Grrl Power #721 – A historic disembarkation
There was a plan in place to get Sydney down without anyone noticing. Cora had a flight path and everything. But that all went out the window when they realized the gig was up, alien wise. They just forgot to call Archon HQ and tell them they were coming in, 5 by 5.
I’ve said it before, but I am nothing resembling a visionary futurist. I don’t think a warp capable starship would utilize hydraulics in their bay doors. Something magnetically driven, or maybe controlled by artificial myomers. If tractor beam technology exists, you could probably use it to swing a door open and shut. I can only imagine the technology would weigh a heck of a lot less that metal tubes full of liquid. It’d probably take a ton more power to work tractor beam driven doors, but if you can crack lightspeed, presumably you’ve got power to spare. I don’t know that weight would necessarily matter all that much, and maybe hydraulics would be more reliable than little telekinesis pods doing all your manual labor, but I think it would seem kind of retro once you have more sophisticated ways of doing stuff like that.
I’ve decided that when Cora said The Interdictor was 160 meters long, she was talking about the main body of the ship, not including the two anti-mass drivers in the front, or the gravity sled. That probably makes more sense considering the size of the cargo bay shown a few pages ago.
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I appreciate that today’s faces are a lot more expressive than Thursday’s.
Which is appropriate, given Thursday’s was a routine press conference, obviously one of many covering similar topics recently. As such it would not be particularly news-worthy, audience figures would be well down, and all involved on the ground, will have been fairly bored and somewhat lackluster in their attitude.
Then they saw an alien space ship arrive …
I dunno. I thought the reporter’s faces all seemed a bit…nonplussed (the unperturbed version of the meaning, not so much the “surprised to the point of being dazed). I kind of liked it that way, too…like they’re so over the alien surprises at this point that they can’t even bother being shocked and amazed when a spaceship lands in front of Archon. :)
I agree. I thought the same thing when I saw their faces. Like once it became the second time, it wasn’t as interesting :P
You know Sydney, you could’ve called
I mean even ET called home first.
Maxima knew Sydney was coming an hour before.
It’s not that there was no call.
It’s that Ariana was left out of the loop.
Well, Cora did mention a few comics back that she discussed with Dabbler the need to hide from Earth when they arrived.
Its possible Archon just assumed Cora would stick with the hiding plan… the comic has said nothing to imply that Cora contacted Dabbler again after learning the secret was out.
Panel eight, from #717 would have happened an hour before this, and it indicates just that.
That occurred before comic #718, panel 4, which is where Cora mentioned Dabbler talked about needing to remain hidden, and Cora being surprised that Earth already knew about aliens. Clearly Dabbler didn’t have a chance tell Cora anything about the secret being out or whether that changed things.
(Also, we’re talking about FTL communications which we have no info about the parameters of. Just because Cora got a message to Dabbler doesn’t mean Dabbler got a message to Cora at the same time.)
If you’re out of the loop, you shouldn’t make @#$% up, or lie to the press, saying things like “she’s sequestered in training” when you don’t actually know where she is, or where she will pop up.
Another black eye for the media re. selling a made up story (whatever their intentions).
All Arianna has to do is say, loudly, “Sydney, so good to see you back from your Top Secret Training. Please KEEP what you were doing Top Secret, so I can introduce you to the MEMBERS OF THE PRESS around me…though I’m sure they’re dying to know who your friends are.”
Often part of being out of the loop is not knowing that you’re out of the loop. When Cora called Dabbler, and Dabbler decided to only call Max, nothing signaled to Arianna that she had been kept in the dark. For all we know, Arianna hasn’t even *seen* Dabbler or Max since then.
To be fair, we don’t know if Dabbler only called Maxima.
She probably called General Faulk as well.
But Faulk seems to give his subordinates a certain amount of leeway rather than micromanaging every detail of the operation, so Arianna being overlooked may be just one of the things which inevitably happen in a fluid situation.
Lucy, you got some spraining to do!
Naw, she’s already sprained Arianna’s credibility….
Arianna might could save face by responding, “Aren’t you supposed to be in training?”. But she’s there to bolster Sydney’s image, not make her sound truant, so she’d probably grudgingly take the hit regardless.
She CANNOT say anything that would make Syd sound truant. This isn’t a recruit gone missing from basic training. A high powered super going missing is like the military losing a stealth bomber loaded with nukes. Someone as powerful as Sydney will become feared if people don’t have the illusion of control over her.
This would be a good time for Sydney to show that she actually learned something in those PR lessons. Like:
Reporters: Where have you been? Why did Archon lie about it?
Sydney: Don’t you guys ever ready comics? Obviously, I was doing something SECRET! And there was a cover story to help it stay secret, because that was important. So stop trying to make me be mean to Arianna when she was just doing her job.
+1
I’mma give it a +1, too.
+1 also
I was kinda hoping for more of a “Look what I found!” line to drive arianna nutty.
They followed me home!… Can I KEEP THEM?!?
Brilliant! The sort of response you only think of 5 minutes later on the staircase.
The White Zone is for loading and unloading passengers only.
Just as the White House is for loading and unloading B.S. only.
Way to ruin a movie quote.
As Arianna’s credibility plummets to Huckabee-Sanders levels…
Reporter #3: I’m sorry, Arianna, what were you lying?
Hardly, please meet some of Sydney’s trainers, who we are now in a position to reveal, a bit ahead of our planned announcement …
*still glaring at Sydney*
… are in negotiations with our Government. Details of which will have to wait for the relevant White House address.
Heath Dodson, Daily Panicker. Arianna, why is ARCHON, which our viewers already have grave concerns about, getting their training from Aliens?! Who does ARCHON -really- answer to, the White House, or THEM? *accusing finger point at aliens debarking with Sydney*
That’s a softball, Heath. As you know, up until recently we had no knowledge of alien life. ARCHON is taking the opportunity to learn from them what to expect in the space beyond our planet. It is imperative that we know what threats might be possible from beyond our atmosphere.
No knowledge?! Do you seriously expect us to believe that when someone from ARCHON walks off an alien ship practically arm-in-arm with aliens? And calls us ‘Earthers’ while demanding we turn over all our ‘Kwatloo’s’, whatever they are! Why haven’t we been told about Kwatloo’s! And what deals are ARCHON making behind the backs of the citizens of this great nation of ours to turn those Kwatloo’s over to aliens?!
“Arianna doesn’t even know what hentai is. How do you expect her to know what kwatloo’s are?” -Halo
I think Sydney has had enough political correctness training (inspired by her Deadpool top and various inappropriate remarks) that she would not bring up Hentai. That one we can take will have specifically been put on the banned list of subjects, given she directly spoke to Arianna about it. Not to mention making her eyes pop by showing her some online.
There is in infinite supply of porn drawn of everyone at arching. You think Ariana is unaware of this?
Are Sydney’s glasses now ultra-durable space glasses?
It seems likely, since Cora isn’t likely to use mere glass when the first set got broken by a piece of shrapnel. I’m betting that “Glass” is really some hyperstrong superpolymer that can bounce bullets at the very least.
I mean, they were likely polycarbonate anyway since it’s nearly impossible to get actual GLASS glasses now a days, and at worst they were a variant of acrylic.
But since she isn’t blind without them, it’s easy to guess that they aren’t the high-density super-refractive poly that I have to get for family. YAY -9 to -12 perscriptions! (I can’t remember, it was one of those)
Even if the lens holds, that’s still a painfully small area to distribute the kinetic energy of any credible bullet across.
Better a broken nose or cheek bone than a bullet in the eye, I always say.
or BUILDING Framents when she (or Max) “accidentally” detonates one…
C’mon, she had to put the holographic butterfly wing transmitter SOMEwhere!?
Well easy enough solution, if Arianna can think of it fast enough: Halo was part of the team checking out the home planet of the new alien refugees. It was kept secret while it was occuring just in case the broadcasts were being watched. The fact that they can bring out some more refugees as well… just helps sell the story.
I think this is one of the better spins yet – Archon learned from the Alari about stranded survivors, had their leader call in Cora, and sent Halo as a liason to assist with the pickup. Archon is simply helping reunite the ones who got separated, nothing to cover up at all!
…not that Arianna will be given the time and privacy to spin this yarn.
Now the next question is… why Halo, the FNG?
As it happens, she’s the most expendable super they have who is able to survive brief exposure to space, and can get back to a planet on her own if she’s near enough to it. I mean, the shield and flight are both public knowledge, right? Airball isn’t, of course, but we don’t have to mention that – just point out that Achilles could handle being tossed into space, but couldn’t move around there. 5 minutes of air is better than being completely stranded, right?
So it was really a choice between Max and Halo. What, Dabbler? She’s just a limited shapeshifter with an affinity for having four arms. It’s not like she’s *actually* an alien!
So Halo was sequestered on an alien ship?
Also, when is Halo’s who’s who going to be updated to include teleportation?
No, an alien ship was transportation back from the training area.
Man, the art has majortime improved since when you started. Love it.
Ya know, I would throw down good money that Sydney’s glasses (made by Cora in the mass fab unit) have a special surprise for Sydney that Cora and Dabbler thought up. To wit, any time the nanite sensors embedded in the frames note an elevation in respiration and increase in pupil dilation, the glasses automatically switch to “X-ray vision” mode.
I imagine it’s more likely they can give a readout of culinary spiciness in scovils.
Something she would use all of the time.
Sydney must just make sure not to accept any clothing gifts, in case they have a similar transparent mode.
Aaand here’s Arianna’s karma for putting Sydney through this.
Mind you, I am still not sure what Arianna is upset about. She knows she’s a liar. That’s her job. And the reporters know, and she knows they know, and they know she knows that they know that… Of course, her bosses wanted her to sell that lie, but it was not her fault Sydney dropped in without warning.
*paw print of approval*
Love those last two panels! And ‘Thanks!’ for that “Mork & Mindy” ref! :-)
Arianna secret X-men power activated: DEATH STARE.
Never considered this before, butt Sydney is a fucking idiot!!!
Even she should have known to contact Max and check to see what the situation is and what the appropriate course of action should be
Just because there is a ship in Africa, and Suzie is talking about it on the news, does not fucking mean it’s a good fucking idea to land in the middle of fucking downtown!!!!!!!!!
For all we know this WAS Maxima’s idea.
If we look over to one side we may well see Maxima taking a snap of Arianna’s face right now. ;-)
If so, she will doubtless have called the President, on her hotline, before authorising the flight plan. Even if she may have ‘accidentally’ neglected to mention it to Arianna.
Odds are though that Cora made the judgement call on her own, precisely as seen in the previous scene with her. She is a ship captain and one not answerable to minor governments on backwater planets.
Sydney is not the Captain of the starship.
She didn’t make the communications, and she didn’t make the decisions.
But go ahead and take a cruise, or go on a guided deep sea fishing trip and see how much of your input the Captain requests or how much unsolicited directions the Captain follows.
Cora was in contact with Dabbler, whom she partnered with for years. She trusts her.
Cora has known Sydney a couple days at most, and has had to pay for her messes and has bought her holographic toys.
Sydney isn’t responsible for when or where the starship landed.
On the other hand she is still an idiot, but I give her points for being a lovable idiot.
Nicely argued.
And agreed, Cora is the captain, and Sydney just a passenger. That aside, I think Sydney made a good judgement call in walking out with the alien crew. Whilst her choice of dialogue is amusing (albeit nonsensical to most non-nerds), it is an ice-breaker which should help to defuse any fears amongst the TV watching populace.
Seeing Sydney relaxed and comfortable around the aliens will (even if only subconsciously) make people feel a bit less afraid of aliens landing in the middle of a major metropolis. Plus those who get ticked off at her casual attitude are focusing their attentions on a much safer subject. Better ticked off at her than being freaked out at the aliens.
(press barrages Halo with questions)
“Guys, guys. Come on. You know I own a comic shop. When I say I go all out for advertising, I mean it! Twenty percent off indie comics 2pm-5pm on thursdays!”
As you said, Cora is the captain, and she would be experienced enough with visiting planets, presumably even a few pre-FTL, to know you don’t just land in the middle of a major city without flight clearance!
And Sydney is genre-savvy enough to know, you don’t exit an alien ship saying any belongs to them
Again, just because there is now an alien ship in Africa, and talking about them on the news, Sydney has to remember how they were still a huge global secret just a matter of a couple days ago
About the refugees….
They all add the middlename ‘Scoville’ on the forms they fill out.
Taking or adding someone’s name to their own is a great honor in their culture.
:-D
If you have artificial gravity you could probably do almost anything you wanted to do with it.
Move a box? Move it with your artificial gravity.
Shoot a guy? Shoot him with artificial gravity.
I think it’s the whole premise of Mass Effect
Yea, people think that about just about any new wonder material or discovery with wide-ranging capabilities. We saw that with plastics, bakelite and nuclear energy/weapons. Whilst each did drastically change society (albeit that bakelite got quickly superseded by plastics) each has its limitations and things that it is not suited to.
That said though gravity control does indeed have a very wide ranging variety of applications.
Whilst a device may be developed to help baked goods rise, it will not be of much help otherwise in cooking. Except, of course, in a weightless environment. Or, conversely, allowing some fabulous cake to be made in a weightless (or micro-gravity) environment, which would be impossible on Earth without that. But such things tend to be novelties, or very specialist uses, which would not affect day-to-day eating habits (running with this example).
Whereas using your example of “shoot him with artificial gravity”, how mobile is your gravity generator? It took generations from the discovery of gunpowder to turn it into a useful weapon. In the West having to start off with very heavy and imobile cannon, before gradually learning how to scale it down. So for a long long time most armies were still armed with crossbows, pikes and lances, even after gunpowder started to be used on the battlefield.
A little OT but relating to the earlier discussion of hydraulic actuators, bakelite is still around and used in the aerospace industry among other places. One of the themes of the comments is that new and fabulous changes our lives and then becomes old and commonplace.
This is exactly the problem with all futurism settings, and we see a lot in sci-fi discussions. Just because you have the tech doesn’t mean you have refined the tech, or have figured out how to utilize it beyond certain capacities based on your limitations with it; like you said the artificial gravity generator. Just how you generator, how small it is, and how well you can focus the intensity and range will all greatly influence WHAT you can actually do with it.
After all there are reasons you don’t see magnetic lift trollies in every warehouse and people still use forklifts.
cost, practicality, energy usage, how well you can service the tech when it malfunctions, ect…
its like the hard light thing. Yeah she has hard light limbs. But how much of a range and durability does it have that you want to trust it with making the physical structures of a space ship? or even just windows?
I can easily see a setting where some ships do have gravity pads that people stand on and lower down in a beam of light to greet visitors and other ships have hydraulic doors, or rolling out tongue doors and what not, based on cultural preferences, personal financial and aesthetic choices, or even just an engineering compatibility and practicality.
Cora seems the sort that needs to deploy quickly and possibly close the doors quickly with minimal chance of an approaching enemy able to use magic or energy weapons to disrupt her closing the hatch. Something heavy and reliable.
I am reminded of Star Gate SG-1’s guns vs energy staves discussion. The staff is a more advanced weapon but it is designed to intimidate people, it kills one and the others see it as a weapon of the gods and fear it like magic. The machine guns were designed to kill, they are weapons of war and war only. The simpler tech won out because by design it fit the purpose better. Which is something you see in engineering all the time. You change up materials and tech when it is better (or practical), not just because its newer.
I love this comic.
I hope Susie News gets a speaking part soon. I am suffering from Susie withdrawal syndrome!
What I want to see (since we have skipped forward in time) is Marble Maiden, whom Archon was on the verge of apprehending back in #366.
Of course, if she was able to intercept criminals through detective work or unknown powers she may wind up working with Arc-lite or Arc-dark instead of Arc-Swat. Still I fell in love with the character. Perhaps it was because she matches so much of my furniture and tableware.
Yeah, I really want to see where that plot thread goes.
Next page, Sydney has been gone a month and Marble Maiden is already in the new recruits pool.
Halo! What were you really doing when you were supposedly training?
Training. I learned lots of interesting stuff. For example that I’m capable of warp drive!
We have already seen (with the Lightbee Teleportation) that due to being a lifelong comic nerd Sydney is pretty savvy about keeping her exact abilities hidden.
She is far more likely to blabber on about Grakz.
NOT with Frix standing there she isn’t… she doesn’t want him to remember her by THAT kind of an “afterglow”…
Good chance as Cora stated it was a well known side effect that as a doctor he knows already, but he just didn’t see Sydney and she didn’t want that mental image of her in his memory.
Does Sydney’s Hair look MORE Blonde? I was hoping she would go for a different type of frames in her Specks. “Well you see Press people, Sydney was just showing them around and they got a bit puckish so they just went out for Chinese….In. CHINA.”
Damn AUTO-CORRECT…….PECKISH!
Generally speaking? If you’ve got the power to get to other stars in a human lifetime, you’re not breaking light speed anyway, you’re finding a way around it. By all conventional science, the speed of light is absolute, and going faster than it would likely involve going backwards in time given the nature of time dilation. So if you’re going faster than light, it’s through a means that has absolutely nothing to do with the raw power output to exceed it through propulsion (which is infinity, by the way) and that means that given how Sydney’s wormholes are Nth tech, it’s not wormholes they’re using. Given all that we’ve seen so far, it works via accessing extra-dimensional space and re-appearing at another location, turning standard propulsion into FTL propulsion, effectively.
It’s like Hyperdrive from Star Wars. Before Disney made it all non-canon, Hyperdrives worked by accessing an alternate dimension woven into the fabric of their universe and traversing that. Spacetime was more compressed there, so 5 feet in there would be 20 feet or some such, which is why they needed Nav Computers to figure out where they would come out of Hyperspace. This “Aetherion” that Cora mentioned sounds just like it and the Nth tech part of it is where her orbs can just plain create a Point A and a Point B and connect the two by manipulating spacetime itself.
All this is just a fancy way of saying that while yes, Dave is right that a ship like Cora’s would be packing a reactor powerful enough to make tractor beam doors totally viable, it’s not the reason her ship can go Intersolar.
And before anyone keys onto my “By all conventional science” point above and points out that we’re not using conventional science and there’s magic in this universe:
1. I know that and I’m making a point
2. At no point does Cora even slightly imply that magic factors into anything her, her team or her ship does, in fact she very specifically says she’s always had a knack for technology so if you want implication, there’s your pointing finger to how her ship does the stuff it does.
3. As far as we’re aware, this entire series is centered around trying to ground superhero stuff in real world consequences, and it seems silly to suspend that simply to explain how a ship goes faster than light. More to the point, Dave has at multiple points gone out of his way to elaborate points using conventional science and logic. Therefore it’s reasonable to assume that his world still operates under the same laws of physics that ours does, just that some people are capable of giving that the finger in some manner or another.
(Worm Hole) is a very generic term,
we’ve seen a magical portal, and we’ve seen star gate style portals as well. Chances are they are using short range jump points for ships that are affected by gravitational bodies to produce weak points to a sub-space. So similar to the portals in (MCU, Star Gate series, Cowboy Bebop and Babylon 5), Also possibly the ether dive from Outlaw Star.
Sydney’s Aetherium Causeway looks like a total gravity bypass, kind like a (screw gravity, screw sub-space, I can just instantly travel long distances in the universe regardless of hyperspace and regardless of something on the other end.
-some portals like Stargates, and like the Fracture and the portal Sciona made with the Bran Ripper look to need an address, like the gravity, electromagnetic, ect… signature of a specific body in space to lock onto and transport to. In some series a receiving device like another Hyper Gate or Star Gate may be required that auto-corrects for movement and a safety mechanism against gravity and celestial bodies disrupting the subspace.
the Aetherium Causeway seems to access a dimension (The Aetherium) that can totally ignore the physical dimension with its own in-built safeties for the traveler upon exiting, but not directly affected by them. Which Cora has explained normally requires an astronomical amount of energy and/or psychic power to pierce into. But Sydney Orb (at plip one of this new branch) can access with ease.
This, THIS comment right here? Is why I love posting in these comments xD Nice ideas. I’d love to see evidence (via specific page links, I mean) to support your arguments but don’t take that as a challenge, I’d just love to pursue those ideas of yours!
The last ‘E’ on the second panel is a bit distracting because it overlaps with a hand, creating a ‘3E’ for lack of better description. Maybe move it to the right? Idk.
Had to laugh, poor PR people.
You had the prefect chance to do a Space Jam style entrance and you missed it. You missed it….
anti-mass drivers…. would that be reverse or inverse Gauss tech? My poor brain….
That final panel of Sydney, so cute.
Upsetting Arianna never stops being funny.
So question about toughness/defense…
Achilles has a 6 (on a 1-5 scale) with the shield symbol. Is that defense? Toughness? (They are NOT the same thing). Something else?
We’re having a debate on another site. I’m arguing that Achilles is the toughest character, but not the best at defense, since there are so many other ways he can be affected and immobilized or otherwise removed from a fight. So clarification would be nice.
“What up guys?! You know what time it is?
PR DISASTER TIME!”