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.
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Now here is my question: how would the galactic community react to Earth reverse engineering FTL from a ship that invaded them but which they defeated and captured themselves? Strictly speaking if that happened then Earth wouldnt have reached the point of FTL by themselves, but having the intergalactic police force break in, bust the place up, destroy all of the remaining pieces of the ship, all the research and records, and either killing, kidnapping or mindwiping everyone that worked on trying to reverse engineer the ship seems kinda invasive and counter to what Cora said about no one busting up the party……
I assume that will be addressed shortly ….
If you’re advanced enough to reverse engineer it, you’re advanced enough to be on the verge of creating it yourself already.
Seriously, just go back to the WW1 in our world, and give them a modern computer chip. They wouldn’t even be able to analyze it much less reverse engineer any of it.
The further you go back in time, the less they can comprehend of it, and the more it just falls into the “well, it looks like magic to me” category.
Sure, it’s an old trope that we get super advanced tech and copy it in a few years, but the reality is more like it’s a forgotten artifact of something weird LONG before anyone can even comprehend it.
That doesn’t mean somebody might not be able to use it, especially if it doesn’t need reloading or maintenance, but that’s a long way from reverse engineering it.
Sydneys Orbs are an example of too advanced to even analyse for the standard galactic civilization level. Just remember how even Dabbler couldn’t figure out anything, and you can bet she’s a bit above most of the galactics when it comes to tech.
You’re right, a lot of what we do better now is down to better materials and manufacturing. Even if you understand what something like a microchip is doing, it doesn’t mean you understand how and why it does it or how it was made.
I had to go to Digital Electronics Technology school for two years to learn that.
The argument that one could not reverse-engineer it because one thinks it is magic only works in a society where one still believes in magic and has no idea that technology is even a thing. in a society where one understands that super-mega advanced tech beyond one’s own imagination might exist, one might take a few decades to understand it, but one would not just write it off as “magic outside the realms of the laws of physics”, one would give it a serious attempt and eventually succeed in decrypting it.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/catholic-school-harry-potter-books-tennessee_n_5d6d5be1e4b0cdfe05742e46
yes but those aren’t scientists, those are religious ppl; i shall refrain from calling them names but first of all they would be frothing at the mouth if they found an alien spaceship and second they would probably call it an angelic or demonic device; the conversation is altogether to do with scientists being scientific
Besides that, unless you know enough about magic to be able to work spells yourself, then you are not competent to judge whether their religious claim is accurate.
I know several magical systems (non-game) myself, well enough to have written spells in them that worked for their adherents. The spells wouldn’t have worked for me, because I don’t independently believe in the stuff, but they worked for THEM, just as I knew they would.
I have the ability to walk in other belief systems. It’s a bit like solving simultaneous equations in linear algebra while doing lateral thinking word problems.
Assuming THESE axioms (alpha1) are in place, as described by the adherent, then doing a, b, c will have effects d and e in that system.
Simultaneously, if these other axioms (alpha2) are in place instead, then doing a, b’, c’ — where b’ and c’ are minor adaptations of b and c relevant to alpha2 — doing a, b’, c’ will have effects d’ and e, which will be indistinguishable from d and e for that adherent.
Simultaneously, if the whole thing is a psychological self-delusion scenario (beta1), then doing a, b, c will have effects d” and e”, which to someone who believes the axioms alpha1 will appear to be d and e.
Piece of cake, really.
Although I have to admit some of the effects over the decades have been pretty darn spooky, and the only “scientific” explanation for those cases is “pure coincidence”…. which is quite unsatisfying to a scientific mind who was actually there.
We dont know what we dont know and, all things being connected, it can be rather hard to predict when or if things will rebound back. It seems to be true that “What you put out is what you get back”, but there is a variable time delay.
Don’t be too sure, I saw an interview with a Vatican scientist who said that if a Non-Terrestrial accepted Jesus Christ and asked him to be baptized, he would do it….. As would I (although, I have to go through a few more hoops to baptize someone, including an interview to ensure they know what we believe and they are following the commandments, but it is just minor paperwork if the person truly believes).
I honestly believe that all sentient beings will be given a chance to follow God our Father. They won’t have the exact same texts, but they will probably have ones similar that teaches the same values. (I also believe that the idiots abducting humans for experiments are not followers of whatever their religion is called.)
Just because all human created religions share roughly the same values does not mean an alien religion would. Those values ultimately result from human nature. Aliens will not share our nature. It would be like expecting sapient mountain lions to have the same values we do. No… they wouldn’t… and they would not lose an ounce of sleep after eviscerating you. After all you were the one being evil by violating their territory and it would have been immoral to let you remain there.
Human religions do not all share the same values.
“Just because all human created religions share roughly the same values does not mean an alien religion would” – JadedDragoon
True, but not what Gilhelmi (or rather, the Catholic being interviewed) was saying. They’re saying that if a Person truly believes, acts on that belief, and asks to be baptised on the strength of it, then the fact that they’re not Human shouldn’t be an issue. The probability of that hypothetical occurring isn’t what’s being questioned, but what to do in the unlikely event that it does occur.
Not “because one thinks it is magic”, but “because one does not have the relevant scientific basis”. Computer chips is a pretty good example. Let’s take a cell phone. The further back you go from 1900, the more required concepts are missing. By the time you get to 1600, there’s no hope in heck of understanding what’s going on. Remember, science kicked out metaphysics less than a hundred years ago, and it keeps trying to reappear.
At our current level of tech, you’re probably right about “decades”… although the existence of supers means it’s more likely a couple of weeks.
Hmmm. I notice that Max doesn’t have an “intelligence/perception” icon on her multipower. If she did, we’d probably be talking “days” when she dialed it up.
back in1968 Dean McLaughlin wrote ‘hawk among the sparrows’ (Nominated for a nebula)
in which a 21st-century variable wing VTOL supersonic fighter falls through an anomaly into World War I France.
none of the locals could make heads or tail of the thing, Or understand why The pilot needed thousands of gallons of lamp oil to demonstrate how well he could fly.
and who then found to his chagrin that none of his infrared and laserguided missile systems could even see any of any of the cloth and wood German biplanes that he wanted to attack.
John Campbell also did an editorial on the difficulty of reverse engineering
with a little story of a supersonic drone with a ‘ram jet’ engine being lost in the past Just before World War II
none of them had a clue as to how it was controlled, there wasn’t a single vacuum tube anywhere to be found
and the engine was, as there is they could tell, just a tube with nozzles to spray fuel into it
not a single moving part to be found.
A final report of the Army air Corps group studying it determined it must be from centuries in the future
when actually everything would be invented in the next 30 years.
You’re conflating “putting in effort” and “succeeding”…
Take an alchemist… yes what they believe in was basically magic in retrospect, their conclusions were actually quite logical and based upon empirical evidence. They basically tried to break things down into their most basic components and figure out how they work. So, give an alchemist some of that meta material where a laser has been used to edge a pattern onto metal at the nanometer level, and the pattern makes the metal repel water in an almost violent fashion. To see it in action, look up metal metamaterial repels water on youtube.
That alchemist will NEVER figure out even the FIRST thing about how it works or how to replicate it. They lack the tools to examine it at the scale necessary to even see the pattern that’s causing it. More than likely what he’ll do is assume that it’s a special metal, and in his experimentation he may even destroy the etched pattern that gives it the hydrophobic properties.
Even assuming he had optics good enough to see the pattern, how’s he going to recreate it? He’s centuries behind the technology necessary to create the pattern. He may try to replicate the pattern at a larger scale, but it won’t have the same, if any effect, even if the pattern is replicated precisely at the scale his tools will allow him to do. No mixing of the right alloys will magically recreate that pattern. That’s what a metamaterial is, it’s a material within a material… It has to be shaped right and have the atoms arranged just so to have special properties, otherwise it’s just the base material.
So no, just because someone thinking scientifically examines an object doesn’t mean they’ll ever figure out how to replicate it.
a concept often lost in sci-fi.
Just because you can figure out how it runs, what it runs on, and how to steer it, doesn’t equate to being able to replicate it.
Honestly the She-ra reboot has a nice example of this “First One’s Tech” it is all over the place, but most view it as magic, and even being able to use at its most basic functions is difficult, and even the most advanced minds on the planet…including an alien (Hordak) have a hard time even repairing it on a basic level, and can’t replicate it even after that.
Having the concepts is step one, having the between steps in manufacturing the components is another.
Just like, you may figure out the basic ideas of how a Dimensional Distortion Manipulator does what it does, is about a thousand or more steps removed from actually making the materials, machinery, algorithms, the other energy and matter manipulators ect….to get half way to that point.
Like any scientific lecture about P.Branes, is all academic, at this point the notion of a device that can even be part of a device able to manipulate those is so far into science fiction that it is fantasy.
Speaking in metaphor for a moment.
One of the BIGGEST hurdles tends to be knowing whether something is even possible or not to begin with. Science tends to cast a wide net with hypotheses and theories, even if it ultimately only catches a few fish worth keeping. If you know where the edible fish are to begin with, it’ll make the fishing a lot easier. Especially if you have SOME notion of what the fish even look like, so that when you find one, you don’t throw it back.
Science is just repeatable magic that can be used by the masses, according to Mage: The Awakening (it’s a white wolf role playing game series, where the ‘bad guys’ are mages who created science to defeat the age of magic and ‘free’ the masses from wizardly control, basically).
Also the premise for a book I read when I was a pre-teen called “Who’s Afraid of Beowulf” by Tom Holt.
In the book, Viking King Hrolf of Caithness and his band of heroes are disinterred in time to put an end to their ancient enemy, the Sorcerer King, and his attempt to take over the modern world via magic—or as we call it, technology. Basically, all modern technology was created by the Sorcerer King, and the principles of technology were explained to people as ‘science’ and ‘technology.’ :)
There was one part where a modern man tried to explain how cars worked to the vikings, and they didn’t seem surprised by cars at all, just saying they were powered by magic. He tried to explain gasoline to them, but the idea of pressure making organic matter and ancient bones into an elixir which could make forged steel move at fast speeds by exploding it got the response from the viking chieftain, King Rolf, of ‘okay you just described magic, why are you insisting it’s not?’
Anyway it’s a good book. It’s very similar to Terry Pratchett’s works.
Yup people kinda forget that Newton and many of his contemporaries (newton in particular) who founded the disciplines of physics and chemistry, were alchemists and philosophers who realised there was much more going on than the limits of their disiplines could account for. Heck, physics and chemistry were called natural philosophy for a long time.
Another problem is that what we call “science” is more often educated guessing. P value = 0.05 and all that. Actual science would have the observer take a step back and say “I’m not sure about this, let’s reexamine the basis in more depth.” And when that fails, do they take a chisel to the device or set it on fire? NO! They step back again and say “I’m not sure about this, let’s reexamine the basis in more depth.” Eventually this does achieve a meaningful result; if not necessarily the results desired.
Actual science requires knowing what you don’t know. Even then, it requires recognizing that not knowing means you need to know more about other related things until you breach the realm of understanding. And even then, it still requires that you take your understandings with a grain of salt until they too are proven beyond a shadow of a doubt.
This is not profitable. Which is why science often proves that X drug is more efficacious than Y at treating cancer when the core ingredient is cyanide. Well of course it the cancer isn’t growing; the patient is dead!
That is science, have a hypothesis. Test it, when the experiment fails, then you can dismiss it.
No, it’s not. A hypothesis must be based on valid information you already possess, and if you don’t possess enough information to form an even remotely valid hypothesis, then you must recognize this and take a step back. Otherwise no matter what experiment you design it will be open to egregious misinterpretation and false measurement.
This mistake was the bane of early scientists and is why we had such interpretations as “ether” (air) “demons” (bacteria) and “spirit” (consciousness). The last one has continued to pervade modern science even to this day. Many of the most intelligent humans cannot accept that the gift of reason may be nothing more than a mundane physical mechanism.
Science is a system of logic and rigor. Make educated guesses at your peril.
Aether was not air. It was the unmoved mover, which was what was theorized to keep the planets in orbit. Basically a wind/current that went through space and pretty much filled up the universe. It was disproven in 1904 with the Aether Wind Experiment. So scientists started to theorize that the universe was mostly just empty space.
Then they discovered that all the matter they currently knew about in the universe only seemed to account for about 4% of the universe, at least according to existing formulas. And so they made guesses about ‘dark matter’ and ‘dark energy.’
Then they found neutrinos exist and the universe is NOT just mostly empty space. Which…. again brings some legitimacy to the basic concept about aether, although they got the specifics obviously wrong.
The more theoretical physics gets, the less it’s going to be based on valid information and more it will be based on educational guesses to make your existing information try to make sense given the gaps. Usually they’re wrong. Sometimes they’re right. And sometimes they are sort of right, but wrong, then turn out to be basically right after all… maybe. :)
“The more theoretical physics gets, the less it’s going to be based on valid information ”
Which harkens back to the days science was called “natural philosophy.”
Society is going backwards and you want to defend it.
Why?
Um, that doesn’t read like a suggestion that society (or science) is regressing, it’s practically the definition of theoretical physics – we have no way yet to measure or prove certain phenomena, so we make educated guesses and use a lot of math to see if those ideas are consistent with the real world. Some of those ideas (e.g. quantum physics) are incredibly hard to verify because we can’t yet collect enough (or sometimes any) of the right kind of data to move from theoretical to experimental physics.
Brichins, everything that can be deduced with science is measurable. Yet because we can’t yet measure it, we should forge forward without hard data?
Chernobyl was conducted under the same conditions. So was the Space Shuttle Challenger. Hindenburg, Agent Orange, the bombing of Japan, Y2K, etc.
It’s called the “framing effect” and it occurs when you interpret some event through different perspectives. In retrospect, launching Challenger with progressively worse O-rings was stupid. At the time it just seemed like a cheap and easy cost-saving measure. This very basic fallacy has contributed to or caused some of the worst screw-ups in human history.
Yet we’re literally utilizing it as a fundamental feature of modern physics; the theoretical that later becomes the quantum. Everything that is discovered here is open to interpretation through many different lenses, each of which are themselves open to further interpretation. Math doesn’t tell you which interpretation of the results is valid. It only tells you what is or should be correct from a given perspective.
Do you want a big disaster while working with the fundamental fabrics of the universe? I don’t.
So… Take a goddamn step back and stop chastising me for not following the herd. You linking the Wikipedia page for theoretical physics is NOT appreciated. I’ve studied quantum physics – and I’ve learned that the most intelligent humans on this planet are vying to be the first to wipe out their own species through sheer ignorance.
Hah. Here I am posting on a comic forum because I’m so deluded with the insanity. I can’t gather the mental fortitude to make my thoughts known somewhere they might matter.
Because talking to you, who surely won’t listen, isn’t going to change a thing.
It doesn’t matter whether you think it’s magic. A technology from the far future will still be beyond your grasp
Yep, a modern pocket phone is FAR better than a Star Trek “communicator” was imagined to be. And if you handed one to the scientists of the time, they could BARELY understand the principles and would have no clue how to go about duplicating anything but the power supply.
1960’s, the Lithium battery used in modern phones was theorized in the 1970’s, developed by a team in the 1980’s, and became commercially available in 1991.
They might have, its not too far off, but still thinking a decade of study and bringing in experts so like it would end up a decade early at best.
So yeah, not far off. Most of the components of a modern phone that “phone” aren’t much different. It is the computer elements that would have thrown them off the most as that tech was still basically new in any meaningful way.
The microchips we are currently producing are so small we CANT reverse engineer them even now. Like, you could take a 80286, carefully cut off the layers and make photos … you CANT do that to pentium and even if you get the photo, it would be like football stadium of tiny lines which would take forever to understand.
On the other hand, even FAILING to reverse engineer something can help. For example, just the knowledge that yes, it will be both possible and worth it to create device capable of billions additions per second would mean more resources will go to related industries. It would also point out some deadends.
Take the Atom Bomb…Please!
The destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki answered the first question:
Is an atomic bomb possible?
From there on for the Russians it was mostly engineering.
(Yes, with some help from spies)
A 2019 smart phone suddenly in 1969 (hopefully with charger) answers several questions.
Is a Smartphone possible?
Will there be an atomic war during the next 50 years? (Check for fission products)
Yes, the battery should be duplicatable… which makes electric cars feasible before the Oil Crisis.
Is it possible to send physical objects backwards in time? (So many theories broken!!)
(My phone has a 256gb microSD card and several movies. (Show the animated Aladdin to Disney. (Too late to show it to Walt. The other one.)))
Umm, no!
They would certainly be able to tell what was the battery and what it was made of, but the materials science to make it isn’t even dreamt of in ’69. I’m a geek who graduated high school in ’72 and (you can either trust me on this or look it up) battery tech has come a long way in 50 years. It’ll give them some ideas and hints of the right way to go, but no way are they going to get enough to have feasible electric cars before the Oil Crisis.
Lithium-ion batteries were conceivable in 1969. They could also be produced back then. The basic technology was not different from other batteries of the time.
What was lacking was lithium mining. And a need for small sized high capacity batteries. At that time batteries were for things like torchlight and emergency radios, neither of which need small batteries.
Cell broadcasting was not a thing and electronics needed two more decades of miniaturisation before things like calculators and phones (and computers) became small enough that the idea of picking one up and taking it with you became relevant (it was of course concept in science fiction. Star Trek arguable conceptualised the mobile phone and that was from that era).
Only when the devices became small enough to be hand held did a demand for lithium-ion batteries emergy. But engineers in 1969 could have created then (perhaps not quite so tiny as they are now) but they would have been prohibitvely expensive due to the shortage of Lithium and other trace elements and the relative expense of mining for them.
My point was that a lithium-ion battery with a weight to efficency ratio capable of operating a car for any significant distance wasn’t possible except in theory in 1969. The method of creating such things didn’t exist and the manufacturing methods hadn’t been conceived of. The deposition method used to create the battery in cell phone comes from discoveries made in processor chip tech.
I bought an expensive Texas Instruments Scientific calculator in 1975. The battery pack cost about half the price of the calculator (I THINK it was lithium ion, but when disassembled looked a lot like alkaline cells); it was certainly more than half the weight. It would run the calculator for about 6 hours.
The calculator was about$350, the pack was about $150 (1975 dollars mind you). This is way too heavy and expensive to use in a car. The cell phone battery is only going to tell them that the battery can be made lighter and more efficient, it will even hint that molecular deposition tech is possible. It won’t give a clue as to how to actually duplicate the battery.
Someone with more knowledge of physics / math might know, but frankly I doubt the theory (let alone the math to apply it to the real world) exists in the late 70’s, let alone in ’69. Electronics was primitive by the standards of 2019. As a further example of lack of developement, I took a course in punch cards in college the same year I bought that calculator (which had more calculating power than the univac NASA used for the moon landings).
I had one of those as well.
That’s completely untrue. Electric cars in the 1800s had already well surpassed combustion engines’ travel distance and efficiency. Even considering the heavy lead-acid batteries. In fact, electric motors were invented before combustion engines.
What happened was the Model T was able to outsell these efficient, reliable, and better-designed electrics based purely on low pricing. Literal hundreds of other car manufacturers were driven out of the market or into bankruptcy. The list of defunct car manufacturers in the early 1900s is staggering. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_defunct_automobile_manufacturers_of_the_United_States
Other companies eventually competed with Ford, but one in particular, GM, orchestrated buying up the infrastructure for electric-powered vehicles (including trams and trains) and then scrapping it.
This is known as the General Motors streetcar conspiracy. It was prosecuted in court. Nine different corporations were found guilty in a court of law of conspiring to eliminate alternate modes of transportation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy#Court_cases,_conviction,_and_fines
GM was of course fined the “hefty” sum of $5,001.
More recently, patents to the predecessor of the Lithium Ion battery, NiMH, were purchased by GM and then sold to an oil company. There exist numerous other battery types superior to L-ion in various fields such as volatility and lifespan, but none of these have seen the light of day.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_encumbrance_of_large_automotive_NiMH_batteries
Batteries allow an individual to rely less on expensive nickel-and-dime technologies like gas pumps and more on distributed technologies like the electrical grid. This is bad for oil and car producers because utility pricing is typically more heavily regulated and subject to scrutiny.
Car battery technology stalled at lead-acid for over 100 years. We invented computers and within 30 years built a global information network.
Do you think battery chemists are stupid?
Is it possible to send physical objects backwards in time?
No. A small matter of Entropy says you can’t. From Simple English Wikipedia:
Entropy is also a measure … of uncertainty or randomness. Any universe which permits acausality does not have entropy, only chaos. No galaxies, no stars, planets, life…
You can make a case that thoughts can be sent back, this follows from looking at seers. Unfortunately, as noted by Neils Bohr, ““Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future”, so most seers can only give us unsatisfying fragments to warn us of coming disasters.
Entropy is based on the premise that any possible feature of time travel inherently destabilizes the course of causality. However, if time travel is a feature of causality, it would be both required and (currently) immeasurable.
This is because the change caused by any purported time travel would need to be measured before it affects the measurement. Since reverse time travel happens before the measurement can take place… Think of it like a black hole. How do you see it? You need to look around the hole. But if you don’t know the hole is there, because your theories have ruled it out, well… You just don’t see it.
Any mathematical proof must be based on what we do know, and what we do know does not unequivocally rule out time travel. Not even as a matter of logic.
https://www.livescience.com/24941-time-direction-subatomic-particles.html
Don’t be too sure. Things get fuzzy at the subatomic level. :) Check out the BaBar experiments.
One way to think of time as something that can be manipulated is to stop thinking of time in the poetic sense; rather than as a universal unknowable everywhere constant; think of it as trillions of reactions going on and interacting with one another to produce a blanket effect of “observable time”, while the sub-sets of reactions can be isolated and changed to change small parts of the observable time.
One idea of time is that time is a reaction caused by a reaction. Gravity is a reaction caused by mass interacting with masslessness; Gravity in turn re-reacts with the mass producing it to produce time. Every unit of mass therefor produces not only a unit of gravity but also a unit of time as a secondary reaction.
So each sub-atomic particle produces its own time, that like the particles themselves interacts with and combines with the time produces by other particles, till we get to this macroverse “stable” level with near constant observable time as defined by the gravity.
In other words, gravity doesn’t distort time, it produces it, a singularity doesn’t slow time down, time appears to move slower from the outside looking in because of time density (there is MORE time there).
So time travel…well let’s call that a chapter 3 or 4 on temporal physics as it requires a lot of other factors like isolating your entire mass’s time production and changing its relation to the observable time field and its in turn relation to dimensions….which is to say that the dimension of time doesn’t even exist until produced and then acts as a bridge between realities across the interwoven space.
-to simplify as much as possible, it is easier to move sideways through time than forward or backwards, and producing localized fractal times and collapsing them to promote an isolated/localized desired result in a manner of micro-seconds is even easier.
Of course the crux of all of that is first figuring out what mechanic of the universe causes mass to react to what otherwise seems to be a non-entity (masslessness) and why in turn the attractive force (Gravity) produced by that would have a secondary reaction further bonding the mass together in a continuum of growth and decay constant with all nearby matter in the collected space.
Exactmundo– the real benefit of having the computer chip would be things like realizing you should be experimenting with silicon as opposed to copper. Or the fact that it is using high low voltages as opposed to photons.
I think capturing an FTL travel vehicle would have the same type of benefits — just being able to observe and FLT travel capable vehicle would give us huge hints of where to look — did it seem to emit gravitational waves? Neutrinos? Did you need some stationary base to project a worm hole type effect or where the engines on the spacecraft? Did they have to leave earths gravitational field before engaging engines — all that type of stuff.
I’m pretty sure that’s the premise of Project A-Ko 2.
WW1 and 1960s tech where the military still used vacuum tubes but used radio isotopes instead of hot filaments, this tube called a ramjet for propulsion and wings designed for supersonic flight. It may have even incorporated the first generation transistors – chunks of silicon in epoxy filled metal cans the size of large pencil erasers.
So right there is a whole slew of technological breakthroughs that 1920s humans had barely a clue about.
Radio isotopes.
Ram Jet technology when even the jet engine was a German engineers snaps driven dream.
Supersonic flight when the basics of flight, laminar airflow and the propeller were just being figured out
You can’t reverse-engineer, something that you do not understand, the Theory behind it.
Fortunately as King Random points out…Semper Vigilantis and Arc-Light are sharing the services of Krona, who can help them with that.
Not all supernatural entities and enhanced humans have primarily combat abilities.
Not even all of the most powerful.
It’s not the things you don’t know that trip you up, so much as the things you know that just ain’t true.
Like I was pointing out with alchemists… They had a very scientific approach to things, but started with a set of very wrong assumptions about how things work. Someone who thinks they know that the elements are earth, air, fire, and water are going to be very hard pressed to reverse engineer anything requiring an understanding of atomic elements. They tried to reverse engineer gold and couldn’t… they thought it was lead mixed with some unknown substance they referred to as “philosopher’s stone”.
Just a side note- 4 stages of matter, Solid(Earth), Liquid (Water), Gas (Air), Plasma (Fire), just need to look at old info in a new light.
One of my favorite characters from Eric Flint’s Ring of Fire series is an alchemist, Phillip Theophrastus Gribbleflotz, the world’s greatest alchemist and a great-grandson of Paracelsus. Does he understand chemistry? No. But he can follow a cookbook and supply his own reasons for why things work, and he takes on projects that the “real” chemists are too busy to do, like baking soda and baking powder and aspirin and on and on.
I just got into that series, and I am loving it.
Sure you can. That’s the whole point of reverse engineering. You study something that you normally can not understand, break it down into its constituent components, and that’s how you start to understand something that, had you not had the finished product in front of you, you would never have been able to understand.
The whole concept of reverse engineering is that by careful, detailed examination of a finished product you can begin to figure out at least some of the processes involved in making the product as well. Even if you can’t get to the finished product, it will at least usually send you in directions you would not have normally thought to go.
Think of Terminator 2, for example:)
Miles Bennett Dyson: “It was scary stuff, but radically advanced. I mean, it was smashed, it didn’t work, but…it gave us ideas, took us in new directions. I mean, things we would have never…All my work was based on it.”
The ideas people have about reverse engineering are very weird. It reminds me of the patent joke:
“Quite unnecessary, Sir. Everything that can be invented has been invented.”
“Everyone’s always asking me when Apple will come out with a cell phone. My answer is, ‘Probably never.'” — David Pogue, The New York Times.
“There’s just not that many videos I want to watch.” — Steve Chen, CTO and co-founder of YouTube expressing concerns about his company’s long term viability.
“I predict the Internet will soon go spectacularly supernova and in 1996 catastrophically collapse.” — Robert Metcalfe, founder of 3Com.
“Cellular phones will absolutely not replace local wire systems.” — Marty Cooper, inventor.
“Remote shopping, while entirely feasible, will flop.” — Time Magazine.
“there is a world market for maybe five computers.” – IBM Chairman Thomas Watson
I’m sure galactic justice is similar to street justice. To the victors go the spoils. I mean, they clearly haven’t done anything about this group of “irredeemable slavering fanatics,” so what exactly are they going to do to the guys who took them down in under a minute? “Ah yes, well you see, there are protocols, and I say, it would be bad form for you to take their technology for yourselves. It would be frowned upon. Indeed, we would frown.”
No, a group like that could easily exsist, despite the galactic federation (in whatever form it takes) wanting to destroy them. For tech, they only need a few believers to buy the supplies they need, then take those raw materials to what ever base they have to make more ships/weapons/slaving tech. And for why they could have a base that is undestroyed ….. Space is reeeeeeeeeeeeeally big. Unless you understand the concept of how unbelievably huge an area it is, you wont realize how easy it would be to remain hidden in a galactic scale. (yes, even with the best sensors you could imagine, still easy to stay in a hidden area)
Sure. On the other hand, that ship was meant to withstand broadsides from capital ships, and Max just blew a hole right through it in a matter of seconds. Shields, whatever hull plating it had, everything in between, and right back out the other side. I feel like they’ll show Earth a bit of “leniency.”
The word is RESPECT.
(with head action)
I sincerely doubt it.
On two grounds. Non interference in this setting seems limited to intentional uplifting at certain techno-social check points (the specific qualifications beyond how fast your boats go not revealed); however an invading force being taken out by the locals and their stuff gone through kinda circumvents those.
On the second reasoning, good graces.
An intelligent civilization seeing that a less advanced one was capable of (easily) eliminating an enemy force of superior technological standings that the first party here have a hard time fighting against; would be in their best interested to ingratiate themselves with the developing civilization, not uplift them…but also not hinder them after obtaining tech from the fallen enemy vessel. Don’t want bad blood in the history between your peoples when the Super-Ultra-Wonder-Captain-Mega-Man/Ra’s show up to the galactic council tables someday.
I think being able to destroy an advanced spaceship on your own would just kind of qualify you in the first place, it may not be figuring the whole thing out on your own but if you used your own tech to destroy it and your own tech to backwards engineer it than you haven’t gotten any outside help, just outside interference. If a space-going race took out a ship in your planets orbit, like Cora wanted to do, I assume it would be their job to either tow it to the sun to destroy it or call in some galactic cleanup crew to clear it out.
Even if she didn’t hit anything too important, they should probably get some kind of shield over it to contain any spillage. not to mention quarantine everyone that came anywhere near them since you have no idea what everyday microbes on those things would do to a human with no immune defense… remember war of the worlds? But then, that wasn’t the point of the fight so all of that will probably be “off camera” lol
I imagine that’s considered a legitimate, if slightly worrying way of bootstrapping yourself.
The whole question of reverse engineering “too advanced” tech was brought up in Harry Turtledove’s novel “The Guns of the South”, where time travelling white supremecists travel back in time and give General Lee’s army AK-47s. The confederacy was able to reverse engineer the guns themselves to a degree, and the ammunition (Minus the smokeless powder) but when they captured some computers and generators, a captive time traveller told him they couldn’t duplicate the computers, just use the existing ones.
“You don’t have the tools to make the tools to make the tools.”
*Cracks open the infinity drive*
Muahaha! The SECRETS OF THE UNIVERSE LAID BARE! Humanity shall rise up and conquer the stars!
*Takes out a glowing green helix and examines it.*
I have no idea what this is.
That’s what we need Ms. Universe Hacker for: reverse engineering an FTL drive.
Or a Forge-like super genius.
Krona’s already basically in place for this one, don’t need to come up with a new character.
just because you can hack reality that doesn’t mean you know what you are looking at when you do. Tamper with and replicate so others can replicate it on their own are separate things.
Krona did kinda have a breakdown of overwhelmed awe when looking at the code underlying Sydney’s orbs. They appeared to be far too complex for her to grasp intuitively, and probably far too powerful to grasp even with a week’s worth of intensive study…
(…but it’d be fun to have her try! *sets out a big bottle of migraine medicine & gets a professional masseur on standby to relax her poor neck & shoulders* (I’d rather be at least somewhat kind than completely cruel.))
Not to mention Krona can “hack” reality – that doesnt give her any special insight into how to recreate it herself.
(Krona might be able to reality hack to fix it or make it work, but not have any idea why it does what it does, or how)
Had this idea in an old sci-fi story. People find a working lab of a long gone precursor civilization and try to examine their gel like green computer system. Upon cutting open the green gelatinous casing they find the inside full of green liquid and floating orbs in the goo; the liquid immediately boils off and the solid parts mineralize.
Not gonna lie, I like that face/hand concentration thing. Didn’t bother me at all it was on back to back pages. Keep up that good work.
If you want that story, try Illegal Aliens by Nick Pollotta and Phil Foglio. That is the EXACT plot of the book. The book is a real hoot. I recommend it for anyone who reads this web comic.
If you can, try to find a first edition, as they have the chapter heading illustrations by Phil Foglio.
Oh, man, another person who remembers that book! I got Phil Foglio to sign mine years ago, and it’s still a joy to (re)read.
I love that book. Ive read it many times over the years, even gifted it to people.
One of my all-time favorites! Fortunately, I was running a small bookstore when it came out and kept several copies.
The only one that comes close in total story quality is “Evil by Necessity” by Eve Forward (a BETTER writer than her much more well-known father). It’s a total reverse-parody of the old D&D Dragonlance saga.
In all fairness, Robert was a well-established astro-physicist – he wrote a little fiction based on some of his theories. Eve has largely been a career author… and she has the serious advantage of being able to talk to her father about what worked in his writings and what didn’t.
The only Illegal Aliens story I know of is the really bad Anna Nicole Smith movie :)
Illegal aliens is a sci-fi comedy novel where a bunch of alien serial killer types Who got their jollies
by visiting pre-FTL species, pretending to be there to test them to see whether they are worthy to join
the Galactic community, by grabbing a bunch of the locals, testing them to destruction, and then telling The world
that they are such irredeemably violent primitives that the galactic fleet will be there soon to sterilize their world so they Don’t infect the rest of the galaxy… And then stand back and laugh at the panic and the riots,as the local civilization collapsed in panic.
Unfortunately, the locals they grabbed, turn out to be one of the most vicious street gangs in New York
Who proceed to kill the crew and take over the ship, and in turn have the ship taken from them
by a mixed group of seals, Green Berets, and cops.
And then mankind starts gearing up to defend themselves against the Armada they think is coming.
And when the Real Galactic police actually DO show up looking for the criminals, and oh, by the way
you’re going to have to give up all that neat tech because you’re just not ready for it,
and no, we won’t let you appeal to a higher court, wacky intergalactic hijinks ensue.
It’s available as a Kindle e-book on Amazon for like 3$, and you can Probably find the original paperback used somewhere. (and no, you can’t have any of my signed first edition copies):P
Note to self. Find out where JamesH lives to steal one of his signed first edition copies.
Also note to self, first buy the ebook to see if I want to commit a felony for this book.
Thanks :)
Felony, no. But for a misdemeanor….it’s worth it.
Depends on how much the book is worth :) I don’t know how much autographed first editions are worth, so I guessed $500 or more.
Well, I was wrong.
I figured Sydney would do something like that, complete with the targeting discussion in the note box.
I hoped she would too, if only to show how capable she really was, but I was wondering if Maxima’s particle beam would do the trick as well.
It’s ok Maxima, we’ve all wanted to try something like that.
I don’t understand what’s weird about it either.
I think what she was really saying was, she wanted to actually use a “Full Power” blast. Remember her reaction to the reporter asking why she used “Full power”….
Sydney, asks that.
No, the reporter asked why she needed to go full power on the tank, and Max laughed before sonic booming to the restaurant.
Try not to ignite the atmosphere, Max. We still need that.
You can’t do that.
She just dropped a ship capable of faster than light travel from the sky by causing critical damage and while I remember the alien saying those ships fighting each other in atmo wouldn’t be pretty, max probably should of asked about the hazards of destroying it…in the middle of a city
Well, she was going to be fighting it with anti-matter drivers, so, yeah, you wouldn’t want to use that in an atmosphere: The projectiles would detonate right next to your own ship!
Some weapons are only safe to fire in vacuum.
Nitrogen is not combustible, chemistry 101.
Nitrogen needs a whole lot of energy to either fuse or fission and either reaction is not self sustaining – Atomic Physics 102
To this day, I find it worrying that we ignited the first atmospheric A-bombs while we were inventing that atomics-102 course…
I’ve submitted a lot of reports in my university years where I thought “meh, let’s see how that goes”, but none of them carried risk of literally wiping out the planet…
There were some scientists who worried it might happen, but the existing theory didn’t look that way to most of them. Luckily, the majority happened to be right.
Live the comic Just a Quick notice
About time that you update the copyright to 2019?
Love the comic, damn auto correct
Copyright dates to the year it was first released.
Well, it certainly wasn’t released in 2018 lol. Also, wouldn’t they then format it like startYear – currentYear?
Actually–and I admit I don’t know copyright law very well–I just © everything the moment it commits to the HDD. Then it gets a © update on each edit. So I have a detailed electron trail… :)
That’s actually just fine. Any item is copyrightable the moment it is put down in a fixed form. Actually, the copyright exists, regardless of whether you note it on the object.
Technically, if you have copyrighted characters (invented in, say, 1997) appearing in a newly created and copyrighted work (2019), then the work is in part a derivative work, and you could accurately state (copyright 1997-2019).
Yes, Copyright law was changed in 1923 so you no longer had to put a copyright notice on the work to be protected by copyright.
However, you can’t copyright a CHARACTER. Characters are protected by Trademark Law, not Copyright. A particular image or story can be copyrighted, but not, say, Deadpool or Mickey Mouse. Their distinctive likenesses are Trademarked by the publisher/owner.
Correct – each image you draw is copyrighted, and the character as a whole identifiable concept is trademarked.
I hope the ship that was pursuing this one didnt come in on quite the same trajectory or its going to catch part of that beam.
You know, “igniting the atmosphere” isn’t really a thing that can happen.
How about “Cooking off the atmosphere”?
Actually it can happen. It just requires a much, much, much bigger explosion than anything we have been able to create. About 50kg of Antimatter would do it though.
No, it would not, it would most likely destroy the entire world.
Depends on what your definition of “destroyed” is.
If your your definition is “reducing the planet to numerous smaller pieces”, it does actually take significantly more energy to overcome the total gravitational force holding the planet together, than would be needed to trigger a self-sustaining fusion reaction in the atmosphere.
I don’t know the exact math off the top of my head, but I would direct you to Because Science, who have done videos calculating both things.
Now that would be useful. Thanks.
What do you think lightning is? The atmo won’t sustain combustion itself, but since fire is (at least partly) plasma, anything you might refer to as ‘ignite’ is true of a lightning.
Lightning is an electrical discharge, not “Burning air”
I’m a very fast reader. I know roughly how much money authors make per page on Kindle Unlimited, and I know exactly how much money I pay Amazon. Long story short, I literally take money from Amazon and throw it at authors. Each month I’m signed up they pay the authors about twice as much as I pay them. :P
That doesn’t even count the ‘free trial month’ they offer. I drop Kindle Unlimited after a couple of months or so in order to catch up on all the fanfiction, webnovels and webcomics I read. Then they offer me another free trial month to get me back.
If every reader was like me, Amazon would be bankrupt.
amazon makes its money from webhosting services. the retail stuff is run barely over cost
I’ve been reading off a few web novel sites and the kind of information I hear from them (why they had to ultimately drop Amazon’s support) matches really closely with situation with Michael-Scott Earle.
Amazon is the kind of company that pays 3 months later. September, “You earned $30,000 through ebook sales!” December paycheck rolls in, “After review of your September earnings we have found that the majority of users that bought your book were fraudulent. Here’s the $7,800.” No messages in between these two times. No break down of these fraudulent purchases. Just a significant number of ebooks get bought then 3 months later they just arbitrarily tell you that 2/3rds of them were false with no explanation what so ever.
If a ship were powered by an exploding star in the process of becoming a black hole suspended in a permanent state of decay, it would probably be bad to rupture the containment chamber.
Good thing that a 1950s police box doesn’t look very threatening. :D
Isn’t that the basis of the Romulan Singularity Drive?
PS Cora’s final line.
“Something the universe wants… besides Sydney’s god-tech orbs.”
HADOUKOU
Something I just noticed, in the long shot max is using her left hand to fire (which looks like one of those grabby claw game claws) but in the close up she’s using her right hand.
Probably the first shot was the power stroke and she brought up her right to do the tweaking
the rise of the imperium of man? lol but one question about this statement “Amazon has taken to banning authors whose success doesn’t match their expectations.” does that mean michael scott-earle did not do well or that he did TOO WELL?
Too well.
Sad, really. With viral videos and such being a thing you’d think that Amazon would be hip to the “meteoric rise to fame” that sometimes occurs.
and in a voice only max could hear, a woman screaming “KaaAA, MeeAA, HaaAA, Mee, HAAAAaAaaAA!”
No, in panel 2 she starts the blast with her right hand. The pull-away panel blurred (assuming because of light/heat distortion) so you can’t really tell which hand is up or down. But the zoom panel on her hand again show her right hand based on thumb position.
That seems incorrect. The side the glows ares on tells us the arm upraised in panel 2 is the closer arm, the left.
Max uses the left to blow a hole, then creates a bomb with the right and releases it through the hole she creates/holds open with the left.
I disagree. In fact I doubt it’s possible…
If you look by her hip in the long shot, you’ll see the glow of her left hand reflecting the light of the blast. For it to be the right hand in that position she would have have turned her entire body in such a way that her back was facing us and then moved her head in such a way that she’d be facing backward over her left shoulder. Then she’d have to return to the previous position by panel six. AND make both position changes without interrupting the beam.
You must be correct, because of panel 2.
However, that means that panel 3 is just wrong.
Look at the glow in the back hand. If that were the left hand, closer to the camera than the one up and forward, then the glow is coming off the outside back of the left hand… for some unknown reason. Her breasts should be toward us, and the glow from her raised right hand should be reflecting off the inside of her arm and her chest.
On the other hand, if my explanation had been correct, then the glow would be off the palm of the distant right hand, which was about to come up with the boom in it…. and the left arm would be between the glow and us, leading to the wrinkles we see on the raised arm.
Of course, now I’m wondering why I think I remember that she’s left handed…
I would be cool if you showed the graph of her power usage like you did in the first fight.
I have to confess that I hoped the fight would last a teeny bit longer.
Enough to maybe see Varia in a plasma form (or maybe a stone form) and perhaps see what Vance actually does.
He breaks apart into individual spiders, who then can crawl into the ship via tiny gaps that would otherwise be too small. Once inside, they reform* and can wreck havoc on the interior.
* Using a hyper-thin membrane carried by the large master spider in lieu of his normal skin.
That was a joke, messing with the newbie.
DaveB said he hadn’t decided yet what his powers were.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-331-my-god-its-full-of-spiders/
Spider Vance, Spider Vance. Does whatever the author says he can.
Which means it could very well be true. Or maybe he can transform into a colony of spiders like the vampires do with bats. Or he’s a werespider.
I just love the quote, “Holy Ovaries!” I think I need to steal it and use it whenever I am impressed in the real world.
Never mind detonating the ship drive, if that ship is designed to withstand barrages of weaponry in a world where anti-matter railguns are a thing, then Max had to be using “Good sized nuke” levels of power to hurt it. Even if her super power kept most of that energy in the beam, the lost energy should still be at leas a kilo-ton class weapon of mass destruction set off at rooftop level over the city.
I am concerned that Maxima might be just a teeeeeeeensy bit overpowered. I thought she had the power of a nuke, not a THOUSAND nukes.
but storyline wise she falls to the possible issue of (non-lethal difficulties), as in the bank robbery at the start only went so well because the person she struck couldn’t be hurt, but against regular people she isn’t supposed to kill she may have troubles. There could be two reasons she mostly stayed out of the parkinglot fight, one being what she said then so people could see how the team works and the other…there would have been a body count. We have to ask how far she can pull her punches. We’ve seen she can when tired still smash up door knobs by accident and she has a mental distribution of powers chart, but really how low can she go?
Blowing apart a space ship, vaporizing a man’s arm off, Vehemence only stood a chance because he was given time to power up to his maximum and then blind side Maxima into a defensive position; it is pretty possible even him at his upper power *which the comic did say he had reached during that fight, it had a point of diminishing returns, can’t just power up endlessly* would have been killed by this blast Maxima is using. So had the others not helped she might have to decide on *split second taking damage so can unleash a gut shot splitting him in half*.
Doesn’t translate well to (we have stopped a mugger), the guy we saw her grab was strong enough to knock down buildings it looked like when she was called in about Sydney coming back, but a joe-shmoe? Blood Stain on the concrete by reflex.
Actually we don’t know that Vehemence has a maximum. He powered up until he was bored with waiting and estimated that he had enough power to wipe the floor with Max.
Honestly, that whole thing with V felt like an ass-pull by the author to add some suspense to the fight. If she could have faced him one-on-one, it would have been an easy victory.
What has become clear is that ARCSWAT effectively consists of Max and some glorified “sidekicks.” The other heroes serve no other purpose than to act as support/cheering team for Maxima.
Maxima is ARCSWAT. Every other hero is perfunctory. They are numbers, that’s it!
Until they have to go on multiple assignments at the same time. Having an S-class on a team doesn’t turn everyone else into a sidekick unless you insist the S-class do everything and everyone goes on the exact same mission.
You don’t need Superman on every Justice League mission just as you don’t need Thor or Captain Marvel on every Avengers mission (granted I am confused by how powerful the MCU wants Thor to be because in Ragnarok he seemed to make the jump from A to S, but in Endgame he was back down to A…well I guess we can chalk that up to being out of practice and eating too much pizza).
Anywho, point is, if you insist that the team can only go on missions if the one or two S-class heroes there are there too then you limit the usefulness of the team to handle more than one problem at a time; and make all your other heroes lax in their training.
But again, all the others are is numbers. There are quite a few members that the team can lose without much issue. Sydney, who is supposedly one of the more powerful members, was gone for months with seemingly little issue. What happens if they lose Max?
Worse yet, what happens if Max decides she has enough playing “superhero scout leader” and decides to turn on ARCSWAT?
Max could kill almost any member of the team without a significant effort. And, the only person she can’t take out is of absolutely no threat to her. The team has no counter for her.
When this comic started, I adored Max. But that is because I thought she had some realistic limitations. But now, it’s obvious that she is basically a gender-swapped Superman, and I despise those sorts of characters.
Right now, her teammates are a number. Sure, she can’t be everywhere at once. But she could be making serious bank and wrecking catastrophic havoc, if she went on her own and no one can reasonably stop her. ARCSWAT needs her far more than she needs them.
It is coming across like your real complaint on S-class and higher characters, especially if they are alone or very few in the setting is when they aren’t corrupted by their power and behave like sociopaths?
Some people do actually want to be heroes and want what society gives them. Maybe they’ll introduce another like Vehemence minus the need to power up, or someone who can exploit Maxima’s weaknesses. Some god in name only, celestial being, another geode symbiote powered up super with a less desirable upbringing, demon lord, ect…
Also we have no idea what her limits are, it doesn’t seem like she can breathe underwater, possibly not in a vacuum then, no psychic defenses it seems, and she does have a known weakness her power has a limit, granted very high, but she has to move a power pool around between her stats.
Chances are right now, she’d never have tried that beam without reasonable back up and the shield to protect; because if she pooled too much of her power to the beams she could be a literal glass cannon while firing.
Actually, my real complaint is that this is a comic with an ensemble cast, and you have one character who completely overshadows all the other characters.
In most situations, Max effectively turns the other heroes into bit players. Supporting roles at the very best. The only times we really see any of the others shine is when Max isn’t there, or when the author contrives some ass-pull to counter her.
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.
We are shown potential limits, but we don’t know if those are actual limits, or if Max was holding back, because if she went full ham there would have been more collateral damage and potential casualties.
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.
I disagree. Max has that potential? Absolutely, but only when she can singularly focus – which is extremely rare. She could only test that potential while being defended by the shield; while also not needing added strength; while not needing to be able to fly; etc, etc, etc.
She literally went FULL glass cannon on that beam. Syd probably could have walked up, punched her, and left a bruise. Remember, during Vehemence fight, she had all her “stat” in defense. She could not overpower him; could not fly; could not use ANY of her other abilities because she was putting everything into defending.
Yes, she’s crazy powerful. But she absolutely has hard limits. There is only so much power and she can % divvy it up as she sees fit.
Sure, maybe she does have some hard limits. I will concede that point.
But, as I have inquired before: “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?”
Again, even if she does have a hard ceiling on her powers, they are still far and beyond what most anybody else on the team can even comprehend. She trivializes so many of her teammates.
To be clear… this is fiction, not a tabletop game.
There are exactly three top-tier regular cast members — Max, Dabbler, and Halo — and they can all play rock-paper-scissors-spock-lizard.
Without surprise, Halo can defend against Max. Also, Halo’s genre-awareness feat means that, given time, she can out-think Max.
Dabbler is a super-science gadgeteer. Since she has seen Max in action, and fought Max to a standstill, so she presumably has counter-gimmicks prepared for teleportation at will.
Outside of the main cast, there are others who have specific powers that could take Max down as well. (Rewriting reality gives Krona a whole bunch of ways to take her down, for example.)
So, the story is not, in fact, unbalanced at the top level. The main characters just all happen to be female, which is unsurprising because the comic is called Grrl Power, not Ggguy Power.
Below that, the next level of characters consists of foils, support, comic relief, and fan service. They have individual quirks, specific tactical values, and not a whole lot else, because while they may occasionally get “featured character” status, they are not the stars.
Other than Math, the combat-capable guys we’ve seen in action are mostly forgettable. I’d like to see Ren do something, but I’m not holding out for a guy with powers that are distinctive.
“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.”
The ability to fight other enemies. Max can’t suppress an entire riot or handle multiple missions at once by herself.
Max *needs* her team for the organization to be effective at all.
for example (thought of this today)
they want to liberate a concentration camp. Maxima goes in, but even though she can overwhelm their power, she can only be in one place at one time; she might not be able to prevent escapes by some of the guards, destruction of crucial documents (add she is also not stealthy…like at all, and might serve better as a destraction for point A while an infiltration teams goes to point D to secure documents); but that adds to this; if she is alone they could also start to execute prisoners because they have nothing else to lose.
and in concentration camp conditions even if she liberates the camps, can she get all the sick, injured, disabled, weakened by hunger and lack of exercise prisoners out of there ALONE. She can move fast but she is now babysitting a hundred plus civilian heads trying to escape enemy territory by herself.
Teams are needed. and there are plenty of situations where her showiness and power would be a liability to the mission more so than help; as stated, stealth required missions, information gathering, tactical drops, ect…
Its like the opposite I use often for villain characters as well, one person can’t conquer the world. Destroy it yes, but not govern it.
during the fight they mentioned a point of diminishing returns where he didn’t seem to be gaining more as quickly as he had been and while being “drowned” was losing power faster than gaining, but was still gaining. So had to end that.
He gained more during the fight, but yes, he had become stupidly powerful, and able to regenerate. But consider this, had Maxima gone for his head or central mass near or at a vital organ rather than his arm; how well could he have regenerated? After all regeneration isn’t by its self a get out of free card even when it can be instant. Take a Namekian vs Perfect Cell. Namekian can regenerate a lost limb easily, granted has to burn a lot of energy to do so, but they’d be dead if hit through a vital organ (like Goku when he head slammed through King Piccolo) or lost their head. While Perfect Cell could regenerate from anything so long as one cell of his body remained; heck one step further and we have Deadpool *and apparently now the Hulk* who could regenerate from even being dusted.
Vehemence seemed lower end as he had a power source that he had to use up to use his powers, he came back stronger but only so long as the power source remained, once depleted even the regenerated parts reverted to human tissue (and he was lucky that was how his regeneration worked, because some regenerators with an adaptation function end up losing anything that got enhanced if their energy is depleted beyond that point).
All things considered…. potential of ship drive explosion, Debris raining down on the surrounding area….Now as far as I can tell, the HQ is not surrounded by much of anything. I was checking back looking for outside shots which might show the surrounding area more. But this happened:
Your access to this service has been temporarily limited. Please try again in a few minutes. (HTTP response code 503)
Reason: Exceeded the maximum global requests per minute for crawlers or humans.
Apparently I’m faster than a computer. So where do I sign up to join this merry crew?
Rocketroo: Powers: able to scan the internet at inhuman speeds. Potential Uses: Well if you want to locate a webcomic or a recipe….other than that?
And before I was distracted by that. the intent was a long build up on using excessive amounts of power which was leading up to the question: Did Maxima just pull a Sydney?
I like how Max’s power blew her own ponytail apart
rebar hairties can only take so much.
Good catch in the page explanation with the “What if it had a Romulan singularity drive!” or something like that.
Though, Romulan ships have been destroyed in atmosphere’s without problems because the black holes that power them a ‘tiddly tiny’ and lose cohesion easily when not in very specific conditions.
Remember; that, like this story are Science Fiction.
“Amazon has taken to banning authors whose success doesn’t match their expectations.”
Wait, what? Do you mean ‘he did better than they expected so they banned him’ or ‘he wasn’t doing as well as they hoped and they banned him’. Either sucks, but… now we’re wondering which it was.
More successful than they expected.
The entire Amazon store, not just Kindle, is highly susceptible to shenanigans like paid reviewing and even paying people to buy your product to artificially boost its visibility. Instead of trying to fix these systematic weaknesses, which they wont because it makes them money, Amazon occasionally randomly bans authors and sellers who’s activity matches at least some of their criteria for suspicious activity so they can say they are doing something about the issue.
They aren’t very careful and catch legitimate sellers and authors as well, who have very little recourse.
And from reading this blog post https://litrpgreviews.blog/2018/07/20/michael-scott-earle-getting-banned-jason-cipriano-banned-and-a-new-trademark-kerfuffle/ apparently Earle pissed of a lot of people who quite justifiably got annoyed when he tried to trademark some rather generic pulp fiction terms as name for a book series. Now people can get really petty when annoyed and jealous, so it’s quite likely he was manually flagged by other Kindle Unlimited authors as well
Yeah I read about that one.
In my opinion, trademark laws have gone too far and need reform.
You have the timeline reversed, I think. The trademark thing (“Dragon Slayer”? seriously? Someone counted a hundred books NOT by MSE with that in the title!) affair seems to be more recent than the banishment from Kindle Unlimited. There are beaucoup articles and blog posts about the incident, pro-MSE and anti-MSE, and for my money, Amazon should discontinue Kindle Unlimited until it can find a better way to administer it fairly.
Amazon does not prevent MSE from selling his ebooks on Kindle. Amazon, in fact, continues to sell his audio books. He sells via Apple and Kobo and others. They have only banned him from Kindle Unlimited, which is like some sort of literary Ponzi scheme where the most pages read get the largest slice of a limited pie, and a bunch of people – MSE is lumped in with them – have learned ways of gaming the system to get the biggest slices.
Read some of the articles NOT written by MSE. Get a balanced picture.
I don’t really know that much of this situation, but I do have to say, “literary Ponzi scheme” is the best description of Kindle Unlimited I have read.
Maybe I should trademark it. :)
Can we get a closeup of Maxima smiling from the last panel as a vote incentive maybe?
The singularity implosion drive has no purpose except to utterly and spectacularly destroy the ship when it takes a certain amount of superficial damage.
Shin Maxima
Anyone else wonder how Max’s jacket survived that?
Her invulnerability field extend to her clothes, up to an extent
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-521-to-no-dress/
Reality check for Cora… All in all she should have gotten some suspect when she found out that Sidney and Dabbler were not the strongest in the organization.
Also, she is saying that because she saw how powerful and versatile supers are, or because there is a fucking capital ship trying to do exactly so?
Are we plot armoring that the ship went down where nobody was?
Max didn’t have to worry about the ship crashing down on them. First, it was above the spacecraft which was off to the side of the main building. Second, as the hull was vaporized by Max’s energy beam it would have exploded outward propelling the ship in the opposite direction, like any old rocket. Third, and last, the ship supporting itself would be significantly easier to move than if it had been sitting on the ground without power. Just a little shove in the right direction. I could see the ship having crashed right next to the parking lot and Arianna’s car almost getting squished. As she sighs with relief a hatch pops off making hers the only one to get pancaked. She would of course want to take it out on Max.
I’m imagining Sylv aboard the ship, after reading the energy levels of that blast and watching the Fel ship fall, calling Cora.
“What the HELL was that?”
Cora
“Our new best friend.”
I wonder if Maxima heard the 2nd half of the chorus from POD’s Boom in that third panel.
“Boom! Here comes the Boom!
Ready or not, How you like me now?”
Here is what happens in the NEXT encounter with the Fel. One of the officers of the first ship (F1) makes it away in an escape pod, is picked up by another cruiser (F2) and leads it back to Earth. We pick up the story as they are hovering over Archon headquarters.
F1: There she is!
F2: Where?
F1: There!
F2: What, behind the woman?
F1: It is the woman.
F2: You silly sod!
F1: What?
F2: You got us all worked up!
F1: Well, that’s no ordinary human! That’s the most foul, cruel, and bad-tempered human you ever set eyes on!
F2: I soiled my armor I was so scared!
F1: Look, that woman’s got a vicious streak a mile wide! She’s a killer!
F2: Get stuffed!
F1: I’m warning you!
F2: Go on, Glorch. Chop her head off!
‘AAARRRGHH!”
This makes me happy, and we are now friends.
LOL!!!
Yeah, this made me happy too.
*thinks about making a reference*
Poor Hubble Telescope.
I wonder if the space-cop ship just got buzzed by Max’s particle beam. Poor mushroom woman’s filaments.
E.E. Doc Smith called, he wants his q-gun idea back. :) (ok, it’d be his estate, and it’s not an exact match. Just thought it was funny) ref : https://www.shapeways.com/product/N36Z7FRU3/galactic-patrol-q-ship-brittania
Holy ovaries?
You prefer maybe “Unholy ovaries!”
In the data collected from the wreckage we find a report that says they actually WERE here for our water.
But just a few quarts to top off their radiator and windshield washer reservoir.