Grrl Power #744 – Recycling
Okay, so, we’re all on board that this is Sciona, right? Right. I don’t quite have a Who’s Who for the combined Escorpia/Sciona entity yet. I didn’t want to use panel two with the busted nose for the mugshot.
BTW, this all happened sometime after Sydney got stuck on the Alari homeworld, but before she came back. I forgot to make a note of that on the previous page. Don’t worry though, this flashback will only be a few pages. On the topic of flashbacks, I know people like to say the comic has been in flashback since the first few pages, but I like to think of those first pages as a flashforward.
That is nice grouping. The guy was like, two meters from her, but still. He was shooting angry.
I’m sure a wound like that would be basically spraying blood. Not like anime spraying, (warning for hilariously cartoonish live action gore) but there’d probably be enough that you wouldn’t be able to see the wounds. I felt like drawing them though, so maybe Sciona’s already begun healing herself. A good blood mage probably wouldn’t want to waste blood if she could help it after all.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. $1 and up, but feel free to contribute as much as you like.
SuperheroThey're super, thanks for asking!
Meatspace ComicSeriously these are awesome. Check 'em out!
Not UpdatingNo longer updating or only updates sporadically, but definitely worth reading.
SeriouslySeriously you guys. If you like Grrl Power the check these out.
"Mature"Mature subject matter and occasionally something explicit but usually safe. Can't guarantee the ads are safe though.
Dongs Ahoy!Full frontal and backal. Lots of skin, sex on some or all pages, explicit or otherwise.
VOTE EVERYDAY
I mean technically the bullets DID work the first time…
Honestly, yes.
On the ORIGINAL owner.
On this one, not so much.
He should have gone for the headshot.
Not much chance of coming back if the contents of your skull is decorating whatever surface was conveniently located behind your head at the time.
you didnt check scionas previous body right? she would have just borrowed someone else top half of head
Forgot about that……
Resilient bitch isn’t she….
No. In her previous “body” prior to restoring her original, the top of the head — from the maxilla up — was all that WAS Sciona. The rest was an orc body or something; I don’t remember what the details were.
So, basically, the brain case.
Troll body. Excellent resilience, strength and super charged regeneration (short of fire and acid).
Wasn’t a troll body, it was either an orc or an ogre, she had to go and get a troll blood injection
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-500-bravery-in-the-faces-of-danger/
When exactly does Sciona get the troll blood in this situation? It’s a Troll body she’s using.
Go back one page and you will see Sci-fright returning from getting the troll blood
Again, if that was a troll body, she would have been fully healed before Sydney showed up, and would have had no reason to leave the room
Troll blood. Does a body good.
For a Blood Mage, Sciona is all about keeping active & in circulation…
To a blood mage, EVERYTHING is about good circulation.
And keeping sanguine under pressure.
Just go with the flow. It also helps to relax with a little sangria. (In her recipe the use of blood oranges skips the ‘orange’ part of that ingredient).
So, why not just go with a Bloody Mary, and skip the tomatoes?
Obviously Mary will have an objection, but she’s likely to be overruled by immediate violence.
I bet she was probably peeved about truth in advertising finding that ‘bloody Marys’ are sans blood.
She has her finger on the pulse of the situation.
It’s understandable if he is too shocked to shoot her in the head under these circumstances.
“My gun’s not working… why’s my gun not working? I just had it serviced!”
Whoever it is didn’t have a head a few minutes ago, so shooting her in the head this time probably won’t work.
Pretty well, I’m thinking.
It’s pretty hard to get a good grouping with a hand gun. My first attempt went all over the place and I was about 6 feet from the target.
Depends on the type of handgun, calibre and experience of the shooter.
If you’re used to the kick from say, a Deagle, then a Chiappa Rhino is gonna feel really stubby and oddly shaped to you initially, plus the recoil is gonna confuse the heck out of you.
Personally, I prefer the Glock 39 with an extended mag, easily concealed, plus the bullets have a decent amount of stopping power.
I’ve fired a pistol once in my life, it was a .22. the target was about 30(ish) feet away and all the bullets hit within the ring. But we were at the range that day, and I’ve handled rifles and shotguns before so I knew what to expect.
(My father didn’t… He is a Viet Nam veteran and hadn’t fired a pistol in 30+ years. The kickback was unexpected to him and during the first shot the gun snapped his arms back and he whacked himself right between the eyes! He ended up with a small cut right between his eyes and I ended up with a stich in my side from laughing!)
I hate shooting pistols. They are extra-loud, waste powder on muzzle flash, and don’t give me the stability and control I want. I prefer long rifles for pretty much everything I shoot. One of the things I like about my 30-inch bolt-action, aside from far better accuracy for tiny varmints like gophers at long range, is that it fires small-caliber .22 LR making only about as much noise as a spoken word. You can rid a whole paddock of the damned little leg-breakers, even without hearing protection, and go home without a headache or ringing ears.
Oh good lord, that link! :P
IKR?
That part where she used a tentacle to fly the dude around in circles reminded me of how my dad used to build model airplanes & fly them by wire control.
I bought that movie years ago.
A lot of WTF moments, but i did not regret it.
^_^
Hey. For once, we’re seeing a female-on-male tentacle monster attack. Just when you thought they were backward and prejudiced as all get-out, they go and surprise you with an affirmative-action plan!
Nice groping… erm I mean grouping.
By panel 1, you’re right the first time.
By panel 2, you’re right the second time.
By the dialogue on the previous page, I kinda-sorta anticipated panel 1…
Nooo Handsome Jack still needs that face!
He’s the one who chose to stop unloading the gun just because it wasn’t pointing at his target any longer. I’m not sure how many bullets are in that thing, but I bet he loaded more than four…. If it was 8, he just needed to fire a few more rounds before she had it pointed at him, and he could’ve experienced a new and inventive way to die. But no, he chose live by the gun, die by the gun.
Handsome Jack made his big mistake messing with Marie LaVeau, though.
I wonder if Sciona’s blood magic may have been the inspiration for some part of Voudon?
Another man done gone.
Apparently that body is zoned for single occupancy.
Can she manifest razor wings despite having a human body?
I was expecting them to cut her ropes rather than her
just brute forcing the chair apart.
Quiet guy should be running and/or screaming.
I think he’ll survive.
She could not manifest wings when she had a troll body.
Just because we did not see her manifest wings with the troll body doesn’t mean she could not. The wings may require a certain level of magical power, which she does not have available at this time. The only blood she currently has to work with is Escorpia’s own. What energy that provides is currently in use repairing the bullet holes and keeping what blood she has inside. Maybe after she takes pretty boy’s blood she will have enough power for some of her flashier powers.
I’m pretty sure she can only manifest the powers of whatever body she takes over. With her last ‘temp’ body, she probably took over the troll body, chopped off the rest of her old body’s head, chopped off the head of her troll body, and stiched the two together because she always intended to eventually get back her original Alari body (with the regenerator thing).
At least that’s the theory I’m going with.
You forgetting that it was the Twilight Pony Council that tried to chop of her head, and failed at doing a proper job of it?
Twilight Pony …. PONY?
Hehehe…
Are you having abstinence delirium already BEFORE FiM ends, Have you watched it too much, or is it merely wishful thinking?
….
Great, now i can’t help thinking the Twilight Council is aware of at least 2 portals to an equine world, of which one of them is in a city where the humans tend to be oddly coloured, but as it just seem natural due to a veil-like effect, noone questions it.
^_^
Have only watched small clips of it, a fan of the original MLP, can’t stand the FiM crap, specially the Brony sub-group (nothing against the people, unless for other reasons, just the sub-group idea)
I’m not forgetting that. I’m saying after they did that, she must have taken over a troll’s body, taken the top of her head, and fled. Then sewed the top of her head onto the rest of the troll body.
Oh, you meant as a spirit taken over the orc (or maybe an ogre, remember, she had to go and get troll blood after she strung Pixelicious up), then retrieved her head from under the upturned snouts of the Twilight Ponies?
Okay, hadn’t thought of that
Yeah sorry. Yes, that’s what I meant.
I said troll because I thought when she said ‘troll blood does a body good’ was she was currently using a troll body.
Yeah, and at the time there was plenty of confusion as well, it was pointed out that she had had to go and get a troll-blood injection, else she would have been there when Sydney arrived
Yeah that makes sense.
She could always try to borrow Sydney’s holographic “fairy wings”. It’s not like they are that heavily defended. Okay, maybe a bad idea.
The rule of interesting says that “Ricono” will survive at least a little while, for exposition’s sake at the very least. It’s quicker to get to the action if he leads Sciona into control of his gang.
It appears she only has an enhanced version of the abilities of the body she is using. She has to grunt while twisting the gun around. That’s way more strength than the girl had, but still well short of the supers. She will likely want to upgrade if she can’t soon get back to her normal form.
She doesn’t need those wings, she needs Lucy’s vectors from Elfen Lied. THOSE would be perfect for a bloodmage.
If your shoot-ee is sitting upright with arms down and back… not much blood, actually. You’d get some blood from damage to the pectoral muscle, but the chest is mostly hollow, blood would drain to the bottom of the pleural cavity, displacing the lungs, not come spraying out the bullet holes.
(Source: Am a Firefighter/EMT in a an occasionally unpleasant neighborhood who has been called for someone with very similar injuries.)
Yeah, as high as those holes are, he missed her heart completely and maybe the aortic arch, which would be the major concentrations of blood. My guess is your patient did not spontaneously get up and talk, as shown in this example.
Sure as hell hope not, I’d be worried if they did!
I figured I was being pedantic enough in just responding to the specific point raised without pointing out the anatomy problems. It’s a webcomic, not an anatomy book. :)
(It’s a potentially-survivable wound, at least in the short term… Chest puncture gets you a tension pneumothorax on that side, though a glancing impact on ribs could send the bullets anywhere. On someone that, uh, pneumatic, the aiming point for the heart would probably be somewhere in the cleavage.)
Previous comic, the three shots are through and throughs as shown with the blood trails from her back.
If we assume the shootee’s clothing hasn’t moved around much and that the bloodstain matches up with a through-and-through exit wound, I think a more pressing issue would be spinal impingment. (For a hole that size, I give pretty respectable odds that a chunk of… hard to say on a comic, somewhere around T5 and/or its connected rib, plus all the associated stablizer muscles, is pretty messed up.)
Likely the shoulderblade is pretty fragged up as well.
I thought Señor Thug had the weirdest shooting grip at first, until I realized it was Scorpiona’s fingers, not his, on top. He’s not interlacing his fingers. The rope finally clued me in.
I AM wondering what kind of gun he has. Most hammer-fired pistols leave the hammer back after the slide cycles, until the trigger is pulled again. Makes for a shorter and easier trigger pull on the following shot. I know, I know, comic strip pistol and all that, but this is the sort of thing that bugs me (even though I can totally suspend disbelief of super powers for in-story purposes). It’s just that the cycling itself of the handgun was drawn realistically enough, the rest jumps out at me…
I’m a little concerned that the exit wounds were so small, if not completely nonexistent.
Oh yeah, whoopsie daisy!
DAVE!
They are covered by her top, you can see three distinct spots
Remember, Rico shot downwards (unless he is shorter than he looks)
Depends on the type and calibre of bullet as well.
.45 ACP FMJ has better penetrating capability compared to the same calibre in a hollow point form, but does much less damage.
.45 ACP HP on the other hand, oh boy……….
Heheh. And of you somehow get access to apds or simple ap rounds, the exit hole is nice and neat and small. I have had the opportunity to fire damn near every type of .45, .40, .38 and 9mm round in existence in the 90s when mum worked for lapd internal affairs.
Wouldn’t they have left giant holes in her top too?
They did. It’s just that it’s the part near her spine that’s cloaked in shadows.
Yeah it sorta depends on the power of the shell plus the type of bullet too. too powerful of a round and it goes right through with out much damage. (like .357 HP) plus things like bullets coated in teflon in particular. some bullets however are designed to open up/fragment and tumble round to cause a lot of tissue damage (cavitation etc)
If you are interested there are lots of youtube vids from gun shops etc that show them shooting such things thru ballistics gel (a jelly like substance that simulates flesh)
If this is Sciona,she gets around faster than Sydney…..
Faster than Mach 4? :-)
Faster than the grapevine? Whoh…..
Thumb on Sciona’s right hand: where didit go? Keep up the good work!
In panel five, the thumb is on the bottom (near his wrist)
Panel six and seven? Good question, if it wasn’t for the still-bound arm chair (and the arm behind his neck) would have guessed switched hands
Nope, not black magic witch, BLOOD magic witch.
He said “black eyed witch”, he magic is implied.
But is she a good good blood mage or a bad good blood mage? Which?
I guess Sciona does roughly resemble that description. After the encounter at her blood lab and the destructive fight with the not-bot Sydney did effectively drop a (ware) house on Sciona’s head.
Five foot two, eyes of blue
but oh what she will do to you
Has anybody seen our gal?
Bloody clothes, broken nose
Fear hits so deep you’ll think you froze
Haz anybody seen our gal?
Why does the guy say ‘Black-eyed witch?’ I understand the witch, but not the ‘black-eyed’ part. Her eyes are now blue. Unless that’s some sort of additional insult that I’m missing?
Sclera is black, or at least a midnight blue, iris looks turquoise maybe?
The eyes change color when Sciona takes over. Go back and look at the previous strip; her eyes are golden brown or golden hazel.
But they change to blue, not black.
Look at the 5th panel. There you see a blue iris and the rest is black (instead of white).
Just like her eyes before.
Umm, the part that is usually white, is now blue, only the center of the eye is black (just like on normal hyu-mons)
Dark blue, pale blue, black
Exactly. Which is why the ‘black eyed witch’ thing confuses me a bit :)
Unless that’s a common central or south american slur or something. Which it could be for all I know.
Well, she does still have a black eye…
Haha :)
It is quite likely that he gave her a black eye or two during his hand-to-face violence with her.
We can see her left eye has been blackened
Tried looking up “Bruja de Ojos Negros”, and apart from getting results of a band called “Ojos de Bruja”, just got images of women with heavy eye-makeup and a type of scarf
Did come across a couple images of people with solid black eyes, kinda like Scicorpia is looking (except hers are blue instead of the normal white)
I think black-eyed is part of the insult. Like black-hearted.
Anime bodies are a Blood TARDIS. Bigger on the inside.
Not gonna lie, didn’t expect Scionia to be so familiar with guns as to know the word “grouping.”
she’s was on earth previously, long enough to survive an assassination attempt by the Twilight Council
Also, the firearm equivalent (if not firearms themselves*) on her home planet may still have some element of manual control so that practitioners need to practice on grouping of shots.
* Can’t remember what it was, but there was a short story where the squad still preferred firearms over more sophisticated weapons because (to paraphrase), “You put a big effin’ hole in something, you can be pretty sure it’s going to stop it.”
It’s not just a firearms thing; training for just about any manually-operated projectile weapon tends to focus first on consistent grouping and only then on getting the group where you wanted it. Admittedly, I only know that first-hand for a relatively small subset of Terran weapons, but it’s a common enough principle that it’s probably universal.
Oh, thank God, the bullets missed her.. Er.. uhh… Wow, man, the detail on those bulletholes is unnervingly real.
Yeah.
Based on the 2nd panel, I wonder if Sciona’s “possession” will mutate or change the body further…
Considering where the shots hit her heart was probably destroyed by the bullets. So those wounds wouldn’t be pumping or gushing blood. Her body would just be leaking like a bag with holes in it. And depending on how long it was laying down before Sciona took it over enough might have drained out that the bullet holes wouldn’t even be leaking once it’s upright.
Don’t ask how or why I know these things.
She never was lying down, she was still strapped to the chair seconds after being shot
And the heart is not high up
Unlikely, actually. The heart is not just below the collarbone where the entrance wounds are; as pointed out by Some Guy Named Dave (who is an EMT), the heart sits lower in the chest… to hit the heart, you’d probably have to shoot somewhere in her cleavage, actually. He might even have missed the aortic arch, in which case the wound is potentially survivable, at least in the short term, even by someone who hasn’t just had her body taken over by a blood mage.
Also, as Guesticus points out, she was never lying down. Those shots went through the upper part of the pectoral muscle while sitting up… you’d get some blood, but not a gusher, and a lot of the blood would pool in the lower abdomen because of the sitting position.
Use panel five for the Scicorpia hybrid
It’s just a guess, but I’m going to say ‘this wont end well for those guys.’
Specially if the little guy tries to hit her
“You engineer! Go to hell!”
Hahaha, I’m guessing something was lost in the translation.
What? “Bruja de ojos negros” translates as “Black eyed witch”. It doesn’t say anything about engineers or hell. I think YOU lost something in the translation.
I wonder if she’s going to be able to remodel that body to her own standards. Also it’s not fair for her to act like he’s an idiot cuz the bullets did Kill the first host of that body original owner. Oh one more thing would it be hilarious if it turned out that that last shot that he used was his last bullet and when she tries to make him pulled the trigger just clicks cuz he doesn’t have any more bullets left in the gun?
Possible, but not likely. For one, nearly every semi-automatic pistol has the slide lock back when the last round is fired to make loading the next magazine easier. Secondly, he’s only fired 4 rounds, far from the capacity of that pistol (assuming it was fully loaded of course).
But then, the rule of cool says that a “click” would make for a fun switchup. Also, if Sciona goes on to kill him with a quick flick of his neck, there is less damage for the next occupant to repair.
The Rule of Cool and the Rule of Funny both have a higher paygrade & security clearance in comics than the Rule of How Things Actually Work. (waaaaaay higher paygrade & security clearance)
I’m thinking the “Rule of How Things Actually Work” would be MIA, except he never sees any action to be missing from.
Remember, Deus already summed up his opinion of Sciona’s temperament thusly: “You obviously don’t see the value in trust or loyalty.” She’s quite likely to kill them first, THEN wonder where to find some useful lackeys. She’s not nearly as smart as she thinks she is.
She has quite a few lackeys in a similar position she was last page: they are just lacking a new meat-suit
And why the fuck should she be loyal to some areshat she doesn’t know who killed a woman because she stole his stolen loot? o_O
wonder how our dear Sciona will react to Sydney bringing the surviving Alari to safety and access to an Alari colony ship*
I’m guessing the colony ship is there because of Sciona.
I am guessing that the colony ship is here because Archon decided to warn the Alari through Dabbler.
I guess we shall see which it is.
Then, why not have them land in USA, and not in Douchevillia, Africa?
They warned them to leave, but didn’t invite them here specifically.
Serendipitous coincidence is one of the building blocks of comic book stories, so one of the ships headed to various colonial worlds would need to break down while earth was the nearest place so there can be a neat solution as to what to do with Sciona’s force after her plans are foiled, and so that Deus has a viable explanation for how he got the technology he’s obtained from Fracture.
It wouldn’t be a unique story element if the noblewoman Sydney and Cora rescued turns out to have a simple (to the Alari Nobility) method of exorcising Soul Battery posession. Anti-climaxes being one way to segue from one arc to the next even higher pressure arc.
Well since this is a flashback I wouldn’t be surprised if when it finishes Sciona is somewhere in Africa Having just watched Sydney’s return.
Probably in or near that Alari ship, as she probably wants to use its technology to make her current body Alari and fully regain her powers.
Ricono’s first words, with hands up, had better be “I speak English”.
I’d think saying something like, “Please don’t kill me. I’ll do whatever you want.” in English would communicate his linguistic skills and something else more pressing at the same time.
Is it just me, or is panel 6 inverted left-right?
Nope, just the length of the fingers is backwards. Those relative finger lengths in panel 6-7 correspond to the left hand that is on the back of his neck, not to her right hand that is struggling with the gun in his right.
It’s seems like, because the thumb (which should be at the bottom) is missing
“Nice grouping”. For some reason that weird compliment just makes me smile.
Not sure why Spanish gets to be called a “gutter” language when English gets no such insult.
To Sciona, I’m sure everything on this miserable mudball is gutter-worthy, because to an alari, humans are an inferior species. She’s very much into the whole racist thing, & it’s in character for her to disdain learning more languages. (Mind you, that’s learning and/or retaining memory of them the hard way, no body with a universal translator, & no kiosks selling those, either.) It’s not a nice thing to say about Spanish, which is a lovely language, but it is in-character for Sciona to say something insulting at this moment.
Just don’t confuse the creator with the character. If we assume that whatever the worse that the characters say & do are reflections upon the author’s own words & deeds…then Stephen King & George RR Martin are both homicidal maniacs who should’ve been locked up long ago, JK Rowling should’ve been burned at the stake for being a practitioner of lethal magic, etc, etc…and why more romance authors aren’t married, I don’t know, save for maybe potential partners fearing serious performance anxiety issues…?
For it to be ‘racist’, Sci-fright would have to know they were speaking Spanish, not just one of hundreds of different dialects
She problem thinks ‘English’ is a gutter language, just one she was forced to learn if she wanted to communicate with the Dirticans (and better than trying to teach one of them to speak Alarian)
Sciona’s not human, so she can be anti-human racist without caring what language he’s speaking. He’s human, on the human homeworld. She doesn’t know the language, so chances are it’s a human language, because even if she’s merely bilingual, he’s unlikely to have access to extrastellar languages.
Therefore, the language he’s speaking is a gutter language.
The fact that he’s speaking a vulgar variant of Spanish, such that many humans would also consider it a gutter language, is probably entirely lost on her.
That having been said, I suppose there’s an outside chance she knows Spanish, too, and is being technically correct. That wouldn’t make her less racist, however.
The author decides what the characters are doing, and their biases effect how they write those characters.
He wanted to make clear that Sciona doen’t speak the language. The question would be, how would someone like her say that? Given the ubiquity of news coverage of folks who are actually racist calling Spanish speakers things like “gutter trash”, “filth”, etc. it probably seemed natural for a Alterian Supremacist to say exactly that.
Does this make DaveB racist? Hell no. That would be a silly conclusion at best.
However, it does reinforce and repeat the white supremacist trope. Folks already leaning in that direction feel, however slightly, empowered by that repetition – especially from a dangerous and powerful character. It would be a good idea to avoid such reinforcement, and have Sciona’s loathing for non-Alterians be more evenly distributed, disrupting being able to relate to her as a supremacist, and leave her still readily identifiable as a despicable villain. A line I would have suggested is “I don’t speak whatever human gibberish you do.” It keeps her sense of supremacy at the species level.
Perhaps in future Sciona could complain that speaking English is “Like imitating the sound of a constipated howler monkey.” or similar. Again, to break the supremacy relatable facet of her evil.
Mind, all I’m up to here is trying to raise a little awareness. DaveB still writes a darn good baddie (second only to his skill writing an unpredictable nerd with superpowers), but when the awful crap said about one’s race all over the news and in our political discourse is repeated in a comic you’re reading, it can hit hard no matter the good intention of the writer.
Peace
It isn’t Spanish *per se* that’s being called “gutter language” here. The thug here isn’t speaking in a formal register, or even everyday Spanish. He’s speaking the sort of vulgar, profanity-laced Spanish you’d expect from street trash.
I was looking at that two. And while I can considered that, perhaps, she considers all of Earth’s languages to be gutter languages” even before Guesticus suggests, I wasn’t getting that vibe in this admittedly small context. I mean, if anything, I’d expect her brand of disdain to not even both with adjectives. And though she is, shall we say speciest, I don’t agree with Ladyofthemasque that she has shown any care about distinctions among humans. In fact, the only distinctions we seen so far is Sciona and her species and everyone else. At least within everyone else, there are the tiers of those who are useful to Sciona without harming them, those who have greater, or possibly equal use, by harming them, and those who are in the way. Whether or not she puts herself above any one of her whole species, over the entire species, or some number in between, is not yet clear. She’s been pretty narcissistic amongst other species. Her time on her homeworld could go either way. She seemed devestated by literal global level destruction there, but it could be more about her than any caring for other members of her species.
As to what Mark brings up, it’s too much of a stretch. I don’t see her chastising him just for the more vulgar version of a lnaguage she doesn’t understand. Also, although there is some room for his interpretation, even with the little context there is, I’m pretty she just doesn’t understand the language at all. So she could be complaining about the correctness of his language.
All IMHO of course, just how I interpreted her comment.
OK, the first visual clue that Sciona’s in here is that eye color change. In the previous page, the woman’s eyes were hazel. Here, they’re a terrifyingly familiar light blue.
That has to be intentional… right?
The blood would only spray if there is sufficient blood pressure behind it. Given the size of the exit wounds and the liquified mess those bullets must have made of her heart and lungs seems unlikely.
Also
A human body can be drained of blood in 8.6 seconds given adequate vacuuming systems (*)
I am sure it has been longer than 8.6 seconds and that a blood mage counts as adequate vacuuming
(* quoted from River Tam)
It’s probably much harder to manage a truly undead corpse. Sciona probably is intending to keep that body alive the traditional way.
Bodies don’t die from wounds like that “instantly”, they just appear to because the person goes in shock for longer than it takes the body to die. Sciona entered as soon as Escorpia went into shock, more or less.
Just by feeling for my own heartbeat at different points on my chest, I’ve verified that the previous responders who stated that those bullet holes were above the heart are probably correct. I’m not sure exactly how far the heart beat can be felt from the heart, so it’s tough for me to say whether that’s above the aorta as well, but I’ve no reason to disbelieve them. Also, there’s not near enough blood spray around the room for the body to be emptied of all blood.
The shots are a little high, but the lowest central one probably nicked it or at least an artery.
Also… have you never had your pulse checked? The wrist is the traditional spot for minor medical monitoring of the heartbeat, followed by the carotid artery in the neck for more anyone unconscious (stronger signal but more invasive). You can also check on your foot, inside of the thigh, elbow, etc.
Yeah it probably also chewed up a cone of meat-popsicle due to cavitation of the bullets.
My Spanish is pretty crap…but I’m pretty sure that translates as “black-eyed witch”
Which is infinitely better than “Black-eyed Peas” (bet she sings better as well :P)
Rico did show her that Boom Boom Boom.
i’ll hazard a guess and say that he won’t want to go back to his room with her… for ANY amount of time, let alone “all night”
Considering Sydney’s revelation that her shield is transparent and yet stopped light based lasers. Her sudden call and hilarious reaction to Dabbler’s recharging process. All having to do with the tabletop game she was in, a minor time jump occurred sometime between her start and the first battle. Or let’s just let a good gag be funny.
Yeah, a couple months, as mentioned at the start
My dude. you may want to take your finger off the trigger…maybe use your second hand for something…safety, eject the mag, wave to your buddy that you need help…somethin.
Removing his finger from the trigger would not help. Ejecting the mag probably would not help for long. That having been said, if there were more than about 10 bullets in the mag total, ejecting the mag and flipping the safety on are probably the limit of what he’d have time for even if he had the presence of mind that he clearly doesn’t have.
Or it’s possible he has more presence of mind than I’m aware of, and his thought process is something like, “Shit, she’s going to kill me in some horrible way, and I do *not* want to find out what other ideas she’ll come up with!”
Of course, if she ends up just winging him to make him bleed so one of her friends can possess him… I guess in that case, he’d have been equally out of luck either way, because making somebody bleed isn’t that hard.
And, if the gun is taking out of the equation, she still has a modified tonfa strapped to her fucking arm she can beat him up with!
That broken part could cause a serious bullet-sized hole, maybe give him three to match what he gave Escorpia
Since the slide is not locked back, dropping the clip would still leave a round in the chamber. It could help, but only if he can fire it off before it is points at him.
I have a bad habit of losing track of secondary characters. Anyone have a link to the arc where we met her?
On the previous page. If you mean the ghost of Sciona inside Escorpia’s body, I think this one might be her first appearance: https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-489-two-liter-minimum/
Response function not responding properly, dang …
Inb4 the gun doesn’t fire.
I am. SUPER not okay with the phrase “gutter language.” Like I don’t really care what Sciona’s intent was, it’s completely parallel to the way real-world racists talk about Spanish and especially Mexican people as a whole and you can absolutely pick a better insult that doesn’t mirror that.
If anyone’s gonna be culturally insensitive, it’s probably gonna be the alien blood mage seeking world domination.
As explained further up the page, Sci-fright probably considers all Dirt languages to be “gutter languages”, whether they are swearing at her (using language from the literal gutter) or not
So are you suggesting that DaveB completely alter the character of Sciona just because you are too sensitive to handle gritty reality? Maybe he should have the thugs speak like some posh upper class British twits. Maybe he should have had Sciona say something like, “I’m dreadfully sorry my good man, but I simply have no comprehension of what you are saying. I simply do not speak your delightful language.”
The simple fact is, Sciona ain’t some whiney oversensitive SJW snowflake, and the only thing PC means to her is one of those crappy computers the smelly apes on this planet use. She looks upon our entire species as little more than cattle useful for nothing but the blood power she can siphon from us.
I think ImpTwins makes a good point, although of course I am not supporting creative writing by committee. In particular the suggestion was that a different insult be chosen, rather than changing the nature of the character or their colourful use of language.
However there are plenty of arguments against Dave taking on board such constructive criticism:
1) Dave may actually be choosing to make a social commentary by this means. It is not the first time he has chosen to have a human behave in an objectionable way. In particular making politically incorrect/insensitive comments. In particular I am thinking of the redneck making sexist comments.
Showing unsympathetic characters making such grating comments does have useful story aspects. For instance showing that Sciona is even worse than our regular run of the mill unpleasant humans. It also serves to show that Sciona does have some (slightly) redeeming features, such as not choosing to use foul language and expressing a dislike of it.
2) It is a realistic reflection of present day life, which is what the story is using as the central basis to layer the rest of the events on. In particular such characters (both Sciona and those she is commenting on) do not choose to self-censor and would not avoid touchy turns of phrase.
3) Unlike other commentators I do think that Sciona is likely making a (multi layered) insult. She is super smart, so it is reasonable to assume that she will do such if it suits her mood or tactics. So whilst I agree that she will be contemptuous of any mere human language, her nature is to also look down on anything different to her chosen lifestyle (or culture).
Sciona has chosen to speak English, therefore that elevates it to a language worth learning. Any one that she has not chosen to do likewise will thereby (using the logic she has consistently displayed) be inferior and worthy of insult.
Likewise whilst Sciona recognises that obscenity is being used she neither understands the individual words (or not fully anyhow) nor the language used. Whilst she could opt to lower her replies with similar language she does understand, she is choosing not to reply in kind, and is thereby taking moral (if also politically incorrect) high ground. But is making sure that they know it.
We have no way of knowing if Sci-fright knows Rico is using obscenities, all we know is that she doesn’t understand it
Rico could have been using French, or Italian, or Canadian, and Sci would have still called it a ‘gutter language’ because she views all Dirticans to be gutter trash
We still don’t know why she was here in the first place, butt she clearly doesn’t like the planet and has a disdain for everyone on it (with maybe a slight tolerance for some individuals)
Also, the very next panel could feature Sciona speaking in Spanish. What she chooses to say or do in a fight is up to her. Confusion to the enemy.
I know from experience that it is easy to tell when somebody is using obscenities, even in a language that you do not understand. Their intonation, body language, attitude and the reactions of others all give a bunch of indicators. Which were clearly visible in this scene, and Sciona is familiar enough with humans, and very smart to boot, not to miss them.
There was an episode of The Simpsons when Lisa snuck out of the house to go to a museum on her own, she got lost in the ‘Little Russia’ part of town and asked for directions from a guy playing chess, he gave her the directions butt she thought he was screaming at her
I have fluently spoken two languages which can be just as guttural and rude sounding to the ignorant and inexperienced. Sciona is neither. Rather than being a young girl, lacking personal world experience, Sciona has experience of more than one world and more than one body and multiple languages and has lived in a cosmopolitan galaxy having contact with many cultures and races other than her own.
I remain content in my assessment that she can easily pick up when somebody is cussing her.
I am superduper okay with the phrase “gutter language”.
Perhaps that it is because I have heard the term for well over half a century, have read books using the term written back as far as the nineteen twenties, and for all of those decades it has consistently been used simply to reference speech laced obscenities, profanity, and vulgarity.
Since I am not attempting to change the meaning to justify some sense of outrage, I have a different perspective.
I guess it comes from both age, and being a bibliophile.
Wow, are we still only on page one of the comments?
*starts tracking down page two*
I wonder if Sciona’s objectives (world domination) and methods (unnecessary brutality) will change now that her species (or at least the inhabitants of the world we know to have been destroyed) need to be brought back from extinction.
Will she learn from her past failures, or (like many humans) will she be doomed to repeat them?
I was about to mention that there are fewer comments.
Is it because these are not the main characters?
Perhaps because the sequence of events for the next page or two shall run in a fairly predictable pattern, but they have to be drawn anyway. Kind of like the idiot teenagers in an abandoned house during a storm would have to decide whether or not to go down into the basement or not if this were horror genre. You know how its gonna go.
More likely she will ramp up her plans, her fellow Alarian soul-skulls are in need of bodies afterall