Grrl Power #766 – Bullet dump
After I drew this page I realized I probably should have put it before the previous one, showing that Arc-SWAT has a way of interfering with the Fel shields. Jiggawatt’s attack only sets up small groups for ballistic attack, but it helps, and takes some of the pressure off of the bricks like Stalwart, Anvil, Hiro and Mr. Amorphous. And Achilles. He’s not really capable of hurting these things, but he’s great for drawing fire.
I spent way too long trying to make a “loose afro” brush for Jiggawatt’s hair on this page, so you guys get smoke for most of the background panels. I’m not 100% pleased with it, partially because it doesn’t really match the style of the rest of the page, but there’s perfect and then there’s done. Sometimes you have to say “good enough” and move on.
Yes, Goose is using the minigun with six bayonets strapped to it. (I guess someone chromed the barrels in the last two months. Oops.) Unfortunately this fight will be over quickly enough that he won’t get a chance to core out a bad guy with it. But it’s going to happen eventually. I mean, how can it not?
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FIRST
Nice to see your degree in performance art isn’t going to waste. Totally worth the soul crushing student loan.
You win at least one internet for this comment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JW68goC4_es
Your username is… soooo appropriate after that sarcasm-fueled slow burn :) I approve.
No Vorching.
That’s right, only Zorching.
and yet no booger aliens out to ruin cereal in sight.
Nice to see Duke Nukem get work again… Seriously, this is gonna be good. Those aliens done fucked up.
“Time to kick ass and chew bubblegum…damn! I’m all outta gum.” – Duke Nukem, in Duke Nukem 3D
“It’s time to kick ass and chew bubblegum, and I’m all out of gum…”
https://youtu.be/Jv7iDcVh2ig
Sorry, it’s a classic line.
It’s a reference to John Carpenter’s “They Live”.
Funny thing about that movie … Carpenter thought his movie was commentary about Reagan.
Duke’s gravelly voice, “Come get some.”
Even better…
Yeah, since his last attempt at a game bombed out, Duke has been under the radar. Least he’s finally putting his skills to good use. Hoping he took plenty of lessons in how to fit in the modern world. Or maybe that’s why we only see him when battles begin, he’s STILL an egotistical product of the 90s…
Daniel the Human let me play his Duke Nukem Games. Original rocked, Forever did not live up to the legacy…
That’s kinda impressive Screwball. How’d you manage a controller built for human hands?
With an accessibility adaptor you can make any control style that works for your needs.https://www.xbox.com/en-AU/xbox-one/accessories/controllers/xbox-adaptive-controller
It’s becoming pretty common to re-purpose these controllers for all kinds of accessibility things besides gaming, they’re pretty versatile and can assist with all kinds of mobility issues.
Faceroll to victory!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1HGhv83hVs
https://twitter.com/i/status/1166799140711477248
I may be a 4 foot tall Cybertronian, but my Pretender Armour makes me 5 foot 5 “Human”. I can use a PC no problem…
Wait, it’s the pic, isn’t it? That’s just a cool baby custom Dragon Daniel the Human commissioned. Maybe things have settled down enough for me to use a selfie…
If you want a good Duke Nukem 3D sequel, polay the Serious Sam games.
I agree. I even fire Duke 1 and 2 from time to time, still fun. Forever was an ok game, but I think the decade plus of foreplay set it up for a let down.
Duke Duke Goose!
*slow clap*
And Bombshell is right there with him!
But is he going to rip of the head of the boss and shit down the hole?
Also, what are his powers? Superstrength?
I think Goose is just a soldier.
To paraphrase Math, “There’s no such thing as just a soldier”.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-209-dramatic-speed-lines-ensue/
He lasted until the end in the parking lot fight https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-250-its-only-overconfidence-if-he-loses/ but he was using a ranged weapon so he might not get hit as much.
If he’s carrying that gun he has higher than normal strength but not necessarily outside human range, he also has the superhero body shape but that’s not a 100% indicator either.
Every time I see him, I can’t decide if that is Duke Nukem or Johnny Bravo.
Yes, Yes it is.
Duke Bravo, Johnny Nukem…
Because 12 000 hertz sounds more impressive that 12 kilohertz.
I’ve worked in labs where the prefixes confused people, despite them being standard. At least this way Jiggawatt knows exactly what to do.
I worked in radar and with Nav Aids. Frequency isn’t impressive, it’s the amperage thats impressive.
It gets more impressive when you realize she’s doing it entirely without computer support. I mean, think about it a sec, she is generating this stuff. Yea, the amperage that is gonna drain her energy, but just imagine for example trying to flutter your eyelashes a thousand times a second, much less twelve.
The amperage is a metric of her power, but the frequency is a metric of her skill… both are equally terrifying.
That frequency, even if it was something like singing would be impressive, roughly F#9. So that’s about two octaves higher than Mariah Carey’s highest note.
Watt power! Watt skill! Jiggawatt is in-capacitator-ing them so fast!
Her name is a (correctly pronounced) prefixed unit of measure, I’d hope she understands prefixed units of measure.
Should be “incorrectly pronounced”.
Since she is producing lightning, shouldn’t it have been 50,000 volts, not amps? Or does she actually generate a gigawatt (10^9), in which case 50,000 amps means 20,000 volts?
Jiggawatt is really putting the hurt(z) on them.
+1
I assume that attack was designed for that joke ….. ^_^
Killer Hertz
It Hertz, but not for long, then you die.
Turns out 413 nanohertz is the most common period of the painful pun.
Watt can I do to make you all stop generating these puns?
It does no good to plead & beg for it to stop. Resistance is futile.
(I made two electricity puns in my post btw, you might not have noticed – Watt and generating). :)
1.21 Jigawatts!!! – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nk5O6F3qwOE
So, I guess the artifact they are here to retrieve is actually their missing flux capacitor.
Scary huh?
That movie has inspired this AND Rick and Morty….
1.21? Are you nuts? She looks more like a 10 to me, 8.9 if you’re the Russian judge.
The Jigawatt is a context sensitive unit, which can be converted to Smoots, which is probably the most widely-recognized alternative, as well as Hubble-barns, Pirate-ninjas, or MegaFonzies. It looks like you’re using the Helen, in which case 1.21 is probably a reasonable value.
That’s SCIENCE, bi**hes!
“She Blinded Me With Science”
“For Science!”
“Any sufficiently analyzed magic is indistinguishable from Science.”
Okay, I’m done…For now…
I couldn’t help read it and not think: “IT’S OVER 9,000!!!!”
I dunno ’bout that.
I think it’s more impressive when measured in “kill-o-hertz” because that’s the same as “hertz a LOT.”
Aww. i wanted to see Sydney sweep her PPO beam accross them and get another level up :(
It’s coming. Be patient.
I know it’s her comic, but I think Sydney is going to be late for the party.
I’m glad to see some of the minor characters getting some action. Reminds us that there’s a lot more to Archon than just Sydney and Max.
She’s going to lightbee into their command deck and just start swearing.
If alien fighter-craft are greys to her, these mooks don’t even register. She’s gonna need a lot more than wiping up some mooks to level up.
Maybe it works like Fallout. Rats are always 50 xp, but over time next level just costs a LOT of xp
But who knows how her levelling works. Maybe the orbs are semi sentient and just know when she’s learned/grown enough.
Save that for once Max pushes the Fel ship so it won’t crash into anything important (like the ARC building or Cora’s ship).
I’m hoping that if the ship gets punted to orbit and vorched, they remember to do a quick backstop check and not hit the moon*. There are much better ways to use a moon laser, some of them even productive for moon science.
* spoiler alert
Did someone say moon laser?
http://drmcninja.com/archives/comic/21p96/
Love Dabbler’s enthusiasm in the ninth panel.
Her cheering makes her a real Archon booster. Or would that be ‘bustier’?
Chibi Dabbler is always so cute!!!
Chekov’s Gatling-Gun
That’s pretty cool, I’ll admit…But still not as cool as this.
For me it looked like Heatwave brute forced the shields. They are there in panel 3, P4 more power and in P5 the alien gets cooked. Similar for Stalwart. Also I know comic logic but that is a lot of energy Jiggawatt puts out, also how does that lighting not just hits the ground in front of her?
Anybody who can shoot lightning, including Jigglewatt and Glowbug, they have a required secondary power of remote electrical control, so they can control the path of the electricity they generate.
Otherwise they can’t send the electricity outwards. Like Hajime in Arifureta. He overcomes it by using his electrical hands to fire railguns, lol.
Electricity follows the path of least resistance.
Lightning actually follows the same ionized track multiple times, so an initial low-power ionization is all that it takes to make that the desired track the path of least resistance.
For me it looked like Heatwave brute forced the shields. They are there in panel 3, P4 more power and in P5 the alien gets cooked. Similar for Stalwart. Also I know comic logic but that is a lot of energy Jiggawatt puts out, also how does that lighting not just hits the ground in front of her?
Echo?
I thought she increased the heat enough to activate the grenade.
And that is a queastion for all lightning wielding heroes and villains. I suspect it is either super physics or part of the power is creating an ionized tunnel or something.
She didn’t brute force the shields. She heated up the greande being carried until it exploded, since the grenades arent shielded apparently (that would probably defeat the purpose of a grenade).
Have to say this is quite the impressive page. The Fel are learning you don’t mess with death World inhabitants.
Also I’m happy to see that the mini gun with six bayonets trapped on it isn’t just for show. The goose looks a lot like Duke Nukem while using it one of these days I’m going to play that game.
Regarding it being chromed, my headcannon is that Goose saw it, liked it and blinged it up.
Headcannon accepted.
They already modded it with bayonets, I could see it being their hobby piece and having all sorts of mods on it like chrome.
Its tradition, everyone who actually can semi accurately fire that down range adds on a single mod.
I fear for the day when Sydney gains the right to add a mod to it.
I feel like Sydney’s mod would precede firing it, as a mod that allows her to carry and fire it with the Lighthook.
Sydney could (theoretically) use the Lighthook in such a way that it would mimic the function of an articulation harness…Which would allow her to hold it up & move it around with her own two hands. In her case, the Lighthook would merely have to hold it up & move it around (which means she’s already using one hand), while she uses her other hand to pull the trigger.
No modification needs to be made on the weapon itself for this.
Yeah but then she’d have to use both hands to operate the minigun instead of onehanding it with the lighthook.
That thing would be really hard to hold once it spins up, I suspect those bayonets would really screw up the balance.
zorching is the term in that chex quest game! :D
Vorching is the term in that chest quest game…
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-520-from-distress-to-datstress/
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-521-to-no-dress/
I’ll be honest I liked Jiggs hair better the other way. But that is my preference
Me too, but style apart, LOVE THE ARTWORK.5th panel looks awesome (although I’m really not sure the nose brige and facial muscles are anatomically correct)
Same here. I am NOT used to the hairstyle, and the nose looks … er… like there’s about 5 times as many muscle groups as there should be. I get what DaveB was going for with the intense scrunching of the nose, but it doesnt really look as good as his usual standard of artwork. Loving the fight though.
My guess is that it looks like this because she was interrupted when getting ready for the day and has not finished prepping her hair, so it is all loose like that. It is so inconvenient when somebody just drops by unexpectedly to attach you during a press briefing.
Oops, to attack your.
Good point.
Personally I really, really LIKE Jigawatt’s appearance upgrade!
Also I enjoyed cheering Dabbler more than I should.
In the first panel, Dabbler’s corset is black with gold stripes. In the sixth panel, it is black with red stripes!
As to the effect of Jiggawatt’s discharges on the enemy shields, maybe it has to do with the “skin effect” exhibited by alternating current on conductors? (AC tends to have higher current densities away from the center of conductors, and with higher frequency, more of that current concentrates on a thin “skin” of the conductor in question).
Good catch on Dabbler. Maybe her corset has gold on the back and side but red on the front? She never did things by standard.
Given that Dabbler routinely combines magic with technology, and that this is her “Battle Corset”, I would speculate that the color changes have to do with the corset switching between modes. Gold representing perhaps a defensive posture emphasizing shields and Red representing an aggressive posture emphasizing offensive capabilities.
Or it could just be something Dabbler added to the corset for a little style.
It’s a mood corset.
[gets popcorn out of microwave]This gonna be gud.
Jiggawatt has changed her hair since the Battle of Ruined Dinner.
There was too much of a resemblence to Marvel’s Storm, so a hair color change was required.
12khz is in the audible spectrum. Should we be hearing that lightning?
The youtubes of high voltage powerlines failing has the 60 cycle hum.
Yes, 12 kHz is audible – similar pitch to your ears ringing, at least for me.
Thanks! At first I thought ‘This isn’t working’ then I stepped it down to 8khz.
Either my system or my ears are having a sharp drop off at 12khz.
8-10 khz it seems to get quieter on the hearing test before getting louder at 10 khz+ and then sloping back down to inaudible at 16+ or so khz
I think it was mentioned somewhere that Jiggs does stuff to her hair on a regular basis. Personally I like this style, but suspect I may be in the minority. Also, good to see Seneca again.
I’m willing to bet Goose is a basic Captain America build. Good strength, endurance, speed, and even a healing factor. And because superpowers are weird, he can also see in the dark which is why he’s always wearing shades.
He’s not a super. But he is a Duke Nukem. Which is almost as good.
There was too much of a resemblence to Marvel’s Storm, so a hair color change was required.
12khz is in the audible spectrum. Should we be hearing that lightning?
The youtubes of high voltage powerlines failing has the 60 cycle hum.
To produce sound waves something has to be moved. Like soft iron in an electromagnetic field.
For heating and cooling off air to create that movement, I would think 12khz is way to fast.
You ever heard a grounding fault when a power line was down, and the electricity arcs? It creates a VERY audible noise, one you are not likely to ever forget. That is caused by the alternating current in the power line basically causing mini-plasma at the same frequency of the power line, generally 60 hz, or 400 hz for one of the big super high voltage lines.
Same concept in the ‘tuned tesla coils’ that some people use to produce music through electrical discharge.
12khz is within human hearing, but it would be a really high pitch instead of a really low pitch. Think that background whine that CRT screens used to emit when running, that’s the tone you’re likely to get. Now amplify that by 50k Amps. Think ‘chainsaw on fast-forward’, and you might be getting close.
I would assume that those with hearing problems might not be able to hear it, those losing the upper part of their range might not, but yea… high nasaly buzz-saw whine would be the sound I would expect from such an electrical discharge.
Like some really bad coil whine
Hundred decibel tinnitus! At least, mine rings at about that pitch.
A Tesla coil can play music with the right modulation. A sound is no problem.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8Dp7irp4EI
A Shocking encounter for certain.
I love how Dabbler is using some seriously good battle tactics with the help of the others, utilizing their skills…and it shows that Jiggawatt knows what Dabbler means by amps and watts, even if she’s never tried that particular setup before.
After all, if you have lightning powers, and government researchers willing to help you measure & develop your skills to the best that you can get them to be, then why not test how to control your amplitude, frequency, and everything? I’d even imagine it’s no different (in its own way) than a singer learning to belt out a Middle C in tune on command (or maybe with the help of a monitoring gizmo to help tune it), and from there be able to sing a couple octaves to one side or the other of it with training. In fact, that’s probably pretty apt for an analogy, because you never know if you can hit a High C until you try! (or someone drops ice cubes down your sweater in the middle of winter, or gooses you through your running shorts…)
It’s good to see Sydney being tactically astute, but I like seeing Dabbler showing off her own combat smarts. (Plus, the chibi cheering version is too cute for words. DaveB, please make that into the rotating list of headshots for Dabbler up in the banner, pretty please??)
I am pretty sure that every AM radio station in a twenty mile radius just got put off the air for about ten seconds by a giant blast of static.
At 12,000 hz she is now a short wave transmitter. She might need protective gear for the UV and the sparks but Jiggawatt could also be a human welding machine when it came time for cleanup and repair.
50 000 Amperes? Really? You know the lethal level for a human is below 0,5 Ampere, right?
And Jiggawatt generates it without even sweating? OMG!!
I pray the HUMAN people around her are safe from these bolts of hers because if not, that’s probably the last thing they’re gonna feel :P
Maybe she has a dark backstory.
Maxima blew a hole in the wall when she was a teenager.
Maybe her boyfriend broke up with her due to a near death experience.
I imagine that the air is drawing the majority of the current.
Lightning averages 30,000.
Can go well above 120,000.
It’s the AC that gets me.
Lightning is like a giant capacitor discharging at once. It’s a single pulse, all in one direction.
There’s some serious power being thrown around to make this last for long enough for AC to be possible.
It also means that she’s effectively striking herself with the same power each cycle.
Lightning isn’t all at once, it’s usually at least 3 strikes in a few hundred milliseconds.
Death range is between 0.1 and 0.2 amp. Even 0.01 to 0.1 is not a nice experience. However importnat is what way the current travels. As long as it isn’t going through your chest it’s usually just very very painful and above 0.2 A will most likely burn you.
At that level it’s deadly, but it takes time to be deadly, by interrupting & unbalancing your body’s own normal “frequency” flowing through your nervous system. It takes about 30 seconds or so at 0.3 Amps if the current is flowing through your chest (from one arm to the other), but takes less time if the current is flowing through your brain (from head to feet).
The current messes up the specific patterns that keeps your heart beating, disrupting/overwhelming neural signals to & from your brain, etc. It takes time, so you can survive it if the current is that low as long as you can break yourself away from the “circuit.”
At higher levels of current though, you might as well say that death is instant, for all that it matters. If the current is really high, the flowing electricity generates heat…If the heat is high enough to vaporize the moisture in your body, you’ll explode. Literally. Literally a steam-explosion.
Jiggawatt scares the hell out of me.
might take into account that at those ranges electricity cooks you as well. most folks that live through the initial strike have bits that rot off over time because they have been in effect microwaved.
I’m still not getting use to Jiggawatt’s new hairstyle….
Talking about Achilles, there is a reason why he goes around unarmed? Being totally invulnerable is cool but he could be much more useful if he had some way to increase his damage output, or if you want to go not lethal you could give him some area weapons that neutralize enemies but that don’t hurt him , like flashbangs, tear gas, one of those tranqguns Harem use, something like that.
Unarmed? Last I looked, he had one on each shoulder… Oh. You mean guns. Well I suppose they would increase his range, but I would have thought he’d be better as a Space Marine in a melee: just run in swinging and keep going in circles.
I’m still trying to think of the implications of Dabbler and Jigg goin strait to amps without mentioning volts. Can Jiig just force unlimited cuurent flow without caring about resistence or voltage? Did Dabbler not know the exact voltage needed and left it up to jigg to dial it in correctly? I am very curious.
Ummm. Does an electric eel worry about all that? Or better, how about an animal negotiating a tight corner: do we care about mass and gravity? I reach for a beer on the table. Do I get a tape measure and mass balance before I do it, or simply reach out and open my hand?
Electricity is part of Jiggawatt’s being. Just eye off the target and do something analagous to throwing a ball, everything else will be sorted while she’s aiming.
When lightning strikes, it ionizes and superheats the air along the passage, creating a plasma with almost no resistance, so resistance is largely irrelevant (besides which the initial resistance to initiate the strike is basically just based on distance since non-ionized air is pretty close to the resistance of empty space, composition doesn’t typically change much of anything, so presumably someone used to shooting things with lightning knows how hard to push it to get a certain distance)
Volts is the measurement of how much current is needed to push through the resistance (ohms) of any given material. It’s the current pushing through resistance that causes heat. The flow of electricity also generates an electromagnetic field, combining with the heat, that ionizes the atoms surrounding the actual path of the electricity. At a certain point, the heat & magnetic field from the flow of current breaks a certain threshhold level & creates plasma.
In your computer, the current flowing through its circuits is quite low, but every single type of material in there has some level of resistance, even solid gold wiring (if you have it) has some resistance but it’s a lower amount compared to other materials, like silver or copper. This is why your computer has heat sinks & air fans installed, to channel the heat away from the circuits. Some of the bigger mainframe computers might even be liquid-cooled.
Fortunately, your computer doesn’t channel anywhere nearly enough power to create plasma…
Maybe the mini gun is like a project of “how awesome can we make it look”. Every time it’s shown, should have some extra work done to it.
How much extra stuff can you add to it before it is too heavy? Like a grenade launcher? Scope? Etc…
The bayonets need bipods.
Jiggawatt does NOT look like herself.
She is twenty six.
If she changed her entire look every month that would be par.
Damn! Jiggawatt is looking really good here! I love her hair <3
Of course 12000hz or 12kHz is not actually a high frequency.
Okay, it is when you try to play hopscotch at that speed, but 12kHz is well within the hearing range of almost every human. And only ten times higher than the high range of the human voice
Terra Hertz, or better yet Peta Hertz, that would have been seriously impressive. And also would have been a gamma ray burst…
12KHz isn’t that high for sound, and is extremely low for RF, but for a straight AC current? Highest AC current I know of is 400Hz (aircraft power systems). Quick googling shows that there are a few uses going into a couple of KHz, but it seems rare. She’s not tossing out EMR, she’s directing a lightning bolt and making it AC. It’s going to have interesting effects (AC ‘penetrates’ resistance better than DC does, I have no idea how much frequency effects this).
High frequency penetrates capacitance better than low frequency (and low frequency penetrates inductance better than high frequency)
Also communications equipment uses WAY higher frequencies than that.
Take a look at a Tesla coil. Really high frequency allows a human to hold it even with otherwise fatal voltage. I have seen units that output a MHz or more. 12 kHz isn’t that much, but it would be a lot for somebody not used to it.
You can modulate the frequency of a Tesla coil over quite a broad range actually, makes for fun music and light shows.
Jiggawatt: You want me to do high-frequency AC when I am used to just producing DC? Have you ever tried breathing 60 times a second? And you want me to do that 12 thousand times a second?! I know how to blow and I know how to suck, but you want me to do both at essentially the same time?! 50kA? Yeah, I think I can do that, but it that wiggly bit that I haven’t worked out. Well, here goes. What do ya know? It works, but switching this fast is hard.
Dabbler: All right! Their shields are down. Nail ’em!
Jiggawatt: That took a lot out of me. I’m going to sit down over here.
Hiro: Jiggawatt, look out! A couple of them got by me.
Jiggawatt: Are you idiots serious? You are attacking me with metal knives? Here, let hold those for you. Oh, gross! They explode when cooked at half a million amps.
lol I know that isn’t Duke Nukem but that guy sure know how to make a good impression of him. :P
1) At least Duke Nukem is used to shooting and blowing up alien invaders.
2) Really trying to get used to Jiggawatt’s hairstyle.
I like Jigg’s new look! More realistic, less comic-y? Her close up has that “taking off my earrings” look. Well done!
Because you never run out of problems that you can’t easily solve with a minigun.
Problem with a Minigun is it requires heavy batteries to use. Goose (the minigunner) should fire the weapon from a stand (maybe one with wheels for mobility) or be very very strong (on scale of an ordinary human) and carry batteries in a backpack.
Given that 1 minute’s worth of ammo for a minigun is between 110 and 330 pounds, the battery is going to be a minor part of the support weight.
Did Jigga’s hair change since last time we saw her? Cause not going to lie, I will kinda miss the white hair.
Yes, first it changed from white to yellow hair, possibly because DaveB was trying to avoid comparisons with X-Men’s Storm. Then it changed just now from yellow to this brownish/yellow color with curls instead, which I’m hoping will be temporary. :)
My head-canon* is that it’s grown out over the last couple months and she hasn’t taken the time to re-dye it from her natural brown back to gold, so we’re just seeing the last traces of color.
* And saying that in the context of seeing Ol’ Painless in real action instead of just as an armory joke, now I’m imagining the troops building a complementary weapon that starts with a beer hat but replaces the cupholder with Desert Eagles. I see though that I am not the first to make that joke.
There is perfection and then there is optimal performance. Perfection is an impossible ideal. Look at it as always improving, even Da Vinci did that.
is Seneca using an auto-shotgun?
I assumed she was using a grenade launcher.
It’s that weapon from Terminator 2.
Yes, that is an automatic shotgun. You can see the shotgun casing being ejected out the port. By the size of the holes she is CHUDing thorugh the aliens (and even through TWO aliens with one shot) she’s using deer slugs, which is an excellent choice. Much better than buck shot for this purpose.
The real deal, for those unaware. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WV379084djs
a) That’s awesome.
b) Why is the narrator of a firearms video so soft-spoken he’s almost whispering?! Let’s hear some hoo-ah!
She is clearly not holding an AA-12.
The right ammo for the right job. That’s why shotguns are the on-ship weapon of choice for the special forces in Deathworlders.
Yay, knifey-minigun gets some stage time!
I would have expected Jiggawatt’s hair to straighten out until it looked like what happens when someone puts their hand on a Van de Graff generator, as she increased her output and did something unfamiliar. Nothing is 100% efficient, so I would expect some minor side effects such as that, a bit of St. Elmo’s Fire, that sort of thing.
Hail to the Goose, Baby?
Dabbler’s comment in the first panel, “Change your lighting…” had me confused for a moment. Then I realized she meant, “Change your lightning…” Dave dropped the “n”.
Well spotted. Hopefully DaveB will correct that.
Hrm….Dave, I think you messed up here. AC lightning really isn’t a thing. Lightning is a static discharge, and static discharge is inherently one-way. In order for it to be AC her targets would have to be rapidly shifting charge direction also (or she’d have to be changing her own charge in a much higher range to make up for the fact that her targets weren’t changing). But while most lightning is negatively charged, positively charged lightning is a thing and 50,000 amps would be a relatively weak positive lightning strike. Have a read.
https://www.weather.gov/jetstream/positive
Ok, I’ll stop being a pedant and go back to enjoying the comic now.
Lightning is a random act of nature. Jiggawatt’s electrical bolts are under conscious control. Of course they have different rules on how they behave.
Electrokinesis: the power to control electrical media aka Lightning powers.
Even under conscious control AC lightning is a bit hard for me to swallow. AC works by switching the polarity of the current several thousand times a second on both ends of the circuit. Conscious control or not that’s hard bordering on impossible unless she can control both ends of the discharge. And if she can directly control the amount and type of charge in her target like that then lightning bolts are kinda redundant. If she can do that then she can just induce a current that wouldn’t have to deal with the frankly excellent insulation that air offers without the risk of missing her target. And Dabbler, being about a thousand times smarter than this old nerd, would know that too.
Tesla coil output is AC; Wikipedia gives the relevant parameters of voltages ranging from 50kV to several million V, and frequencies normally being between 50kHz and 1 MHz. So Jiggs is operating somewhere in the reasonable range of a Tesla coil, but probably at a higher total wattage.
We don’t have quite enough info to compute everything about the electrical energy being deployed here, but if we assume 1.21 GW as an thematically appropriate output, combined with the 50 kA Dabbler indicates, that’s about 24 kV. For comparison, transmission lines run between about 150 and 765 kV, but at only 0.5-1 kA.
That puts Jiggs power output at 2-3 times the power of an average high-volt transmission line, or enough to power a modern 1st-world city of about a million people. Which really comes directly from the 1.21 GW assumption, but visually her Arc Swat attack (I’m sorry*) looks pretty similar to high-volt substation arcing, so it seems like a reasonable ballpark.
*not sorry
Doing some estimations based on the number given here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spark_gap#Power-switching_devices of 10^-3 ohms resistance in one of these. Figure it’s about a tenth of an inch based on that picture, so at 30 feet distance it would be 0.036 ohms. Pulling 50kA at that would require 1800V and 90MW.
It’s probably somewhere in that ballpark going through ionized air. Causing the air to ionize in the first place will require MUCH higher voltage though.
This is all RMS. Dabbler didn’t specify but that’s generally the default if you don’t specify when talking about AC.
Let me rephrase that for you.
“you can created excess electrons and move them from here to there or vice versa.
Move the excess electrons from here to there and back really fast and really often.”
You will find a never-ending onslaught of pedantry in the comment threads on this site.
Embrace it!
I for one hate pedantry.
It’s true, you will never find a more wretched hive of puns and pedantry.
We’re comic book and sci-fi nerds and geeks. Pedantry is part of our genetic makeup:)
OUCH!!!! Good Pun!
@siskulous
Good point, AC would involve the arc of electricity switching directions between Jiggawatt and her target 12K times in a single second. A 12 RF signal modulating a DC lightning bolt would be easy enough, that would be changing the amplitude, not the current direction, unless…
what if Jiggawatt created a 50K Amp DC current, that she then modulated with a 50K AC signal? So the peak and trough would be at 0 and 100K (AC being measured (peak-to-peak)/2 ). At no time would current actually need to flow back towards herself, but still get all the effects of it being AC.