Grrl Power #886 – Insert joke about airbags here
This sort of thing can only really go down a few ways. Max gets a face to the bosoms, or she takes a crotch or butt to her face. I mean, yes, technically, they could just collide in a less amusing way, but why would I allow that?
I guess this page makes Maxima a Motorboat Eskimo Sister with Dabbler and Cora. An ignominious accolade for her, to be certain.
Not too much else to say about this page, so instead I’ll tell you about how I almost forgot to post it. I got to playing Half-Life Alyx last night and I wound up with some serious eye strain, so I wound up going to bed early. Then an hour later I suddenly remembered it was Wednesday night and I had to post the comic. So I almost forgot to post, which I think I’ve only ever done one other time. Maybe twice.
So my super short review of HL:A and the Vive in general. It makes me excited for the next few generations of VR hardware. The Vive is on the verge of being too low fidelity for me. It has 1080p* screens which sounds adequate, but they’re like 3cm from your eyes, so it’s lacking compared to a decent gaming monitor, plus the lenses inside the headset are lenticular meaning there’s a choppy kind of grain and focus issues at the edges of your vision. I also found it impossible to get it all focused correctly as well. I don’t know if that’s a limitation of my eyes or the hardware. All that apparently adds up to a lot of eye strain for me.
*Edit: I looked it up and the screens are actually 1440p, so I guess I have to attribute most of the eye strain I suffered to the lenticular lenses and possibly my own prescription issues.
Despite that, it is fantastically immersive. There’s just no comparison to even sitting right up on a 60″ TV, much less lounging on your couch or sitting in front of your computer. Being able to move around in an environment and just look around with your head like you would naturally, with the screen taking up almost all of your peripheral vision is pretty amazing. It just makes me wish the display technology was better. Honestly I think the low-res screens might have more to do with managing rendering expectations since as far as I’m aware, anything rendered in VR has to be fully rendered twice, once for each lens. There might be some clever shenanigans they can pull to cut down on some of that processing time needed, but you can’t just take a 2D image and split it into two separate 2D images with depth separation for each eye, because that makes everything look like a bunch of parallaxed 2D cutouts.
The controllers are excellent, with finger-level controls. Things like having to manually reload your pistol and rack the slide to chamber the first round in HL:A is great, and also incredibly stressful when monsters are lurching toward you. My biggest complaint about it is the whole setup is missing a piece. Movement. Obviously it’s a problem, you can’t just sell everyone a 4 way treadmill or something. That would cost as much as the Vive itself at the super cheap end. Immersiveness is the name of the game with VR, but the lack of ambulation tracking means that every game has you teleporting around everywhere, which utterly breaks the immersiveness. The other option is that you use the little thumbsticks on the controller to glide around like you’re playing on a console, which may not seem terrible if you do most of your gaming on consoles, but it’s very difficult to get used to, and especially hard to manage while you’re trying to reload your gun or carry a gas can to set up a trap for a bunch of enemies. Basically every encounter I’ve had in the game has me standing stock still, because it’s too much to try and backpedal and reload at the same time.
Like I said, it’s… partially awesome, and kind of sucky, and I hope the next few revisions of hardware deal with some of the issues I have with eye strain. I just don’t know what they can to about movement. Hell, sitting in a chair and duct taping a mouse to my foot might work.
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Yeah, Space Dandy 2.0 is in over his head here.
Still, looking forward to the upcoming fight.
Turns out big muscles aren’t enough when the opposition has big muscles and super strength.
yep, Supers get that + bonus on stats; always wandered if anyone ever did a math equation on that like it amplifies a certain bonus amount per muscle mass on average. Or if its just a toss up all around.
Since no two supers have the exact same power, the exact amount, even the mechanism, is probably different for everyone. Whether it’s a multiplier to muscle mass or a static strength bonus – probably depends on the individual. We know that Harem has a multiplier. On the other side, Anvil’s strength depends on her stored kinetic energy, not her muscles.
Since supers get perfect physique for free, it doesn’t really make a difference for most of them.
good point,
I was wandering if any series ever did something like that. It is usually so random and in some settings seems pointless to have characters be super bulky if their strength isn’t any better than the guy who can fit through a door.
Doors are for weaklings I walk through walls.
“Are you crazy, that’s a load-bearing wall?”
“Rumble, crunch”
Oops
so yeah bad guy only mildly inconvenienced max
He’s not on his own here though.
Multiple attack vectors has to be the way to take down Max
There’s some pretty big guns on Max’s side around here too though.
Yeah, but these guys SEEM like they’re a bit smarter.
I mean, as locals they’ve GOT to know a good deal about what the super’s are capable of by whats been covered by the media. They come here to target tech and only make their play after the kidnappers have gone to their limit.
This guy sends Max flying with a punch, aquires the tech and immediately passes it on for extraction by a flyer/mover. Then he slows max further by throwing people at her rather than trying to out muscle her further.
At this point they need a plan for either keeping Maxima out of the picture, or extracting the team without being followed, captured or harassed. In this sense, I don’t think their aim is to beat Arcswat, I think they have eyes on the prize and are looking to get the tech and get out.
Tech-vultures
You assume Juggernot knew Maxi was getting up again (doubtful, or he would be in a different galaxy, not pissing her off even more)
Unless he’s aware of her variable power set and that he’d hit her while she was at minimum armour, I highly doubt he’d believe Max wasn’t going to recover and get back up unless he’s insanely more stupid than we think… or has been living in a hole and missing the televised demonstrations and vehemence fight.
His real intelligence (or that of the team he’s with) will be measured by their next few steps. Unless they have some kind of trump up their sleeve which they didn’t deploy on Max right away, I’m going to presume their next steps are either immediate extraction in a method the Arcswat team can’t follow or prevent, or more delay tactics while they take what they came for.
Why would he be aware of her variable power set? Very few people (including on her team) know about it
They may know she can do different things, they most certainly wouldn’t know she can ‘boost’ them (how many, not counting Z-Fighters, are able to do that? and even with them, it’s a complete package upgrade, not selective upgrades)
If he hadn’t hit her with everything he had, and hoped he broke her, he would be a complete moron: forgot about being charged with assaulting a federal officer, she would make sure his remains were never found to be charged
He MIGHT be charged… or more appropriately charred. I’m fairly sure she does thermal blasts instead of electric.
Thats kind of what I’m saying. He WOULDN’T be aware of Max’s variable power set, so he SHOULD be expecting Max to get back up after the hit he gave her and NOT believing that he might have hit her at a point when she was more vulnerable (not that she was all that vulnerable anyway).
He’s an idiot if he has no idea about the limits to how hard he can punch compared to the televised hits that Maxima has previously taken. He’s smart if he knows he’s only delayed her and is both employing more tactics to delay her AND an exit strategy to escape her before she can exact revenge.
Dumb = Hur Hur, I defeated Maxima and can take her team and everything I like.
Smart = I’ve got about 10 more seconds to grab tech and pull a disappearing act.
I dunno, Max is pretty well-suited to fighting multiple opponents. If you can’t take her by surprise, you either need a lot of raw power or something esoteric.
Yeah. Even if they could out-power her, she still has super speed and flight and so can disengage at will, which allows her to stop being surrounded, and so engage on more favorable terms.
“Does not cotton” :D
Someone may want to intercept that flyer with the way above Earth’s caliber tech
Someone would have to notice her
Well, someone who gave a damn… and could do something about it
Dabbler will have noticed. She was going to be videoing the end.
Well, I hope Mr. Dandy has his will written because I doubt he will survive the reflexive hit Maxima will nail him with.
He might if she’s still set to 100% speed? Though speed added to mass equals power, so maybe not. It might turn a blunt hit into a hot knife, lol.
Depends on how her super speed is implemented. If she’s just pushing her body around faster, yeah, super speed punches hurt more, but I designed a character once who could alter the ratio between inertial and gravitational mass: If he lowered his inertial mass, he moved faster, but without any more momentum.
He couldn’t hit any harder, but he could chestnut fist like nobody’s business. He just had to move around a lot, because he tended to exhaust all the oxygen in the air around his head pretty quick if he didn’t.
Had the downside that he aged at whatever his subjective time frame was; If he spent an hour throwing punches into a tough guy, or a couple hours running to the next town over in what everybody else thought was a fraction of a second, he aged that hour or two.
Oh, and at higher speeds he had trouble seeing where he was going, because he wasn’t getting enough photons per second hitting his eyes. The faster he went, the darker the world got. At highest speeds even wearing night vision gear he couldn’t see where he was going.
I was aiming for a super-speedster with realistic limitations: Go as fast as you want, but going fast has costs.
Thank you for reminding me of Cyborg 009 Episode 33 Frozen Time
that is a creative solution to the speed=force problem that should make any speedster that isn’t time sliding or also has super durability; severely hurt themselves and others from impacts at those speeds.
Nah, after what almost happened to Maxi’s brother, she doesn’t do ‘reflexive hits’
She doesn’t do reflexive energy blasts, actually
Considering her base strength, not even ‘regular’ hits
Dave,
Foot pedals.
One for forward and reverse.
One for direction.
Sounds terrible.
If enough space is avaliable, it’s worth looking into OVR advanced settings and enabling redirected walking.
But otherwise, getting used to smooth locomotion is the way forwards. It just takes a bit of practice and getting used to.
On a resolution front, that’s improving.
The HP Reverb coming out soon has 2160×2160 per eye. And the recently launched quest 2 isn’t far behind, and is a good budget option.
And yes. Alyx is great.
Agreed, for seated play, you can’t beat smooth motion IMO. Before I tried VR I read everywhere how smooth motion causes nausea… For me that was a *slight* issue for about day or two. The teleport stuff is so unnatural that I refuse to play anything that doesn’t at least have switch to smooth. Limited FOV while moving (black stripes at sides) is not complete dealbreaker, but I turn that off too whenever I can.
I have yet to try HL:A, but I spent some two hundred hours in NMS (and I still return for more from time to time), which has some pretty complicated controls. Not to mention SkyrimVR. Both are very manageable with some practice and smooth/natural motion.
*sigh* just wish it was not vr based. The correction I have always made those ‘reverse distance’ fake machines at the DMV not work. So the reverse binoculars tech has issues.since vision is near sighted would almost have to have no special contacts and NO reverse binocular at all.
Eg tuned to 2-4 inches. Contacts would have almost no correction l, but because they are smooth helps with kerataconis.
I read somewhere that non-vr version is coming, they just focused on vr first.
Not impressed that Dabbler and others allows the Big-Guy to throw off the illicit tech to the flier.
They should be fast enough to interceed.
I’ll hazard a guess here, perhaps a mere speculation, that Dave neglected that detail because he’s already decided the plot will involve Sydney taking up that loose end. To be seen.
Yeah, they are currently busy elsewhere, or Juggernot wouldn’t have stepped in when he did
Plus, it’s been, wait, half a second since he showed up and punched Maxi?
It must have been AT LEAST 5 seconds, by my estimate, and I’d wager more like 10 to 30 seconds or maybe more – no idea why it would take that long for Max to get back into the fray, but maybe there are reasons (?)
1) Knuckles punched max, thanked Torchy (1-3 seconds); Max impacts the pavement and scaffolding asynchronously, probably coming to rest after 1 or 2 seconds (?)
2) Turned away from Torchy, started walking away, and Torchy became miffed at his intervention (2-4 seconds)
3) He thought better of grabbing the Torchy’s gun, turned around and attacked her shield (1-3 seconds)
4) He made something go ZRRRRRRRRR, then FZT, then CHUD, then SMASH (3-7 seconds)
5) Mid-air gun went FWIP at least three times before going WHAP in his hand (1 to maybe 2 seconds)
6) He quickly tossed the gun into the air for a well-coordinated hand-off (1-2 seconds)
7) We can assume Cosmos starts talking in the middle of the handoff (4-15 seconds)
8) Knuckles then launches Cosmos (I’m assuming throwing) to the same spot he put Maxima (2-4 seconds)
If you factor in a TON of wiggle room for an improbable reduction to below my low end estimates of 15 seconds to say AT ABSOLUTE MINIMUM 5 seconds have passed
Unless Knuckles and Torchy and Cosmos are speedsters, it has been WAAAAY more than half a second
Where do we disagree? Or are you claiming hyperbole?
Talking is a free action in comics so that could take off a few seconds.
Your itinerary assumes that Torchy wasn’t the target.
If this was an opportunistic tech grab, which this page makes it look like, and the team knows what they’re up against, at least regarding Archon, I think we’re probably looking at the 10-15 second range.
1. 1-2 seconds. Max’s fist-powered flight is 1-2 seconds until rest, but nobody waits for that, so it doesn’t count.
2. 3-4 seconds. Turning away from Torchy was a calculated move. The dialog’s the time consuming part.
3. 1 second. As soon as he felt her guard was down, pounce. The time consuming part is he seems to only be using one fist for no explained reason, so it takes him longer between punches. But it’s still just two punches, so that doesn’t take long.
4. 2-3 seconds. ZRRRRRRRRR FZT CHUD doesn’t take that long. We cared about seeing where Torchy went, so we were shown that, but Punchy doesn’t care about that. He’s entirely focused on getting the gun, which would be hitting the ground before he reactied if he was gawking at Torchy’s flight. Yesterday’s panel 7 was likely at the same time or earlier than panel 6.
5. 1 second. Three rotations won’t take long if it’s from the holder’s sudden flight into a faux flag at the distance it was shown to be on 883.
6. 1 second.
7. 3 seconds. Ray’s adaptive to the local culture, and this is New York. So, 1 second for his first bubble, 1 second for most of his next bubble, and 1 second for “does not cotton”.
8. 1 second.
I come up with 13-16 seconds.
Guesticus doesn’t have a track record for thinking things through methodically like this before posting. Just sayin. You don’t manage to come close to their posts per day going through things slowly and carefully. I mean, they’re basically *everywhere* where I read comic comments, excluding The Far Side of Utopia, and multiple comments every day that I read comments.
Probably about twenty seconds. You can almost ignore the action, and count only time to say the overlapped dialog.
Page #884, fist hits Max, a few seconds for dialog as she flies and he sets up to sucker-punch flame girl.
Page #885 panels 3, 4 and 5 are a single punch in slow mo, with 6 being the knockback. 6, 7 and 8 are nearly simultaneous, flame girl flies to/thru window, her gun spins, he catches it. Physics means it can’t “really” spin three times in midair… so that’s nearly instant. He immediately hands it off, while flame girl curses Earth.
Cosmos’ long winded talking presumably started before the toss, and perhaps should have been an internal dialog, but it’s likely a character tag that he’s a sleazy echo of Deus, saying what he means out loud. Page #886 Max’s panels 6-8 happen simultaneously with Cosmos talking.
The number was just some random shit number, the point was, there would have been barely any time for Dabbles to notice what had happened, let alone be able to intercept the hand off, the rest of the team are probably still busy doing what they were doing, with Sydney being DaveB-only-knows-where dealing with the pod
Could be that Dabbler and the other Archon agents are currently dealing with any other individuals mister Chungus Maximumus there brought along for the ride. Having gotten a ringside seat to watch, they likely had the initial movements planned out, with the flier standing by for exactly this before the plan makes contact and the enemy starts voting.
That honestly looked like the most viable item to steal: clearly a gun/weapon that’s not a simple slug thrower, handheld, not obviously neutralized already. Ninja babe w/ sword may or may not be retrievable, and we don’t know here apparent weight compared to that of the gun, which is probably a lot more reasonable. Most of the other stuff we see are handheld pistol sized weapons (most seem to be slug or grenade throwers), or would require tackling Dabbles and Sidney (the pod). While firehead has a shield, they’ve no idea what it looks like. Many of the aliens seem to be using their natural biology as weapons, and I’m going to go out on a limb and say the US government wouldn’t get to fire up the nerve weasels on some very public arrestees just cause one of them can spit acid.
What? “the enemy starts voting”? Do you know something we don’t?
It’s a reference to the saying that “conflict is a democracy: your opponent also gets a vote”. It comes in many versions; that’s my preferred as it’s most wide-ranging.
So all it did was pop her jaw a bit? This guy can’t even one shot a tank and thinks he took her down? Obviously not one of Deus’s, then :P
He did ‘one shot’ a tank, unfortunately for him, Maxi is a minimum of a ‘two-shot’ tank, and he ain’t getting another one
Well he still made a rookie street fight nistake. This is not competition fighting where you get points for hits.
in steet fighting you pummel them until they stay down.
He is about to learn the hard way. Oh well, Max needed a good reason to cut loose.
You’re assuming that Max was the target, and she isn’t. Looting the corpses is. If the B team can self-extract NOW, they win.
If they can’t, they lose…. unless they have a pretty good lawyer.
yeah, mistake a lot of cocky fighters make; one lucky shot knockdown does not mean the opponent will stay down, or that you can knock them down again when they see you coming
The reason I compared her to a tank was due to the writer making mention that with zero additional power in her ‘defense’ pool, her baseline is around a tank.
So he just hit her AT that tank level baseline, and didn’t even loosen a tooth. Just popped her jaw a bit.
Remember. Her power is based on a stat system. She has a base stat, and then an energy pool to move towards flight, defense, speed, and strength to augment them way above that baseline. Not sure where her energy blasts fall in the categories, though. Maybe dropping all the powers down to baseline and using the energy pool itself?
You’re assuming he’s here to fight.
Everything we’ve seen so far indicates that that is _not_ the plan, and that they are very much sticking to the plan.
Which probably does not include a prolonged engagement, that would increase the likelihood of failure and/or capture of one-or-more of their own personnel.
And I’ll go on record that they aren’t here for Max, either.
In fact, my money is on Miss My-Tech-Is-Mine.
After all, if you can’t steal her loot from her…then the logical step, if you are fixated on getting stuff from her, is to abscond with Dabbler herself, and make her surrender it.
Same-same applies to Sydney.
Ya’ll notice they’re both off camera, with their allies thoroughly distracted, right?
I’d say they weren’t here for Dabbler. They heard the news of aliens being blatantly alien tourists and came over to see what they could get. So Torchy was probably the closest they had to a prime target. Mission accomplished, now time to leave.
Honestly, that’s probably the most real-world logical answer.
But, otoh, it’s not unreasonable to think someone looking to black bag Dabbler would be camping the news for “Atypical” scenarios, wherein ARC-SWAT could be expected to make an appearance.
“Aliens have landed in Times Square, Sir.”
“…finally.” (In the voice of that shitty little mercantilist with the DEIC in the Pirates movies)
Dabbler just doesn’t seem like the type to capture to me, she’s got too many tricks up her sleeve to safely keep her in custody and conscious, which she needs to be to hand over her toys.
That doesn’t mean there isn’t someone foolish enough to try but these people feel smarter than that so +1 to them being here for a quick tourist mugging and getting out while the getting’s good.
Sydney is off-camera dealing with the pod, Dabbles is off-camera getting into position to record the fight
Max is more of an “Essential Follower” for Sydney in this story. ;P
She might get her ass beat but she’ll get back up in a few.
I think there’s a typo in the text at the bottom of the comic. I feel like you’re not intending to talk about where Jesus died.
Ray may be beyond the point where the cavalry would be able to rescue him. He will still need salvation for his immortal (immoral) soul though.
Ray Cosmos must have rather strange taste in women, if that third-eye-fire chick with the chitinous face is his definition of perfect beauty. Yeah she’s got a rack, but that only counts for so much when the rest of you looks like a spider had a baby with one of those dancing fire babes from the barbecue commercials (am I the only one who remembers those?)
PS – I am so glad he didn’t get named Ray Cosmic.
I believe Ray was referring to Max there.
He was talking about Max.
Prrrrrretty sure Ray means Maxima, since he was hitting on her just before the stasis field went into play.
{Simpons Action Movie Actors Voice} That’s the joke.
If that’s the joke they shouldn’t really have elaborated. Should’ve just stopped after the punchline. Adding more information after the punchline usually detracts from the joke unless you’re putting in more punch lines.
Ray reminds me in a lot of ways of Harcourt Fenton Mudd, galactic conman and swindler, from Star Trek ToS. With the difference being Ray can (apparantly) usualy do his own fighting.
“Harcourt Fenton Mudd. Thief –”
“Come now.”
“Swindler and con man…”
“Entrepreneur!”
“Liar and rogue.”
“Did I leave you with that impression?”
– James T. Kirk and Harcourt Mudd
“Because you stole everything else!”
Well he’s trying to do the right thing getting his butt kicked but still getting rewarded
As rewards go I think he can live with getting thrown face first into Max’s breasts.
He only gets to enjoy that “reward” if he’s still conscious.
But he was merely thrown at her. He’s a distraction to assist with Punchy exiting the scene. That works a lot better if he’s still conscious.
Some would say it’s a wardrobe weakness to have such an easily grabbed point with that much structural integrity. Ray, on the other hand, feels it’s a feature, as it’s gotten him tossed into somebody’s breasts like this so many wonderful times.
A wobble board under your butt (or feet) might work best. Think DDR pad but with full joystick range of directions depending on the exact degree you lean. Sensitivity can be dialed up or down depending on balence of user. You’d “glide” or “fly” instead of walk – but it would be FAR cheeper then a 4-way treadmill.
I wouldn’t want something like that under my feet in VR…
I’m thinking it’s time to revive the Wii. They had plenty of walking/balance/bobsledding/jumping/other movements worked out.
Dabbler’s beginning to regret she put herself on video duty. Cost her he opportunity to be in Ray’s position right now: legit face-plant into Max’s boobs, no repercussions.
At least, until she offers to massage Max’s boobs to ease their bruising.
Dabbles may not have survived to enjoy the moment
And Dabbles isn’t stupid, or hungry, enough to try and pull that shit in the middle of a battle. After the battle, most certainly, just not during
Ray: I am so HAPPY right now!!
Dabbler: I am so… JEALOUS right now!!
Confining his tastes in women to humanoids, firehead probably lays within the range of the previously seen bridal party.
I was expecting Ray to say something to the effect that striking women is frowned upon in the civilized sections of the galaxy, and perhaps he’d like to take his chances fighting a man.
That said, strong Earth guy has excellent aim to toss Ray 150 feet and hit Maxima.
There’s 5 more seconds of escape time.
Not sure if it was intentional or just a misspelling in the caption at the bottom of the page, but “Calvary” was the hill on which Christ died, “Cavalry” are the mounted military unit used in the idiom “Send in the Cavalry”
It probably was an error, given the final spelling.
Dave, need to get you a FIVR pod, couldn’t cost more than a few dozen kilodollars! /LitRPG jokes
These events further fall under the previous discussions on how technology can fall into the Earthican’s hands. The space cops miiiiiiiight be able to swing buying it back for a few tons of gold from a criminal organization, but that assumes the organization isn’t going to have access to tech wizardry. I’m trying to recall, but do we have any tech wizardry supers similar to Wearing The Cape style ones?
Back to the discussion, a criminal organization is probably more willing to negotiate for some variant of easily liquidated raw material such as gold than governments are, since they don’t have constituents to keep employed (read: campaign donors to appease). They’re also not going to be too terribly concerned with ‘advancement of mankind’ type things, especially when dissecting the technology means they couldn’t steal it again the next time some schmucks try to kidnap Maxima and get atomized.
That is an interesting side path, the space cops keeping organized earth crime on tap to prevent tech contamination. Would probably avoid the Cobra Effect as well, since the locals are presumably the only ones that still value gold as much as that. Would make a lot more sense than how New York gets invaded every few years and SHIELD has fleets of helicarriers but the US Navy still presumably only has barely more than one digit of aircraft carriers. Before anyone mentions it, I recall Reed Richards Is Useless (as an extension of Like Reality Unless Noted), I’m curious how Dave is going to apply or avoid it. Bounties also have the further issue of what happens when organized criminals kill somebody to get said technology to turn in for space cash.
Of course that also raises the counter arguments about the Terran entertainment. How are humans getting paid if they can’t buy tech? Either somebody is going to splurge on some processed raw material and piss it all away, it’s going into the equivalent of escrow, or intergalactic digital piracy is going to ruin their chances at making some early game creds.
on the subject of HL:A, I’ve had a rift cv1 for a few years (same res as the Vive) but bought a valve index a few weeks back, and started playing HL:A which I had been holding off on.
The index controllers are amazing, stick movement works well, I have far less queasyness and headaches than I occasionally got on the Rift, I think due to the higher resolution and 144hz refresh, if you get a chance I really recommend trying an index!!
You’ve probably got other sources of VR advice, but just in case you haven’t already run across these sort of tips:
Check out Natural Locomotion on Steam. It lets you use your hand motion controllers to do something that feels surprisingly like walking for almost any VR game that supports joystick movement (including Alyx). This made a world of difference for my enjoyment of Skyrim VR — much better than either the teleport or joystick “gliding” motion.
In addition to double-checking IPD settings, be sure to fiddle with the adjustment that moves the lenses closer or farther from your face. In my experience both require some tuning to minimize visual distortion and discomfort.
The Vive Pro and Valve Index resolution is my threshold for “this is could be better, but it’s good”. The Vive was just barely acceptable — as you say, it’s more an indication of a potentially promising future. Of course, with the extra resolution, you need more graphics power for the extra pixels.
And now you can go fuck yourself with a rusted pipe Dave. You’re just like everyone else that takes this slap ass comedy without thinking about it further than “OOO, BOOBS AND FUNNY!!” I quit. I’m done trying to understand why people think awkward and shame inducing situations are funny. Especially when they have it happen between a dislikable guy and an uninterested woman. Because its ALWAYS like that. So fuck you and have fun. I’m finally done.
Boob collision: Funny
Boob collision joke passing off a humorless cunt: Priceless
One third of the internet is porn and this offends you?
One third? I think it’s more
It used to be more, until we got some major banks which object to that sort of thing. These days, porn is less on the bleeding edge of tech than it used to be.
I would probably be more concerned about that, except that most of the porn industry seems to think it needs to be degrading to women in order to sell their product. Most of the porn I’ve seen that doesn’t degrade women is lesbian porn (made by and for actual lesbians). Note: even most of the femdom porn I’ve seen degrades women, as it limits them to this particular niche in which they dominate with force, in essence being masculine women, rather than dominating with their femininity or with their minds.
You need to broaden your porn-horizons if that is what you believe ‘most of the porn industry’ is
The “big thing” would have been to just leave.
As opposed to trollish rant :/
You believe they are leaving? o_O
No, no I don’t
Can’t please everyone, and everyone has their own sensitivities. If you’re not having fun, by all means drop out.
It’s not as if an occasional leer hasn’t been part of Grrl Power’s style since the beginning. Were you expecting that to change?
In this case, I think it works precisely because Max is nearly as invulnerable as Achilles. An attack of embarrassment/annoyance might be one of the few things that can get through her armor, and that only if she’s distracted. She’s more than capable of reprimanding the offender herself, and presumably that will happen in the next frame or two, so I see this more as set up for “oh boy, is he — and whoever threw him” going to get it” than as a gratuitous gag.
Your milage will vary. Fare well, wherever you fare.
(By the way, my machine’s spill chucker tried to turn “Grrl” into “Hero”. Appropriate.)
It’s fine for people to have preferences and not like things. But it’s amazing for someone to get this far and only now figure out that this comic isn’t to their taste. What’s unacceptable is their opening line. That’s not an appropriate response to something not to your taste.
It seems to be a peculiarly American affliction to vacillate between the extremes of bleating about freedom (eg refusing to wear masks in the middle of a pandemic) and trying to make everyone conform (the sort of PC just witnessed). The US is not alone in this sort of folly but it does seem to take it to the next level.
Or, as some of my family members have done, embrace both extremes at the same time, by trying to make everyone conform to not wearing masks in the middle of a pandemic, or similar shenanigans.
That could be that next level you’re talking about.
Wow.
I can remember a time where is someone didn’t like FREE entertainment, they just quit partaking of it.
When did that change to an almost requirement that the ‘offended’ party must make a Diva like announcement that he/she/it will no longer offer his/her/its patronage and suggest damage to the creator?
No one cares what you think little blossom. Feel free to fuck the right off.
“Whatever” seems to be angry that such entertainment even exists, believing that it’s not just low but immoral, perhaps inspiring people not to take real sexual harassment seriously. I doubt it has that effect.
It’s seems as though slapstick humor may just not be your thing.
Perhaps you should find a different comic to follow.
I don’t see it.
Yeah, there’s such a thing as stupid misogynistic sexism that derives jokes from low-brow sex-shaming & the humiliation of women.
But quite frankly, that isn’t the drum that Dave beats. Yeah, he makes some sex jokes some times, but I don’t think I’ve yet seen him explicitly victimize any of his characters sexually. Even Sydney, who very often is the butt of such jokes, doesn’t get _abused_. The closest anybody has actually gotten to that, is actually Max, specific in the form of taunting from Dabbler, ages ago, when Sydney was being interviewed.
Remember, “Colonel Sexy?”
That was legit sexual harassment.
And in fairness, so was the stealing of all the guys’ shirts by Harem, shortly there after, but because of our societal norms, that generally gets overlooked. The point being, though, that while neither of things is “okay” in a real-world context, it also doesn’t violate the general tone of the comic, and so isn’t exactly setting anyone up to be shocked by the sudden appearance of sex comedy. Anybody who’s surprised by this scene hasn’t been paying attention, and while I love and and am proud my own boobs, I’m not especially offended by comedic motor-boating slapstick.
I can imagine myself in this situation, and not feel like I’d be humiliated or threatened. And I’m certain, under the circumstances, Max wouldn’t just assume this was some premeditated attempt to get a face full of her 24 karat jublies.
In fact, my personal response would be to ask Ray, “Shit! Are you okay? What happened?”
…in any event…while I’m usually the first concede that sometimes Dave’s comic is a little problematic, this isn’t one of those time, and while, say, the “Eskimo Sisters,” bit is clearly not okay because of its casual racism (which I sort-of noted elsewhere), I don’t think it’s especially logical, or even productive, emotionally, to categorize this scene as being sexist, in any way.
The fact is, sex is f*cking funny. (Ba dum tsss)
Just look at the faces people make while they’re at it, and contortions they go through, to get into those contortions.
Rant /off
I’d say, in large part, society accepting the sexual harassment that’s directed at guys tends to happen because most of us don’t recognize when we’re being sexually harassed, and many of the ones that do *like* it. Also, many of the ones who don’t recognize it in the moment revel in it once they’ve figured it out.
It makes it really hard for the rest of us to get any sympathy about it. That said, I’ve seen enough sexual harassment of women in my workplace, which actually seems to care about that stuff rather than just paying lip service, to feel that female sexual harassment is still a more urgent concern than anything I may have personally been subjected to myself. (Some of which I will admit to having enjoyed a bit.)
To clarify my statement about my employer, for any who feel I’ve been mislead: it’s one of the few ways you can get fired without going through a lengthy process of corrective action plans, which can drag on for years if it’s something they’re less concerned about, such as poor job performance or sexual harassment of anyone who’s trans, regardless of whether it’s MtF or FtM. If someone were to sexually harass a woman somewhere it’s easy to prove it happened, such as in the reception area of any building, where everything’s on camera, they could be fired the next day (though that depends on the victim making a complaint.) Most of the time it still happens, it’s not so easy to prove, and the process usually takes a couple weeks. Versus the one guy I worked with whose manager was too busy to do their 90 day review, so they were automatically taken off of preliminary probation, and it took many years of them doing *nothing* useful as well as causing numerous disruptions to get them fired. Someone who was less disruptive managed to make it to retirement. That’s just in the people I’ve personally worked with.
(No, I’m not saying where I work because I’m pretty sure this post would mostly draw interest from the sort of people who I would not want to have as coworkers.)
I’d also mention Dabbler’s “blobble-wobble”-ing Max’s shiny breasts in that flashback to the first time she saw her in a towel. Though that’s sexual assault, not harassment.
Anyway, yes, how does someone make it this far into this comic without getting upset by the sexual imagery and slapstick without leaving?
34th rule of splapstick: Men /will/ get hit in the nuts at some point. Women /will/ get hit in the boobs (and in this situations they are boobs, not breasts).
Corrolary: if sword fighting happens then the enemy of the hero will have it revealed that he is wearing (gender) inappropriate underwear.
Also known as: slapstick humour is crude. Learn to deal with it or avoid it. It is after all the entire point of slapstick humour to be crude.
In this situation, Max is in the position of acquiring a third Boob.
Ba dum tss
And she isn’t even on Mars.
then she needs to get her ass to Mars
:)
Your nick say everything there is to say, really.
Soooo…When she has her armour up, do her airbags become chrome lated marble? Or do they stay soft and squishy?
To be able to move she would have to stay flexible, therefore soft and squishy. In her case I would expect that “armor” refers to resistance to damage and tensile strength. That said, Max’s body still has inertia and when the impact speed reaches a certain point it is still going to hurt the impacter no matter how soft and squishy said body parts are. Annnnd I don’t care if some people get but hurt, the cleavage faceplant is one of the 39 immortal comic moments that are humorous in all human cultures.
Non-Newtonian.
Soft usually, hard when hit.
Ray may have made an impression in his face.
Boobleck.
You’re welcome.
if you’ve just heard about that stuff, does it make you a noobleck?
Anything is hard if you hit it hard enough, non-Newtonian or not. Like, if a human falls in Earth standard gravity from half a mile up into water sufficiently deep that they won’t touch bottom from the initial impact, that impact will still kill them if they’re not a super and they’re not in some device designed to protect them from such a fall (such as wearing a deployed parachute). Just saying. Also, I expect that Maxima is probably a lot firmer than most her size, even if they are still technically soft and squishy.
Also, the Occulus is rumoured to have better lenses and therefor less eye strain and motion sickness induction.
Also yes, Alyx is great. The first non-flight simulator game that makes integral use of the VR experience (and not using it for simplistic jump scares only)
Super strong bad guy just had a team mate flee with the tech.
Ergo he doesn’t think he’ll win this, but winning isn’t the point.
What, you think he’s willing to sacrifice himself as long as someone else gets to play with the new toy? o_O
He’s simply making sure the new toy is secured rather than lugging it around and risk it getting either damaged or stolen back
Or there’s a plan, and he’s following it.
Teamwork & organization, coupled with prior planning & resources, are the actual best superpower.
Yes, that ^ more than that ^^^
Yes, anyone who plays a team-based video game can tell you that teamwork is OP.
The best superpower is money though.
Money is teamwork, but in stackable form.
Merriam-Webster helps with the easily made typo in this episode: On the battlefield, one should send in the cavalry, which is the word for an army component mounted on horseback. The similarly spelled word calvary however, refers to “an open air depiction of the crucifixion,” or more recently “an experience of intense suffering.”
Cavalry hasn’t been restricted to horses for a hundred years
Calvary was the name of the hill upon which crucifixions were performed(? placed? done?), not a type of crucifixion (and that was not the first, certainly as fuck in a truck wasn’t the last)
What, exactly, is Maxi flicking in panel eight?
The strand of hair that was in front of her face in panel 7.
as good a guess as any I could make, but I would also think that having a strand with motion lines away from her face would have helped in understanding that, if it were the case… ce’st la vie, I guess
Whelp, guess he’s died and gone to heaven so to speak. Should be interesting to hear his take away from all of this once it’s all done and the dust has settled.
Not necessarily in that order. :-)
Maxima can’t cut a break…!
So, Mr Poetic’s getting rolled to the side, and whoever threw him is getting an extra special impounding for adding insult to injury. Neat.
Maxima has officially Worfed out.
I can almost hear Dabs (and more ppl probably) thinking: “Lucky bastard”…
I’m reminded of Kuno a pervert so into himself that he rejects the reality right in front of him.
which brings me back to the question i asked after reading wearing the cape where is ranma
BTW, Eskimo Sisters is a racist expression, please refrain in the future.
Hah hah, very funny
Blow it out your ass.
It’s bad enough we get someone flouncing because they were personally offended. Instead of just moving on.
Quit trying to change everyone around you. Don’t like word usage? Then stop using it yourself. Do not tell others- even couched in a polite request to change their language, culture and ways for your sensibilities. Be an adult, move on. Move away. Just leave everyone else alone.
Wow…that’s the same sort of stunning logic one usually hears from people who want to say n* without dealing with the normal consequences of being a bigoted muncher of excretory hind quarters.
Clearly, you’re a towering philosophical intellect of unimpugnable character just trying to take a stand for “classical language,” with zero intent to undermine the already marginalized minorities of the world.
That one I’ll agree is a legitimate, and in fact constructive, suggestion.
And Ray has now demonstrated that there’s more to super-juice than muscle mass.
I really hope they impound his ship, and he gets stuck doing what amounts to sales for Archon.
Also, “That, to employ my exquisite knowledge of the local idiom, does not cotton,” sounds fucking hilarious in that voice, and it only gets even more funnierer when you raise the volume and emphasize the last three words.
I mean, yeah, “sh*t just got serious,” but not _so_ serious that we can’t have a total Looney Toons undercurrent running, and be perfectly harmonious….
I think Ray only demonstrated that someone with sufficient muscles to throw him can throw him into boobs.
Being able to throw someone doesn’t mean that one is necessarily stronger than someone. In fact, I’ve seen people demonstrate the ability to throw an attacker when they would not have been able to lift said attacker directly without their life or the well-being of someone very important to them being at stake. There are several martial arts techniques that teach one how to do this. Judo’s probably the best known for it.
Not that I think the brute used Judo on Ray. Being strong enough to punch Max like he did suggests he’s probably strong enough to pick Ray up and throw him just fine without special technique. I think it more likely that either Ray was not expecting the guy to try to throw him, or he figured the guy would probably throw him into some boobs. Either way, Ray probably just wasn’t guarding against it adequately.
It feels plausible to me that Ray anticipated the throw, but also anticipated the target, and his motivations really are not those of a team player. Certainly not a Team Archon player.
Hello Dave and welcome to the VR world!
My first working VR experience was Everest VR. Virtual climbing on Mount Everest is hella cool experience. Don’t take too long either (under ½ hour as I recall), so it’s great way to show off your VR rig to visitors.
My brother’s favourite is Superhot VR. It don’t have much in the way of replayability, but it’s cool while it lasts.
Space Pirate Trainer makes a good party game. One session is short, unless player is hella good with it and can keep going level after level.
Dreadhalls is really scary. I get motion sick with it though, so I haven’t played much of it. But what little I played, I really was feeling it. You can laugh at Metatron playing it; then try it yourself and see how YOU feel about it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dU6kWGICZc
The most promising solution for movement in a VR system uses sensor boots and a low friction pad, while supporting most of your weight on a harness. This is vastly cheaper than a four way treadmill and lets you use your own feet to control your movement. Turning is still an issue, though.
For some people though, having your legs and environment moving in sync while their body doesn’t actually go anywhere throws off their proprioception even more than just floating or teleporting. Our brains and bodies are wired to be in sync, it’s pretty tough to mimic. The main advantage of the treadmills / counterweight systems seems to be that you can at least move some and lean into the motion appropriately, so it just feels like your movements are (greatly) compounded rather than completely disconnected from what your eyes are seeing.
“Does not cotton” sounds kinda funny, but I feel like he’s messing up a phrase I do not recognize.
Yeah, had to Google it. Its normally “I don’t cotton to” I think which means they don’t agree to it.
https://www.waywordradio.org/i-dont-cotton-to/
Here ya go, fellas.
http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/225189/ddg#225201
Always understood it to be ‘cotton on’, which means ‘it is agreeable or understood’, with Raymos saying it ‘does not cotton’ meaning he doesn’t like what Juggernot just did
Air bags? No. Cement wall disguised as air bags? Most likely.
Remember, her armour was way down. So he’s golden. ^.^
Omnidirectional “treadmills” are already a thing. They’re generally a sizable investment, but smaller consumer-targeted models are just around the corner.
I know perfectly well this is done for the sake of humor, but should it even be possible for Max to be surprised by such a slow moving projectile? You’ve already established her as being able to stop bullets that aren’t even fired at her.
But not panic vomit.
There is a hard limit on Max’s reaction time, best known as “the rule of funny”.
I’d say she probably was perceiving the world in slow motion, so someone actually moving quickly stepping up and punching her had to be quite the surprise. After something like that, it’s fair for someone to be stunned for a few moments. While I feel like Guesticus’s estimate of how long was drastically low, it’s still not been that long, especially if Max’s instinctive reaction was to turn everything back to defense, and the stasis beam isn’t an instant-off.
Yeah, the estimate was extremely low, and irrelevant, with the missed point being the others were busy elsewhere
Except they used her reaction time and speed as an excuse to do a PR stunt with civilians and live ammo.
As if there was absolutely no danger of anything unforeseen happening.
You mean, like Sydney happening?
So, an extremely powerful punch hit Max when her armor was low…
And it did virtually nothing to her.
*Yawn* Called it. So many good characters in this comic. And then there’s Max. The “Charlie Kent”. All the power in the world, yet no apparent weaknesses or vulnerabilities.
Naw… That’s not quite fair. Superman at least has a fear of green rocks.
No, she has weaknesses. She’s had her nose broken, (And had to reset it in a hurry before it healed.) SheBang popped her back, and NOT with her biggest blast. If you hit her hard enough you CAN injure her. It’s just that few people (But not none.) can hit her hard enough.
She had her nose broken when she was showing off by standing her ground. She was in superspeed mode when this guy hit her, so instead of busting stuff, the impact mostly just threw her.
I’m sure that if she’d had her back against something really solid, that punch would have done a lot more damage.
That’s not a weakness! If you hit anything hard enough, it will break (unless you are hitting Achilles.) Breaking someone’s nose is not exactly an accomplishment. She could probably break her nose by tripping on a sidewalk and landing wrong.
A weakness is a vulnerability. A flaw in the armor or some such.
I want to see her actually try to fight someone she can’t deal with and have to rely on her teammates. And Vehmence doesn’t count! Under most situations, she could take him on one-on-one.
This is someone who can casually obliterate an entire spaceship. Heck, she was fooling around and showing off when she did it.
We have only seen her in true peril a grand total of once. And that was under very specific and contrived circumstances. I want to see that there are actual, plausible threats to her that others can protect her from. I want to see that she needs her team just as much, if not more, than they need her.
As of now, she is effectively a female Superman. And it is the, in my opinion, biggest flaw in this comic.
Another weakness of hers is that she apparently keeps turning her speed to the lowest setting in a fight – or did she let him land on her chest at incredibly glacial speed?
She doesn’t have super awareness, and even when she ramps up her speed, she can still be caught unawares
She just got decked across the square, so hard that her jaw is now ‘all clicky’, which means that she was hurt, even mildly, so her priority would be to raise defense while she does a self-check (to see what else might be ‘clicky’) and then figure out what the fuck is going on
Most likely her next action would have been to check in with her team
I mean there’s no way she’s catching bullets if her mind isn’t as sped up as her body when she puts even a little bit of her pool into speed.
While something might still surprise her if she doesn’t notice it, someone flying into her chest at anything less than supersonic velocity would move with the speed of a glacier and simply be walked around like any other mostly stationary object.
Ah, I see. You don’t want her to have weaknesses in a conventional sense. You want her to have weaknesses in a Superman sense, where you’ve built a character who ought by rights to be invincible, (He’s stronger than everybody else, AND faster than everybody else, AND you can’t hurt him with any plausible amount of physical force…) and so you throw in some arbitrary, “alien element poisons him” or “he can’t do anything with things that are yellow” weakness to compensate.
But those sorts of weaknesses don’t make actual plot sense, they’re just arbitrary limitations the writers throw in. There’s no sensible reason that a character with Maxima’s power set would be deathly allergic to gerbils or lose her powers whenever she’s in contact with styrofoam.
That’s really a DC thing, anyway, even if it has become a trope.
She’s not invincible, she’s just really strong, so if you want to beat her, you have to catch her by surprise and hit her really hard. Or go after her in an area where she doesn’t have any special advantages; She still needs to breath, you could probably take her out by just tricking her into walking into a room full of nitrogen gas, or slip roofies into her booze.
“I want to see that there are actual, plausible threats to her that others can protect her from. I want to see that she needs her team just as much, if not more, than they need her.
As of now, she is effectively a female Superman. And it is the, in my opinion, biggest flaw in this comic.”
not sure if intended but that came across really cringy. Trying to ignore the possibly implications you want her to become a damsel in distress who needs others more than they need her; this can also fall under if focused on into two equally horrible tropes.
Worf Effect *they say they are really tough, but keep getting their ass kicked to show how tough the new threat is; and everyone else has to take it down instead” Essentially turning her into a jobber for whatever threat shows up.
and
“Dumb-ass in distress” : Nostalgia critic coined that so not sure if the trope has another name. Essentially a character that SHOULD be competent and capable of taking care of themselves ends up constantly needing to be saved by someone…see Robin, Green Hornet, and Jubilee in the X-men animated series as prime examples.
the time scale of this comic isn’t as long as it feels. If this were a comic book, 8-12 pages once a month, now this does put out that many *usually* in a month…well 6-8 on average. But not all at once. If you go back and re-read this in an all at once method this timeframe gets a lot shorter feeling. Honestly Maxima has combat wise, barely done anything in the comic for this time frame, in fact she has tended to mess up most of those times in some way and pulled a Goku being removed from the battle for some reason or another just to prevent that instant win..and yet people still nag on the character. So while waiting for that whole month to go by and thinking she’s done too much or too little in that time, you have only read three quarters to half an average comic book’s one issue length.
To put it simply, force feed what you say would improve her, and you would ruin the character instead *especially by how compressed it would be*. They would become all bark and no bite and end up a complete joke of a character. The Mighty Mighty One needs saving again…
PS: I said it below but it goes here too, the special weakness thing is terrible. Heck it was so overdone its treated as a joke, it is what you do with joke heroes “Milk my only weakness”
I rather like that like Megamind this comic ended up with a fake weakness. Everyone expects them to have a special weakness so they readily accept it. Granted Mega Mind the copper weakness was an outright lie, and Maxima being weak to electricity was a misunderstanding by people who saw the parkinglot brawl on the news.
I don’t see any justification for discarding her difficulty with Vehemence. So what if she could normally take him in a fight? He acted intelligently and spent the first half of the fight powering up with some rubes he collected. Then, after apparently discovering a method of harming her, he powered up more by getting everyone back up to fight each other again.
Also, frankly, she got into that situation largely due to her arrogance. Which is, of course, a weakness. That’s also what got her nose broken.
She was thrown back less than fifty feet into a building, most of the energy of the punch was lost in that. We also know Maxima’s baseline is still strong enough that when debuffed by a golem able to weaken even elder vampires to their knees she could still rip it apart; and you’re complaining random brute/bruiser super we know nothing about didn’t knock her out?
PS: So What, jeeze, some of you act like the powerful character has to suffer the Worf effect or you complain about them. Note Maxima also hasn’t solved any fight so far on her own, and in fact caused some problems *see bridge*. This story is clearly character driven not “they could die at any time” driven.
Wow… Strawman much. Besides, I’ll take Worf over Superman any day of the week. He’s a far more interesting character.
I’m not asking for her to constantly be in peril. But I just want to show her needing to actually rely on her teammates at least as much as they rely on her.
Oh, and yeah, by the by, she did effectively solve the fight with the alien invasion force on her own by casually obliterating a space ship. And, according to Dave himself, she could have defeated that force by herself. And he has stated she could have taken out the big parking lot fight on her own as well. But she wanted to see what her subordinates (inferiors) were capable of in a fight.
So, sure, she hasn’t “solved any fight so far on her own.” But, according to the author of this comic, she IS fully capable of doing so if she wants/needs to. (Perhaps not in every case, but definitely in most cases.
PS: *see bridge* doesn’t tell me anything. We are on episode #886! Can you please provide more context as to what you are referencing? Or, at least, bring up a page number?
She under estimated Vehemence and needed help, she can’t breathe underwater or in space, and the bridge refers to energy blast bouncing off of Sciona’s wings and hitting a suspension bridge. The word effect doesn’t refer to Worf’s personality, it refers to how he got his ass kicked every other threat just to show how dangerous the threat was after saying he was tough, eventually making him look like he was all talk about his combat skills. I don’t honestly care if characters are over powered if the focus of the story is on their character. Heck my favorite anime series Slayers, and Tenchi Muyo, the main cast aren’t in any real peril unless it’s an apocalyptic level threat. But here’s the kicker in the comments here, every time Maxima doesn’t show off her power the comments trash talk the character for holding back and endangering others and not being as tough as claimed. But every time she does show her power comments like yours show up with your little sarcastic yawns and signs and eyerolls and accusing her of solving every problem, being OP, or outright calling her a Mary Sue. So I am just lumping you all together in that damned of they do and damned if they don’t category.
Her weakness , since you seem obsessed with that concept is obvious. It is her power, it makes her over confident at times she can be surprised and has to hold back but never really knows how much to hold back. This is a personality flaw like any good powerhouse and not some lazy (magic rock, color yellow, separated from magic item for three seconds) lazy weakness.
Indeed, that’s exactly what happened in the Vehemence fight; She got her nose broken due to showing off.
To some extent the classic Spiderman had a similar problem: He was so used to fighting normal human criminals, that he’d trained himself to always pull his punches, and when he’d get into a fight with a supervillian where it wasn’t really necessary, he continually had trouble overcoming that training.
There was a line said by a space knight named Ikon in the short lived Annihilators comic that fits well here; the majority of the team were made up of A-class and S-class power houses; so used to either fighting cosmic level threats or having to pull their punches so much with lower threats that they both didn’t really know how to work as a team as they never really needed to coordinate with others before on a regular basis or hold back so much it gives regular enemies they aren’t used to fighting a chance to get away and endanger others around them.
One of the biggest flaws of a high class super, which early on this comic addressed is their collateral damage potential is so high they have to be extra careful to not harm bystanders. Get too cocky, too flippant with your powers and those stray beams, fire blasts, flying psy blades, or whatever can end up going through walls, killing civilians, destroying thousands of dollars worth of water lines, electrical lines, walls, sewer, drainage, and of course the popular in movies but would be an immediate law suit; someone’s vehicle.
Power houses can show off against alien invaders, giant monsters, demon in an extra dimensional space, ect…but put them in a C-class’s environment (Street level) and all power suddenly becomes a liability. Which came up in comic with the suspension bridge. Maxima thought she’d just blow away her enemy and fortunately for her when bounced the energy ball hit a high point of the bridge rather than directly at the vehicles; able to call in help to fix that while she continued pursuit.
Its like I say, you can’t send “Captain Armageddon” to stop a bank heist. Maxima can tone down, but only to a certain point.
Okay… Again. You really are not getting what I am trying to say. So let’s try a different tact.
What do the following members of ARCSWAT bring to the table that Maxima doesn’t do far better:
Anvil, Hiro, Stalwart, Math, Jabberwocky, Ren (and these are the ones I can come up with off top of my head.)
The ONLY thing they provide for her is numbers. They don’t fill any gaps they Max has. They are redundant and effectively obsolete. To use DBZ terms, they are Krillian, Yamcha, and Tien to her Goku. They serve little to no purpose on her team outside of the fact that she can’t be everywhere at once.
Having one person who is miles above and beyond everybody else does not for a good team composition make.
Now some of the others I didn’t mention, like Dabbler, Halo, Harem, etc. at least have some Utility abilities that are of use to her.
I’m not asking to get her ass kicked every episode, a la Worf. I want to have to honestly rely on her team once in a freaking while.
You mention Slayers and Tenchi Miyu. And those are classics. But those both have multiple characters that are incredibly powerful not just two. The two of Grrl Power being Maxima, and then Halo and Dabbler each taking a half point.
I suppose this is my problem in a nutshell: Max doesn’t need ARCSWAT. She could go out on her own and become a mercenary or whatever she wanted, and not be constrained by the constrains of authority and the chain of command. But without Max, ARCSWAT is very much up a river without a paddle. In virtually every team fight we have seen with her, she is at least 50+% of the force in and of herself.
For example, without Max, they seemingly had no way of taking out that Space Ship. Maybe Cora’s ship *could* have done something if it’s resources weren’t taken up shielding everybody. But, in that instance, every other member of the team was USELESS. It’s this whole “Dues Ex Maxima” crap that just frustrates me.
And again. According to Dave, Maxima could have soloed that entire Parking Lot fight, with Veh.
I guess I just don’t like her because she cheapens all of the other characters. What’s the point of an ensemble cast when there is one or two actual stars in the show? When there is only one or two characters that actual matter? (Again… Maxima with Halo and Dabbler each taking half a point.)
I want characters like Anvil, Hiro, and Stalwart to be able to fill roles that the team needs without just being numbers for “Dues Ex Machina.” I don’t want those sorts of characters to just be redundant.
Again… It’s the exact same reason why I hate characters like Superman and Goku.
I get what you are saying, but at the same time I am not a fan of puzzle piece teams; it feels very artificial; even in a fictional medium it is distracting like the original X-men team it felt like…Prof X…did you specifically find people who had flaws and strengths specifically to compliment each other?
A problem however, a real issue with this comic you have seemingly stumbled upon is this. Halo, Maxima, and Dabbler are by number of appearances, frequency of appearing, and story focus the three main characters. All of those others feel like secondary and tertiary characters; whose role is often filled by the arc-guest character *the role Cora is in right now and before would be characters like Pixel and Krona*, we have had very little outside of the first arc character focus on Math, Anvil, Hiro, and most the others.
If this comic were part of a greater universe with multiple titles and issues of those this large team could get that focus, but right now most of them come across more like background Avengers and yes Goku’s friends who had become less and less useful/important the further we got from the original Dragon Ball.
I can see how this is a bad thing, but at the same time with a large cast of characters and limited focus potential some will get pushed to background for the plot, not show up for stretches at a time, while the focus goes to those. If the story tries to give everyone equal character development and panel time then you end up with something likely unfocused. There is a reason even after Avengers and Justice League became things that the individual members tended to get their own comics and show in other series; because there simply isn’t time to put them all in one. Its why the MCU’s best move ever was to give characters their own movies and THEN put them all together.
Otherwise you end up with stuff like the Justice League movie, you don’t want them to be redundant, but…they kinda don’t have a choice if the story moves away from them and there isn’t time to focus on them;
in fact the Goku comparison is apt. Dragon ball Z was written and drawn by Akira Toriyama, not by a whole team of artists and writers like a DC or Marvel comic would have. He had deadlines, he had to get those books out and quickly, and his audience wanted certain things. So some characters suffered for it; but as much as I’d love to see a slice of life Krillen and Android 18 story; that’s not what the manga is about and they end up as space fillers for big events till the focused on characters show up.
Honestly what I am saying here is all over the place, as I understand what you mean, although you came about it in a rather bad way *wanting to nerf a character* rather than try to give more characters screen time. Maxima does have one thing working against her, she can’t be every where at once. The Fel came down in one ship, but present a problem she can’t just punch, or enemies that come down in larger more dispersed numbers and while she could eventually defeat them all like Superman; by the time she does they’d have killed most of the world’s population, why a team of heroes is needed, and trying to get the best of the best on the team not just puzzle piece characters.
But this comic has never felt like it was an action focused comic to me, there are action arcs, more so in recent years than before; but in general is more comedy and character focused.
But again I too would love to see more of those other characters but unless DaveB gets a partnership with someone and a guideline for them I doubt we’d ever see something like a Wolverine comic spun-off from X-men or the dozen other titles they had to split up and give focus to the various parts of their large team. He can’t just go…ya’know what I think I’ll do a Wanda and Vision style spin-off at the same time as the main comic so they get more focus…I have seen some online comic artists try to do spin-offs for that reason and one or more suffered for the time crunch; and they experienced burn out.
The reason why Maxi didn’t finish the Restaurant Rumble in one go, was because she was making sure her team was capable of dealing with threats without her, and she was acting as ‘Eye in the Sky’ to coordinate things (she told Dabbles to stop playing silly buggers with that sword woman, specially when Dabbles had already mention she’s not that great with swords)
I am reminded of an episode of Justice League where Green Lantern had to argue with Superman during training because Superman kept getting in everyone’s way. Superman’s excuse was every bullet he takes is a bullet no one else has to worry about; he was so used to saving everyone that he had no clue how to work with a team and treated his own super team mates as just people to save interfering with their training. Having to explain to him he won’t be at every battle, his teammates have to learn they can’t just hide behind him and do their own heroics. Likewise he needed to learn to trust them and not try to do everything alone.
Rhuen: yes, and that seems, to me at least, Maxi’s motives during the Rumble: at the moment, they are just one team, but eventually there will be more, and in different parts of the country (if not the world), and she wants to know they will be able to handle any threat without her ‘holding their hands’
Exactly, this is the founding branch, with likely intent to expand with other district specific offices. Right now they had to ship out part of their team across the country. For the sake of fast responses they will need to set up more teams; especially now realizing the number of supers is higher than expected; (not surprising, decades of media making supers fear they’d end up conscripted or dissected for revealing themselves or face hate groups ect…) a possible supers arms race is opening up, aliens revealed, before too long supernaturals will likely follow suite. Add their original aid with disasters and what not and it becomes imperative once able to open up branch offices and their own “West Side Avengers”, “X-men blue, gold, Excalibur, X-Factor”, ect…type teams to be more available for public aid. and there is no guarantee they can find more S-class supers to help, no guarantee of specific puzzle piece power sets to filter their teams for, everyone they find needs to be able to handle themselves and be an asset when they sign up.
I’d guess that there are probably side effects to her putting everything into speed. If “everything into speed” is not “everything into muscles”, then it must achieve that speed through some other mechanism. If it does so by lowering her inertia, then the guy’s fist caused her to start flying back so quickly that the speed differential between her face and his fist wasn’t there long enough for him to really do damage. And after he was no longer providing thrust, the wind resistance was enough to slow her down before she went too far. Also, she’d have not been at a huge risk for crushing bystanders.
There’s a lot of need to explore exactly how somebody’s powers work before you can really legitimately say that they’re depicted inconsistently. We haven’t seen enough of her super speed to really tell.
Remember that her power is basically zero-range telekinesis. https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-dabblers-science-corner-1/
Idea: top of the head into the cleavage.