Grrl Power #820 – Action overreaction
Hopefully I drew Sydney’s grip and stance right. There seems to be a few different ways to hold a revolver, depending on how the back end of it is shaped I think. Anyway, that’s not really the point of the page. Also it looks like Sydney’s right arm is locked, but it could be bent slightly at the elbow, just bent away from the camera so you can’t really tell. Pretend it’s whichever you think is best. Let’s assume that Seneca actually instructed Sydney on how to shoot the thing without maiming herself, because Sydney in a wrist brace would severely limit her utility in any super action.
No matter how well educated Sydney is about shooting a big bang, she’s still going to throw herself back like a crash test dummy, because she’s Sydney. If I wanted to shock you all, I would have had her fire the gun, then calmly hand it to Seneca and say “Hmm, yes, I see what you mean about the kick.” Actually, I would have done that if I wanted to hint to you guys that Sydney got replaced by a doppleganger at some point, because there’s basically zero chance she would act all cool and collected after firing a big honking gun like that.
Yes, I remembered to draw hearing protection on everyone this page. I was planning on saying they’re all wearing those foam earplugs, but, eh. I would forget to draw those too.
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Sydney’s arms in the first panel look pretty much correct. Right elbow locked, left elbow slightly bent, fingers of left hand curled over the fingers of the right hand (except for trigger finger of course).
My only issue is the “BOOM” sound effect in panel 2 should be 3 times bigger.
BOOM on left margin vertically? Much bigger!
She’s using a fairly good Weaver stance with an autoloader grip,(yeah, she should use a revolver grip, but her duty weapon is an autoloader, so I guess this is what she learned), but her feet are out of position. Her right leg should be back about one foot length or a little more with her knee straight and locked. My S&W 629 taught me that this makes an amazing difference under heavy recoil!
As for the BOOM, well. she had muffs on until the gun when off, and I bet ArcSWAT gets top of the line noise cancelling range muffs.
Ah which website do I need so I can get to see that lower body detail?
I canmake a shrewd assessment that probably her feet were in the correct position at the time of firing, but that won’t stand up in court.
from panel 2
If her feet were right,it would have been hard to hold her shoulders that square to the target. She’s clearly flailing wildly in panel 2. No weapon she could lift would actually knock her off her feet like that, and DaveB said it’s a Sidneyesque overreaction in the title.
Looks like she’s using a modified Weaver stance, which should be better for soaking up recoil but the way she seems squared off to the target like an Isoceles might tend to destabilize her a bit and rock her back on her heels, especially given her low mass and strength.
Weaver works best when you’re angled a bit to the target with good foot placement, the bent weak elbow acts as a shock absorber to soak up some of the recoil while the straight strong arm gives the weapon something to recoil against which is useful for autos so you don’t end up with a ‘limp wrist’ jam.
The Weaver or Chapman are my preferred positions for deliberate shooting and they do work well if properly applied although I do shift a bit from the ‘textbook’ version, everyone’s built a little different and my elbows tend to rotate out instead of in.
For heavy recoil ‘bullseye’ target work or contact drills I modify the stance a bit and bring my off elbow down a lot and let the strong arm flex a little at the elbow to deflect the recoil to where I want it to go instead of straight back, I find it recovers faster…for me, anyone else’s mileage may vary considerably.
I, too, prefer the Weaver stance, though it seems most of the LE & CATM instructors are teaching A-Frame, because it’s works better with body armor (maximizes armor coverage, and minimizes arm impedence). Since Syd is a novice, I would’ve expected her to be in an A-Frame stance, irrespective of the potential for comedic knockback
I prefer to use the terrain and fire braced from cover.
Nothing wrong with the artificial limitations from competition shooting, but they no longer interest me.
It would have really sucked if Syd had caught the kickback in the face and broke her new Cora Glasses. I wonder what other bonus capabilities they have?
She also could have done a Martin Short from The Three Amigos.
Which I believe involved him flying across the room
I imagine those wouldn’t break even if hit with a bullet directly….
I suspect her Cora glasses could have taken a punch from a mere gunpowder-propelled firearm.
At least she didn’t clock herself in the face with it. That often happens when someone uses a too-large caliber and isn’t being taught how to shoot properly.
I fired one of those monsters some years back at a firing range. One shot. It was enough. I vividly remember stressing my muscles to make sure that the weapons recoil would have pull over my head instead of banging me in the forehead. It wasn’t nearly that bad. I think I controlled it so that it only pulled the gun up to a 45 degree angle.
On the other hand (heh), Sidney’s comment about feeling in her hand is entirely believable. I remember the effort of carefully disengaging the cylinder and placing the gun down in a safe position before I could step back and try to message the feeling back into my palm.
Im surprised seneca didnt burn her hand grabbing the gun by the barrel but for all I know they dont get hot like in movies with smoking guns. Did I mention how little I know about guns yet?
It’s a massive piece of metal. One bullet’s only going to bring that barrel up to warm. If Sydney’d emptied the cylinder then yes, it’d be a concern. Gun smoke is of course a thing because even if you’re using smokeless powder, burning propellant is hot. If you’re putting a lot of rounds through a gun quickly it can even cause thermal warping of your gun barrel that effects aim. That’s part of why you see multi-barrel arrangements like the Gatling gun.
Well like I said, most of what I know about guns are either from video games or movies/tv so when talking about guns, to quote Socrates, I only know that I know nothing :). Thanks for the info. I was thinking about how I’ve seen in movies where a guy shoot a minigun and when he stops the ends are hot. So that’s probably like a Gatling Gun :)
The explanation for why not is on the first page (in several different posts)
It’s learnin’ time for me!
One round isn’t going to heat it up enough to burn.
But you’re right in principal. In Basic when we had a chance to fire a .50 cal, it was locked down to the point where we couldn’t change the shot pattern at all. But after we all had a go at this useless exercise, we of course had to police up the brass. One recruit decided that grabbing the barrel of the rifle we had all just pumped ~20 rounds out of was a good idea. I yelled something that wasn’t a word, but it was too late. She got a nice burn on her hand to remind her that explosives are hot.
She was returned to our unit in the middle of the night while I was on guard duty. Being on guard duty in the middle of an exercise is like enforced sleep deprivation. I used my time on ‘guard’ duty to change, as we’d been in the field for a number of days and I was grungy. As I was naked in the woods the jeep with her and her escort arrived. I was luckily able to finish getting dressed before I had to challenge the arrivals…
I didnt understand a few of the terms you used. Mainly ‘police up the brass’ and ‘couldn’t change the shot pattern.’ But good to know that information. Also…. you were naked in the woods while on guard duty?
Most of what I gather from your post:
1 bullet fired = not that hot
20 bullets fired = AUGH I BURNED MY HAND. :)
“police up the brass” – ‘The brass’ part of that refers to the spent round casings. Policing it up refers to squatting down on the ground to pick up said casings.
“couldn’t change the shot pattern” means they had secured the .50 cal to the point where despite not hitting anywhere near the center of the target they had set up, there was no way for the user to adjust the aim. I guess the Army doesn’t want fresh recruits to be able to swing around a .50 cal for some silly reason…
And yes, I was naked in the woods while on guard duty. As I said, guard duty while on an exercise is just enforced sleep deprivation. The only point of it is to set the habit for possible combat missions. So yes, I was naked. For exactly the same amount of time that you are naked whenever you change clothes. Find me a better time to change clothes amidst all the marching and running and etc. during an exercise and I’ll get naked then instead. Since I had nothing better to do than change clothes while ‘guarding’ against the enemy attack that wasn’t going to happen, I picked that time.
Worth noting that when Peggy gets back and hears what happened, what she should do – what any competent rangemaster would do in this case – is put Seneca on report, strip her of RSO (Range Safety Officer) status, and probably bar her from the range for a while. Because what Seneca just did was program that flinch into Sydney so hard it will take weeks or months (Sydney doesn’t seem like a natural shooter) of retraining to remove.
I agree wholeheartedly with this.
To say nothing of the fact she’s encouraging horsing around on a live range. That’s when accidents happen. I get it’s a humorous comic, but Sydney has just negated any claim for people to take her seriously.
sydney? do you mean Seneca? the list of thing sydney has done to keep from being taken seriously is very very long. I’m sure there’s a list around here somewhere….
If this were reality, you’d have a point. In this reality, Sydney is so over-the-top adhd that under normal circumstances, she’d be prohibited by law from using anything more powerful than a water pistol.
Don’t forget, she just faced down *literal* planet destroying aliens, after being marooned on another planet. She’s got more firepower in the PP orb than most combat battalions.
She’ll be fine. It’s a worthwhile lesson.
With the firepower of her abilities, I think training a gun is unnecessary. It’s like teaching The Flash how to ride a motorcycle.
The reason for having firearms was explained the first time Sidney was at the shooting range (where she met Varia).
Plus it’s not all about acquiring the skill (which may be useful regardless of any powers). Training is about discipline, following orders, and working together as a group, which are just as important as weapons skills.
Yes, and those reasons were all about people like Maxima who can point a blast shooting finger at someone and have it not be intimidating. Sydney, on the other hand, can manifest a physical tentacle which is very much more visible than a firearm. And she can do so while being nigh-invunerably shielded. Unless she has a useless firearm in her primary hand, that is. For Sydney, a firearm is nothing but a liability, and so this insistence on training her to use one is stupid beyond belied.
It’s all about transferable skills, and working in “difficult terrain”.
There’s an ancient maxim, “Never bring a knife to a gun-fight.” It works the other way too: “Never bring a flame-thrower to a gun-fight.”
Let’s put Syddles et al in a likely scenario. We have a mall as youse call them in ‘Merrka, a shopping center in Oz. We have upwards of 2,000 people at any time, coming and going, say 400 odd in the major supermarket. And the cinemas are soon to finish the current screenings… A target-rich environment, yes? We also have a few loony-bins with strange ideas of their importance, and they’re waving firearms in the air. It is possible more than one of them may have super-abilities. They are not in a tight group, but seem to have some concept of cohesion.
So how would you have ArcSWAT deal with them?
Except of course if the target is not close.
Or when blazing fires resulting from shots missed together with splash effect fires from shots which hit are unacceptable.
Or if the goal is to avoid guns at all costs then Sydney could be regulated to fights in space and fights in deserts. Perhaps just make her a hand too tentacles combatant could work.
Me, I like tools and gadgets.
I want her to have…Dix’s gun from Sky Captain And The World Of Tomorrow.
Okay, I admit that doesn’t have much range, and it didn’t work half of the time. But damn it was cool.
Maybe if it was Sydney’s first experience with a firearm, except… it’s not, Sydney has already fired her regular firearm several times, this was to show what a real kick was and to realise the other was only a ‘hiccup’
Nah. Archon is atypical.:)
Good posture and best possible reaction to the kick given her size and strength. Glad she didn’t manage to clock herself in the face which is what most people do. Most of the time it’s your elbow that gives out first when dealing with a strong kick and the force of the gun turns it into a hinge to slam the top of the gun into your head. Also I forget, Is her instructor a super? Because that barrel should be HOT!!
I’ve fired several different kinds of Magnum weapon, and I’m a pretty big Veteran, so I can do so left or right handed, one handed. But, I also taught Rifle & Marksmanship. The carriage Sydney presents is acceptable, the grip looks a little awkward, but I didn’t notice anything until I saw your mention of it… except, that is one fine drawing of a weapon!
Missed opportunity with Seneca. She should be shooting an Astra.
No? No one? Okay, I’ll see my self out…
If you can’t put your firearm’s kick in perspective, Seneca’s Astra may be able to help.
Um, Halo’s not wearing hearing protection in panels 2, 4, or 5, and Seneca’s not wearing any in panel 5.
Halo’s hearing protection came off in panel two.
You can see it still hanging in the air just in front of the orbs.
And there was time for Seneca to take them off in Panels 3 and 4.
Seneca probably took it off so she could talk to Sydney.
Wow I can’t help this say this is funny also where did they get those things that they used to score Stickney? You knew they were waiting for it and wouldn’t the instructors can be burned and grabbing the barrel like that when the gun was released by Sydney when she jumped back?
Answers can be found on page one of the comments
Seneca’s hand must be super burned from grabbing that gun by the barrel after it was just shot.
Amazing how many people post without reading the forum first.
Honestly, the page layout doesn’t help. You have to scroll down to the bottom to find out that you’re not on page 1.
That has only been a problem for the last year or so, and even when it is still on the first page, people tend to not read others’ posts (and no, can’t blame it entirely on the fact sometimes posts take a few minutes to go through)
Many people are more interested in vomiting their thoughts into the public square than they are in engaging in intelligent discussion. It’s equivalent to people talking just because they like the sound of their own voice — they assume other people will enjoy it just as much.
one shot isn’t enough to make the barrel scalding hot.
Is it just me, or is Varia staring into the camera?
Her eyes don’t follow me.
And while she watches I can never be free.
Such good photography.
I’ll wait
Comic bullet time trajectory to now dent Cora’s ship or Round 2 with lighthook bracing.
Yeah, her stance is pretty much dead-on. Love the trail of dragon balls following along, BTW.
My own response to my first time firing a .460 was pretty much the way you imagined. The owner was blowing great big holes in the berm with it, and when I asked if I could try it(he’d gotten a few shots with my Garand earlier), he talked up the recoil, and how it was a wrist-breaker and he kinda didn’t like shooting it, yada,yada,yada… I dropped into stance and popped off two rounds like it was a Glock and handed it back to him. Dude looked at me like I’d just curled a small-block Chevy one-handed. If you’re prepared for the kick, it’s really not that bad. Being used to having my shoulder destroyed by ancient steel buttplates from the benighted reaches of Russia, it just didn’t faze me…
I guess its to prove the recoil of a revolver is much more brutal then then the recoil of a revolver, kinda glad that Sydney’s glasses didn’t go bust.
Those glasses were made by Cora, or her crew. They could probably survive a small fission grenade.
With the proper rail attachment she could use one of her orbs for an instantaneous moveable gun mount.
Actually, she could just wrap the light tentacle around her hand as a brace, too.
that’s Jiggawat?
what happened to her face, or hair? XD
Her hair has been that way for some time. She had a makeover sometime after the restaurant fight. It was like this by the time they fought the Fel.
Long answer: She’s been wearing her hair more natural since the pile-out scene during the Fel attack, but there’s still shading from the blond-ish highlights she had before. Her eyebrows are still the lighter color, and she’s still using the yellow lip gloss. She never had blonde/gold hair, so though earlier art seemed to suggest atypical hair color like Storm in the X-Men, it was just an affectation.
I’ve seen videos of women shooting guns that are way to big for their ability. the kick doesn’t knock them over. what happens is that the muzzle rise makes the gun flip out of their grip and it hits them in the face. when it comes to knowing your place getting hit in the face is a bit of a more brutal lesson.
I’ve seen grown men try guns that are too big for them all the way down to 9mm. I guess they did not know there place either?
correct!
You want recoil? Try firing an M79 against your shoulder with a marker round designed to just dent car bodies. A 12 Ga slug comes in at 1 to 1.5 ounces, the markers were 4 ounces. After a day at the range dropping markers at each distance I felt like I had just gone fifteen with Ali.
What? no response to firing marker rounds from a 40mm grenade launcher having a substantial recoil? I am dissapoint.
Years ago. Some church (more than one church) related youth groups decided no more handguns and only rifles during gun safety and other activities. They’d hand you a black powder muzzle loader that bruises you easily but never handguns. Reason is that some girl was using a handgun with recoil she couldn’t handle. She fired once, hands swung back over her shoulder, and in her disoriented shock, she squeezed the trigger again. Striking someone behind who later died.
I don’t see any real lesson here, other than *check this out*, at Sydney’s expense. She’d likely be issued a fire arm for her weight and frame that is less than a propellant for her. Especially as Maxima said before the gun is more a symbol of threat and a back up. In Sydney’s case unless an upgrade has a tactical low energy beam or stun setting; any firearm would be so she has an option that is less than Nth tech mini-nuke floating around her head that could decapitate Godzilla; or set everything on fire.
Its already been said, but this would likely have more negative repercussions for her range training than positive.
She… does have a fire arm for her weight and frame, as seen in panel five, this came about because Sydney tried to claim it had a ‘kick’ rather than a ‘hiccup’
Did you not see the previous page? o_O
Yes I know, she didn’t seem all that adamant about it and was using the general speech anyone not acquainted with guns would use, by calling it a kick. Giving her a go at several calibers higher just seems unnecessary and luckily didn’t cause a worse accident. It comes across less like, “Its not that bad, let’s work around it” and instead, “don’t be a sissy, want to see a real kick?”
Previous page her aim was slightly off because she was fighting the gun, and yes I’d have said “kick” as well as I am not a big gun enthusiast and far as I know that’s the only term for the kick back even if its a small one. Unless we want to say pull of the gun which doesn’t seem right. It was explained there with her making a fist rather than squeezing.
this much larger gun looks more like shits and giggles at Sydney’s expense than a training experience. Which I can see someone doing, even thinking this “tough love” approach of, “see it aint so bad, so stop being afraid of that little gun” despite not really giving the impression she was afraid of I; would work. But it can be taken wrongly and be counter productive. She might even over compensate MORE if somewhere deep down some part of her keeps expecting that bigger kick now when handling the smaller firearm. She doesn’t have the training experience (at all) to differentiate quickly. Hell if she did this little exercise would make even less sense.
The exercise is meant to give her a mental perspective on firearm power as she’s a total beginner.
And confidence in firing the F7
Holy yak-testes soup! Just found a clip of a real life Sydney firing a .454 Casull Taurus Raging Bull!!!!!
Did… did anyone at least check out the clip?
How To Have Fun In Spades!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
She was enjoying that. Alas, we didn’t get to see the target, but I’d venture a guess it had more than one hole in it…
And what sort of lunatic would stay around to find out anyway? “Do you feel lucky, punk?”
Considering she fired five rounds!
And did you notice the flash from the last round?
Actually there were also flashes from the 2nd & 3rd as well :)
I particularly liked the bent arms allowing her to just let the gun do its buckin’ bronco thang, but always under control.
The loudness and the smell are the two main reasons I dislike using firearms (yes, even with ear protection). But the kickback just feeling really weird is the other reason.
I’ll stick to crossbows, slingshots, and atlatl for ranged target practice. I’m not good with a regular bow and arrow).
There is a special place in hell for people who set up a new shooter with a big gun for the laughs. Yes most of the people in the room are bullet proof, have super reflexes or super something in this case. Still.. a SPECIAL place in hell.Her instructor needs a solid reprimand for a gross breach of judgement and ethics. I am not the most experienced firearm handler in the world but I guarantee you thats NOT the way to cure flinching.
Sydney, while not an experienced shooter, is not a new shooter!!!!
It was not to cure Sydney of her flinching, it was to show her that her little peashooter had more of a ‘hiccup’ than a ‘kick’
I can’t quite follow those good folks having a problem with Syd shooting the Big Girl’s Gun the first time. I remember my first with the Big Boy’s Rifle the first time.
Of course I’d been shooting for years with the Lee-Enfield Morris Tube, and the Mauser .22 single-shot lever action (very sweet!), and my dad had a Lithgow single-shot .22 as well, but then I was in Syd’s position, literally “Put up or shut up!”
The Morris Tube conversion was a complete bitch. It added at least 1lb to the weight of a SMLE MkIII, and could really only be used from a prone position. Smaller kids like myself were excused from the standing or kneeling positions. Bu-u-u-t, the SMLE MkIII was… terrifying. We truthfully did not want to know how smooth the action was, or the accuracy. I already knew to cuddle the butt into my shoulder, but the recoil and noise were brutal!
I did graduate that day to a standing position, but there was no way it was a pleasant picnic. However, in the next few weeks I could feel the authority growing: I had faced down the beast!
And that’s what Syd’s gonna feel. She faced the beast, and bit back, like on Planet Alari.
Can’t help but notice Sydney lost her earmuffs in every panel but #1 >.>
I mean, you can see the earmuffs stay in place in panel 2.
Yup, the earmuffs staid in place, Sydney didn’t :P
I noticed that also
Reminds me of the first time I fired my grandfather’s 12ga. Put me flat on my tail.
Can someone make a meme shot out of panel 4
I am now reminded of a Phoenix Wright game where it was literally a plot point that a big enough gun could have you break your dang wrist…
Also: Sydney made a mistake with her Wolverine power set idea…turns out, a good enough Medic means EVERYONE gets injured! And being the star, she, of course, gets injured the most!
I like the way Seneca’s appearance has evolved from when she first appeared. Jiggawatt too.
About 70% correct. Left hand should cup the the right, and bottom of pistol grip. Arms should be extended and not bent.
Her shooting instructor can correct those issues.
Google Weaver Stance, Images. For Ex;
https://media.cdn.lexipol.com/article-images/weaver3__1_.jpg
Did some instruction on Marksmanship(Pistol/Rifle)in the Marine Corps, Long time ago, and use a non-competition modified Weaver Stance today. Left arm tight to the body, left hand on/behind right elbow. Like firing from bench-rest.
shit… I wanna shoot this now.
I have a very small complaint. In picture one if the hammer is back (single action) the trigger should be close to the back of the trigger guard. In double action the hammer would be down and the trigger would be correct where it is.
I used to fire double-action revolvers using the single-action method (pulling the hammer back with thumb, then firing). I found it gave me better accuracy. (other’s mileage may vary)
But I don’t know where that put the trigger, ’cause I never looked at it from the side when I did that. lol
Something tells me if you gave Sydney a Tannerite target, she’d give more concentration to hitting the bull’s-eye.
For those superhero aficionados following the Cape High series, Book 26 is now out.
My dad once handed me a custom hunting pistol that (unbeknownst to me) fired 30.06 RIFLE ammo, when I was like, 13.
Bruised my forehead and was not fucking amused.
Of important note from the author’s commentary — Syndey threw herself back, the gun did not knock her over.
betting those glasses scanned gun and went ” WTF error” when it went off like even alien tech not expecting the power behind a hand cannon XD