Grrl Power #739 – Swear jar II – A filthy boogaloo
This is the most rich person thing Sydney’s ever done. She’s been… well, not rich exactly, but well on her way every since she got her first paycheck, but she has yet to actually spend any money in a flagrantly irresponsible manner. My question is, is she just going to leave an open jar in the middle of the lounge with ten grand in it?
I know I didn’t actually show Sydney launch into some kind of filth blitzkrieg for all the times she recounts here. It’s not like I’m never going to show her going on a Yosemite Sam-esque rant ever again, but I’m also not going to show each and every one, either.
I think Max’s top keeps getting smaller and smaller on each page I draw it on. It was already a bit of an odd top for her to wear around the base, but at this point it’s downright out of character.
I may have to change panel 2, because honestly I don’t know how military do. I wasn’t really sure what to google either, like “if someone needs some petty cash to buy some stuff for a military base, who do they see?” I mean, I’m sure a big military base has some sort of financial chain of command. Like an accountant and a list of approved vendors, but what if you’re out in the desert somewhere in another country, and the squad decides it needs to run down to the Baghdad Home Depot and buy a bunch of tarps? Like, they’re not close enough to the base to go get them, but they definitely need tarps. Does the squad commander have a platinum Visa on him, or a stack of Benjis? Or do they just take them and tell the manager to call the base for reimbursement? Probably that one, come to think of it.
Anyway, the team is domestic, so they’d probably operate a lot more like a domestic military base. My point is, somebody at Archon manages the phat stax, because sometimes you just need cash in hand. If someone has a better suggestion than “Bursar” I will change it.
Edit: Hah hah! Whoops! I forgot to add in the orbs on this page. I will do that after I get some breakfast.
Edit 2: Okay, Sydney is enorbened.
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As Soranic pointed out, in the military the office is usually called Disbursing. The guy who runs the office is called the Bursar, and in many businesses and some militaries it’s called the Bursar’s office, because he’s literally personally responsible for every dollar that the office releases. Getting money from the Bursar is therefore a tedious and annoying process. As Sidney has money in the bank, it would probably be easier and faster to just visit the bank to get the money.
Given how much members of the team make, there’s likely a small branch of their preferred bank or credit union onsite. (If it were the US Navy it would be NFCU, the Navy Federal Credit Union. No idea what these guys might be using.) While most banks wouldn’t have enough cash on hand to casually give out $10K, I’m pretty sure that nobody is likely to try to rob a bank colocated with their HQ. (Although that might make a funny side plot or short story.)
One of the cop shows had a pair of punks try to hold up a cop bar only to find themselves facing three dozen guns. Toward the end of the episode, they were still handcuffed to a central pillar. “Hasn’t anybody called them in, yet?” “Several times. They won’t believe us. Joe will take them in when he goes back on duty in a couple of hours.”
It’s a trope. Feet of Clay had it. So did one of the RoboCop movies. I’m sure it’s shown up in a lot of other things as a light-hearted humor bit.
*utterly unflappable doughnut cook leans back, idly bites a doughnut* “….whats it like being a rocket scientist?”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaUqdIFUbxE
How did he not see all those cops just casually sitting in the corner? o_O
Boring until something exciting happens, then you wish it were boring again.
I like the way Texas, Walker Ranger did it. Couple of geniuses come charging in. Suddenly faced with thirty or so service weapons, plus the shotgun from the barman. The captain is sitting with his arms out. “Howdy. You boys must be new in town.” It broke the tension.
reminds me of an article I read where a crook walked *around* a parked squad car to go inside a gun shop and try to rob it. They were shot by three customers and the shop owner before the two uniformed officers inside had cleared their holsters.
That article has been proved to be false, a rubbish Urban Legend
It is actually true, just not as its usually penned for embellishment.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/dead-stupid/
According to the staff at a local pizzeria, something similar happened to them. One of the local tactical units came in for lunch, with their weapons because their unoccupied vehicles were not considered secure enough to leave some of their “nearly weapons-of-war” high-powered firearms in them. The cops took up a couple of tables up by the windows (blinds down to block out the noon sun) and proceeded to place their orders. While they were waiting, a person (poor fool) came in to try to rob the cash register back by the kitchen, not looking around as to who the customers of the place may be. You really do not want to be the cause of a half-dozen heavily armed and armoured police officers having to back on duty during lunch.
Do you remember how Sydney was introduced to Archon? She was at a bank as Maxima was trying to open an account for her direct deposit, prior to an attempted bank robbery. So this makes me think there is not a bank/trust company/credit union in the Archon facility. Mind you, in a couple of months, an new financial office could have been established.
“Hey, Jim. I got the layout of a new bank that just opened in town. Will you look at this? That would really easy to break into. That vault door is about as cheap as you can get. There is hardly any other security in the whole place. And get this, they regularly have over a million bucks in that bank.”
“So where is it? Hey that’s just down the street. Wait a minute. Archon building?! Are you nuts? You do not rob Maxima’s bank! Or Halo’s!”
“By the tongue, man. BY THE TONGUE.”
True, but the event was also staged as a public coming-out of supers.
Maxima wasn’t aware of that initially, though.
But the “Robbery” was a staged showcase for Archon. There may or may not have been ay legitimate banking being done.
Max was unaware, at the time that it was staged she figured out about half way through. Then she chewed out Arianna for staging it.
Most likely there’s an ATM…but ten grand isn’t something you can get out of an ATM. (Used to be a hard limit of $300 a day, dunno if that’s changed.)
depends on your bank account, the bank machine itself and where you are. here in Canada most accounts start with a $200 limit, but you can increase that over time, $1000 a day is pretty commonplace, but you have to do it in multiple transactions, most ATMs can only count out 20 bills at a time, so if it is only loaded with 20s, then you can only get $400 per transaction, but the ones loaded with 20s and 50s can do $1000 at a time
It’s not a credit union. They will do direct deposit, but the payee has to set up the account being paid. I doubt anyone other than a fairly deep cover Intelligence Agency sets up accounts for people they pay salaries to.
And to the ex-Marine earlier… You may never have seen the office, but there is a Burser. I know a guy who demobbed from the Corps and went directly to work as a civilian in that office (practically no duty personnel there, almost entirely ex-service civilians or their spouses, and not located on a Base).
USAA (United Services Automobile Association) is the preferred insurance and bank for US Army.
she has 3 months of back pay and it was implied that ARCSWAT Enlisted make BANK! so 10 grand is probaly like one pay period
Sydney has one month of back pay.
She was in Arc Swat about two weeks before leaving earth, and then was gone fifty three earth days.
They has advanced her a full month’s pay when she was recruited, so they just owe her for the second month. She probably gets paid on the fifteenth and the thirtieth day of every month.
grrl-power-345-ka-pow-ka-blam-ka-ching – Nowhere did she state this was “a full month’s pay”. She even stated that paydays were twice monthly, leading me to believe that this would be her first paycheck, whatever that might come to, paid early to cover… incidentals.
Paydays are more likely the 1st and 16th, or the Friday before, should payday fall on a weekend. 53 days is enough elapsed time for three paydays fifteen or so days apart to have occurred four if the first one was during the first week. But the first one was payback day for the advance, so…
Except, she’s not getting full back pay, she’s only getting maybe half
And she got more in that first check than she sees in a year, so ten grand will be nothing
Military pay days are the first and the fifteenth unless they moved them. In Sydney’s case for back pay for the time she was gone she would get paid in full, she would be considered on deployment until she gets back which means she gets paid.
Max’s looks went from “I am impressed and slightly worried” to “WHISKEY TANGO FOXTROT! WHAT JUST HAPPENED?” in panels 4 through 6. Granted I think she looks good in panel 6.
Yeah, I don’t think any of us are upset in the least by her magically shrinking top. Wait…..DABBLER!!!!!!
WHO CONTROLS THE SWEAR JAR II???
That person is about to get a good bit of pocket change. OKAY – enough to open an interest bearing savings account.
Be able to travel to some vacation spots? With friends?
Well she spent her last swear jar on a car, she treats it like a personal challenge slash savings account she spends once a year, like a tax return.
Well she almost has enough for a kick ass Harley trike.
To be true to form you also need kick ass leather gear with a long coat to top it off. If ya don’t know what I mean you have never seen the ‘norms’ shrink to the sides of an elevator when you walk in carrying your helment and looking pissed off at a building that has probation depts.
Knowing Syd she plans to have LITERAL Harley Leathers meaning ones that look like Harley Quinn’s costume
Which one? o_O
COOL!
The money from the jar will go back to Archon
If anyone would be in charge of it, it would be the General (or Maxi), or maybe the Financial Officer
Absolutely not. Swear jars are for fun perks for the team that you wouldn’t normally be able to get approved through official channels. You do not hand the self-funded team fun money back over to the leadership, they have budget for official ‘fun’ line items.
Sidney swear jar is a personal thing not a team thing so end-of-the-year all that money that she swore up and down generating is all hers to spend
I love how she casually dropped all the fighting she did lol
“Oh I just killed those world ender monsters, no biggie! *casually drops a fortune on a swear jar*”
Its no wonder Max is beyond shocked.
Sydney world has different rules about danger.
I can almost hear Max’s blood pressure going back up..
Same, but I mean yeah, what IS protocol in a situation like that? I would go out on a limb and say that sydney’s actions could be classified as a defensive and limited engagement given the nature of the attackers.
But next page will be interesting.
We’re gonna need a bigger jar.
Hmmm. OK, lets run down the sequence of events. This is a party. Sydney, the main focus of the party and Maxima, the commander leave the party and come back with Sydney holding a big phat stax (and Maybe the swear jar?). This would immediately have the attention of about half the people there if not all of them. As Sydney peels off bills and tosses them in the jar any one not paying attention would have been poked by anyone who was. And probably a large number of the crowd would be hearing what was said as this it very interesting to watch. So the last part, pretty much everyone is going to be aware that Sydney had pulled some very major power moves. I think that jar is going to be very safe from anyone but an idiot touching it.
Well given comics often compress or expand time as needed, given the previous pages time may have passed.
And the fact that people are in the background with Maxima interacting with Sydney, she is the leader so she is the one that should be handling this situation?
^ this. Also, they will be more likely to try to spy on the debriefing as well.
I like the idea of it becoming the Sydney Swearity Foundation fund jar, donating the Swear Jar II contents to a good cause, one agreed upon by all the participants.
Sydney is the only participant.
It’s her method of saving.
So, if they had a bursar on site, and obviously Sydney has both back-pay and her previous paycheck available to her, why did she need to borrow 10k from Maxima? Or did that go out the window once they got to the bursar, and that’s Sydney’s money?
I focus on the strangest things…
…because she didn’t have any money on her?
Pretty sure that she still had seventeen dollars in American Paper Money.
Remember, Sydney has only been with Archon for about two or three weeks, she probably doesn’t know that Archon has a cash vault on-site, and asked Maxi for the money rather than simply fly to the nearest ATM
“Agreed upon” (which is what Arianna did when she first arrived) isn’t the same thing as “Already Available.” We’re still easily within the first hour of Sydney’s return. Back pay takes a couple of days to arrive in the account even with direct deposit, because it has to be allocated, signed off on, printed, literally signed, delivered, received, deposited, and then the funds need to be made available. (When it’s several thousand dollars, this can take a few days, trust me on this; the two banks involved need to agree that the funds have been transfered, and THAT needs to be signed off on, too.)
Not to mention any pay required for her apartment, electricity bills, etc, would have had to come out of her next paycheck if they didn’t have access to her bank accounts directly (which normally they wouldn’t, but they CAN do an advance on next month’s payday when paying said bills for an MIA employee/soldier).
She’s still at the party, and it hasn’t been more than a couple of hours (probably just over one hour at most, really), she hasn’t even been debriefed yet, so…no chance to go get money of any kind, yet.
Hmmm.
Since Archon knew Sydney was alive, there is no reason that they should NOT have had her money auto depositing on schedule.
Especially since Arianna was publicly professing that Halo was undergoing special training.
Which means the conversation about time travel pay should not have occurred…
Except, they didn’t know she was still alive until Cora got in contact with Dabbles, at lest 51 days after Sydney went AWOL
Sydney never went AWOL.
Sydney became MIA.
Correct. And you do NOT generally stop the pay of MIA soldiers. “When a military member is carried as MIA, they are considered as living members of the Armed Forces and are entitled to all pay and allowances.”
And, Guesticus, I believe you have it backward. Archon would not have a reason to ASSUME Sydney was dead until told so by Cora after retrieval of the body… which never happened.
Sydney’s shield had already proven able to stand up to a full blast from the one known Squiddy, while embiggened.
The time delay would primarily have meant that Archon could be assured Sydney did not die of starvation in the intervening transit time.
Sydney only had to hide out and survive a few hours or days before help would arrive to ferry her home.
Of course everyone heard panel 2.
The debriefing should be interesting. At this time Maxima does not know that Sydney can teleport, but she used that talent in defeating bad guys at at Alari. What is she going to say?
She might have had time to mention it “off camera”, they did go back to base after she’d used it. “I think I died!” probably calls for a quick debriefing.
Yeah, we saw Sydney thinking about keeping it secret, but still debating with herself over it, and the point about her teleportation being crucial to the events on the Alari world also applies to the events in Sciona’s abandoned warehouse. Even if we allow for Harem letting Halo enter the building, it would have been a hard sell for Halo to have found Pixel before Sciona intercepted her. She probably ended up telling Maxima the truth.
Is a superhero having a power that is kept secret a Trope or Bad Writing?
I suppose Superman *could* be a marksman or speak French.
(Maybe he used to go shooting with Pa Kent.)
The Marksman part is too much of a give away.
Clark could shoot, run to the target before the bullet get there, watch as the bullet gets closer to the target, adjust the trajectory so that it hit the center of the bulls-eye, run back to the rifle (still seemly floating in mid-air to him), turn to everyone and smile about his shot.
Smile at everyone who is a) deaf, b) heavily bleeding from the ears, eyes, and nose, and/or c) blown away. The sonic boom from a non-aerodynamic human-sized object at a distance of mere feet would be extremely dangerous if not fatal.
It can be justified in some cases. Spider-Man, for example. Everyone in his world knows about the wall-crawling, web-shooting, and probably the super-strength, but (in the comics, at least) he actually keeps his Spider Sense a [i]very[/i] closely-guarded secret, even from most of his allies. If Spider-Man’s enemies knew he actually had a sixth sense helping him be so good at dodging, they’d start looking for ways to get around it, and Spider-Man’s rogues gallery includes a few geniuses who would doubtless find a way.
Thanks!
It sounds like a plot device that could be interpreted as sloppy writing
or violating the Writer/Reader trust by pulling something out their ass.
Mr. Fantastic knew DareDevil used some sense other than vision when Malice debuted.
Astra keeps her imaginary friend a secret because she’s afraid she’ll be taken away.
SheHulk never told anyone she knew she was in a comic.
She probably thought people would have an existential crisis.
Generally, it’s a trope, and the reader is usually in on the secret powers.
We see it most often when a hero is maintaining more than two identities, such as when a long time sidekick is preparing to go solo and the mentor doesn’t know.
Or when a hero who works with law and order creates a vigilante to handle crimes crooked higher ups are covering up.
Or the classic hero goes bad story.
That’s not so much a trope as an application of literary irony to maintain tension.
Literary irony is the parallax between what the characters know or believe and what the reader/viewer does… and there may be an additional level of literary irony between initial readers/viewers and what they will experience on a second read/viewing.
The irony is not necessarily humorous. The reaction may be dread, humor, sadness, happiness, literally anything based on the difference between viewpoints.
Actually, I think he might have mentioned it during that (short!) period when he was being considered for the Avengers. Other than that, I can’t recall it coming up, though he came close to spilling the beans to Daredevil once.
Marksman~!? Try Expert, as I am.
I think that Sydney’s jar would be safe sitting in the common area. It would not be worth anyone’s time or honor to steal it, or from it, as all are pretty well paid, and it would be something of an item of unit pride/curiosity to watch it fill up. I’m guessing that there is already a betting pool on how fast it fills up, and what Sydney uses it for once it is full.
The locker room at the police station has padlocks on the lockers.
There’s a photo of a police station breakroom refrigerator where each milk bottle has a padlock.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-4597002/Workplace-uses-padlocks-protect-milk-stolen.html
Oddly, little things are more likely to be stolen than big things. Especially if it’s in a box with 5 sides and a door that only one person can see into at a time.
In a police lunchroom locked drinks are probably not so much to prevent theft so much as to curtail practical joke exchanges.
Hmmm. like a cable lock on the doughnuts?
This is Sydney’s way of telling Max that she wants to talk about it.
Yup.
You have a solid point there.
I’m imagining the second panel narrated by Tom Kenny.
Individual soldier banking would be different than the base finance office. Each Soldier can choose their own civilian bank and the military has no interest in providing those services. Soldiers can get cash advances from the pay master but rarely more than a one months pay. That most likely would not be $10,000 for Sidney.
The finance office / and the finance officer writes the budget, tracks the allocated funds, and would be in charge of all the funds allocated for any required distribution. this would include payroll, supply purchase and secure contracted services (the civilian members of Archon would all be contractors), as well as any funds paid out for damage to civilian owned property (like the steak house). I don’t know what the annual estimate for damage would be for a team that destroys bridges, buildings, and highways in the course of “assigned duties”.
There would most likely be two separate functions for finance at Archon. One for regular operations (payroll, building maintenance, meals, supplies, computers, etc.) and a completely separate function for “continencies” like major battle damage (why are hidden liars always in hydroelectric dams or mountain top observatories?) and costs of unexpected off world travel. The military uses an oversight function called an Acquisition Review Board to make sure military expenditures and kept under control and distributions are managed correctly. The minutes from the Archon ARB meetings would be an interesting read.
$10,000 almost certainly would be more than one month’s pay for Sidney, now. Remember her commenting that her first paycheck was more than she usually made in a year? ArcSwat are VERY well paid.
It has earlier been established that Arc Swat are paid like professional ball players.
I can’t for the heck remember anymore on which page I found it or what the exact math was, but based on the mentioning of something (probably a taaad exaggerated) I did the math and came out on like 9 million a month, if I remember correctly.
So yeah, I guess we can call that well paid.
Do you mean “would not be more than one month’s pay for Sidney, now”
Or maybe meant more than her regular month’s pay, from running the comic shop into the ground
True. I concede the point. I guess that is why Sidney is flicking $100 bills in to the “Swear Jar II” like she is making it rain.
recently retired MSgt, USAF; here’s my experience: every base has a cashiers window at the finance office that’s used in only special circumstances –
1) a new Trainee that doesn’t have direct deposit set up yet (heavily frowned upon);
2) cash advances like advanced pay, advanced housing allowances, & travel pay (all need commander’s approval except when in conjunction with a permanent change of station).
the only time you can cash a check at finance is at deployed locations.
every base has a BoA bank (community bank when overseas) and some credit union (it varies). you can also cash checks at the Officers/Enlisted Clubs.
I think Maxima is starting to wonder if Sydney just pissed off a advanced space-travelling civilization. One that is willing to destroy planetary civilizations. One that might see Sydney as a Enemy Number One.
In fairness they attacked first.
When you think you have the bigger guns, you often believe in the “He started it. He attacked me back first.” theory of aggression.
When I was in the Somali refugee camps and there was still some fighting on the border (20 miles that way). My team subscribed to the “You go fight among yourselves. We’re just going to hunker down over here.
Also, it is notable that Max did not ask “Why” but “How”.
We don’t know that the Squidwards are randomly genocidal.
The Alari have evidently given plenty of civilizations reason to desire them harm over the centuries, and Arc Swat did arrive together with an Alari, after which the Squidwards immediately attacked.
We don’t even whether the Kaiju are intelligent or just the equivalent of trained hounds.
Sydney may have just eliminated the equivalent of a couple of dogs and a bunch of cheap drones.
“Sydney may have just eliminated the equivalent of a couple of dogs and a bunch of cheap drones.” Or, the corkscrew mothership was all the “homeworld” the Squidwards had left after being first attacked by the Alari… The Kaiju were their hive queens, and thousands of lives were lost fighting to defend their only home from the “evil bubble terran”. Wouldn’t it be interesting when, just as they began planning the funerals in absolute rage, someone matched their ultra-HD holovids recordings of the attack, with a viral video from the fracture. Weren’t people still recording when Sydney was speaking American English, and Cora walked up and said her name?
Zero lives were lost defending their home.
They encountered an unknown life form while exterminating (not an act of home defending) the Alari.
The life form fled, and the attacking kaiju pursued (again not home defending) it.
The life form flew to the attacking kaiju and attempted to negotiate with It. In a very non -home defending manner the kaiju attacked the unknown life form.
After an exchange of fire, the unknown lifeform fled to space.
The mothership unhome-defendingly pursued the unknown life form with hundreds of attacking ships as a vanguard for the mothership itself .
Unable to escape by space the unknown lifeform returned to the planet and engaged the kaiju victoriously. Three more kaiju were sent for a group assault, and one was killed as the unknown lifeform fled again.
The unknown lifeform fled around the planet and vanished.
There was never any viable claim that the Squidwards took a defensive posture during their genocide, and just how excruciatingly stupid would the Squidwards have to be to search for the home world of a being like that and pursue? What if the home world has billions just like the one they encountered living there?
The last point is the salient one. Unless the kaiju know EXACTLY what the orbs are and how many orbs there are, tracking Sydney back to Earth would only happen for the purpose of learning precisely what solar system and nearby sector to avoid.
Maxima’s reaction is priceless.
Each panel: “what?” “What!?” “WHAT?” “WHAT!!!!!?”
Why do I get the feeling she was talked down about the $10,000 and had been exaggerating. That could easily have been a hundred $5 bills.
The band on the bundle gives it away. It is the correct band for A 10k bundle of 100’s.
Magic orbs magically reappeared since this morning. I tried to suggest that maybe Tubey was attached to the back of her belt, but for some reason, Chrome won’t let me post here on my aging iPad.
Max wants to debrief Sydney… so she can get those new words written down for later use.
After hearing the story, Maxima might need them right on the spot frankly.
I wonder who has those words on their “Make Maxima Say” bingo card?
You NAILED the “wait, what?” expression PERFECTLY. Keep up the great work man!
Thanks! :)
Debriefing is probably the very first thing that should have happened when she arrived. She’s been gone quite some time from their perspective, and a LOT could have happened they don’t, yet NEED to know about.
They believed Sydney simply found a hole to hide in for two months before Cora found her, and figured the debriefing could wait until after her “Welcome Home” party
Hide in for 4 hours or so
Four hours Sydney time, two months Everyone Else time
It isn’t 4 hours her time, 2 months everyone else’s time. Sydney got time traveled to the future and didn’t *exist* for those two months. She would’ve been hiding for 4 hours or so period if she had managed to hide
Max: Debriefing, NOW!
Sydney: Geez Max, buy a lady a drink first.
Also, shouldn’t this have been done shortly after she returned what with the company she had in tow… Yes, celebrations for safe return are nice, but she could be waltzing in carrying a chest burster or symbiote or maybe bringing doom from a galaxy far far away via hyperspace just being there. I mean even Dabbler is in hiding from certain entities.
In her defense she did try to run first only to realize that she needed to level up a few times first.
Max’s incredible shrinking top? Just Dabbles having a little fun with the material so that every time it’s stretched out (deep breath, exercise, etc. etc.) it shrinks just a little bit upon returning to it’s “normal” state.
Shooting a huntin’ dawg around here is just about a capital offense.
The problems is that the mecha-Cthulhus seemed to know what the orbs are, or at least could scan them in a way that made sense to them.
But you are right, the Alari may have REALLY pissed them off; from what Dabbler said, they may be pretty good at that.
My thought Dave, is I’ve seen how much you get on Patreon each month, so you definitely have gas money to get to the nearby military base. Just go there and see if you can talk to someone. Tell the gate MP that you write a comic and want to make sure that the military aspects are accurate. They’ll probably get you inside and in touch with whoever you should talk to rather quickly.
Cheaper and easier to chat online. He could be hours from the nearest military base, and that’s time he could spend drawing while waiting for a comment board or email reply, rather than gripping a steering wheel and cursing traffic. I literally drove past a military base twice this last week; it’s about an hour and a half from where I live, and that’s coming from the local perspective of it being a “local” base, comparatively speaking. Next nearest military base (not counting the Navy ports) is a 4 hour drive away…and in some areas of the state, it’s more like 6-8 hours away to get to the nearest one, depending on where you live.
Plus, security is heightened due to various policies and wars and things. It’s far easier to just ask online. They look at you sideways if you try to get onto a military base to ask about funding. (The military knows the internet exists.)
Didn’t Dave mention something about being in the Dallas/Fort Worth area? If so, he is no more than an hour from Fort Worth NASJRB.
Another option is find a local army reserve militia barracks; there are lots more of them then there are full-blown bases, which take up many-multiple square kilometers each. Go to the reserve barracks and ask. Mind you, those buildings tend to be used only part-time, so you have to time your visit carefully.
I think this was fully intended by Sydney to be a (somewhat) subtle brag, and to provoke a major bragging session under the cover of a debriefing.
Also, on top of everything else, the part I’m most looking forward to is something like:
Sydney: So, what’s the deal with the big Alari ship in Africa?
Max: No idea. They’ve been working with Deus, and he won’t let anyone else talk to them.
Sydney: Oh. Would it help if you could talk to some different Alari?
Max: What?
“Yeah… there’s dozens of them in the parking lot.”
This is one of thoes moments when they probably want the President and The Secretary-General of the United Nations listening in on the debrief since she Basicaly went up against something larger than an Eclipse Class, or even the Supremacy, never mind the Council, and the rest of the team.
Granted she may have taken down the equivalent of Sideshow bob….and the rest of the aliens squids want to thank her for dealing with that jerk for them.
You never want the top of the chain of command to be given uncolated data.
They expect everything to be analyzed, codified, and obviously corollary implications indexed before the report gets that high.
Sensationalist novels and movies not withstanding.
Dave had said that kaiju guy was a dick in need of a humbling, but not to the extent of being killed. That surprised the other kaijus
As in the Rest of the sr officers and staff, never mind the joint chiefs, NATO, NORAD…..
There gonna need more monitors….
Dave, the art, particularly the color/shading, is great today. And Max’s expressions in the last three panels are perfect.
I AGREE!!! And Max has cheekbones again! At the risk of jinx’ing it, it’s a wonderful step back from the uncanny valley to the “golden age”. :D Thanks Dave!!!
Thanks guys. I know my art is really inconsistent. Switching shading techniques may have helped bring back Max’s angular face a bit. Of course, the longer I use the new shading technique, the more and more complex it gets. We’ll see what happens in a few posts, as I’m actually moving this week and will probably only have 2 or 3 days to work on the comic.
Good luck on the move, hope nothing important gets broken or misplaced.
I’ve been loving your art, especially the past few days you see to be going on a whole new level, especially with the faces and muscletone.
Also I just realized you draw hands really well, which I’m told a lot of artists have problems with.
Even if that swear jar were in a lounge area, no one is going to steal it. $10,000 is not enough to lose your career over.
Where I work, people leave the platinum crucibles sitting out. The instruments have 22k gold parts. No on has ever stolen either; but.. pens, tape and staplers are kept under lock and key.
HELP PLEASE THIS AFFECTS GRRL POWER AS WELL!!!
I can’t get to my account on Patreon to update it (did a couple music videos lately and uploaded new comic episodes of my own) but since I couldn’t get in, I tried to get to the main site. Couldn’t do that either.
If Patreon is dead then Dave has to go back to work as the thousands of dollars he gets from us each month is gone.
It was down for a bit. Seems to be back up now.
Oh god, FINALLY. I’ve been waiting for the debriefing!
+1
Since they are a branch of the DOD I would guess there should be an Armed Forces Bank on site. They are usually located on secure sites so carry larger amounts of cash than a normal bank in, say a strip mall.
As for shopping, again being DOD they would have a general goods store on site and usually a shopping anex of some kind sized appropriately for the base. In the Navy it’s called the NEX or Naval Exchange but given Archon’s shared base it could just as easily be a branch of Target or Walmart.
In the field most troops will carry either personal trade goods or a comfortable amount of the local currency if they think they may need it. Most places in the world will take US dollars though. A spec ops team will either trade or steal for what they need as they don’t take anything into the field with them that could identify them.
I have to wonder, how much of what’s in that swear jar will be used to buy something nice for Iron Cloth? She does owe him for making a uniform that prevented a random piece of shrapnel through her gut.
Heh, I just love that it is “Swear Jar II”. Doubtless mostly due to Sydney.
A core element of her character, long overdue for reexpression.
Due entirely to Sydney this is how she saves money.
This is the best page in a while :D
I just realized Sydney will NEVER mention the Grakz Incident. (Especially since Fritz is still around.)
As if Cora and Dabbler weren’t mentioning it now, as Cora tells Dabs where Sydney was when she found her and about the alley mugging and holographic wings…
shrinking top sounds like Cora isn’t the only one whose outfit dabs messed with, and a succubus will soon feel a Leander level Gibbs smack.
Panel 4 is Maxima’s sudden realization that sydney may be more powerful than her now.
Super speed is a pretty big deal, though; Should be enough to win most fights before anybody else knows the fight has begun. And we still don’t know how powerful her “Big Bang” attack really is.
Maybe she isn’t permitted to use it on an inhabited continent.
It is called Hypersonic, and it creates a blastwave. Therefore it cannot be used near people.
I was referring to the maximum power of Maxima’s blast.
She may have done so much damage during her time at war, or on a test range without approaching her limit that theoreticians in the military calculated a maximum damage level in the range of atomic yields.
Complete with an electromatic pulse.