Grrl Power #797 – Bust-a-gestalt
Before you read this page, put on some dance music. Oh, you already read it? Well, just do it retroactively in your head. Here are a few choice clubby musics that also happen to feature fit ladies working out:
Progressive Psytrance 2017, ProgPsy July 2019 Mix, Psychedelic Trance with Hula Hooping.
I’m sure you guys have your own favorite dance music, but the above videos are highly relevant to my interests so I thought I’d share.
I almost posted this page without the one word bubble. Actually without the sound effects either. Just to be… artistic I guess? I have faith that most of you would have figured it out, but, eh, work either way.
It’s tough for Varia to stay under the radar. Not as tough as Maxima, obviously. Even Anvil has it harder most of the time, and honestly, if Varia really wanted to stay incognito, she could have worn a version of that gaussy shirt of hers that had gloves and a longer cut.
For anyone unfamiliar with Varia, she gestalts with anyone she touches. (Except Maxima, apparently because her skin is weird) She gets a fixed power with each person, and the person she’s touching gains immunity to her powers, so she can still hold hands with them and not burn/freeze/irradiate them.
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Dongs Ahoy!Full frontal and backal. Lots of skin, sex on some or all pages, explicit or otherwise.
Did you notice that when she touched Halo, the balls went around her as well as Halo….
I think that can lead to interesting things.
What I mostly wonder about that scene, together with the explanation that Varia’s gestalts are fixed per person, what would’ve happened if she had touched Sydney in a time before finding the orbs. As well as the implication that either the orbs have a deeper connection to Sydney than they know, or are so powerful they override Varia’s power in favor of the current gestalt.
Honestly I think it has to do with Nth technology fuckery and the author deciding it would be cool.
What happened when Varia touched Sydney that time when they first met strikes me as a clue that the Orbs may be tied to Sydney on a genetic level.
Scenario then. If the liquid that transformed Max when she was a teenager came in contact with Sydney now, with her Orbs, would it change her as well? I’m guessing that the Orbs would keep that from happening.
seeing as the odds are very good that the makers of the orbs as also the people that made made the geode/liquid and started the super humans (as they are also unnatural). its very unlikely the geode liquid would effect Syd as the orbs would override it yes.
my guess was the orb maker/s (likely all linked to the story of Atlantis) uplifted humans at act as a police force/army to act against the squids Syd met a few chapters back. and they either died before they could finish that war or more likely died protecting the earth form the squids (causing the destruction of Atlantis and starting the myth)
And the reasoning behind that is…what exactly?
Nth is not a specific species but a theoretical development stage in the evolution of species two stages beyond FTL.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-690-gotterdammermcguffins/
So they could be different artifacts left by different races and if they are looking for some sort of markers to offer some sort of gift or test to civilizations reaching some sort of milestone then its not surprising that they should kick off close to the same time.
the chances that two different super advanced races and leave behind tech far beyond anything else the galaxy at larger could ever hope to make is unlikely in the real world (both the orbs and the geode/maxima are more powerful then anything else out their.)
it would make even less sense form a story telling POV
having the orbs be from the race that made the Geode and super humans would rap everything up into a nice little bow. answers to almost all the questions of the story in one go and as for why Atlantis well thats simply about where Syd found the orbs and how cagey she is about it.
That assumes that civilization which have reached Nth level have not learned some method of seeing great distances through time. If they develop that then odds and random chances as to which wolds they might seed are entirely out of the equation. They see the ones they already know are likely to develop in the direction they wish to encourage.
I was never suggesting that they were doing anything for a random purpose and indeed I suggest that however many artifacts they left are somehow detecting appropriate recipients to work with and their discovery by such people is guided in some way.
Atlantis was not in the fucking Caribbean, it was in the Med, right where it has always been
You’re just gonna straight up ignore the Atlantic/Atlantis connection?
Or the fact that Plato, who invented Atlantis, placed it in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean?
But I guess you know better than the guy who literally wrote the book about it, eh?
Plato didn’t invent Atlantis.
He passed on a legend he got from the Egyptians.
A legend which archeologists have found preserved in ancient Egyptian ruins.
didn’t most folk from Egypt west to the Atlantic have a story of a missing land?
Alternate history proposal: Columbus sailed through the Bermuda Triangle, landing and trading on the coast of the actual India – only in 650 BC. His account of coming from a land in a direction known to be empty ocean are the source of the Atlantis legends.
Historical records show that Plato wrote of Atlantis in two of his papers. If you can name an earlier source which names Atlantis, I’d love to hear it. If you cannot, Plato invented Atlantis.
Note also that Plato didn’t claim that Atlantis was real, it was purely allegorical. So you’re claiming that someone before Plato invented the fictional nation/island/continent of Atlantis.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Location_hypotheses_of_Atlantis
Follow the links in the notes to the two part “lost worlds” episode from the history channel. Pay attention to the archaeological digs at Akrotiri and in Egypt.
Go back to Plato’s books. Note the books claim that the story came from Egypt, and that the archaeological findings in Egypt match the concentric circles description of Atlantis…as did Santorini before the Volcanic eruption that destroyed the Minoans blew the crap out of it.
Pointing to similar legends is not at all the same as a reference which names Atlantis. Plato invented Atlantis. There were several ‘dead and resurrected’ gods prior to Christ. And yet Christ is named in the bible, and was invented by the authors of the bible.
He may have written about it, that doesn’t mean he invented it
And the Atlantic Ocean was named after Atlantis simply because of the stories, not because Atlantis was actually there
Have never watched the History Channel, butt have seen a show about Discovering Atlantis, which seemed to indicate that Santorini was the island the stories talked about (the problem is that people continued living there after it was supposedly destroyed, which is why story-tellers kept moving it further and further west)
They found a ruin in Spain that matched the architecture associated with the ‘Atlanteans’, and the ruins of a port just off the west coast (personally believe that was just a trading port, which could have gotten quite large in itself, or maybe just a colony slash outpost)
Plato may have bundled up a few existing bits from various real locations and/or other legends, but the story of Atlantis started with him. He used it as the setting for a discussion on why one should not mess with the Gods, and incidentally why Athenians (his audience) were better than everybody else.
It could just be that Varia’s power reacts to the current situation. Yes, there’s known to be a genetic component, but it could also be that there’s an interaction between whatever causes supers’ powers and the orbs that in that case causes Varia’s power to do what we’re all deeply suspecting (and are STILL waiting for confirmation of dammit) it will do.
Thank you! This is the kind of deconstruction question that I like to see asked and discussed.
Copilot. Just harness them together somehow so they both have two free hands
Back-to-back! Like, have them wear a harness and clothing so that exposed backs are touching (think shoulder blades, people!) and then yeah, four hands.
The Return of MasterBlaster: Piggy-back harness, Varia wearing a midriff-exposing shirt, Sydney wearing shorts or short-legged pants. Advantages: Mad Max reference. Sydney gets +1 to Spot checks for altitude. Disadvantage: Varia gets -5 to Spot and Listen checks for having Sydney’s thighs covering her ears and blocking her peripheral vision.
Secret Origin of Company Picnic Lass and Team-Building Grrl: Strap their calves together three-legged-race style. Advantage: They can switch between side-to-side and back-to-back as the situation demands. Disadvantage: One of them will have to devote a hand to using the fly ball for movement to avoid the usual problems with moving in a three-legged-race that, while funny at a picnic, are not funny in a superhero/supervillain fight or disaster relief situation.
When was that exactly? I don’t remember her touching Halo/Sydney.
When she was first introduced, when she was demonstrating her powah on Daphne, Jigs and Ren (and Maxi doesn’t have ‘weird skin’, she has ‘screwy skin’)
Can anyone link this page, or maybe give a date?
That was neat. I’ve randomly clicked on a year of the archive and started with a random link to give me an idea of where I was. I got the page before the one we needed.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-324-she-should-put-all-those-answers-on-a-shirt/
When Varia got right up close to Sydney the choices were that the orbs would orbit both of them, the orbs would be confused and fall to the ground, or that the balls would retain their prescribed orbit and begin battering Varia until she moved away.
So I never read anything into the orbital change with the spheres of doom because that is what I expected to happen.
I’m going to have to disagree with you there. Typically, they’ll pull in tighter, even going so far as to make a very tight circle just above her head. She’s had them orbiting while sitting in a high-backed chair and not hit the chair, for instance. Pretty sure they can avoid hitting someone who’s somewhere between one and two arm-lengths away without tripping over there own feet (or whatever the phrase would be for a set of floating/flying spheres — I don’t want to be limb-ist, assuming that’s a thing).
Look at panel six on the link above.
“Pull in tighter” would translate direcly to being “Battering Varia until she moved away”.
You say that you disagree with me, but then you effectively suggest one of the three possibilities for drawing the page I had already mentioned.
Varia and Sydney are holding hands and standing inches from one another.
Dr. Phogg, please reference pages 588 and 591 for what I mean by “pull in tighter.”
On page 588, when she’s feeling crowded in the shower, the amaze-balls are going in a circle directly over her head, where the outside edge of the front-most sphere is barely past her forehead, and maybe 2-4 inches above her hair. To get hit by them in that configuration, you’d have to trying to brush her hair or something. You could headbutt her and miss them, if you were shorter than her (admittedly an unlikely scenario).
On page 591, when she’s feeling less self-conscious and hemmed-in, they spread out a bit, but the outer edge of their orbit is still about even with her shoulders.
In other words, on most occasions, they seem to avoid collisions by going closer to Sydney, rather than farther away from her. They’re kinda clingy Nth tech orbs, but then they were alone on the bottom of the ocean for who knows how long before Sydney found them. It makes me wonder whether they actually can’t go more than so many feet away from Sydney, or if it’s more that they really don’t want to.
And, when she clung to Maxi’s legs like a hyperactive limpet, her balls expanded to encompass Maxi in their orbit
Clearly Maxima (Grrelverse’s Superman) can use Sydney’s orbs then. She just hasn’t tried yet.
still waiting for them to relized that so they can tape there forearms together and get 4 orbs going at once. Fly+ PPo + shield + alternating air/lighthook would be a terror..
Well, damn. I hadn’t noticed that.
Varia’s power is, from an author’s perspective, one of the most annoying. Not just because it can easily be seen as a ready-made excuse for an ass-pull or deus ex machina, but because… holy crap, you have to remember what she does with each character she interacts with just in case she manages to interact with them again! On pain of SOME fan, you know the type, pushing his glasses up and going ‘erm, but exctually…’
Ugh, it would be too much for me to keep track of, personally. I wish Dave luck in maintaining his spreadsheet!
That’s true, but most writers keen on consistency and continuity keep notes on their stories and characters and whatnot.
You don’t need some huge spreadsheet – you need an entry in each character’s about page:
This is Fred – he likes surfing, kites, and makes Varia turn into a genie-like sentient cloud.
Yeah but you need a spreadsheet to write out the power description to fit in Varia’s Variable Power Pool.
Hey! Maybe the author needs a Deus Ex Machina every once in a while.
In the Halo/Astra crossover Varia’s powah got Astra to where she needed to be to get home.
A good writer won’t use a variable powers character to be a deus ex machina. Varia is the Croyd Crenson (Card Sharks universe) of Grrl Power. She might be powerful, she might be weak, but she should never be unbeatable or without challenge. Croyd never was OP even when he was in one of his top forms, but then he was created by Roger Zelazny, who is an excellent writer.
My question is why does it appear that there are three of her in both the first and the last pan on the first one I assumed she was just answering her way across the screen but the second one with three different powers yeah I don’t get it
Standard comic trope for showing fast movement/dancing.
It’s a time lapse effect showing her interacting with all three people, one at time. Probably easier to draw it that way than to draw three separate panels.
You’re correct in that it’s meant to show motion across the dance floor, and the last panel is the same but with her touching the 3 people around her to show different reactions with her powers.
I do agree that it’s initially confusing. I myself thought that she had somehow cloned/duped herself.
Yeah, thought it was the Daphne’s at first, then actually looked at her and saw it was Vahriah
I too thought that Harem dancing, but realized that Daphne tends to wear different outfits and then realized who I was really looking at. Yeah, if she has so little control over the power when she touches somebody,she will need to cover up ala Rouge when out in public.
Oh, yeah. The standard “multiple images represents a timelapse,” is a bit less obvious when you do have characters who actually can be in more than one place at a time.
Yeah, I was kind of thrown off by that too. Not that it wouldn’t have been cool, and probably overpowered.
Reminds me of a panel in One Piece where Robin’s arm is shown in two positions for movement, but Robin is a person who could have an extra arm coming off the same shoulder if she felt like it and it threw me off at first.
Oops, only meant to italicize “could”.
To be fair, I found myself looking for a fourth person, whose contact allowed Varia to generate three independent clones as long as her “original” was touching the fourth. Given Varia’s narratively unlimited power, a Harem-esque ability isn’t out of the question!
I wonder – if they find a particularly useful power-partner, will that person be invited to join Arc-SWAT solely to act as Varia’s enabler?
We know Varia usually gets the same power as a super, though not always. I now wonder what happens with Harem – does she share the same mental state? Make a copy of herself and/or Harem? Teleport away once, then get stuck there because she’s no longer touching Harem?
None of those things actually add anything to the team since Harem can already do it all. The only benefit I can see is if she can make 5 teleporting copies of herself, and only one has to remain in contact with a Harem instance. And I guess the original would be the only one left if she let go?
No, Harem’s gestalt simply allowed Vahriah to ‘tag along’ when she *VORP*ed
Well, it’s not like she was holding her long enough to develop second copy of herself … that would take years …
Why would it take years?
Because it took years of power use for Daphne to manifest each duplicate for the first time.
Kind of concerned that not only has Varia blown her cover but also of every publicly known ARCHON member there as well. At least a few people in that club are bound to think that if she’s hanging out there, other ARCHON supers are also. If so alerted, they’re gonna try actively and consciously look for them among the crowd.
I would think that people who live near the Archon HQ would expect to see Archon members from time to time.
Oh dear…I know it’s fully repaired from the damage Sciona’s minions caused, but how well does the Veil hold up to people suspiciously eyeing every individual member of a crowd?
…Well, I suppose it had better be able to handle it or the Secret would have been out long ago…
So the black guy turns her into a Stone version of Colosus and the girl turns her into a literal Aquagirl. =P
Ummm… I think the far left form is Metal. I’d expect rock to be more angular.
The text at the bottom of the comic agrees with you, (although stone can be carved quite smooth and curved. Just look at almost any marble statue.)
To be fair, for awhile the comics classified any mutant who could turn their body into inorganic material as a “Colossus”.
That’s not stone.
Neither is the X’-Men’s Colossus, unless they’ve retconned his powers recently. He’s “Organic metal”.
I think you’re thinking of the Fantastic Four’s Thing.
Cancel. Sorry. I’m the one who failed to read something completely. No. She’s not some “Stone form of Colossus”. She’s practically Colossus.
Closer to Ironclad of the Ufoes. Definitely sexier though.
Ah, do the floor and sprinkler system also gain immunity to her powers?
She’s actually got a dangerous power to experiment with, with more than one person in the area. Suppose she touches somebody and gets a deadly area effect power, like breathing out nerve gas, or exploding like Marvel’s “Nitro”?
Well, one person besides Varia will be *fine*. So long as they keep touching her.
I would guess that each power has a bit of a start up time, rather than her going from 98.6 to human sized flame in an instant. I would also guess she knows better than to touch somebody who makes her into a human sized flame for long enough to heat the air up around her to 2192 degrees Fahrenheit when she’s standing under a sprinkler. Or in a crowd. So she probably stayed a yellow flame the first time for barely long enough for people to notice – but people of course notice when suddenly it feels a little warmer, and there’s a bright flash of light. The second time, she probably did it a little longer, but not *too* long.
People say things like “there’s no safe amount of lead to have that isn’t 0,” but these are people who measure things in parts per million. I’m not sure what the safe concentration for nerve gas you can breathe is, but there probably is one. It’s my impression from her response to touching Sydney that she probably normally gets some awareness of her power besides the obvious, because it feels unlikely to me that her power is *always* going to be showy, except for, as mentioned, Sydney. It’s just the times that Dave draws her touching someone, he feels the need to show her power visually, because that’s what one does in a comic. Also, she’s not getting Spidey Sense, because some of us would probably think she instead got Smelly Cheese Man’s power or something similar.
” I’m not sure what the safe concentration for nerve gas you can breathe is, but there probably is one.”
Absolutely is one. Consider that your typical insecticide is basically just a low end nerve gas, and humans don’t usually drop dead after spraying some hornets. VX, for instance, has an LD50 (Half those exposed would die.) of about 5mg to kill an average adult male.
The problem with a power like that one is that she probably wouldn’t realize what was going on until people started dropping.
Sure there is safe concentration … Botulinum toxin is deadly in amount of few nanograms. And now the winner: Polonium: Just seven trillionth of a gram of polonium is enough to kill any adult.
Gulf War Syndrome tracking should tell us about just how bad small wisps of nerve agents are. Although if the US kept records, they’re not telling.
Neonicotinoids work on insects and not humans, so it’s not always true that all of the nastiest ones are nerve agents for humans.
There were so many vectors out there that they will never be able to tell what was what.
A chemical mine did go off in the center lane of the breach through the berm going into Kuwait from Saudi Arabia but we were in MOPP4 for three days including that time.
The Saudi desert is full of wild gerbils which in turn are hopping with fleas. Who knows what those carry.
There were pills issued as a supposed defense for nerve agents, but they were untested and many personnel didn’t take them.
After the war many units on the Kuwait front sat in burning oil fields for months in a hellish twilight right out of Dante. It never got all the way dark, but it never got all the way daylight either. The gritty film from the burning oil was everywhere. It was in your hair, it covered your clothes your teeth, your toothbrush…your food. I recall getting tremors in the skin of my head.
I think we were living in an oily fog for two or three months after the ceasefire.
I had a stroke in 1993, about two years after we came home.
Excellent point – she’s potentially one of the most deadly members of the team, who knows what power any given villain or innocent bystander could trigger during a fight or just walking down the street.
Or speaking about radiation … which is invisible …
Has Varia tested her gestalt power with any of Cora’s crew? It would be interesting to see if it works with non-humans.
Excuse me, I believe you mean “gestalt powah”
Just for the record: that fire-effect looks frickin awesome.
Be glad that no one from Sydney’s group came and pulled her off the dance floor….
They wouldn’t, because while Varia touching someone wouldn’t blow their cover, them doing that would blow their cover. Varia could theoretically go clubbing alone. But anyone trying to re-cover her after she blew her cover like that would draw enough scrutiny that their disguises would not hold up
Ok one where did her clothes go in panels 2 and 5?
Two why didn’t he get burnt? Did she get instant control. Can’t effect the origin of her borrowed power. Or did it give him the ability to protect himself from the power.
Three what happens if she touches more than one at the same time.
One of the rules of her power – it doesn’t affect the person she’s currently keying off of.
In the post under the page, Dave clarifies that the people she touches are immune to the power they give to her. AS for what happens if she touches multiples people… In some cases, it’s not going to be possible, like if the power is harmful such as that fire form… Maybe her power blocks other contacts in some way? Like, for the metal or water form, the person touches her and that gives her the power, but for anybody touching her afterward it doesn’t count as “skin to skin” contact so she can only have one power at a time?
Apparently her powers don’t have a negative affect on the clothes she wears. The clothes transform in the way her body does, then revert back undamaged.
Are most of her forms elemental in nature? Then again, gaining psychic powers isn’t as visually impressive.
A lot depends on how wide a range Varia’s potential powers have. With over seven billion unique people in the world, one of them is bound to give her the power to transmute any fabric she touches into oxygen gas or something.
Seems like the clothes should be protected as-is or transform to something appropriate though, not just disappear completely.
The fire form seems to have a glowy aura come with it, which could simply be covering and/or shining through her clothes. There’s a suggestion of something similar with the water form, but it’s far less pronounced.
The really strange one is the apparent changes in her metal form. The clothes are still visible, but subtly changed – extra holes in the belt, far lower cups in the bra, and that’s just what we can see on-panel.
So uh, maybe her civilian wear should include gloves.
And turn her into Budget Rogue? No need for that, it’s not like she drains the person she touches
I was of the impression that Varia had more control over her powers. Maybe this incident was a surprise? And does she get a power from non-supers? This would imply that there are a lot of people who are potentially supers but their powers never quite develop.
As stated on her reveal page (linked above so not bothering), yes she does get powers from non-supers.
Thanks for that reminder, The fact that her power works with standard humans has some interesting implications.
Must make her sex life interesting.
…..or nonexistent.
Unless she finds just the right person.
She has made a reference to having had sex with multiple partners though (not at the same time) and it was implied she had sex with someone on base, close after the pool scene I think it was.
Unless she just brushed someone in the hall and got the same type of abrupt hair foof we see in panel 3. I’d think that her powers with any person not on the core team would be classified, and she wouldn’t be allowed to talk about random encounters (of any kind).
No, panel three is simply her powah turning off, not a separate powah
Yes, and in 3 & 4 we see that her hair is in much more disarray than in the first panel, due to the sudden fwoosh. Ergo, activation of her power can dramatically mess up her hairdo.
Panel three is her hair falling back down, panel four is her hair settling back into place, no more dishevelled than it would have been simply by dancing like a lunatic
The ramifications of her having sex, along with the transferal of various bodily fluids, must put a huge damper on her sex life. Because of a bit of “afterglow” effect that she should be having, due to the bits of DNA she may have acquired during the event. Minute flakes of skin in saliva, as a relatively g-rated example, would not dissipate on impact. Unless that were core to how the power worked, her immune system going into overdrive to fend off the “foreign” object, manifesting as these superhuman abilities.
Was it a character or a commenter who suggested that she have a ‘keyboard’
of skin samples so she could select desired powers?
There was a character (Sydney) who made a suggestion somewhat similar to that, but the way you described it sounds like a commenter taking Sydney’s suggestion a step further.
Sydney asked specifically about blood contact and if Varia could potentially carry an assortment of vials.
Which makes me wonder, do we know what happens if she touches a second or third person at once? Presumably she only has one “spell slot” and therefore nothing; if not she’d be unable to physically attack another super because her incoming fist would grant at least invulnerability to the new power, and possibly cross-immunity to both…?
Again, just because the one being punched may gain limited immunity to the new powah, doesn’t necessarily mean they gain immunity to the punch itself
But does it negate the power from the first… power donor*? A simple punch, even from a more-athletic-than-normal but non-super-strength person wouldn’t be more than a nuisance to most super villains (or supervillains).
* go donate regularly and save some lives!
Not all supers have strength or durability as their power, just look at Concretia: taken out by Peggy and a claymore (after taken her out with a bullet to the head)
What if the power the villain gained was Glassjawium or Glasscanonite?
True – we haven’t really seen any truly lame powers yet, but I suppose it would make sense that Archon wouldn’t be hiring any scrubs.
Depends on what the power is, just because it’s not a combat deployable power doesn’t mean it’s not something they could still use back at HQ
Lithograph Lad may not qualify for ARC-SWAT (unless he is built like a brick shithouse and punches like a mule kicks), butt he could be useful for making copies of crime-scenes, or simply copies of reports
https://leagueofcomicgeeks.com/comic/4304348/directory-to-a-nonexistent-universe-1
I gave my copy of this to my son when he graduated high school years ago.
It had some doozies.
“[Varia’s powah] Must make her sex life interesting.” – Fairportfan
Perhaps she’s just looking for the One. That person whose touch gives her Kawaii-vision, because she likes the cute. What, you were expecting a sex joke?
She does not share Sydney’s weakness to mittens
What one (Sydney) views as a weakness, the other (Vahriah) could view as a blessing
I don’t see the fried cheese though.
Was looking forward to some shenanigans with fried gooey and hot peppers…
I guess that comes into play when ms lurk six hands does her thing.
That’s because we don’t see Sydney
For a moment there, I though Varia was able to create duplicates of herself, like Harem.
I think Varia’s power could still be dangerous- imagine bumping into someone in a crowded elevator and turning into radioactive-flame (or something like that). The person you touched is immune, but not everyone else, and neither, presumably, are the surroundings. This isn’t normally that kind of comic, it just seems like it would be very easy to stumble into a “formative superhero moment”.
Kinda doubtful. All her powers seem internally based rather than affecting her environment.
Yeah a lot of her powers are Varia turning into other things because those are the easiest to show off. Like, if you gain the power to shoot Maxima-style energy-blasts, you can’t really see that until you actually shoot one and unless you’re already at a shooting-range that’s gonna cause some destruction.
But with literally billions of possible powers (even allowing for some overlap), and some of them suitable for combat presumably, it’s virtually impossible that none are dangerous to bystanders. And that’s assuming her power only works with humans- as another commenter pointed out it would be interesting to see what happens if Varia touched an alien. And we KNOW that they occasionally frequent nightclubs.
so, no one speak of Guile in the backgroud,,to ba there is no ryu so he can make sidney’s pun a reality!
He’s there to help provide appropriate music, don’t mention it though as it is a medical condition.
Thought it was Goose without his glasses, butt he would know all about Vahriah
The way his eyes are bugging out, made me think more “Math’s brother” (the hair isn’t quite right for Guile)
Math’s brothers are Algebra, Calculus, and Trigonometry. He also has two sisters: Statistics and Geometry.
Statistics dosn’t have many friends, because almost nobody REALLY understands how she works……..
I’ve met too many people who have chosen to sculpt their hair to look like some famous person they admire to think that a random white muscular blond flattop === Guile. Different people are different, but a lot of them choose to resemble other people.
But how many of them also shave their eyebrows like Guille do?
If you are going to go as far as looking like Guile, why stop at just the hair?
Somebody just found out she has groupies :D
I’m thinking that the “groupie” is another Archon member (suitably disguised). After that little “flame on” there’s no chance of keeping Varia’s presense low key, so might as well apply silver age rules and name her. Trying to cover it up would only lead to subpar sitcom humour, or (possible and) massive property damage. It’s how these things tend to work. :-)
We’ve never seen her before, and she certainly didn’t arrive with Sydney and Co
It is possible for someone to accidentally run into a groupie, just look at Tammy and Sydney
OOOOOOOooooooooh.
Your “taste” in “music” explains a lot about you. Not much of it flattering, but there you go.
And you didn’t think how he draws women would have explained things by now? o_O
It definitely explains how he’s gotten so much better at drawing butts
After “Club Oontz” I’m not surprised. We can’t all be into psychobilly and 70’s metal.
Anyone else notice how freaked Vahriah is looking in panel three? Has she had bad experiences with how people reacted to her in the past?
Kudos to that lady in blue… Wait, how do they know Vahriah is Arc-SWAT? She was never introduced during the initial press conference
We’ve had a couple months of time-skip. I’m sure they’ve had other press releases. And action figures. They can sell SO many different Varia figures!
Yep. Varia would definitely have gotten special attention in terms of publicizing.
Considering the phrase “collect them all” got Arianna so hot she needed to fan herself when it was in reference to replicas of seven spheres, a superhero with the potential to sell virtually limitless different variants of an action figure would potentially cause her to become severely dehydrated.
In some ways Sydney’s options fall into a better spot though – 7 colored nerf balls requires only a single, very boring design session and you can convince someone that 7 copies is a reasonable purchase.
Whereas getting a meaningful version of 100s of Varia would require a new design (or at least revising the accessories and color) for each one, and only a few OCD fanatics are going to shell out for all of them. It’s easy to sell a basic
PikachuVaria, but how many parents are going to get all 890 of them?… as if there would be WHERE to get them. Most shops will stop at 4 pokemons.
A more sane way to merchandise Varia’s powers would be to give her action figure some light piping, and then have a dial built into her back that moves various colored filters in front of the battery-operated LED in her torso so you can make her glow in a few different colors.
I can see that, along with at least a handful of accessories or decals for various basic types (similar to Pokemon types or the traditional 4 elements). That way you can still have some customization; in fact, people could do meet & greets with her at PR events and then buy the right figure and decal kit to customize it to their own power. Great momento and conversation piece, especially signed.
Oooh, nice idea!
^_^
Don’t even need filters. Just RGB LEDs and the knob varies the power to each color. Break it into 3 knobs or sliders, and you should be able to do the whole 16.7 million colors a monitor can produce. Put a couple bright LEDs in the torso, and transparent plastic bands through the arms/legs with a translucent surface, and you’d get nice even light stripes the run the full length of the body. Swap the controls for bluetooth and toss in a microcontroller, and you could even inject lighting programs, so you could have a flickery yellow/orange for “fire mode” and blue/green pulsing for “water mode” etc.
The “person she touches has immunity” thing is gonna bite her in the ass if she ever has to take down a villain solo…
Only if it’s a solo villain as well. Two villains? Touch one, blast the other. Grab the disabled villain, blast the first.
That’s assuming that she gets useful power from both of them of course. Is she gets the power to adjust her hair color at will, she’s going to have issues taking down one of the villains at least.
So Varia’s power works even with people who DON’T have powers of some kind themselves? I’d been assuming that that limitation applied…
It’s explained in this page: https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-324-she-should-put-all-those-answers-on-a-shirt/
What is Duke Nukem doing at a dance club? He strikes me as a more strip club type of person.
Naw, Duke’s into roleplaying games and scifi conventions:
http://thepunchlineismachismo.com/archives/comic/whos-to-say-duke-cant-have-hobbies
In my head, Bust A Groove is playing! We need Kelly, Hiro, and Frida in the next background shot dancing!
Kelly and Frida? Who are they? o_O
Kelly and Frida are characters from a Dancing game called Bust A Groove! On page 792 Dave drew Tamantha as another character from the same game named Shorty. I’m just hoping Dave would draw some cameo Characters cause it took me back!
I find it interesting that her tattoo remains no matter what her current form is. I wonder if there’s something about tattoo ink that causes that, if Varia has the ability to make it still show up no matter what, or if it’s visual shorthand for her that Dave puts in for the readers’ sake but isn’t actually present in the reality of the comic.
The tattoo design remains, butt it does change depending on the material she changes into, just like the mole on her left cheek
No it doesn’t. It’s the same, Maori-looking armband design on her left biceps in all forms.
I thougt that guy to the right was math in disguise. His eyes popping out as he sees that
varia wears no clothes in fire/water form
What happened to “the next page showing Sydney eating cheese”.
Inquiring minds want to know if the marinara was made with San Marzano tomatoes. yes the appetizers sounded more interesting than the dancers, I’m old.
/and for the record, no I did not recognize Varia and I did not find her in the cast. I read a LOT and watch a LOT nowadays, so except for current actives in the storyline, I don’t recognize the walk-ons.
Is that transformation not a giant issue during sex?
I mean it is not quite “Rogue” bad, where she could kill any partner. And from the Fire Form (and her not avoiding contact) we can see the transformation never directly hurts the – form donor?
But at the very least a transformation here could be annoying. And disrupt all the interesting neves and/our touch feelings.
The person she’s touching is immune to her power as long as she manifests it, and what kind of person never touches someone until they are actively engaging in coitus? That is freaky beyond Howie Mandel levels of “Can’t touch this”.
For those not aware Howie has a severe touching phobia.
well, it depends on the speed, and also the power and location.
Speed meaning, does the person lose immunity immediately / does he power instantly turn on and off. Might be bad if you went from touching to barely not touching and now being burned / zapped before you re-established the connection.
Do any of the powers (metal form, fire form) change her physically? less supple, more? Also, might be hard to get someone to go down on a literal fire crotch, even if it won’t effect you (or lick lightning, ice, a brick, etc). If nothing else, would just require more discussions about how such and such might go, partner needs to be prepared (maybe just close eyes until used to it, etc).
As for location, it depends on how here powers manifest around her. If her flame on form doesn’t hurt her, her clothes & the person she’s touching and their clothes, what about the bed, pillows, etc? Is it just a visual effect of what power she has (kind of an illusion) or actual fire?
Depends on transformation. I imagine the fire is one of the most problematic transformations for sex she has, but there would be plenty of men with different, less problematic transformations …
Took me a while to realize that the last panel was time-lapsed.
Same as the first panel
Because of Guile gawking backpanel, I can now nolonger hear her dancing to anything but Guiles Theme.
When did Varia become a public figure? She was not at the press conference.
its has been months of in comic time since then, sure Sdy skipped most of that time by time travel meaning so did we) but time did not stop for the rest of the team. they have gone and missions (thanks to harems knowledge of “future events”) and made names for themselves
Good choices, Dave.
For me it’s always been Zombie Nation by Kernkraft 400: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5LW07FTJbI
It’s all fun and games until some’s gestalt trigger-power is “the ability to spontaneously emit gamma radiation from every pore.”
They’ll be immune to it, sure, but what about everyone else?
No one mentioned that Metal Girl is doing The Robot?
Yes, that made me laugh.
I think this might be my favorite page in a while – been too long since we just saw some wacky superpowered slice-of-life hijinks, and Varia is one of the characters with a dangling plot thread that I’d like to see woven back in.
Also Kevin, the villains gallery from the initial news broadcast, Cooter…
She got the touch. She got the powah. Yeah
Recent News: Roxette Singer Marie Fredriksson Is Dead at 61 – The New …
https://www.nytimes.com › 2019/12/10 › arts › music › marie-fredriksson-ro…
6 days ago – Marie Fredriksson, the spiky-haired lead singer of Roxette, the Swedish pop duo that briefly ruled the American charts in the 1980s and ’90s …
Looking at the background (especially last panel) – just how big is this club?! The size of the people on the balcony suggest it’s hundreds of feet across, and while I get it might be a very popular club this appears to be the size of an event center main hall. Not into the club scene, maybe this is realistic…?
It’s a refurbished warehouse, they’re that big.
In the mid eighties I sometimes visited a discotheque in Tulsa this size when I would be home on leave.
I think it was called “Twenty First Century Electric Company”
I’m currently grooving on Paradelous (The soundtrack to the movie Redline) and Juno Reactor (Conga Fury is bad ass)… Good choices you posted though. My bookmarks are full of Electroswing and Psytrance offerings…
I wish somehow Caravan Palace could do a joint project with Melody Gardot.
Dunno what you would want it to sound like though, probably closer to Caravan’s usual stuff, as Melody’s musicians are broader based in the styles they normally perform.
I would like to hear Caravan Palace’s percussionist (the one that does the vibraphone numbers) together with that saxophonist Gardot has who studied under Stan Getz.
With your music recommendations, I thought this one might interest you.
https://soundcloud.com/kaminanda/feel-like-a-stranger-kaminanda-remix
I forget exactly how her power deals with multiple contacts, but it just 9ccurred to me that she would be super weak to any sort of grappling, since the grappler would be immune to her powers while in contact.
The grappler may be immune to the shared powah, butt are they immune to a punch to the throat or kick to the groin?