Grrl Power #888 – Supervillain ping pong
Comic #888! The number of the guy who lives two stories up and like 4 apartments over from the beast! Depending on how the numbering goes on each floor. It might be different for hotels and apartments. The Beast seems like the kind of guy who would live at a hotel. But he’d almost definitely be in the penthouse/President’s Suite, so I’m not sure how anyone would live above him.
Anyhoo. You know you live a strange life when your opening move involves a .577 round to the knee. I’ve been drawing her gun on her leg this whole time so I thought I’d actually have her use it. Come to think of it… is this the first time she’s actually fired it? You’d think of all people, I’d be the one to know, but a lot of scenarios run through my head that don’t make it into the comic, so trivia like that can get a little fuzzy at times.
You know how in movies, laser make that Vmm Vmm Vmm noise, and then when they cross the camera, it’s all VvvvvOOOOMmmm! You know the sound I’m talking about. My point is, Maxima’s later sight needs a suppressor. Max isn’t a bad shot, she’s passed basic Air Force rifle proficiency, but she doesn’t shoot a lot beyond that. I don’t think you normally see a lot of laser sights in the military, but I could be wrong. (A quick google shows they’re not standard issue, but sometime they use IR ones in conjunction with NV goggles.)
Anyway, Max is the boss, so no one gets to make fun of her for having a laser sight on her gun.
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Honestly a laser sight on a pistol should be standard equipment. Ensures accuracy, allows for non-standard firing positions that can still hit a target (from the hip, for example), and it also serves as a great deterrent. There’s pistols pulled, and then there are the laser dots. One of those has the effect of hitting home just a little more vividly.
there are few things that assert your dominance better than half a dozen red dots appearing on the chest of the person you are talking to, and casually adding “and you can’t see them, but there are 4 more on your head.”
The following comment is nitpicking, but without malice. Just a subject I’m interested in:
Most pistols don’t have the accuracy to merit painting the target. And the beam is invisible, only the endpoint illuminated can be seen, but normally not by the target. This would negate its use as a deterrent or intimidation tool in most cases. The gun she uses has a longer barrel allowing more accuracy at the distance she shoots him, but we don’t see her turning it on. That’s a point often neglected in action movies, etc. We can assume that Max has used her speed enhancement to do so just as we assume she has cocked it, between frames.
Alot of pistol LASER sights have options to have a pressure switch on the grip. So more of grab gun, sights on anyway.
if you have ever seen a laser on a pistol when someone is aiming it, you would not be saying it ensures accuracy. its usually bouncing all over the target.
If I were selling enhanced sighting systems to the military that didn’t require squinting through a telescopic sight, it would be in your helmet HUD and fed by through-the-lens viewing from the weapon’s telescopic sights. It’s not too difficult to reconcile a small difference in POV so the crosshairs appear at the right place even when you’re looking at the target from up to a foot right, left, or above the actual telescopic sight.
A passive system, that doesn’t give away the soldier’s position, seems like the needed thing. And I have no doubt that somebody’s probably selling them such systems right now.
If I were trying to sell laser sights to the US armed forces, they’d either be “stealthy” (near infrared, not visible to unaided eye) or “momentary” (pulse when fired, at the same instant that the muzzle flash would make the shooter’s position visible anyway – you are trained to hit the target on the first shot, but if you don’t, and there’s nothing to be lost tactically in terms of visibility etc, you may as well get some feedback on exactly where your miss went).
But, honestly, laser sights are for specific missions and deployments where communicating to the enemy that they are being targeted is more benefit than keeping confidential the position of the fighter whose sights they’re in – largely limited to “police” type roles that the National Guard units of various states might serve (and in this storyverse ARC-Swat), but which Posse Comitatus says the US armed forces as a rule aren’t serving.
All of the sighting systems used by the military are EOTech or Aimpoint style sights which are not visible to the target. These work in normal and infrared, also in conjunction with night vision goggles. Almost impossible to miss if you have any training at all.
I don’t usually miss, anyhow!
That last panel made me think of angry faces from Thomas the tank engine XD
https://i.imgflip.com/skihz.jpg
Oh noooo
Just wondering why they went with .557 for Maxima’s side arm rather than a NATO standard calibre like 12.7×99 NATO (.50 BMG) or a 20mm (I believe the USA has 20×102 and maybe 20×110 weapons).
I’d have thought a standard cartridge with a wider range of payload types would have been preferred (after all sometimes you want to not only shoot someone but also have them be on fire afterwards as well) and I imagine considering its break action and Maxima’s abilities action strength and recoil are not an issue.
I can imagine it being an esoteric choice by her or the gunsmith and then rolling with it because she’s the epitome of special forces, or that it hit a sweet spot of performance out of barrel length, strength against expected targets and carry volume (as I assume weight isn’t really an issue).
I also wonder if a 40mm system would work as lots of power and less lethal options (against baseline humans and low end supers at least). I am unsure if the difference in high and low power cartridges is more then length and power which for Maxima is not an issue and as shotguns can take cartridges of varied lengths possibly a break action system could fire both? Though you might hit the whole “make a gun big enough and it stops being recognisable as a gun” thing.
I will now stop rambling about guns……..
Maxima’s handgun is based on a real type of firearm. The “Howdah pistol” is sawed-off hunting rifle designed to be used as a last-ditch defense against dangerous game. In short, the selection of .577 shows that Dave has done his homework on firearms.
To elaborate:
In panel one, we see individual rounds stored on the holster. This would not make sense if her gun used a detachable magazine. This shouldn’t be an issue because Maxima doesn’t seem like an “accuracy through volume” type, and she could achieve a high rate-of-fire even while using a “single-shot” weapon. I believe that this results in a lot of potential versatility using different types of fantasy ammunition; think “Borderlands” and elemental damage.
i miss -Constantly-