Grrl Power #726 – A return to abnormalcy
This scene would go down really different with just about any other Lieutenant Colonels in the military. Granted, there are fewer R. Lee Ermey types in the service these days, but glomping your XO is probably still generally frowned upon.
Yes. Dabbler went to Balor University. (She was 85% of the way to six different doctorates before wandering off.) Their collegiate rivals in the Doom Bowl was and still is Pit Fiend U. Although watch out for Marilith U. They only allow lady demons to enroll there, but while sexual dimorphism is fairly extreme among demons in general, we are talking about species that can summon fire whips and regenerate from eating corpses and… I don’t know, fly and breathe fire and probably other stuff with fire, the amount of muscle mass you’re walking around with matters for a lot less when it comes to collegiate sports.
A few things about this page. The eagle-eyed among you might have noticed that it looks a little different. So here’s the thing. I’m getting ready to move from one side of town to the other. This involves selling my house, which involves getting my house ready to sell. At this point, anyone who’s sold a house and moved may be surprised that this page is anything more than stick figures, because, damn, it’s a lot of work. Though I will say it’s probably healthy to have a bit of a stuff purge every once in a while. I tend to slough off about 20% of my stuff every time I do.
This feels like a good time to thank everyone for your support over the years, financial or otherwise. It’s amazing that I can do things like living in a houses because of all your support. You guys are my wonderbra.
Anyway, I had to find a way to speed up the comic process a bit. I was going to post this page with just the flat colors, but I experimented with a sort of cell shading with some smoothing around the curvy bits, and a few highlights. This took a lot less time than my more rendery style, so I may stick with it for a while, or I may be forced to be resort to just flats here and there for a few weeks, so we’ll see.
But Dave, don’t you have a guy who colors pages for you sometimes? Yes, but I spent nearly $200 on empty boxes and stuff like tape and bubble wrap this month, so you know. Choices.
Something else different about this page is that it’s a bit bigger. Updating the back end of the site made it easier to make the whole thing wider, and I’ve thought for the longest time that the dialog font I use is a smidge small for the size I post the pages at. Hopefully this will help with that. And also… it just makes the page bigger.
Edit: Whoops! Fixed the left-handed salute.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. $1 and up, but feel free to contribute as much as you like.
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Dongs Ahoy!Full frontal and backal. Lots of skin, sex on some or all pages, explicit or otherwise.
She’s like a mom, really – Sydney has MOTHER issues!
Awwww
Awwwww
Double “Awwww”
Biggest Awwwww of the comic. :D
None can resist the Sydney glomp.
Why would you want to?
Yeah I keep forgetting the Sydney really isn’t a hardened Soldier or police officer yet. She’s a girl who’s been at the job at most a week as already had to deal with being stranded in the field fighting hide you the one that killed her they already decimated planet getting lost in space again who knows what all else. Her going straight for the hug One Max Plus I guess I can understand that as being her what do you call it Comfort Baker someone who she can believe in and rely on to look out for her best interest. I can understand her being grateful to see her again.
We both are using the English language and yet none of this is comprehensible to me. Can anyone translate?
Guessing: “Yeah, I keep forgetting that Sydney isn’t really a hardened soldier or a police officer yet. She’s just a girl who’s been at the job for at most a week and already had to deal with being stranded in the field, fighting for her hide (the alien she killed had already decimated an entire planet) , getting lost in space where who knows what dangers there are. Her ‘going straight for the hug’ on Maxima, I guess I can understand as she’s someone Sydney can trust and rely on to look out for her and act in her best interest. I can understand her being grateful to see her again.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comfort_Baker
Guessing this is something like a regional story.
I think we’re a bit over a week, but I’d have to read it through again…
The replies just make this more confusing.
The regional story and a week being mentioned doesn’t help comprehension. Unless the plan is “let’s confuse people”
Comfort Baker was the thing that the first guy mentioned, which I say might be some regional story since he decided to use that example for someone that you can trust and rely on.The only thing that came from a google search was a wiki article( at least only thing that made sense)
A week is referring to the amount of time passed since Sydney joined the Archon. First guy says it’s only been a week but the one replying is saying that he thinks she’s been in Archon for more than a week.
Any other questions need to be answered?
I just thought it was a Cake song:
She is grooming her wolfman
She is living comfort baker
She is dressed up in her halo hugging pointy-eared Max
Yeah I need to re-read it as well. As I understand it she met Maxima at the bank robbery, was taken to archon had her interview signed on to be a member of Arc squat went to the press conference and took part in the super villain battle culminating with her coming up with the plan that took down Velhelmance sp? All in the same day. The next day she got her utility belt I got her first assignment learning how to field strip and dress a gun got her custom uniform made went to the nightclub with the other recruits and a few other things including her introduction to the Veil and I forget that vampires name. A day later if I’m not mistaken was the hunt for the person who sent the assassination party to the Twilight Council discovering that she was alive and being sequestered as they try to make sure that picks couldn’t destroy the universe accidentally using her powers. Then after that the Twilight Council realizes they don’t goofed and one of the vampires I forget what you call the sirens try to sneak into art got caught and Maxima was taken to the Vault with Doppler then we find coot and go from there. After that she got stranded during a hunt I believe it was two days later trying to take down Little Miss alien blood mage. How long it’s been since she’s been missing the field for the others I do not know but I think from Sydney’s point of view is been about a week a week and a half tops. Also I wish I could see my entire post on this phone screen instead of just the latter half of two lines
It’s a cool post. WAY breathless. If you talk the same way I’d be gibbering in a corner with my hands over my head before you finished.
A left-handed salute?
good catch. Usually that would be considered disrespect or a joke in the US Mil. Even left handers learn to salute right handed.
I suspect joke. You aren’t supposed to salute when not in uniform either, generally.
Maxima does have a sense of humor, as… rarely as we see it.
You’re right! Here you go!
https://www.dropbox.com/s/2wsn9vjjg44snzy/2019-04-11-GP0726%20typo%20left%20handed%20salute%20r.png?dl=0
Perfect, yeah if you look all military and para-military US organizations salute with the right hand… he should fix that… it irritates me… a lot, but I like the panel as a whole.
I wonder how many did not know at all like me. I have always seen salutes done with the right arm , but had no clue that the other way was disrespect etc.
learn something new every day
Uh oh. No way an officer like Maxima would salute with the wrong hand. Possessed by an Alari soul perhaps? If you’re going to possess a body you may as well go for the gold, figuratively and literally.
She is probably doing it on purpose, as she is not in uniform, or on-duty, and as something of an inside joke with Sydney. Didn’t somebody get corrected for a left-handed salute on an earlier page?
When I went through basic training I saluted an officer with the wrong hand once. ONCE!
What that infraction cost me in pushups ensured that I would never repeat that mistake ever.
Maxi’s confirmation of being a Conch Republican! :D
And yes, the Conch Republic is a real thing, in Florida (thank you Sir Billy Connelly for teaching me that)
Whoops. I guess I should flip that panel.
…and it’s fixed. This is one of the reasons you’re my fav. comics author. You keep in touch with your readers, humble and flexible. Keep up the good work.
There are some situations that call for a left-handed salute, but it’s generally only when the right arm is injured or the hand occupied by a weapon or formal tool. I saluted left-handed while carrying a bosun’s pipe, for example.
Sexy Heroine Line-up! :)
Gonna be that guy, but you salute with your right hand. The origin of the salute dates to knights meeting one another. The right hand is the sword hand, so on meeting another knight, one would use the right hand to raise the faceplate of the helmet. This revealed the knights identity, and also showed an empty sword hand, doubly signalling peaceful intentions. The military is particularly anal about ancient traditions like these. Maybe Max really was goofing around?
Riding on the left of the road so the right hand was the sword hand. America drives on the wrong side of the road so their left is their sword arm…
Also, ships’ portside is on the left. If cars were land ships, they’d drive on the left as well.
Ships, I belive, got port and starboard from the navigation room. The mast was in the center, the door (or port) was on the left (facing the front), the starchart (starboard) was on the wall to the right.
Nope. Ships dock with the left side against the jetty, or port. In the old days the rudder was on the side, so they put it on the right to stop it banging against the wharf. It was known as the Steering Board, later abbreviated to Starboard.
The US ended up driving on the right because when it was being settled (overrun?) by Europeans the whole knights with swords in their right hands era was pretty much over. Instead the issue was teamsters driving wagons pulled by teams of horses. The teamster would ride on the left rear animal so that the whip in his right hand could reach any of the other animals. When 2 teams going opposite directions met, the teamsters would bear to the right so that they could see if they had enough room between the two teams of horses.
Actualy there both right, Balor is a mor modern script form of old Celtic for Baleros, but that is another story.
Holy Crap, Harem is RIPPED TO SHREDS.
Um, yes, she is Technicaly a Superhuman, just physically on the low end of the scale,
I just don’t recall the last time we’ve seen her in something so revealing. Most of her incarnations are pretty girly; seeing her Special Forces Warrior Woman body threw me.
Oh and I just noticed that her freckles go all the way down…::sigh::
Maybe dabbler is so ripped is she was doing a lot of the obligatory “cookie bop”
She also might have a bit of Trill heritage
Also her tits are gigantic. While Max’s are physically bigger she is also build heavy enough so they just look big. For Harem it looks like they double the volume of her upper body. In comparison to her rib cage her tits are a lot bigger then Max’s
I really appreciate the larger text (and larger image, ofc). Thanks!
You should have seen that coming Maxima.
I love the fact that despite all the glomp-i-ness joy of Halo’s return she was still aware enough to know that Max wasn’t in uniform and thus didn’t need to return the salute.
She also called Maxima a MILF, kind of, and is still breathing…..
I wonder how many people would have caught that if it wasn’t highlighted. this bunch does have pretty sharp eyes…
Awwwwwwwwwwww.
Peer pressure.
I feel like her hugging Max is OK. Also I like to think a quite some Officers got hugged by conscripts after high stress situations. Just with the age difference they can be some sort of replacement Dad/Mom. Do we know anything about Sydney’s family besides that her Dad named her Sydney and is also named Sydney?
Her mom is the practical one, asking about what kind of training like Police Procedure 101, etc… but her DAD is the Comic Book geek/nerd… what with his “can you get me a signed, first-run statue of you as Halo” as one of the first things out of his mouth when they heard about her Super-Hero gig… other than that not much, sorry…
Art note Harem’s breasts look bigger…and Maxima’s smaller as do Dabbler’s.
Not sure if compression for M and D, but Harem looks really bountiful.
Maybe that’s ALL of the Harems combined. Her most powerful configuration?
or it could be considered her Weakest configuration if you consider the NUMBER of Harem’s to be her main strength… and not her physical body, even though it gains strength and whatever else happens when she un-teleports one or more of herself back down to just one body.
You might try to ask at a local supermarket about leftover grocery cartons/boxes. In Poland the banana boxes are quite solid for moving purposes, and they throw them away for recycling anyway so I just ask a day earlier for them to leave as many boxes as I need instead of throwing them in the trash compactor. Also bubble wrap is a lot cheaper when bought from a plastic foil wholesaler than from homedepot-type stores. However I don’t know how (un)available such options are in the US. Good luck with the move and sale :)
Really good advice! The last time I moved I, like Dave, spent piles of cash on boxes and other packing supplies, and found myself out of boxes late at night with movers coming the next morning. I found an open big box store, I think it was a Target, and while they had some boxes for sale they were really small. I asked one of the guys working there if they had any boxes they were throwing away and he went into the back and rolled out a freaking pallet cart, once of those things with a pump jack handle as the tow bar that can pick up a pallet loaded with stuff, just full of empty boxes all broken down for recycling. I grabbed a bunch of them, slipped him a $20, and got my packing finished.
When moving, most of my boxes will weigh a lot since they will be full of books.
I get discarded heavy duty boxes from liquor stores. The kind expensive bottles ship in.
Back in my military days, I used to ship and store stuff in grenade crates and 105 shell crates which would otherwise have been burned (and yes, we did used to sit around the fire burning wooden crates in the field) so crates were used for everything from furniture to flooring.
In my hometown there was a house that had a large addition built almost entirely out of artillery shell crates. Sadly, or maybe not depending on your point of view, the days of cheep milsurp are pretty much gone.
You can also hit up your local Barnes & Noble to get shipping boxes that held actual books. Those boxes are nigh indestructible and designed to be packed solid.
OOOH!!! Never though of that! next time i have to move i hope i can remember this as i have about 10 book cases full of books double and triple stacked on each shelf… and more shelves of movies the same way.
Supermarkets or your local corner shop likely has boxes. Most already have smaller ones available for carrying your shopping. Electric kitchen goods shops might be worth trying for huge boxes.
In our (tiny) city all the cardboard ends up in a single room. If you sneak in on a Friday afternoon and ask nicely, you can fill your vehicle from the “mountain”.
It looks better than the normal pages you’ve been doing, but still not as nice as flat colors. Honestly, the first 50 pages or so of Grrl Power were the nicest that the comic has ever looked.
I noticed the colors were different even before reading the blurb below the comic, though I have to say I might even prefer this simpler style over the ‘rendered’ one.
DaveB – the who’s who doesn’t show up on the .com top page, but it does on the /archive (hit prev, then next to see). I’m on android, using chrome.
Still some tweaking of code needed, I guess. or maybe it’s intended that way?
Hmm, never noticed that, though I don’t spend a lot of time using chrome on android. I’ll bring it up with my brain guy.
Actually it doesn’t show up on the homepage at all. It should be there.
The “Other stuff I like” sidebar has been missing since the site update. It vanished just before I finished your archives, so I was looking forward to adding some new strips to my feed.
The markup examples have also disappeared.
Wouldn’t Max be a COILF?
*Snerk!*
There’s nothing on this Earth sexier than a woman you have to salute in the morning.
Now that Sydney is back home, will Maxima consider her time in space as burned up vacation time and to compensate she puts Sydney on KP duty?
KP will have to wait while everybody from Brigadier-General (sorry, dunno the US rank equivalent) upwards tries to get Sid to stay still long enough for several dozen hours of debriefing.
The US equivalent to Brigadier-General is Brigadier-General
I’m preaty sure getting sucked into a portal and being stranded on another planet counts as extreme circumstances.
She probably owes Dabler for calling in an escort to find her tho.
Don’t be an ass. She was stranded out in the field and any CO worth allowing to live would know that. Max isn’t a bad CO and so would know the right things to do for Sydney, now that she’s back.
Sydney went forward in time.
A troop is not AWOL while not existing.
The Balor Bares, by any chance?
Not that I’m complaining,,,,dang! I supose I am…but Maxima should be in uniform. Aliens visiting. Unless the idea is not to be seen as militaristic as a first impresion? Wearing clothing as similar to what the aliens are wearing as possible? For all I know she was in uniform until 5 seconds ago and used superspeed to wear what she’s wearing now.
The aliens *are* naked, technically. So Max’s outfit fits right in better than her uniform would. Besides, if she’s off duty, the official meet-greet-and-eat is someone else’s job right now.
I’ve always been a little intrigued that Max is so stridently feminist about body image, yet wears only form-fitting belly shirts when not in uniform. Not sure what the mindset is there – “I want to wear revealing clothes, but anyone who then checks out my body is devaluing me as a person.” …wat?
I happen to agree that ogling is inappropriate, but how is deliberately* inciting a behavior you actively dislike a consistent world view?
* as in she’s deliberated the choice and continues making it, not as in baiting people so she can yell at them.
the mind set is “I’m a comic book artist that goes for the fan serious” but honest even if she was real the problem is still you’re view not her actions.
No one is responsible for other peoples actions and to expect otherwise is to oppress those people. i mean basically that’s the same line of thought that you use to backup the burka and victim blaming. and honestly the world doesn’t work this way, people actively harass women no matter what they wear or how they look.
the point is that feminist teaching shows us “a woman should be able to walk down the street naked without being harassed/disrespected”. the point being the problem is reducing a person to a sex object instead of treating them as an equal human being.
so max’s think is that dressing this way makers her happy/feel good about herself and that’s the only reason she needs to dress that way. if other people can’t control themselves well enough to treat her with respect then THEY are the ones that need to be called out on their failure.
It is hardly fair to men for an attractive woman to wear clothing designed to emphasise her sexual attributes, then to get mad at men for having the normal involuntary hormonal responses that are built into their very being. In my experience there are a lot of woman who will dress provocatively with the intent of arousing a particular male, but then get all uberfeminist when a guy she isn’t interested in expresses some interest. Somehow us guys are expected to magically know who the woman is after, and act like a castrated monk if we aren’t the one. Women need to understand that if you toss the bait out there for all the world to see you cannot be picky about who responds to it.
Wow, great example of being the worst kind of human being, Overdose.
” brichins
”
That sounds like Mansplaining.
And that sounds like a deflection of the issue by playing the gender card, but I’m sure your position isn’t that simple.
If you’d care to enlighten me, I’d honestly be interested to learn about how this issue is perceived from womens’ POV.
Doesn’t everyone know that Balor U. and Miskatonic U. are big rivals?
Balor is where you go when you want hot demon action. Miskatonic is for book nerds who want to learn about elder gods.
It’s been a long time since I’ve opened my AD&D Monster Manual, but I thought ‘Pit Fiend’ was just another term for a Balor. Or was it vice versa?
One is a demon; the other is a devil. Huge eternal rivalry.
Yeah the whole Chaos vs. Law thing kinda adds to it.
Also not to be confused with the Pervs and Deveel (Thanks Aahz!)
Confusion is secondary to checking your wallets still in place.
And if you’re wallet is still in place, you need to be even more concerned, and start counting your fingers and toes. And if they’re still in place, you know you’ve lost something REALLY important.
Maybe it was the Balrog entry that had the parenthetical (Balor)? Or vise versa? Like I said, it’s been a really long time since I opened the AD&D MM.
I call BS on Sydney not knowing what a balor is. That’s a classic D&D monster blatantly inspired by the balrog in Fellowship of the Ring; there are too many ways for a card-carrying geeknerd like Sydney to not have heard of it.
Unless she’s calling it misspelled because it’s unlikely for both balrogs and balors to actually exist in real life, and she’s stubbornly hoping it’s the balrogs that are real?
She knows what a Balor is, she didn’t make the connection though, and was thinking of colleges.
This is valid. Whatever else Balor might be, he is NOT a University, whereas Baylor is. So, “your shirt-dress thing is missspelled” is correct…on Earth!
fully I thought it was supposed to be sidney thinking “Baller U” XD
I had never heard of Baylor either, so I was guessing that Sydney construed it was something basketball breast size related and was reading it “Baller” too.
Ugh, the older I get, the less geeknerd cred I realize I have.
Anyone else realize that it’s the enlisted that initiates the salute unless certain VERY specific circumstances are in effect, or do I have this wrong?
Our Author is of a non-military background and isn’t even very much military adjacent. The left handed saute really drives that home, but it has been made glaringly clear many other times previously. I guess he’s never had a close friend or a relative who served and talked about it even a little bit. Even the right kind of gaming can convey a decent amount of knowledge on things military, but that doesn’t typically include FRPGs or the superhero genre.
Also, you don’t salute indoors except in certain ceremonial occasions. Or wear a hat indoors, I’m looking at you CPL Estrada.
“Or wear a hat indoors, I’m looking at you CPL Estrada.” She also is on duty.
He is a guard.. guards with weapons do not remove their headgear
Strictly speaking,officiers don’t salute enlisted. And Lower rank starts the salute, higher rank returns it.
In the US military when an officer is REQUIRED to salute an enlisted soldier. When that soldier has been awarded the Medal of Honor.
Because EVERYBODY salutes someone having a MoH.
Officially, there is no law or military regulation requiring all servicemembers to salute Medal of Honor recipients, but you are allowed to do so when the recipient is physically wearing the medal, according to the Congressional Medal of Honor Society.
So if you want to salute the recipient of an MoH, go ahead. Just whatever you do, don’t call him a Medal of Honor “winner.” It’s not a contest. You don’t “win” it, and the ones who wear it do so for all their buddies, especially the ones who didn’t make it back.
There are a ton of reasons why individuals in the military may wear a cover indoors. It may be part of the uniform of the day. It may be part of safety gear. It may be part of watch or ceremonial uniform. Quarterdeck watch on Navy ships wear covers because they are in a position between the inner and outer spaces of the ship. Hell, I’ve seen a group of 300+ people wear a cover in doors for two hours straight in formation for a change of command. Archon probably has a rule for covers on their equivalent of the quarterdeck, and honestly, it’s DaveB’s baby, he can make up up as he goes, even saluting with the left hand (but that would just be weird XD ).
I have saluted many times indoors. I have never heard of not saluting indoors.
Altus and Dabbler share some similarities in horn placement. I wonder if their species are related?
And now that the cat is out of the bag about aliens, will Archon reveal that Dabbler is a strange visitor from another planet?
Altus’ horns appear to start lower and slightly more to the center of the brow than Dabbler’s. However while Dabbler is called a succubus I believe she is more of a mixture between various alien and/or supernatural races and thus there might be some of Altus’ species within her as well. (Or else there might be once the afterparty is over.)
I really hate saying this, and it has probably been pointed out already…but she’s saluting with the wrong hand >.< Otherwise great page
Apparently Dabbler puts that shirt on with static electricity and a vacuum pump.
Standard dress code for superheroes and succubi.
Reminds me of the literal painted on with body paint videos / photos.
That sounds like Dabs swimsuit. Aka apply in paint booth
This reminds me of a JLA comic where the Justice League returns from the past (and back from the dead too) and Nightwing just hugs Batman in front of everybody.
It does look different, but it looks…good. Really good, I like it. On the other hand, panel 2 their torsos look a little…long? Maybe it’s just me.
If anything, the torso length is far more realistic than it has been. Comic illustrations, even “realistic” ones, tend to greatly exaggerate human form, e.g. drawing men’s shoulders and women’s legs as double or even triple their actual proportion to the rest of the body, omitting female rib cages in favor of literal hourglass waists, etc.
Seconds to Dabbler asking about furry jokes?
How soon debrief is called for and a baby Alari pulls Halo’s pant leg to ask if she can play.
I bet Dabbler will be able to smell Frisk on Sydney.
Or her porno sense is tingling.
And Altus has the metal part of the ship’s uniform back.
They are meeting Sydney’s commanding officer. Maybe he hit the ‘dress uniform’ button on the suit controller for the occasion.
The author is moving, so he might have packed it accidentally last time and just remembered where it was in time for this comic.
I’m just waiting for Dabbler to look at Sydney, look at Frisk, look back at Sydney and say: “My porno sense is tingling.”
SNERK!!!
More likely Dabs would just smirk and high five Sydney.
Dabbler has probably gotten so used to her porno sense going off whenever Cora and her crew come within a kilometer, she hardly notices.
The look on Maxima’s face in the last panel, imho, really conveys the fondness she has for Sydney, awesome, most excellent artwork showing that, it really jumped out at me!
John T., took you long enough. :) I noticed it from the first time they worked together.
Maxima should know that left handed salutes are a no no. Also, the senior officer doesn’t initiate the salute and saluting isn’t usually done indoors unless making a formal report.
So many things here to make this retired squid twitch (some mentioned above).
1. Never salute with the left hand unless the right arm is injured.
2. Never salute when out of uniform.
3. Never salute when not wearing a cover (Navy, anyway. Other services allow it.)
4. Lieutenant Colonel doesn’t salute a Private first. Private salutes as a sign of respect and then the LCOL acknowledges it. The exception is if the Private has been awarded the Medal of Honor.
Or when the private arrives back from a battle which would kill almost everyone else while saving the life of multiple superior officers.
So I guess Sydney’s about to get a medal…
I like this new art style. I’d say keep it as long as you like, especially if it lets you catch up on other things.
Same. Making Max shiny would be something worth the extra time when you have it but everyone else looks good.
You can’t ‘shine’ when the only light source is fluorescent lights (or whatever the new ‘eco’ equivalent of those flicking tubes are)
LEDs.
I also like this art style. It’s reminding me of the original flats that this comic started with, which I also really liked. Nevertheless, it does do the three d thing where needed. Keep it stored somewhere so you can do it again if you like next time you are short of time.