Grrl Power #829 – Spilling news
Hmm, looks like Anvil’s master plan might be interrupted by this little development.
C.C. St. Claire’s show Macroeconomics is one of those little specialized news shows that probably has a fairly small audience, but Deus likes it because it usually features deep dives on complex topics, and doesn’t rely on sound bites or angry aging white men yelling at each other. That and he’s probably trying to get C.C. in bed. There are much more prominent venues for him to tease out little nuggets like he’s doing here, but he doesn’t care about his social media presence at this moment. He knows the right people will be listening.
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Sounds like Deus managed to reverse engineer the Geode Water that gave Max her powers. I wouldn’t put it past Deus to spike the Galytn water supply in order to induce a bumper crop of supers.
It was mentioned though by DaveB on the next page that Max was a super in her own right, just whatever was in the ‘geode water’ changed or amplified her powers to unmatched levels. There also wasn’t any of that left in the geode by the time it was found, assuming Deus was being honest in that conversation.
Yeah, and that also clearly was not a geode. That was an alien SOMETHING.
Wouldn’t it be interesting if that “geode” was originally discovered in Gayltn? One might think that it could pique the interest of a certain industrious individual to that specific landlocked country.
But if he could replicate, even to a much lesser extent, a power activator/amplifier then he could make active supers out of people who would have lived their whole lives without realizing they had powers.
Either that or he went the easy route of just hiring super-mercs around the world on the down-low and then claiming they were all native citizens.
Or he found a country with an unusually high level of super power production, but it wasn’t showing through at the world stage due to abject poverty and endless strife from local warlords. So he set out years ago to stabilize the country and improve quality of life to let the factor(s) that produce Supers to blossom in the population.
It depends on why you think he chose Gayltn in the first place – random chance, any place would do because he had other knowledge, or Gayltn already had something special and he recognized it?
This may be my favorite take so far. We already know he picked the country specifically for its potential, both economic and political, but there are several third-world (outdated as that term / perception is) countries that could have worked for his purposes. One with abnormally high percentages of supers would be the icing on the cake.
Oops that was a follow-up talk, this is the one I meant to link about how almost no third-world countries still exist as we think of them in the western world.
Yah. The “almost no” translates to “just one“, and unfortunately I live in it.
How on earth can you get a Prime Minister who says “Australians don’t need a fast internet”? Where does “Build more wider roads!” translate to “Better transport options”? How does a maritime nation prosper if we cannot even build ships?
I wouldn’t either. I also wouldn’t expect him to advertise it like this without it being part of some larger plan that ARCHON won’t enjoy being part of…
Sounds like that’s what he wants Max and Archon to think anyway. More likely he’s equipping people with low profile technology from his offworld shopping trips.
Given that we last saw him shopping for alien tech before the Alari returned, this seems most plausible – just laying a cover for using the tech in the open. He may have even had inside info from Harem, and accelerated existing plans in the 2-month “missing Halo” timeframe to prepare to receive Alari refugees.
That would be brilliant- let people believe its magic when it’s his smuggled alien tech – he could use it without needing to reverse engineer everything.
I bet he just imported all the supers he can find with good job offers
“Must be something in the water” is almost certainly just hyperbole. First, it’s an old saying; second, Deus is (probably) not dumb enough to give away his method of creating supers.
It was bound to happen. You can bet the USA and other govt are researching that big time.
Oh, I’ve seen arms races before, certain people will be frothing at the mouth to figure out how to make Supers,or at least how to track them down…
“at least how to track them down…”
Maybe if the government asked the supers to agree to be registered. What could be the harm in that?
The sarcasm is thick with this one.
As you say, learn history or repeat it.
To the surprise of no one Arianna are IMMEDIATELY on the phone to the top brass
Top Brass? Nope, she’s talking to her media unit. “I want a full briefing on Galyton, both politically, economically, ans socially. I want to know if theirs any evidence they do have more supers than anyone else, and I want talking points, and media strategies so WE own the news cycle should this go public.” (Inhale) “Oh, and talk to the military and get them to keep us in the loop just in case we have to spin a super war.”
Ten times the super population per capita as compared to WHAT?
I assume US/Europe, as they already have higher super population than average.
Compared to the natural occurrence of supers in the population. Statistically, if you rounded up a random group of people from anywhere on the planet, a specific percentage of them are going to be supers.
Deus is saying that if you grabbed a random group of people from his little country, you’re going to find ten times as many supers. A statistical anomaly.
Globally supers are somewhere between 1 in 900,000 to 1 in 1,000,000. Developed countries apparently skew a bit better than that average. Galtyn is a very recently developed country, but Deus apparently has found a way to boost Galtyn’s ratio of supers to 1 in 90,000 to 1 in 100,000.
Reference: https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-145-lets-talk-numbers/
Those numbers were before the Restaurant Ruckus, when more Supers showed up than Archon believed was in the entire US
At 1 per 1,000,000 that would still translate to 330 supers in the US. Many more than were at the battle of the restaurant parking lot. As one of the supers was a teleporter it would have been easy enough pull supers from all over.
Portaller. Harem is a teleporter, Deus’ new transportation specialist is a portaller.
Indeed. It’s possibly that Galytn has the same percentage of super as any other country, it’s just that Dues is actively searching for them rather than seeing how many pop up. It’s also possible he’s trolling, “10 times the super population per capita” is a very weird (and possibly meaningless) measurement that could be used to imply anything the speaker wanted.
Possibly some of that he has enabled him to find the supers that already exist, or amplify them. Going forward I foresee Deus being able to control supers with his tech, even Max, with only Sydney’s orbs to stop him. He’s clearly obsessed with Max, so even if he just goes after her only Sydney will stand a real chance, and would be the point person of any response.
Dabbler can also fight her to a draw using lightning, and both Hiro and Anvil would be similarly useful in a vs Maxima fight as Halo
I’m guessing other countries? America has gone public with the existence of Supers, maybe some of the additional information paperwork included rough Super population numbers? Or maybe Deus’s superpower is knowledge, as some people think. Including Daniel the Human. And I’ve learned to follow his lead, just don’t tell him that…
from the context of the conversation, i’m going to presume it’s compared to their neighbours.
Compared to their neighbours who are mad about Galytn’s border expansion
I seem to recall that he has half of a VERY SPECIAL geode… a geode that was at one time filled with some very fancy water that made for a very shiny Max…
So… Super-Serum, Magic Ritual or Breeding Program?
Good pay, pension funds and dental plan.
Who knew that all this time, good public healthcare and welfare was what gave people superpowers? No wonder the capitalist elite are so deadset against it….
The UK has been meaning to bring it up but we don’t want to brag.
Never underestimate good employee benefits when it comes to doing better on the recruiting front. I suspect he also has a very high signing bonus up front to attract the interest of supers from all over.
I’m just sitting here thinking “Maybe he makes them feel welcome and offers a competitive career path”?
That’s my guess: There are few enough supers that you don’t need a breeding program to have ten times as many per capita. You just need a recruiting program.
Offering asylum (or just a job) to wandering supers.
MY money is on importing aliens in disguise as supers
Even with the mostly humanoid aliens we’ve seen so far (Dabbler, Greenie, everyone on Fracture) this would be a hard sell with the extra scrutiny on any disguises. Except that Archon already presented Dabbler as having a “battle form”*, so he could hand-wave that away. You may be on to something.
*Alien existence is in the open now, wonder if they’ve admitted Dabbs is one publicly or just assumed it’s an open secret now.
Did you miss the part just before the Fel ship attacked, when Cora and Dabbler were holding a press conference talking about aliens and galactic society, and in reference to the “battle form” claim Dabbler literally said “I can’t believe you guys bought that”?
I had completely forgotten that line, thanks.
He either knows how to make supers… or he knows where to find them & has the money to hire them. Which is the easiest to believe?
Both? He has money, but also half of the Max-Be-Shiney geode. Daniel the Human points out Deus has already said he’s analyzed the geode, found some hard to explain as Earthling microbes, it’s not impossible he figured out how to make Super-Juice…
Also just noticed that anvil is spilling wine all over her dress
Close, but not over her dress. Down inside her cleavage.
The news blew the date anyway.
I would happily help her clean up that wine.
Turns out Anvil has a drinking problem, and Dave’s just lampshading it with the title.
Anvil: “I don’t have a drinking problem! I drink, clothes fall off, I fall down (onto bed) No problem!”
Halo: “But did the bed survive you falling on it?”
It’s been a while since the resident evil villian, er, Max’s boyfriend, uhm, wealthy capitalistic scum, dang it, rich guy of ill repute has graced us with his X-scared face.
Or stalker, depending on your point of view.
You make supers by paying them to emigrate to your pocket country, obviously.
He’s certainly implying he knows how to make supers. But supers are currently rare enough that a man with Deus’ resources could easily just pay enough supers to move into a small country to have ten times as many per capita as its larger neighbors.
This one gets it
And the one above
I mean, we certainly know he had at least a half dozen of them on his payroll. And whatever Valerie is. Still terrifying.
Valeur, not Valerie :P
Yeah, my take on it was closer to ‘he has a bunch of supers on his payroll to boost his military power’ than ‘he can stimulate supers’. Though that would make the ‘something in the water’ comment a red herring.
As someone else said, it was bait (and he’s Master at it ;) ) to get Maxi’s attention
Ah yes, but… Without diving into the racist cesspool, at least 80% of Deus’/Galtyn’s “invited” supers do have to be obviously Africans, to avoid the very problems the deposed ruler mentioned: the “apparent” take-over of a small nation by a rich and powerful economy.
The “Drink me” program would deliver the necessary believability, at a reasonable profit margin. As long as Deus avoids the arrogant capitalism of Vought International, everybody (in Galtyn) wins. Of course, Deus does know he needs a “Stop” program for those supers who can’t quite toe the line…
You really believe SmugD gives a crap about what some dead genocidal worm-factory thinks?
Cap’n Obvious.
I just haven’t had the time or inclination to roust out the quotes, but they are real and were heavily referenced in analyses of Robert Mugabe’s takeover of Zimbabwe in ’87, and his vilification and expulsion of white farmers. They were also referenced in the film “Black Panther” (2018).
Mum came from Rhodesia, fortunately she and her kids managed to leave in in the early 60’s, she still had family living there during the Bush Rapes
Do not let Mugabe or his murderous fanatics trick you other wise: before Rhodes and his people arrived there (fleeing the English from the south) there was no country called Zimbabwe!! There may have been some ruins with that name, butt no one knows anything about them
The land Rhodes was giving were completely worthless scrubland, he and his people turned it in the ‘Bread Basket of Africa’, and they treated everyone well (until interfering outsiders came along and fucked things up). Within two years of Mugabe’s ‘liberation’, the Bread Basket was irretrievably broken
Yeah, that was probably more than you ever wanted to know, just when people bring up that arsehole and the false name with out knowing the full story always pisses me off into ‘rant mode’
Pay enough to get them to move there _and fight unnecessary wars_ for him. Remember, this is how he explains his nation’s expanding borders. I can see that being prohibitively expensive _because_ supers are rare and in high demand.
Well that’s bait.
And’s a Master Baiter
Is it really surprising? Stop overthinking it: he has simply rounded up all those involved in the Restaurant Ruckus and had them shipped over to Doucheistan
The surprise is that he’s publicizing it. He must be even more self-assured than I thought. And will he even bother to present a justification for border expansion, or does he not care if the world sees him as a villain?
Well it was a tiny tinpot dictatorship and those do not grow in isolation.
The odds are the neighbours are just as bad and deserving of a good smack-down.
With that the local populace would be more than fine on being on the other side of the border without having to actually move.
That isn’t actually true, is it?
North Korea is a tin-pot dictatorship – does this imply that it’s allowed to invade South Korea?
Was Iraq entitled to invade Kuwait?
The Nazis were surrounded by democracies. Was it OK for them to invade them?
You seem to know little of Africa – which is of course the second largest continent, with democracies all over the place.
“border expansions”
So he has a population of advanced alien refugees, probably the ability to make supers(unless this is a gambit to provoke an overreaction to some end) and is actively conquering atleast parts of the neighboring countries?
Yeah this is probably something you want to stomp on fast, because it WILL spiral out of control if you let it.
Maybe not spiral, as I noted earlier, bad neighbourhoods are bad and cleaning up a tire fire is something nobody wants to do and nobody but a few special people will try and stop you from doing it. Sure as heck the locals won’t mind.
It will be the other nefarious types running small countries that will be screaming for UN intervention because they see their own heads heading for the chopping block if things continue.
It’s not the neighbors being conquered you have to worry about. It’s the expansionist country with centuries-advanced technology and the ability to mass produce supers having time to get established and build up enough to threaten the rest of the world.
I picture Arianna going full on HU:A Integra trying to get someone on the phone.
That’s either bait, or Deus is an idiot. I’m betting on the former.
Nope, it’s both
Never underestimate your opponent or your enemy. Looks can be deceiving.” – Sun Tzu.
Certainly his ego plays a big part in the comment, but only someone with little to no experience in complex strategics would assume Deus is an idiot.
No, his personality defines him as being an idiot, not his intellect
Was Deus looking at the camera when he said that?
Daniel here. There is another option nobody seems to be considering – Deus’s “ten times the Super population” might just be be nothing but hot air. And I don’t mean he’s MAKING Supers or hiring & IMPORTING Supers (neither of which which I’m ruling out either), I mean he could be completely bluffing. He’s puppet master of a rapidly developing African nation, which just had an Alien spaceship land in their backyard, he could just be going “stay away, I have a Mcguffin” until he actually sures up their defenses enough. I believe it was Sun Tsu who wrote something along the lines of “what you are preparing for war, appear as if you’re not. If you’re not prepared for war, MAKE IT APPEAR YOU ARE…”
Doesn’t necessarily mean he can make supers. It can also mean Deus can entice them enough with cash and other benefits to move there and work for him. Like after the big ARCHON brawl, several involved and arrested supers reappeared later as his employees.
…Well. This could be a problem.
While I’m not even remotely close to being well versed on comic book lore, I can’t think of a single superhero story (that I’m aware) where attempting to mass-produce supers didn’t go wrong at some point.
The only way to expand your borders, is by taking land from others, and cereally doubt his neighbours did it willingly
Everywhere else in the Universe, that is an act of aggression, and he has just publically put the message out: “Try and stop me!”
Of course, just maybe it’s not so much Galtyn expanding its borders, so much as Galtyn’s neighbours are contracting theirs as a result of Galtyn’s super-powered push-back to, ahhh… ingression.
Daniel here. It could also be a case of either the borders were highly blurred/pushed in by the war the previous leader/dictator was fighting, and now he’s solidified them. Potentially in “his” country’s favour, but hey, it was a border war, if you got the momentum, many would lock down their baseline & then give themselves some more room to move/prepare themselves…
Granted, we don’t know how those borders came about in the first place, or how recently. Maybe the Galytn perspective is that they’re reclaiming stolen land.
This is very likely – https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-393-deus-uses-develop-country-its-super-effective/
It could also be that he took over Galytn *because* it has anomalously many supers and he wanted to find oit why.
This is my favorite take on it. We know that industrial countries have a higher level of super-power occurrence in its population. Deus took an interest in Galytn years ago for SOME reason, and has been working hard to lift the country out of poverty. If he analyzed their population and realized that, with development and time, it would become a Super-Power Superpower – I love it.
Arianna must be calling the TV station to demand they pull that program off the air or is it something else?
What? And draw even more attention to it? The Streisand Effect is in full force at this point.
Much more likely talking to ArcDARK.
@DaveB may I congratulate Deus on the Eldridge knot, it’s exactly what I would expect lol.
Yes that’s my takeaway haha
ArcDARK-Is it kind of like the MIB!? They even have their own mind wiping devices?
From the Wiki we learn that “ArcDARK is responsible for covert activities including intelligence gathering.” We know that “X” is one of the agents.
And it is possible they do have mind-wiping devices.
Oops. Proofreader failure. Please insert a / after “gathering.”
Sorry.
And it turns out the water there just has something that Supers find delicious. And thus want to stay. Spending big bucks on tourism, get them that taste.
I liked the idea of Deus being… *mostly* unrelated to the super stuff. A concurrent plotline, that would undoubtedly merge with the super stuff with time but not be deep into the super mechanics.
HOWEVER, DEUS YOU MAGNIFICENT BASTARD. With lustrous hair.
I’m rooting for two possibilities. One, he’s lying. His tech, artifacts (notably from the vault we saw him do shopping in), and/or whatever he bought on the Fracture (this wretched hive of scum and villainy), allow him to fake it. Two, he specifically chose Galytn to rule ove- I mean, develop infrastructure in, because of that extra super stuff. If that’s true, I don’t think he’s studying it. I think he knows why and how it happened already, even if that is just a statistical aberration.
Not “make”, “find and recruit”. We’ve even seen this on camera.
The only thing to say after Deus’ comment is
DUN dun DUUUUUNNNNNNN!!!!
Theory #1 – ALien Gear is medical replicator/modifier tech and lab material to produce whatever serum. Not warp tech.
This lets him scan supers DNA and other materials in them and make more of the same. Or create boosters to maximize human potential and maybe add in some alien DNA to enhance them. Being more than human would equal superhuman.
Theory #2 – Geode and alien tech finds remnants of the juice and uses that to enhance humans that have minimal super powers into a lot more than they should have.
Theory #3 – He has clone tech from aliens…cloning supers means more supers. He’d have to have training tech and aging tech to decant them at various ages of superpowers.
Theory#4 – he has a HUGE library of Super DNA (especially those he’s slept with already). This lets him map out powers and build custom supers or recreate originals even if not fully equal to them. Having a library of set powers he can build into a hero would make for very dangerous powersets.
That or he’s offered immigration to a shit load of supers to back his emerging nation. Bonuses of alien tech, upgrades, super suits etc…
How many of his supers are just support types? ie Gearheads…using alien enhancements and tech to make earth tech like it’s never been seen before. ie artificial sparks?
I am very interested in where Dave B goes with this and if genie gets out of the bottle and someone steals or leaks how the new supers were made… and balance is restored by someone more villainous than DEUS…who makes custom counter villains to all known heroes… or a multipowered hero killer.
#5: he’s lying.
#6: he has a very big super hiring program.
#7: he has good taxing systems for supers.
#8: he has a magic school and fills magic users as supers.
Also if he can make supers or boost humans… WHAT will he have done to himself to make him smarter, faster, stronger more resilient (And a better lover) than everyone else? I suppose this is his wildcard…
By the way, my knowledge of Tudor (or early modern) English is somewhat fuzzy (it’s been a few decades since I needed it), but I’ll still attest that Anvils attempt at it is just a bit wrong. Thy is possessive adjective, Thou is nominative subject. And “Dothn’t: as a contraction of “Doth Not” fails as early modern english had no contractions and you want Dost (2nd person) not Doth (3rd person) anyway.
So, “Thou dost not want to protest too much”
Now write it one hundred times or I’ll chop your (something sensitive and preferably left unchopped) off! :-) :-) :-)
Verily.
Though harsh be the accent of thine foreign tongue, without falsehood is thy meaning found.
This is why the comment section is the best part of almost any web comic.
And here’s me thinking she was just lusht…
:)
Ah, there’s the smoking gnu! Tasty.
Deus is looking a bit off model in panel 6 and 7. The face seems bit long?
I swear Deus is getting uglier with the newer art style. Or maybe it’s just him.
He does seem a lot more angular, somewhat Krytenesque.
Come on Dave, it’s not like Deus is some kind of wildebeest or anything.
A theory I’m not seeing here: Is Deus counting his alien refugees, and do they (or a percentage thereof) count as “supers”?
Am I missing something, or is his scar gone?
No, scar is still there, just less boldly there…
Nooo! Don’t extinct the gnus! We need them to compile code!
Didn’t gnus go out with a clang?
That sounds suspiciously like he is very tax nice to supers.
The Alari had blood magic as an option and he may simply have found that one of the refugees is happy to “power up” the natives of this world to help offset the cost of hosting them…
you know if Harem leaked Sciona’s bloodmagic that made her super…with all the other alari you do well have a point…
Which nations are missing their supers or who have suffered major blood and memory losses recently?
IS no one going to comment on Anvil/Kenya pouring her wine down her chest in the last panel?
No.
No we are not.
Now shush and enjoy the wine.
She’s either surprised, or watching Deus has… overheated her.