Grrl Power #70 – Punked
When you hear of someone with the power to make copies of themselves, the first thought is “what if one of them dies?” Don’t worry the comic isn’t going to get all dark all of a sudden – I don’t even have a storyline remotely in mind where we find that out with Harem. However, her little prank won’t be without consequences.
Now, Sydney’s made Max look foolish more than once already, so you may be asking why Max is suddenly so lit up. One of Sydney’s unofficial superpowers is that she’s strangely disarming, she didn’t make Max look like some sort of sexual deviant (and with no way to explain it without possibly spilling something about the, let’s call it gray ops, going on right under the press’s nose, and she’s not Maxima’s subordinate. Though really it’s the second thing. Max is a little wound up when it comes to anything pertaining to her sexuality. She doesn’t even like the word sexuality in the same sentence as her name. As far as she’s concerned, if you wouldn’t say it about a guy, she doesn’t want it said about her, and the word sexuality is almost never used when talking about guys.
Now might be a good time for Harem to find a safe place to hide.
I hear them some good planets a couple galaxies over.
there’s some*
*punts the typo demon into orbit*
She can run, but she can’t hide. Not forever.
Wereworld might be far enough away (and Dabbler knows where it is), but one may have to change universes to be safe from the fallout.
issue there is how long would she go before forcing an infection by a were. um how would that work with the whole copys bit would all become were or not and would the non infected be able to keep the infected from going feral or would it drag them all to beast mind?
I think Harem needs five places to hide actually.
Its like that game where every one is it. and one person hides. As the person is found, the finders hide with them. Max will be the last person it.
I do not believe that Max is the type of woman who would wear lipstick in the first place…
I dont think she wears lipstick, which she can easily show, but then she’d have to explain where the lipstick came from. “Someone teleported in to erase any recordings from while i was in there” is possibly not one of the best explanations
Yeah she doesn’t wear makeup at all. It just happens that her lips and nails are fire engine red. There’s actually a reason for that, though it’ll take me a while to get to the explanation.
When you have naturally metallic gold skin and metallic fibrous hair who needs makeup?
kudos for Happy Fun Ball reference!!
tangential question: If Dabbler (panel 4’s the first time I noticed and thought about it) has 4 arms, then she has to have 4 separate pectoral muscles for them to do anything other than rotate in a vertical axis. Shouldn’t she have 4 breasts?
In Wereworld she did have four tits, I was just about to ask the very same question myself.
Yeah, she had 4 boobs right up until I first drew her in this comic. Basically the reason is that it was fun to draw when I was uh… doing anatomy studies, but as soon as you put a shirt on her, she wound up looking just weirdly lumpy. I could never really figure out a top for her basically. If she was walking around in weird bondage gear or Boris Vallejo style bikini tops it might work, but that’s mostly not going to be the case in this comic. Besides there’s no correlation between pecs and mammary glands. Humans are the only ones who keep them there, every other mammal has them running down the stomach.
And for that matter, there are humans with more than two. Google can help, but you’ll likely have to disable “safe search”.
Just because of the duplication of all the bones and muscles to make up the additional set of arms she doesn’t automatically have to have two more breasts. its been done but not necessary to the character or her morphology. Two is enough. Just look at Spinerette. Or the Hindu multi-armed people and gods.
fair enough – still, given her musculature, I would still expect her pecs to show through (as they do in her bio picture).
that said, I certainly understand the aesthetic difficulties – that said, Max wears skin-tight clothing that borders on “painted on” – I’m kind of surprised Dabbler doesn’t (not to mention the possibilities of “cleavage cut-outs” that an unmodified human couldn’t pull off)…
either way, I’m not demanding (or even requesting) a change–I just thought it was an interesting tangent
[insert Snorg t-shirt ad here]
Well, Max really shouldn’t be wearing skintight anything. That’s just me failing to break away from my superhero/comic book art origins. I really should go back and update her shirt, it’s pretty egregious in a few panels how tight it is.
Uhm .. why shouldn’t she wearing skintight clothing ?
The tight clothes will actually hamper her movements. Loose clothes are better to do sudden moves and contoursions.
And yet, every contorsionist out there wears skintight, elastic clothes.
Besides, Maxima is so strong that if the shirt decided to make any resistance against her movements, it would be a fight it would loose quite badly.
… not that *I* am advocating for her shirt to rip all the time. :D
hey super geniouses in the base drop the tech for super tough and streechy fabric that clings a little, most this expensive or difficult to make material is used for the non choking skin tight neck bands with built in lojack and (unreveiled) audio transmission ability but over time a supply for special uniforms may occur —- so no need to shadow the chokers — same material used for at least one of dabs outfits on wereworld that I remember.
Well, she shouldn’t cause it doesn’t really jive with her character. She’s not out to show off her stuff. That’s why she’s wearing a V necked shirt that doesn’t dip all the way to her cleavage. Honestly it doesn’t really make sense that she’s wearing a belly shirt, but that’s like my favorite thing ever on a woman with a flat stomach, so she’ll have to put up with it. Some guys are boobs guys, some are ass men, some are in to legs or whatever, for me, it’s a washboard stomach. There’s almost no such thing as “too much” as far as I’m concerned. For instance. Yes please. (girl in bikini if that’s NSFW where you are)
But – Maxima does have big boobs, which need all the support they can get. Tight shirts support better than loose ones. Offcourse, I have only seen her in tight clothing, so for me it doesn’t “jive with her character”, for me it seems natural.
As for good abs, this girl on youtube has some impressive ones, especially once she does pull ups. :)
She does take a look at the char profiles or reread the comic from the start you can get a good shot of her
Just would like to say, having four arms and being a female does not mean Dabbler would have to have four breasts. Breasts are for a reproductive purpose, they are in no way genetically linked to arms. Say that Dabbler was half of some kind of animal, then yes, more than two breasts would be somewhat relevant. Not in this case. Sorry, my pre-med background, and being a woman myself, I had to chime in.
You know, the way Maxima is uptight about her sexuality, she might end up really exposed about it int he media. After all, if she’s so protective of it, she must have something really horrible to hide. No, that wasn’t (too) serious, but seeing how media goes after even rumours of sexual deviantry in OUR world, a Super that is so blatantly denying anything reated to it as pertaining to her, is going to be under the magnifying glass by the media sooner or later.
Good point, she’ll eventually have to choose how to fight … fight the “enemy” or her public image.
Just like Captain Awesooooooome !! :D
love the look on Maxima’s face when she see’s the guy covered in lipstick marks. About the last pannel I would be scared of any woman who had that look in their eye’s. If I were Harem I would take a two month vacation right about now.
well,,, i must point,,, ever since maxima was introduced,,, we have had quite a few close-up of her face,,, and it clear she aint wearing any lipstick,,,,wich is very noticable,,,,also,,,, you need place maxima’s face on fourth square to her rotating ones top page,,, that ;am gonna blow expression of hers is great
Is that Achelies she smooched? Because if it isn’t Harem is going to have to deal with Heat Wave as well as Maxima.
I just looked back a few pages and it’s Amorphous. DUMB! DUMB! DUMB! You now have two super powered indivuals after your ass. Maxima might just give you a toung lashing, but messing with another girls man in a sexual way is a good way to get your hair burned off. I think the name Heat Wave give’s you a pretty good idea of what her powers are. Stupid girl is all i got to say…
They actually both have smooches, but I was struggling with the layout of the page a bit to show that as I wanted to have the one “space marine” guy standing over by Max and co, so I settled on just showing one of them on this page. Don’t worry though, I haven’t forgotten about Heatwave.
Where did “Heatwave” come from? I see nothing on the cast page and, I only recall mention of a “Brook”.
That’s stuff discussed in the comments. I was intending her to be a tertiary character but it looks like she’s becoming more and more entangled with the main characters. I’ll have to do up a bio entry for her and Achillies and Mr. Amorphous eventually. Probably once those two get out of their disguises.
I have to say, that’s a brilliant way to get under Maxima’s skin.
Can’t hurt her physically, but she *can* step on her feelings and reputation.
Clever girl.
Very inventive. I am impressed.
But I hate to think what Harem might do to somebody she actually dislikes.
Hit them .. in the face .. with 5 fists at the same time!
Just realized there’s a flaw in HArem’s plan .. Maxima is probably not wearing lipstick.
Heh, it’s funny that you don’t see Max’s mouth on this page except for one panel where she’s doing a goofy expression that doesn’t work as well with the lips drawn in on it, but normally they’re bright red. You’re right though, she doesn’t actually wear any makeup.
Actually, I thought of it because her skin is “goldy” so normal lipstick probably wouldn’t work.
Maxima probably uses red metallic car paint.
With glitter in it.
:D
Typo Alert in Panel 6:
“And what happens when one your spares…”
Should Be:
“And what happens when one OF your spares…”
Also, it should be “That’s the woman WHO killed me!”
But the bad grammar could be in character. :)
Due to the very public nature of the incident (on TV) bad move on Harem’s part (funny though).
Dabbler looks really cute in panel 4! :) You need to show more of her!
Here here on the showing of more Dabbler.
Thanks for the heads up. And I was proud of myself for catching another typo at the last second last night.
oh,,, i just noticed that harem call anvil,, A,,, and also,,, great work on anvil,,, she look positevly beautiful there
And that’s the fifth cell-phone Maxima had to replace this month.
Only the fifth? She’s doing well then. With Harem and Dabbler around, I’d have thought she’d already be up to double digits.
And since those are special issue, the replacement will come out of someone’s pay, and I don’t want to be the one that gives the bill to Max.
Max will have to take the pieces with her when they leave (to drop in the lap of our prankster, perhaps?) to keep it from falling into the wrong hands.
a funny look at that is in the movie “Sky-High”: Kurt Russel plays the super hero strong-guy/invulnerable father and gets spun when his son tells him that the coach put him in the side-kick program at high-school rather than the super-hero program… he smashes one phone while trying to dial a number, tosses the broken chunks aside, then he opens the kitchen drawer and there’s about 7 or 8 identical phones there all just waiting to be used. a funny moment indeed.
i dont know,,, but i think she is gonna get to break alot more once sidney is in the team,,,, that and use alot of aspiryn
Just because you won’t kill one doesn’t mean they can’t get maimed. Besides she has plenty of others.
OMG – I laughed so hard when I saw the lipstick marks I couldn’t read any further. It would only spoil the perfect image.
(I’ll read the rest of it later, once I stop chuckling in an hour or three…)
I don’t care that this comic only comes out once a week the pages are good enough that I can re-read them every day and be just as entertained as I was the first time I read it.
Your right, this comic is on my top ten list.
I don’t think Max has a problem with her sexuality, but rather as a woman in a position of power she probably feels that it shouldn’t be a issue that’s considered since it isn’t considered when dealing with men. Without knowing her sexual preference, it would probably take a very socially aware person (feminist, mysogonistically-conscious) to get past her defenses. Very challenging.
Also, I have to wonder if maybe cosmetics simply don’t stick to her armor-like skin, besides, finding the right colors to go with her shiny gold complexion must be rather difficult but I’ll let those in the forum that wear makeup debate that.
I think that the ONLY problem Max has with sexuality (hers or anybody else’s) is other people suggesting that she has a problem with sexuality. Can’t blame her for that.
Yeah .. besides, who knows, maybe she DOES have a crook fetish ?
:D
*manages a breather so he can type this*
Great page as always, Dave! As per usual, you make my Mondays. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have an appointment with another laughing fit. Harem is just too dang priceless!
Oooooooo i love angry face MAx but you know max sweetie you shouldnt scrunch your face so much you’ll get wrinkles
Awesome, maximas look on panel 3!
alos someone should buy her a stronger phone, like made of steel
nah,, steel not strong enough,,, i suggest an alloy of titanium and berylium for the casing,,,, seeing as berylium is the metal with strngest tensil strenght,,, but since its also the only not ductile metal(it cant bend,, only break), the adition of titanium,, an also very strong metal,, wouold give it some manner of flexibility
but chronic beryllium disease is bad bad bad.
oooh is that a happy fun ball SNL reference i see in tiny print at the bottom? i think it is!!
Warning: If Happy Fun Ball begins to glow, seek fallout shelter immediately.
Considering that’s Amorphus it might not be MAX that Anvil’s talking about, but BROOKE!!
And considering that Brooke is right behind our naughty girl watching this that might happen in the next page. A Gibbs headslap might be warranted (Harem does remind me of Tony DiNozzo in a way) but getting one from Max could be deadly. Brooke might scorch Harem’s hair off for this stunt.
Ya know, while I realize that Maxima and Harem are wearing superhero ID necklaces, any reporter who does not know could mistake Maxima’s as her BDSM Mistress collar.
I do believe that you forgot to put Harem into the Who’s who.
So the space marine in the third panel is The Rock? Lifted eyebrow and everything :D
Whoops, sure did. Fixed that.
The eyebrow is cause of his curiousness at his commander’s behavior. Not the rock though.
Leonard Nimoy was famous for the single lifted eyebrow, and the quote, “Fascinating.”
I love the look on maxima in the last panel. I think the drawing is the best yet. It would be hard to top it. Keep up the fantastic work.
Thanks! Though I think her eyes are a touch too far apart since I was concerned about getting all those scowley wrinkles in there. While I was coloring it I realized I had done the “eyes only scowl” before on Max. I guess it’ll be a theme with her.
You should have one of those oldschool (western) staring contests between max and halo in the far future. With varying degrees of wackieness ofcourse.
Either that, or play the contrast. Maxima completely deadpan in every shot, possibly getting even more scowly, while Sydney has a different face pulled every time in an attempt to get her to lighten up.
Actually, not that smart of a move by Harem. If she had left just one lipstick print, preferably massivly smeared, she would have a much better chance of getting away with it (providing she convinced the guys to stay quiet), by stating: “You realize it’s your own fault M for tossing around the ambulance while I was in it.”
“and the word sexuality is almost never used when talking about guys.”
Haha, I can’t decide what has me gasping for breath more, today’s page or this statement. XD
Nice angry eyes.
Now I see what Harem meant by “Payback” two pages back.
Oh the hilarity!
Also, have you noticed that you can deduce that Dabbler would support this kind of thing, in panel 4 she has a “Yeah… You went too far… You should run. Fast.” sort of look mixed with obvious amusement.
In your comment you mention Max “As far as she’s concerned, if you wouldn’t say it about a guy, she doesn’t want it said about her, and the word sexuality is almost never used when talking about guys.”.
I was always under the impression that men are the more sexual of our species. I mean if a women tries to be half as sexual is a man they are considered a Whore. And if a women was to be like Charlie Sheen they would be a mega Whore or just the worse kind of Whore.
That and most sexual predictors are men.
Any way I do like the update though. I can not blame max for being upset. In my view she just does not want to be considered a Whore. Any way I can not wait to see what she does to Harem.
Well when it comes to sex, I think it’s fair to say that men want it and women have it. (of course the opposite is true, I just mean in terms of general perception) It’s why bars have ladies’ nights where the women drink free. The free drinks are the bait to lure in the women, the women become the bait to lure in the men. A bar would go out of business if they had “dude’s night”. The “sexuality” of women is why lingerie exists for women and not for dudes.
But in terms of language used, think about every late night talk show, when the guests come out. “Please welcome the talented (dude)” is the usual intro for a guy. But with a woman, it’s ALWAYS “Please welcome the lovely and talented…” or “Please welcome the beautiful and talented…” Her appearance and sexuality is as, if not more important than her talent. The most neutral thing you might hear is “Please welcome the talented and lovely…” because the comment on her appearance is so ubiquitous, if you omit it, it almost comes across as a slight. That’s the sort of feminism that Max rolls with. The stuff that distinguishes and (in her mind) diminishes women. To her, anything that distinguishes also segregates.
Ah can not disagree with that then. I guess I took it different then you meant it.
I feel now that I must defend my fellow males in this.
Your comment that men are the overly sexual gender is in many cases true. But that is not necessarily a bad thing. consider this, a woman is not always in the proper mood for sex. Women in fact have many moods that come and go in an (at least to us guys) unpredictable pattern.
Now imagine if guys were the same way. terrifying thought isn’t it? The different moods of the two genders would almost never line up, no one would have sex; procreation would cease and the human race would die out and end our civilization.
So, to avoid this terrifying scenario MAN kind has chosen to remain in one mood at all times. This way when ever the female reaches the proper mood we are ready for you.
Sure it’s hard to be on call 24-7, of course we miss out on the other moods we could be experiencing. But given the alternative we males have chosen to make this noble sacrifice and be horny all the time.
No, no don’t thank us, it’s just what we do.
What a sacrifice !! :D
I SO wish i could like this comment.
Amen brother
Fit’s right in the list of perfect excuses next to this one https://www.damnlol.com/now-thats-a-very-good-theory-10615.html
While men generaly are horny little bastards most of the time, just because we do like sex dosn’t mean we cant turn it down from time to time, like when we just don’t like the girl in particular. There was a time when I was propositioned and turned the girl down and as a result got a lot of respect from the girl and her friends. I was in the next room when they were talking about it. She was good looking by the way, I just didn’t like her personality, so dont go thinking it’s all about looks.
perfect angry face, great work, i’ve seen people fail completely trying to make a face look angry
Angry Eyes need eyebrows, the bushier the better. without them it just doesn’t work.
One way Maxima could get out of this would be to make it look like one of the _soldiers_ was playing a prank on her, and had applied fake lipstick prints as soon as he entered the ambulance to get the men out. That way they wouldn’t have to reveal Harem.
Oookay. THAT’S not going to make the Team look good. Arianna might have a few words to say here, too.
And Maxima is currently unaware of what she did to provoke this. I doubt she knows yet she was tossing Harem around in there.
Harem could teleport back over in disguise, and claim that she was a super-troll/villain doing it for laughs, or that there was a different tele-troll that did it.
The problem with discussing sexuality – in general, at least – regarding men is that the majority of us would be utter man-sluts if we thought we could get away with it. (There are, granted, many possible reasons to restrain oneself to varying degrees – promises to other people, social custom buy-in, religious convictions, game theory, etc.) Of course, a lot of us are overconfident to an insane degree about our ability to get away with it.
Throw in some actual power to get away with it, and Loose Zipper Syndrome becomes nigh-epidemic, whether in the fields of business, civil service, high society, media, military, or politics. Colonel Leander probably has stories to (almost never) tell about officers who thought that rank trumped Penumbrate-tier god-moding.
What’s left to discuss, once you’ve survived adolescence and have been exposed to standard masculine . . . exuberance?
It’d be interesting to see her reaction to a male colleague with whom Colonel Leander develops a mutually respectful working relationship – because he goes to quite a bit of effort to avoid paying attention to her physically, choosing to keep his IQ points focused on the job(standard drop around attractive specimens presenting a visual display is ~40. Studies have, yes, been done about this). Prefers texting/email/memos to phone, prefers phone to face-to-face, and getting him to look her in the eyes – instead of at the subject of discussion, or three feet off to the left/above her head, or just keeping his eyes closed – is an epic task that very nearly requires the application of superpowers. Keeps his wit bone-dry around her, a la “I suppose makeup flakes right off – have you tried electroplating?” as a potential response to an annoyed comment about the impossibility of going out in public anonymously.
Because, with that behavior, the obvious reason would be that he finds her distractingly attractive – whereas Harem and Dabbler are merely tedious and tiresome in their antics. Since he doesn’t think she’d appreciate a man asking her to dial it back, (and maybe doesn’t want her killing his career, if he’s military), he does what he can to minimize incoming sensory distractions. Probably practical enough to keep a c’est la vie outlook about the necessity, but refuses to discuss his reasons because he’d rather not get in trouble for his attitude. Likely counting the days until he’s transferred to other duties, unless/until the Colonel decided to keep him around as one of the few men she could work with.
Eh, enough with the Gary Stu’ing. Really cool comic.
Oh, come on.
Give our gender a little credit, will you?!?
Sure someone like Maxima would be distracting to work with.
At first.
But you get used to it. Basically that´s what we humans do. Get used to stuff. If you´re honest about it: “sorry, stared a little deep there. Just give me a month to get used to them and i´ll look you in the eyes. Promise”, she might even give you the time to prove it. And if and when you do, she would probably be your best friend.
I _did_ give credit:
“(There are, granted, many possible reasons to restrain oneself to varying degrees – promises to other people, social custom buy-in, religious convictions, game theory, etc.)”
And not everyone reacts the same way. Bell curves, and all that.
As for Colonel Leander, she’s a _militant_ feminist. Expecting her to give you a month to learn the art of ‘Eyes Up Here’ . . . well, that seems like a great way to make sure she won’t work with you. To put it mildly.
As for Gary Stu, the poor guy obviously has the makings of a crush. Can’t blame him, really. Colonel Leander is competent, capable, comely, and hovers somewhere around the LG end of the alignment pool. (As opposed to the CG-to-CN tedium of twits like Harem and Dabbler.) But by now she’ll have a reputation as a ball-buster, so he goes in planning to keep it professional . . . and finds out that it won’t be particularly easy.
“Is something wrong, Lt. Stu?”
“No Ma’am! Just keeping my eyes and my IQ from heading south of the border.” And then not staring at her ass as she walks away proves one of the hardest things he’s ever done . . .
gotta ask: does maxima have a streak of yellow thunderbolt shaped hair in her hair at the left top in panel 6? or is it a draw-o(like a typo but with drawing). cause it looks like part of her hair comes of her temples(side of her skull where people rub when having brainfreeze)
Neither.
That is her temple.
Well, since everyone seems to enjoy discussing superpowers; here is one.
I think it would be actually interesting to see (well not actually see, cause i´d hate to actually see it) one of the Harems die.
Now, Now.
Hear me out.
At the moment i can think of two possibilities:
1: Nothing happens, She gains 1/5th of her strength back and can use it for the next 5th copy.
2: Since all her Brains are linked, she actually feels herself dieing (is that right???), and ranging from a shot to the Head to getting her legs ripped of by a mine, that could take a while and hurt a lot.
And another thing.
Since she is in the Military, she cold be taken prisoner in action and be placed in an EM-Field (or something). If she is subsequently interrogated, or even interrogated with extreme prejudice, can she disable the link, would the link filter that out, or would all five of them have a problem?
Wonder if a faraday cage would work in this situation. Telaportation is a strange thing, you can do it in many diffrent ways. transmitting yourself like the Star Trek method or variations of it, spacial gateing where you exchange the area you telaport to whith the area you were at, or just plain gating where you move through a area into another. So depending on how she actualy telaports and how her telapathy with the rest of her bodies work, you have a lot of options out there.
Way back when in the Legion of Superheroes when Triplicate girl’s third body was killed they blew through it without any trauma. A couple of decades later they have the same villain re-appear and she has a very moving scene where she discusses the trauma she went through with Bouncing Boy. Of course by then comics are no longer for kids (the price alone tells you that).
she is so fucking dead
… And she can have up to five duplicates at any given time.
So that means Max can kill her REPEATEDLY.
Physically speaking, Harem will likely be fine, more or less. Military regulations don’t even allow superior officers to touch as punishment, much less shatter into tiny pieces, and Max likely prides herself on following the rules. So Harem is going to survive.
Now whether she will deems that as good news is another matter. Those same regulations encourage the superior officer to give “extra attention” to “special situations”, which easily covers making an insubordinate subordinate wish she was dead. So Harem may receive some “special training exercises”, which will consist of some super version of running around a track in extra full gear for a few hours. [Or maybe Harem has some phobia, like spiders, and she gets some “corrective therapy” like having to handle them.]
This might be a good time for Sydney to sneak away…
Actually think Anvil raises a good question.
One thing, Sydney isn’t going anywhere. She wants to be with super dudes, er women. A comic book geek’s dream. So she isn’t anxious to go anywhere except to wherever the golden skinned Amazon wants to go. Though she still has Maxima’s hat. A funny bit still going on.
As for Maxima’s phone, maybe using a carbon nanotube matrix might be strong enough. If not, add it to a metallic laminate. Just a suggestion.
Also their V-22 transport could have a nanite covering based upon octopus melanophores. To change color and even be used as stealth coating.
I know that all these ideas about how to make a stronger phone are great and everything, but you have to consider budget constraints. Nowadays phones are changed almost yearly, if not faster because somebody is always coming out with a new function or app, cases for a new phone would probably be expensive because there would be too few of them ordered. basicly a one-off would cost more than a years worth of replacement phones, expecialy if they got a insurance plan with the phone plan to cover for breakage.
Asurion is the only insurance company in the US that will insure cell phones and they will cancel that insurance if you have 2 claims in a year. [Formerly worked for T-Mobile, I had to know this kind of thing.] Some companies do provide their own insurance so I don’t know how that works. Probably the Army buys in bulk from the manufacturer directly and doesn’t worry about insurance. After all the dear peeepul will pay for replacements.