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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Time for knuckles to find out the hard way why the bounties on Maxima are so high.
And why they remain open
this ^
if it was easy, someone would have collected already.
This is why if you see a SINGLE bounty that will make you set for life… DON’T.
The beast that puts 666 on its followers is a giant ocean dwelling goat man with the voice of a dragon so…. I’d go with sea side condo.
Eh, that’s due to a bunch of biblical and religious figures getting melded into one over time for sake of narrative convenience. Satan, lucifer, and the snake in the garden of eden are today all considered the same being, but they really aren’t in the source. So you are talking about the dragon of Armageddon, the leviathan, the great god pan, and satan, all melded into one being.
I’m not, *or was referring to a specific creature I am remembering a little off, the ram horns*
a lot of other people are when they say “the beast” and 666.
Ya’know the poorly plagiarized from the Hebrew beasts of the Apocalypse only using Christian symbolism instead of Hebrew symbolism as Revelations exists only because the Council of Nicea didn’t want to use the Jewish Revelations story for the end of their book so cut out most and heavily edited the rest and placed a book there that all signs should have pointed to was an apocrapha.
I mean if we want to get theology class about it. Heck the wording actually says 666 is the number of the beast as it is the number of man (why thank you numerology whose exact meaning was relevant to the audience at the time but completely lost on future generations I’m sure your symbology will remain just as in tact as all the Hebrew numerology which certainly won’t be taken as literal numbers by the gentiles thousands of years later)…
But my mistake on something double checking this.
“The Beast” is more than one thing. The beast out of the sea was some multi-head leopard metaphor, the goat one was the Beast out of the Earth…oops.
Revelations 13
The dragon[a] stood on the shore of the sea. And I saw a beast coming out of the sea. It had ten horns and seven heads, with ten crowns on its horns, and on each head a blasphemous name. 2 The beast I saw resembled a leopard, but had feet like those of a bear and a mouth like that of a lion. The dragon gave the beast his power and his throne and great authority. 3 One of the heads of the beast seemed to have had a fatal wound, but the fatal wound had been healed. The whole world was filled with wonder and followed the beast. 4 People worshiped the dragon because he had given authority to the beast, and they also worshiped the beast and asked, “Who is like the beast? Who can wage war against it?”
5 The beast was given a mouth to utter proud words and blasphemies and to exercise its authority for forty-two months. 6 It opened its mouth to blaspheme God, and to slander his name and his dwelling place and those who live in heaven. 7 It was given power to wage war against God’s holy people and to conquer them. And it was given authority over every tribe, people, language and nation. 8 All inhabitants of the earth will worship the beast—all whose names have not been written in the Lamb’s book of life, the Lamb who was slain from the creation of the world.[b]
9 Whoever has ears, let them hear.
10 “If anyone is to go into captivity,
into captivity they will go.
If anyone is to be killed[c] with the sword,
with the sword they will be killed.”[d]
This calls for patient endurance and faithfulness on the part of God’s people.
The Beast out of the Earth
11 Then I saw a second beast, coming out of the earth. It had two horns like a lamb, but it spoke like a dragon. 12 It exercised all the authority of the first beast on its behalf, and made the earth and its inhabitants worship the first beast, whose fatal wound had been healed. 13 And it performed great signs, even causing fire to come down from heaven to the earth in full view of the people. 14 Because of the signs it was given power to perform on behalf of the first beast, it deceived the inhabitants of the earth. It ordered them to set up an image in honor of the beast who was wounded by the sword and yet lived. 15 The second beast was given power to give breath to the image of the first beast, so that the image could speak and cause all who refused to worship the image to be killed. 16 It also forced all people, great and small, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hands or on their foreheads, 17 so that they could not buy or sell unless they had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of its name.
18 This calls for wisdom. Let the person who has insight calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man.[e] That number is 666.
From all I know the “Apocalypse” of St. John was originally not a doomsday prophecy at all, but an angry rant about the state of the church during his lifetime, written in code as a lot of what he wrote would have pissed off the romans and get him killed. The whore Babylon is Rome, and 666 in numerology translates to “Neron Kaisar” – Emperor Nero.
Ye, you still mixed up the beast of the sea, the beast of the earth, and the great god pan. So excuse me for not being correct on which exact biblical figures from the most drug trip esque book you were jumbling up into your greek monster of the week.
My self correcting is not an open invitation to be condescending, it is not a sign of weakness to know when you mixed something up.
Heh, I was gonna say “What the hell does Capricorn have to do with any of this, and why is he selling condos?”
Presumably 30 mm PGU-14/B Armor Piercing Incendiary. You know, the kind of rounds that come out of the main gun of an A-10?
BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT!
You mean these rounds?
https://youtu.be/NvIJvPj_pjE
I’ve seen these things in action. It is not something you want to be in the crosshairs of…
Does a laser sight count as crosshairs?
Does that mean there are guns you would like to be as target practice for?
That’s what they make Airsoft guns for, using live targets without damaging the target.
I may be only a Minicon, but I am Cybertronian, normal pistol rounds sting a bit but don’t really do any damage. Makes me look tough, but the sting can last a bit too long, especially if there are lots of them…
I have a dummy round for that cannon, ballasted to the same weight as the live DU round. You definitely don’t want to drop it on your toes.
How do you ballast to match DU? Tungsten? There’s not a lot dense enough.
A friend of mine was in the navy when they upgraded his ship’s guns from 40mm to 70mm. He said “the 40 was loud, the 70 test fire sounded like a dragon barfing”
The whole point of her gun is to be intimidating, so having a visible green laser sight on the top makes perfect sense. Heck, adding a sound generator to create that spooky movie laser sound would be a bonus….
No, if there’s a sound generator it should make a soothing OMMMMMINUS HUMMMMMMM. The glowy laser sight of DOOM just adds to the effect.
Honestly, I’m hearing Breath of the Wild guardians taking aim…
The reference is to Schlock Mercenary, and Sgt. Schlock’s favorite weapon, a plasma cannon/rocket. Single shot it’s a cannon, full auto it’s about 6 seconds of retro rocket power to hopefully reduce impact from falling from orbit to a survivable level.
It makes said “Ominous Hummmm” during warm-up/recharge phase between single shots.
The sound generator should literally be a recording of someone saying “Ominous hummmmmm.” Preferably either Sydney (for the adorableness) or Dabbler (because she would make it, like everything else she says, sound like a double entendre).
Just realized that “ominous hummmmm” would also describe the sound made by any vibrator Dabbler had been involved in designing or ‘upgrading’.
I remember. https://www.schlockmercenary.com/2000-06-12
Schlock did once glue a sight onto his plasma cannon, so he could have it classified as a ‘precision’ firearm.
No one bought it.
I came here to say this. The police, in a perfect world, are supposed to apprehend, not execute. Making the perp wet himself before surrender is preferable to a corpse.
Adamsite.
Yes, but we don’t live in a perfect world, we live in a world where execution requires less paperwork, and the police are taught to think of themselves as shepherds and the public as wolves in sheep’s clothing.
“Better be judged by twelve than carried by six” is a mantra of American police. When in doubt, empty the magazine. You will get acquited anyway.
Hopefully this will be less sure of a thing in the future, but at this point, yeah, it can even come with a pension…
Actually it’s the mantra of anyone who isn’t stupid or suicidal. It’s better to explain yourself in court than to be dead. Always.
It’s shocking that this has somehow become controversial.
Meanwhile, “we live in a world” where the people who risk themselves to protect us are increasingly being demonized as bloodthirsty monsters, when only a tiny fraction of them are ever involved in any questionable action. That’s a great way to rip apart society and make it far less safe for everyone (ask the countless poeple harmed by the recent riots and police pullbacks).
When you treat people like the enemy, is it so strange that they ACT like an enemy? When they feel that they are already at war? Police or public, both sides treat the other like the enemy FAR too often.
That said, I know that MANY people want the freedom to go out and do whatever they want, any time they want. They want the right to kill people and steal stuff anytime they want because movies at TV say that is how modern people ‘socialize’. Ethnicity plays a small role in that but it is mostly about being human and not liking being told ‘No’. Society needs rules to function, or it becomes anarchy and that truly benefits no one, not even the anarchists even though they all think it does.
I live in the US. I have lived in places in the US where there were gunfights every weekend. Places where SWAT did not go without massive backup. I have been shot at, simply for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. I saw my first dead body when I was ten.
This is what many people in the US seem to want now. Free fire zones at every intersection. ‘Cut me off in traffic and I have carte blanche to shoot you and everyone around you!’ I have one word for them:
FOOLS!
How many of YOU have lived through such NOT in video games? Games do not portray the mess or the smell. Yet anyway.
When it seems like the police no longer differentiate between criminals and the citizens they’re supposed to be protecting, and they don’t appear to distinguish themselves between the good cops and the bad cops, why should the average citizen? A good cop that takes the side of a bad cop isn’t a good cop.
Really?
A real world example from 2000 in North Carolina USA-
BMW flies through a stoplight at about 45 MPH. Speed limit in that area is 25, but he was in a hurry, so he ignored that just like he ignored the stoplight. After all, he was in hurry, so he had the right to ignore such silliness. He was far too special and in far much a hurry to bother.
The lady who had green was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Her Suzuki Avalanche SUV was no match for a speeding BMW.
When the ambulance I was on got there, there was nothing we could do for her. We tried anyway to save her or her unborn little girl. We failed. We didn’t CARE that she was black. She was a patient who we FAILED TO SAVE.
That is not what sticks on my mind from that horrible day, however.
What sticks in my head is the black driver’s rant as the black police officer read him his rights. This while we pulled her out of the wreck and dd our very best that wasn’t enough.
‘She had no right to be there! I am in a hurry! I gotta go! I am in hurry!’ Cop asked why, guy replied. ‘Get out of my way, I am out of here!’, at which point the black cop arrested him to keep the almost entirely black crowd from lynching the guy.
He thought he had the right to leave an accident site, a vehicular homicide site no less, because he was in a hurry. Maybe whatever he was in hurry to do WAS a matter of life and death? It was for the lady and her kid.
But he was special, because he thought he was, so that makes it okay for him to kill two people. THAT is what is wrong in the US now, not cops, not citizens, not peopel with agendas.
‘I am special so I can do anything I want’.
And… FYI? Police DO differentiate between citizen and criminals in the US. If they didn’t, we would have a MUCH higher body count. Think I lie? Check out what police reports you can get from Moscow. Or even better, Beijing. Let alone places like Chad, Zambia, Iraq, Afghanistan… The list goes on and on.
There are no good answers for the mess the US has caused itself. But blaming EVERY cop for the actions of the bad ones is akin to blaming EVERY Frenchman or EVERY Englishman or EVERY American for the actions of the bad ones in history.
I don’t blame any particular group. I blame humanity as a whole. We are all just dumb, panicky animals.
Your 20 year old anecdote of one time where a citizen was in the wrong and the police didn’t kill them is kind of the baseline expectation. It doesn’t matter if 90%, even 99%, perhaps even 99.999% of all police interactions ends correctly. Every failure to meet that expectation hurts their reputation, damages their credibility, and reduces community respect for the system. And those failures are happening far too frequently.
And it is clear that the police protect their own, even when they’re in the wrong. I have been told by a police officer that they feel the need to support each other off the field, for fear that they won’t be supported on the field if they don’t. They’re worried that if they expose another officer’s wrongdoing, they’ll be at risk in the field, either that other officers won’t support them in a dangerous situation, or that they might even get a bullet in the back.
Choosing loyalty to a group over loyalty to principles is always going to result in sacrificing the principles the group is supposed to stand for.
The point is, all you hear about are the times things go wrong, so off course that’s what people remember, and that’s what colours peoples’ view
When they do report something positive, people don’t believe it, or they feel they are covering something up, or some other bullshit
Like I said, positive is the baseline expectation. The police don’t get any points when they succeed, that’s just them doing their job. It is admittedly a pretty high bar. But they’re expected to have the skills and training to take risks that the average citizen could not, and are expected to risk their own lives to protect that average citizen. Their job is not to punish people for breaking that law — if anything, that’s a function of the courts.
They don’t punish them for breaking the law, they punish them for resisting
If you have done nothing wrong, let the courts sort it out
Because letting the courts sort it out has worked out so well for all the people who were killed by police, and then the police acquitted of any wrongdoing.
You have to trust that you’ll survive to make it to court. Some people might think their chances are better if they resist.
“You will be acquitted anyway.” When the circumstances justify it, sure. When they don’t, not so much.
Don’t make blanket statements that are grossly and transparently false.
unfortunately, far too many police departments these days train their officers-
pull your weapon in any confrontation- fire your weapon if you feel even the Remotest bit you might be possibly be threatened-if you fire your weapon, empty the clip, and if the supposed perp isn’t dead
reload your weapon and empty the clip again.
Not remotely every officer takes this to heart, but enough do to cause our current problems.
a couple of years ago an officer who calmly Talked down a man having a psychotic break
(he was the one who called)was disciplined and a black mark put on his record,
because he didn’t pull his gun and empty it into The man’s center of mass.
just recently there was a similar case, were family called for help for a family member
who was having a breakdown and when the police arrived and he was confrontational
and wouldn’t immediately Lie down, they proceeded to shoot him multiple times.
when that sort of thing gets into the national news, it tanks them all regardless.
So, you are a former LEO? Which city and department?
Maybe the US Police departments should send their officers to Norway for training?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cd8ZTKU8csw
and here’s an LAPD officer visiting Norwegian police a couple of years ago.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54jBFtVMmpo&t=252s
A quick search shows some numbers: “Law enforcement officers kill about 1,000 people a year across the United States. Since the beginning of 2005, 121 officers have been arrested on charges of murder or manslaughter in on-duty killings, according to data compiled by Philip M. Stinson, a criminal justice professor at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. Of the 95 officers whose cases have concluded, 44 were convicted, but often of a lesser charge”
This is a systemic problem with the US police force. (In comparison: In my country, LEOs killed about 40 people in the last 30 years. Not 40 per year; 40 in 30 years.)
You view it as ‘a systemic problem with the US police force’, rather than a poblem with the US society that calls for that sort of a response
Because everyone knows, the US doesn’t have a criminal problem, it just has corrupt cops
And why would the USA have a criminal problem, when it’s supposed to be the greatest nation in the world? Sounds like something’s wrong to me.
The 44 convictions seem to imply a judge has chosen to rule their actions were unjustified even in the situation it happened.
This implication is enforced by the existence of laws that do justify high levels of violence of the police in situations that call for it.
This doesn’t mean there is no reason to think there’s not a societal problem: 1000 people dead by police violence a year still seems to imply a societal problem.
It was a sarchasm response to everyone who feels that cops are at fault ALWAYS!
What Rrolf‘s ‘quick search’ failed to show, was how many of those 1000 people killed were in the process of committing a crime
YES! Cops kill innocent people, so do non-cops, but you never hear of that, now do you?
Actually you do hear of that. Those people are called murderers and tend to get to the news a lot. The problem people get with cops killing people is that it undermines the trust the governmental violence monopoly is build on and to a further extend the entire government. Translated to language reacquiring less prior knowledge: the government is the only one who gets to legally proactively attack people, so the amount of damage done to the total populace reduces.
“we live in a world where execution requires less paperwork” — this is complete horse manure. Stop spreading divisive, rabble-rousing propaganda.
In a perfect world, cops don’t have DOA bounties placed on their shiny golden arses
I wonder if the laser itself could be modulated to create the sound in a similar way to tesla coil guitar amps.
Would she have to pay licensing if she wanted her laser sight to play the Imperial March?
I think a laser strong enough to cause that kind of effect would be a weapon in and off itself.
“Sorry, didn’t mean to lop your arm off there, targeting laser a bit too strong.”
I am recalling one of the moments in the Honor Harrington series where a ship deliberately cranked up its active scanners to ‘mottle hull paint’ levels to get someone’s attention.
Ahhh yes, the Radar Hull Map pulse, the universal “HEY JACKASS!!”
Hm. That cool laser rust-n-paint remover may just get a ‘logo depainting’ mode….
Also, the first story in Larry Nivens shared the Man-Kzin wars series where the unarmed human exploration ship used a communications laser to take out a Kzinti scoutship.
Got to love these levels of incompatibility between species.
I wrote up as a though experiment an isolated alien race whose primary method of communication was radio waves. Their version of a central nervous system evolved in such a way to utilize electromagnetic radiation (radio waves in this case) as a means to communicate with one another *they were also filter feeders with a sealed mouth structure that used liquid and suction to filter food particles from their thick atmosphere* and didn’t have vocal cords of any kind.
-long short while sapient they developed light based data transfer, as radio wave based transfer was to them like screaming everything. First encounter with human space craft came across as an attack of many screaming voices driving many of their kind in the area of the probe insane.
There was a book about an interstellar war, and where the aliens continued to fire on the lifepods after they ejected from the destroyed Terran battleship.
The radio beacons in the pods were causing them pain.
took some hunting down..but tracked down the “Radio Heads” species write up I made for them.
https://www.deviantart.com/rhuen1/art/Alien-Race-Radio-Head-644568595
close, but it’s probably been a long time since you’ve read it.
The humans had had a pacifist Golden age for centuries when Their ship encountered
a Kzin warship, and were not immediately attacked because the ships telepath
-knew- they didn’t have any weapons.
but the human whose mind had been contacted realized these were warlike predators
who were going to conquer and eat them, and turned the ship to try and escape…
at least that’s what he convinced himself he was doing.
What he actually did, (deliberately) was point the ships laser reaction drive directly
at the Kzin ship As he maneuvered and He Got away with it because, ‘hey no weapons’.
and thus ended the human ‘Golden age’ of no war or violence.
It wasn’t a communications laser it was the Human ship’s drive, itself a rather large laser, that cut the Kzinti scoutship in half. The Kzin thought they were in no danger because their telepath said the ship had no weapons, which was technically true because humans were trained to find the concept of using weapons and violence repulsive, but any drive sufficiently energetic to accelerate a ship to relativistic velocities is also a weapon, and the ship’s drive was basically a terawatt laser with a beam a meter in diameter.
Now I want to see Max do this magnificent laser entrance, even if it takes her into supervillain territory.
There had better be a sound generator because I have never used a laser sight that made sound effects.
In the Alacrity Fitzhugh and Hobart Floyt series Alacrity had a “Captain’s Sidearm” for a firearm. It was designed to repel boarders and so had a reinforced handguard with a pop our “bayonet”. The handguard had another function besides deflecting blades and that was protecting your hand from the blow back because the weapon was designed to create an amazing display of light, heat, and wasteful energy. While it would blow a hole in an opponent, it was specifically to be intimidating as hell so you only had to fire it once for people to reconsider mutany or boarding your spaceship.
First!
Yeah, sorry, but you missed it by 5 minutes. Apparently it’s not very nice to try and make “first” posts too, did I say that right? Not nice? Anyway, people don’t usually like them sorry…
Uncouth as opposed to not nice. I find in a general sense the best method short of moderated removal of “first” spam is total and complete disregard. The best counter to attention seeking is paying zero attention to it.
Or point and laugh.
“lookit the idiot!”
That CAN backfire, though – for most folks, it’s effective, I guess, but there are a few folks out there that will be encouraged by it.
Or do the internet equivalent of ‘patting them on the head and giving them a cookie.’
I have to admit. Cosmos seems to be quite adept at bantering with Max without being threatened seriously, unlike Dabbler.
And as to the laser sight, it may very well be sp[ecifically for intimidation. I think having the light show up on your chest is a fu** ton scarier than just having a gun aimed at you. I know they mean the same thing. But logic rarely dictates fear factor. Like Max’s ‘finger point’ example.
If someone aims a gun in your general direction, you can’t really be sure where the bullet’s going to end up. The target can be thinking “Maybe they’ll miss. Maybe they won’t hit anything vital.” A laser sight sends the message “I’m planning to put a bullet right here.”
.577? The Main Man laughs and waves his .666 Pastor Blaster.
Hellboy says “That’s cute to both and levels his 22mm (roughly .866) Samaritan.
What the Hell did you use?
Your standard issue big gun. (In Batou’s case a 57mm)
The Good Samaritan that Hellboy uses is a .875 Calibre (22mm) Revolver.
Maxima’s gun looks similar to a Volcanic Repeating Pistol, based off the grip and the size of ammo on the holster.
And Volcanic bullets had a small charge of powder in them to act as a simple rocket motor.
Problem being that the Volcanic was terrible…
There’s a story about one being returned to the gun-shop after the purchaser tried to commit suicide with it by shooting himself in the head, and failed to penetrate. SIX TIMES.
I mean… I guess it could be argued it’s a good way to prevent gun crime… making the guns so pathetic that they can’t hurt people…
Dave has said previously what gun it is Max uses.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-53-florence-nightingale-she-aint/
“I wanted more fanfare for the debut of Max’s pistol but it seemed appropriate for her to use it here. I’ll show it in more detail later obviously but the quick version of it is that it’s a custom weapon that fires a massive round so out of practicality is a break action single shot pistol. I thought about making it a 2 or 3 shot revolver but with her speed, reloading it is trivial.”
Ooh, Hellboy vs. Lobo sounds like a much more interesting fight than the stereotypical Superman vs. Hulk b.s.
easily settled…they’d end up somewhere drinking beers and talking trash till somebody abused a kitten or touch the main mans ride. Then they’d spend some time one upping each other. The real issue is One has no line he hasn’t crossed (that I’m aware of) the other does have some lines. That he’d not cross except for a good reason like saving reality and such.
and Mr.Mxyzptlk turns the Main Man’s ride into a kitten, solving the entire issue, and, thus, winning.
Section 8 had the right answer to Lobo.
Alucard will stick with his Jackal 13MM Antifreak Combat pistol with explosive rounds.
Big Guns is what Seras is for after all.
The tallest residential building in the southern hemisphere (in Melbourne) has the penthouse halfway up the structure. It does take up the entire floor though so I don’t think it’d be number 666.
During the recent super lux condo boom in NYC, the very high units didn’t sell as well because after about 20 floors the view starts to get worse because you cant see any details.
I’ll have to assume that that is Rick’s fist. But I didn’t expect him to be this quick.
That thought also occurred to me… seems like Knuckles is still recoiling, to an extent, from the shot to the knee. The implication is that Maxima then punches him, then Cosmos punches him shortly after. Even if there were two or three seconds between those punches (which would be a very long time for Max to wait, I think), he’d have to be moving quite fast…
Could also be that Max’s punch sent Knuckles flying to Cosmos.
I love how he’s hurting from Max’s punch but just decidedly insulted by Cosmos’s.
Let me get this straight.
This moron thought he could tough talk the lady who, literally single handedly, shot down an entire starship?
Is this the new title holder of dumbest billion around?
As Daniel the Human says, “Never underestimate the power of Human stupidity…”
I think this guy may have crossed into “prime example” grounds…
I was always fond of Einstein’s version:
‘There are two things that I believe are infinite. The universe and human stupidity. That said? I am not entirely sure about the universe.’ -Attributed to Albert Einstien but undocumented.
Either this guy has something up his sleeve, or someone’s going to have to sit down with him and explain the word “overconfidence”. In simple words, with pictures, and maybe hand-puppets.
Yeah, I gotta admit, I thought he might be smart and have a plan to GTFO rather than taking Max on but my opinion of him has significantly reduced.
Never-the-less, he just took that bullet without it penetrating AND a freaking punch from Max, and he only looks insulted. So maybe he’s much more challenging than we might suspect.
It could be a distraction for the real attack/objective…like stealing the spaceship.
which would really show how dumb they are.
Imagine someone who has only ever driven a stick shift made in the 1960s, trying to steal a Harrier Jet, thinking it would operate exactly the same.
Or five guys trying to hijack a submarine because they know how to drive a bus.
It would be beyond foolish to assume any vehicle, let alone an alien vehicle, is going to operate close enough to something they know that they can just hop in and control it
(this happens to be a major gripe of mine in sci-fi; granted it mostly happens in kid focused sci-fi so I let it slide on those grounds; but still when it happens in regular sci-fi…a particular dumb moment in the Marvel comics event Annihilation was Drax driving a bio-ship and stating that all vehicles are fundamentally the same to operate some just a little more exotic than others); and I just pictured some idiot trying to take off in an Airliner from a car and accidentally putting the landing gear up while going down the runway and screeching over the tarmac like the idiot he is.
Do you instantly know a 1940s biplane requires a person on the outside to get the propeller started? Is it common sense for all vehicles to have a key to turn to start the ignition…or even have an ignition…
rant going on long here, but yeah. Even vehicles aside any technology you are not familiar with can be a pain to try and operate; how many people I’ve seen in Sears trying to figure out how the less intuitive fridge doors open tells me a lot; or figuring out someone else’s microwave, or an older person’s first flatscreen…likewise younger person trying to figure out an old tube tv.
would be a laugh though, they break in, think they’ve found the controls for the ship and its actually a daycare area for bored infants in travel and the wheels and buttons they are pushing are just noise toys for toddlers like at the dentist office.
The quantifying word Drax (the galaxy-widely renown idiot) used was ‘operate’, how you start it or get it moving is where the ‘little more exotic than others’ part comes into play
Completely agrecian about idiots who think they can operate a Big Rig because they know how to drive a Prius (because they exist in real life)
to be fair at the time Drax wasn’t being written as an idiot, a hot head yes, but he had reasonable human intelligence (the entire point of his power drop after drinking hyper drive fluid that boosted his intellect back to his original human levels in exchange for losing his S-class powers).
Post Thanos Imperative and to try and ride the coat tails of the movie (a major problem in comics right now is movie envy where they change details and character personalities to more match the movies to try and draw in that audience *rather than address the real problems comic books have as a relic industry that can’t compete in today’s on-demand preferences and has been slowly dying for decades as that became more prevalent*, anywho; thanks to Guardians of the Galaxy movies making Drax a moron; when he was brought back after Thanos Imperative we saw a dramatic drop in his intelligence; even more so after the universe partial reboot caused by Dr. Doom. Drax, Star Lord, and Gamora saw major personality changes to closer align with the movies.
But during Annihilation Conquest he was basically Kratos-Rambo, hot headed and violent but not stupid.
Will admit, haven’t really read any dead-tree comics in a good number of years, and even then, never really knew much about the Guardians
Have been getting the Marvel Graphic Novel collection for a few years now, so maybe they have reproduced some Guardian stories (did you know there have been about three Marvel Civil Wars?)
you are illustrating why comics are dying as an industry.
Comics are too difficult for both new comers to jump into a story and ontop of lack ease of access to re-read older issues. Comic books still operate on this “collectors” mindset where one comes out, just once, and that’s it. Collections of entire stories rarely happen except years later and for big events (normally);
but the general issues aren’t like a novel which stays in circulation for years and can be found for a FAIR PRICE online, PDFS, and what not as well; or like the tv shows, animated series, and movies where you can find them years later, and rewatch whenever. One big reason why those have a far greater audience than the comic books. Add price on that and the self destructive effort of comic companies to make up their losses by splitting a story across multiple issues and the more thrifty will find they can’t keep up with one story if it goes on for 6 months across seven different titles each coming out every month and costing 3.99 to 5.99 per book of 8-12 pages of the story on average. Its just not worth it when you can spend far less to just watch a movie or check out one of the shows.
this is why the comics try to emulate the movies and shows to try to get some of that audience but…its not working. Comic books are a relic of a monopoly like situation for the medium; even tv is falling behind as (on demand viewing and reading) has become the norm.
Imagine if this online comic Grrl Power, there was no archive, if you didn’t read the page when it came out or copy and pasted the image to a file on your computer; when the next one came out it was gone…or was free to see the page, but had to pay to download it for a limited time. Anyone knew would have to check out a summarized wiki or wait for a special collection book to come out but since they lack emotional investment having not read those lack the drive to want to buy it. That is how comic books feel these days; especially as everything is a big interconnected event; the episodic days are long gone and everything is some big cross-over event.
*one reason I say its okay to love/like the characters but not the comics they come from. The character can be in multiple mediums and be portrayed with different histories, some you may like more than others (see Star Fire controversies over the last two decades), but there is no need to memorize every detail from the comic books; those gate keepers should always be shut down.
that or the companies need to get with the times and provide digital copies on their websites with a donation tab and incentives to donate. Their industry isn’t making as much as it used to after all. Heck where I live with the exception of hole in the wall collector stores and the off-set comics they have in the impulse aisles of some stores the only current releases comic book store within reasonable driving distance for me is a little mom and pops operation in a dying mall. and quarantine almost put them out of business. If they went, I’d be dried up on comics completely and back to my old habit of every so often reading the wiki pages to see what my old childhood heroes have been up to in comics.
Another contester for the Darwin Awards.
Nah, suicide-by-cop (wonder if he has freshly purchased Life Insurance, made out to himself)
That’s… less atypical than you might think. There are always guys (not too big, not too sporty) who believe they would defeat Mike Tysson in the ring.
Remember Mariusz Pudzianowski? The guy dominated the strongman contests worldwide for several years, mostly by his speed and stamina. A freak of nature (and almost certainly ‘roids, but still, I think he _carried_ his car all the way to the gym as a light warm-up before the real workout), as wide as he was tall. And yet anytime he went clubbing, he had to take a bodyguard with him, because there were *always* guys wanting to pick up fights with him. The guard was there so Pudz wouldn’t do … things … to his opponents.
Not that surprising; this is why Maxima made that speech about how rare supers are so they might think since they’ve never met anyone like themselves that they are the toughest around. That kind of ego is hard to dissuade.
there is a reason in tv tropes there is a real life tab for “mugging the monster”, and its not just people doing it accidently; their own egos make them think they can the professional boxer, wrestler, martial arts champion;…heck there was on delusional fool who had somehow convinced himself of his own scam “no touch chi martial arts” that he challenged a professional MMA fighter…and got his butt kicked as a result. In the video you can tell the kick boxer realized really quickly he just beat up a dumb old man.
https://www.mixedmartialarts.com/wtf/no-touch-master-vs-actual-mma-fighter-real-fight/
as a note these same people still continue this stuff even after getting their butts kicked; and every single time someone interviews them; the interviewer is immune and these no touch guys make some crap up as an excuse.
if someone who should know their own scam can be this delusional, imagine someone who is the tough guy of his gang being told this pro/military person is tougher than them.
To be fair to Maxima, normally if she notices her shot is going to miss, she can saunter over and readjust the bullet’s trajectory by hand.
Certainly most folks would not consider it to be a saunter, but I hear ya
Looks like, for Max, the gun is just a momentary distraction so she can close in. If they had any brains, the mercenaries would be calling for evac already, since they DON’T want to still be trying for Max when the rest of the team is done with the ETs….
It’s a visible deterrent mostly. but in this case it allows her to deliver a ‘fast response’ without running at super speed.
(I’m guessing she’s redistributing her ppoints from speed to a more even power/toughness setting to slug it out)
Alternatively test that he’s not just a strong non-super using tech. If max ever winds up super punching what turns out to be a regular human and they turn into a bloody splatter the arc swat is going to have an Incredibles style shut down outlawing government sponsored super heroes.
^ My thoughts exactly. A .577 to the kneecap is just Max’s way of seeing how far up the scale she can start the encounter. Unfortunate for the perpetrator if they’ve picked a fight above their weight class, but relatively safe compared to an easily-lethal blow to the head.
Easier to regrow a kneecap than a head
A shot from Maxima’s .577 Tyrannosaur is this universe’s equivalent of an English Bobby coming up to you and saying “Excuse me, sir, I’m afraid you are disturbing the peace.”
That was a good question, actually. What limits the muzzle energy in handguns is the recoil, the fireball at the end of a short barrel, and the gun robustness, more or less in this order, I guess. For Maxima, the first is irrelevant, the second may be a little annoying, and the last may be ameliorated by heavy construction plus near-sci-fi metallurgy. I’m betting that with some fast burning powder, .50 BMG level _at least_ would be easily doable. Preferably with tungsten core.
(Also: Any plan in which you lose your hat iz a BAD plan.)
Hyu iz dem right! Bad plan!
Jager ?
One of the limits on muzzle energy is that you can never get the bullet traveling faster than the speed of sound in the propellant. Even with a hot load that tops out at a bit under 2 miles per second.
But as often as Maxima fires that gun, she probably loads Osmium bullets, just for the extra density. Each round might cost a couple grand, but given some of the people she fights, that might be worth it.
2 miles per second is helluva fast, though.
If you assumed the bullet size of .700 Nitro Express with some techno magic round design, you would get something around 250,000 ft.lbf muzzle energy. That’s almost twenty times .50 BMG.
The gun is just a friendly tap on the shoulder. I was trying to come up with a projectile she could throw harder than she can punch but it kept coming up earth shattering kaboom.
Tungsten darts, with sharp tip and small fins, shape optimized for hypersonic speeds, about finger wide and handspan long. That’s almost a kilo of very hard projectile and you can carry a flat pack of them on your hip.
It would be about as loud as a 20 mm antitank rifle, I guess. Maybe less with smaller cross-section, better shape and no propellant to throw it. (A sonic boom from Maxima’s _hand_ when throwing, on the other side…)
You’re describing a flechette, but:
This would be more of a specialized sniper round than the shotgun-like rounds (1100 projectiles!) described in the footnote to that statement though, so I don’t think it falls under the same category.
If what I described is a flechette, then 30 mm Vulcan is a varmint rifle :)
And seriously, give Maxima a handful of tungsten carbide masonry drill bits, and there will be no significant difference.
https://what-if.xkcd.com/1/ like this?
“the batter would be considered “hit by pitch”, and would be eligible to advance to first base”
HAH
Realistically though, Rossi’s 12ga pistol is probably the closest real-world analogue to Max’s gun. Shotguns allow for a wide array of bullet effects, anything from a normal deer slug, to a .357 Defender, to Dragon’s Breath incendiary rounds.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQR21EcH8Rs
Tungsten? I’m picturing an osmium core. Might need to combine a gyrojet system with standard chemical propellant in order to get it up to speed though, lol. Honestly Maxima could throw the ammunition to greater effect than any gun could produce, lol.
With high explosives you’d probably get closer to 5 miles per second. Some magic or superscience barrel would probably survive that. Then scale it up to 20mm at least or a full inch for good measure, and you get something noice. Of course nobody else could fire it and survive, but it’s her gun, so whatever.
At some point the limiting factor on the gun is not whether or not Maxima can handle it. She could probably shoot a 40mm Bofors Gun from the hip. At the ranges where she will use the pistol big, fat and slow is preferable. You don’t want to have to worry about over pentation or ricochets landing somewhere five miles away. Once you get much over .50 cal just the bulk of the gun, holster and additional ammo get to be an inconvenience for everyday duty. One upside to a gun like Maxima’s is that you essentially have a flashbang on the end of a stick.
Heh. Maxima gets an “oof!” and blurred recoil. Ray gets an annoyed “grr!” At best he’s a convenient distraction in this fight.
Props for his reactions and speed, though. The bad guy was far away and Maxima must have dashed to deliver her punch. For Ray to follow immediately is impressive (and his punch would have taken a regular human’s head cleanly off).
Also, we can see the target’s face bend under Maxima’s strike, the motion blur, and the SFX; while Ray gets nothing. He is clearly slower and not as strong.
Ray is a lover, not a fighter. :-)
I guess this is where I jump in and say the number of Mr Beast is actually 616, at least from what we can tell of the oldest and best translated texts. So there’s yer trivia for the day, folks.
Which might explain why comic-Marvel Earth just has so much bad crap happening to it.
I thought the number was 6 to the power of 6 to the power of 6.(one story said it was the number of how many universes there are)
Someone who reads the classics.
When some of us read it, it had just been published. Mind, the ink was dry. And personally I thought it not quiet as mind twisting as the Finale of a book from 2 decades earlier…because. Years later I am still wondering if it all happened or did Easy’s mind snap.
“Number of the Beast” was a class in “how to write sci-fi and fantasy”– he showed examples of common mistakes new writers commit and then immediately after would name an author and show how they had done it right.
for Robert Heinlein fans, they just came out with a new-ish book.
apparently when he was writing ‘number of the beast’
he wrote A second version which the Heinlein estate apparently got David Weber
to get into publishable form from his notes/early drafts.
They start out exactly the same, but once they start traveling
they begin to diverge wildly, and in a tone that’s a little more like his earlier works.
I think 888 is much cooler thou. Same forwards and back. Same upsides down
Kudos for 4 way symmetry
plus, triple sideways infinity just looks really cool
If I was RP Maxima I’d toss this guy in the air with a severe spin on all 3 axes.
Repeat as necessary (or until bored).
But if she did that all the supervillains would need to have flight.
Still, Syd could use the light orb for a volleyball net and Max and Anvil could bat him back and forth.
Ooooh, beach volleyball.
I applaud your attempt at getting us a full page beach volleyball scene, with bikinis naturally. Perhaps Dave will feel inspired for his next vote incentive.
Aha, but remember Maxima’s one true weakness,surprise vomit!
Oh No… she’d be READY for THIS guys vomit… no surprises there, that’s for sure…
If your laser sight is making noise it is defective. The power supply on very powerful laser might hum, but a laser site is basically a laser diode, lens, heatsink, a small circuit board connected to a switch to turn it on, and a battery. The beam itself won’t make noise unless it is powerful enough to superheated the air it passes through and then you get a crack, or popping sound.
Didn’t Star Wars teach you that laser beams move at about 1600 fps and make “pew pew” noises even in hard vacuum?…
Those aren’t lasers. They’re packets of plasma.
…. going pew-pew in vacuum is still inexcusable, but I’m more concerned about how and why the ships bank in space.
The universe has artificial gravity – wouldn’t that be enough of a thing allow a ship to something something something lower its inertia enough (at least momentarily) to move like that with a small puff of gas from a tiny directional thruster?
COULD they? Yes….
…. um….
Actually, I don’t know. It would depend on how the antigravity tech works. Does it exert a force to counter gravity, like say a VTOL craft’s downward thrusters? Does it somehow reduce the craft’s mass? If so, does it also reduce its inertia? The two are normally linked, but would they remain linked under the effects of this sufficeintly-advanced technology?
IIRC, the explanation was that the craft had something called an “etheric rudder”, which makes it sound like they’re doing aerobatics off the fabric of spacetime or something like that. But that was in the Expanded Universe and that’s not canon any more, so I dunno.
More to the point, even if you could bank in an X-wing… that would answer the how. It still leaves the why. I mean, MAYBE you’d say that accelerating in two dimensions makes you a harder target to hit, but that’s situational and there’s a lot of times when they’d be smarter just rotating and burning retro.
Like, let’s say you’re flying down the Death Star trench on a mission to fire a torpedo down an exhaust port. Three cheeky TIE fighters drop in behind you. These cheeky buggers think that despite the fact that you have deflector screens and they don’t, you’re easy pickings because your weapons point forward and they’re behind you. Do you…
A) Continue to fly down the trench with them on your 6, do a little bit of junking to make yourself harder to hit, sacrifice your wingmen to buy you a little more time, and hopefully get a rushed shot off before dying like a fish in a barrel?
B) Bank (pull) up, break off the mission so that your moon base gets destroyed, leave the trench, expose yourself to the surface guns, and try to dogfight with them despite the fact that they’re already on your six and trying to shake off dogfighters once they’re in that position is immensely difficult?
C) Realize that banking is stupid, yaw around so that you’re aiming at them, continue towards your destination (backwards) on inertia, shoot those three TIEs who are basically holding still in your sights because they were trying to line up shots and who brought craft with no shields to go nose-to-nose against three fighters with shields, and once the idiots are dead spin back around and take your time lining up the shot because you can do that now.
This is why ships bank in space, and always meet nose-to-nose in the same plane – because the audience needs to connect with the story, not worry about reference frames.
Same with sound, of course, although I loved how The Last Jedi finally lampshaded and broke that trope for a moment, letting a dramatic explosion play out in complete silence. One of the best moments I’ve had at a theater was the collective gasp and held breath of the entire audience. Of course it opened a whole can of fridge-logic worms, but right then it was amazing.
For the first trilogy, Lucas showed the SFX team some actual footage from WWII air combat (cameras mounted on fighter planes) as a reference. It was meant to look like people would imagine a dogfight.
There is a reason some don’t consider Star Wars to be sci-fi (as the science side is rarely if ever explored); rather it is a space drama themed fantasy adventure. The outerspace stuff is the aesthetic, the focus is on the fantasy aspects like the force and the adventure drama of the evil empire and the rebel.
US-American Superheroes: Of course they use guns. And by “use” I mean they fire guns. Right across Times Square. Even when they are faster than the bullet. The whole sequence in this comic where we’ve been told that they would mainly use them to “intimidate” was just… ah, whatever. It’s a comic, it doesn’t have to make sense.
As someone above mentioned: Maxi using her cannon was to test the durability of the meat-punchingbag, if his leg ‘fell off’ then, well, the problem is solved and it’s now in the hands of the medics (or the coroner), if it remains attached, then Maxi knows how hard to punch him without getting pink-goo all over her hands
And yes, they are used to intimidate, but what happens when the idiot doesn’t take the hint?
She’s faster than a bullet, she could’ve “punched” him like a bullet, but with even more control of the result. Still no argument to use the gun instead.
the gun was a warning shot
A warning shot is never aimed at a person.
You are correct, it wasn’t a warning shot, it was a testing shot, to see if his durability matches his strength (and ego)
Convenient distraction. Nobody expects the super who can vaporize them to shoot them as a less-lethal option or a door knocker.
To someone with super durability being hurt at all with a handheld weapon is super threatening
I thought Maxima’s pistol was .50 BMG.
Dave mentioned in the comments under a previous comic that is essentially a sawed off .577 tyrannosaur.
Given that the guy is still on his feet, Max must have held back a lot more than she did against Deus. Presumably out of concern that she might turn whatshisname here into red goo splattered across several buildings if she hit him that hard.
Kevin, not SmugD, and he’s stronger than he smells (note how his leg is still attached after getting shot?)
Sure, but bullets just bounced off Deus even before Max stepped in. Not her bullets, but still. Even a 50-cal rifle bullet was just an eye-poke to him at that point.
Again, Kevin, aka “Vehemence”, not Deus, who at least purports to be a normal human whose only super power (The best one, he claims.) is wealth. But I have my doubts about that.
Hmm… How those names got mixed up here I do not know.
Well considering how 8 is the luckiest number in the far east, Apartment 888 should either belong to the god of Luck or someone closely associated with him.
Gawain? or Gawian?
Why did Ray’s word balloons changed? Is he speaking normally now?
I’m guessing that round is a Dabbler special. if max can handle the recoil who knows what kind of crazy propellant is in the cartridge.
Always have enjoyed a good game of super tennis. Also known as ‘juggling the bad guy’.
The last panel his face says, “So this is my life now.”
Max’s gun is there primarily for intimidation purposes, and I’d say that the laser sight is absolutely something that would help with that.
Why did Raymos take his glove off? Last page, he was still wearing his purple glove on his left hand, so either that’s not Raymos or… art error?
A laser-sight isn’t an instant ‘I hit the target’ device, the implication in the commentary seems to be that the laser-sight is a ‘crutch’ to help a poor marksman make-up for lacking skill. Being able to hit the target is more about being able to hold the weapon steady from the moment you’ve aligned it with the target to the instant after you’ve pulled the trigger and if you’re holding the gun properly you can’t even see the laser because the gun itself is in the way.
Also why Mack Bolan in the various Books by the same name doesn’t use laser sights. They give away your position, which a lot of mooks over the years learned the hard way when he evades and ambushes them, or just puts a pair of silenced rounds through them.
Fact is, a laser sight IS a crutch. Though, in the case of the comic, Max is just using it for intimidation value, which is her gun’s intended purpose anyways.
Was looking for this observation. Laser sights have the same flaw as tracer rounds – they work both ways.
Although one strong enough to be visible along its entire length (like the green ones used for stargazing indication, excellent color choice Dave) would serve as a visual line-of-fire warning to the rest of the team, keeping anyone (e.g. speedsters) from stepping in the way at the last moment.
Actually, tracers can be used for intimidation.
It was common to load quad .50″ AAs with 1 round in 5 being a tracer, even when they were to be slaved to a radar system. Because the enemy pilot would see all the tracers and know that there was a ‘wall of lead’ in front of him.
A laser sight is a tool. It can be a crutch, it can a detriment or it can be useful, depending on the situation.
I was always fond of ‘the laser sight that also serves as a laser designator’ even though they are VASTLY different things in the real world. For now anyway. >> smirk <<
'Oh, that is solid cover against 9mm rounds. Tell me, how does it fare against laser guided artillery?'
Honestly I think Max uses the Laser-Sight as a verification there are no targets between her and the point of impact.
With stealthers,cloakers, or amorphous aliens, gotta check your intended firing lanes
hmm… with how proper invisibility works, I would assume any light would pass through/around them and continue on as though they weren’t there…
Think of it like a glass of water, in water: you can’t see the glass, but anything passing through it (like light) will still be refracted enough to be noticeable
you got it, when light passes though any field, there is a energy transfer which causes a change to the doppler phase shift of the light.
40 years go I wrote a short paper on the using a phase shift detector (national semiconductor 567 pll chip I think) using radio waves to detect the difference between ferrous and non-ferrous metals with a metal detector for a high school science fair. Turns out you can use the same algorithms with laser light.
A laser sight is a great training/practice device on the range by improving muscle sight memory, not for real life shooting scenarios. That said, one needs to also follow the laser practice sans laser. There are a lot different opinions on this both pro and con. Using a laser one tends to be a bit slower in firing than natural point and shoot. Then again speed of draw and firing is way over rated, fast draw against an opponent is so rare as to not really being a real thing. Not the Wild West any more and the high noon shoot out is mostly Hollywood BS. In virtually all police encounters, the cop has already drawn his weapon long (relatively speaking) before actually being forced to shoot.
You’re right, it isn’t an instant ‘I hit the target’ device, they are primarily used as a warning: if you see the little dot, then you know you are in a snipers’ sights, if you see more than one, prepare to be terminally ventilated
Woo nice! A pistol firing .577 T-Rex or a shortened case thereof, and that looked like a solid brass penetration round crushed like a spitwad! Nice test to see if a perp is up to being a punching bag, with the benefit of slowing them down if they arent up to snuff…
Who’s going after the stasisgun?
Sydney?
No, Sydney is busy with securing the pod
Probably Heatwave,
the other alien mercs were still fighting so Amorphous and Achilles are probably still fighting them or crowd control. Our variables here are Cora and Dabbler.
Dabbles was last reported as heading to a good viewing platform to watch the fight between Maxi and Torchy, still no word on if she even made it to the platform
It seems to me that making fun of Maxima for using a laser sight is begging her to demonstrate that the gun is her gentle option.
HEY! Back to the playground you. It’s almost time for the next “Kobolds are True Dragons” thread.
XD
“Super Villain Ping Pong?”
With Max’s gun, it’s more like that old video game of Breakout…
Considering that the primary purpose of her having a gun at all is warning/intimidation (since pointing a finger, while even more lethal, doesn’t get the message across), the laser sight works perfectly for her purposes. It lets someone know “Yeah, I am actually aiming at you. Gunna listen now or do I actually have to get destructive?”
it is also a ranged option that don’t risk to destroy some building by mistake.(do we even know how strong is Maxima weaker blast?)
Am I the only one who thinks this guy is similar to Achilles in the terms of invulnerability?
He doesn’t seem to be too bothered by neither the bullet (as it bounced off) nor both Maxima’s or Cosmos’ punch.
You might not be the only one, but I wager you’d be on a very short list. We haven’t seen anything to show he’s much more than “very durable” yet.
My interpretation of Achilles is that a shot from Maxima’s gun to the knee would probably sweep that leg out from under him and send him flipping around a couple times. This guy took it and is still standing, meaning, in my mind, he has a decent amount of “unmovability” that Achilles does NOT have.
I don’t think that Achilles would ever say OOF! from an impact either (he’d just go flying), nor would Achilles have what appears to be flushing on his jaw, where Maxima hit him.
Given the bullet hurt him but didn’t penetrate and he is clearly strong but not as strong as Maxima.
I am thinking his power set is likely comparable to Luke Cage from Marvel comics. Skin that is highly resistant to cutting, bruises, or being broken in any way; but not invincible just very durable. and a descent strength class C or low B maybe.
But like Maxima’s speech on supers, chances are this guy falls under that category of rarely if never coming across another super his own grade or higher before and has become overly confident even when evidence is clear before him he is out matched. Ego can be a blinding thing causing massive denial.
He is lucky.
Max could have started with fingerpointing.
Sounds as fun as Etrigan vs Lobo…not that that hasn’t ended in similar ways too. The 3 could swap stories over drinks for quite some time
Probably already noticed, but “later sight”? As opposed to “earlier sight”? I presume “laser sight” was meant here ;-)
Her reaction was overkill, literally. Thus far she’d only established that that guy was super strong, not super resilient, so the severity of her reaction could well have killed him.
He threatened a Federal Agent with death, she tested to see if he could handle one of her punches, she could have tested it by aiming for centre-mass or a head shot
I used to be a mercenary like you….
But then I took an elephant gun round to the knee.
Correct me if I’m wrong but wasn’t ray’s right hand the one without a glove? The one in the last panel there is the left hand. I mean sure he could have taken it off but I can’t imagine there being that much time between panels 4 and 8.
I’m under the assumption his entire outfit retreats to avoid being damaged or it’s entirely holo.
Interesting thought. There was a part of his shirt (“Yes, it’s breakaway”, 876) that wouldn’t make a lot of sense as to it being holographic, and Maxima was holding the glove (875) that is shown to be missing since she flipped him and removed it. Seems strange for holographic clothing to do that, so I’m incredulous… but who knows? @DaveB knows!!!!!
He did ditch the glove quite handily there and I assume it’s location doesn’t matter anymore as somewhere between 875 and 883 the glove just ceases to exist. Max could only have taken so many steps before dropping it would have had it properly fall to the ground. His cape also randomly adjusts to covering shoulders to neatly tucked behind his back. This made me think it’s pure Casanova holographic clothing. It exists… so long as it helps the owner’s libido. His amulet also stops glowing at 866 and resumes when he needs protection while flying thru the air into the “soft landing” zone. Thus his emitter is not strong enough to contain his punch or it’s programed to delete glove in combat.
Option C: His glove broke when he turned the amulet making him powered up when it reached critical mass. (probably should have happened earlier)
Except, he is still wearing his glove on his left hand in panel four (but not in panels one or eight)
100% sure he knows it’s time to take the gloves off after the elephant gun.
So, he took them off in panel one, put them back on in panel four, them took them off again to punch Juggernot? o_O
Yes, someone mentioned it above