Grrl Power #768 – Late to the party
I done goofed.
I have to own it. The very first draft of this page had Sydney saying something slightly more innocuous like “When did this happen!?” or whatever. Then at some point while I was drawing it I decided to do the change up gag where someone overreacts to the wrong thing. I don’t know the name of the trope off the top of my head.
Here’s the problem. This whole scene started with Sydney watching the press conference from the firing range. She’s a flake, but that’s just too flaky, even for her. But I just forgot about that page while I was writing/drawing this one.
I realized this sometime Wednesday and I could have fixed it, but I thought just to mix it up, it’d be fun if you guys wanted to pitch some lines for Sydney that hopefully make more sense. I’ll update the comic with the best one.
Whatever else happens with this page, I’m positive I drew either the Interdictor or Archon HQ at the wrong scale. I think the building is way too small. Cora said the ship was 160 meters long, but that seems super small now, even if she meant the body of the ship and not including the gun/gravity sled nacelles at the front.
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THEY PULLED THE BOSS WITHOUT ME?!?! <- something i've said during a late stage raid. something more up Sydney's lineup
^this one!
I second this motion
Thirded
Thumbs up for this ^. I was thinking along the lines of “They fought some bad guys without me!” This idea works better.
Dave
Don’t worry about the ship V building size, Given the perspective you have for it, You are looking down from above a skyscraper at a star ship, capable of housing a few hundred people. (admittedly as cargo but still)
The Archon building is roughly the same size (given the shot) just tall instead of long and wide. So Yah, the ship looks a little bigger then it needs to be, but given the camera angle, you could have gotten away with not mentioning it and only a few sticklers would have caught it.
Still great page you even took into account where it would have fallen based on Maxes firing location.
I vote leave the joke as is. Its a classic and fitting her character.
As for the ship and building; they look fine; the ship was implied to be huge, and you’d be surprised how small some buildings look from the sky; even what on the ground feel like massive amusement parks once you are a few hundred feet up look like they’d fit in a typical parking lot.
I second that motion. Just make it clear on the next page that she knows she was a bit, or add a short back and forth at the bottom of this page using floating heads showing that she was doing a bit. I really like the joke here, the juxtaposition works very well.
Agreed.
Being Sydney, and my other thoughts taken, I’d say “My begonias!” just for randomness. Well, I’D say “MY CABBAGES!” But I figure the response to that from Peggy would be less frustration and more confusion.
“WE HAVE TWO HELI-PADS?!?”
^ I love his one.
I like that one too. Anything specifically about the aliens, upon reflection, would miss the point of the joke of Sydney… missing the point. :)
Thanos invaded and they’re only calling us now?!
Just add a talking heads bit at the bottom, where Peggy says “You were /watching/ the press conference!” and Sydney replies “Oh, right!” Or, maybe something along the lines of “I didn’t know it was going to be a /press conference/ press conference. You know, with all the press. And cameras. And stuff.”
Would add some context, and make it even funnier.
Given that Sydney and Cora spent time together and the ship is floating front-and-center of the panel, maybe something about Cora showing off the ship’s weapons without her – implication that Sydney had REALLY wanted to fire the guns during their tour, but Cora had declined.
“Cora did a weapons demo without me?!?” And the following page could have her continuing “No fair, I was on that ship for like a WEEK and she wouldnt even blow up an asteroid for me…”
Another interpretation is Sydney reacting to them having an alien fight without her, given that she may see herself as a self-professed ‘expert’ on alien combat now.
“And Max says I’m a danger to those around me?!”
“How did they manage to redact THAT from the Press Conference!”
“But Dabbler said invasions were too much work!”
Awesome comic.
“I was going to park there today!”
You can tell it’s a press conference by the flaming, downed spacecraft.
Exactly
has any one asked how far away is this shooting range that they are getting back now? with how fast Sydney can fly and the fact that it looks like fires are stating to go out either that dispatch was slow or Sydney was pulling “let me shoot one more round” and not moving fast enough to actually get there.
Plus the sonic boom would have traveled forty miles even if the Fel ship had only been the size of the space shuttles.
Looks at Peggy
This, is not my fault
There are press conferences and Press Conferences. The first just has a bunch of people talking, the second, stuff gets blown up. Makes sense to me :) Keep the line as is.
The attacker’s ship is at least 3x too small on this page. We should be seeing just the edge and some panel/pod details. This is an invasion ship for ghods sake. Perspective from previous panels showed it as dwarfing the building and the other ship. It isn’t going to shrink just because Max blew the hell out of it.
It did get slightly exploded.
Ah, just shrink down Cora’s ship by 25% or so. Should look more in perspective.
“You’re supposed to capture it INTACT! That was like four tech levels!”
-Sydney Scoville, jr.
And the crash site is wrong from the previous page.
Does yanking the spoils of war off a ship count as a valid way to FTL?
Also, uh…
Earth has at least two capital ship equivalent energy weapon users. This may be worrying for the rest of the Galaxy.
Re: reverse-engineering spoils of war: it works in the Jenkinsverse (a.k.a. Deathworlders). Realistically, if you’re at a stage where you have the scientific underpinnings to make sense of the workings of an FTL drive and build your own version, you weren’t that far from doing it yourself. For instance, a Stone Age person capturing a sword from a time-lost knight isn’t going to suddenly have the ability to build a forge, understand carbon steel, master quenching processes, realize the importance of weight distribution, balance, and edge geometry, etc. A late Bronze Age or early Iron Age culture could likely realize that the blade is made of iron and carbon and get a huge boost toward figuring out how to modify their metallurgy to replicate the process.
Dunno, I could see it not dawning on her until just now realizing she wasn’t invited to the conference. I mean, when you’re at a range, playing with big guns you plan to use to cut a car in half, the excitement can win over what’s on TV, especially to someone with attention issues. Conference vs BFG… which do you think her mind will be focused on? :D
IF CORA is taking off the perspective is right… ie her ship is even with top of building…
If on the ground reduce ship by 2/5
Sydney: “I just remembered I’m scared of heights!”
I don’t care. This page had me laughing my ass off. Sydney’s expression is just so priceless. If not for the facepalm, Peggy should have tagged it and emailed everyone. >.>!
I’ve got a callback to earlier pages.
“Couldn’t you have crashed on the track?!”
You know, the track that she’s spent so many hours of each day running on.
Now that’s funny.
+1, Sydney would totally react that way
I still vote for keeping the line as-is, but that would make a great follow-up joke.
The battle is won, Archon HQ is heavily damaged, and the next day Sydney is dragged out of bed by Peggy and told to run laps. Sydney: “The track survived?!!!”
Come to think on it, given who uses the track, maybe it’s made of neutronium, or some other ridiculously hard-to-destroy material, like astroturf. Sorry, Sydney, guess you’ll be doing laps after all. ;)
Honestly, I think you could keep it.
It is somewhat “Sydney” to have not really registered and/or just outright forgotten that she was watching it earlier. Even for people who aren’t attention deficit and distracted by the idea of playing with machine guns, there’s a reason why the term “brain fart” exists.
And, one way or the other, it does give Peggy another possible reason to be face-palming.
I am surprised, by direct size comparison the “Evil Star Empire Super Battle Ship” ist actually a bit smaller than the “Privateer Coras Light Cruiser”. Does that make sense?
At no time has the relative size class of the Interdictor been specified.
The term was “Super Battle Carrier”.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-761-piiiiigs-in-spaaaaaace-cause-theyre-cops-see/
We all thought aircraft carrier equivalent, because aircraft carriers are awesome and impressive.
The Fel, however, absorb defeated populations like a zombie hoard.
They primarily use infantry, to keep more of the conquered populace intact.
For moving infantry, all types and sizes of vehicles are used. I have been on a hell of a lot of them.
In 2015, the United States added a new class of naval transport. The High Speed Troop Carrier.
https://www.military.com/dodbuzz/2013/04/22/navy-adds-high-speed-troop-carrier-to-fleet
Also called an Expeditionary Fast Transport.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USNS_Millinocket_(T-EPF-3)
Seeing as this is the Fel, within context the space fuzz likely meant huge troop carrier.
considering all Sydney has been through with the whole abandoned on a destroyed alien world scavenging for food to supplement your rations it while giant death bots stomp about looking to kill you im guessing the whole wrecked alien ship thing does not really register that well
Well, after fighting the first alien spaceship and it’s giant robots on a alien planet, I guess the aftermath is not that impressive for Sydney.
Since everyone is addressing the change in helipad designation and the lack of other items of architectural significance about your drawing, Dave, I recommend you change Sydney’s comment to:
OMG! They got rid of the rooftop pool??!??
Which pretty much clears that up.
I missed the first alien earth invasion atempt!
I missed the xp
And they say I’m the PR hazard ???
OMG The forest is on fire!
SUZIIIIIIIIIE!
A couple of thoughts.
First, and I don’t know if someone else commented on this, building-top helipads are always marked with their weight limit in tons. This being ARCHON HQ, I imagine even the height of the building won’t decrease the weight allowance, so something like (88) on one and (90) on the other would be killer. (For comparison / example, the US Bank Building, tallest in Los Angeles, is rated for 12 tons.)
Second, while the ARCHON HQ building height and proportion is clearly ‘unclear due to angle’, I think the Interdictor is too big. If the Inderdictor is 160m long, it should not quite span the entirety of the running track in back — a standard 400m track’s dimensions can be found with a quick search (though https://global-uploads.webflow.com/5b44edefca321a1e2d0c2aa6/5cba146a66d1ecd017ea8d8e_Dimensions-Guide-Sports-Track-and-Field-400m-Track-Dimensions.svg is easy), and from outermost curve point to outermost curve point, it’s just short of 177m. And in all honesty, the running track’s size is definitely in proportion to the size the building should be. (The skylight on top is a little big, but what the heck, right? ;) ) So when you think ‘Cora’s ship’, think ‘as big as the running track’.
Third, the Fel ‘super battle carrier’ is (IMO) too small. THAT should be sized equal to, or larger than, how Cora’s ship is drawn in the picture — which looks to be two and a half or three ‘tracks’ in size, so 450-540m in length. Though the Fel ship IS further away, and on its side in woods. And maybe the name is that it’s a ‘superior’ ‘carrier’ for Fel ‘battles’ (i.e. Fel combat groups, like US Army/Marine Divisions) … ?? And it just has seriously tough defensive screens so that it can actually make landings … ?? ;)
“Always”? I checked the three hospital helipads near me: one is marked with its weight limit in thousands of pounds (as clarified by the fine print on the nearby roof), one is marked with a plain “9” (don’t know if that’s tons or kilopounds), and one just has a red cross.
“Someone should call 911 !”
The ship isn’t drawn at the wrong scale, it is just flying now…
“They repainted the roof?!?!?!”
A is for Apple, B is for Jacks…. no… wait.. Ummmm
.
A is for Apple, B is for Boom!
‘You added an ALIEN LEVEL to the ROPES COURSE!?!’ or ‘They had an Infinity War re-enactment without me!?!’ or maybe ‘Why wasn’t I invited to Keg Night!?!’
i could see her complaining about the first one.
If you hadn’t’ve mentioned it I wouldn’t’ve noticed it. Of course its easier to miss if you’re reading the pages as they come out, might be more noticeable if someone was reading it straight through. Still, the joke worked so well! I actually laughed out loud :)
Its so something she would say.
“WHY COULDN’T IT HIT THE RUNNING TRACK?!”
PS, first time commenter, LOVE this comic! Discovered it a couple months ago and binged the whole archive in 3 days.
I like this version of the running track related comments…
I think the trope you want is “comically missing the point”.
Focus, Sydney. Focus.