Grrl Power #891 – Enter the Wench! (Not that way, pervs)
Before anyone asks, “All of whose powers?”, that is the first line on the next page.
My first question is, how did she discover this powerset? Did she get a summer job at a home and garden shop that just happened to be owned by someone who had the super power to till soil with their mind. And was also evil, I guess. She specifically said “supervillains who hire me” so maybe it only works with bad guys? That would be my second question.
Hench Wench is a Patreon cameo character from… actually I didn’t ask if she wants her name here, so uh, stay tuned maybe. Anyway, she didn’t give me any instructions for the cameo beyond the name, so I came up with something that honestly might be a little overpowered, but she seems like she’ll be fun either way.
Max might need to talk to Heatwave about not trying to immolate tangos. Or suspects. I’m not sure what Arc-SWAT calls people actively criming. “Suspect” seems like you’re not sure if they’re guilty. If they’re actively punching your teammates, a more proactive term might be appropriate. “Tango” sounds a little terroristy, but can also mean target, so I guess it’s okay.
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Smashing face first into the ground in the middle of your big introductory villain monologue, does kinda decrease the impact of it.
Impact of the monologue that is, not her face’s impact with the ground, that remained unchanged.
And just because you get the powers of other people, doesn’t mean you have them at the same strength. Super strength for example, covers a pretty wide strength range. Being able to lift 200 kilos one handed is still super strong, but not as strong as being able to move an entire planet (the planet would need to be pretty solid for that to actually work).
Yeah,
it is a considerable and odd limitation for a ranged power mimic to only copy the powers of people they work for. Unlike say Mimic from the X-men who while he can only mimic mutant powers gets every mutant power of any mutant standing within like a mile of himself.
imagine the “Hench Wench” working for Suicide Squad (the movie version), now its debatable if Deadshot’s sniper eye even is an actual power or if he is just trained; Killer Croc is a physical change, and other than that its Diablo’s fire power and nothing else.
Doesn’t say they need to be present. Think “We know you have a record, we’re offering you a safe job anyway.” At that point it doesn’t matter where they are and she has their powerset. With the right legal mumbo jumbo she can also hire temps, pay them for a week of work, and when they “leave” or “quit” they’re just put on the inactive employee roster so she never loses their powers. By sheer technicality she can load up everything. All she would need is a lawyer who offers free legal services to supervillians to bring a contract.
I didn’t really stipulate she had to have them present, just the X-men character did, but I didn’t say she didn’t there so yeah.
that actually raises the question if her power actually functions like a demonic contract of employment (allowing her the powers of people she has never met) or if she has only convinced herself of this and this is an association mental connection form of power copy; like a darker version of the “My friends, their powers, they are with me as one I shall defeat you dark lord” where the one special character ends up gaining the skills and powers of their allies because of this mental familial bond (there is some psychological studies where people even unknowingly adopt work groups as a pseudo-family),
an easy test, hire someone above her with a power but don’t tell her or anyone around her. She gets their power then there is a metaphysical contract at work. If not then it is a mental placebo limitation requiring that subconscious bonding.
Ah, the Ronin Warriors white armor method.
So, could she hire someone to a company she owns and have herself on the payroll to get infinite weenie boost?
Ten employees giving 100 percent of their powers plus herself giving a ten percent of herself and another +10% of the employees –and another 1% of herself and them again…
She could then work in Baseball where they regularly give 111%
Hell, imagine her working for Archon. Any combination of a strong power set such as Maxima with Achilles makes for a fairly unstoppable character. Imagine Maxima if she never had to bother with assigning any of her variable power pool to armor. Vast offensive power in the form of strength and energy blasts, super speed and flight, and utter invulnerability make for a very bad day for anyone up against the gestalt.
She would probably not be able to copy Maxima’s powers for the same reason Varia cannot.
You’re making an unfounded assumption. Varia’s power is based on skin touch. Maxima’s skin is “screwy.”
Skill / training =/= power.
Im sure swapping points wont be easily done if she gains such a power set.
Remember the gaming session with clear shields versus opaque with light damage.
that would question the mechanics aspect of her power. After all, all supers end up with that enhanced physique and while their powers were said to all operate differently, a zero contact power copier like this implies there is a common element to the source of the metaphysical properties of said power.
However like how Mimic can’t copy non-mutant powers, this setting too has non-super human powers; so while we have no data on this, and if countered I will concede but it would be really strange, if for instance she can’t copy magic based powers *one of her bosses/team mates turns out to be a mage or vampire and can’t copy their powers* then it is reasonable she couldn’t copy alien physiology powers, non-human originating powers, and advanced technology. Which may be why Varia can’t gestalt with Maxima, the same reason you wouldn’t expect Rogue or Mimic to get anything from Venom.
you know at the steakhouse battle when Vehemence punched Maxima in the nose and got it to bleed, could Varia touch the blood and form a gestalt? that’s kind of direct contact to Maxima.
I! Love! This! Character!
Not sure if it came up, but…
What one of them contact Adrianna, and Adrianna get a judge to issue an emergency injunction against the LLC, or something.
Poof, no powers.
Again, they would have to know the name of the L.L.C
No name, not a shit Ari, or anyone else, can do
And yes, it has been brought up on every comment page!
Well, since she just had them incorporate into an LLC, that narrows it down a lot.
She didn’t say when she had them do that, just that she got them to do that before contracting her…
Honestly, it really is a big question of how that power even functions. I suppose it’s some sort of psychic feedback thing. Because that sort of thing really could be prone to being abused. Your supervillain boss decides they don’t need you anymore? “You’re fired,” and suddenly you are de-powered unless you were working for another villain at the same time.
on the one hand it does help with the power hungry fear of having powerful agents in your evil organization who get big headed and try to overthrow you; if they succeed; they lost their power.
conversely another fear is other agents feeling they are only being kept around to be part of a power pool for this one person so also leave thus depriving that power from them as well. Anything long term here is going to require a lot of trust and bonding exercises.
This introduces the question: does HenchWench have the power of the person (including LLC) who currently employs her under the law, or the person she *thinks* employs her?
If the latter, then there’s a straightforward debuff: a convincing illusion of the boss saying “You’re Fired!”.
Easier said than done, of course.
lest call them susu for super suspect!
Susu is too close to snu-snu. Dabbler is already distracted.
To be fair she is always distracted with all the sexy supers around her. Isn’t easy to be a succubus in a world of sexy.
Oh look someone Worse than Vehemence to have participated in that melee.
urgs, Just imagine her Bosses to be Vehemence and Periwinkle Butt Sniffer. After a bit of powering up of cause.
Yay to Vehemence, who automatically counters everything thrown at him. And if you finally reach crittical mass to bypass the auto-defense, you still have to overcome Vehemence defense and not your attacks should start to work agaisnt each other…
I think you’re confusing Vehemence and He for whom the death tolls
Both would probably be broken as her boss though
With a name and powerset like Hench Wench, she was destined to be a henchman supervillain. Not even a main supervillain.
It is an incredibly useful and yet useless power. Very strong but no upward movement in the organization since promotions would nerf her powers. Great if you don’t mind being stuck in an entry level position
You’ve never met anyone with no ambition to be management? There are plenty of people who are content to be a worker bee and to leave what can be the crushing responsibility of leadership to others.
Indeed, it is often better never to sit on the Supervillain Throne. A high-level hench can have almost as much evil fun, while not being a prime target.
As Elan’s father discovered in Order of the Stick. :)
Not all that useless. She’d get paid well, with none of the ultimate responsibility. I’m just saying with a power like that, she’s destined to be serving others. If she was SMART, she would have joined Archon instead. :)
And before anyone says that Maxima doesn’t hire, the US government does, I’m pretty sure that if her power works a certain way, they could work things to let her be hired BY Maxima.
It would provide an insanely powerful addition to Archon, while still being easy to control since just firing her, or even just adding a clause in her contract, can de-power her.
As already mentioned on a previous page: some people prefer being a lackey, and not even the top lackey, easier to ‘slip under the radar’ when the Super Goofs come calling
The name no doubt came from when she realized this exact thing – she was almost assuredly not born with the name “Hench Wench”
Unless she was born in the silver-bronze age Marvel in which case her name would be Henchetta Wencheretta. LoL
More likely DC there.
Henchrietta :)
She had them form an LLC? A limited liability corporation… LLC’s with lots of partners are…unstable!
Has she field-tested this yet? Because it sounds like she’d get all the powers of the LLC, but in a weakened form and not all at the same time… …maybe not even have full control over which she has at any given time. It might even cause random variability in any power while she’s using it…
Or… all of them temporarily losing their powers if she’s taken out…
It could even be worse than that. This has to be some kind of psychic-connection power sharing (otherwise it wouldn’t require hiring or be limited to supervillains). Which could mean that by imposing a limit feedback, she only has whatever amount of ability is both not in use by its primary AND only works to the threshold that each individual partner THINKS it does at any given time.
Or she’s fey (maybe fae depending on how hip your universe is) and her powers are a metaphysical contract that works exactly as stated. They have to give the fey something for the contract to work but if all she asks for is $ then everyone can keep their first born children.
LLCs are not unstable. I love LLCs.:) My law firm is a PLLC specifically because of how stable it is. You get the best of both worlds for only being taxed once and having liability protection. :) However, it’s not called ‘incorporating into an LLC.’ It’s forming an LLC. Incorporating into a corporation, S-Corp, or C-Corp :) I’ve also set up quite a few LLCs for clients – much more popular than corporations because of not being double-taxed.
I’m also sort of surprised if she was able to have them set up an LLC just before doing this, since LLCs usually take around 4-6 weeks to set up, at least in New York (some states have a type of rush processing that can reduce the time to 2-3 days, but New York is not one of those states). There are also some additional requirements like publishing in a paper of record first.
Maybe she thought way way way ahead?
Nobody said she had to be preparing for this, particular engagement. This might just be the first one up.
Also, while having a copy of someone’s powers could mean a reduced power level, it will almost certainly result in a reduce skillset. Just because you have a new power, doesn’t mean you have any idea how to best use it, or use it at all.
It is always fun to see people steal (er, borrow) new powers and have NO idea how to use them.
I remember the first time I saw that. I remember back in the X-Men animated series back in the 90s, Rogue got Cyclop’s eye blasts after giving him CPR and had no idea how to turn them off. She blew a huge hole in the side of the building they were trying to stop Magneto from torching. Oops.
But other examples abound. Hench Wench is likely going to wind up roadkill. Either Sydney or her own arrogance will get her stomped. (Or both! <<Shifty eyes<<)
Cyclops couldn’t turn them off, either. That’s why he wore those special goggles, or sunglasses if he wasn’t expecting combat.
Or when Emma Frost got Bobby’s ice powers… and taught him some new tricks with it
Given the guy she seems to be working with not impossible it’s been coming a while, merc companies aren’t a strange thing ie Blackwater as it was previously known. And given they’re trying to collect a bounty on Max probably expecting and/or have other contracts open.
I’m actually surprised that she did not try to get a job with Archon and, after explaining how her powers work, suggest her working directly for Maxima in order to game theory her powers for maximum efficiency for Archon.
Some people just want to see the world burn. Or turn into lava, become invisible, or stop generating gravity, as the case may be.
You saying that Archon are villains? o_O
Plus, she would be forced to follow orders if she wanted to continue to have those fancy powers
No I’m suggesting maybe she hasnt thought things through, and her powers could also work when being employed for LEGAL purposes, not just villainy.
She doesnt seem like the smartest pea in the pod, after all. :)
Maybe they incorporated in Galytn. Galytn may have some fast track, fill-in-the-blank Instant LLC laws, if Deus sees an advantage. Three pages and a postage stamp, zip, zap, done. The hard part might be finding a trademark-able name, and that’s likely a Google search.
An analysis of Hench Wench’s power from what is revealed so far.
Zero Contact Power Copier requiring association by hierarchy with individuals whose powers are being copied.
At the star power copier / power mimic: an individual able to copy the powers of other super powered individuals without any loss of power to the individual being copied (that would be a power thief),
-sub-set: Does not necessarily include Skill Copier (individuals able to observe and copy what they see…usually martial arts skill; although super powered versions do exist),
Zero Contact: Able to copy powers without needing to make any physical contact during or before copying the powers of the individual being copied.
-no blood drinking, kissing, sex, or skin touching to name a few common example of contact required power copying *generally the DNA required versions*.
Association Based: Generally requiring the individual to have some social connection with those whose power they are copying. This normally shows up as a temporary thing for a powered protagonist; a “all my friends, their powers are with me now and together in spirit we shall strike you down evil one!”; normally a bond such as friendship, family, lovers, fellow warriors.
*This raises the question if this association based power copy for Hench Wench works how she thinks it does *like can her employers hire someone without her knowing and she automatically gets that power: which would imply a supernatural contract angle* or is this just how she thinks it works and she is making a subconscious bond twisted by her corrupted morals to create a darker version of the bond of friendship and she does need to actually know who they are.
she is making a subconscious bond twisted by her corrupted morals to create a darker version of the bond of friendship and she does need to actually know who they are.
This makes the most sense to me. She strikes me as a Libertarian.
The Libertarian part also works with why it has to be supervillans.
Arc-SWAT would call them “perps.” Short for “perpetrator.
Reminds of an old JLA plot where when an Amazo showed up and copied the entire JLA powerset Batman defeated it by proclaming the disbanding the JLA.
Unless Blatman actually disbanded the JLA, it wouldn’t have done shit
Also, IIRC Amazo copies powers via contact with the individual, meaning that even if they disband the JLA Amazo still has all of the individual powers he copied, he just no longer has the convenient shorthand of “of the JLA” when stating where the powers came from.
Unless Amazo worked differently at that time; it’s not a plotline I’m familiar with, and it sounds like a silver age thing, which is not an age I am super familiar with, and if it is silver age then I guess all bets are off because having consistent rules for how a given power works was definitely not big in the silver age.
Does it require her employers to be supervillains? What if they don’t identify as villains? Would that realization turn off her powers? If it doesn’t actually require her employers to be villains, just do what Batman does, and pay them more to be on your side. Honestly, I think she’d like Arc-SWAT’s power reservoir even better, so you might not even need to offer more money.
I don’t think she’d get anything if she joined ARC-SWAT. I think she gets the powers of whomever her ultimate employer is, not simply everyone above her in an organization, or even everyone IN an organization, but the person or entity that is defined as her employer. This would be why she had them incorporate, if her power only draws powers from a singular entity, then because a corporation is a person (according to the government, at any rate) then all of the powers of the people who have ownership of the company could be called the powers of the company, and if the company is her ultimate employer then she gets all of those powers.
On the other hand, if she was employed by ARC-SWAT her ultimate employer would be the government, which is also generally considered to be a singular entity, however while a corporation could be BS’d to be equivalent to the owners or shareholders or whatever, there isn’t really an equivalent position when it comes to the government. Perhaps the president, since she’d be under the executive branch of the government, and I could kind of see an argument for the legislators also maybe qualifying, but unless there are a bunch of supers in elected office she likely wouldn’t get much out of joining ARC-anything.
Granted I could be proven wrong about all of this when her powers are actually explained beyond the elevator pitch, but given the intel we have that’s how I think it works.
Problem with that is the President is an employee of a democratic government, not it’s employer.
Here, the Shareholder rules apply. She gets all the powers of all the voters.
Hello Wench, have you considered how much more powerful you would be, if you had been hired by the United Nations? You would gain the powers of every super in every member country. So most of the supers on Earth.
Instead you decided to become a small-time criminal.
*sigh*
Dumb human.
Smart human, by being a small-time crim, she can avoid most of the attention the big time rims get, plus, by being an employee also affords her limited protection from prosecution
The webic “Evil Inc.” kinda discussed that: someone asked them why they don’t want to rule the world, and the answer was, it was too much hassle, much easier to let someone else deal with that problem and they just ‘rent’ control
Villain 1: “Dude, you trying to rule the world or something?”
Villain 2: “Oh, hell no. I’m just after the money.”
Villain 1: “Well, why not? Everybody wants to rule the world!”
Villain 2: “Ever think of the paperwork that goes with that job?”
Villain 1: “Oh, yeah. Bummer.”
Sums up about right :D
Thats the main reason that I chose to not rule the world as well.
I don’t want to rule the world, I just want to conquer it.
After I conquer it, I set the whole the to be a direct democracy, and put every political leader, religious leader, and corporate leader on public trial, and the world can decide if they were good or not.
Then, banish all money to be replaced with environment/prouction vouchers (each voucher counts as an equal amount of Earth’s usable resources before causing climate collapse, with new created each to mach Earth’s recovery rate.) Most tasks you trade the vouchers just like money, but any natural resource you want to use (carbon emissions, mining, etc.) costs vouchers that are destroyed on use.
After that, I just go on my merry way, letting the world do its own thing.
Which is to revert to how things were before you tried to screw it up
I have always wanted to have a super sentai villain who just keeps sending golem/robot soldiers to one area and monsters one at a time only for the heroes to realize the villain HAS an army, could send thousands of ships at once, easily conquer the world their group of like six people and one giant robot wouldn’t be able to stop them *especially as they have a hard time every so often against one of the monsters, against twenty they’d be curb stomped let alone hundreds*…
and discover that the whole time the “good guy” who hired them and the villain weren’t really trying to save/conquer their world, they were just a pair of bored galactic powers goofing off at their expense.
“conquer the world”, too much hassle, all those different cultures, people, having to set up magistrates, occupation forces, outposts, put down uprisings, the effort to put in the propaganda so enough people view you as the good guy so don’t resist you but resist those trying to stop you, ect… for what…a boring blue marble whose resources could be gathered a billion times over more easily from uninhabited rocks anywhere in space, slaves…humans are small and weak, plus machinery is a thing; there is no reason…but using a team of “good guys” own sense of justice, and a team of “villains” to act as your own representation, sure a way to pass the time.
Or ya’know doing it for the money not the headache of ruling FOWL from Duck Tales comes to mind who are trying to be wealthy and the head guy has to keep reminding his underlings they are not super villains.
Yeah, I always wondered WHY people like Doctor Doom were trying to conquer the world so much. He wouldn’t want the hassle, would he? He is a monarch. Even HIS arrogance has limits. Ruling Latveria is bad enough at times and that is one small country, not planet full of morons.
Then I realized. Victor Von Doom is trying to SAVE the world, not simply RULE it. Admittedly, the WAY he is doing it is fairly nasty, but no less nasty than many nations have done in history. He is far from perfect but there is an argument that can be made that HE is the hero and the irritating fools in spandex who keep thwarting him are the villains.
Then again, it is all about perceptions. He is far more feared than loved, but is that a bad thing in a ruler?
Dr. Doom apparently did win a few years ago, conquered the entire multiverse; but concluded I think that trying to keep the peace and retain that power has resulted in a worse world than before as people still opposed him and his rule. This was after this had already happened when he had two infinity gauntlets and two sets of gems and created his own universe as an all powerful god…so redundancy in comic books in play. Apparently he is now trying to be a hero, although when he reset the world he made minor tweeks that only high level entities noticed (some of which were just excuses for the writers to make some characters more like their movie counterparts to bring in more readers)
The nature of the organization might have an effect on what powers she gets. If she worked for a single person, she’d only get their powers, if they had any, even if that single person ruled over millions, unless that person somehow represented the people they rule over. In most corporations, the CEO is not considered to represent his employees, only to employ them. However, if she worked for, say, the Soviet Union (in its heyday), in which the government is considered to represent the direct will of the people, she’d basically get the powers of every super in the union. OTOH, if she worked for the King of Thailand, she’d possibly gain the powers of any supers in the royal family, but not much beyond that, as the king only represents his own will, and the people are his subjects.
I’m sure there are a lot of grey areas here. For example, what if she worked for the U.S.? Our leadership structure is federal, with a lot of distributed power. Our leaders don’t represent the will of the nation, just of parts of it, and they squabble a lot. If she worked for a Republican president, would she gain the powers of Democrat citizens? What about Libertarians?
She said she gains the powers of her EMPLOYERS, not everyone who works for them. So she would only gain the powers of the heads of the U.N. (if there even are supers running the U.N.), or whichever specific branch hired her, not every super on Earth.
Seems that in this case she gamed the system by having all the other members of the “team” form an LLC and then hire her, giving her all of their powers, but the ability to do that is limited.
Hmm, I wonder if she’s actually a super? That feels more like a magical talent rather than a standard super-power. If we hadn’t already met some demons and they were totally different, I would be guessing she had some demonic heritage, and her power was actually some kind of mutated demonic contract ability.
I think Halo should do at the big fight near the swimming pool with they were looking for recruits. Encase in a bubble and let the oxygen content (or whatever they may need to breath) drop until they pass out. That little bubble I am pretty sure would even give Max some difficulty breaking.
Halo has to be inside the bubble with them, even if she has a rebreather she is at their mercy as neither of her offensive powers work inside the bubble.
I’ve got it!! Halo (or some other devious genius) can simply make a phone call and de-power her! They just have to get to someone with enough influence to legally dissolve the LLC! The moment the legal ruling is made, she’s powerless! Of course, there might be some delay in finding the exact LLC contract they need to nullify, but it should work.
this keeps being repeated and people keep repeating why it wouldn’t work. Like ya’know…the paperwork, not knowing the civilian identity of their LLC, ect…the possibility her power is actually psychosomatic in this regard and not a demonic contract so she’d have to know and believe them that it was dissolved, ect…
…or if she just seriously doubted that it was ever actually valid to begin with (?)
Inform Hench Wench that an LLC formed for the purpose of committing criminal acts is invalid. See if she instantly loses her powers if she believes it.
Umm, who said the L.L.C. was formed for that purpose? What employees do outside of work hours, is on the employees’ heads, not the business’
If the point is to test whether her powers are based on her beliefs, then the truth of the situation isn’t all that relevant, is it?
…Admit it, Henchie, you’re auditioning for a spot on ARC-SWAT, right? You know you are.
Henchie’s line in panel two, it’s what Mister Spittle Ick! says during the DCUO St. Paddy’s day event, and it’s just as annoying to read :P
At least she was smart enough to wear boxer briefs instead of tighty-whities with that wench dress.
Butt, what are those white strappy things? o_O
Wit, is she wearing flesh coloured stockings? WHY? What’s the point of wearing stockings if no one can tell you are wearing them?
warmth,
smoosh down leg hairs,
cover up razor burns, scars, ect…
comfort
*ya’know if you use powder in your shoes then the socks aren’t necessary to stop the sole sticking to your foot. in fact socks are a lot younger of an invention than people think. So why wear socks?
Not only do socks absorb moisture, but they are also used to help prevent rubbing of shoes on the bare foot. Socks can also provide cushioning to pad the feet and help keep them warm. As we are going into the fall and winter months, socks can help prevent cold feet and even frostbite.
The main risk of not wearing socks is that it increases your chances of developing athlete’s foot and similar infections. … What’s more, even if you don’t develop an infection, going sockless with closed shoes can cause your feet and shoes to seriously smell because of the build up of sweat and bacteria.
Thank you salesman from 1910 I was mostly being sarcastic to the post I was responding to.
Technically, they work for the taxpayers…
In actually Max shoplifts and there seem to be very few checks or balances.
Dabs getting punched is strangely refreshing.
Yup!
giving away your weakness like that shame…
*Captures her boss*
Say she is fired or you die
*she loses her powers*
Her boss is the guy currently fighting Maxima, so your plan is easier said than done.
Cape vs Cowl?
A question, if her powers allow her to stack copied powers, what if they’re the same or comparable?
Would super durability just stack and what if it’s laser vision, does she get a fourth eye or does her vision become more energetic?
Before someone says there’s no such thing as “the same power” remember that guy with super strength and Hiro, the sheer amount of flyers, light bub and Jiggawatt and the super speeders
Who beats her?
Dabbler by countering every single one of her powers?
Sydney by bubbling up and flying her in a cell?
Maxima by restraining her and putting her in a cell?
Ariana by disbanding the LLC?
Leon by deleting her contract?
The officer of justice by promising less punishment if they fire her?
I like the Ariana and Leon idea.
just as she is about to whack someone down completely.
Leon Hits enter and Ariana Stamps a form making it officially declared a Non Organization by America.
and she just deflates unable to give even the slightest of whack to anyone
Umm, who said the L.L.C. was formed in the US?
And, again, they have to find out which L.L.C. it was to get rid of it
Arc-light could do their job and recognize one of them and after that tracks his/her records.
And that all takes time
How can anyone in Archon recognize someone who has, previously, been staying under the radar?
Mercenaries generally don’t stay that well under the radar, since they also need some kind of fame to get jobs.
Arc-light has real life video feedback from all the tourists.
Yes, it costs time, so this is only a viable solution if this team of super villains actually has an impressive combined power set.
Well if she cant burn her enemies she really should not be put into combat.
though she did seem like she could chill things too but moving heat away.
I would rather fight a pyrokinetic than a cryokinetic because despite how comics and cartoons make it look; you have a much better chance of surviving and recovering damaged tissue to a workable state from 2nd and even 3rd degree burns than from frost bite.
On the flip side, the cryokinetic can’t hit you with colder than absolute zero, (Minus 273C) with the tissue penetration rate limited by thermal conductivity of flesh. While there’s no upper limit on heat, so the potential damage rate is much higher. A cutting torch will run to plus 2200C, 8 times the temperature difference.
Sure, frostbite can eventually penetrate quite deeply, but extreme cold injures you a LOT slower than extreme heat.
well if we counting the higher classes of pyrokinetics with the higher temperatures, which granted Heatwave a few bits back with the Osmium demonstrated B or low A class heat levels; considering she has thermal flight and a flame shield function this was pretty much a given.
higher class cryokinetics also have the metaphysical ice generation, able to create ice despite the lack of moisture available and at a rate far exceeding physical limitations on how fast ice can form. So the encased in near absolute zero ice that is generated so quickly and thickly around their bodies that the pressure on them and possibly ice crystals forming into them in the process if the cryokinetic doesn’t have absolute control over that could be taken into account. like Sub Zero, his ice formation breaks the laws of physics on how fast he can solidly freeze a body, not to mention Ice Man (who granted was officially labeled as an Omega level anyway).
*although I suppose some of that is how higher end cryokinetics are basically specialized geokinetics and there is the physical mass threat more so than just temperature.
but yes if we are looking at ones whose powers are down at the D and C range of thermal manipulation the pyrokinetic is a greater threat than guy making a cold breeze in front of his hands and mostly creating frost when he touches surfaces.
if F range I’d be more annoyed by the pyrokinetic feeling like they have a heat lamp focused on my arm than the one who feels like they just touched me with an ice cube.
How the hell do you even discover you have this power? That’s an extremely specific set of circumstances to discover a superpower.
all power copiers have that problem. They fall into that sub category of “could go your whole life without realizing you have this power” of “relies on outside influence/specific circumstances”. As a thought experiment I sometimes try to think of such convoluted abilities or multi-step power or makes sense in a comic/manga but would be hard to discover in real life.
Power copiers fall into that hard to discover in real life one. Because whatever version you have requires there to be other people with powers and your specific limitation to come into play. Its why supernaturals have more of an advantage, born into a group who all have the same power, they tell you what it is and how to take advantage of it.
A funny idea I had once was the universe of supers (inspired by Ben 10), the idea different aliens all have one special power per species; but what if humans all have power copy so its an invisible power among other humans, but the instance humanity meets the empowered aliens humans can copy their powers…and thus aliens realize this and quarantine Earth as a no first contact out of fear of humans gaining everyone’s powers and overthrowing the galaxy.
but back on power copier, Hench Wench here has a better chance in a shifting job market to realize one day she has a power…no idea how, but she decides to be a hero/villain/mercenary so quits her job…suddenly power vanishes. Goes to work somewhere else, gets a different power, some serendipity later discovers she is gaining the power of her employer if they have powers (but this requires supers be common enough for this chance event to happen).
However if her power is psychological in nature and she just thinks it works that way then she may have had other employers with powers, never knew it as they never showed it, and the one time it kicked in was because she formed an at least subconscious bond with the employer and wanted to be a super villain too; and she just kept telling herself her power worked that way, others heard of her, and she was hired on for that purpose and in her twisted mind this qualified as “I belong”, so kicked in the power.
That is an oddly specific power condition to have…
Her actual power is psychic mimickry of powers, but she’s a Libertarian.
Time for a nit-pick and pet peeve of mine. Panel two, our wonderful Hench Wench is making a fist with her thumb in the wrong place. A punch like that is liable to break her thumb. Or a normal person’s thumb, anyway. It would also distribute the force away from her weighted knuckle gloves, assuming that’s what those are.
How else do you punch? At least her thumb isn’t tucked under her fingers (like so many people still do), that will break your thumb
Not sure if anyone else has noted this, but Henchie also bursted onto the scene saying “Don’t ignore me!”
…she’s complaining they were ignoring her when they didn’t even know she was there in the first place and she literally just showed up?
Panel 3, last comic, you can see her. Dabbler tripped her with some kind of spell, then looked away without confirming that she was out of the fight.
Dabs “Foomped” her on the previous page. See the distinctive boot?
That is an incredibly interesting power, in that it seems to rely on semantics and social constructs in a way that I’m pretty sure we haven’t seen yet in Grrl Power, and that I quite possibly haven’t seen anywhere else either. (Admittedly I haven’t read much in the way of superhero fiction, so it’s not like I’d necessarily know of other examples anyway. I do know that “Semantic Superpower” is a trope on TV Tropes, so that aspect must be fairly common. I’m just not personally used to seeing powers that are this reliant not only on semantics, but on social constructs specifically.)
So who the heck grabbed Heatwave before she got suplexed?
Amorphous.
Hold up! She just tried to use Rock Lee’s Lotus corkscrew maneuver! She’s an effin weeb!
and the unnamed Brute/Bruiser/Strong Guy tried to invoke a tripe of an anime trope where-in removing the powerful female character’s clothes causes them to stop fighting back to focus on covering up
*provided they aren’t Cutey Honey but one of the numerous others who think its more important to be modest than…not being murdered by their opponent…yeah, there is a reason Cutey Honey still stands as one of the best female anime characters of all time.
One of SmugD’s powers is Advanced One-handed Bra Removal
One day Hench Wench encounters a powerful magic user and decides to give her a special “gift”…
Hench Wench:If you placed a spell on me,it didn’t work…!
Magic User:It DID work,just look under your skirt.
Hench Wench pulls the top elastic of her skirt and suddenly her eyes bulge out and she lets out a blood curdling scream!!!!!!
Her weakness? Someone slipping a fivver into her waistband.
Waidaminute. If they had to incorporate into an LLC to give her powers, that means every villain who gives her powers should be legally traceable. Seems like a bit of a liability.
I think I see the hench-wench Achilles heel:
“We find that the business entity, Evil Empire L.L.C., being criminal in nature, to be illegal. It is herby formally disbanded furthermore, any and all contracts by them are null and void.”
Lawyers/legal fine print.
People keep repeating this and some others on here will need new keyboards from head smashing