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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Is anyone else wondering if we should interpret the distortion effect in the last panel as being meaningful besides motion? Is the merc wearing a hologram or something that is being disrupted?
Or maybe its just a motion blur effect.
I like one other commenter’s interpretations – makes a lot of sense – that it shows how much harder Max hit, than Cosmos did
but since second-to-last panel has less of that distortion… who knows?
its motion blur to convey Max’s hit was more impactful on him that Ray’s
No, look at the center-strip of his face in the last panel, specially the nose, it looks like a hologram that is about to short out
I had to zoom in Alot to see what you were talking about. Looks more like a coloring mistake or an attempt at little motion blur.
Didn’t need to use zoom
Motion blur is a probably, colouring mistake is not, we will just wait until the next page and see if his face falls off
Second-to-last panel – he’s surprised.
Last panel – he’s just annoyed, now.
At this point Dabbler has ceased to look for a good video angle and has brought out the popcorn. I will assume Cora has converted halfway into a sofa. King size as this is going to be good.
Several large bounties on Maxima is surprising, honestly. Putting a bounty on a serving US officer is (under any sane administration) going to get you a lot of negative attention from the government. That’s not something most people/organizations/countries want. Sure, the really rogue orgs like Al Qaeda (in the time frame of the comic) or drug cartels might, but are there really that many of them?
> but are there really that many of them?
Across the galaxy? Possibly more than one galaxy?
I’d say not only are there that many of them, but it’s being understated.
I think the working assumption is that Knuckles is a human, though likely super as humans go, or else someone loaded Max’s gun with rubber bullets and she just tapped him in this pic. There’s little basis for us to think he would have knowledge of extra-planetary bounties, in general
I dunno. Bounties on enemy war heroes used to be a pretty common thing. And even fairly recently I seem to recall something about Chris Kyle (of American Sniper fame) having a pretty hefty bounty on his head.
I don’t think the bounties were made on earth, so they’re not going to consider any local politics. The impression that I got is that the bounties are a direct consequence of Maxima letting lose sometime ago. That action put her on the radar of these intergalactic thugs.
The alien mercs were after her because of the Fel ship.
Its not unreasonable there are local government, crime syndicates, and possible wannabe Dr. Dooms who would love to have Max removed from the board or captured for study to figure out her powers. Chances are Sciona *yes she is an alien but for some time might as well have been a local super villain building connections* didn’t get her super blood samples all single handedly and used mercenaries. We know there are also supernatural mercenaries.
these counties could even include some vampires and such interested in getting Maxima under their control and seeing if they can’t be empowered by her blood.
Let’s not fall into the History channel trap of assuming everything is aliens.
Do you really think the U.S. government has never put out a bounty on foreign targets?
Foolish if not, the “Rewards for Justice” program has been going for nearly 4 decades.
I think Maxima might be a special case; she is a living weapon of mass destruction, Earth’s most powerful super-human, after all. Many governments would want to remove her from U.S. service, minimum.
Given that Max’s finger is several dozen orders of magnitude more powerful than any sidearm in existence I wouldn’t expect her to fire the gun very often. The only reason she even has it is because she can often deescalate a situation more quickly by pointing a gun at it. She only has it for the intimidation factor. She uses it to gain submission, not to cause destruction.
I’ve got a real life example of this concept in action. A guy broke into my house and I didn’t actually have any ammo for my shotgun at the time (I’d used it up at the range and hadn’t replaced it yet). Of course he didn’t know the shotgun pointed at him was empty. I’ve never seen anyone run so fast in my life.
Test round seeing how powerful merc is, once she figures out that she can open the can of whoop ass.
Given that he actually FELT those punches, she needs to open that can a little more.
Accidentally-ing a superpowered mercenary who is trying to kidnap/kill you should not cause that much of an issue in a court of law- but I ain’t a lawyer… Although I would be annoyed if someone tried to sue me because I accidentally’d a superpowered slaver/mercenary who was specifically targeting ME.
Annoyed as in ‘fuck this planet I’m out rectums’ annoyed.
Accidentally-ing? Accidentally’d?
I’m confused. Explain.
Unaliving them.
When I worked at a movie theater one joke of mine that always fell that was comparing unbuttered popcorn *something customers would ask for and I am surprised the spell check here recognized as a word to be honestly* to the undead. Saying I want popcorn that has the quality of having butter on it without actually being buttered.
If unbuttered just means without butter, then “undead” should just mean alive, not a reanimated corpse.
Personally prefer the term ‘nonliving’
Ah okay.
Living impaired.
Formerly living.
Biologically non-functioning.
Detached from the mortal coil
Human version of the Monty Python Parrot skit.
Thanks, this explains what he meant :)
In their case, they were meaning ‘accidentally pulped the head’ by punching too hard
Killing people in front of civilians is bad no matter how you cut it. Only idiots that want fear do this so they can spread terror and make everyone more afraid of them. Cops aren’t supposed to kill people as a first resort only as a last resort. Also there is the whole think about want to know who else he maybe working with and where the bounties came from.
Came here to say exactly this. Judging by the reaction to a .577 to the knee (not even a railgun round) – this guy is in danger of having his face amputated by a punch far lesser than the MFP. He’s boned unless his bag of tricks is FAR more significant.
He is probably suffering from Luke Cage syndrome. Due to seldom fighting anyone above human and perceiving your strength super and your skin impenetrable the idea never crosses your mind that other supers can be a lot stronger and your defenses not as Superman level as you think until its too late.
Exactly.
Notice how her punch seems to have been roughly about as impactful as that round.
This was a move to test the general toughness of Knuckles McSomeguy, so that she didn’t accidentally kill him.
Before he can be interrogated, mind you.
I like that Ray is on the assist, here. Not trying to treat Max like a DID earns him a lot of points, imo. Assuming he learns to respect Max’s boundaries, without _ever_ not being a shameless flirt, flatterer, and ham-bone pick up artist, I’d love to see these two become drinking/brawling buddies.
And to watch Dabbler & Cora drop their respective jaws at that bromance.
If Maxima thought it would annoy Dabbler to get along with Ray, and therefor did so, that would be funny.
also may be an order of magnitude in response remember she is in downtown …… no destroying a city block or 2 for an opportunistic merc or 5 … so no finger of the destroyer for her ….
Rule number 1 of the Gun Range: NEVER. EVER. BRING. YOUR. OWN. AMMUNITION. TO. THE. GUN RANGE!!!!!
If you can ask what round you’ve been shot with, it clearly wasn’t the right one.
The .577 Tyrannosaurus cartridge isn’t designed to kill its target. It’s used by hunting safari guides to stop very large charging animals, it’s massive and blunt and delivers a lot of force to the target.
That much impact almost always ends in death…. But this is Maxima we are talking about…. Really need a flashback episode where she “tests” for level of appliable force. After Vemonance super villains will get the HARD overwhelming force option.
it was to his knee, he won’t be walking it off but he won’t be dying too soon either
i wonder if Vehemence… will be affected by all the Alien mayhem going latelly… is he still a story thing? will he help our super hero team? i mean, he likes violence, doesnt mean he is “bad”, more like anti-hero i guess? hmm…
He is somewhere far away and stoned totally off his ass. Only things he wants are Cheetos and more Kirby.
1) Vehemence is stoned 24/7 as part of his prison stay.
2) Vehemence is almost certainly not anywhere remotely close to a city or population center.
3) Vehemence is not in any way an antihero. He is a villain. There is nothing remotely heroic about him. He likes violence. He also likes the idea of murdering Maxima primarily because she’d be able to eventually stop him from causing more chaos via violence. He also essentially controls people’s minds to make them hurt other people against their will. These are not the makings of an antihero. They’re the makings of a villain. :)
As vague as “Anti-Hero” is, to the point even OverlySarcastic Production’s take on it was all over the place; Vehemence in no way shape or form comes even remotely close to being any sort of hero. The Gentleman Villain is still a villain.
Pander already stated the main points against him so I won’t repeat but yeah…he’s not an Anti-Hero, is a sociopath who thinks its beneath him to kill people who don’t pose a threat to him; and really only because he can feed on fighting them later.
For those out there who don’t know who Rhuen mentioned
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpABx1NOIX0
I love that youtube channel.
this look like he is at the moment at the end kinda just getting annoyed more than anything.
So the use of a laser pointer, rather than an invisible red dot sight (laser pointed into a targeting scope in such a way that no light passes through), makes sense for Maxima, given that her use of the gun is purely for show. But why green over red?
Not only would red look more like a movie gun (prompting a better reaction from foes) but it’s also a greater wavelength, meaning a lower frequency for the same energy and therefore less chance of causing collateral damage to eyes.
Because the main purpose of the gun IS for intimidation and show.
Unless you raise the power enough to just burn holes in things a red laser is essentially invisible in air,
all you see is the point, which while being good for aiming is only intimidating if they’re looking down.
A green laser on the other hand is visible in air even in daylight and at night quite Noticeable,
so the perp sees a green line of light leading back to a VERY big barrel pointed straight at them.
Interesting discussion on lasars. My understanding was that they all were invisible unless the particulate count in the air was rather high (smoke, water vapor, etc) and that due to scatter of the uni-directional photons.
I knew that grenn (and blue-green) lasars had better penetrative abilities, due to their wavelength; something the navy was researching for decades (the state of which, I admit to be ignorant), but were harder/more expensive to make due to the higher power requirements, among other things.
Certainly, if you see one or more lasar spots on your chest, that should make you think a bit about the next couple seconds; can you dodge the incoming round(s). Intimidation de escalation indeed!
There are different aspects entering into this. First of all, the scattered light intensity (the one that allows you to see the laser path) depend on the ratio between the wavelength and the size of the particulate: lower wavelengths scatter more on smaller particulate. In addition, green lasers are, on average, more powerful than red lasers. Last, but not least, the human eye is more sensitive to green wavelengths. All these things combined make so that the typical air particulate, and air molecules themselves, are enough to produce a visible trace for green lasers, but not so much for red. Mist and smoke provides much more and much bigger particles, making the red lasers visible too.
Your eye is more sensitive to green than any other color. The reason that military don’t use lasers is that anyone can see where the dot is coming from. It is a permanent muzzle flash giving away your location. that is why you are supposed to go to the range and improve your proficiency, not use fancy tricks. I want to see a retcon where the laser is removed. Peggy already knows that the gun is an extension of your arm and its firepower an extension of your will. If Maxima were to use a laser she would need to put the pink latex gun in her holster.
‘Anyway, Max is the boss, so no one gets to make fun of her for having a laser sight on her gun.’ rank and power have privilege.
As does fandom. WE’RE allowed to make fun of her.
It’s a laser sight from Wicked Lasers: It doubles as a cigar lighter.
We see Maxima using the laser assist, we don’t see her relying on it. If she was relying on the laser in a situation where it wasn’t necessary then I would agree that further range time is warranted, but that’s not what’s shown.
A primary purpose of her gun is intimidation: some opponents won’t take the pointed gun as enough of a hint or will be inclined to take the chance of her missing the target, for which having the choice of a visible aiming point gives her more options.
Green lasers work better outside dim environments than red has been the verdict for a while, shows up better on target.
This goes backnto your eye is more sensitive to green light. Of the bits of your eye the ones that detect green make up about 50% of the total the remainder detect an even split of blue and red.
1) I thought green looked cool.
2) I have a green laser pointer at home that’s so powerful that you can use it to point out stars at night if you’re out stargazing. I figure Max has something like that so she can wave it at someone’s face and seriously compromise their vision if she’s so inclined.
For a change your rule of cool agrees with the regular shooters. ;-)
Green makes more sense where Max is likely to be shooting, ie she can see her target.
I wonder who put those bounties on Maxima, how many were terrestrial and how many not, and how did Nigh-invulnerable Meatslab learn about them?
http://www.298798298527mercenarybounties.onion/highbounties/#/super/omega
guild dead $1million
Not-China52367: 100billion Yen alive in Zimbabwe at 11pm/1billion Yen dead in Zimbabwe at 11pm
Demonlord215465: Alive in circle of lover’s blood(see image): 1 arifact and 9 virgins
Not-Russia: 100billion Roebles alive at the Krim, 1billion Roebles dead at the Krim
Is: Dead: $100million
Madscientist81759431792: alive $1million when the giant dead robot shows up
Syndicates: Alive 100 mvlk meoijrewvmscojlgfhksjjfsdlk, Dead 10 mvlk meoijrewvmscojlgfhksjjfsdlk
Maffia14: Dead $1billion
foreign governments seeing her as a walking WMD.
Powerful supernatural forces that either want this champion of humanity removed *typical legendary hero flashbacks*, or enthralled as a prize or some demonic eugenics “powerful enough to give rise to the future ruler of Hell whose reign will never be questioned*, add blood sourced beings like vampires who may think her blood may empower them as well to become anime level super vampires.
Mad scientists trying to replicate her power for various reasons, make an army, usher in a new era of humanity by spreading the power to everyone; ect…
*add: possible factions within their own government who’d love to secret her away and learn exactly how her power works; via army of Hulks kinda scheme. Even though she is a member of the military there is bound to be that one senator, governor, lobbiest, whatever who thinks they can go behind everyone’s backs and be rewarded after the fact if they succeed.
naturally criminal syndicates seeing super cops.
Add an X-factor set: supernaturals afraid that with so many supers running around, humans in general may evolve into being mostly supers if they figure out how…and these immortal supernaturals who feed on humans being static will suddenly find themselves going from being the wolves hunting rabbits to being the wolves hunting *trying to* crocodiles through Godzilla.
-so try to eliminate as quietly as possible the strongest supers at this crucial point in super evolution *where does this spike go down or keep going up*
Has anyone here used a laser sight that made sound? Because I haven’t.
I mean yeah I heard the effect in movies but that’s just Hollywood.
That’s the effect to which he refers
Yes. I had a brick of a laser sight in the late 80’s that ran off of a pair of 9 Volt batteries. It had a high pitched whine typical of circuits involving step up transformers used to generate the high voltage needed to power the laser. As I remember a fresh set of batteries would run it continuously for around 8 minutes, though in use there was a grip switch allowing you to activate it only when you wanted it on.
I like the idea that lasers don’t actually make noise in this universe any more than they do in real life, but Max specifically requested the engineers figure out how to make a noisy laser to improve the intimidation factor. It’s the whole reason she has a gun in the first place, after all.
She should talk to Schlock.
There was a short story about the brave, conquering space explorer titled ‘The Ultimate Weapon.’ The ultimate weapon being a disintegrator gun and he was off to test it, he quickly learns that when a pack of predatory wolf-like beasts are coming after you that having them just ‘poof’ vanish without a sound was NOT a deterrent to the rest of the pack. They continue to swarm him and he’s panic-shooting while thinking how they needed to add an intimidating sound effect generator to the weapon so targets would associate the disappearance of pack members with you/the gun. He ended up slicing up all the power conduits, fuel lines, etc in his ship as a result.
Years later a team finds him starting with his ship, make some jackass comments about him and the damage to the ship when they’d have not done any better because they had no clue what he went through and find him all Robinson Caruso with a bow and arrow and explains how useful the bow and arrow were. The new guys ask eagerly about the ‘ultimate weapon’ which is what they’re really concerned about and he declares that indeed it was crucial to his survival…right before taking it out and using it as a hammer.
Maxim 34?
I had a laser pointer that I used to entertain my cat. The cat’s not fooled, but he’s into the game, and chases the little red dot. But when he’s tired of the game, he always homed in on me instead, because he can hear the switch clicking on whenever I push the button. Or I’d see his ears flick up when I hit the switch and then he’d look around trying to find the little red dot. He got very bummed when the batteries ran down and the switch noise happened but there was no little red dot to chase.
I used to do the laser pointer bit with my cat, the second she ‘caught’ the dot, I’d turn the pointer off so she’d look under her paw, at which point I’d turn it back on and make the dot ‘run away’. She always looked so surprised!
Even for Maxima, it’s best to deal with enemy supers by erring on the side of BOOM HEADSHOT
Well, since she has the gun mainly for intimidation purposes, I think the laser sight would add to that.
Interesting – I haven’t seen anyone yet point out that a bounty would be outside of most organizations – That is, if he had a boss, that boss would doubtless not approve of him trying to get a bounty while working a “job” for said boss – he’d be there to do that job, not mess around with side pursuits… I wonder if that implies he’s the boss, or there of his own accord, or if it just shows he’s a little less professional than the ideal “gig” employee, or something… not sure…
Well he did pass off the primary target level tech to a flyer. We have yet to see anyone else, so thinking Heatwave is in pursuit of the flyer while Amorphous and Achilles are still dealing with the remaining alien mercs and crowd control.
We have seen in comics that cliché of the tough guy henchman who decides they don’t care about the plan and want that extra glory of taking down the hero; pointing out there is also a bounty on them is just cream. They think they are the toughest around and that ego overshadows their senses that should tell them they aren’t. Heck you see people like that in real life, so sure of their own strength and skills they pick fights with clearly stronger and more experienced opponents. Not sure of the thug breaking ranks to pick a fight *above a street gang level; can’t picture this going well for a Mafia henchman to risk arrest*; not as likely in real life; but it is a common enough trope in fiction.
Who said that that was the primary target? That would imply they knew about the space mercenary’s even when Raymos didn’t know about them
Speaking of tough-guy no-brain henchmen, remember that one guy who decided to crash the celebration party early, only to get nose-flicked across the parking lot by Anvil?
It does look like an quick reaction “team”. I have to wonder if they are very local, or have access to a teleporter.
Primary target LEVEL.
Just in case that needs explained. A primary target level items or target means something when seen causes you to temporarily halt your current action or switch target to that
Yes, it did need to be explained, and thank you
I don’t think I worded that very well at the time. So just to be clearer.
A Primary Target Level item is something that if you are aware of it either is or becomes your primary target.
for instance a thief breaks into a private collection because they know their target has a giant diamond. However while scoping out the place you discover they have an amulet that grants invisibility. That is a primary target level item so it is reasonable to switch your immediate focus to obtaining that.
No, your previous explanation was good enough :D
Fun Fact. Green lasers do far more damage to eyes than red lasers. Maxima may wish to keep that in mind.
Because they’re higher energy, presumably. I expect blue lasers would be even more damaging.
Is that a 60 cal hand cannon slug?
I believe it’s a .577 Tyrannosaurus.
The .577 is a round made for a “stopping rifle.”
A stopping rifle is different from a hunting rifle because with a hunting rifle it’s enough to deliver a lethal shot. With a stopping rifle, the requirement is that the shot should be *immediately* lethal, and preferably delivered with enough force to break the momentum of an oncoming charge.
IOW, if you’re being charged by a rhinoceros, you can hit at a range of forty feet or so with your hunting rifle, and land a lethal shot that will bring the animal from a full gallop to a halt in about eighty feet; Or you can hit it with your stopping rifle, and land a more-than-lethal shot which is likely to cave in its skull, bringing the animal from a full gallp to a halt in about thirty feet.
People don’t like to have to use stopping rifles. You wear some kind of armor plate on your shoulder; otherwise It leaves you black and blue, and takes days to fully heal.
But .577, which used to be called ’24 bore,’ is a stopping rifle sized for bears and wild pigs. IOW, it’s small relative to the historical stopping rifles. Back when the first generation of firearms-equipped explorers were coming to appreciate African Big Game Hunts, the stopping rifles preferred on elephant hunting safaris were eight-bore (.835 caliber) or six-bore (.92 caliber).
Thing is, you can’t buy .835 or .92 caliber cartridges anywhere, and no rifle still commercially manufactured uses it.
As you perfectly know, not all .577 cartridges were made equal :) The .577 Tyrannozaur, for example, has 3x the muzzle energy of the early .577 Black Powder express. And I wouldn’t be surprised if they made some +P+ loads for Maxima’s dinky little handgun to make it deliver more oomph.
Also, this is a great video on FOUR-bore stopping rifles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDYtxxRU_cY
That means it’s a single-shot handgun, for the shells are WAY too big to fit in a magazine for a handgun. Her hands are still normal-sized. In fact the round might perforce poke out the barrel merely loaded in the size depicted. What our author was trying for might be the .50 AE of Desert Eagle infame, “only bigger”. I think physics is getting in the way, short of some way to “super-power” the powder. And the gun, to just hold together when fired.
It is specified as being a single-shot break-action, custom-made. No reload mechanism, besides Max’s own speedy fingers, and a massive trigger pull force so that it’s less likely anyone else can use it. DaveB did post a link to a close-up description, somewhere back in the first day of comic-time, but I don’t have the reference to hand.
I’m guessing you’re referring to this?
Thank you, that’s the one!
Here is an interesting thought for Maxima’s guns.
Force = Mass x Acceleration.
But Max has enough acceleration to intercept the bullet. Which means she can draw and extend her gun faster than the bullet fires.
In theory, can Maxima quick draw so fast, her speed gets added to the bullet speed to make them more lethal? And if so, what’s the effective range before either wind resistance cuts it down, or her accuracy drops due to focusing on speed?
Theoretically she could “punch” the gun at him while firing and her speed and strength would increase the momentum of the bullet and thus increase the joules of energy delivered to the target…. but she can do more damage with a punch or a BLAST than the bullet can do. Playing GURPS supers we literally ran into many situations where a super could do more damage throwing the gun at someone than shooting it at them. This is the case here.
She’d need to have to have the punch at speed and then fire or it would end up over-pressuring the chamber. Also putting aside accuracy issues, I have to wonder how well a gun would operate in the moments of being rammed forward at bullet velocities. I’m guessing ‘not well’ as inertia would be trying to rack your slide at the very least.
theoretically, she don’t even need the gun, she could just ‘ping’ the bullet with index and thumb like a marble (or a booger) doing more damage.
maybe she is using it as a test to see just how much punishment they can take before she begins ramping up her powers against them.
Finally, Chekov can rest easy again.
Maxima explained to Sidney that she keeps the gun more as a universal threat that people will recognize and react to when they wouldn’t pay any attention to her pointing at them. The laser sight would add to the intimidation factor, I think.
Exactly!
Although I confess that I was kinda hoping for the “onomatopoeia”-type homage to “Sergeant Schlock’s” plasgun:
.
.
.
…”OMMMMMINOUS HUUUMMMMMMMMMmmmm…”
;) … :) … :P … :D
:P :D
I see what you did there.
When the Galaxy starts making an Ominous Hum…..
I think all of 2020 so far has had an “ominous hum”.
So does anyone looking down the barrel of Schlock’s gun
So, this is where the expression of a gun packing a punch comes from.
*snickers*
If that’s Ray Cosmos’ hand, shouldn’t it have a glove on that one?
Maxima took that glove. Check panel2 of last page. It’s the wrong hand here though.
Well she probably figures that anyone who can punch hard enough to make HER jaw go all clicky can take a bullet to the knee, allowing her to go full armor to see just how hard he can hit next page.
The author mentions somewhere the specs of this gun.
Where?
The comments here, for one: https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-53-florence-nightingale-she-aint/comment-page-1/
Thanks
is the gun her check on
“if they can take this bullet and walk, they can handle my fists too”
*CRANKS STRENGTH UP TO 11″
Perp: plz no
I have a question unrelated to today’s comic.
When Sydney was first using the Aethrium Causeway, she wasn’t able to return to Earth, because the symbol for the “last available planet” was glitched out.
However, when fetching some Grazz to give to Neil deGrasse Tyson, she was able to return directly to Earth via the same aetherium causeway.
So, does she now have a navigation symbol for Earth that she knows will work? Or did she use the corrupted symbol? Or did she just leave the causeway open while she went and got more Grazz?
I suspect the icon for Earth was glitched out because of some accident which resulted in the orbs sitting on the ocean floor. It got refreshed when she left Earth the first time without incident.
That may, however, mean that the orbs are “out of warrantee”, which could have plot implications down the line.
I suspected it was a glitch caused by the way Sydney was in deep space, having gone through a time not just space portal throwing her out of synch and messing up the return function.
Although even that seems iffy if it just works by being able to go anywhere she has been before kind of portal; so yeah there could be something later on about Earth’s signal being glitched. I suspect though she checked upon returning to Earth and found the glitch cleared up before flying off into space right outside the comic shop before thinking of going off like that…would kind of suck to have to make a call home about being stuck at Fracture Station.
“We could hook you up with a few choice stellar landmarks.”
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-715-wormhole-101/
That all assumes the last user used the Causeway to get to Dirt
The orbs have an ‘history’ function that remember the last place where they opened a causeway from.
When Sidney tried the first time there was something wrong with the Earth ‘bookmark’ (That as mentioned was also -probably- why the orbs were lost under the sea)
When she went for a ‘food’ run the orbs just made a new, working bookmark.
(that also mean that that you can open a causeway in the atmosphere of a planet. does that mean you ca use them for intra-planetary trasportation?)
Ray must have super luck; beating up supervillains is probably the only type of first date Max would consider fun.
Just a quick comment. A big reason guns like rifles and snipers are so large is to absorb the kick-back such weapons have. With Maxima’s defense and strength I’m sure she could use a handgun with anti-tank rounds or even 30mm (the bullets put into attack copters rotatory guns for reference) without breaking her wrists.
While most attack choppers use either 25mm, 27mm, or 30mm, I believe they aren’t rotary. They are however, chainguns using single or dual barrels and linked up ammo belts. Still got the sizes right though. A GAU-8/A Avenger cannon round is still sexy as hell though. Bigger shell casing as it uses more power then a standard 30mm.
AH-1 SuperCobra uses a 3 barreled 20mm rotary gun in it’s chin turret, but that’s about the only one I can recall from memory.
The Avenger and by extension the A-10 are seriously sexy hardware, there’s a great photo out there of the GAU-8 with all the trimmings and ammo drum sitting on a frame next to a VW beetle, it dwarfs the car, it gives a great idea of the sheer size of the weapon system. Also gives evidence to one of the main sayings about the A-10, it was built around the gun :D
A Rafale a fixet wing attack aircraft use a 30 mm GIAT 30M 791 revolver canon with an higher muzzle velocity 1,025 m/s (3,360 ft/s) than the GAU-8 3,324 ft/s (1,010 m/s) and a good rate of fire 2,500 rounds/min for a single barrel compared to the 3,900 rpm rounds/min of the GAU-8.
And the Rafael was not built around the gun…
Gotta love a plane where the gun has more thrust than the engines.
Oh that is a big gun, it made a very satisfying boom sound. XD Clearly only a super like her can handle a hand cannon that is more cannon then hand. :P
I’d go with the high pitch rising bweeEEE for the laser personally
Unless I’m mistaken, this is the first time we’ve ever seen that gun fired.
I love the looks on the super merc’s face in the last two panels. He really felt Max’s punch but Ray’s seemed like more like it inconveniently pushed his head sideways than actually hurt him.
So does Maxima know this guy or did she just assume he could take a massive bullet to the knee? I know she’s not a fan of permanently crippling the bad guy. https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-632-the-peg-legginator/
Super-strength requires a certain amount of super durability, lest the Super tear their own body apart by simply flexing. I would guess that she has a pretty good idea what ballpark Knuckles there is starting in, given the sucker punch he landed on her.
Read the damn comments!
Maxi shot him in the knee to test how strong (or durable) Juggernot actually was: if he could handle that, she knew how hard to start punching (if she started too hard, he would be pulp, too light and he wouldn’t even notice it), if he couldn’t handle it, then the fight is already over
They have a super doctor that can (probably) put him together later.
And he sucker-punched her, and how they say, you mess with the bull, you get the high powered bullet to the kneecap (if you are lucky)
Not to bad mouth the Airforce but you can pass their rifle course by hitting a 1-meter target about 43% of the time. They’re not… Celebrated by the other branches for their marksmanship. To be fair, generally speaking, if your airforce officers and troops are engaging the enemy with personal small arms, it means you’ve fucked up somewhere as that’s not their job.
Marksman, is not as high as you believe, try Expert, which is 75%+
Now that he mentions it… What the hell kind of rounds are those indeed? We know they’re high caliber high powered rounds sure, but what is that slug even? It’s clearly specialized given the gun, but it’s also a full metal jacket. Those are typically for target shooting in hand guns and not law enforcement per say. So what’s in the core of that round given that it didn’t effectively disintegrate on impact given the energy behind the round and the more unyielding nature of the target?
Her gun is designed around the .577 Tyrannosaur
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-53-florence-nightingale-she-aint/comment-page-1/.
Arc-sparq has a guy who’s able to enhance material to be stronger with his power.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-319-armored-with-advice/
I’m aware of both, but that only extends so much. Case in point, most full metal jacket rounds tend to fragment on impact or tear. When they don’t do ether of those, they’ll expand and mushroom out a bit like hollow points do. That round crumpled instead of ether case. Only thing I can think of that would cause that is that the core of the slug has a special payload embedded in it. Would be real interesting as well if it was loaded with an explosive payload too. In her line of work, it might be considered more like firing flash band rounds.
That seems like a smart idea for bullets against supers.
You could make the payload something non-kinetic damaging for supers with high resistance to kinetic damage.
I’m just thinking of caster rounds existing in this world of tech and magic like Outlaw Star
If he shrugged off a bullet like that, you’re gonna need to hit him harder.
Looks like Ray is far from a paper tiger. So far he’s taken at least one solid hit from Knuckles with no significant damage (assuming Knuckles punched him at Maxima rather than simply tossing him), he can hit accurately and fairly hard (nowhere near Maxima’s level, she’s still holding back at this point) and he can seriously move to get back to Knuckles to land that punch so quickly (again, not Maxima-fast, but way faster than normal). More a lover than a fighter obviously, but not someone to be taken lightly if you are anyone other than Max.
Knuckles seems more dangerous than Ray. So far no attack has made him shift so much as an inch or raised a bruise, though at least Maxima made him hurt a little. His punches seem to be on par with a not-fully-enhanced Vehemence (based on busting through an alien force barrier with ease, though he didn’t break Max’s nose with his cheap shot, so less powerful overall), which is damned impressive. No idea how fast he is, but far from slow. Unless he has a lot of power he hasn’t shown yet or a LOT more allies in the wings, Max is gonna take him apart in seconds.
Unless a bunch more super-mercs show up, I’d say Knuckles is going to be Kevin’s new next door neighbor in short order. And Ray will have managed to technically have a first date with Maxima. While technically getting to first base. And the mercs will have scored one alien stasis rifle, so everybody wins except the alien bounty hunters.
We’re assuming Ray was punched when he hit the airbags.
Could have been tossed.
Could have launched himself for a little accidental motor-boating.
I was kinda expecting the next comic to start with Max and Ray in bed
enjoying an post-coital cigar.
Followed by a “Mr Cosmo? Are you awake Mr Cosmo? Wake up…” sequence
Followed by Ray in a bodycast with all four limbs in traction.
Wait, that’s Ray’s left hand punching Knuckles. Where’s the glove?
Something that has been asked many times already, and will be asked again many more times
I look at the last panel and all I can think is “God-Fist America”. Sing it ‘yall, sing it.
im guessing the laser sight serves a similar reason to the gun, she wants the being she’s shooting to know that they are about to get shot and precisely where they are going to be shot
I just had a vision of the kaser-sight for appearing on a peep — and their going down under a wave of cats (including a few big cats) trying to catch the Red Dot.
Laser. Darned spill chucker.
MEOW! (We sure will!)
Laser. Perp. Darned spill chucker.