Grrl Power #879 – Immovable grapple
He’s scratching his cheek, but I don’t think his cheek can itch. It’s probably an affectation.
Achilles would be a real pain in the ass as a grappler. There are certainly beings who can simple muscle him off, no matter how good of a lock he gets, but short of someone exceptionally strong, there’s no real way to shake him. Wrenching his pinky or thumb back won’t hurt him, you can’t poke him in the eye or kick him in the nuts. Well, you can, but it won’t help.
Of course, the fact that he is so potentially effective as a grappler is something Maxima has encouraged him to pursue. She was keen to impress upon him that drawing fire, while useful, is an underutilization of his abilities. He counter-suggested grappling people while clutching live grenades, as a sort of non-suicide bomber, at which point Maxima referred him to Doctor Frost.
“I meant flashbangs?”
I wonder when the last time the Human Torch was choked out. Sure, high level villains like Apocalypse or Darkseid could throttle him with little effort, but they don’t strike me as grapplers. Besides the high tier antagonists, anyone fire based could swing it. Maybe a Sand Guy. Or an Ice Guy. Or an energy absorber or power negator or someone with Nemesis or Asbestos Man. Okay, come to think of it, he probably gets strangled every other comic.
But you get my point. Someone like the Human Torch or Acid Man or Thorn Gal or Cherenkov Radiation Lass probably aren’t prepared for someone to put them in an arm bar.
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One day he will fail that test. That day is not today.
That’s what everybody expects from him: A heroic death against something.
My bet is on something embarassing like falling down the stairs onto a chunk of phlebotinum or into a currently opening portal to a black hole or somewhere outside any universe.
Let’s hope nobody plays with portals near stairs…
I WARNED YOU ABOUT THOSE STAIRS BRI
His nemesis is a black hole.
He may be entirely okay in there, but if he’s unable to get back out again, he’s effectively dead as far as this universe is concerned.
or until a chousin level cosmic being sees this guy floating in the singularity and yanks him out, out of curiosity, boredom, empathy *bird caught in bug net, or fish in the filter to be more accurate*; maybe keeps him around, maybe lets him fly free, maybe gives him a job; to cover a few chousin level reactions to specimens of interest.
also to paraphrase someone from this comic, its a black hole, its everyone’s nemesis.
Not a problem, he will just have to wait for a while untill the black hole have boiled away into Hawking radiation.
On the bright side, due to time slowing inside a black hole the time from his perspective will be him falling in and then instantly being evaporated out at the heat death of the universe if noone finds an economical way to collapse it before then.
Less bright side, he can’t do much more than float in space for the rest of eternity – it’s the quintessential immortal torture trap.
He may pop out just in time for a new universe to be created randomly from the void. Perhaps he have already experienced this a few times already.
*gasp* Achilles is the former owner of the orbs! He’s sick of repeating the same timelines over and over after being tossed into a black hole, and decided to just see what someone else does with them this time.
Even so, he’d have to wait for some 4 billion years before anything interesting happened.
Well, he has added to his array of tricks! He would probably be unbeatable in Unlimited Wrestling unless he encountered somebody stronger, or that could neutralize his invulnerability somehow.
I’m sure any super powers kinda disqulify you, otherwise human torch would always win, you can’t grab someone who’s on fire
Maybe *you* can’t, but Achilles totally could.
Not the version John Byrne wrote in the 80s. He defined Human Torch’s powers as a transformation into Plasma.. like from the sun style plasma, not blood. Even the times he only transformed his hand and part of an arm, he was turning that part of himself into liquid fire.
In his plasma form, even if shot with projectiles that could withstand the amount of heat he had, they just passed through his liquid plasma body with only the mildest of disruption done.
Complete immersion in water or an absolutely drenching downpour of water or other smothering material would force him to change back to human form, and shock his system, preventing him from immediately changing back. But a grappler sould just pass through him, not unlike sandman.
…Sandman, on the other claw, assuming he wasn’t glassed from attempting it, could probably smother torch out.
It’s also very unclear if this explanation for how his powers function remains to this day. But it was published in OHOTMU and remains the canon IIRC
Achilles would LOVE to be thrown into the Sun! What a ride that would be!
Lousy retirement plan though, unless Cora has a way to retrieve him.
As Dan McNinja taught us
Here, for the curious. Also available as a shirt, which I have on my “someday” list.
Considering he’s jumped in a volcano, been subjected to mass explosions, and taken a cruise missile to the face, pretty sure he’ll be fine grabbing fire.
Oh right… hit by Dabbler’s railgun, unburned by one of Maxima’s… “Higher” (not highest) splosions, blocked Heavenly Sword’s weapon with his eyeball… among other triumphs. He’s basically a dream member of any dungeon crawl party. Send him in to trigger all the traps or use as a shield :)
Sydney literally did that one
hey, it’s called ‘Unlimited’ Wrestling, that means they can’t just say ‘oh, not you, you’ve got powers’
Achilles does indeed have one absolute offensive weapon — the Glasgow Kiss. You would NOT want to be wearing a helmet…
Interestingly most Fire based characters in Marvel’s roster are actually Heroes the only straight-up villain I can think of is pyro and even he can sometimes swing back
There’s always the one arm of the super skrull…
Fire Lord, herald of Galactus comes to mind
… I still want to know what their plan was. This seems like a Benny Hill sketch of a kidnapping for slavery thing.
Step 1: Sneak onto earth.
Step 2: Capture gold human
Step 3: ???
Step 4: Profit
Step 3 is “Leave Earth”. That is the step they are at. Unfortunately, “Step 2.5: Fend off allies of golden human” was not properly considered and is not going so well.
Really, Step 3 is the step they are trying to get to, but they are stuck at step 2.5.
No, they have not fully captured the Gold Human until they are able to remove her from the field. I call it as stuck at Step 2.
No, they have captured Maxi, they are in the process of containing her in preparation for Step 3
Step 3 is to contain Maxi. They are not there yet.
Agreed, you haven’t captured the flag until you get it back to your base. Just taking possession temporarily doesn’t count.
They really haven’t, they’ve immobilized her, but she is not in their possession. Which is a vital element of capturing someone.
I guess they thought that Maxima is the only one they need to worry about and they overlooked the possibility of many other supers with enough power to foil them. The news of Fell ship being shot down by a single person spread wide, but the tiny details of the ground battle probably did not.
Probably for the best that they don’t know about Sydney yet. She’d be a little easier to contain (mittens).
That and distract. Sydney would be a prime target when the element of surprise is used. I would have thought that they would have spent some real time effectively casing the heist if only to ensure Max didn’t get free some how and entirely obliterate them. The stasis gun was kind of a gamble to use on a being that defied all known metrics of weapons/defense systems.
OKAY YOU CAN STASIS SYDNEY, but I don’t see it working on her artifacts as they defy Newtonian physics.
do you just swap to the martian antimatter disintegration gadget and kill Sydney , then run off with her balls?
Do you mean the Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator or the Quadvected Hyperthermic Cosmoblaster?
You know, I just realized something. Sydney’s shield can block pretty much anything. I wonder if she’s gonna do what she did with Deus’ anger aura and get between Maxima and the girl with the stasis beam to try and cut it off? I guess, more importantly, how would such a thing be thwarted or backfire? I’m really looking forward to seeing her get into the fight now!
You mean, Kevin‘s anger aura, not SmugD’s
Certainly is a less impressive name ^^;
Kevin (the guy who lead the Restaurant Rumble) and Deus (the smug bastard who is trying to sell the world a pile of shit as the finest caviar) are not the same person
Which would be why he called himself “Vehemence”.
There is the possibility that they are all dupes and the real action is around the corner.
*slow clap* Nicely done Achilles, nicely done. Grappling does seem to be a good idea for his set of powers.
You are still using your powers in a very annoying way, but that’s just how you roll I guess.
Invincible-grapple VS Sticky air
Who would win for most annoying?
Those lessons from Math and Jabberwocky are definitely paying off.
10/10 would grapple again.
At least Achilles saved his jacket from getting shredded. A large amount of his paycheck probably goes toward his t-shirts.
Then again, they get destroyed so often he probably doesn’t have to worry about laundry.
He’s a super hero, they get huge paychecks, he could proably go trough 5 shirts a day and not even notice the difference (unless they were some kind of designer shirts, but you wouldn’t wear that on the job.
That reminds me, he could totally wear some kind of spikey shirt, i mean it’s not like it will hurt him
You forgot who it is, he totally would wear designer shirts on job…
Clothing damage and fanservice is part of the job for a superhero.
Panel 8
“A large amount of his paycheck probably goes toward his t-shirts. – yukkiek
Not as much as Super Hiro, for whom topless fanservice appears to be a secondary(?) Power.
“Wait”?; What exactly does she think she can say that gets her out of this? I guess we find out later in the week.
“I still function!” perhaps? Not that I would bet on that.
I think it’s just a way of expressing her disbelief
Dave…. I don’t know how this would go over with your readers.
It might be insensitive to the events of 2020.
But…what if she isn’t as tough as she’s lead people to believe?
Overly dependent on offence as opposed to developing a defense.
Has a physiognomy unique to her world that they don’t like to talk about.
***
What if Mr. Achilles kills her in the process of arresting her?
Her saying “Wait” was supposed to be followed by “I surrender.”
Of course there’s no way he could have known she couldn’t be choked safely.
I get your point but there is a big difference between an unarmed civilian and someone who literally just tried to capture and kill government agents. These arent just random people being abused by law enforcement these are people slavers and smugglers who picked the fight.
The main issue with the current events is that there was no justifiable reason to use that level of force in the first place, and ignored very obvious signs of distress long after subdual. Whereas whatshername was literally trying to murder several people a few seconds ago, and is actively trying to break free to continue that task.
I would slightly disagree with the other replies in that, while she has certainly ‘earned’ any response she might get, I would still prefer the team go for non-lethal options whenever circumstances allow, and as you point out, this has no guarantee of non-lethality, both in current real world crises and in a comic where you don’t know the biology of your opponent. While I don’t think I’d enjoy the comic going to the dark place you mention – too much realism in my escapism, TYVM – I wouldn’t necessarily want the comic to gloss over the possible problems with Achilles’ actions either. My hope is Maxima or someone else calls him off the choke in the next panel and gives us a different shutdown method – Dabbler should surely have an option.
The sad thing about this whole thing is this: Seeing how there are people out there who are using either and any of those points in earnest, I am not entirely sure whether or not, and if so, which one of you is joking, ….
That’s what I find so effective about memes. By using a standard format for jokes it becomes distinguishable even without facial expressions.
Wooo memes.
What you people always forget is that no matter what you feel about a situation from the comfort of a video replay in the safety of your home or office, or in this case from behind the fourth wall of a comic, the responders still have to react instantly in the heat of the moment to end the threat to themselves, innocent bystanders, or both. Several times she used (what was intended to be) deadly force and threatened to keep on using it, deadly force is perfectly reasonable as one of the possible responses. Achilles is in the clear no matter what happens.
To aliens: don’t eff around, don’t find out.
Also, to Dave: THANK YOU for using the correct spelling of ‘psyche.’ I am SO sick and tired of seeing clueless morons spell it ‘sike.’
I agree with the second half, but not the first.
For the real world event they’re referencing, there was no “heat of the moment”. They had a man pinned and with pressure on his throat for 8 minutes straight.
And it was two on one.
So don’t feed me anything about how they needed to do it to “protect the public”.
it was actually 3 on one. one on neck, one on chest and one on legs. + one doing crowd control.
There was no pressure on his throat, and they kept the pressure on his back and neck because he wouldn’t stop struggling slash resisting
And then, after he stopped responding (and thus struggling slash resisting) continued to apply that pressure on his back and neck for minutes more.
Are we talking New York, where the guy kept shouting “I can’t breathe” as he was swinging his arms around like a berserk gorilla, or are we talking more recent where a DUI stole the taser from a couple of police officers, turned to use it and they shot him, then pinned him to the ground so he wouldn’t try anything else?
In both cases, the suspects’ own actions are a BIG contributing factor to the outcome, and if they had surrendered quietly, they’d be alive today, far more likely than not.
Talking about Gorge Floyd: A man who was unconscious and pinned for several minutes but the cops insisted on kneeling on him despite his clear lack of ability to fight back anymore and having a numbers advantage. (And the pleading of bystanders.)
You know, the actually current/infamous of the police killing someone they had no reason to.
Also, calling a black guy a “Gorilla”? Real subtle.
When you’re kneeling on the back of someone’s throat you’re definitely applying pressure.
I feel like Achilles wouldn’t bother to call out that he was going to start choking her, unless he was giving her a chance to explain that would be lethal for her.
When fighting an unknown alien, nothing is guaranteed to be non-lethal. Some are just more likely than others.
So unless you want him to try beating her into unconscious, this is the next best thing.
Don’t try to make her unconscious, you don’t know if she even has the proper biology to become unconscious.
My advise would be to have some of the other supers protect this situation and to wait for Dabbler to get some free time or the diplomats to get an alien doctor/cop and ask them advice on treating her species while arresting.
As long there’s no haste this is a useful strategy to get them to survive without harming anybody who can’t handle it.
Cora established that most of the galaxy is basically humanoid and has fairly compatible biology; presumably that includes breathing. We know Archon has been doing all sorts of training, and they had 2 months to prepare for Cora and possibly an Alari invasion to turn up – surely there has been some discussion of fighting aliens effectively by now.
2 months isn’t by far enough time to learn anticipate all galactic races and even pretty humanoid races can make it hard.
Take a human and move head’s veins to inside the (expanded) vertebra and boom chocking is lethal, two veins in the neck make them invulnerable to most chocking techniques, missing one reaction system can mean you either die or stay conscious, an extension of the skull to the neck makes a chocke lethal, a brain that consumes a little more energy than a normal human dies of a normal chocke, a more brittle breathing pipe makes it lethal, etc.
This’s all still for very humanoid races.
Even by normal humans this’s an avoided method of non-lethal movement restriction, because of it’s unpredictable effects and we’re dealing with aliens, supers, anomalies, “supernatural American” creatures and hybrids.
Achilles is here in a pretty comfortable situation and doesn’t have any reason to think it will change, so he can use this stability to his advantage by keeping it safe.
there is a reason action movies tend to avoid the biology side of things.
A great example of that is here, a real doctor reacts to the Captain America Winter Soldier elevator fight scene *like many superhero action scenes the “knock out” type stuff would in actuality be lethal…Cap would likely have killed half or more of these men if they didn’t receive immediate medical care.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yztDvM9m5g4
Wait, you’re saying action movies lack realism?
Not really an option considering she’s actively trying to kill them.
If you don’t know the biology of your opponent, nothing has a guarantee of non-lethality. Achilles went for the safest option he had in his arsenal. If he hadn’t been confident in that choice, he would have been justified to empty his gun into her. After all, she was trying to kill Cora. Cora’s and the others’ safety takes precedence over the perp’s.
Thought didn’t even cross my mind until you said something and even then I had to re-read your comment to understand what you were referencing. Can we please, PLEASE not dig up the past? I highly doubt many people are going to draw parallels here. It is SO not worth bringing up real-world politics in a webcomic. This only opens the door for more strife.
TL;DR: why bro? Just why bring it up?
“This would be lethal for me.”
“My species doesn’t rely on air for consciousness. Our throats are really only used for communication, so you’re just being annoying.”
“Yeah, I get that a lot.”
> He’s scratching his cheek, but I don’t think his cheek can itch. It’s probably an affectation.
Imagine if he _could_ itch, but (because he’s invulnerable) scratching does nothing. That’s real nightmare fuel.
In fact Achilles nemesis would be a guy with a gun that shoots itching rays.
You eventually get used to it, tbh.
Itching is caused by some type of bodily distress (either flesh or nerves). Being utterly immune to any kind of harm would thus mean that he would be immune to an itching ray.
“May ye have itchuung without scratching” is a fairly nasty old Irish curse.
I like the (probably facetious) Middle Eastern version: “May the fleas of a thousand camels infest your armpits, and your arms be too short to scratch.”
Sounds like a misquote from something Klinger would often say (well, he said it at least once), and fairly sure it wasn’t the armpits that were infested
As someone who’s allergic to both soap and monochloramine (which is what many cities now use to chlorinate their water, as it allows the city to select exactly which chloramine their water contains, and so they can avoid nitrogen trichloride), as well as having contact dermatitis, I can absolutely confirm Paul’s response… at least, if you manage to not scratch the itch for long enough, or your scratching has no effect. Note that just because you’ve gotten used to one itch doesn’t mean that you’ll be used to the next one. I hope that one can eventually get to the point where itches can be ignored, but I’ve not gotten there yet.
That said, it may also be worth pointing out that for lesser itches, it can be helpful to just hold ones hand firmly on the itchy part of the skin. On that same note, it’s possible, at least for some people, to trigger an itching sensation by simply applying the lightest skin contact possible. (Disclaimer: There are some people whose sense of touch, motor control, and/or proprioception is/are insufficient to manage this degree of skin contact. The exact amount of pressure required to do it most likely varies based on the acuity of the target’s sense of touch, and some people may be immune to this.)
Dabbler intended to build a tickling one.
Okay, so today I learned that his power extends to “can’t be harmed at all” as opposed to simply having flesh that can’t be compromised in any way.
Although now that I word it that way, I realize “flesh” would include that which is below the surface as well as the surface itself.
More then that, he cannot change in absolutley any way, his hair can’t be cut but doesn’t grow either
It bothers me JUUUUST a bit that the schism blade seems to be rendered, in Panel 7, as cutting THROUGH his hair…
Thoughts anyone?
maybe in between the follicles
When sitting naturally, there tends to be some air gap between individual hairs. The bulk is therefore somewhat compressible, by pushing the hairs closer together and closing those gaps, even though all we see in the image is the outer surface Evidently there’s a front ‘layer’ that doesn’t reach as far back as where the blade hits the head, that hasn’t been compressed by it – a brushed-back fringe, perhaps.
You must be forgetting one of his earliest appearences where he says he literally ate a vial of ‘super ebola’ to save the world. He is completely impervious all the way through, inside and out.
But on the other hand he must be able to ‘digest’ or the Ebola would have just passed through him (or maybe it did and they just contained it … erm, ‘after’?).
I mean, we know he can eat, but does he assimilate anything that he eat? Or the food come out chewed but essentially untouched?
It is nice that he tries to make himself more useful, invulnerability by itself just doesn’t cut it, I’ve had the same idea that Dave mention, with the flashbangs, other ideas could be a taser, or that hipo-gun that Harem use to knock out enemies, heck even just hitching powder could be useful.
You’re right, I did forget about that.
It was explicitly mentioned somewhen that he also neutralized some super ebola by ingesting it, so his invulnerability covers pretty much everything.
“at which point Maxima referred him to Doctor Frost” made me laugh so hard.
+1. This page and the accompanying artist commentary have made me like Achilles way more than I used to.
Invinci-grapple will be added to the list of BS powers next to sticky air
That Achilles, he is such a gentleman <3
When Achilles blithely walks into some new bizarre demonic power or sci-fi weapon, does he ever wonder, “Is this the one thing my power won’t work against?”
Makes you wonder if he becomes a death seeker at some point, as he appearantly hasn’t aged since the 80’s
Apparently his hair doesn’t grow, which is good because Rapunzel locks are often a bit of a hassle, but it’s bad because he’s stuck with the McGuyver Mullet.
“Which is *awesome* because he’s *adorned* with the *MacGyver* Mullet.”
You had three typos. Two were really strange because they looked like other real words! I fixed them all for you. ;)
Why would he ever even know fear? He has never been harmed. Physical, energy, magic. Nothing so far has ever been capable of harming him.
If anything, he would just take it in stride right up until something actually does manage to harm him.
For instance. What if you put him through a portal and then closed it on him halfway through? The namesake only had a single weakness. So this Achilles might, as well.
Imagine if he was invulnerable even to that, and it broke the portal.
That could get ugly for the universe real quick.
The math for a wormhole indicates that one needs exotic (negative-energy) matter to hold it open. Well, Achilles counts as exotic matter in my book, so he would be able to keep a wormhole from collapsing completely until he gets through.
Head canon accepted. I can see him attaining a significant exit velocity if one squeezed shut on him though.
Not that he has to worry about that, either.
Exotic matter is a little general.
It’s a description of all kinds of matter that could theoretical exist, but have never been measured.
Not all kinds of exotic matter can help with wormholes.
Try holding a black hole with tachyons or dark energy.
I’m imagining the penultimate scene for Captain Hammer in Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog where he gets hurt for the first time in his life :
Never forget.
Doctor Horrible got everything he ever wanted, and all it cost him was a single Penny.
Seems to me that, if he found anything out there that he isn’t invulnerable too, he’d just exit the hero business entirely. He’d be like, “If I can be hurt by EVEN ONE THING, how am I different from any other schmuck out there? I’d have to watch my back constantly! F that, I’m out.”
Good guy Achilles, even turning his head to make it easier for her to (attempt to) poke him in the eye.
I wonder if he practiced grappling for better grapples, or to prevent boobie grappling like with Sciona.
Don’t get me wrong, concept and comic great, but something seems off about her hips and left arm both being pulled and turned in one direction but her torso somehow still turning the other direction, I mean she just needs to roll over her right shoulder and the choke is neutralized? Hips should be twisting the opposite way of the choke I think
I think she twisted that way to bring her sword into action against him.
His grip on her arm is also really weak. It’s only his fingertips holding her arm across her throat (although that’s maybe just because he’s screwing around and scratching his cheek thoughtfully in mid grapple instead of using his other arm to finish locking her up). I think the joke is that he IS, in fact, doing a really bad job of grappling her, but it’s not mattering because a) he’s invulnerable and b) because Sword Girl is only thinking to try using her sword on him instead of just breaking the hold. Hell, her “wait…” at the end there might be her realizing “hold on, this is actually a terrible grapple and I can just wriggle out of it! Maybe this is one very specific circumstance in which hitting something with my sword is NOT the best solution!”
most folk cannot change their stratagie in mid fight. also the way her arm is across her neck shes only able to pull it back with her rear delt with some minor help from her lats, traps and medial head deltoid. in other words yeah the grip isn’t top notch, but it’s more than enough to hold her arm there. that said, he needs to get her in the mount, work his other arm though and lock it in.
So he’s completely invulnerable AND trains like every other hardcore soldier on the team? That’s actually pretty scary…
Achilles and Super Hiro order tee shirts by the pallet-load.
Being mr fanservice super isn’t for The poor.
That would explain why Hiro has only one kind of shirt. Cheaper to produce in bulk.
Next panel:
“Sorry, the safeword was banana!”
Fun fact for the blurb, Asbestos Woman, Yes there actually was such a character and she was an enemy of the Human Torch.
Lemme guess, she eventually succumbed to her nemesis, mesothelioma?
Her actual name was Asbestos Lady aka Victoria Murdock, and she did die of mesothelioma aged 45, date not mentioned https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Victoria_Murdock_(Earth-616)
I thought after I posted I got her name wrong. Yep created before the dangers of asbestos were widely known and changed after to reflect that knowledge.
Strangely enough wrenching Achilles right pinky is exactly what you should do in that situation.
Doing so would weaken the grip of his right hand by over 30%, making it easier to break out of that hold.
Just because his ability to feel pain is virtually non-existent, and is near invulnerable, does not mean you can’t use his body and physiology against him.
That depends on when his power kicks in to prevent his muscle and connective tissues from being harmed by over-extension.
Does it? There are levers that do not rely on pain, but body mechanics. He should be succeptible to those like anyone else is.
The amount of people with the knowledge, experience, and physical strength to pull that off would be very low. He has minor super strength as well in that he doesn’t need to worry about self injury. He can push his body to its limits and not be harmed. He also as far as we know has no limits of endurance. Once he grabs you he isn’t going to get tired. Boredom or surprise are pretty much your only options if you don’t have superior strength compared to him.
It is literally a fact that if you grab the pinky finger of a hand gripping something and bend it back you cause the the next finger to also lift as they are connected in human beings.
This weakens the grip considerably making it easier to break.
It has nothing to do with hurting the finger, just the mechanics of human physiology.
You can even try this at home on yourself.
Plus it doesn’t take a lot of strength to do, so even with Achilles’ Super Strength it is still a viable option and probably the alien swordswoman’s best option for breaking his chokehold.
I can’t decide who my favorite character in this comic is.
But what I am 100% certain of, is the number 1 and 2 slots are definitely Sydney and Achilles.
He is an invincible smart ass and I love everything he does down to getting buried in a mountain explosion to being used as a 10ft pole trap detection device.
Speaking from experience, the counter to Achilles and his grappling may amusingly be more grappling. Just because he doesn’t feel pain and can’t take any damage doesn’t mean he would be able to get enough leverage to break out of a lock once he’s in one.
I have something kind of similar, where pressure points and joint locks don’t cause me any real pain, which doesn’t make them any easier to get out of, but does make you everyone’s favorite for practice, since they get an accurate idea of how much pressure can be applied to a lock before causing damage.
That’s bunk. If the only way to prevent someone from holding you is to actively hold him, he is still single handedly neutralizing you. He just has to keep her busy while more of his friends show up and overwhelm her side.
The only ways this could really work are if they can get in and out before things get too out of hand or if the advanced tech allows them to have an advantage despite any numbers.
You could tie him up after having him grappled. Not trivial, but a lot easier than burying him under a building for most people.
Good to know he’s a good sport about everything and not just Sydney.
well, until she uses teleportation or something other of her powers
Humans seem to be unique in having superpowers. The aliens are just using superior tech.
Dabbler has shown tons of teleport tech and there seem to be kinds of aliens that have “powers” as a specie(Liquid osmium guy).
Even Venom figured how to choke Human Torch (throwing sand at him to extinguish his flame, then wrapping him in tentacles and pulling him under water.
Later Human Torch learned some tricks himself – when facing on opponent who had the same power, he used his flames to deny him oxygen and choke his flame out.
Also, the non-suicide bomber sounds like a typical rpg group.
wish dr frost would get continued on english versions
… What? There is non-English versions where she has appeared more often? o_O
He can be taught.
Okay weird thought that comes from Achilles working the way I imagine invulnerability working as opposed to how it is show in comics.
He still has human mass. So a howitzer shell to his chest won’t hurt him. But it will still send him flying because it simply has that much force compared to his mass. So why do so many comics show the invulnerable guy just standing there ignoring this amount of force?
If I remember correctly, the Wild Cards series had a hero “wonder boy” who tried just that. Stood in front of a speeding car full of baddies legs astride hands on hips in pure superman fashion. And physics being what they are, got bounced off the car and thrown to the curb. At which point he grabbed a nearby lamp-post, ripped it out of the ground and threw it at the car to stop the baddies.
One of the (many) reasons I love this webcomic is that it addresses these things. When Achilles was hit by Dabblers rail gun he was unharmed, and rocketed backwards in accordance to Newtonian physics (the rocketing back bit, not the being totally unharmed thing).
Super inertia powers as well I guess.
Dabbler’s railgun did that during the ARC introduction demonstration, he even made the Goofy™ “Whoo-hoo-hooey” as he went over the mountain range in the background and somebody went to fetch him back.
That’s because the invulnerability is part of their overall package, not the whole enchilada
All Les has is the invulnerability, he doesn’t even have Super Strength (well, not above half extra what a base-line hyu-mon has, and that is simply due to the invulnerability)
Superman (and Maxima) can do it because they have super strength and can fly. Other heroes may not have such luxuries, so they get thrown around when hit with enough force.
Yeah but how does strength mean you don’t get knocked around. If Maxima weighs 200lbs (guess based on height and muscular build) She would still get knocked around by a speeding vehicle or powerful blast.
Flight I would assume can counter but only if you know its coming.
Because they have the flight ability: to counter being knocked around, they simply direct their flight in the opposite direction and, conversely, it’s the hit that is keeping them in place
and balance that out well enough, while floating like 1cm off the surface and you give the impression of being an unmovable force before your opponent.
But yeah, it was often an ignored factor for invulnerable (or nearly so) character to take whatever hit and not budge, even if the surface they are on should have given, like slide back through the dirt, mud, sand, a strong enough hit and the concrete and asphalt should be, being torn up by those indestructible feet forming a wedge at the heels as their lighter mass is pushed back and slices through the less resistant matter *like pushing a knife through cake*.
I can see why though, I have encountered people who mistook being shoved over or pushed back as a sign of being weaker than their opponent as the concept of physics doesn’t occur to them; so series, especially older ones aimed at children kept it simple…and reinforced the misconception so not a good thing over all. I’d like to see someone in a movie have the Hulk jump at an opponent only to be thrown backwards by a simple missile and have someone on the sidelines ask, “hey if he’s so strong how’d that throw him back?”, and have someone beside him point out, “physics, he can’t fly so airborn in freefall its just his mass coming down, he’s still indestructible.”
Have you not heard of bracing yourself?
We’ve seen Maxima do it before; If she braces for an attack it doesn’t move her and instead the ground under her cracks or shatters.
If she doesn’t brace; she goes flying.
So, I’m not the best at this, but it looks like he’s got one arm pinned in such a way that she can’t do more than try to rotate away from him, and his legs are wrapped around her thighs? That’s a pretty great temporary hold, although more to the point, it leaves him in prime position to go to town with his unused fist. It’s really hard to think and focus on getting things right with somebody beating you in the face.
While rolling into the grip would relieve the stress on her throat from her own arm, with their positioning, Achilles could easily just use his free arm to hold her in place. Most attempts to break that would likely require some serious muscle since she can’t use pain by applying pressure to something soft like an eye.
He has her in a half guard right now if she rolls to the right she shows him her back. if he shows him her back, he moves up, wraps his legs around her waist and locks in a rear neck choke. which will cut the blood off to her brain. that’s white belt Juijitsu stuff. you can learn that in 2 weeks of class or even by watching it on youtube.
Quite In-Theme too, considering that Greek Martial Arts were very grapple heavy and only Herakles could boast being better at them then the mythological Achilles.
Does the Achilles up there practice Pankration, actually ?
Throw in amnesia, and Achilles could be the feller out of antiquity (with the ‘being killed’ thing being exaggerated). The amnesia is plausible, provided it is of a non-injurious nature, such as being psychological or emotional. So, had some kind of traumatic event pushed him into blanking out his past, he may have gotten on with living a normal life. Up until some event would have revealed his invulnerability. Which would then remain consistent with his background story (forgetting about the amnesia).
Of course if he did have amnesia then he would no longer remember pankration. But the familiarity of the moves would probably make it incredibly easy for him to remember. And he would be the ultimate master of the sport!
Although he wouldn’t be able to replicate the greatest feat, in Olympic history, of winning after dying!
And if anyone is curious about how that can happen, pankration is a (literally) no-holds barred anything goes form of fighting. Where maiming your opponent is not just allowed, but encouraged, as it is likely to cause your foe to concede, which is the victory condition of the sport.
So when a two-times pankration Olympic champion was defending his title, and performed a maneuver which both severely injured his opponent and killed himself, he still managed to win. Simply because his opponent conceded, before anybody realised that the champion had already died. As conceding takes precedence under the rules of pankration, the deceased champion was declared the winner!
Well he himself can get choked out right?.
the problem with indestructible or super regenerators.
the day someone actually manages to hurt him “even a tiiiiiiiny tiiiiny bit” he is gonna freak out and panic.
*like one drop of blood*
“AAAIIII!!!! RUUUUN!!!!”
Umm, no, he can’t get choked out: invulnerable neck muscles?
He also can go long time without breathing (remember him being buried alive during the Restaurant Rumble?)
Can he pull off a Highlander? Strap a ton of weight to his legs and dump him in the ocean. Is he immune to drowning?
He’s been buried under a mountain more than once, asphyxiation is apparently not an issue. You’d have to completely encase him in concrete to keep him from (eventually) breaking out of anything he can bang on with his invulnerable fists.
Kinda like what happened to Captain Jack that one time
So in additional to being at least as invulnerable to most forms of damage as Superman, he doesn’t need to breathe either. So he’s Superman but without the additional super powers (strength, vision, flight, speed, hearing, etc.).
In the cast page is mentioned he can’t be drowned.
It appears he just doesn’t need to breathe.
Unless somebody gets to negate his power* that is not going to happen. Unlike the other pretenders he has the real deal, true invulnerability.
However there is a way to emulate the result you are after and that would be with something as simple as an illusion. Dabbler has very weak illusion powers (remember her puppet Maxima), but that should be sufficient to give Achilles a boo-boo gushing scratch. And, yea, he may well faint away at the sight, not being used to seeing his own blood!
* And general power negation is not a thing in this universe. Although it would be possible for someone to find a way to negate a specific power. But of all the contenders, I think his would be the hardest, due to its very nature.
“Ok now all we need to do is overcome the power’s innate resistance to change. What? It’s off the scale?”
That was actually Gwen’s illusion, not Dabbler (#437).
The same page did say Dabbler didn’t put much into illusions though.
Ahh, recalled Dabbler’s talent being mentioned there, but forgot that it was not actually her who initiated it, even if she was collaborating with her breadsticks. Thanks for the reminder.
So happy to see Achilles get a moment to shine :)
Pretty sure even using flashbangs in that situation wouldn’t be a good idea – at least not while grappling someone. I’m pretty sure if a flashbang goes off in your hand, for example, you wouldn’t have a hand anymore.
Achilles wouldn’t even get burned, his hand (and everything else in his body) cannot be harmed.
Yup. Achilles could do that trick with nuclear bombs and not be harmed.
OK New York would be wiped off the map, and he would be coated in radioactivity with a half life of thousands of years. But he could happily prance around in the rubble, feeling smug, if guilty.
He would probably be thrown far away from the city ruins. A naked radioactive man drops from the sky in the suburbs.
Mmm. True.
The trick would be to hold one in each hand, with them outstretched to either side of his body. Provided they were of the same yield and went off simultaneously, he should be trapped between the two blasts and not move himself.
Of course if his arms were a bit too low, or not perfectly in line, or the explosions were even fractionally off, then he would be shooting off at some random angle. Shouting “WHEEEEEEEEEEE!”
What if he goes down a manhole with a nuke above him? That should place him somewhere in the crater.
Probably deep enough to require extraction, although he may be able to dig himself out and swim through the lava before it hardens into glass. Good point through.
Being able to hunt for him safely with mining/excavating equipment would simplify recovery, but that’s still a pretty expensive rescue operation. Could be worth it in the right context though.
Remind someone to add blue glitter to nuclear bombs, just so Achilles can land somewhere looking like Dr.Manhattan
Coated temporarily, maybe
The insidiousness of fallout is that it gets stuck inside things, ingested, impregnated, etc., where it continues to fling off radioactivity for months to years… That part wouldn’t happen with him, so far as we know, so he wouldn’t be radioactive for long – heck, even a brisk jog in the buff would probably get most of it off…
Eww, what about the bits of radioactive material that he breaths in or swallows. A bit of radioactive material way down in the bottom lobe of his lung or lodged in the folds of his intestines could hang around for quite a while. I guess you could drown him until the lung was flushed out. How many gallons of Go-lightly would he need to flush out that last bit of plutonium from his colon. It might not kill him but I’ll bet it wouldn’t be pleasant.
A few tons of high pressure water from a hose down his throat (or perhaps from the other direction) should do it.
I did sorta neglect that he’s a torus with a bunch of “holes” like the rest of us. We assume he breathes, but yeah… there are plenty of pockets in the body that could make his various wastes and excretions radioactive for a while…
The stuff stuck all the way inside in various nooks and crannies would presumably have its ionizing energy reflected, rather than it penetrating his body and hitting anything as he walks around, but his sweat, feces (assuming he actually MAKES feces and it’s not just masticated and pushed through to the other end), and possibly breath may be irradiated…
Hmmm… at the risk of sounding like an idiot to an actual radiologist or physicist, I wonder if the half life of bits stuck in there would be effectively extended due to being re-bombarded with alpha particles or whatnot that have been reflected by his tissues instead of being absorbed?
the thing about radioactive stuff is this. the hotter it is. the more radioactive, the shorter it’s halflife. Radioactive iodine is hella hot. it will kill you quick. but it’s only around for like 18 days or so.
Achilles is a pretty formidable weapon actually. He could strap a bunch of grenades to himself and just walk through any security in the lobby of any facility in a cloud of explosions. Or you could airdrop him through a skylight. Until you pinned him down in a bunker, he’d just keep going.
Now that I think about it – given that ionizing radiation does damage through, well, ionization, stripping electrons from atoms and the part where Achilles is able to think indicated electrons can move in his brain, he might suffer brain damage from ionizing radiation if it strips electrons from the atoms in his brain.
The only way I’d see him being both immune to that and also able to think rather than being in complete stasis, is if he doesn’t have a human brain at all and instead some other organ that does not require electron movement at all.
Wouldn’t be a very good strategy for TAKING A SUSPECT ALIVE, though.
On the plus side, it might catch his clothes on fire, temporarily turning him into something akin to the Human Torch! And not much later, anyone who likes the men folk in this comic might catch a yummy glimpse, if DaveB would oblige.
Dave might draw something like that. He sure loves drawing those exotic females but he can be very generous with the manservice as well.
I was referring to what would happen to the guy he’s grappling while covered in flashbangs.
Now if he was just gonna run in the door and set them all off it’d be fine but if he’s actually holding someone against him when the flashbangs go off… yeah, that’s gonna leave a mess.
So if he has TRUE proper invincibility, then he wouldn’t be able to be out-strength-ed. Forcing him to do anything would put strain on his muscles and that would go against his invincibility.
He is inwincable, not super strong, and if he doesn’t have the proper grip, it would be like getting a super-annoying bearhug
I suppose it would depend on the exact mechanism of his indestructibility. He certainly can’t have his joints hyper extended, they’d simply hit their limit and stop. The question would be does it discount all external forces, or what? Is he x-ray permeable? Does he feel physiologically different, IE: would poking him be like poking a granite statue with absolutely no give, or would it fall under the same hyper extension clause as before, where the flexibility runs right up to its limit and then becomes infinitely stiff?
He did describe mouthfeel and texture before, much to Sydney’s irritation, so there’s got to be some interaction unless it operates on some kind of permission basis. I don’t recall exactly how he responded when Sydney smacked him for using the word ‘mouthfeel’, but I recall him bending with the force, so I think the ‘flexible to limit’ is the most likely answer.
He is invincible, but not immovable. I get where you are coming from mind, but ‘strain’ does not equal ‘damage’. His muscles, and other organs, have the same amount of flex as all of us have, in order to be able to breathe and move.
Yes there is a limit which his body cannot be pushed past, namely when that strain would cause any degree of injury at all (but that said, with the caveat of ‘injury beyond that necessary for day to day life*). However the amount that his arm might be needed to moved, in order to break a particular hold, need not exceed that threshold.
Of course, if it does, then you are right, in that no matter how strong the opposing individual was, then they would be stopped in their tracks!
* For instance taking memory to an extreme, in order to lay down a new memory, the brain has to be altered (i.e. ‘damaged’). Clearly he can learn new things, as seen by his new technique above. So his body (which his brain is a part of) can change, within a non-harming range.
Surely, you’ve heard the thing about the brain is riding around in a meat mech suit?
His brain – and even his nervous system in general could be largely normal and vulnerable, but everything else, from muscle to bone to adipose tissue could be the invulnerable parts. Wouldn’t fully explain invulnerability to Maxima and rail guns, due to his apparent lack of significant pain reception and the acceleration of his body/skull, but… who knows
DaveB knows!!
On a somewhat related note, I do wonder how DaveB pictures his digestive capabilities….
He ate a vial of Super Ebola once to save the world, so his digestive system seems to be just as invincible as the rest of him.
Yup.
My favourite part of this is “My schism blade is unstoppable” said to someone who literally just stopped it with her leg….
Yeah I was about to mention that.
I mean, come on lady, it literally got jammed up in a leg like 5 seconds ago.
“Don’t you dare look surprised, that’s the most predictable thing that’s happened all day! Anvil, get her! She’s daring!“
one of my favorite scenes. +1
What happens when an unstoppable force meets immovable object?
Romance!
I am shipping these two now :D
Insert Marvel Gladiator/Juggernaught fiction here
Why not Strong Guy and Juggers? They have fought each other before (believe poor Guido died from a heart attack due to the stress and strain though, not sure if it was canon or a ‘What If…?’ type story)
You mean she-hulk/juggernaut, of course.
I was wondering where the rest of the team was, though considering that all of this is Sydney’s story, I expected her to do something… Like maybe walk up next to Max and pop up her shield around them both and see if the Stasis ray (or whatever it was called) could penetrate it, freeing Max and opening up a whole world of hurt on the kidnappers.
It’s nice to see the rest of the team have some screen time. I suspect Achilles will get to do his patented “Wa haha hooey” while flying away eventually… (Goofy should sue)
Achilles IS Goofy
*snickers*
That is a good technique, using her own arm to choke her out with (“Stop choking yourself! Stop choking yourself!”), and the way he is holding her arm, she wouldn’t be able to ‘roll into the choke’ to relieve the pressure: all he need do is pull down on that arm and she rolls right back into the choke
Nice to see Achilles get a scene where he’s not the butt of the joke.