Grrl Power #664 – The biggest collar of her career
I don’t know what Sydney is hoping to accomplish with suggesting that thing is under arrest. I mean it’s obviously just a suggestion. There’s no indication the thing even understand English, and even if it decided to surrender or whatever the next step would be, her whole goal is to beat the hit dice out of the thing until a skill point falls out.
I guess it’s partially to ease her own conscience, as if this goes as she needs it to, this will be her first time killing something. Assuming that thing is alive and not some sort of mecha-kaiju. It helps that it’s a huge rampaging monster. She would probably have a heck of a lot more trouble killing something more human looking. She blew up a few of those mannekillers, but they were soulless automatons. It also assuming all those fighters were drones and not manned. It’s convenient how those things stopped attacking as soon as Sydney decided to focus on the big guy. Basically I sort of forgot. They probably should still be swarming her, or at least some stragglers should be picking at her shields. Maybe they actually ran out? Or they just decided there was no point in tossing more materiel into the meat grinder that is The Mighty Halo.
As I post this page, it occurs me that I maybe should have posted this page on Monday, and Monday’s today. I do like popping back and forth between Sydney and stuff back on Earth, but it was kind of a weird place to break the fight. Maybe once we’re past these pages, I’ll change up the order in WordPress if I can figure out how, to make it read a bit smoother.
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Something worth considering: we don’t know anything about the lightbee’s durability.
It may be possible to ensnare or destroy it, though in the latter case I’m sure it can be remade if not immediately. If that’s holo-Halo and she’s taunting a breath attack, she might suddenly find herself unable to use the teleport to get herself out of a jam…
The “lightbee” is not a physical object and as such can not be touched.
This suggests otherwise. Why didn’t she send it through the glass pane if that’s the case?
Because DaveB forgot that the lightbee was not physical.
You said here that DaveB said he forgot the orb could go through things. Where was that? In his comment on that page, he said he didn’t think of putting the head part of Sydney’s image through the pane, not the orb itself.
Thank you
He said it a while ago, shortly after the Mars warehouse scenes. Maybe DaveB will read this and clear up the confusion so I don’t have to go through a few thousand posts to find out where he said it. I clearly remember him writing that he forgot though, in response to someone else in the comments.
I searched DaveB’s comments in the discussion section, but not the blurbs, from pages 497-546 and didn’t see anything relating to that, if it narrows it down.
I’m willing to just wait and see if it becomes relevant in the next few pages.
Direct quote from the blurb on #89 about the Comball: In case it’s not clear, the comm-ball has to send out the smaller, inner orb, and the holo-Sydney projects from that point, so it’s a little like Rimmer from Red Drawf once they introduced the “light bee.”
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/494
From that, I’m assuming the Main Comball is the transmitter, it sends out a smaller physical receiver/projector orb (aka a lightbee) to the designated location and then creates the hologram. Or for the teleportation side, acts as a transmat pad. The thing is from all we know Sydney’s never checked to see if the lightbee was physical or not, but knowing Red Dwarf, a lightbee is a solid holo-emitter (as Lister in one episode to punish Rimmer, swallows the lightbee), a later version gains the ability to produce a hardlight hologram (which may be an upgrade on the Comball’s branch)…
Or maybe Sydney forgot that the lightbee can go through things. It wouldn’t be out of character for her.
top that any time Light bee is out it dodges items. back around 100 pages she talks to Harem about teleportation and the feeling she has when she moves light bee around. went something like…
” when you teleport how do you know you wont pop into something when you arrive?”
“Well i get this feeling like there is something there and i just move to where there isn’t.”
“It’s similar to my light bee I can feel the walls and things but I can’t see what is there until i make the illusion.”
back during the interview when she was showing off her powers she stuck her holographic selfs hand through the lawyers head.
yes but that was the illusion not the lightbee that little dot is the only solid there. think of it as the hollow projector that the DR on star trek voyager uses to get round but on a smaller level.
Should have gone with the Enima. Just a knee won’t cut it, syd.
I hope sydney has time to shoot it where the sun doesn’t shine (inner alien butt-stomach lighting system aside), LOL
She is also just a wee bit outside her jurisdiction.
As for the fighters, unless the aliens have effectively unlimited resources, they probably simply decided that sending them out to get blown up while doing nothing to Sydney is a waste of resources (and pilots if manned). Especially as tall, dark, and multi-everything here seems to be at least able to keep her at bay without dying.
Well, at least he was. Not so much now.
I would like to point out that, just by looking at the graphics, I have not the faintest clue what is going on here. And this isn’t the first time. Recently the artwork has been beset by a trend to be dark, obscure and uninterpretable. I strongly suggest reverting to the prior format.
Panel 3 shows a leg getting sliced off. Panel 4 has it lurching from balance issues.
Panel 5 it’s looking at its severed leg.
Panel 6? It’s chest seems to have opened up into something that looks like a sea anemone while it screams “Raaooo.” Possibly the prelude to shooting a stronger beam at her, or to eating her. Dunno.
By the way, it seems to be standing over a crater it made earlier.
Page 658 shows the head gear it’s wearing and the toothed, tentacled orafice is more of the mouth position assuming it doesn’t have a neck.
I think that tentacled mouth orifice is one of it’s hands.
Was thinking that as well
I had no problem following the flow/sequence of events.
Either your monitor is dark, or its just you *sorry I don’t think there is anyway to make that sound nicer*
I’ve seen much, MUCH, worse comics with crazy jagged boxes…or Marvel’s sometimes issue of switching from the story flow being on one page or splashing across two pages and not realizing till you hit that long box half way down you were supposed to have read across the two pages to get the right flow of the conversation and/or events.
Seems to me you’re missing a lot of subtle stuff. Alien as this being may be, the 2nd panel clearly shows it being surprised as its leg is being amputated. Almost an “oh, sh**!” look with the tentacles straightened out and the eyes wider. Masterful work, Dave. Bravo!
Sorry guys, maybe I have defective pattern recognition, but I see nothing of the sort. All I know is that up until recently, I had zero trouble following any action. There has been an obvious recent change in art style.
No, I’m with you, Panels 3 and 4 are too close up, too filled with things to understand anything, either you should see the monster from far away or the action should becleaned, it’s not the first time, Dave tends to “ramble” and experiment a lot, causing serious issues trying to follow what happens, or filling in too much unnecesary gags and text.
“Too filled with things to understand anything”? o_O
Panel two has Sydney’s Enema-Beam going off, Panel three has the beam connecting with the leg, panel four has Squiddly lurching as it’s leg falls off
What is there, in any of those three panels, that is difficult to understand?
To set and maintain the scene frequently having one panel zoom out more to show more is normal. The closest we have is panel 4 which unfortunately doesn’t show enough, not Halo and panel 3 is fairly useless. The last panel could have more elaboration with another bigger image to show what the alien looks like.
Contrast page 663 with it’s bright and clear graphics with the art on this page, or page 658, where the action is pretty obscure due to the darkness of the pages.
You… do realise last page was during daylight, and this page (and 658) is at night?
Panel six is supposed to be a little blurry to imply motion as Squiddly gets ready to eat Sydney
You do realise that the last page (663) was a cut-away to Earth to show what Vale and Deus were doing and has absolutely nothing to do with the present fight on the Alari Homeworld between McKree and Sydney, where everything is dark due to the numerous fires belching smoke into the air?
I think you’re picking faults just to pick faults. As for the darkness causing problems with you reading it, I have light sensitivity, so I have to either turn down my monitor’s brightness or wear my shades when looking at it and I have no problems following this.
I just started wondering, does the comm orb maybe have a translator function? One of the inactive features might let her communicate with her current attackers and manage to somehow convince them to stop with trying to kill her.
I somehow DOUBT that.
It might have a Universal Translator slash Babelfish function, butt, as of now, Sydney has either not discovered it (and now is not the time to search) or hasn’t bought it yet
Also, unlike with Trent, it’s a bit late for talks
I’m glad you threw in the reference to Sydney’s ‘assault or battery’ convo. That cracked me up enough to licit strange looks on the subway from other passengers. …..totally worth it though.
I’ve never battered a Federal officer. Do you fry them or bake them afterwards?
Hang a sec, if someone really has it in for this planet, is destroying one of these things going to be enough? Could there be more of them waiting to pound boots on the ground?
Maybe the hit squad is already gone and this is a just planetary scavenger here to corefuck the place. The question remains: is this going to be the only one of them? Will they ever get enough?