAK THE SKY!!! ….
Que evil laugher (https://youtu.be/1P526n6wfP4) … https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/808
(Crazy fan theory alert) Yep, he’s making a portal to the Doc Future universe and donating mass to that Skybreaker’s “spear”. Never mind a temperature differential, the tops of these towers will be sucking air into a black hole! The Skybreaker knife is actually only named that because Flicker sometimes notices the portals opening and comes over to visit.
> the Doc Future universe
Man, I love that series. It does not get nearly enough love, in my opinion.
I guess he COULD use it to open a rift to a desert area at the bottom and an arctic area at the top to make it really pump out the energy.
But if he was going to use it for power generation, he doesn’t need a tower that would actually work without it. He could just have a cheaper one along the ground and open a rift up in the stratosphere to create a huge vacuum from air pressure alone. Or use water in hydro for even greater power. One end starts just above the ocean while the other is at the bottom of the Mariana Trench.
Honestly, I’m willing to believe he was just out there checking it as one of his many more legitimate business developments, unrelated to the skybreaker and had Vale meet him… Of course I’m also wiling to believe that the foreshadowing comment about what he could do with the skybreaker was a misdirection to him simply using it for clean energy production.
My theory was the tower is there for plausible deniability on where the energy comes from. It’s one thing if your country’s energy comes from a power plant, it’s another if it comes from some guy’s house.
Makes sense.
If I was doing something like that I would just connect the top to the bottom and eliminate the frictional losses.
Secondary uses would be waste collection and recycling with a side order of smuggling.
Everything goes to a central depot where people need basic simple jobs on a large scale and they do primary and secondary sorting of everything.
Line a mine shaft with Teflon and aeration pipes – dump the organics in the top – let nature do the decomposition and compaction – siphon out the fertilizer out the bottom and natural gas out the top – sell at a premium.as green products.
Had a feeling we might have to wait to see the outcome of Sydney’s attack.
Dang it! ;)
Yes, we were due for a ‘Meanwhile on Earth…’ but I thought it was going to be
Maxima handling losing a teammate. Or not handling.
Still in the ‘Denile’ phase.
“She’s smart, she has her orbs, it’s only been a few hours, Dabbler is sure to
come up with something…”
Honestly, I’d be perfectly happy if the next time we see Sydney is as the crew come to her rescue and find her doing some victory dance over multiple squidwad bodies.
Best part is she’ll probably be half disappointed that she’s done all that work to get points only to be rescued.
I saw the portrait of Max on TWC before I came here – she looks great!
I don’t think I’ve ever seen Max look so relaxed. To me, she usually looks angry and/or threatening, though maybe that’s only me. I have Asperger’s and I’ve been told that’s why I have a hard time ‘reading’ people so to speak.
No, you got her right most of the time. At her most relaxed she still on guard almost all the time.
Though that shirt is far more Dabbler than Max.
what ever the teen titans are looking at it must be serious, since even Raven stumped
They are looking at the rating for the show, wondering why anyone would watch that shit
Maybe Deus thought: The Sky is the limit? Not for me it isn’t!
Is he creating a portal to a place much further away from earth, but still within the atmosphere? That would be a fascinating way to counter climate change.
That would be a logistical nightmare considering who and what goes zooming around up there.
There is also the issue of things falling in and ending up in the stratosphere. Never a good thing.
He could put one end near the base of a tower with a safety net and the other near the bottom of a deep dig mine shaft. Air in there is hot moist and under pressure, so venting that would draw cool dry air down from the surface. Win win with the bonus of duty free exchange of goods and materials between the two locations.
She’s watching Teen Titans Go! ?! Truly, she IS an Eldritch Abomination! (Seriously, I hate that show. It took everything I liked about Teen Titans and ruined it.)
Should’ve used a South Park cartoon instead….!
So what’s Deus up to this week?
The same thing he is always up to: planning on taking over the world
Narf!
He said “South Park” and you’re quoting “Pinky and the Brain” ???
Maybe that Fat Albert parody-Fat Abbot!?
“I’m-a going-a pop-a your-a bitch-a ass-a too-a bitch-a!”
Because that’s the quote Pinky asks Brain every episode
Wonder if he’s going to portal gun it. Put one end of the portal at the top of the stack and the other at the very base of the stack.
Would wind up with ever increasing wind velocities and heat concentration. Those reflectors can get the tower up past a few thousand degrees, so might even be able to generate plasma in those stacks.
That’s not a solar furnace tower. That’s a solar updraft tower (as the notes say). The flat area round the outside is basically a glorified greenhouse, and fairly benign on the outer edges, but the tower itself has a huge hot wind blasting up it the whole time, which drives turbines (placed at a convenient location). I’m not sure if any have been built in real life, but the engineering challenges involved are pretty modest as you don’t need to find materials that will take heating to a thousand degrees or more without melting.
Would those work best in Tonado Alley?
Would they have the side benefit of taking the fuel
away from potential tornadoes?
They would work well in Tornado Alley but not because of the tornadoes. The constant high level winds to keep the top end cool and the flat plains collecting sunlight are what make them good.
I thought Tornadoes were formed by temperature inversions.
Hot air held down by layers of cooler air.
These chimneys would relieve that imbalance.
The real world problem is the cost of a chimney strong enough
to support its own weight to the height required.
Taller than the tallest radio tower and 100 feet or greater
in diameter at the top??
Making a perpetual motion machine would cause the air to fall, it only rises because it floats on top of heavier air. But…
I would expect that gravity would be distorted around the openings, causing the energy to balance out. To go through to a location that’s higher, you’d need to go through a region of intense gravity pushing you back, which could cause serious health problems.
Of course, the expected gravity control needed to maintain a wormhole is something like a negative Jupiter’s worth of mass, so if you’re able to avoid throwing the planets out of orbit that may be a moot point.
“Making a perpetual motion machine “. Those cannot be made, the laws of Physics prevents it. However, the Patent Office, just a few years ago issued a patent on a perpetual motion machine
The patent office has recently issued one for displaying data on a screen from a distributed database.
Yeah, the idiots issued a patent to some troll group for the internet.
Hm… I’d suggest housing and industry under the greenhouses. One story down to be out of the wind and heat obviously. But no need to waste all that useful visible light and weather-proofing you got going on. Not nearly as space efficient as a skyscraper, but would you need it to be? The housing density of suburbia and some power-hungry industry will fill the space nicely.
This one appears to be surrounded by mirrors for heating the lower parts of the tower. Which block all the sunlight from the ground. Efficient, but makes the ground unusable.
Also, the heat would lessen the strength of the metal used in making the tower.
Given that the newer solar panels are about 19.2% efficient, seems like a lot of trouble for not much gain, unless you’re trying to pump hot air into the layer a few thousand feet up so it will rain downwind or something. In which case, they left off the half million protestors carrying signs reading “NEVER CHANGE ANYTHING ABOUT THIS PLANET”.
That’s the thing about having your own country full of people who vividly remember the Time Before Deus and who now are enjoying *infrastructure* for the first time in their lives. Galytnians (Galytners? Galytns?) aren’t Latverians yet, but they’re probably not going to tolerate hordes of outside protesters. The NGOs must HATE this place.
Yup, but a solar tower is a degree of magnitude easier to make than a solar panel factory. It’s a good ‘intermediate’ technical hack for generating power and doesn’t have the pollution footprint of a solar panel factory (they’re mostly made in China for a reason).
I was going to complain about the scene switch because I wanted to see Squidward get proctoed, and then I realized that no I really really really didn’t want to see that.
Also, Re: Incentive: I think Dabbler did a light glamor on Max’s shirt without Max realizing it.
Don’t kid yourself, Deus is building a HELIOS One :P
Oh no, does that mean he’s gonna build ARCHIMEDES next?!
I personally dislike Teen Titans Go. It is childis for the sake of being childis. But I think that Vale is going to get a lot more hate from the “original” Teen Titans cartoon than she deserves. TTG is bad. But there are worse things outthere.
We simply are upset that they thrased a good show with a lot of following for this… joke.
A few of the originals were funny, the new ones are either dull, weird or boring. Often all three.
At the time of Grrl Power, no, TTG! was the upper limit in regards to shit cartoons
Pool on a plane, cool why isn’t it an infinity pool on a plane?
I perhaps you can still retcon that in just out of sight, there is infinity pool rich and then there is infinity pool in a plane with a big ass window, rich :D?
A pool on a plane is just insane. Firstly, water weighs a lot and you’ll need tonnes of the stuff to make a pool worthy of the name. Secondly, it slops around when the environment it is in undergoes varying accelerations, and that’s pretty strongly expected on a plane, especially when taking off (or landing).
Ahhh but a pool on a zeppelin is a horse-bath of a different colour. It just means you put all your ballast in one tank and occasionally the pool is ‘closed for refilling’
This is EXACTLY why Deus should have a pool on his plane. Incredibly expensive, unthought-of luxury, and profligately wasteful – the ultimate show of wealth.
I agree with everything else you just said there, but if you think a pool on a plane is the ultimate show of wealth, you are greatly underestimating Deus.
Exactly. It’s just as decadent as marble flooring in your zeppelin, or a nuclear motor for your jet.
…. actually, if you could pull it off from a mass and safety perspective, a nuclear motor for your jet would be extremely practical. You’d never need to land for refueling.
(Yes, technically you’d need to refuel, but you’d need to land to take on rations and empty the chemical toilet LONG before then, so refueling would not be the reason you landed.)
Vale just made an innuendo based joke. Which brings a thought to mind:
Has Deus slept with Vale?
It’d be easy to understand him, EVEN him, wanting to keep things entirely professional with his personal bodyguard, and we don’t know exactly what sort of creature she is yet or if she’s even capable of intercourse in the way we understand it. Her human form could really just be like a ‘shell’ for something like camouflage, so she can interact with humans in a way that won’t leave most screaming in terror. For all we know it ends there and is not actually capable of ‘sex’.
BUT she’s more or less human while holding that shape, well lets look at the facts:
Deus likes to trophy bang exotic ladies.
She “likes to watch”, that could be simple curiosity (like watching an exotic tv show) or it could be legit voyeurism.
Having been around to guard (and watch) him during his aforementioned trophybangs, she is privy to the info that he supposedly IS as good as he claims to be.
And she is apparently capable of casual dirty jokes.
I’m guessing he’s banged her at some point. Normally the disqualifier would be the ‘you can’t do that on television’ issue, but this comic attempts to be very realistic about basic interaction, including a bluntness about sex paralleling the way many humans are very open and blunt about sex in this day and age.
As it is my mind was blown when she yawed. It suggests the “shell” is more than just a simple covering.
I’ve been thinking that it would be the ultimate irony if Deus never was able to convince Vale to do that. She is not to be underestimated, in any capacity. She probably puts Dabbler to shame. :)
Hmm….actually, I can think of a way you could do actual agriculture under while actually increasing the efficiency by a considerable margin….mind you at much greater cost. Instead of using plane glass for the ‘upper layer’ layer the top in the currently-indevelopement printed solar cells (they’re see through, but are like slightly tinted glass, so light would still get through to some extent). Leave a gap for the wind to go through and then build a large circular greenhouse underneath that is completely enclosed. The sun that gets through the top-layer solar cells heats the greenhouse (which doesn’t acttually need constant sunlight to get or stay warm) that acts as a secondary ground level heat source. And by having the smaller gap but the same amount of heat and gasses, the air would actually move at a higher velocity which would in turn provide a more efficent turbine operation (think a hose when you put your thumb over it. the same amount of fluid, just harder/faster). So, you get to tripple dip on the same light source. twice for energy and once for growing plants.
ALTERNATIVELY you could go with a ocean based idea, where you build these off shore over an ocean, and use the area previously explained for green-house, to be used as a location for evaporation based desalination.
Greenhouse covers are usually translucent, NOT transparent. Mostly because many of the plants valuable enough to actually bother with greenhouse growing do better in partial shade. And because indirect light will encourage plants to grow evenly and not lopsided to the sun.
So yeah – that is pretty good idea. Material cost is still an issue because of the constant strong winds. Can’t use cheep plastic sheeting for this!
Random thought, really good job on the leather seats, especially in panel two. They’re damned near photorealistic.
Another cliffhanger… Will I end up hating DaveB? … No, that new Maxima´s portrait of the vote incentive, makes me unable to.
Regarding the vote incentive, Max has a brother, he’s been displayed to be a jerk (even if he got over it). Maybe he sends her T-shirts & the like as troll-gifts. And, on occasion (when she’s out of other things to wear), she actually wears one. Of course, she could be borrowing that shirt from Kenya…
My bet is on Dabbler having developed a photogenic ink that displays for just a brief second under the right conditions. Embed micro-receivers in the fabric of the shirt, and you can change it to whatever you like.
That sounds very like Dabbler. Instant headcanon!
Aww man! Couldn’t have waited till after Sydney tried destroying the killer robot?
The Vote incentive of Max is ridiculously good.
Just need to do the same for each character (well, maybe the major players – but must have Sydney, Dabbler and Harem).
Must
Have
One
Of
Each
I’m sensing a pokemon vibe here… gotta catch em’ all or something like that.
I do agree Dave did a spectacular job on it. I have one of his earlier incentives titled “max-experiment” it is just her head but she looks worn out and upset like she had a hard day and put next to this one it’s like a before a good nights sleep and after shot.
The invotive seems familiar, have we seen it (or something similar) before? Not saying that that would be a bad thing, just wondering why it seems familiar…
One very big bonus plus for having GP set in 2011: 7 years away from Valeur watching “Thundercats ROAR!”, the show that finally surpassed TTG in shitting on the fans of the original
TTGo is pretty boring. Now “SpongeBob SquarePants” would be the proper way to mentally unwind.
Does anyone else think that this will play a part in Sydney getting back?
No.
I do.
Well, I hope that happens, Deus is in some need of reglorification after his last slip of the slip.
Those aren’t mirrors, they’re a greenhouse. You can see in the second to last panel that they’re a solid, horizontal surface.
“Maybe I should have had her watch something super brain dead”
…uh, you kind of did; TTG is about as ‘brain dead’ as you can get outside Twilight
For some reason, Vale is really growing on me. She may be a wad of horrifying ectoplasm in a human like shell, but that yawn in panel two is cute as hell.
It is interesting that Vale is seen relaxing, yawning and stretching here, given that we know:
a) her body is a shell
b) she is apparently an eldritch creature, immensely resilient and possibly made of energy, which would suggest she is not subject to human limitations.
Is it learned behavior – simple mimicry, or perhaps her shell is good enough that it actually includes human sensations? It seems likely Deus would have sprung for, um, enhanced simulation of physical sensory input, but I can’t see why he would include stiffness and fatigue.
Or is she trying to learn to be more human?
Given that she is seen watching human comedy pop culture, and subsequently surprising Deus by making a joke, indicating it is not something she normally does, makes me think it may be a desire to learn. I really want to know why she (/he/it/unknowable but would melt your sanity, choose gender as appropriate) is willing to stay with Deus, and what her history is – she seems the most intriguing character in the comic at present.
Note: There are many interesting and fun characters & I am not bashing on anyone’s favourite! It’s simply that in terms of possibilities she seems the one with the most potential for an interesting background and history.
Vale’s become the main reason I’m so excited for future developments. If my ideas are anywhere near right, we’re in for tons of fun. :)
Sounds intriguing- any theories that you may wish to share?
The possibilities are endless, but I keep coming up with scenarios that are just too good to spoil if they happen. :(
At the very least, I fully expect the final confrontation to be one hell of a matchup, so stay tuned. I know I will. :)
‘Galtyn, on the forefront of clean renewable energy for the 21st century and beyond’
Truely, the face of evil. OPEC demands extreme sanction.
Yeah, I’m willing to believe this is another “evil” misdirection.
Mwaha! Imagine what Sciona could do with the Skybreaker? HA! I’m more interested in what I can do with it! Ripe a hole to the stratosphere at the top of the tower and ho! Clean energy! MWAAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!
Mwaha! I killed the former king of Galtyn! Who was a terrible human being and tortured others for fun…
Mwaha! I virtually rule Galtyn! Aaaaand have significantly improved it’s economy, self-sustainability, the welfare of it’s people, yadda yadda…
Just think of the jobs a project like this generates. And not only blue collar construction and farming jobs but some decent engineering jobs as well. The construction jobs go away once the tower is built, while the farming jobs remain forever. And if Galytn is blessed with endless expanses of barren waste lands then a decent construction labor pool could be maintained for years while the country transforms into a nation that can actually use all of that energy in its urban centers while the crop production increases at a proportional level. And until that time they can sell energy as an export that doesn’t strip the nation of any natural resources.
Aw, nuts! I hate the timing of this page…Leave it to DaveB to give us a Smash-Cut just before Sydney delivers the Blast-Butt!
(I’m just kidding around, DaveB. Whether writing books, comics, movies, or any other type of action-oriented story, a good writer will take advantage of suspense (Alfred Hitchcock) & antici…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..pation)
……………………………….pation)
Midnight, you should have waited til page 2 of the comments popped, at least.
If you really wanted to break the trope, you could have her watching Barnwood Builders.
Antiques Roadshow would also be good.
NOT the American version, those idiots base the valuations on the cost of restoration (that’s if they don’t dismiss restored items as ‘no longer being antiques’)