Grrl Power #821 – Sydney falls on her brass
“Sydney’s been… downed by a gun.”
“You mean she’s been shot?”
“…No.”
I’m sure some people will ding Seneca for not being a lot stricter about range safety. The truth is Seneca is probably a bit too far removed from the basics to be instructing recruits. She cares about them hitting the targets and not each other. She’s also concerned about someone like Varia being able to shoot a supervillain in case there’s no useful gestalts around, so she’s prioritizing accuracy.
It turns out that most supervillains make for bad silhouettes. A few of them work well, like Galactus, but a lot of the ones that seem obvious are obscured by capes. Dr. Doom in silhouette is just a cloak. Magneto has a cape and a dome helmet. The quasi-Spartan cutout for the face is distinctive, but his outline looks the same as a dozen other guys.
For those wondering, Sydney’s lineup there is Darkseid (another guy with a dome helmet), Lady Doc Oc from Into the Spiderverse, (that one should be obvious hopefully) and Thanos… yet another dome head, though his minor redesign for the movies gave him a bit of a teardrop swoop on the back. I mean honestly, the silhouette of Darkseid and Thanos is basically the same. Granted, about 70% of both DC and Marvel’s major players were either designed by Jack Kirby, or people who were hugely influenced him.
I was going to have Sydney’s flip over the shelf thing include a flailing foot that caught the divider support and the whole thing to collapse, thereby earning an 8.5 from Varia. But I ran out of space.
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Very Sydney. It’s nice to know that humans never change.
… Sydney managed to John Wick herself with her own gun. That’s kind of impressive in how bad it is. Say goodbye to the glasses though.
I highly doubt Cora would make glasses that easily destructible. Also considering the nanotech that must exist within they probably could self repair.
Is Sydney’s safety meant to be off? Red means dead, and I’ll bet at this point she should know that. No way they let her out on that range otherwise, right?
I’m really hoping that’s an editing error, because otherwise, c’mon Sydney.
Red what? o_O
Panel 3, red dot above the trigger guard. That’s the safety, and if the dot is red, the safety is off.
Although considering her finger’s in the right position to toggle it in panel 5 while she clears the chamber, and we don’t see it again, I’m going to assume she engaged the safety before she flipped it into her face and fell into her spent brass.
Thank you
You nailed it cob’, and I’ve been staring at her finger (non)discipline for the last 15 minutes…
Pink rubber foam for you girl!
That’s how Seneca saw that Sidney was going to twirl her gun into the holster.
I actually didn’t notice that. Probably should fix it.
I’m not familiar with that particular sidearm, although I’d like to be, but possibly the safety can’t be applied with the slide locked back ?
That should cover you…that and it’s your world after all so things do what you want them to there ;)
Whoops, my bad, slide’s forward in that panel…
Maybe in this world, for that particular sidearm, the safety won’t go on unless the chamber’s loaded ?
We don’t see a cartridge ejecting when she works the slide…
So, possibly the loaded chamber indicator and safety are interconnected in this world ?
Stranger things have been made…
Try putting the safety on an AR type with the hammer down or a Browning Hi-power with the slide back…
It’s still a blatant Rule 1 violation. Not to mention the utter idiocy of gun twirling!
Instruction unclear. Twirled gun towards face instead of holster.
woooh very old nostalgia of the time she fell on a rock after the bank staged robery
In panel 6 all I can see is “Ehhhh, what’s up, Doc?”
That’s not a carrot…
And that is neither a rabbit nor a duck.
*pulls away last WANTED poster*
SENECA SEASON
*toot toot toot toot toot toot toot toot toot!*
“B-but no bullet craters!”
(Hint: a bit of arithmetic gets you an Oz hire-car company.)
Is that a beef jerky cameo I see?
Where? Where?
the uniformity of the holes makes it look more like a chocolate item from the uk called a curly wurly
Unless it’s covered in chocolate, nope, Neca has a sweet-jaw
Old candy bar from my youth: the “$100,000 bar”
Just looked it up, and… what Neca is eating looks nothing like the $100K Bar (not to be confuzzled with the ‘K-Bar’ candy)
Still around, they call it ‘100 Grand’ now.
It’s some kind of braided chocolate bar. I don’t think anyone in the US makes that so it must be an import.
I, too, thought it looked like a curly-wurly…
I’m not sure about the $100,000 bar, but in the U.S., the Marathon bar was the braided chocolate/caramel candy bar.
Wait, how can the Marathon bar also be the Snickers bar?
This kiwi is confuzzled (like that’s news)
Is the middle target Plava Laguna?
You need to read the blurb cobber.
@DaveB – a random thought occurred to me as I was reading your commentary, regarding Varia.
So, she can temporarily pick up powers from people/beings she touches. Involuntarily, as we have seen, and can potentially be pretty awkward depending upon context.
Can she touch a “normal” person to reset? It might not be just any normal person at random. It may be “normal” people, but perhaps a subset of the regular non-super population. As some beings have certain innate powers that she can access, some people have a “normal” setting by their nature of not having any powers. If Varia touches them, she might randomly get reset into a state of not having any power for that moment. Could be involuntary, and thus inconvenient at certain moments. But, also, she could “learn” that reset and implement it at need, or learn ow to let it happen if some “neutral” is nearby.
And then, to complete that thought as I was having it: if she touched Sydney (for example), might she absorb some of Sydney’s super-power of super-ADHD? Or ANY person’s/being’s innate ‘nature’ of chemical balance/imbalance, intelligence, mental stability/instability?
It just seems that her mimic/chameleon ability is the ‘nature’ of the being she physically touches. It occurs to me that it does not have to necessarily be a super/supernatural power. And, it doesn’t necessarily have to ALWAYS happen, there should probably be some cases where it doesn’t transfer. For Reasons.
Like I said. Random thoughts. No agenda beyond curiosity, and how I would design testing protocols around her ability to define & refine how to use it more effectively.
She… already ‘touched’ Sydney, results are still to be confirmed (don’t listen to the comments, they already have their own opinions)
And she gestalts with ‘non-super/naturals’ just the same
The only individual (so far) she can’t gestalt with, is Maxi, due to her ‘screwy skin’
My head-canon is that Varia gets no power unlock from Max because Max’s innate forcefield (which usually protects her clothes as well) prevents Varia actually touching her skin. Sort of like an invisible plastic wrap, the force and temperature of touching/grasping objects is transferred just fine, but there’s a microscopic gap maintained that means no actual contact.
We had a bit of an explanation when she was introduced. She, as of yet, have not found anyone that could not provide her with powers (possibly Sydney, but some theorize that Varia also gains the ability to control the Orbs). It was also explained that people that are close relatives gives off similar powers; I would like further explanation on this as if the Mum gives Fire power and the Dad gives Ice power, what power does she get when holding onto the child? Maxima doesn’t provide powers due to “screwy skin”.
There appears to be a slight misunderstanding of Varia’s powers. She does not ‘temporarily pick up’ powers from people she touches, but she gains an ability/transformation during the time she is touching them (and maybe until a moment after while it wears off).
As mentioned by the other comments, Varia’s power also works on regulars, super-naturals, and para-naturals (at least vampires).
Not only is there no need/time for her to ‘reset’, there are also no people, or at least no humans, that she could touch that don’t give her some kind of ability/transformation.
Maxima would be the only exception to that according to Varia’s own comments, but as we as the readers have seen the gold skin isn’t a natural side effect of Maxima’s powers and either that or her ‘telekinetic armor field’ is preventing Varia’s power from activating.
(By ‘telekinetic armor field’ I mean whatever it is that allows her to lift up cars without them breaking under their own weight, such as the ambulance back at the bank, and what keeps her clothes intact when she is standing in an explosion.)
That brings up the question of whether Varia’s powers are really all that useful. As soon as she lets go of whoever is giving her the powers, the powers start to shut down. Can she “hold onto” a particular transformation until she touches someone else, or is she a “Powers, but only when I’m touching someone else” type person? This means she really can’t rely on any particular power for any length of time. Let’s say she gains a power that lets her survive in space, but the person she has to touch to gain that power DOESN’T have that power. That makes it almost completely useless.
I think it could work somewhat with the same rules as Rogue’s powers. Early on in Rogue’s life, she couldn’t control the life/power drain, and she developed a mental block that actually prevented her from controlling her power. But after that mental block was removed and she actually practiced controlling her ability, she was able to control what she drained from someone, and how long she could hold onto the powers.
Varia might be the same way. She knows her power lets her get powers from basically anyone, but right now she hasn’t actually trained in how to completely control it, and it could be a mental block that prevents her from holding onto it for a certain amount of time.
Thank you. Comparing Varia to Rogue is mostly how I understand her. Obviously there are differences (such as NOT sucking out the life force of other people).
I guess I was assuming a bit too much ‘hang time’ with Varia after she stops touching someone else. I was under the impression she could use those other powers for ‘some undefined but short & finite time’ after she stopped touching someone. I expected it would be both useful and comically random as per required plot devices. Among other things, I was also thinking if she held onto someone for a longer period of time, she would assume “more” of whatever power(s) she was tapping, including use of and longer time.
And thus, my thinking she would need or could want to touch a “normal” to turn off a power that had become inconvenient or dangerous. Or maybe as a reset so she could assume a different power without some sort of innate conflict making things dangerous or otherwise inconvenient.
Damn. But I’d love a job in the testing division to evaluate and develop applications for super powers.
“[Varia] can temporarily pick up powers from people/beings she touches. […] Can she touch a “normal” person to reset?” – luis wu
It doesn’t appear to be a general case of ‘picking up part of the other person’s powers’: although there does appear to be something of the sort from Harem and potentially Halo, she also gets gestalt powers from ‘normal’ baseline Humans. That does not, however, exclude the possibility that some people ‘ground’ her back to an un-gestalted state rather than switching her into a different gestalt.
Alternatively, if DaveB wants to keep it phrased as ‘everybody gives her a gestalt power’ for sake of consistency, then the power from those people could be ‘is immune to transformation effects’, which would also allow a positive use of the ‘grounding’ to get out of a non-gestalt transformation. Or they give her something potentially useful but non-transformed, such as ‘understands all languages’, if later gestalts override current ones.
Honestly thought the one above Sydney’s head was a Judge (probably a Sov-Judge or maybe one of the Dark Judges), no distinctive shoulder-pads though…
I thought it was He-Man…
Can see that, sort of: Adam doesn’t have a collar though, does he? o_O
Two comics ago, we got a Galactus one. My first thought was wondering which version of the Cybermen it was based on. The old cosmic glutton didn’t even rate a mention. It all depends on which fandom you relate to.
The question is “Did you notice that she was aiming at a Darth Vader before they brought in the Galactus one?”
Because there was only Vader up there when she aimed, and Vader isn’t what came back.
Now there is another crossover I would like to see.
Waiting for the time Cora mentions to Dabbles (who naturally mentions it to Maxi) about upgrading Sydney’s glasses, who then proceeds to order Sydney back to Day One of training without her Space-Specs
May have just done that to herself [cue smashed glasses sounds]
I wouldn’t be surprised if the upgrade to them included better durability.
That said even modern earth glasses probably wouldn’t break from a hit that isn’t hard enough to break a nose (unless it hits it just wrong). Would scratch them up and/or bend the frames though.
[cue nanotech repair glasses sounds]
… actually, she MIGHT reveal those are not normal glasses by standing up with the glasses broken and letting others see how they are selfrepairing.
It might be that Cora simply didnt realize she’d be *upgrading* Sydney’s glasses. Maybe that’s just how specs work in her world…
Auto pairing Augmented-reality layer on the glasses. That’s just the way they are, no big. Oh wait, you don’t have that tech yet?
I’d have serious reservations about using a nano-fabber that couldn’t tell the difference between plain metal and glass (/polycarbonate), and an integrated AR weapons tracking system with a power source.
Your comment reminded me of Jason X, when the nanites that were only supposed to use a specific material to heal instead turned Jason part metal.
Because mixing up organic and inorganic is such a common mistake in nanotech based healing :P
And, dislike typing this, Sydney needs a Near-Parker moment to wipe that damn smug cocky grin off of her face
That tumble deserves a solid 8!
Just as I’ve always said, the only effective gun control is the control you have over the gun in your own hands.
Sydney let it get out of hand…
make her shoot 150 rounds per day everyday and I bet that not only would she get good but the shenanigans would settle down.
The easiest way to make kids (of all ages) not overly fascinated with guns is to make them boring.
First, 150 rounds is nothing. My dad and I used to blow through 1000+ rounds every Sunday afternoon when I was a teen. Second, this is Sydney. Shenanigans settling down is probably never happening no matter what.
Did you do it right after morning P.T. and did the weapon have to be cleaned well enough to pass the armorer’s inspection before you could turn it in, go shower, and then go eat? I don’t think that you quite understand how the military would use this as a disciplinary tool.
It’s like I’ve always said, the only effective gun control is the control you have over the gun in your oen hands.
Sydney let it get out of hand…
Ugh! At first, my comment didn’t display even after I’d gone to other websites, cleared my cache & reloaded this page. So I made the same comment & only NOW does it display BOTH of them at once…
Only 6 minutes is still only 6 minutes regardless of how many other sites you visit in that time. I’ve seen it take over 9 minutes. I generally intend to not re-post things that didn’t show up instantly for at least half an hour, although on this particular site I tend to post and forget. If it posts, great, if it doesn’t, whatever.
Yeah the caching thing that delays comments is on the server side so it doesn’t mater what you do as a user.
For me, have found it doesn’t post if someone else posts at the same time, not sure if that is the same with others, maybe more testing (from smarter people) is required
Yes, it seems to have problems accepting a post if it’s still processing one.
I’ll go out on a limb here {insert idiot cutting the branch behind himself} and say this is WordPress, which in my experience does need a lot of help, mostly a decent server with load-balancing. It’s amazing what WordPress can do if you give it a chance.
I’ll also acknowlege DaveB may not be able to afford the (often extortionate) charges for such a luxury.
Dave’s anti-spam filter can take a few minutes before it clears stuff, especially if Dave is still in bed when you are commenting.
Ahhhh… Are we waking DaveB every time we post late in his night-hours?
yes, yes you are
Happy DST Monday as applicable to all my virtual friends!
Please drive safely today!
(WELL, EVERY day obviously, but be extra careful today.)
Youse poor bastards :( The last time we had DST was so long ago the pollie who put it in for a “Three-year trial” (the lenngth of a Parliamentary term) has forgotten what Party he belonged to… That Party said goodbye to governance for about 12 years IIRC.
Actually, we have a permanent half-hour DST, as our reference longitude is so close to our Eastern border.
There’s a prized newspaper cutting in our State Library, about 1895 I think, of a prosperous gentleman coming out of court with a conviction for battery after having horse-whipped a politician who had neglected his electorate. The pollie did not contest the next election… Those were the days!
Can’t remember a time we didn’t have it, would have to ask the Elders
With all the hits to the face Sydney just gave herself I really hope those glasses are made of some kind of unbreakable alien space stuff ’cause I don’t see her getting a replacement for them anytime soon.
Why? she can go to the space station anytime she wants.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-784-how-to-lose-friends-with-alien-cuisine/
Except she didn’t buy them at a stall on Fracture, Cora custom-built them for her inside her ship.
im just gonna put this out there…https://www.bulkcandystore.com/curly-wurly-bar.html
For those in the country that considers America as their pants https://www.blackcatimporters.com/index.php?route=product/manufacturer/info&manufacturer_id=70
Or know that it is N S E & W of the states.
We had those here, many years ago, they were called ‘Wig-Wag’s and the TV ad boasted they were “three hands high”, and they were, which was pretty easy when most of it is open space…
If she hadn’t downed herself, Seneca should have kicked her over the shelf, just because of the missing gun handling discipline. At least that’s what my instructors would have done.
Or is this normal in Mercia?
No, in America the range supervisor would kick her out of the range for life. And if there wasn’t a supervisor the other people on the firing line would have kicked her ass. This kind of shit is not tolerated with something that can easily kill people.
I’m kinda hoping Sydney gets some kind of comeuppance about her carelessness with deadly objects soonish. It’s bad enough when she fools around with guns, but her orbs are a heck of a lot more dangerous and getting worse as she goes along. If she keeps this attitude and she DOESN’T get her a$$ kicked about it, there’ll be a moment when things will go horribly wrong for a lot of innocent bystanders, let alone our lovable/annoying heroine herself. Imagine her taking off at Mach 16 in the middle of New York because she was in a hurry and she forgot she could go that fast now! And that’s just one of the safer scenarios as she keeps leveling up.
Best-case scenario would be that her shield orb would absorb most of the shockwave’s energy, preventing widespread damage from a zero-to-Mach-16-in-roughly-zero-seconds takeoff. Previous panels argue against that, though, since Sydney cracked that Guile joke right before making a might “BOOM!” when passing Mach 1. If her shield were absorbing most of the energy, it would likely have been a muffled “boom,” if anything. That said, her new speed-boost left a bow-wave wake across the ocean surface she was skirting that suggested it was mostly from the air she was displacing, not the unholy shock wave even the streamlined bubble she was projecting would have created while she was going ~12,276 miles per hour (assuming relatively equal air pressure at sea level on Sciona’s planet and Earth).
tl;dr: not sure how big a shockwave Sydney creates. When you’re repping Nth-level tech, the laws of physics are more like suggestions, yo.
It would seem her shield only absorbs/deflects external forces. So if Syd takes off at Mach 16 (we’ll assume she bubbled up first!) she will leave a sonic boom from ground level up to cruising altitude.
What you saw over water was simply displaced air. The sonic boom is itself only displaced air, as is the music you hear from {insert instrument here}.
Nth-level tech depends on science exactly as our human-level tech. Only the terminally insane are in a position to treat the laws of physics as suggestions. Even in Grrl Power Universe.
Most certainly not. The vast majority of “Gun Nuts” I’ve met would have absolutely lost their minds if someone did this at their gun range.
The stereotypical “Gun Crazy ‘Murican” is just that. A stereotype.
While I’m sure it was drawn for us to see the action, the fact that her clearing the weapon had her flagging every person to her left would’ve gotten her tackled by a range safety most places I’ve served at. Never point a weapon at something you’re not intending to shoot(even Sydney got that part of the speech on her first day and questioned why Maxima was allowed to). She probably forgot, as I’ve seen plenty of people in Basic have to get the muscle memory of keeping the weapon pointed downrange until getting to a clearing barrel practically forcibly taught to them…and he’s, I have seen an idiot flagging everyone else with his (blank loaded) rifle get tackled.
For a bit of info as to how range safety works at the highest levels of elite troops… They basically grab whatever weapon and ammo they want that is available, usually the one they will take into the field, and they shoot their target. Each person is a range safety person in their own right and they all are very accurate and trust each other, so it’s a bit more lax. There could be one person shooting a target from 50m line while another grabs a smg/pistol and walks downrange towards the target to train “advancing engagement” while his buddy is still shooting targets next to him. It sounds dangerous – and it is unless you’re trained for it. But it’s cool.
More like adorkableness, I guess.
Magazine ejected and chamber cleared or not that stunt would get her kicked out of any supervised gun range in the world. Rule number one of gun safety is to treat the gun as if it’s always loaded. It doesn’t matter if there’s a chamber lock on the thing so that it’s physically impossible for it to be loaded, it’s loaded.
Mind you, I’ve never been in the military, but something tells me they’d be even less tolerant of horseplay with guns than my dad and all his gun club buddies were when they were teaching me.
You’d be 100% right in that assumption. I got kicked out of the range in basic because I yawned a little too hard (meaning at all) while standing up. Pity, by the time basic was over, I could field strip and reassemble an M161A with my eyes closed. Just never got to shoot it! XD
One of her best scenes has Sydney pointing that fact out to Peggy, when Maxima does it. So she had to know and should get some kind of punishment detail for it.
Her grouping on Thanos’ hand is perfect.
The lone Sydney shot the Cosmic Cube right out of Thanos’ hand.
He’s already plotting how next time he’ll make a glove…
It’s probably meant to hint at the gems and tell us that it is Thanos, but it’s well documented in dissections of actual shootings that in the real world, in many contact situations, people do tend to fixate on the weapon in their opponent’s hand and direct their fire at it ( ‘aim’ just isn’t there ) instead of ‘centre of mass’, even trained military/LEO can end up doing this, especially in the first encounter with an armed adversary.
The two-way range has a completely different set of rules.
Not entirely a bad thing, if you hit the weapon, but accuracy usually goes out the window with the adrenaline surge, along with fine motor control, and that 2″ group at the range turns into a ‘at least the bullets went away from me’ spray and the smaller the target the more likely the miss.
Not in all cases, certainly not, and the proverbial “practice, practice, practice” can make the aim-squeeze-recover so instinctive that it works 60% of the time every time but trying to shoot faster than the other guy when they’re moving and you are too is a heckuva lot harder than it looks.
Paper targets don’t shoot back and self preservation does tend to add a little more urgency to the task.
There’s a big difference between a well-lit range with targets at known distances and a scene lit up by flashing blue and red lights, in the rain, at night.
Seeing as Sydney is effectively blind without her glasses, I’d suggest she talk her alien buddies into a second pair or at least contacts :)
Actually, it has been established that Sydney only needs her glasses for reading.
Having been held up at gunpoint I can confirm that it is difficult to pull your focus away from the gun barrel that you are literally looking down. I was able to give the police officer a very detailed description of the gun, including the brand name that was on the side of the barrel. I can still remember what the end of the barrel looked like in crystal-clear detail, and the robbery happen over a quarter of a century ago.
I have also had to pull a gun on someone who was in the process of pulling a knife on me during an attempted retail store robbery. I had no problem focusing on their center of mass, but they were on the other side of a store counter with their hand partway out of their pants wrapped around a knife handle, so it was a bit easier to focus on training and logic rather than what turned out to be a 10 inch long boning knife (considering he had it taped to his left leg and drew it out of his pants right-handed, he’s lucky it wasn’t a “de-boning” knife, as it were). I am also sincerely glad that I didn’t end up involved in actual gunfire on either occasion, and profoundly grateful that I’ve never had to discharge a weapon into or at a person.
To be fair, when Thor went for center of mass with his new hammer, it turned out to be a big mistake. “Should have gone for the head.”
Look closer: Her grouping on the hand is off as she only hit three of the six targets. Whoever made that sheet thought to put targets around where the stones would be.
There are also targets on Lady Ock’s tentacles (and Sydney managed to score in at least one of them, possibly even both)
*checks* Nah, looks like neither tentacle grabby claw was hit.
Oh, yes, just zoomed in and it was the tentacly-grabby finger-bits thought was a hit on our right (thought Sydney had hit just below the centre circle). Did hit her square between the eyes though and only missed four times
Hitting three of the Infinity Stones is still good shooting :)
Sure, hide the alien monitoring device implanted in your glasses. Not like you have access to classified data, is it? This is how the hackers win. I remember an engineer in the factory I worked at once came in on Saturday overtime to cover our two man rule requirement, didn’t have anything to do, sat in the office and found a illegal site on the internet that let him download something to watch the grand prix.
It’s sad how much of security comes down to people ignoring training and (what should be) common sense. Just scatter a few shiny USB drives with Stuxnet around a nuclear facility, and you can destroy millions of dollars of equipment. Or get spyware onto a competitor’s system, or whatever. Just wave a shiny new bauble in front of people and they stop thinking and put listening devices inside their own homes.
In a podcast I listen to, someone mentioned that they were doing a security related audit for a critical infrastructure. They found some traces of peer-to-peer traffic going to the control room. Same reason, staff just had do monitor things and got bored, wanted some entertainment.
The proposed solution to this is to give them another computer that has internet, but no connection to the critical devices. Just to make sure that they get the entertainment they need for their boring work.
But back to the topic: I don’t think that there’s a device on the planet that lets you hack Sydney’s glasses. Alien technology from Cora is just too advanced to be vulnerable by our systems.
There is. Her name is Krona. Also, possibly one of Sydney’s balls would be able to.
(Also, yes: it doesn’t matter how hard the punishment would be, bored enough people eventually WILL find way to get entertainment, and it’s MUCH better to give them some in way you can control. If you just tighten the security on computers, they find way how to get entertained without them and you will get harassment suits.)
Ok, if that’s your benchmark for device security, then every tool of Dabbler is affected, too.
By the way, I don’t think that Krona herself is a threat, just the existence of her abilities and the possibility that someone else may also have something alike. On the other hand, does someone like Krona really need those glasses to access classified data? If you think about it, ARC Light might have a lot of work just to raise the security measures against all those new threats.
Ah, my geek cred is shot to hell, only one I didn’t get was Lady Oc, but then, I havent read a comic since the 90s.
Yeah, always treat your firearm as if it is loaded, even when you know it isn’t. That includes any funny ideas to preform vaudevillian juggling acts with it.
To be fair she’s from an animated movie (and a very delightful one)
She was from the comics first. Early Scarlet Spider if i recall right. My older brother is an avid comic collector. lot of his first stuff he picked up as a teen was Mid-to-late 90s and 2000s Spiderman and Green Lantern. Even had the entire Marvel vs DC and following Amalgam series comics.
Sadly, havent seen as many of those as I’d like either. Begs the question tho, why are so many DC animanted shows and movies so freakin’ awesome, but the majority of their live action features are just *utter garbage*.
Of course, your mileage may vary.
Maybe because the animation doesn’t have to deal with ego (executive mainly) because the DC big-shots think animation is for children so the guy behind Batman was mostly ignored (he was the guy who gave the world Harley Quinn remember)
And they didn’t have a Kevin Feige to oversee everything (if he was English, he should have been giving a Knighthood by now :D )
Sydney’s gun fell apart and she’ll have to assemble…again!!!
What is Seneca to do???
Into the spider-verse was WAY better at silhouettes for every character compared to the standard comic book.
I totally whiffed on that one. I saw cobra commander on the left and shredder on the right.
in fairness, they do have similar shaped head armor. And Shredder HAS hulked out before.
She got off lucky! Guns are NOT toys!
RO should slap her down, put her on report and Arrianna should dock her ALL accrued pay to date.
Then deny her any food other than watery unseasoned corn meal mush for a month.
If I was the RO, Syd would have been disarmed and brigged for that crap.
If you think it can not hurt anybody, it has not been used by Sydney.
Reminds me of one of my favorite sayings, “Nothing is fool-proof, never underestimate the ingenuity of a fool.”
↑This‼️↑
Has anyone mentioned Sydney’s other range violation… Sydney has managed to stumble into no man’s land on a live gun range…
Treat every weapon like it’s loaded… that’s literally the first of the 4 basic safety rules. Sydney should be running laps… as well as everyone that allowed her to do that.
Seneca just lost her range maser privileges. EVERY GUN IS LOADED ESPECIALLY WHEN YOU JUST CLEARED IT!
We established that the FIRST time they were at the range!
Would the Balad of Irving be appropriate at this juncture?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_aKkzq27Hl4
@Elfguy:
I hear that the slot for 142nd fastest gun in the west has recently opened up…
Oh, Sydney… if you only practice with your enhanced glasses… what are you going to do if they break again?
Assistive devices are fine, but you gotta be prepared to do without then if you physically can, in an unforeseen situation
In theory, if she shoots the same gun often enough with the glasses, she should become a decent point shooter. But she’ll still be lousy at ranges where you need the sights.
Props to Seneca for spotting Sydney’s intentions fast enough to stop her spinning a live weapon like an idiot. Clearly they’re all perfectly happy to let her get it out of her system after the weapon is cleared though. While as others already pointed out – extensively – this should never be allowed in real life, I can see the culture within Archon being okay with a little goofing around.
I like the look Seneca gives her in panel 6 – “oh it can’t hurt anyone huh? Go ahead and get it out of your system, dumb dumb, then maybe you can take this seriously.”
I THINK that the gun was empty at that point (as she just finished shooting). Now, playing with gun you THINK is not loaded is still dangerous (as multiple people already pointed out), but not AS dangerous as playing with live weapon.
Erm, DEAD wrong. Ever heard of a bloke by the name of Murphy? FWIW, my dad (WO II most of the time when not acting WO I) had at least 3 true tales of soldiers who tried to look down the sharp end of the barrel to see if it was clean… without first removing the bolt…
That is why the only approved method is to (1) eject the magazine, (2) eject from the chamber, (3) apply the safety and (4) holster it.
Firearms are NOT toys.
Any weapon that was not just cleared by the one holding it should be considered live. Even if it’s been sitting innocently on the table since someone else put it down clear while you watched. Even if someone else cleared it and then handed it over. One should clear a weapon every single time they pick it up (or treat it as loaded and ready), if only to build the habit.
But even aside from good safety practice, the slide is closed and the magazine inserted in panels 2 & 3. The super-majority of semi-auto pistol designs* lock the slide open after the last round is fired.** Not sure what official police/military training is, but those I have shot (including officers and ex-military) with nearly all leave the slide open until they are ready to insert a fresh mag or clean and store the weapon.
That said, it’s rare to set a weapon down until you’ve emptied the magazine, especially at a range (unless you’re specifically vacating your space and leaving the weapon for another shooter – somewhat common with costly ammo). So I’m willing to give her the benefit of the doubt on whether it’s actually loaded since she may have closed the slide.
Also, I too know people who have scars from shooting themselves while cleaning or mishandling an “empty” weapon. As well as one genius missing part of a fingertip from deliberately putting their finger “next to” the end of the barrel “to see what it felt like to have a bullet just barely miss me.”
* at least speaking from experience/anecdote, not mfg statistics so I could be off. Brief research indicates the FN does have a slide lock that does this. The point is part safety, but mostly to indicate to the shooter that they need to reload (which is critical for enforcement to be aware of in live fire conditions).
** Inserting a fresh magazine may automatically release and close the slide (and chamber the first round), depending on the design. I’m less certain about whether initiating slide release this way is the norm, but I know it exists and is at least common. Tangentially, some designs won’t release the hammer either unless there is a magazine inserted (empty or loaded, doesn’t matter).
Ahem…
“Not sure what official police/military training is, but those I have shot (including officers and ex-military) …”
Really?
lol should’ve moved the “with” in front of the parentheses. I’ve gone paint-balling with a number of them too though, so I suppose it’s technically not inaccurate as written. :D
Wait, why is there any targeting on Thanos’s chest? I thought it was well established that “you should have gone for the head’.
That movie knowledge hasn’t been learnt yet
Seneca should make Syd practice all the shooting and safety drills for a few hours as punishment… with an airsoft replica of the 5.7 gun. :3
I find it strange that there are so many people fussing about proper range discipline in the context of a comedic superhero comic. Do people react like this to other media that doesn’t take guns seriously, and I just haven’t noticed? This comic does put the reader commentary in an unusually accessible place, and it gets more traffic than most of the comment sections I have seen on other webcomics. But I’ve never seen or heard so much demand for accurate portrayals of anything gun-related in any other context.
Sydney creates a silliness field so strong it penetrates the fourth wall.
I think that might be what the brown orb does.
Actually, yeah, I kinda do. My theory on it is that fictional characters doing dumb shit with guns consequence free in media contributes to real people doing dumb shit with guns in real life, which in turn gets people killed. So when I see a fictional character do something dumb with guns I tend to point it out, be it in a web comic or a movie.
In its own way, this can be considered “teaching material”. Hopefully some of it will stick :)
Agreed; as Peggy put it, most people must unlearn what they have learned from the movies when it comes to firearms.
I think the people complaining are selling a fiction too. “that stunt would get her kicked out of any supervised gun range in the world” is hyperbolic and unlikely to be uniformly true. People obviously horse around with guns, even on “supervised gun ranges” because the times that goes poorly for them tend to end up on the news.
I think it’s funny that both extremes of the gun debate want to paint gun users as a bunch of identical clones. One side wants to pretend that they’re all responsible, disciplined, and “law-abiding”, who would never hurt anyone who didn’t deserve it, while the other side wants to pretend that anyone with a gun is a dangerous lunatic.
It’s not hyperbolic at all. The only way to get away with a stunt like that on a supervised range is to not be seen doing it, and she was doing it right in front of the range supervisor. The whole point of range supervisors is to keep people from doing dumb shit that is going to get people killed. The cases you’re talking about are examples of the supervisor either not doing their job or dealing with someone else.
My point is that not all range supervisors are going to be “doing their job”, as you put it. There’s a no true scotsman fallacy lurking somewhere here, with people claiming that things are universally a certain way, and all exceptions somehow don’t count. I think it highly likely that there are ranges somewhere in the world where the range supervisor lets people get away with stunts, because it hasn’t resulted in an accident in their range yet.
And, possibly, because the people at the range are adults who know the risks, not babies who cry because they tripped over their own shoelaces and then have their mummies and daddies sue the manufacturers of the shoes and the laces for ‘allowing’ it to happen
To be fair, this comic does try to inject realism into topics like this. See Maxima’s various pieces of advice to Sydney on her first day at Archon. The problem with that is DaveB himself doesn’t have the encyclopedic knowledge of firearms needed to do so flawlessly.