Grrl Power #877 – Ray tracing amputation
Yes, Dabbler has a gun that fires backstab rounds. (See panel 2 if you didn’t notice.)
Yes, yes, I’ve talked before about how people with fake limbs get them chopped off all the time. Well, Cora grew up with all limbs being fake, and she’s used to throwing them in the way of incoming damage to protect her meatier bits. I know, it’s impolite to use the phrase “meatier bits” when talking about a girl. She’ll get over it.
If Dabbler and Cora seems a little bloodthirsty, try to think of them as characters from ARPGs. Dabbler would fit right in with the Diablo/Path of Exile crowd. Cora’s more of a… hmm. There aren’t a lot of really good gun based ARPGs are there? Although, honestly, the Alien/Zombie Shooter games, while very cheap feeling, are pretty dang fun, especially when you realize the first minigun you buy is a real sissy weapon compared to the late game stuff. Like the minigun missile launcher and the one that’s like a machine railgun or whatever.
Dabbler is adjusting to the “try not to go lethal with your opening move” mandate. Cora probably needs to be reminded about that. That said… these alien mercs aren’t American citizens, and don’t have any sort of diplomatic representation, so they’d be okay with wasting these guys, looting them, then kicking their bodies down into the sewer when no one is looking. Really they’re just used to gunning down alien mercs out of reflex.
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Ok come ON Sydney… space wizard the mercenaries!
The PPO is the very definition of superior firepower.
Sydney may not have noticed this yet as well as the others. I personally think the sword lady needs to encounter Achilles as he will not doubt entertain her for quite some time.
As well as murdering the MANY innocent civilians in the immediate area including alien tourists, locals, and anyone in the surrounding buildings of times square. The PPO cuts through and then sets off a secondary explosion effect on what it cut into.
Her shield stopping the immobilizer ray by expanding around Maxima or being used to shield up all the innocent bystanders while the others fight is a better use of her time.
The PPO is overkill here. All she needs to do is encapsulate herself and Maxima in the shield while restraining the the mercenaries with the tentacle orb. That’s not even using 0.1% of her power and likely wouldn’t attract much attention except from entities who recognize the orbs… of course any recording devices in the hands of tourists will have to be confiscated so the Kaiju Squidards don’t find out.
something tells me the world breakers who look like giant versions of the Fel only big and significantly more powerful probably aren’t the social media types.
My best guess is given the Alari expansionist mindset, and their use of thralls and magic, they probably either opened a portal with the wrong blood address and accidentally invaded a stygian hellscape, or they went after a world whose high priests could call upon their “old ones” to descend from the stars and strike down their enemies
(PS: Cthulhu and his kin were aliens originally who went to war with the elder things and were sealed away by the elder gods who didn’t like them mucking up the Earth *although that might be mixing Lovecraft and August Derelith’s stuff together…)
anywho, if they are that class of being it makes sense they’d recognize Nth tech and react to it as an immediate threat seeing it on the world they came down to, to avenge their worshippers wronged by the Alari.
America should call NATO.
This’s a literal alien attack and an attack on one is an attack on all.
You might argue that Archon can easily have them, but we know they’ve vastly superior technology have prepared for Archon, while Archon didn’t get the time and info to prepare for them and they’re already with four, so non-precalculated supers or militaries could really help shift the odds to their favor.
*the USA
Sconia was a challenge(to a certain level they even lost) and only one trained alien marine with preparation time.
This’re at least four trained mercenaries with prepartation time and a pretty clear view of their enemy.
It isn’t really an “Alien Attack” it is Alien criminals attacking and attempting to kidnap someone. You don’t call NATO on individuals. This isn’t an act of War unless it is found those Aliens are acting on behalf of a government, and with what they said, they are much more likely to be indipendent.
Good point.
Call Interpol…
Um, it really is. Maxima is US military service personnel. When ya F*ck with Marines/Army/Navy (list goes on) you are very much involving a military level reaction. Combine that with the fact that they are taking a WWMD (walking weapon of mass destruction) and there will be brown pants level calls for action.
Cora, “Real talk honey, you should know when you haven’t hit a vital spot that you are about to receive a hit in several.”
Crime against a serving soldier by a civilian? At most you’d call Pixel as the ARC equivalent of Leroy Jethro Gibbs.
It’s more piracy than an act of war. Which, yes, the US could call NATO in on.
If we wanted to delay the response for days to weeks waiting for the various NATO nations to get their forces mobilized in play. By the time that NATO can possibly get into play, these criminals will be various flavors of incarcerated, incinerated, or in the wind, where “in the wind” refers to the vacuum of interstellar spaceways where, oh look, NATO doesn’t have the capacity to pursue.
If NATO were ten times better organized for rapid deployment, where the ball could get rolling with a simple phone call and a sitrep rather than hours, days, or weeks of politicians talking about it, then this whole thing would still be over before the phone call ended. And that would be getting-planes-on-the-tarmarc rolling, not assets-arriving-on-site rolling.
And then to top it all off… from a political or PR side, that is exactly the wrong call. NATO is for responding to military- (or quasi-military-) threats. Do high-tech criminals meet the power threshold where they might be considered a military-grade threat? Maybe. Is it a good PR move to paint them that way? Hell no. The right move is to treat this as a law-enforcement situation, not a military one. Otherwise the dumber half of America will be demanding we go to war with an intergalactic community that outnumbers, outguns, and out-everythings us, while we make believe we can just ignore all those problems if we chant U-S-A loud enough while waving little American flags.
Hey, in my country we’re really proud of that one squad that can react within 24 hours on any location of the world. XD good point.
Ayy that sounds indeed like a problem.
Even calling the cops is the wrong thing here. The fight has already started, so even if the police arrive in 5 minutes, it will all be over by then. The people that are on the scene are the only ones who can actually do anything to stop the actual crime. This is true in real life as well Thankfully the people on this scene are supers.
Also, the people on the scene are cops.
Not sure I’d go quite so far as that. The Baseline-Human NYC cops may not have the tech to go toe-to-toe with the Capture Crew, but they do have the numbers and the expertise for crowd control of the surrounding civilians (both Human and otherwise). They also have the local knowledge and accreditation to assist with clearing the scene once the big-hitters of ARC have taken care of the Crew. The fight may or may not be over by the time the cops can respond in effective numbers, but ARC loses nothing by starting that process running sooner rather than later.
Do you really think that a NATO response will be faster than what the US can bring to bear on its own soil? Did we call NATO to help us on 9/11 when the scope of the attack hadn’t been determined yet?
Hint: The answer is ‘no.’
And yes, NATO allies helped us in both Iraq and Afghanistan, but that wasn’t until months after 9/11 and a lot of diplomatic leaning on the smaller NATO partners so the US could point to the joint force and say “See? Not a US attack on Islamic nations! No crusade to see here, this is a broad coalition of nations!”
Yes, for some reason, NATO partners didn’t believe in Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). Thought they were just propaganda, an excuse for the USA to invade a country. Pretended they had their own agents in Iraq and had fully checked this out.
And their faces were so red, when the invading army found WMD everywhere. Oh no, wait a minute …
Even today, some USAians still don’t understand what happened back then. The whole ISIS catastrophe was a direct result of the lies told then, and the incompetence of the Bush government before and after the attack on Iraq. So many brave young Americans have given their lives or been maimed needlessly in Iraq and Afghanistan – for zero benefit, except GOP political gain.
We didn’t believe in them because they didn’t exist. It was an exscuse to secure the oil fields.
Well, either that, or the US freaked out wondering where all the WMDs they gave to Iraq in the first place went.
Also, @#$%ing net lag, didn’t mean to double post.
Yeah, pay no attention to those mobile chemical labs. Those were clearly for…something else. And all those truck caravans that headed to Syria right after the WMDs thing hit the news were…carrying pool toys, yeah! And those cannisters of Sarin gas that were found were just museum exibits!
Really? The “mobile chemical labs” was an invention. The sarin gas containers which were found in Iraq years after the invasion were both not used by the Iraqis and not fit for use. The were part of the removal of Iraqi WMD in accordance the terms accepted by Hussein, but were left undestroyed due to some combination of errors, not any deliberate attempt to hide them.
Don’t be a tool, a simple Google search and choosing a news source which isn’t FOX or some other right wing lie manufacturer would tell you the facts of this matter.
I read a book written by an ex cia operative on the WMD thing, the very person who wrote the report about the presence or absence of WMDs there.
The book was long and redacted, and she spent a lot of time on some african yellow cake scandal, but fact of the matter is, intelligence had photos of two things: enormous aluminum tubes, and trucks equipped to grow biological warfare agents. There was never any nuclear weapons, but biological warfare is still a war crime.
The aluminum tubes nobody could decide whether they were missile bodies, uranium centrifuges, or drainage pipe, so those are a bit of a red herring.
So, at the end of the day, we retaliated against a foreign power who was openly antagonistic, has an ideology that believes in our total downfall, sanctioned 9/11 or recruited the guys, and had biological WMDs (against the geneva convention, you know) and were general assholes.
We would have been justified in attacking them even without the WMDs, I just wish they hadn’t passed the patriot act.
Was bush wrong? Yes. Was america right? Mostly. Is ayatollah Khomeini an asshole who legalized suicide bombers? Most definitely. I’m not saying it’s a good thing, but neither the “right” nor the “left” has the full picture covered by their narrative, truth is in fact stranger than fiction.
funny thing is Khomeini was basically put in power BY the states due to that shit they pulled with installing the Shah after toppling Iran’s democratic government in the 70s.
Also, invading on SUSPICIION of WMDs isn’t the same as “They have WMDs!”
the only thing Saddam used WMD-ish wise during that entire war was Chlorine Gas, which is frankly kinda hard to ban because you can get enough of it to be lethal from any Swimming pool.
Fun fact, btw. Most of the Terrorists you’re talking about? Saudi Arabia. Not Iran. US just won’t touch them because they’re allies.
Exactly. Many current problems in the Middle East are linked to destructive USA interference, over many decades. It’s why the USA is so hated in the area.
Saudi Arabians are the number one driving force for Islamist terrorism. Saudi wealth has driven hardline fundamentalist Islam for decades. 17 of the 19 terrorists in 9/11 were Saudis, and so was Osama Bin Ladin and most of Al Qaeda.
Yet Bush attacked Iraq instead. And that created the Islamic State (ISIS).
Not just the Middle East, USA has spent the last several decades destabilising regions all over the world, either because the country doesn’t like the US, or they have resources the US wants but can’t have, and then they cry when the new leaders not only hate the US even more, they will actually fight back
9/11 was the first time (not counting Hawaii) that there has been a foreign-lead attack on US soil in, what, 150-200 years? And US has had it’s troops in countless countries during that same period
It’s basically like when a bully finally faces someone willing to punch them in the nose, they won’t hit that person, they will find someone else to take their anger out on (after crying to the nearest adult first)
Saddam was bluffing that he had WMDs. That obviously backfired!
But also the UK Govt massively exaggerated the evidence to justify taking action.
The aluminium tubes in question were, as I recall, anodised. In other words, they were almost completely useless for purposes of refining uranium. Definitely not centrifuges. As the experts told the CIA when Iraq was found to be buying the tubes in the first place, before the invasion happened.
(Also, do you know what nation has an ideology harmful to the American people, trained & supplied weapons to Bin Laden and his troops, and a long history of war crimes that they refuse to so much as recognise, much less answer for? The United States of America)
Why I like the Marvel Civil War Comic, first time around.
Cap makes an excellent argument about WHY registering Superheroes is a bad idea, and pretty much the first major point is “The government starts telling us who the supervillains are.”
Course, my absolute favorite part of that is when Tony tries to guilt Emma Frost into siding the X-emen with him by bringing up Stamford (which had a death toll of about 3-400), and she basically just stares him down and says “Where were you when Genosha burned?” (which had a population of about 13 MILLION) Basically like comparing September 11th to the Holocaust. Both horrific….. but there’s no way in hell 9/11 is remotely even in the same ballpark of a tragedy.
Correct. They were in violation of the Gulf War 1 armistice by firing at us literally every week for years, and we would not have needed any international agreement to roll over them for that alone.
You literally called that backwards. Due to Saddam’s propaganda efforts, everyone thought Iraq had WMDs, including the other Iraqi generals. Each general thought the generals on their left and right had them.
And they *did* have massive stockpiles of WMDs, but they were locked up where they were supposed to be.
It’s no one’s fault but Saddam Hussein that he was effective in his false intelligence efforts..
This, exactly. Even at the time I remember reading that French intelligence (The U.S. great power ally most opposed to the Iraq War) actually agreed that Saddam had a WMD program, the disagreement was over whether or not it was a big enough threat to actually do anything about.
Turns out everyone was wrong and Saddam was just an excellent liar.
In any case, Saddam was a tin-pot psychopath, and the world is objectively better off without him in power. Pity the Iraqis decided to waste the opportunity they were given by killing each other for no good reason, but hey, you can’t win ’em all.
Not faster. I hoped for extra fire power later in the battle.
Since Cora’s limbs are “hard light” constructs, I would imagine she can reset them nearly instantly.
Limbs? I assume torso and a lot of additions considering the Naga form she had at one point. She can go lightsaber on them and have Arianna screaming at the top of her lungs to “not call it that!”
I thought The Terran and the Succubus was the book title for Mork and Mindy?
Upvote. Yes , I know there are no upvotes on this forum. Still…upvote!
Ah, Dave waxing on about fave game guns brings to mind my very first BFG9000. Now THAT was a gun! Ammo usage was a stone cold bitch, though.
for cora, might be best to refence to Hellgate: London or Defiance
So, Cora is a Terran? Not by birth though, right? And also not entirely? Because I note a distressing lack of blue skinned people on this planet.
And given both Dabbler and Cora’s mixed parentage, how would our erstwhile Maxnapper even know to call them “the succubus and the Terran?”
Cora’s blue skin was an optional extra she added when she modded her skin to photosynthesize sunlight.
“Terran” is often a place holder for humans in a lot of sci-fi, seeing as so many aliens are named for their planet of origin as well even if they weren’t born on it.
the succubus however is more suspicious as Dabbler’s appearance shouldn’t be giving that away, as Succubi in this setting are genetically parasitic, taking on traits of host species they interbreed with so their offspring will have an easier time feeding without needing to use as many glamors and fit in among the host species.
It makes me wander about an earlier page (two pages ago), theory that these mercenaries could be Xevoarchy agents pulling an insidious CIA level move of “oh see, you’re planet even with and because of supers can’t defend against ALL threats, you totally need to sign up and join us so you get our protection…oh and make sure to send some supers to join our military”
Opportunity to crush this one with her tank form. Meanwhile, does Dabbler have any of that mummy wrap shot ready to go?
Dabbler seems to pull out a different weapon in every fight. Drawing her sword is possibly the sole repeat weapon she has ever used.
The mercenaries remind me of just about every antagonist in a Chinese Light Novel. They even have a saying ‘animals die for food people die for money.’ Where a sane person looks at a powerful character as they pull out some devastating martial technique, weapon, etc and goes ‘woah I don’t want to mess with that!’ these people go ‘Yes! Truly the Heavens favor me and have provided me with such a great bounty once I take it from you!’ The thought the uber-powerful thing could be ending their life shortly never even crosses their mind because they’re so arrogant and confident. They also like to say things like the assassin says there at the end, or ‘give me what I desire and I’ll leave you with an intact corpse,’ for which that’s more serious than it sounds as the Chinese are really big on having intact corpses when entering the afterlife.
What will Dabbler and Kora do in this epic battle?
Not sure how many noticed, but ms hot head seems to have a emoji flame ‘eye’
Is that because of a holo tech tech face mask? Maybe part of a rebreather? And where did Halos holo wings go?
this is the second of her species we’ve seen, it looks to be a feature.
as for Halo..the hologram wings were a novelty, she’s on duty. You don’t see an officer on duty wearing pieces of a Halloween costume do you?
Are we sure it’s not the same one?
I think the blurb under the comic one or two pages ago said it was a different one than the one we saw before.
Yes, definitely a different specimen. Also, I really like how their 3rd eye emotes what they’re doing instead of just hovering placidly.
Third actually.
There was one at the Grakz stall on Fracture (who sponsored Sydney a bowl in exchange for filming her eating it), one seen early in this Tourist Invasion, and now one leading the Capture Crew. Based on behaviour, I’d assumed appearance 2 to be the same individual as appearance 1: they had a similar ‘camera’ pendant, and looked as though they were doing an introductory piece to camera before heading off to investigate (the food stalls of?) this new city. Or am I missing one?
Oh wow, what a shock. An alien caused a major disturbance. Almost like this was guaranteed to happen. I’m still confused how the hell Sydney failed her Know: Tropes skillcheck this hard. Must have been trying to hard to avoid being racist to see the obvious.
Now I’m trying to imagine an sjw trying not to be racist to klingons. “They’re not all bloodthirsty warriors guys give them a chance!” The klingons: “no, we really are, that’s retarded, I sleep on rocks and am going to eat your spleen, p’tach!”
The Klingons are a caricature in TNG. Proud warrior race. That whole “officer exchange” episode where Riker was given a room with a steel bed and told that Klingons didn’t need to sleep on soft things… Rubbish. Riker was either being hazed big time (cut to a scene with two Klingons in medieval armor and one says to the other “And then I told him we sleep on a steel plate!” *snicker*) or Klingons were being written as completely one-dimensional ‘tough guys’ by some fool of a writer.
Star Trek was always very “planet of hats” a trope it was hard to get out of and affected many other sci-fi exploration series. Mainly because the original Star Trek and most space exploration series/serials like it were basically just space re-writes of ocean exploration stories. The crew, the captain, brave explorers, and coming across islands with a singular weird theme. Which makes a little more sense for an island than a whole planet; but that’s the formula they went with. Familiar story, new backdrop.
I agree that the Next Generation klingons were trash. The old series ones were thoughtful and cunning. They were changed into what a 12 year old would think a warrior race would be like. They are a society that would never be able to develop beyond the medieval technological level.
Could someone mess with that beam by simply standing in its path. Would be hilarious if “Normal Man” or “The Average Woman” saved the day by stepping into the beam while giving two thumbs up with a shit-eating grin.
That would be a super heroic thing to do.
Messing with alien tech and alien mercenaries by putting your life literally and figuratively on the line(yes, I’m proud of that pun) to safe another human being, but I don’t think it would be the smartest thing to do, because there already are professionals dealing with the situation and nobody knows what it will do.
Yeah, but one of those professionals is probably the most powerful person on earth, could end the fight in seconds, and got ambushed at the start. Plus… people do dumb but heroic stuff all the time. The latest celebrity gossip kicks it out of the newsfeed. Also, it is safe to assume they are attempting nonlethal here since her declaration makes it pretty clear it is a kidnapping and not a murder in progress.
We didn’t believe in them because they didn’t exist. It was an exscuse to secure the oil fields.
Well, either that, or the US freaked out wondering where all the WMDs they gave to Iraq in the first place went.
I know of 2 gun-based ARPGs/franchises that are significant in terms of popularity. Those being the Destiny Franchise and the Borderlands franchise.
Destiny 2 and Borderlands 2 are currently kinda the top, though Borderlands 3 is out it’s not exactly the cream of the crop right now.
Fallout as well
*this next part is not personal or aimed at you*
However; Destiny can rot in purgatory forever for dising the PC community They treated me like a crimnal without due cause. I paid my dues for 45 years and going for hardware and games (some great some not so), but they will never get another penny from me in either sales or mouth service.
Defiance 2050 is also pretty good.
Knocked out of 1st place on TopWeb by a comic that’s added 20,000 votes in the past week or so…
with zero activity in their comment section o.O ?
Vote early, vote often and vote daily…
I think I’m a little slow, but I’m so glad to notice that Cora used her hard light limbs to save Dazzler. Good work, space lady! I suppose having limbs that can be replaced with a reset command would make you react differently to danger than having limbs that hurt!
I didn’t catch that either until my 2nd read-through – it (possibly) explains her look in panel 6 as well, her spidey sense is tingling.
DaveB, the ads are still there, still giving problems, clicking the ‘x’ to get rid of them only lasts until the page refreshes (like after every post)
Don’t get Cora’s surprised “really” at Dabblers “future lover” comment sounds perfectly in tune with what she knows about Dabbler.
I suppose of course it could be the “future” part as in “really you haven’t slept with her yet?”
Could be a surprise she hasn’t slept with her yet, surprise she is interested in her, surprise that she would continue to chase her when Cora know what a “prude” Maxima is or anything else.
My take was Cora was either surprised at the “future” part given Dabbler’s proclivities, or surprised at either the cliche one-liner or the relatively-harmless choice of weaponry.
Has anyone noticed the flame on “stasis gun mercenarie”‘s head is reactive to her mental state.
Her name is Ftedt :)
Someone needs to be asking what the exit strategy is, because the exit strategy has to involve exiting the planet.
I have brought that up, the (exit) part seems to keep being ignored though for ways they snuck down. Which makes this situation kind of suspicious.
to expand on what I said, this smash and grab approach, the fact they couldn’t have known she’d have shown up to the tourist landing spot, ect…
the fact they used a tour bus instead of sneaking down in a stealth craft only a few miles, or maybe a hundred miles from the site of the Fel battle and snuck around to capture Maxima if that was their goal, is giving me a set-up vibe.
Like the Xevoarchy version of the bank robbery at the start of the comic.
so Earth was seen by the space cops to take out a Fel battle carrier with a handful of supers. However thanks to the millennia long tourist industry, the Xevoarchy knows Earth has no wide spread defenses and could get cocky thinking they don’t need help from the space police or to be part of the Xevoarchy as they begin expansion into space with the basic FTL puddle jumper they are getting for the bounty on the Fel battle cruiser.
So what does the Xevoarchy do? Send down a group sneaking in among the first open (if it doing so against regulations) tourists with the instructions to cause trouble. With the latest equipment including a fancy high tech stasis beam even able to immobilize Maxima. So this small group causes trouble, kicks around the local defenses a little. and when all hope seems lost…boom…the Xevoarchy sends down some space cops to (easily) take down the “bad guys” and tell Earth; see you do need protection, you can’t rely on your supers and their small numbers. So join up with the Xevoarchy.
Your tinfoil hat is very thick. And I would like to purchase one as well, actually a pretty believable strategy; though I still lean towards some random mercs jumping on the first ship to Earth once the news broke.
the later is likely, very poorly planned, their exit is a tour bus…that could have left before they could have reached their objective. and if it wasn’t then why take it down at all to the underdeveloped planet when your real exist could have been your means of arrival as well. Not like there is a space port and interplanetary customs here.
narratively a full circle from the opening bank robbery wouldn’t be unexpected at some point.
and its not like real governments havn’t used this underhanded trick before *usually to a massive backfiring effect a few years down the line*
Based on how they treat their chauffeur, stealing his bus.
Schlock Mercenary has a pretty good running gag with stealing the same driver’s bus several times (and generally getting it blown up).
Er…NATO… (definately the Brits), would likely have an Archon eqivilant (MI-7?) that could respond more ‘effectively’ than calling in conventional forces.
However, they are a good few thousand miles away and don’t know what is going on at the moment…
Thank you for your estimation of our capabilities! But I would be surprised if the UK’s equivalent was as large or as capable as the USA’s ARC. Nothing do do with politics, just with population: fewer people means fewer Supers to recruit, fewer Supers means fewer chances to hit the long odds of one being in Maxima’s league.
I suspect the Powers that Be would discourage calling it MI7, as that could cause confusion with the one that already exists/existed. Unfortunately ‘Special Branch’ is already a division of the Police, so we couldn’t take that name. A military unit could be the Special Powers Service, to go with the existing SAS and SBS, but that would be a very different role.
Oh shit.
I keep forgetting that Cora is basically Edward Elric but for all four of her limbs. And with cooler prosthetics.
I mean, I guess much like Edward Elric, this is technically a better situation than if she had real limbs to slice off. And of course, much like the “Good Thing You Can Heal” trope, that’s exactly why she’s the one who took the brunt of the attack, both in the Watsonian sense and in the Doylist sense. But still. That kinda sucks.