Grrl Power #67 – Jedi yoink
Whew, just barely finished this one in time. Darned Skyrim.
So the first thing a lot of people will think is “if she tried to lift the ambulance by it’s side like that, she’s just rip of the chunk she grabbed on to” It shall be explained! Otherwise, not too much to comment on this page. We see that Sydney has some control over the (contents of the) tube, obviously that control doesn’t allow her to extend the range they will allow her to stray.
Is it just me or does Maxima’s shirt seem to keep getting tighter? I need to scale back on that a bit. It looks painted on in this page.
Oh and I forgot to mention, the Washington Post online is doing a “best webcomics thing” I’d appreciate a write in, but obviously these best of lists are really just “who’s got the most traffic” lists. Lemme guess, people like Hark a Vagrant, Penny Arcade, PvP, Oatmeal and Olgaf? I’m shocked! Well not that shocked. Still, I think it’s important that people nominate their favorites (not just mine) so people outside of the usual webcomics circles start to get a feel for what a huge community it is.
SuperheroThey're super, thanks for asking!
Meatspace ComicSeriously these are awesome. Check 'em out!
Not UpdatingNo longer updating or only updates sporadically, but definitely worth reading.
SeriouslySeriously you guys. If you like Grrl Power the check these out.
"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.
Love the look on Sydney’s face in panel 4. And Harem seems to have an “I’m gunna kill her” look on hers in the last panel :P :D
Also, wow, Sydney must be pretty dang fast to be able to successfully swipe Maxima’s hat.
Bear in mind Maxima was kind of occupied holding up the ambulance. Might have distracted her a bit.
From what I’ve gathered about the way Max’s powers work, the fact that she’s being strong enough to pick up an ambulance may actually mean that she’s had to become less fast.
This is correct
About the last pannel. LUCKY GUY!!!! Ok, that’s over with. Pannel nine Maxima looks realy great with her hair like that. Great page again Dave B.
MRRF! Indeed!
Love it!
I NEED MOOORRRE
With a name like Halo, and the aversion to sunlight, could it be possible that Sydney has some light based powers, maybe she absorbs sunlight (like Superman), but the process is painful to her or something?
Yeah, with a name like Halo, she’s gotta have some sort of flashy aura-power, but as for sunlight hurting her…
Page #26 Commentary… “ Sydney is just… that way. Melodramatic just for her own amusement. She’s probably not even aware that she does stuff like that… or that she has the option to just walk straight to her car and not act like a maniac.“
She probably has Heliophobia, a fear of sunlight. It comes up later.
Gotta agree with M, Only once a week is torture.
I almost wish I hadn’t found the comic until it had been out a few years. But of course, then I would just devour the archives again and STILL be stuck waiting all week for an update.
And I think the look in panel two is just adorable.
I was wondering if she was actually pulling the tube to her in the bank. Now we know.
There is a bit more to it than that.earlyer when under the ambulance she did not want to move, so the tube contents decided to stay with her.
Earlyer she was being held by mr not a bank Rober the tube probably sensed she kind of wanted to move with her so they just followed her.
i aggree,,, the image of maxima without her hat is HOT!
as for mister amorphous,, as if i recall he is the one on that side of the ambulance,,,he might not be so lucky,,, cause if harem talks,, you gotta remeber he has a super girlfriend,,,
At least he’ll die happy.
Speaking of HOT. Remember his girlfriend is a redhead whose codename is HEATWAVE… Amorphous better hope Harem doesn’t blurt out having his node in certain areas.
Oh, I think she’d forgive him. It’s not like Amorphous has a fucking choice here.
“How dare you be strapped down in an ambulance that someone happens to pick up making some woman fall over and land crotch first on your face!”
“Sorry, honey, I swear, it won’t happen again.”
Although that would make a good running gag. Imagine all the girl’s at one time or another landing on him, crotch-plants them on him him on them or boob-plants whith the girlfriend standing by seeing all of this. Of course this has been done many times in manga, but it is a very funny senerio to see. Thats why you see it so much.
Oh yeah, like it’s not happened before in fiction or real-life :P
So are you so obsessed with Skyrim that you haven’t tried Saints Row 3rd yet? As always great job on the comic. I especially like the Harem concept. That has to be the most unique take I’ve seen on either the duplication or teleporting power sets in any comic I’ve read. Awesome work!
I love Saint’s Row 3. SR2 continues to be one of my favorite games of all time (out of a list of 50… I’ve played a lot of games) but I’m playing SR3 co-op with my girlfriend, and she has her kid over the holiday, so she’s been busy keeping him entertained, and SR3 is definitely not appropriate viewing material for a 6 year old. He enjoys watching me fight dragons (go figure) but Skyrim has all that pesky dialog too, so I usually play it after they go to bed.
Oh and thanks! I like Harem’s concept too. She’s really interesting and every time I sit down to write a joke I thought of for her I wind up with 4 or 5 pages of material. She’s a PITA to draw of course :P
“Hi I’m Harem and so are those 4 over there… off panel.”
Well, it may take you more time to work on Harem than a normal character, but I for one have enjoyed Harem’s antics so far – So it’s time well spent.
:)
Speaking of harem, I thought that version of Harem was off giving shoulderboob and there’s another one in the ambulance.
on the last panel of the last page harem changed into a gothic looking girl
The blonde Harem (She’s the Vogue one, right? Damn confusing to keep calling them by their hair colours…) was the one standing over Leon. However, if you look closely, she has the data key in her right hand in the last panel. My guess is Leon got the job done really fast, and blonde Harem teleported back into the ambulance just before Max lifted it up.
Yeah I was originally going to write show all the stuff he was doing to the file into a page, luckily my internal editor thought better of it. Basically, he cropped the file, slid the “deleted” files after it forward – deleted on most OSes means that the file header has been removed or it’s been removed from the Table of Contents, but the actual file is still there, that’s why undeleting programs work. Then he had update the ToC and fill the remainder of the drive (the length of the conversation that got trimmed) with noise 1’s and 0’s like it had never been recorded onto. It would probably be undetectable by examining the data on the drive itself, but you might still be able to figure it out if there was a log of how long previous calls/recordings were. But really it was probably only a few minutes of work.
50 is not a lot
i’ve played around 320 online games (not including flash because i can’t count that high without making mistakes or getting distracted)
all of which were free so i probably spent the same on the internet costs for that as you did for the 50 games.
I’m pretty sure the list is 50 games long and not the total number of games he’s played. having a ‘best game of all time list’ thats 50 games long suggests he’s easely played a multitude of that number..
Yeah I own 177 games on Steam alone, and I’ve owned every console system that’s come out in America except for a Turbo Graphics 16. Uh… and the Atarti Jaguar and 3DO, but basically every major system, and concurrently with that PCs starting with my Dad’s 086 PC. (It was 8Mhz). Also an Amiga 512, before that an Atari 1040ST, Commodore 64, Atari 2600. I’d brazenly claim that I’ve played more games than most of the people reading the comic, but while I never got sucked in to MMOs thank god, I did tend to latch on to some multiplayer game and stick with it for months on end, most notably Counter-Strike, Rocket Arena 3, and CoD4 MP. I used to be a demon at Street Fighter II but I just don’t have that kind of time any more, even if I wasn’t drawing a comic now.
Make that 178. Stupid Steam holiday sales.
Pats Dave on the head. We understand we all have our . . . interests that cost far more time and money that we can really afford. Mine were rather low tech- D & D, Mechwarrior, Star Trek Battles, – you know major time sinks!
As an addendum My more high tech time sink is reading a weeks worth of comments on ‘Wapsi Square’ at work. I work nights, my week starts on Thursday midnight to eight. I start on Thursday and usually get finished sometime Saturday.
These people have interesting ideas, and are not in any way shy.
I found you through a banner ad there, I think.
Great read, huge archive.
“MRRF”= Best view ever!
just one thing,,, about maxima pants in square 7 and 8,, in 8 the purple line is visible on the side of the pocket all the way down to the under knee sewing line,, and in 7,, its not
Okay. Maxima really is strong. Even better, she’s not lifting from center of mass so it means her wrist is fighting torque that measures in *tons*… apparently without effort. Her fingerprints are going to be visible in that steel.
Heh. Poor Sydney. Her big reveal moment on national TV and she comes off as such a complete loon. And they still haven’t mentioned she works in a comic book store.
Nice touch with the Jedi powers tube summoning. I thought she would have something like that up her sleeve (short though it may be), otherwise the tube contents become much more of a hassle than would really be funny.
Maby her powers are tactil-telakenetic based like super boy’s, Maxima’s I mean. As for Sydney, in her bio page it show’s a symbol that looks like she has telakinetic powers that go up to a three out of five stars.
Nah, there’s a normal way to lift that without crumpling anything if she’s lifting the ambulance on one of it’s built in ‘jacking points’.
(Had a car with this feature, as if you tried placing the car’s included jack anywhere on the car in a situation, you’d most likely tear a hole in the body.)
Look at where she’s lifting the ambulance. I very much doubt that there is a jacking point where she has her hands, it’s too far away from the wheel base.
I suspect Maxima is, either through training or natural talent, extending her ‘flight aura’ around some or all of the ambulance. They had to explain the same thing when Superman caught something big and heavy with his bare hands one time too many. Remember Superman Returns and the 747 being gently lowered into the stadium? Same thing on a smaller scale – can’t be done without telekinesis or gravity manipulation or some such like that.
Besides, if it was only raw strength involved Maxima would not be able to lift the ambulance in that manner without overbalancing. She’s putting on a show for the camera again now that she calmed down a little.
Lifting by a jacking point isn’t sufficient for the torque necessary to keep its orientation. When you jack up a car, the opposite side wheels stay on the ground.
Looking at the picture again she is lifting the whole ambulance up and not just it’s back axel. Whatever you call it she has some kind of power field around the thing so I’m just going to think what I want to until Dave B say’s otherwise because it’s his charactor and she has whatever he thinks it is.
Woah! Harem has some beefy thighs…
She’s been working out a lot with learning martial arts and all that. You do a lot of running to strengthen your body so you will be able to do whatever moves you use will have power to them.
yeah but Strength =/= Beef er bulk.
Bulk usually is for short term power and tends to lack endurance. Ever see the legs on a long distance runner compared to say a sprint skater or a weight lifter? Good tone and definition but no thighs bigger round that yer head.
As for Maxima’s painted on shirt, just soften the lines and loose some of the muscle definition/detail through the clothing and you should be a bit more happy with the results.
Most fights in real life end within two min. or so, unless they are both well trained. plus she can telaport with multiple people, any fight with her will probly end real fast.
It’s tough drawing fit women without going overboard. When I was… whatever, 8, and was trying to draw women for the first time, I had no idea how to do it so I’d just draw a guy (such as it was back then) and put long hair and boobs on it. It was pretty horrifying, but it put me on a path of drawing rather masculine women. That and collecting bodybuilding mags for art reference instilled an appreciation in me for… well, really really fit women. It’s really only in the last few years that I’ve been drawing women that didn’t look like they belonged in a Boris Valeo painting. Sydney’s pretty easy since she’s a beanpoll, but the super women in this universe are supposed to look like, well, superheroines… only most people draw this hyper idealized version of women in their comics that usually look more like models than anyone who could do a chin-up. I’m basically trying for a fitness model look – that bodybuilding light competition that aims to retain the femininity but also look like she can do planche pushups. Which… may actually be impossible for most women, seeing as how maybe 1% of guys can even do them.
just HOW old is that kid…?? o_0 makes me think of what my old sensei used to talk about, in regards to one’s chi…you could have little 80-year-old men through sumo wrestlers around…..lol
I know what you’re talking about. But upon ferther inspection I have concluded that is not a kid but a photoshop image.
Based on that reference link, it seems that most of those people are very well defined. Most aren’t this guy, they’re muscular, sure, but they aren’t bulky.
Anyone who throws a fit over the car-lifting is not falling into the Physics of Comic Super Heroes. If Superman and Spiderman can do it, so can Maxima. :)
Great job.
Both have tactil-telakinisis
No they don’t.
Spider-Man just uses his Spider-Agility combined with his strength to lift/catch vehicles barehanded without overbalancing and totaling the vehicle. However, in the more recent comics, if you look closely, they’ve started putting indentations on the cars that he handles like that. They’re just a little more difficult to spot on the ones thrown at him, because the villians tend not to give a darn if they damage a car or injure an innocent.
Read Spider Girl, she has Tactil-TK and can actualy push things away with her powers. I’m talking about Spider Mans Daughter here. So he does have tactil-TK.
If i may, Spidey is in the Marvel universe, where mutations (the X-men) are a fairly common occurrence, just because the offspring has a specific power, doesn’t mean the parents did.
First off, Spider-Girl is in the Marvel 2 Universe, not the mainstream Marvel Universe. Second off, Spider-Girl is a mutant, unlike her dad, who received his powers from a radioactive spider.
Add to that the fact that MJ’s the ex-girlfriend (Peter’s currently dating a NYPD CSI) it’s unlikely that “Mayday” Parker will be born. Phil Urich going evil (as the new Hobgoblin) also precludes that future being part of the main timeline. Thus the M2 universe has become an alt-timeline.
Besides all that, the only character in comics who is officially stated to have Tactile Telekinesis is Superboy (Kon El), not Superman, not Spider-Girl, not anyone else. The very term is a DC Comics trademark and thus couldn’t be used by Marvel anyways, now Spider-Girl might have some similar ability but it is NOT Tactile TK as defined by DC and Superboy.
Bovine Excrement. Tactile Telekinesis is an (admittedly bad) descriptor. It’s not something that can be trademarked. It’s not even a brand name, like Apple. Phoenix Force is totally trademarkable, Pokemon move Future Sight isn’t.
Spidey is a mutate, So are the Original FF members.
His daughter is a mutant, much like Franklin Richards.
The Hulk is technically both. His innate mutation kept him alive through the incident that made him a mutate.
Neither Spider-Man nor Spider-Girl have any kind of telekinesis. What they DO have is hydraulic strength, and electron-attraction manipulation. Spider-Man can enhance his own electron-attraction in order to allow him to ‘stick’ to objects and surfaces, while Spider-Girl can do that, manipulate the electron-attraction of things she touches (making them ‘sticky’, which would for instance allow her to fix everyone’s feet to the floor at will), or create force by rapidly ‘flipping the dial’ to electron-repulsion.
Neither is a case of Tactile Telekinesis.
And how are they going to stop the fact that a TV crew is filming their every hijink?
That’s what their resident Uberhacker is for. But this might be happening a little to quickly for him to handle.
I don’t think Arieana would want this from being shown on TV, remember she is a P.R. person. This is great for her orginization, showing that they have superpowers and are human also. Not just some comic books version of a superhero.
I wonder if the TV station has dropped the live broadcast because the interview seemed to be over. But if so, they would still be recording the footage for possible later editing and broadcast. Could be hacked then.
Halo = circle = field of influence?
If any of that is right, then we are looking for what she can do within that field of influence.
Maybe Sydney is the center of her own universe.
Well a Halo is usually depicted as a ring or rings around / behind the head of a saint or angel.
My guess is those power balls will circle her head like annoying gnats or ioun stones for the DnD geeks in the audience.
Actually I thought halo had to do with her breath attack… :)
According to dictionary.com
ha·lo
/ˈheɪloʊ/ Show Spelled [hey-loh] Show IPA noun, plural -los, -loes, verb, -loed, -lo·ing.
noun
1.
Also called nimbus. a geometric shape, usually in the form of a disk, circle, ring, or rayed structure, traditionally representing a radiant light around or above the head of a divine or sacred personage, an ancient or medieval monarch, etc.
2.
an atmosphere or quality of glory, majesty, sanctity, or the like: the halo around Shakespeare’s works; She put a halo around her son.
3.
Meteorology . any of a variety of bright circles or arcs centered on the sun or moon, caused by the refraction or reflection of light by ice crystals suspended in the earth’s atmosphere and exhibiting prismatic coloration ranging from red inside to blue outside ( distinguished from corona).
4.
Astronomy . a spherical cloud of gas clusters and stars that form part of a spiral galaxy.
5.
an undesirable bright or dark ring surrounding an image on the fluorescent screen of a television tube, due to some fault either in transmission or reception.
Just putting this out there.. if you do tactal-kenesis hold true to in in every case. That’s a big fail for superman cause he had it then they wrote him without it, then they made him act like he had it when he didn’t and planes were ruined! (and he just looked incompetent)
Also totally love max’s hair when its like that more feathery/less sharp and pointy looking :D
love it all Dave B
Throwing in another aspect to the mystery of Sydney’s poster tube while holding off its big reveal for later is a nice touch. Well done! Some people would be impatient about knowing what’s in it, but you’re pacing the comic just right.
I’ve been meaning to ask you: Does Harem’s having 5 brains but 1 mind increase her intelligence? Update #59 seems to indicate such although Arianna’s enthusiasm for her PR stunt may have made figuring her plans out easy for most people. Anyway, I’d imagine that the experiences and coordination needed for 5 bodies would require some extra processing power, if just to prevent being overloaded and confused by all those different sensory inputs and all that situational awareness.
I think the theroy for Harem is that we’re as limited by the fact we have only ONE set of stimuli receptors (body) as any other reason. Harem having 5 set’s of receptors would obviously be able to absorb much more stimuli in the same period of time and I think her mind simply developed to be more efficient in it’s ability to absorb and catalog the sheer mass of stimuli. Think of humans as a computer having say a 1.8 gig processor. Harem’s brain is basicly a server linked to 5 such processors.
Adamas is right, she has 5 visual cortexes, so seeing 5 different things at the same time isn’t a problem for her. Having 5 brains doesn’t really increase her intelligence, but it does increase her processing power, she can read 5x as much or do 5 separate math problems. Of course it depends on what you mean by intelligent. She’s remarkably educated and worldly for a 19 year old since she’s always consuming new experiences.
Being able to do five things at once is definitely an advantage in any kind of test with multiple questions and a time limit.
Never mind “multiple questions and a time limit”: short of keeping all available manifestations under supervision (or even super-vision!) and giving them individual tests with no overlap, how would you stop them conferring, or even having one looking at the notes and relaying the answers to the others?
Well you couldn’t. You’re thinking of them as having 5 separate minds/personalities that can communicate telepathically, when it’s actually a single mind controlling (up to) 5 bodies. I suppose it could be argued that it really is 5 separate minds that are in constant perfect telepathic synchronization, but her personality isn’t changed when there’s only 4 or just 1 of her. Obviously her ability to multitask is impacted. Now, there might be a way to block that link, but I haven’t really thought about what would happen in that case. (besides her freaking out I’d imagine) Is it a case where one brain is the server and the rest are slaved to it? That’s tough to answer because it’s not like the other bodies operate only if the “original” one exists. She can “unteleport” that one and the remaining 4 function normally. Maybe it is like that but she has instant “host migration” to one of the active bodies. Is she really just a disembodied consciousness floating in the aether that links to the bodies? Maybe we’re all like that… Wooooo…
Mesh Netowrk. Nuff Said.
damn I just tried for the simplest explanation I could think of for Harem and Dave wound up with an overload of possibilities. :P
Re: “Intelligence”- no specific definition of it- smarts in the most general sense, from an academic PoV to a common sense PoV to a practical problem-solving PoV.
I had this strange idea this morning about a specific application of Harem’s powers in regards to this:
What if, by meditation or the like, Harem is able to “shut down” or “put to sleep” 4 of her bodies but still have access to their brains? She would thus be able to focus the thinking, calculating, mental power of 5 bodies in one person (the non-sleeping, active one). This may give her a boost of intelligence (again, general sense) and thinking power.
Also, another question: Do all 5 bodies need to physically maintain themselves or will just one of them eating, drinking, and sleeping be enough for all 5?
I’d think of the connection between Harem’s “selves” to be more like quantum entanglement than a telepathic link. In this way, they really are the same brain/mind, just split into different physical locations as opposed to separate brains/minds communicating.
This is the sort of question where a bit of basic computer science can come to the rescue. In a vastly oversimplified nutshell, not all processes have linear growth.
(Bear with me, I’m actually going somewhere with this.)
That is, there are tasks where the amount of processing power required to perform them grows in direct proportion to the size of the input: twice as much data takes twice as long, three times as much data takes three times as long, and so forth – nice and simple. This is called “linear growth”.
However, there are also tasks where the amount of crunch required is a power of the size of the input rather than a multiple. For example, you might have a task where the required processing power is the size of the input, squared. So if you double the amount of data, it takes four (two squared) times as long to process. If you triple the amount of data, it takes nine (three squared) times as long. This is called “polynomial growth”.
Beyond even that, there are tasks where the required processing power is some exponent of the size of the input. For example, you might have a tasks where doubling the amount of data takes ten times as long to process; triple the data and it takes one hundred times as long; quadruple the data, a *thousand* times; and so forth. This is is called (logically enough) “exponential growth”.
Why do we care? Well, the funny thing is that problems with linear and polynomial growth are generally extremely simple – typically the sort of thing you only ever encounter in textbooks. Most “real world” problems – i.e., ones that require actual thinking to solve – have exponential growth or worse.
The upshot is that having five times as much brainpower at your disposal doesn’t necessarily make you five times as smart. If “smart” means solving problems, then it’s entirely likely that problems you’re dealing with have expontential-or-worse growth in terms of required brainpower, and your shiny 5x multiplier disappears into the rounding error.
I don’t think Maxima realized Harem had returned with the modified data card yet (you can see it in her hand in the last panel). She doesn’t mind shaking the other two! :) As for Sydney’s powers, I think the tube’s contents will circle her head like little Death Stars!
*geek-mode initiated*
Hm, I see Maxima uses non-ranged TK – holistic strength.
Will Anvil have a different power, so she has to worry about crumbling metal, etc?
Force-field control would make for an OK mechanism for shifting between strength, defense and flight. (Can’t do increased reflexes, though, so either force-fields can affect time flow, it’s another mechanism, or Maxima has additional powers.)
I think Anvil’s powrers are gravity manipulation. the symbol on her bio sheet looks a lot like the Marvel Comic’s Gravity. I don’t know if thats the case, but it’s what I’m infering from her symbol’s.
And the image of an anvil dropping on the Coyote’s head? :P
What?
it’s a Loony Toons reference; Wily Coyote was forever trying to catch Roadrunner, and as in ALL cartoons, anvils always fall on their heads….Wily was just always popular because NONE of the made escapades he came up with EVER really remotely worked…so he was always getting abused. as in multiple anvils to the head lol
…now I’ve started imagining Anvil falling on someone’s head.
Knowing Sydney, she might actually suggest “dropping Anvil on the bad guys” as a strategy. And who knows, it might even work.
Now just imigine anvil falling on Mr. Amorphous head like in the last caption. He’s a shape shifter he can probably take having his head smushed a little bit in the name of sexy comedy.
On second thought, reading some of the power discriptions below Anvil might have density powers. I once read a fantasy novel called The Legond of Nightshade where the main charactor had the ability to both increase and decrease his body density. Now if Anvil can do that she could climb up walls and things like that cool stuff. Just an idea.
I have only this to say about that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKeQpeDkoGc
AHZ!! “Oz…?” “no relation….-_-” lmao
I miss my old gaming group when we’d play Champions and this sort of silly slapstick would happen.
Great comic DaveB! I look at the last panel with Harem sitting on Mr Amorphous’ face and I hear the old Monty Python song. https://youtu.be/CxVKtNkQAtw
First – Can I get three 10 x 12’s of that last panel with Harem please? ^_~
Love this entire page but that was priceless, especially that Maxima didn’t know she was there. She should have though of the possibility though. She told Harem to bring the altered black box recording back quickly. It seems Sydney can exert some control over the artifacts while not in contact with them anyway. Kind of puts my theory on shaky ground. Ah well, nice while it lasted. Oh, and I’m not really sure what Maxima could be holding that close to the side of the Ambulance that could withstand the torque of lifting the vehicle’s weight. Then again she is able to shift her powers around, perhaps shes levitating the vehicle right now and using touch to disguise the fact or maybe it is tactile TK. We will find out eventually I’m sure.
Maxima’s lucky that Harem arrived before she lifted it up, otherwise Harem would have appeared outside in full view of the news camera.
That’s an interesting aspect for any teleporter, the answer to which will presumably be illustrated at some point: how local is the reference frame used in their jumps, and what happens if the reference they use is moving relative to major objects and/or their start position.
At one extreme, a very close reference frame could only include the ambulance interior, and the fact that it’s not in the expected position could even go unnoticed at first and/or produce the evident disorientation. At the other extreme, the background velocities involved get so large it’s a miracle anyone can hit the same country, let alone the interior of a vehicle, given the rather complex motion of the planet itself – depending on the time of day and year, someone at the equator is moving at anywhere between 31876 and 182574 km/h! (assumes all rotation planes etc. line up; does not account for motion of galaxy as a whole; corrections required for increasing latitude or inclination.)
I think Dave said that the Harem teleporting into an area has a limited spatial sense so she won’t teleport into an object or so forth.
If it’s within an inertial frame of reference, only the rotation of the earth matters. All of the rest is just freefall through curved space.
Don’t forget that another version of Harem is parked in front of the TV, so she could have adapted on the fly.
Bah lifting big heavy things by a small point works for ALL super strong heroes, and most of the villians. I’m more interested in the Jedi tricks.
same…..along the lines of you kinda EXPECT all super-strong heroes to be like that XD not all can do jedi-like stuff, while referencing the original Jedis….lol
not knocking your comic Dave, not at ALL….loving it every bit of the way d; lots of fun….i feel bad for Harem though…lol
It looks like Harem just got back with the hacked memory stick, but hasn’t had time to install it. Hope it doesn’t get damaged.
Okay, that is awesome. All.Completely.Awesome. “You gonna keep being shiny?” heh.
And if you want to scale back on Maxima’s shirt- (no complaints from anyone here, I suspect) remember that real fabrics don’t cling to the skin that way. Most Superhero costumes ARE drawn as if they’re painted on. Real clothes tend to bridge the gaps between bumps, so usually no visible cleavage or abs.
yeah,, with the exeption of a few materials,,, well most material if made top be,,, tigh,, enough will cling to every curve in a mater of minutes as they will cling there by the effect of small amount of moisture from prepiration
no, what he meant was that most comics with the “painted on” shirts are wrong because there is no application of force that is causing the shirt material to go from her ribs to the nipple of the breast and then FOLLOW THE SKIN BETWEEN THE BREASTS BACK TO THE STERNUM, THEN BACK OUT TO THE NIPPLE OF THE OTHER BREAST. basically it should go from the ribs to the nipple then straight across leaving an air gap directly between the two nipples then follow skin contact back to the far ribs… ESPECIALLY if its a stretchy material like Spandex… what is causing this STRETCHY material to further stretch and follow a longer pathway that the shortest distance between to points (no pun intended).
Really, it’s _less_ stretchy materials that _aren’t_ tight that can cling like that – since they’re not providing tension force opposing the adhesion of moisture [or static electricity]. Or, of course, any material can conform like that if it has a vacuum seal – if the openings are set up in a way that tends to let air be pushed out but not back in, a semi-vacuum may form inside a non-breathable suit.
the clingy-NON-stretchy material will NOT leave a smooth wrinkle free surface though, therefore it IS a stretchy material (no wrinkles)
and i’m sorry but if somebody is walking around in a VACUUM-TIGHT shirt, then they are going to be extremely uncomfortable just BREATHING, let alone trying to do anything in it, even if one could GET a SEAL around the neck, arm/sleeves, and waist openings of the shirt… so, unless said otherwise by DaveB, i’m going to assume that it’s a regular T-shirt she’s wearing and not some spacesuit that only covers her torso… and that (no offense Dave…) he’s following general comic conventions in that all shirts *must* be form fitting on either sex, to show off any related anatomy features, unless it is to be specifically portrayed as a “loose-fitting” garment of some kind, which is then usually designed to conceal that self-same anatomy, purposely.
Your skin is vacuum-tight, in that there’s no normal way for air to get under it / between it and the lungs. It doesn’t really imply any particular amount of pressure – just a lack of ability for air to get under it to separate it.
Yeah, pretty much what scantronb said. The only time clothes look like that in real life is if moisture is involved. Wet T-shirts or glueing them to the skin as part of a costume. Otherwise they tend to be a lot flatter. But as I said, in a comic, who’s complaining?
Oh my so is he happy or sad?
Probably a little of both as he struggles for his next breath of air. LOL
Looks like standard comic book super-strength to me. Which is to say, it ignores inconvenient problems such as the fact that the place she’s grabbing can’t possibly support so much weight, and even if it could, unless Maxima weighs multiple tons (in which case she’d be cracking the pavement) the center of gravity is under the van so she’d just fall over. Sure, you can invoke ‘tactile TK’ or some such, but easier to just accept the genre conventions.
I wasn’t aware that tactile TK was a common explanation, shows how up to date I am with mainstream comics these days.
As far as the center of gravity goes, remember that Maxima can fly, though she hasn’t done it yet in the comic. She could easily be “rotating backwards” (yaw? I’m sure there’s some term for that) slightly while keeping her feet on the ground to compensate.
It really isn’t. Most comics just ignore what physics actually dictates should happen.
Back when Superman was “dead” for a while, a young clone of Superman (or as close as they could get without knowing much about Krypton) had the power of “tactile telekinesis”. This probably spawned some speculation that Superman had that power all along, explaining some of his less logical lifting exercises.
As for me, I think Superman’s really a full-on Psionic – telepathy, telekinesis, pyrokinesis, cryokinesis, and the whole nine yards. He just doesn’t think of his powers in the same way that Professor X does, and mostly just uses his powers to appear to be a flying invincible strongman. This just happens to explain his “super kisses” in his movies as well.
Superboy (who’s still around, as far as I know) has always had a slightly different power set than Superman does. The explanation was that the scientists couldn’t fully decode Superman’s DNA when they tried to clone him, so they mixed it with some other DNA (of one of their other superhumans, I think). And, just like how frog DNA magically made velociraptors able to make babies in Jurassic Park, the extra DNA gave Superboy Tactile TK instead of Super Strength.
They used Lex Luthors DNA.
Which goes along with the joke about so many of Superman’s girlfriends having the initials LL.
The scary part is that this explains His and Superman’s relationship at one point when the back sorry was that they knew each other from way back and were more or less friendly.
It depends on your flavor of geekiness. I’ve seen the ‘tactile TK’ explanation in about three different places, and it’s the best way to explain what Superman does.
In my favourite supers verse (apart from Empowered, that is), Whateley Academy – a webfiction collective – super powers are scientifically categorized and sorted – and there are a lot of them.
There are maybe ten different ways to have “brick” powers there, and all of them have different advantages and drawbacks, which makes for cool interactions.
Energizers channel motion energy through their bodies (and can have other energy powers, like laser vision). Exemplars are strong, tough and gorgeous because of tapping into some dimension of platonic perfection, TK bricks have flying and holistic strength, but if something gets through their force-field, they’re in trouble. GSD cases can be strong, tough and freaky-looking because of biological mutations. And then there are Gravitic supers, Density changers, Manifestors, Avatars… And those are just the MUTANT powersets…
Since it’s the most complete framework I know, I generally think of superheroes in those terms.
Maxima would probably be classified as a TK brick and Exemplar, then. She looks to be at least an EX-5, possibly even an EX-6 similar to Hippolyta (abs that can stop an RPG). The shininess and purple hair could be an EX trait, too.
Given that she seems to be able to lift several tons of vehicle without breaking a sweat, it’d rank her as TK-3c at minimum. The bullet-catching might push her to a TK-3d, unless it’s a Speedster trait, which means she’s more likely a PK brick than TK; possibly even a physical-oriented PDP.
Or, y’know, she could just be an internal Energizer (plus Exemplar). It would explain the strength, speed, muscles, and being able to be surprised when she’s not ready for something.
What system is this? An RPG or the above mentioned Whatley thing? I’m not familiar with that if it is. Anyone got a link? (I suppose I could google it huh)
Is it wrong that when Sydney said “You gonna keep being shiny,” my first inclination was to interpret it with the Firefly definition of shiny, and said in Kaylee’s voice?
LOL,, i love firefly,,,, and i admit that jewel staite would make a great sidney,,,its the name of kaylee’s actress :)
not sure about using theyr definition for it tough,,, as it doesnt make sense in the scene much,,,since if i recall well it mean great or nice,,,unless you add sarcasm to it then it works
I love the forth panel.
hehe,, love the sisth square,,, where maxima talk sidney in realising that it already past the point of beeing suspiscious,,,it is now evident that she has some kind of power,, or powers,,,
Heh, well I almost called it.
I’m now highly suspicious that while Sydney isn’t burned by sunlight, and was just being a spaz in that previous page way back, she is effected by it in some way. Like she unconsciously absorbs it and it creates a halo around her head, or make laserbeams, etc. Hence why she avoids it and just stole Max’s hat.
I am so excited for the next page! Always!
Harem’s expression, love it, and the other guy must feel like a lucky guy to get a face full of that stuff. Love how it flows here
okay, i had a good smirk going untill the last pannel, then i started laughing so hard it turned into a coughing fit
great job!
Add one concussion to that injury list lol
I would defenitely be more worried about the ebonics. Language is more precious than the tube I’m sure.
I’m surprised that truck isn’t shredding at the point of grasp. That must be one durable ambulance.
No joke, if this webcomic had 200 pages of this quality it would be my favorite webcomic. It is just too early to add it to my top 5 list though. Definitely in my top 10 however your comic gets more laughs per page from me than any other comic. (Except Cyanide & Happiness but thats a gag-a-day)
Thanks! C&H is definitely one of the ones I check up on at least once a week. My favorite is their depressing comics week.
In the next-to-last panel, it looks like Sydney is doing an impression of Maxima — her stance, her expression — just to make fun of her a little more. Cute.
For those who worry about real physics in a comic… particularly one that is less than fully serious..
As others have noted, Maxima has the standard comicbook power of doing something impressive looking no matter how impossible it actually is.
The frame would likely buckle if she did not hold it at the proper spot, and would buckle if we try to compensate the other problems.
Since she holds it by the edge, the actual force needed is multiplied several times and she would end up lifting only the one side.
For “serious” comic consideration…
Maxima has demonstrated power way beyond the human. She has before, but not in such a camera friendly manner.
She doesn’t seem irritated enough by losing her hat.
Despite being strapped down and “unable” to move, both girls should blame him for ending up in an interesting position with her, on the sensible grounds that if he could have gotten into that situation, he would have [unless he was worried about getting caught] and whether or not he could have avoided it, he enjoyed it.
Message to all comentary writers:
Please keep commenting,it keeps me entertained until the next comic appears
PS: Dave:Great job with Maxima in last panel,and panel 2 and 4 sydney.
PSS:by the way,wich is your EGS favorite character
Hmm. Honestly I have a little trouble distinguishing them all sometimes. I’ve voiced this complaint before, but they can be a little hard to keep track of when any character can be multiple genders/hairstyles/etc in a single story arc, which is why I have my little Who’s Who box to bump people’s memory each week. I definitely like Ted, Grace, uh, Susan, Nanase… Elliot, female Elliot… Ellen I think. I’m sure there’s plenty more that I like depending on the storyline.
I think you just named every main character besides Justin and Sarah…i find it normally easy to keep up with although i can see how it can get confusing on occasion, especially with Tedd
Don’t forget we now have Man-Ellen and Ashly.
… this annoys me.
it’s PPS, not PSS.
PS stands for Post Script. as in ‘words after the main text has ended’. ‘PSS” would be ‘post script script’ which … either means the exact same thing in a more precisely stated way, or absolutely Nothing, depending how you look at it.
‘PPS’ is ‘post post script’ meaning ‘after the bit that came after the main text’, roughly.
i’ve seen this before. it annoys me. (kinda like a LOT of Americans (and others who know no better) inverting the ‘if not’ structure in their writing. or the fact that most of the world can’t seem to grasp that a ‘kiwi’ is a bird or a person from New Zealand. not a fruit. (the fruit is a kiwifruit. or a Chinese gooseberry if you’re being more old fashioned and less PC.))
Thanks for the correction!
PS:i will keep it in mind
PPS:i did it right
PPPS:I love kiwi!
heh. skills.
it’s just one of those things that drives me up the wall… then i rant about it… then it’s all good again :D
I agree about this being entertaining to comment about this comic. Great fun.
I think Maxima looks REALLY beautiful without her hat.
Oh, and don’t worry about the whole “picking up the ambulance” physics, just about every superhero has some kind of exception to the laws of physics. Like “The Atom” having a conversation on an electron.
“Hey Atom…we’re smaller than oxygen molecules…how are we breathing?”
The Atom, “…I don’t really know exactly.”
Oh by the way, I would actually rather I WEREN’T under Harem, especially in that fashion…
I’m most DEFINITELY not homosexual, but still I’d rather avoid awkward situations like that, regardless of whether I could help it or not, lol. XP
I’m crazeh!