Grrl Power #767 – Maxima effort
If you were wondering why Max hadn’t joined the fray yet, this is it. It’s not like she couldn’t have knocked some heads first, but she wanted to be sure the Interdictor’s shields wouldn’t interrupt her blast. She wasn’t that concerned about it blocking her shot, she was more concerned that if it did, the backblast would be detrimental to her own team and probably all the windows on headquarters.
Somehow I didn’t realize it while I was drawing them, but now I have two sequential pages where someone dials in their energy attack complete with closeups of their face and hands. Normally I draw two pages side by side, then save them as separate files when I’m done, but because this page is a double, they were separate files that I had to flip back and forth between. Still, you’d think I would have noticed.
Okay, so… let’s all politely ignore that tactically… this was terrible move for Maxima. For one thing, she’s lucky that the ship listed before crashing to the ground. I mean, Maxima is crazy strong, she could have shouldered it to the side though if it had started coming straight down, but I’m not sure she could lifted it.
The part of this that makes it especially risky is that while coring out a spaceship is a baller move, there’s a chance she could have hit something… sensitive on the inside. What if she had ruptured an antimatter chamber or hit some kind of… I don’t know, singularity implosion drive? (whatever that is.) She could have turned North America into a black hole or something. So… let’s pretend that she had a brief conversation with Cora about where to aim.
The reason I didn’t get into this stuff in the comic is because the point of the whole Fel attack wasn’t to have a big drawn out fight with a boarding action and all that, it was to prompt Cora’s final line. I actually planned out a longer fight, which I hinted at when the Mushroom Spacecop girl called the ship a supercarrier, but again, I decided to trim the encounter to the essentials.
Okay, so most of you guys know one of my favorite authors is Michael-Scott Earle. Quick update – Amazon banned him over a year ago for reasons they never explained. Basically Kindle Unlimited is deeply exploitable, so instead of fixing anything, Amazon has taken to banning authors whose success doesn’t match their expectations. The short version is, he sued them but it came down to them saying “we’re a monopoly and there’s nothing you can do about it.” So he’s striking out on his own and is going to start running Kickstarters to fund his novels. The good news is that 1) New Tamer and Star Justice! 2) All his previously written books will be available soon at his website, (soon) so if you missed any of them the first time around, then prepare your wallets. You can also sign up for his mailing list there to get heads up on the kickstarters. He’s also super active on his facebook page, so there will be updates there as well.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like!
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Oh holy crap that was awesome! :) But something tells me those guys are the first wave and that there will be them big guys soon enough.
It was also incredibly stupid.
If that operated on an antimatter power plant as suggested in the author’s blog.
It doesn’t matter if she hits it or not, if it looses containment in the crash on just 50 kg of antimatter the resulting explosion would ignite all of earth’s atmosphere in a fiery destruction that would kill us all.
Not really, you’re off by a factor of 10. As in you’d need a perfect detonation of 500kg converting into pure energy, not accounting for loses caused by the creation of neutrinos and other fusion-by products. This is just the required amount for Air, though, dunno what kind of exotic things that spaceship contains.
50 kg of antimatter reacting with 50 kg of regular matter would still present a bad day. That much energy will wipe out the city and likely most of the surrounding area, and probably invoke an extinction level event for the rest of the world. Sydney and Peggy get to survive out at the gun range only because Sydney’s shield getting stressed holding back the shock-wave.
Peggy: Is your shield supposed to do that?
Halo: Please hold. Please hold.
Peggy: Ok, the shock-wave has passed. Take us up. I want to see what happened over there.
Threat level: Dragon
More like “Serious series. Serious Punch!”
Well, maybe not… I don’t think this is going to cause a shockwave in the cloud cover a third of the way around the Earth.
Assuming it all goes off at once. If it’s like, depleted anti-uranium it might just ricochet around explosively sublimating against any normal matter it touched until it got kicked into orbit.
Maybe. It would still be plenty death all around. 1 g Anti-Matter is equivalent to ~43 kt TNT. So the 50 kg would be equivalent to 2.14 Gt TNT. That would be still 428(or 214, as they tested it they dialed to halve power so that the bomber could get out and they don’t create that much fallout) of the biggest nukes ever tested. That 50 Mt bomb had a total destruction radius of 35 km. 2 Gt would be in the 700 km range at least.
According to the website https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/ that calculates that kind of thing a 100Mt explosion would create a crater with more than 20km radius and over 400m deep. The 5psi overpressure radius (severe injuries for anybody caught in the direct blast and most non-reinforced buildings collapsing) would be almost 20km.
The site would not even calculate a 20Gt explosion, though an older version did (it would not calculate the crater and is not accurate). It put the 5psi radius at almost 200km, and the radius where people can expect instant 3rd degree and worse burns and where structures may catch fire at over 800km. The crater of such an explosion must be miles deep and in and of itself enough to create a supervolcano that will trigger a global extinction.
Thankfully scientist agree that it is unlikely that such a big antimatter weapon is physically impossible because the start of the blast is to quick that it would blow most of the antimatter away, causing less of a concentrated explosion and more a prolonged burn (as in: of a few miliseconds :)) It would of course still cause a lot of heat and radiation, but possibly not dig quite such a big and deep hole in the earth.
Full disclosure I’m using this guys math.
https://youtu.be/MrotHOV7pow
Rather than contemplating it myself.
(Just before the 3:00 Mark)
Can we just enjoy explosions like Rednecks.
Somewhere Jamie Hyneman is happy be cause he got his “Big Boom!”
Megumi would be proud!
Oh geez and here I was enjoying the explosion then imagining that massive FEL ship will show up and drop off more of them really huge monsters.
Depending on how that explosive device works, how powerful the actual explosion was, and how far into the ship she placed it, Newton’s third law would mean the explosion itself would have knocked it off its axis into a safe landing zone. I assume Maxima has enough knowledge of physics to get the placement close enough to work. Horseshoes and hand grenades and all.
Device? That was no device. That was Maxima’s “Maximal Boom Beam”, and her dialing it in from wide-blast to thin-piercer. Still goes boom unless she goes down to the ultra-fine settings, assuming she has enough control to do that.
Unless I’m misinterpreting it, it looks like she put something into the path of the beam after it cut through the hull.
Would still need to follow Newton’s laws.
Lasers still have a recoil.
A DeathStar laser for example would have enough recoil from firing a planet killing laser…
That every crew member on board would be turned into red paste on the opposite wall from the direction of the firing.
Maxima should have been blown backwards. Meaning she needs to be dedicating part of her power wheel to her flight to create the compensating force to keep her from being pushed back, meaning this isn’t even her full power.
Lasers are made of light, photons have zero mass.
Lasers do have recoil, just not very much for the power its putting out. While yes a laser is light, there is a reaction going on, and thus it will follow newtons law, as ninja mentioned, there will be counter force. As to how much that is, requires way more math then I am willing to do.
Good news though, its irrelevant to this comic page, so I don’t need to do the math, because I am pretty sure that is not a laser, more like a heat blast based on those particles flickering off the beam, and that purple/blue ball thing seems like plasma.
I can never remember, is it p=h/lambda? And is that a gravitic lens she created for tightening the plasma beam (plasma has mass, so gravity may be the only thing that can act as a lens, but I may assuming too much)? And would a gravitic lens work to focus a photonic cannon? A most interesting concept, must test in my lab…
Thanks for the heads up about Michael-Scott Earle, i was wondering why i could not find any of his excellent books any more.
and yes thanks to maxima earth now has a Huge target on in.
Go here for super powered slaves, that can kill super carrier with one shot!
There are more then one way to make superpowered people into slaves…
Of course, in the third book in David Reiss’ Doctor Fid series we see what happens when someone frees those slaves.
All things considered, I am not entirely convinced that it would be a good thing for the intergalactic commonwealth to learn Earth has cool toys at this stage… I mean, super-slavery and -smuggling could easily become a thing.
Yeah, watch the newest Season of Young Justice to see how that can play out.
Cora, what are you saying here? Should we get Arianna on another tourism project?
Speaking of something Cora said:
“Holy ovaries!”
That is a serious exclamation…If there’s one (or two) place(s) that no woman wants to have holes, it’s right there.
HOLY CRAP!!! Syd will be totally upset she missed seeing that.
She probably heard it, even if she’s inside protecting the the crowd of people, which probably will enhance the regret for her not being able to see it.
she’s at the gun range, depending on how far away that is, and accounting shifts in land mass obstructions (hills, elevations, trees, buildings), she might have seen it from a distance.
So.
I have a theory.
//insert long and convoluted explanation involving random nonsensical teknobabble like “picomechanic gestation sac”, “dangers of contact between unshielded DNA and residual unslaked mekamniotic fluid”, and so on.
Teal deer: Maxima is eighth orb.
A stretch, but interesting. Be funny if the orb that has demonstrated no powers is actually the control module for the rest, and all she has to do is hold that one to operate them all, interfacing directly with them individually for precision control/modifications only.
But.
What if.
The last orb is actually the control module of Maxima?
Somehow I’m reminded of a scene in episode 2 of Bodactious Space Pirates, when Blaster Ririka takes her daughter out for a little firepower demonstration, and the girl gets to burn a hole from front through back of an old abandoned battle tank. And that with a smaller gun, perhaps more suitable for a beginner pirate?
Now that was a great anime. Never got around to reading the books, but intend to someday. Really wish they had completed it.
Or how Ririka-san punched a whole clean through a crashed ship with the larger gun.
“IT’S TIME FOR SOME PIRACY!!!”
PS: The Movie was pretty good to. Have you seen it?
Hopefully there’s no satellites, planets, small moons, death stars….. beyond the ship. With all that fire pretty hard to see what might be behind with a shot that big.
Im sure Maxima considered that because she is the one that taught it to Sidney
You mean like the space cops that were chasing the Fel?
I get the feeling they would just be entering orbit and see this. It sounds about right for comedic timing.
A “we are here to save the day….and…the primitive locals have decimated the powerful invading alien horde…huh*
Well…….there isn’t anything behind the ship…..anymore.
Good, Bad, Max is the one with the gun.
While cool, I must admit, this does sort of lead to more of an ongoing issue I’ve had with the comic (Still, overall, rather enjoying it). Maxima is so comically powerful that it really robs all the tension from big fights that involves her…and really starts to run into sorta uncomfortable issues about her acting as an agent of a specific government. It would be hard to blame other countries for feeling very uncomfortable about an american superhero team A) Being actively a military force (Instead of the more police-like role superhero teams generally take on) B) Is full of beings who other nations don’t really have a counterbalance for.
I’ll admit, I was hoping ‘Actual alien battleship’ would finally be the point where she encounters a threat she can’t just directly overpower.
Well, to be fair, she wasn’t able to just overpower Kevin. On her own she would have lost that fight.
Also, this comic isn’t really about the fight sequences (at least not for me). They can be entertaining, but the real enjoyment for me is in the other stuff.
Well, Maxima is the sort of hero that you’re better off not attacking directly. An illusionist would have a better chance against her than another super strong invinco-flier.
Don’t forget, there’s a NATO agreed upon law stating that supers can defend their homelands, but not be deployed abroad. How well people adhere to that law remains to be seen, but at the moment, no one is particularly concerned about Maxima invading them for their coconut harvest.
No need to deploy abroad. If she stands on the coast of Alaska, she can still give Mother Russia a buzz cut without ever leaving the US of A. Imagine if USA and Mexico should ever have a disagreement. She can effectively shoot as far as the curviture of the planet allows, further if she can heat up her beam to turn into plasma and get affected by gravity…plus all the orbital structures of foreign powers…
But all that politics aside, she is a it of a Deus ex Maxima. Sure, eventually, Halo will get similarely OP, but that is endgme talk. At the moment, it looks more like Maxima is the actual protagonist of the story to take on Deus at the final battle, not Halo, but she is still growing and it has been many times hinted that she could potentially become way more powerful than Maxima…. if she survives her ADHD, that is…
And missiles silos can make the entire surface of russia glow in the dark. But are still technically on american soil.
So your scenario of shooting over the ocean was propably included under “deployed”.
It is really just a normal case for a missile and soon railgun age.
She can’t do that, her beam is line of sight, the curvature of the Earth prevents that from happening.
Which is about 20 miles if I recall correctly. Line of sight is line of sight.
During a press conference Maxima related that she had fought supers from other countries. When one reporter remarked “There are supers in other countries?” Maxima responded with “Not as many as before.”
She has definitely killed supers in the line of duty.
That’s why Superman’s biggest archenemy is Lex Luthor. Brains vs brawn. :)
Okay I know…. Superman has bigger enemies like Darkseid and Doomsday, who CAN beat him in a physical fight, but the fact that some really smart/rich human being is even close to that level of being an opponent of Superman does show that even if you’re not insanely strong, there are ways to fight a superman-level hero. Also Batman comes to mind as the person who’s consistently beaten Superman more than any other hero in confrontations (Wonder Woman beat Superman once, barely – twice if you include Injustice; Green Lantern beat Superman once – although that was by creating synthetic kryptonite which is no longer something the rings can do in canon; Supergirl beat Superman a couple of times – but they’re both Kryptonian and Supergirl was basically sun-dipped; Power Girl beat Superman once – but again, she’s Kryptonian also, and was fighting a mind controlled Superman; and that’s pretty much it unless you include Injustice, where Captain Atom, Martian Manhunter, and a few others have each beaten Superman temporarily).
Long story short, you don’t fight Superman where he’s strong. You fight Superman where he’s weak.
Sun Tzu: “When strong, avoid them. If of high morale, depress them. Seem humble to fill them with conceit. If at ease, exhaust them. If united, separate them. Attack their weaknesses. Emerge to their surprise.”
More than one country says pre-emptive war is self-defense.
I don’t think that it changes much. The US is already able to go and bomb and kill anybody anywhere they really want. On that scale Maxima is just an other nuke. Also having overpowered protagonists is not a problem. See One Punch Man for instance. Or Super* character of DC really.
To be fair, Maxima’s actual firing range seems relatively limited in the grand scale of things. She might have nuclear-level firepower, but it’s mostly LOS, so at least she’s not [technically] a strategic asset. There’s also a significant point that moving any sort of firepower into a position where it’s in your nation but has an effective range into foreign soil is generally considered a provocation.
Also, the US has had the firepower to smite 90% other nations with little chance of resistance for ages now. Generally it’s only because we hold back that things are as difficult as they are. Maxima being added to things might be a step up in scale, but not really in the overall situation.
And dammit Ukezi, I was typing that before you replied. XD
Can’t most any First World Countries with nukes?
That’s why the idea of Max using overwhelming fire power is kinda moot; Most prominent countries already have that.
Well, Taiwan doesn’t have that many as far as I am aware. Just enough to keep mainland China at bay.
Maxima though seems like she may have the Alpha problem, that is she is built for big lethal cosmic level conflicts; but put her in a more basic situation where she isn’t allowed to be lethal and she ends up dialing back so far out of fear of killing someone that either she ends up being less help than others on the team in the direct fight or ends up giving an enemy time to power up (Vehemence, whom she could have killed but was given time to power up enough and her first attempt to fight him was dialed back to try and not hurt him, thus giving him the chance to pin her in the way he did that it became detrimental to her).
in stories with powerful characters those like Superman are explained to have precise muscle control so man of steel world of cardboard isn’t as big an issue, but Maxima has been shown to have less control than that; she has a great deal of control, to the extent of world’s strongest man can still pet a puppy; but try throwing a punch in a fight where you know your best will kill and even a normal punch by you will kill most people, but the only other experience you have is light touch; you still want to hurt them…just not kill them.
As Ikon in Marvel put it (paraphrased), you are so used to holding back in a fight you don’t know how to fight anyone not at your level. *everyone on that team could have destroyed the ship they were on easily, but they were trying to defeat enemy combatants without murdering everyone.
Wasn’t there a SpiderMan comic where Doc Oc puts his mind in Peter Parker only to discover that if SpiderMan wasn’t holding back he’d have killed each of the villains attacking him with a single punch?
It was a run, Superior Spider-man, and yes. It seems to come up every time someone ends up in the body of a high end super as part of the story or magically gets the powers of them.
Yes. Superior Spider-Man. It was an entire series of comics during which Doc Ock was in Peter Parker’s body. Apparently, not only does Peter hold back, his ability to stick to things means he can also pretty much rip off people’s faces with ease, etc.
To be fair, one of his villain enemies, Sandman, also apparently holds back, MAINLY when fighting Spiderman. There’s a comic where he decides to not hold back, goes down Spider-Man’s throat, and basically explodes him from the inside out.
It’s sometimes a trope in comics in general where someone else gets control over a person’s body or powers and uses them in ways that the original user never thought of doing, or intentionally never does. Like when Emma Frost takes over Husk’s body and powers, she basically has Husk (Paige Guthrie) turning into all sorts of different things that Husk can normally not turn into, like fire. After that, when Husk is in control of herself, she’s able to husk into things like acid and whatever else.
Nope. She has incredible speed when she wants, which means she can basically do anything, even with easily pulped humans around. She dials back because she’s strategically smart enough not to hog all the glory.
In other words, you don’t use a nuclear bomb for every battle and skirmish. :)
I don’t understand what maxima did.
sure there were lots of EEEEEEEEEs.
and colors.
but. umm.
still no clue.
it looked to me like she did layered power beams or something. but then other people here are talking about me supposed to device, so… I’m confused
First she tried a normal attack.
Then she went on focussing it more and more, till it was focussed enough to punch through.
It is miltiary basics: If you focus the same force on a smaler area, your changes to break through increase dramatically. That is how Kinetik Projectiles work.
Syndey also explained it when the size of her fist was commented on. Smaller projectile/impact surface with same total power output == higher force in Newtons per square inch
Well I mean Halo did it before her, so she prolly figured it be safe.
Why is wanting to shoot down a alien Invader with a Hame Kame Ha like attack a wierd thing?
I totally still want to do that right now.
Damn maxima for living the dream.
And it looks like the good old idea of “making the attack thinner and the focus will get you past defenses” does work against alien ships too.
Note: I was actually a bit worried about them shooting down the ship just above the buildings. You know, not pulling a Vegeta (when the de-tailed gohan in their first fight). But apparently it was fine.
Just noticed that the bottom of the picture says c 2018. Is that atypo
Yes, this comic and the one before. Before than it properly says 2019.
“let’s pretend that she had a brief conversation with Cora about where to aim.”
Cora: “OK. Its to the right of the retro booster assembly. But why would you want to know if the ship had a thermal exhaust port?”
Also boys and girls, today’s show is brought to you by the letter ‘E’.
…also
>singularity implosion drive (whatever that is)
//inhales
That’s when you take a kugelblitz and use reverse Σ-deritrinitation derived unidirectional null-transportation to swap hypothetical singularity point inside the schwarzschild limit with an infinitesimally small but quantifiable area of space-time outside of S-radius of kugelblitz in question. Such an action immediately leads to destabilization of kugelblitz due to internal energy pressure now being insufficient to balance inertial gravitational deformation of STC, leading to secondary collapse cascade, and subsequent formation of secondary kugelblitz derivative tentatively known among lesser races as dunkelkugel. Overstressted to the limit of cohesion STC, left as a result of dunkelkugel formation, can be used for easy energy extraction with implementation of even decisively primitive methods akin to well known to Erfians nuclear core strappings. Basically, a glorified kettle at this point.
*Gasp!* Don’t tell them out secrets!
It also is the only (as of yet) known energy source that doesn’t just use a different way to heat up water to super-hot presurised plasmatic steam in order to spin a turbine but instead gains the electricity directly by converting collected gamma and theta waves into electric current.
“I push button. We go fast.”
+1
reminds me of a great line from “The Real Adventures of Johnny Quest” where Johnny asks an alien if he can repair some alien tech and he is like, “I am a diplomat, I don’t fix toasters”
Coconut harvest…
Banana’s on the other hand are going extinct and their harvests are now fair game ;)
Banana is on the other hand?
There’s nothing to worry about from a crashed spacecraft.
You Earthers think vehicles have to carry the energy that propels them.
Obviously the alien engines have to be in one piece to produce energy.
What, you think they work on Magic Smoke that if released would burn the planet?
(Alien Giggling Sound)
Hmmm there’s something that feels wrong with maxima’s arm in panel 3.
Looks like she is shooting with her left arm but with a right hand at the end.
Dave,
you can always retcon that page and have the mushi-mushi girl say that they are chasing a Fel Interceptor.
That would leave plenty of room for the Fel to grow as a credible galactic threat.
And may even allow for the, then, inevitable joke:
Heatwave: Uhm guys? Where did the second moon come from?
Maxima: That’s no moon. It’s a space station
Sydney: I have a bad feeling about this.
Humans are going to get real famous, real quick, around the galaxy. Although it may take a while for the word to spread that it is not all humans who can shoot down supercarriers with their bare hands.
Sounds like a good time for a bit of exoplanet tourism. Whilst there is a minimal risk of getting mugged. “No, not that one, that is a HUMAN!”
Although I shall have to rely on being humans best friend.
And then come the waves of very advanced civilizations wanting to find out what makes these super humans tick for…..you know…..the good of the galaxy. (AKA. Sydney’s worst fear “under cover vivisectionists”)
or what Sciona was doing with her super blood samples to power themselves up (like the Super Skrulls program), and the Goa’uld like fear of Alari killing supers so they can spirit hop into their bodies.
I don’t think it’ll take long to clarify supers vs. regular humanity to the intergalactic community- it’s common knowledge on earth what Archon is and who it’s staffed by- and there were at least 2 ET’s to phone home about it in Club Oontz alone (Greenie and the snapper). And, to answer Eric’s comment about advanced civilizations coming to figure out supers… Sciona is already on her 2nd try.
Hmmm. Alien expats are going to be very popular on the galactic vid circuit for a while.
By Cora’s explanation there are already Humans in the Galactic Neighborhood. She is human. Genetically altered, but still human.
Hey, there is a perfectly harmless spider with an hourglass on its abdomen. Will you let it hang around in your bedroom, if you are unable to tell the difference between that one and the black widow spider?
Or hit the missile/bomb rack or explosives armory. Or even if you aim for the ships power-plant, it might be a a black-hole generator, and now you have to deal with an imploding black hole in a planets atmosphere. Ever see the end of the XCOM games where they destroy the mother-ship and have to take it off-planet before that happens?
Also I once made a point that the Asgard beam weapons from Stargate worked more like sniper rifles with high penetration than shot-guns that do massive damage. And so to really use them effectively you need to know where the vital spots are on opposing ships are, or you are just inflicting the ship equivalent of flesh wounds.
Also, where DID that ship crash? It was right above a large city. Are there going to be survivors on it that will continue the ground attack?
Yeah, my head canon is that Max asked Cora if there were things about the Fel ship they should be careful about. She’s the one who taught Sydney to think before blasting loose, so I doubt she would not think of it now.
And was’t that ship just hovering right above Cora’s ship? I wonder if that shield can protect it from a complete spaceship worth of scrap dropping on top of it?
I love Max’s expression in the last panel, btw.
There is a story in my head. Fantasy novel. If I ever manage to get it out of my head and onto some medium, I intend to avoid Amazon with its publication. I ban them before they can ban me.
Also, if they’re going to insist they have a monopoly on kindle, then I shall blame them for all the badly/non-proofread kindle stories I’ve ever seen.
Also, a side note that I recall Piers Anthony having written that he was once blacklisted as a writer. We all probably have a general idea about how that turned out.
Amazon are already known as employee-abusing jerks as a company. Your story didn’t cause me to decide these things – but that’s going on my list of reasons why Amazon deserves boycotted.
“Monopoly on Kindle” is a given, since it is their platform.
The problem is, that if you want anything but a reduced selection of native-language books (German in my case), quite possibly requiring that you deal with cumbersome DRM (where Amazon’s isn’t noticable usually), there isn’t any competition. Especially, when you count in infrastructure like cross-device synchronization of reading progress and useful details inside apps.
I have a Kobo Aura One, and Calibre on my desktop. Best thing ever for reading. The Kobo can read anything except proprietary DRM’d books, and Calibre easily converts them to epubs. Awesomely readable, large e-ink screen, and excellent backlight for when reading in low light.
Mine has about 700 books on it and is less than 10% full.
As I recall from Adam Warren’s Fatal but not Serious, Yuri’s line is, “Damn I’m good, no Damn I’m god.”
And the lesson learned is never confuse Girls with Really Big Weapons (aka the Dirty Pair or Syd & Max) about what is and what isn’t reality.
Like DaveB said the best way to mess with Max is a really good illusionist where she becomes the instrument of destruction.
Looks like the beam from panel 8 is spilling over into panel 9. Looks like the layer didn’t get cropped out of the panel.
It looks like Michael-Scott Earle is available just find on Kobo.
They do not look their e-books in a propriety format so you can just download it to another device. Nicer e-readers too if you ask me.
Just not quite as much books as amazon has.
I was wondering when Max was going to get the chance to use her “POP-gun”?!
@ Dave, I think the first page could have solved a few problems if you’d had a distance shot of the Fel ship’s shield with Maxima’s blast splashing off of it, literally shoving it to the side before she gave it a good shot at penetrating it. Assuming that she shoved it toward the ever present convenient empty lot/forest.
Also, it’s not that weird to want to try and kamehameha an alien super ship.
In love with Max’s giddy anime face at the end XD
Hopefully the pending anti-trust actions against Amazon end up with a ban on proprietary e-book formats and a mandate that all purchased digital content (ebooks, videos, music, etc) must be fully downloadable for offline storage as a backup.
(I can hope, didn’t say it was likely.)
Apprentice Alf is your friend.
You should be able to figure that out.
You can always switch to Kobo as that platform just does that.
And Calibre is a program that, I think, lets you convert azw to epub format (though I do not know how well it works with the newer format and the increased encryption levels). It is an e-reader application for desktop and laptop also
Oh, don’t fret! Several upcoming lawsuits would easely ban usage of all nonproprietary file formats, e-books, music, flicks, images of any kind, and plain text included.
And then some anti-democratic terrorists would be eliminated during power-plant meltdown in Tycho Crater, in 2062. Bloody bastards had the absolute sheer audacity to demand “universal right to read”, degenerate commies as they were…
In a communist country, you can only read, what the government allows you to read.
And in the liberal democratic country you have no need to read.
And if you “think” you have such need – you bloody communist, you – you would be judged and dealt accordingly.
I remember a talk about how Faerun in D&D might be seen by the planes and it went something like this.
“Faerun is like Earth in superhero stories, it’s the little backwater place that happens to have a bunch of insanely powerful people living there so it draws attention.
so when are we going to get sydney asking dabbler what the chances of earth being invaded were again?
Not so weird, really. Who wouldn’t want to do that?
That page was brilliant!
As for michael’s getting banned, I didn’t know! Sadly, he isn’t the first to be banned by amazon, some of those have published on google to recoup their losses.
I’ve also found some of the banned authors still have books for sale on amazon, and to add insult to injury, rumor has it that amazon is still getting an income from such books, withOUT sharing the earnings with the respective author.
I’m surprised she was allowed to do it at all, she’s probably getting court-marshalled. Sure she won, easily, but everyone was doing really great and they had a huge amount of additional firepower they didn’t even bother bringing in. That ship has a lot of tech Archon would probably be happy to have, but it’s blown up now.
You don’t court-martial someone for a ‘not the best call’. You court-martial someone for getting a gazillion people killed.
ALso? You don’t court-martial Superman. That ends badly.
That’s Courts-Martial.
Maxima is in charge of ARC-Swat. It’s her call on how to take out the baddies. When the Archon building itself is suddenly under attack, she’s not going to General Faulk for suggestions.
Oh look… Maxima has, yet again, proven to be the most powerful entity in a 1,000 Light Year radius. Yay…
Seriously, this is why I despise Superman, particularly in regards to JLA. I don’t mind one character that is noticeably more powerful than the rest; I just don’t like it when the difference in power is overwhelming to the point that the team really has no real counter if they decide to “go rogue.”
“But Halo…” you say. Maxima has super speed and super strength and way more combat experience. She could pop Sydney’s head right off her neck before she could get her hands on one of her orbs. And I highly doubt that Dabbler would stand any sort of chance in a fight to the death.
The only person in ARCSWAT that has any chance against Max is Achilles, and that’s because he can’t die. He would just defeat her by the simple tactic of outliving her.
Oh, and Vehemence? How well does he do against very large and heavy objects being thrown at him at supersonic speeds? Max has plenty of overwhelmingly powerful ranged options as well.
Of course part of why her attack’s so powerful here is that she can leverage ALL of her power for attack since she’s conveniently inside a capital ship’s shields. She’s not using speed, flight, defense, or strength. She couldn’t have pulled the same power stunt against the mecha-cthulu without getting murdered, for example.
Oh, I am pretty sure she could have pulled that stunt just fine. The only reason why she didn’t was because she had to worry about her teammates.
Fact of the matter is, the only reason why she hasn’t just taken out ARCSWAT and just taken over the planet is because of her “morality,” and the fact that she apparently has no real ambition.
Characters concepts like her and Superman I have nothing but disdain for. The fact that she is far, far, more powerful than her teammates (probably combined) just kinda sickens me.
More powerful? Fine! Overwhelmingly more powerful? HARD PASS!
Okay, but if you hate her character type so much, why do you bother reading a comic where she’s pretty much the second most central character? I don’t find superman himself especially compelling as a character, and that’s why I don’t read the JLA or his own book.
That aside, she clearly does have ambition (she made it to being a lieutenant colonel in the air force after all), but she doesn’t consider global conquest to be a worthwhile use of said ambition. I think that her morality holding her back from global conquest makes her more interesting, not less.
Just because you have the raw power to do something does not mean that there’s any good reason for you to do so, or that you should. Max exists in society, and she seems fond of things like people having freedom or will and expression. Like most sane and moral people, she doesn’t feel the need to murder and/or dominate everybody that she has the raw power to murder and/or dominate. That’s not lacking ambition. That’s having a functional sense of right and wrong, and then paying attention to it.
Why do I still read this comic? Because I used to really like Max before more recent stuff. Also, there are a lot of other characters that I really like. Unfortunately, she overshadows every one of them! You are allowed to enjoy things and still be critical of them.
Maxima makes the rest of the team moot. They all basically exist to be numbers and support for her. That’s it! I’m gonna quote some stuff I posted in another thread to enhance my point:
“Answer me this, if Max is out there in the mix of a fight, what purpose do the following heroes serve: Anvil, Stalwart, Hiro, Math, Any of the non-powered characters (including Peggy,) Achilies.
What can any of them do that Maxima can’t do far better? Sure, you have some heroes with more esoteric abilities, but even then, they are not the main focus, they are regulated in support roles.
When Max is in the field, nobody else gets to shine. THAT is my issue. She is the solution to virtually any problem. Hell, the whole V issue was more about saving Maxima (which Max had far better ways of dealing with than just going fisti-cuffs) than actually defeating him.
Also, remember, Max got pissed at Halo for not informing her of a new power that she developed. She knows the abilities, both strengths and weaknesses, of everybody on the team. This makes defeating all of them far easier. Yet, many of her abilities are classified (does she actually have limits? We don’t actually know; they’re classified!) meaning her team has no way to effectively plan in the incident that Max, for whatever reason, decides to become a problem.”
“I don’t know if you play any Table Top cooperative role-playing (like Dungeons and Dragons,) but having one character that is OP compared to everyone else is not fun.
Which brings up the other issue; if you are a squishy, you don’t want to be anywhere near the near-indestructible demi-god, just in case the enemy tries to use a weapon that could potentially destroy her. And compared Maxima, pretty much everybody, except for Achilies, is a squishy.
Her team, and ARCSWAT need her far, far, more than she needs them. And that does not make for a good teammate.”
you are all missing the point- like the big blue boyscout- Maxima has to limit what she does EVERYWHERE because of potential collateral damage- did no one catch the episode when Darks%de cam dowm and or Kryptonian friend stated he could cut loose because the bad guy could take it- Maxima in the same boat- generally(NOT including Kevin)- just stop and think about the poor smouck who takes her on a date- and might get “damaged” by ANY physical active- even a hug……
I’m thinking that Major Hiro… ie Super Hiro would take offense at being called “a Smouck” (though i think you meant schmuck instead)
Drat. I wanted to see Halo get in on the action. But seeing what Maxima can do is pretty cool.
Anybody else listening to DOORS “Break on through”?
Cora: Holy Ovaries! You really turned that up to 11!
Maxima: What? Oh no, sorry that was my low power warm up mode.
Pretty sure that was her high level of particle beam power. The Fel ship withstood it until level 4, which seemed to be a VERY narrow and focused beam. Which might be why Maxima said she always wanted to do that. Because she’s never had a reason to use her energy beam at full power before.
It’s like I live in a world of cardboard. I have to careful not to break something, or someone. But what we have here is a rare opportunity for me to cut loose and show you just how powerful I really am.
Yeah, it’s sort of Superman’s World of Cardboard speech :), if reflecting only her plasma blast power (she’s already used her superstrength and her armor at max level before, when fighting Vehemence).