Grrl Power #896 – Vive le testicules!
Enjoy this comic while having a happy Thanksgiving if you’re in a country that does that on this day and also if you’re so inclined. If not, then simply enjoy this comic, and bank my well wishes for the regional holiday of your choosing.
So, on the one hand, this is the most action Maxima has given a guy in a long time, so I guess Brüt can brag about that. On the other hand, this would be such a bad time to get a fear boner. At least the lights are out.
I’m not sure if catastrophic damage to one piece of the ground in NYC would knock out like 6 blocks as shown, but who knows, maybe Wench ripped up some massive bank of transformers, and not just a few pipes. One might like to think that major centers of business would have some redundancies in their infrastructure, given human stupidity, laziness, lack of foresight and wildly overstretched budgets, I would easily believe a single incident with a poorly planned groundbreaking is just as likely to knock out all the traffic lights in a 60 block radius.
Hey, speaking of books that were a trilogy for a long time and a 4th book only recently came out, the Good Intentions series by Elliott Kay is one of those. I prefer books in series I like to come out in a relatively swift and predictable pace, but with the last two series I’ve mentioned, it gave me an excuse to get all the audiobooks for them before diving into the 4th, because I knew if I didn’t refresh myself first, I’d be reading the 4th book and be all “Wait, who’s that again?”
Oh, and ignore the reviews for the 4th book complaining about how there’s a bunch of SJW stuff in it. I think those people were mostly complaining about the main characters getting away with punching out a bunch of nazis demonstrating at their college. (Which in my estimation tells you more about the people leaving those reviews than anything about the book itself.) I’d call that a spoiler but it’s a tiny section of the book. Given that the main character remembers his past lives, one of which was killed by nazis, him wanting to punch them out makes sense for more than just the usual reasons. This book is just as good as any of the others in the series.
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Hench Wench, meet the Hench Wench –
She’s a moder day unpaid intern
(Unpaid intern)!
From the town of Whocares,
She will beat you when it comes your turn!
She won’t follow orders, you dumb schlob –
She’s not paid enough for her to stop!
When you go with Hench Wench
Have a yabba-dabba-doo crime!
A dabba-doo crime!
You’ll have a gay old time!
Brilliant!
https://de.catbox.moe/izga1k.jpg
Happy Thanksgiving thank you for providing this wonderful gift for your fans, but remember to spend a little time for yourself.
i love henchwench
Hench Wench, Hench Wench!
Does whatever her employer can.
Makes a mess, any size,
Catches heroes, just like flies.
Look out! Here comes the Hench Wench!
Is she stacked? Listen, Bud!
He’s got a standard super bod.
Can we even fire her?
Maybe with help from Pander.
Hey there, there goes the Hench Wench!
Costume from, a Skyrim mod.
At the scene of the crime
Dedicated to her job
She makes chaos every time
I feel so honored to be memorialized in song.
When in this world the headlines read
of heroes stomping villains’ greed
and a helper you will need
to fill this need with blinding speed comes
She’s Hench Wench! (She’s Hench Wench!) She’s Hench Wench! (She’s Hench Wench!)
Speed of lightning, Roar of thunder, fighting all who’d stop your plunder!
She’s Hench Wench! SHE’S HENCH WENCH!
Knew that tune was familiar, had to look it up though
Straight into a contract,
Hench Wench rules the night.
She’s easily hired,
And good in a fight.
Heroes might be screwed,
Pleasel pardon my french
4… 3… 2… 1…
Here’s Hench Wench!
When there’s trouble,
You’ll see H W.
Here’s Hench Wench!
She. Is. Dangerous!
Here’s Hench Wench!
Henchie! HENCHIE WENCH!
Here’s Hench Wench!
(sung to the tune of Darkwing Duck)
I think we’re about to see Max unleashed here. She seems very calm before the storm about this.
That could be anything between “Fallout” Maxima where the public was protected from the fireblast by Sydney’s shield, or probably even more intimidating: “Unfazed” Maxima with shield and power up and going full on slow but unstoppable, immune to everything Henchwench can throw at her untill she’s cought.
After all that, prepare the legal department with razor sharp ironed neckties, small, slim and very expensive suitcases and a hourly cost that’s better not mentioned to the people involved because that would be a real cause of alarm.
Sounds like a job for lawyers evil enough to have thin mustaches.
You saying Ari has a moustache? o_O
She would if she was male no doubt. But this raises a question: What is the female version of the evil moustache?
Angularity in facial features, I presume.
Even the famously plumpy ones (like, say, Ursula) have that special angular look about their faces – and the classic Baroness always sharp enough to cut steel with her cheekbones.
Also – perfection: openly evil female characters may play a charade on someone with disgusting or ugly appearance, but their true image always filled with doll-like perfection. Until they unravel under the heroes’ OVERCOMING, that is, revealing their inner ugliness of EBIL, hiding under the porcelain mask.
But if you see someone with V-like disposition of eyebrows, perfect visage in all aspects, and plenty of angles and sharp streaks in features – be they facial, bodily, or in clothing – that’s a bad girl right here.
That is, if you are not in eastern kind of story – discarding the comparatively recent Korean obsession with flowerboys and such, any classically themed eastern villain would have an asymmetry of some kind, for perfection is symmetrical, and the perfect is divine; ergo, any error in symmetry comes from the corruption of the divinity – that thing humans call ‘Evil’.
Said that, all this depends of the details, in which the Devil dwells – depending on the depth or medium small details could be unrecognizable, which made it hard to codify anyone without obvious shortcuts. In the situation where small detalization is impractical and/or inapplicable, one would need to reach deeper: what I mentioned above about perfection of visage is a representation of vanity; similar to overopulence being the sign of greed; sharp features being warning of wrathfulness; and so on.
Come to think of it, long fabulous mustaches and sharp goatee for men come from the same root – only obviously vane person would waste so much time on such a nonsensical thing, after all, and vanity is a mortal sin. Someone with perfect goatee and slick nourished hair would be a classic evil necromancer – while bushy and unruly, slightly unkempt but suitably clean beard betrays a wise old mentor figure for the young protagonist, after all.
In short, then – anyone openly displaying sinfulness of some kind in your classic story; or conservatism of some kind in the ‘young rebel’ narrative. With a footnote on relative nature of sin in different cultures, and duplicitous or downright untranslatable nature of some cultural aspects in multicultural market – Russian ‘мародёр’ being denoted only as ‘looter’ and explicitly not English ‘marauder’ exempli gratia; or the word for number four being homophone for ‘death’ in Japanese, and so on.
But I digress.
It is time for me to sober up, and regret ever posting this, it seems.
Ciao.
Shoulderpads and a white streak in the hair.
Also one of those cigarettes in the cigarette holder.
It’s pretty bad when the hired help is more effective than her bosses. She is sooooooooooo going to pay for this. And that is just the lawsuit.
Most of my jobs have been where I am much more effective than my boss, because I have the training and experience they do not.
The president of the small business where I work can do the work for most of his people when they are on vacation, sick leave, etc. That works for the marketing manager, the inventory manager, etc. It does not work for my job as the IT manager. I joked to him, “Between the two of us, we have 30 years of database programming experience, but the distribution is a little skewed.” (like 100%-0%).
I knew a guy who was a retired fighter pilot. His father had been a legend, with 27 confirmed kills, not even counting smokers. In his career the guy I was talking with had shot down one enemy plane, he used to say “Between me and my dad, we have 28 confirmed kills.”
I’m a little surprised that in a small company where the president obviously values the ability of management to be hands-on that your IT manager even exists. If he is only management overhead and cannot do the job of his underlings if they are out sick or on vacation, then I’d think he’d have to be a really good manager to be retained in that kind of an environment.
The underground of NYC is an astonishing maze of pipes, wires, tunnels and other crap that has been buried over the years. Chicago is the same way. There are no totally comprehensive blueprints as much of the buried infrastructure was put there by people long deceased. So yes it is possible that Hench Wench ripping out a chunk of the sidewalk can result in major failures.
Also ghosts, right Ray?
Ray?
Plus lots and lots of pink shampoo…
Just don’t for a swim in it, apparently it’s made from pure anger. Makes you get more than a bit agro…
Speaking as someone who used to mark underground utility lines (power, gas and telephone specifically), anywhere older than 20 years is a nighmare for such things, and big cities are worse. There is so much junk buried underground that it is very hard to find clear spots to dig in most cities these days and when you do? Don’t trust it!
I was told a story by a telephone crew one time in Charlotte, North Carolina while I marked the area they were going to put in a new cable They were working in Washington DC one day and had a clear area to dig ro put in a new junction box for a telephone conduit. (Big plastic tube filled with cables of many kinds) Long story short, they hit something. Their power shovel tore right through a big cable that looked like a telephone line. There wasn’t supposed to be anything there, so they called it in and tried to figure out what it was. Then half a dozen black SUVs pulled up around them, a bunch of guys in suits with guns stepped out and told them to leave. Not being idiots, they did. No one ever said WHAT they hit but they were two blocks from the White House.
And the stories I can tell you about gas mains…
Washington DC is a new city, relatively speaking. Place like Chicago, New York and San Fransisco, all of these are reasons that utility line location is far more stressful than people think, let alone somewhere like Paris or London! *Shudders*
Well a communications cable two blocks from the Whitehouse incurring the wrath of alphabet men is kinda obvious what it is.
It doesn’t require aristotle to figure out that it’s clearly a communications line for a secure facility somewhere.
The surprising thing to me is that there isn’t a government bureau dedicated to telling people they can’t dig over top secret buried lines. I mean surely there has to be someone you can submit a request to to see if you can dig there, right?
In fact, there is a number, 811.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nn6ZtmxjiWg
Do you imagine that the locations of the classified lines are given out to the utility people? Grab that database and you have a map of classified locations plus how to kneecap their communications.
I’ve written software that interfaces with multiple 811 call centers across the US – the 811 people don’t hold any information on the utility locations, just outlines of the area each utility wants to be notified for. Say for a municipal water system, the call center just sends them (and every other utility with an overlapping boundary) a notification for every request inside the city limits, then it’s up to the city to look at the dig location and their maps, and determine if and where to go paint some lines for whoever’s digging there.
The TLA agencies could easily get forwarded alerts from the telecomm that installed and maintains the line, without any paper trail or public record of the line’s existence, location, or connection to said TLA. Of course, the telecomm is still a security point of failure, but that’s unavoidable since someone there has to know about the line.
You don’t even have to know what the lines are for, just their location. 811 schedules a guy with a detector to come out and mark the place you may not dig.
Wouldn’t t make more sense, for them to mark the spot you can dig?
You know, the ole ‘X marks the spot’ routine?
There is such an agency, but you have to be cleared for GROUND SQUIRREL ULTRA just to know they exist.
ok, so here’s why they Don’t
If you were a terrorist organization, revolutionary, or the hacker anonymous, you could then flood the agency, or bureau with dig requests, and from where you get told “no” you could map out where the classified infrastructure is, and from That map, you could locate classified facilities.
Once you Locate a black site, you can Target a black site~
Okay, but at what point does the telecom agency notice the absurdly high requests for dig sites, and either stop responding or report you to the authorities? How many requests would you need to map out one hidden line in a city? We’re talking battleship, if your opponent positioned their ships in a line and there were ten thousand spaces. Either you get incredibly lucky, spend a lifetime looking and find nothing, or put too many requests in and get reported. In addition, I don’t know that they give reasons for denial, so there’s no reason to assume you found a top secret wire on a no, and not just some part of the power line or other infrastructure.
The 811 call centers require the name, contact info, and (sometimes) project permit IDs. Also, the owner can choose not to mark the lines (although they are then liable for any damage).
Sure, you could fake IP address and caller info, and spam requests for an area, but you’d still have to go out in person (or by drone or something) and capture all the markings. You can bet a spike in requests in a high-security area with no city permits will get some surveillance on whoever shows up to look at the markings.
And if you have a spy satellite that can read them from the sky already, you don’t need 811 because you have archive footage of when the project was installed. Unless it was installed with trenchless methods (increasingly common) and covered work pits, then you’re back to bribing government contractors for the plans.
This now makes me wonder about something that happened in our small town. Small town with a large university and a Research Park with a lot of oddly named buildings. My department gets an ear on lots that happens with the town IT department. And there was a installation of new fiber optics going in. And in a spot there was supposed to be nothing at they came across active cables. Multiple active cable. Unmarked and on no map. Fortunately they had just cleared the top and saw then as they were digging down. Work came to a complete halt as they tried to find out who the cables belonged to. They never found out. They ended up having to reroute the fiber install. The placement was between the University and the Research park. Both of whom claimed no knowledge of the lines. Nor did any utility company or cable or anyone else who would have had business having lines in the town.
That’s simple to determine. Cut them and see who complains.
Yeah, and you find out it’s a forgotten cable from the power company, that varries 300.000 volts. BOOM. enormous explosion, a LOT of dead workers.
Yeeah, never damage underground cables, the potential damage is ginormous.
Carries*
Detecting high voltage power lines isn’t very hard. For true high voltage you don’t even need an instrument, 22kV will make the hair stand up on your arm. For more modest but still lethal voltages suitable instruments are even available in domestic versions. My commercial unit is similar but with better range, precision and information. Copper data cables are much lower voltage and much higher frequency. They are also heavily shielded but are detectable anyway at short range due to the high frequency signal. Fibre optics are electrically silent and stiffer.
This is what expendables are for.
Daniel here. We here in Perth, Western Australia have a “Dial Before You Dig” service. Let them know where you gotta dig, they talk to the agencies, you find out where the cables are. It’s possible there is a decent mess under there, but that is how we are told to proceed…
‘Dial before you Dig’ has literally saved lives many times.
If everyone did it, more lives would be saved. I could tell you stories all day. Good and horrific. Funny and scary.
In the end, what is more important? Speed of finishing work or the lives of the crew and potential damage to the surrounding area?
Humans make mistakes. Always have, always will. When you make such a mistake dealing with natural gas or extremely high voltage power, things get loud and messy.
One story-
I saw a man break into a primary power line with a hand shovel. No idea HOW he did it, but the spark was at least a foot long. He survived, but that used up several lifetimes worth of luck. I had the line marked. I had put flags down with big red letters saying ‘Power’. He dug between two of my hash marks, because there were no marks there.
*facepalm*
I’m almost inclinded to wish that that incident had at least sterilized the guy with the shovel—if your job is digging underground and you can’t figure out the implied line from one flag to the next, it would probably benefit the human gene pool if you aren’t reproducing.
Dad ran into something like that decades ago during his phase of ‘I’ll get rich digging for oil and water’ using an old pounding-style drilling rig he owned with the neighbor. He was always scrupulous about checking maps to be sure nothing was buried where he was going to dig and was actually across the road drilling for water on the neighbor’s property. Oh did he get a gusher as he slammed dead center into the main (and unmarked) water line between our town and the nearest one nearby, resulting in the water tower dumping everything it had within a few minutes and turning our road briefly into a river as it emptied out. Thankfully the failure of the county to have it marked absolved us from any kind of fines or lawsuit to pay for the damages in fixing everything (I hear it took something like days for the tower to be completely refilled).
BDOS: Backhoe Denial Of Service
Better than the “DDDoS’ for utility lines.
“Drunk Driver Denial of Service’
As in, when the drunk plows through the pole that holds the transformer that comes out of the substation and feeds the entire subdivision. Of course, being drunk, they survive and immediately try to sue the power company for DARING to put a POLE there!.
A good chunk of my city lost power to RDoS: Racoon denial of service. One nosy critter in a substation: several thousand customers out of power for a day.
Coupla three decades back, City of Houston decided to build for itself a miniature ‘river walk’ kinda like San Antonio’s. Instead of a river, Houston has Buffalo Bayou going near downtown, but it had been a trash heap and shopping cart graveyard for decades. In cleaning it up, they discovered that a subdivision inside the loop had been dumping all its sewage in BBayou, by the design of its sewer mains that were completely uncharted and different from official plans. Somehow, no one had noticed that community had only 20% of treatment plant it was supposed to have.
Ew.
It’s not “poor infrastructure” for a city to have major failures when several thousand cubic feet of their infrastructure is torn at random from one spot.
Cities are not space ships. They don’t normally have to survive such things with everything still functioning, so redundancies do not often exist at all, let alone double and triple redundancies.
Sure, electricity can usually get to a place multiple ways… but ripping up a zone will cause failures in that zone and nearby, and sometimes cascades in any given direction, and that’s a feature of the normal usage and decisions based on cost/benefit tradeoffs for infrastructure development.
Laughs in old European cities with entire districts build on nothing, but garbage.
Seriously, one of the most notorious districts of the capital of my country is build on garbage.
Much of San Francisco is built on the remains of buildings from the 1906 earthquake.
They built as whole shopping district near Cleveland Ohio years ago on a landfill. Unfortunately, the company prepping the site did not do anywhere near he job they were supposed to. The result: stores with methane warning sensors, and finally almost every store closing as they were unusable…even the Wally World!
Tell me about it. Last year they tore down the buildning next to mine and they found a dead body.
Seattle’s 19th century waterfront was mostly unbuildable tide land. Ships taking on a load of timber would start dumping their stone ballast and get hauled into court for Doing It Wrong. The clerk of the court, “Doc” Maynard, owned a bunch of that tide land and worked deals with the ship captains that you can probably figure out in about a second, resulting in much of today’s rubble-based shoreline.
(Maynard also owned the hotel where the court held session – on the ground floor – during the day. The ground floor in the evening – and the upper floor at all times – was a place of entertainment suitable for sailors and lumberjacks. The jokes write themselves.)
Used to have a buddy that once worked for one of those giant multinational infrastructure-buildings firms. They did a lot of stuff in millennia-old cities; his job included being around for when (not if) they hit a pipe or cable laid last century and forgotten. The local cops needed someone to arrest to ensure collection of the proper fines or bribes got paid, and not someone so insignificant to the multinational that they’d neglect to pay. He said it was ok because everyone knew what it took to keep the both sides happy; they always took him politely to the ruling class jail and he’d be out after a few hours in air conditioning with good coffee….
…until one day he’s driving to the site and sees a wall of water literally – not figuratively – pushing cars sideways down the street. He made a quick u-turn and went to the airport, figuring correctly that they’d hit a water pipe big enough to affect the entire city; it was going to take months to negotiate the payoff. It was time to change careers.
You know, for someone with as diverse a powerset as Maxima, along with all the training she’s had her situational awareness right now SUCKS.
Granted, it’s some rule of funny, some author fiat. Still, getting blindsided by the stasis gun is one thing, NOT reacting to the giant earth/rock/concrete worm/tentacle coming up behind her and stealing her prisoner is a bit different.
Her diverse power set may actually be hampering her in that regards. Always having to adjust powers in the back of her head. That, and she probably usually has speed nerfed as the default in a fight.
Secondly, not quite sure as to where that earth pillar actually came from. It could’ve come from the ground right next to or even just under Brut, in which case, it is much more a question of having super human reaction time up and running rather than any level of situational awareness.
Add to that She literally just learned that Hench Wench HAS Geokinesis at all. And has team members in the area, AND was trying to interrogate Brut.
yuffiek’s awareness of how ACTUAL Situational Awareness would be in that situation is what sucks.
yuffiek is management material.
That may be the meanest thing ever said on the internet
Depends on if upper or middle management
The Peter Priciple states they’re both incompetent. “A manager will be promoted to the level of his incompetentcy.” In other words if you can do your job well, you’ll be promoted, until you can no longer do the job.
I thought it was ‘if you can do the job once, you’ll be promoted, and if you can’t, you’ll be promoted higher until it doesn’t matter anymore’
Back around 2005 there was a fire in a telecom building in one of the Chicago suburbs. Telephone and internet was knocked out for Chicago, northwest Indiana and the eastern half of Wisconsin. There were companies that needed data redundancy so badly that they had two separate T1 lines purchased from 2 different telecom providers that physically left their buildings going in opposite directions, and they still had them both fail simultaneously as they all met back in that one little building in the Chicago suburbs.
Sometimes, a single redundant line is still not enough.
There’s also a story from 2011: A little old lady from Georgia (the country in eastern Europe) was digging for copper cables to scavenge and sell for scrap. In the process she severed a fibre optic cable and cut of internet access for the whole of Armenia, the neighboring country.
Funny thing is how incredibly stupid doing that is too. My older brother’s a firefighter, and he probably goes to at least 3 cases a month of some dumbass frying themselves trying to steal live copper wiring to sell for drug money.
Yeah.
Electricity is no joke. As I said when I marked underground utility lines, if you smell it and don’t make a spark, you can run from gas. Can’t outrun electricity.
And there is really no limit to human stupidity, is there?
As Daniel the Human says, “never underestimate the power of Human stupidity”. And I can agree with electricity being nasty, it was lightning that dropped me for Daniel the Human to find, plus I’ve gotten myself zapped a few times. Daniel the Human seems somewhat more resistant to electricity than most, he’s been 240 volt zapped a few times (sorry again for that 1 time, I thought turning on the party lights would help him replace the shattered globe) with no damage, just a “tingly feeling* in his arm…
Not something he would recommend in any way, shape or form though, in his own words…
It’s only 240VAC. It’s a little tingly. It’s the 480 commercial A/C Mains that hurts.
That said I rewire 110 outlets live because it’s better than working in the dark. It doesn’t hurt. Me anyway…
I dislike working with live 110, but I’ll do it given enough inconvenience in shutting it down – just a sharp buzz. 240 hurts enough that I won’t touch it live no matter what. Anything above, that I personally verify disconnection at least twice before even popping the cover.
I was doing sheetrocking one time, and made the mistake of trusting my boss when he said he’d flipped the breaker off. While I was putting in sheetrock screws, the wires dangling from one of the removed overhead fixtures brushed my right temple. I could feel the current come down through the side of my face and neck, through my shoulder, down my arm, and ground out through the frame of the power screwdriver in my hand, and the entire right hemisphere of my vision went white.
Since then I do not trust. I verify.
I was in a town house complex as they were re-wiring it for individual meters in my basement, as that’s where the utilities came in. 2nd day, it’s my day off only 1 guy in the basement doing some finish work. I’m on the main floor when I hear *SNAP*. I pause and then go “I’m going to go check on that”
Walk downstairs. He’s 6ft away from the wall stairing daggers at it.
“You OK?”
“Yup. … I’m going for a smoke.”
Way back in the day a friend’s brother was trying to replace a board in a big mainframe computer. Apparently he accidentally shorted the power supply, because all he remembered was a bright flash and then he found himself sitting on the floor ten feet away staring at the melted stump of the screwdriver in his hand.
Yyeeeah
Anthing above 50volts can kill if it goes through the heart. Luckily most common shocks just go through the hand and arm, but if you’re unlucky, even a 110 shock can induce arrhythmia.
Tasers are less lethal weapons and hit silly levels of volts but still work with just a nine volt battery. I heard it said (so dont quote me on it) that its the amps that kill. Either way you can only pull limited watts from the battery.
can’t outrun electricity, true, but it’s the assault of electrons that gets you and… not the battery
yet another benefit of Fiber Optics: Fiber optic cable is expensive, but Scavenged glass is almost worthless, and there are many much easier ways to get it than stealing cables.
Those people have no choice.
Copper cables may be dangerous, but it’s accessible from the locations these people live and worth enough money for them to afford their next meal.
I’ve been in Pâta Rat the biggest garbage belt of Europe. Close to two entire ethnic groups live there and believe me that is not, because they like it so much.
(Warning rant about discrimination of Roma and Gipsy in Romania)
The Roma and Gipsy are discriminated by Romanians.
Let me give you a few examples we encountered(We didn’t speak the local language and traveled mostly as a group, so very little of the total).
One of us told a Romanian friend at home he was going to help the Roma’s in Pâta Rat. That friend basically reacted with: “What you don’t help Roma’s. They are bad.”
We had to help set up a container as temporary visit centre, because the other district members had shot down the request for a permit to build a real visit center with a: “we don’t want those Roma’s in our district”.
The catenary power for Amtrak and several commuter lines in the northeastern United States is 11 or 12 kilovolts. I heard of some people stealing copper and managed to get that voltage. And the power lines above them are even higher voltage. A squirrel once went for the wiring in Philadelphia and shut down a large portion of the railroad for several hours. The squirrel apparently looked like charcoal. The men trying to steal the wire in better condition but still dead.
Yeah, you could have a t1, cable tv, phone(wireless), satetite as backup and still fail if the power outage is widespread
If you want real redundancy, you not only have to have your communications lines going out two different directions but using two different methods. It’s either that or you have to have a real map of your vendor’s cloud to avoid this exact situation. Point to point microwaves to a different regional NAP to the Internet should do the trick.
I usedta work for a major insurer in Springfield Mass that had redundant data lines and redundant power lines and frequent disaster drills, as you would want.
Then a warehouse of pool chemicals nearby burned, flooding the area with that white stuff you’re assured on TV won’t kill you but please stay home, nobody come to work. IIRC the data center was ok what with super air filtration but otherwise I guess they neglected to arrange for redundant atmosphere.
Like the shadow puppet Brut is doing, even if by accident.
Angry bunny rabbit… :P
Horny bunny wabbit ;)
With the firm grasp Maxima has on Brüt’s testicles, wouldn’t they… stay in her hand?
(also, it’s » vivent les testicules «)
She’s not holding them, she has her gun pressed up against them — or she did.
It isn’t a firm grasp, it is a firm jab, with a shotgun, that fires .577 tyrannosaurus rounds.
I think she was grinding the barrel of her gun into his manparts.
And he was about to have an ‘incident’ in what remained of his pants if Henchie hadn’t saved him
In fact, the plural form of the verb is no longer necessary (probably since the 90s reform; not true in a sentence where it begins with “que”). But the plural on “les” is definitely necessary (unless you put “testicule”, using the singular noun, but it reveals a bit much about Brüt… ;) ).
As a french speaker no it as a diferent meaning
“Vive les testicules” -> Hurray for the testicles
“Vivent les testicules” -> Long live the testicles
Doesn’t Machina have geokinesis…?
I wouldn’t be at all surprised if this villainous L.L.C. was on Machina Industries’ payroll.
D.E.M. is a long-term planner, but causing little spikes of chaos like this:
A) Prevents aliens from making off with Max.
B) Keeps Arc distracted and running all over the place while he does whatever he wants.
SmugD has no powers other than being a smug bastard of a douchebag (with a prominent lawyer in his back pocket… originally typed something nasty, and she doesn’t deserve that, she likes SmugD, that’s punishment enough)
That’s he’s revealed yet, no. His physique is certainly super-ish, but that could just be plastic surgery and healthy living.
Deus, our lord and savior, praise be his name amen, needs no powers. He’s already easily able to exceed any super with his mind, savvy, and wallet.
He has no powers aside from wealth that he admits to.
Please forgive those like Guesticus for their blasphemy, for they know not what they do.
Guesticus, I have faith that you will eventually accept the truth and come into the light, leading to a better tomorrow for us all.
Amen.
His preternatural talent in the sack is at least hinted to be a superpower, I would say.
Deus is in love with Max so I doubt he would do anything that risked her getting hurt.
Hurting Maxima is not such an easy thing to do.
And as much as I loathe him, D.E.M. is a fairly shrewd planner.
I’m sure he’s got a decent idea of how much damage Maxima can take, so which level of violence needs to be avoided if he wants to keep her in pristine condition.
Deus is also smart enough not to be involved in an LLC that he does not have complete control over, when such grants a laundry list of powers to an uncontrollable individual.
Ah, best defense, no be there
Okay, fully understand how important the ads are to you DaveB, but for the last week or so they have been making it very difficult to make comments (which would probably be viewed as a good thing by many)
Even the ads that can be closed don’t stay closed for long (or, at least, they simply refresh as a new ad within seconds, making closing them redundant)
Behold the power of AdBlocker!
there are adds on this site?
Have to second the adblocker (specifically AdBlock Plus is amazing). I prefer sending the Patreon money directly to the sites I want to support (including this one), and living without all the garbage ads and security holes they bring.
Personally I do not have an adblocker except the one built into my browser, which only blocks ads which contain malignant software. My stance is that artists deserve to be paid for the work that I enjoy, and if I cannot afford to pay them directly, then I am willing to have a reasonable amount of banners and commercials, as long as they are not so prevalent and invasive that they interfere with my ability to enjoy the content (I’m looking at you, George Takei). I also usually use the grrlpower portal when shopping on amazon to toss Dave a few cents more directly
Okay guesticus it turns out you may have picked up some nasty cookies, I dont use adblock and have no ads obscurring my view. You really need to get a virus checker or something
yeah, pretty sure you have an adbar or other vulnerability/exploit happening, because the only Ads I see on grrlpower are the adbars on the right side. (some of which are actually products I want to buy! madness!)
Those are the ones talking about, not getting popups, just those ones on the right and below keep refreshing, and while they are refreshing, it makes typing difficult
NOT asking for them to be removed, because can’t afford to monetarily support webic-creators, was just letting DaveB know something has happened because it wasn’t always this bad (and whatever was causing the rapid refreshing seems to have stopped)
Okay, the ads seem to have settled down, if it was something you did, thank you, if it was something that fixed itself, hopefully it doesn’t unfix itself again any time soon
Just FYW “le testicules” is incorrect, you either go for “les testicules”(plural) or “le testicule”(singular). I would usualy go with the plural given the usual anatomy of people, but who am I to decide. You can also go for a more vulgar approache using either “Vives les couilles” (which works a bit more because “couilles” is more commonly used )or “Vives les boules”( this one works a bit less because “boules” is also the general words for balls and is less connected to testicules without any contexts).
Finally, there is also an agurment to use the plural for “Vive” which would be “Vivent” but according to google, it seems that both are acceptable and the singular would be more recognisable as a “Vive la France” reference.
As a french native speaker I’ll say no it as a diferent meaning;
“Vive les testicules” -> Hurray for the testicles
“Vivent les testicules” -> Long live the testicles
He wasn’t speaking about that, he was talking about the missing “s” at the end of “les”
They did talk about the usage of Vive and Vivent at the end
Since we are talking about testicles and several people seem to be quite knowledgeable about testicles I’m hoping someone can answer a question that has been bugging me for a long time. Is it normal for one of your testicles to hang lower than the other two?
Yes, it is to reduce friction when walking.
Personally like panel four: it shows that Henchie may be power mad and crazy, but she also cares about things like city repairs and job loss (or some crap)
Isn’t this going to backfire on her? She’s going to violate some rule or by usurping control of the group break the terms and condition of her employment and vest lose all the power she’s drawing from them?
Most people WOULD consider physically assaulting an employer to be a violation of contract…
Yes, she got the big guy out of Maxima’s reach momentarily. Will that save his manhood? Probably not.
That is leaving aside whatever Sydney is going to do when she sees this mess.
Sydney: “you can threaten my life, and the lives of my teammates, but when you take out power and internet and prevent me from joining my tuesday night guild raid, THAT CROSSES THE LINE!”
She is causing to much damage. Sydney should drop her of on the Alari home world to cool off.
Wouldn’t be surprised if Sydney was using the portal to secretly transport Archon’s other teammates to New York as back up after seeing the fight go down
Panel 5… Check the shadow on Brüt’s chest.
At first Panels 1-3 made it look as if HenchWench had some sort of vagina-based power drain ability. I was very confused.
Not impossible. There are some weird creatures in this story. Some electricity absorbing super may be among Hench’s employers.
“as if HenchWench had some sort of vagina-based power drain ability – Will
As if Dabbler (or some other Succubus) had joined the LLC?
I had the same thought, after reading the page title and looking at the first panel.
Brut should show some class and just go wait around the corner for the fight to end, gun to genitals is definitely a showstopper and Max has been very patient. Its the polite thing (and safest) to do.
Probably should buy a cup too…
It’s a question of more than just “class”. He’s been placed under arrest, and has acknowledged that. If he does anything at all he just piles on the charges. Max has already shown she can arrest him at any time, so there’s no future in him getting active again in this fight.
escaping from custody is a charge all of its own, even if you turn out to not be guilty of anything that you were arrested for.
It sounded like he had a cup on last comic or so back.
Who can imagine Sydney doing this type of commercial with certain Archon members(Harem,Anvil,Jabberwocky,Varia, Dr. Chevy,Hrio,Math,Dabbler,Cora,Decollette or Arianna)?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmhIizQQol0
Yeah Dave im not gonna lie most infrastructure is built and maintained by the lowest bidder so I imagine that something like this probably would smash the local areas power supply.I mean just look at the state of roads in less affluent areas.
Low bidder or no, power grids all follow a distributed design, and ripping out a major transmission cable could easily take down the local substation. Better to shut off a few blocks temporarily then start them on fire.
Not familiar at all with the NYC grid designs; Dave may have picked a slightly larger area than a single substation could handle with all the skyscrapers, but it’s at least on the right order of magnitude. Cascading failures are also a thing, this could be multiple substations.
Slight nitpick with your accurate comment: This would probably be a distribution line, not a transmission line, which would be MUCH more localized and wouldn’t go back to the nearest substation, just to the nearest recloser (or reclosers if it was a loop layout fed from both sides, which I assume but do not know for a fact big city grids are).
That could still be a few city blocks, though, which is what’s shown dark here.
Plus it’s really more efficient to build non-redundantly and then just do a rapid response fix on any area that has the rare catastrophic failure, than it is to try to anticipate any/all possible disasters at any/all possible areas and pre-build in redundant systems everywhere (most of which will never be needed, and most of which wouldn’t cover every possible disaster failure mode anyway).
Leaving yourself at risk of losing power for a few hours/days in the unlikely event Godzilla passes through is preferable to paying quadruple rates for everything year in and year out because you were foolish enough to Godzilla-proof all your systems when you built them.
Some potential failures are pricey enough that it’s actually worth doing that (e.g. when building nuclear power plants), but for most city utilities and other engineering projects, no.
The title should be Vive les testicules, not vive le testicules. Le is singular while testicules is plural, and thus don’t mesh.
Ripping up chunks of NYC would likely shut off power for several blocks around. There are still occasional steam pipe explosions in the underground there that cause localized blackouts as those aren’t nearly as catastrophic as whatever Hench Wench is doing.
I’m thinking ‘76, all over again.
Brut: … Call me?
See also Interviewing Leather for some fun reading, including some of the reasons heroes and villains suffer a mutual attraction.
I don’t think so.
He just met her. And that would be crazy.
…. I suppose he could give her his number.
Maybe?
Is Wenchy here trying to compete with Deus for best evil laughter?
I’m certain Deus is watching and taking notes. He will not let anyone outperform him as a stereotypical super villain.
Pretty sure that Deus does not want any part of Hench Wench, on his payroll. Reason: she would “inherit” whatever odd powers he has, making her a direct competitor. Additionally, she can’t be hired via a subsidiary (like Vale) because then Hench Wench would become MORE powerful than Deux, inheriting both Vale and Deux’ powers. No true Evil Overlord would want this crazy broad around, and the members of this LLC are complete idiots for what they have done.
If they hired Death Toll, than she would be stupidly powerful and almost invincible. The sole reason Death Toll could be taken out was that he had no active attacks so they could coordinate 12 angles of attack at the same time. The people who hired her could still be murderized so she could still be defeated, but if she wasn’t an idiot playing by “silver age rules”, that would be very largely minimized.
Nice shout out to the Good Intentions series. Been a fan since it started.
I will say that the negative reviews of book four seem like an organized campaign of people who aren’t fans of the author to begin with, since he’s been very blatant about where his sympathies lie for his entire career. Anyone who was surprised that Alex is a character who’d punch Nazis is someone who very obviously hasn’t read any of the previous novels.
‘Good Intentions’ is awesome! All 4 books rock.
Speaking as someone who got in trouble in real life for leaping into a brawl on a college campus started by our resident Nazi loons, I totally GOT that part. Ours attacked a mixed race girl who dared stand up to them. Hell yes, i jumped on their asses and I wasn’t alone. Didn’t even know the girl. Didn’t matter.
Yeah, I spent a night in jail for that along with others. When the inmates asked us why a bunch of fairly scrawny college kids were in jail. we told them. I told them that both of my grandfathers served in WWII and would expect nothing less. I can;’t speak for the others, NONE of them gave me ANY grief.
These days, it may be okay for politicians to act that way. Might makes right and all the rest. It may be okay for celebrities or such to act that way. But they better beware. There ARE good people in this world. They try to be anyway. Push good people too far and they will stop being ‘good’. Many have learned that lesson over the centuries that humans have been recording history.
I think many are about to learn that lesson again the hard way.
The way I figure it, if you ever find yourself on the opposite side of a moral or ethical dilemma from Captain America, the correct thing to do is apologize for your error and change your ways.
Cap punches the Nazis.
Until he became Hydrated
That was not Cap. That was an copy created by the Cosmic Cube.
We will speak no more of THAT heresy.
Easy there, Hoss…
Captain America fought actual Nazis who were using actual declared war to actually forcefully subjugate entire countries and actually kill millions of people.
Meanwhile, self-styled crusaders like Antifa who see themselves as akin to “Captain America” are doings things like… *checks notes* sending Bernie Sanders supporter Paul Welch to the hospital with a concussion and injuries that required stiches (Welch: “I remember thinking there was a very good chance that I could be beaten to death”) despite the fact that he was there to support them in their counter-protest in Portland, because he was holding an American Flag, which the Antifa folks said was, and I quote, “a fascist symbol”.
Captain America my ass…
When you’re an Inquisitor, you “find” Heretics everywhere. And when you’re a NaZI fiGHtEr everyone looks like a fascist, because there’s no face-stomping fun to be had if there aren’t real Nazis around for you to get your self-righteous violent jollies from.
Even the Tiki douchebags are sad substitutes for actual Nazis.
Maybe try *not* to be a face-stomper in one’s zeal to confront perceived potential face-stompers.
Too many people are wannabe Brownshirts (who themselves believed fervently they were protecting The Good People And Good Society from The Bad Dangerous People).
Fight violence (as it’s actively happening) with defensive violence, sure. But fight bad ideology with better ideology, not “I fear what they say/think/want so I’m justified in giving them a beat-down”, for that way lies chaos and ever-spiraling violence.
Well…
If you want to argue, argue. If you want to fight, fight.
I really didn’t CARE that the lousy good for nothing scum were wearing brown shirts and swastikas until later I had time think about it. I CARED that they were beating a girl in the middle of my college campus. I know, I know, I should have just ignored it, gone about my business like a good little ignorant apathetic modern American moron. After all, it is not MY problem, someone ELSE has to handle it.
If they had killed the girl, I am sure than MANY people on the internet and off wouldn’t have cared. They were not there. I was. I did what I thought was right. Now, I am sure than such a belief is WRONG in today’s world, because I am not SUPPOSED to disagree with loud and rude people who are threatening what I hold dear. because I might cause them emotional distress or some other horse crap.
Frankly? I don’t care.
I see a bunch of loudmouths beating a girl in the middle of a college campus NOW, twenty years later, I am STILL going to do what I have to in order to stop them.
This time though? i will use a shotgun instead of my fists.
Your post interested me, so I did a very cursory search. I have not seen a single news report anywhere about that happening, as you described it. Then again, when it happened, according to you saying it was 20 years ago, I would have been just a teenager or possibly pre-teen. Could you please tell me where and when actual brown-shirted, swastika-wearing nazis attacked a mixed race girl who stood up to them on a college campus, after which you and a few others jumped in, beat them up, and were jailed for one day.
I’m a mixed-race woman as well (who keeps up on the news and legal cases) so I’d like to know when this happened, since it sounds like something that would have been on every channel and every news program. All I currently know from your post is that it happened roughly 20 years ago on a college campus, so sometime around 2000 or 2001.
If it actually did happen, I’d be very interested to know the particulars. I don’t know if you’re telling the truth or not, but if you are, giving more details would probably go a long way in making people not think this is an ‘And everyone stood up and applauded.’ type of story that normally is found on reddit.
Not to mention you’d be proving you’re a legit hero who should be commended, and not someone telling tall tales.
Thanks in advance.
kalenath: Assuming your account is accurate, it seems your action had less to do with the identification of your opponents as “Nazis” than it did with the fact that they were unjustly roughing up someone who thus needed protecting (and good for you). You’d have done the same kind of scuffle to protect someone being attacked by, say, radical Mormons, or to protect Paul Welch when he was being attacked by Antifa idiots, right?
…right?
As for your last two paragraphs, pause and consider that those exact same words could have come with the same fervency and conviction from any of the folks in whatever groups you consider the dangerous ones. Somewhere Nietzsche is going, “nailed it”.
Wholeheartedly agree there.
So…thinking back to the ‘70’s, and the horrific blackout that utterly crippled the entire Northeastern Corridor…
I going to suggest that the havoc caused by _that_ stunt, would actually lead to an immediate reenactment of said power outages, and not just a couple blocks of NYC. o.o’
…HW is going to deff going to be in all the trouble.
…assuming this doesn’t turn out to be Archon’s first “ah, sh*t, they got away,” due to raw chaos. Which might, in fact, be the single biggest plus in HW’s resume.
“Enabled employers to evade arrest by ARC-SWAT,” is pretty big, shiny feather.
DaveB, there was a little incident in my home town when an internet company was putting in new fibre found (AKA sheared through) a power line that wasn’t marked. Blacked out three neighbourhoods and a 10 mile stretch of motorway lighting.
So yeah, HenchWench’s snapping a power cable could have that effect.
A couple of months ago, a storm in Staten Island took out a single wire which eliminated power to 3 neighborhoods (including my own). We were without any power for 4 days – still don’t know why. Soooo yeah this definitely could happen when someone’s yanking up entire parts of the ground and smashing them into other parts of the ground. :)
I would have thought they can find the source of the power outage a lot faster than that. Con Edison didn’t even have a geokinetic to blame for it.
(tangent rant to follow)
Now I own a camping generator just in case. It’s pretty cool actually – holds a couple of gallons of gas, and also has a way to tie it into solar (although I have not yet bought any solar panels – still trying to figure which ones would actually work with it. 2200 watts, which is not enough for the entire house, but it’s enough to keep my refrigerator and microwave working. Plus I have a portable stove which uses butane just in case as well (Coleman – really good brand).
Geokinesis in a city on an island that due to over a century of construction whose sub structure is mostly hollow and full of support structures, a black out was the least destructive thing, accidentally making a sink hole by moving that much mass in one spot in the city is a significant risk.
That’s her next trick!
It occurred to me that what Maxima’s been doing, as funny as it is for a comic, is extremely problematic for a law enforcement officer. It’s basically sexual assault and threatening to mutilation someone’s genitals, and doing so under the color of law. WHICH MEANS that under USC 18 section 242, Maxima could, if tried and convicted, get the death penalty. Not that there’s any way the government has of following through with the execution, the fact is that it’s one of the few crimes for which US Federal Law explicitly allows for the death penalty.
Not so sure on the mutilation part. It would hurt a whole hell of a ton, but Brut’s toughness rating has been shown that he could take a similar shot to a similarly vulnerable area (knee) and consider it “A little sore” afterwards.
The sexual assault is a bit more possible, but police and military are the ones legally allowed to commit (regular) assault.
Secondly, if she gets a jury, then it is very likely she could get sympathy based on “turnabout is fair play”, as Brut EXPLICITLY stated that he was trying to strip Maxima using fucking grenades.
While yes, police and military are generally allowed to “commit regular assault” (in the course of their duties, under certain circumstances), the fact is that 18 USC 242 specifically prescribes the death penalty for sexual assault by people acting under the color of law. A police officer, even a military one, while acting on their duty is acting under the color of law. Mind you, 18-242 is about using the color of law deprivation of rights granted by the constitution or by law. So since we have sexual assault, all we need is Maxima to violate some constitutionally or legislatively granted right and we have a recipe for possibly giving her the death penalty.
I’ve said “color of law” a lot, and it’s a phrase that a lot of “sovereign citizens” use, but they misuse it. I however am definitely using it correctly. Heck, 18-242 is referred to by the FBI as “the Color of Law Statute”, because it’s hard to discuss the wording of it without using the term repeatedly.
There is a lot wrong with your post, especially with how you worded things.
First is that you seem to have ignored the entire first half of the statute – specifically this part – “on account of such person being an alien, or by reason of his color, or race, than are prescribed for the punishment of citizens,”
Second is the death penalty, even in 18 USC 242, is for DEATH resulting FROM “kidnapping or an attempt to kidnap, aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to commit aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to kill.”
Third, you’ve completely ignored sovereign immunity.
Fourth, we do not know if ARCHON’s specific statute has them operate as military or as police on US soil, because there’s a huge difference there.
Fifth, you’ve ignored a ‘Defense of Others’ defense by Maxima, even if the first four things were overlooked.
Sixth, what Maxima is doing would be a stretch to be called aggravated sexual abuse, which is the specific term used in 18 USC 242, which is different than ‘touching which might be considered sexual despite a lack of intent for it to be sexual.’ Maxima is clearly not doing this in a sexual manner – she’s trying to minimize the danger of someone who, for all she knows, has murdered one person and was in the process of trying to murder her as well, as he outright stated that he’d be fine with taking her body in dead, even though he’d get more for capturing her. Aggravated sexual abuse does require intent to commit the crime. ie, if a cop points a gun at someone who has a kink about being in dangerous situations and they orgasm from it against their will…. the cop has not sexually abused the person.
Seventh, building on sixth, the statute’s language says aggravated sexual abuse, not sexual assault. The definition for aggravated sexual abuse is found in CRM 1982, and also look at Section 2241.
So no, Maxima won’t be getting the death penalty, or any sort of conviction, any time soon, at least not for this. Honestly she would have been in more trouble with what she did with the bridge back when she was chasing Sciona. Even then it would have been from recklessness.
Upon reading my post, I might have been too mean, and if I was I apologize. But your post was still problematic in several areas, which was the only intent from my responding to it.
Still I wasn’t trying to sound like a jerk so if I did, I am sorry.
So going for the death penalty under 18-242 wouldn’t be very tenable, but I’m pretty sure getting shot in the crotch with an antimaterial round constitutes cruel and unusual punishment, which is a violation of the 8th amendment of the US Constitution, and under color of law that’s still imprisonment in a federal pen under 18-242.
Archon operates as police on US soil. If they operated as military on US soil, there’d be Posse Comitatus issues there.
Posse Comitatus has been raised as a potential issue before, and addressed on-page. According to Arianna, the Posse Comitatus act only specifically names the Army and Air Force as falling under its jurisdiction, with the Navy and Marines having their own equivalent but internal procedures. ARC is set up specifically to operate within USA territory, while being organised under the DoD for chain-of-command reasons, so they’re not written into Posse Comitatus.
Actually there would not be posse comitatus issues with Archon. The comic explicitly talked about it and it’s legally sound how they got around it.
Scott’s Folly linked to the page where they state exactly why Posse Comitatus is not an issue here. Like he said, ARCHON is not subject to Posse Comitatus for the same reason the Coast Guard is not subject to it – the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 (18 USC 1385) is only for the US Army and was amended in 1956 to also include the US Air Force. The US Navy and the US Marines are also subject to it, but not because of the Act itself – instead it’s because the US Navy and the US Marines have made their own internal regulations which basically copy Posse Comitatus.
The Coast Guard and the Space Force are not covered by Posse Comitatus at all. Neither is the Army National Guard or the Air National Guard (with state authority, approved by that state’s governor).
And neither is ARCHON covered by it, as Arianna states in the page that Scotty’s Folly linked.
Okay so that takes care of the Posse Comitatus argument. Now for the 8th Amendment argument, which is admittedly a better one that you’re bringing up. But no, it’s not subject to color of law. Again, you are ignoring the sovereign immunity issues, and also it’s not illegal for a police officer to use potentially uncomfortable or painful force against a criminal while taking them down.
Again, you need to read the statute more closely. “on account of such person being an alien, or by reason of his color, or race, than are prescribed for the punishment of citizens” – that does not include when the police officer is doing what they are doing to prevent a crime or arrest a suspect. Maxima is not pointing the gun at his crotch because of his race, his alien status, his color, or even ‘technically’ because he’s a super (although that last part is not in the statute anyway). She’s doing so because he’s CURRENTLY committing a crime, plus he’s already committed numerous felonies, including attempted murder (more than once if you include the alien, although you might not be able to since the legal definition for murder uses the word ‘human’, which I mentioned in another post months ago). But at the very least, even if you want to argue that punching Maxima was not attempted murder (even though he was not sure if he had been able to kill her with that punch), it is still a felony to physically assault a federal officer of the law.
Also I should mention that they ARE military police, not just normal police. They operate through the Department of Defense. They operate as MILITARY police on US soil. Much in the same way the Coast Guard or Space Force would. And similar to the Army National Guard (except they don’t need permission of the governor of the state they’re in, at least so far as we know from what’s been written in the comic so far).
(although technically the Space Force does not yet exist in Grrlpower Universe, since Obama is still President at this time in universe)
Or worse-attorney drones
Unless you have the bounty contract for them.
Currently held by Sanctum Adroit!
Dun dun dunnnnnnnn!
Emergency power in non-industrial structures is typically reserved for important things, like servers, fire suppression, and life support (in hospitals), and beyond that would only be found in the batteries in emergency lights and in buildings owned by people with more dollars than sense that have a need to show off.
As for transformers, it fantastically oversimplifies what is actually going on to call it an oversized plug splitter, but transformers are essentially really complicated plug splitters, so messing up one cable like that would actually cut power to several buildings if you hit the right one.
Amusingly enough the only unrealistic thing electrically about this page is that the arc at the end of the cable would have been less “pretty sparkler” and more “angrily fries (or in super-scale just tazes) and sets fire to everything within a foot or two of it”, and shoes wouldn’t help in that regard simply because they haven’t been made of suitably non-conductive materials for decades (unless specially made for such).
No kidding. That’s presumably a distribution line not a transmission line, but it’d still be on the order of 15kV, which is going to do more than spark a bit. Unless she’s got anti-arc-flash powers, it would probably blind her if nothing else.
I also now wonder whether most forms of tough-meat-based super-damage-resistance would do any good against electricution. Up to a point, it’s not the cellular breakdown that kills you, it’s short-circuiting your nervous system and heart muscles. Even if we’re talking mechanical damage, it would need to be more than skin deep to keep your insides from baking within your tough outer shell or thermal damage at the cellular level rather than just mechanical stress.
Based on old Marvel and DC.
No it doesn’t do you any good.
vive LES testicules
in french, the pronoun also get plural when its linked word is plural
But isn’t “le” a particle like “the” or “a” in English, rather than a pronoun?
Le is a particle, equivalent to the but it’s specifically a singular (masculine) particle. Les is the equivalent plural particle. Carmeops has the right grammatical idea, if not the right category name.
Facilitating escape from arrest is a Federal offense
YAY! now maxima can call in the heavy squad
Lawyers?
they have Maxima. who’s in the heavy squad? Maverick? Rambo? Judge Dredd? Raiden? a squadron of A-10s?
Maxi is the
BruteHeavy SquadIt’s a good thing Brut doesn’t know Maxima better, he’d be a LOT more afraid.
Can Maxima please put down that idiot before she causes more damage and trouble? I mean yeah she is acting like a hyperactive idiot that needs to get a beat down.
Max has stated before that she doesn’t want to be the focus; she wants the team as a whole to be respected (and feared) so that when they split up the part that doesn’t contain Max is still trusted to get the job done.
Max is doing what she usually does; let the team take the fight until they prove that they can’t handle it. That time is getting close. Actually, it’s already in the past; she really should have handed Brut off the moment he agreed he was under arrest, because Henchwench has the powers of an entire team, so it’s going to take Max or possibly Halo, to drop her without a battle that… well. does more damage than it already has.
You do realise this has all happened in the space of a few minutes at the most, right?
And Maxi has been doing what she can to de-esculate the problem and gather intel on who they are facing
It just seems like longer to people because of how we have to wait a few days between each page.
Sort of like how it took a year for the parking lot fight, which was torturous for me at the time, but is a lot easier to re-read now since I can just binge through it all. :)
As French native speaker the tittle is bogus
It’s “Vive les testicules” he had two and Max is threatening to add one in lead :
-Tu en veux un troisième en plomb ?
I imagine the t-rex slugs that max’s sidearm throws are something more solid than lead. Although “plomb” is a word that’s fun and funny enough to forgive the inaccuracy, much like Iron Man started out as steel, then moved on to titanium before becoming much more exotic materials, “Steel Man”, “Titanium Composite Man” and “Nanite Recombinate Man” just don’t have the same ring to them.
.577 Tyrannosaur seems of jacketed the core is lead and the outer shell is Gilding metal- elle est e plomb chemisée avec du laiton – like many bullets.
But I’m interogative .50 BMG is more largely aviable in us military as usable in break-action pistol and develops more energy why using a hunting caliber.
This is one of those fascinating cases to try to figure out what level of force Maxima is justified in using. She could just switch to Beam of Plus Three(Tanks) and put a hole in Hench’s forehead, but would that be justified? Hench is causing massive property damage and appears to be escalating, if unintentionally for the blackout, but she isn’t really endangering any of the people involved in the brawl. The most directly lethal force she has employed would’ve been power slamming Heatwave from the top rope.
If I punch Superman in the face, or point a normal gun at him, or try to stab him, you can’t really argue he was in any danger. Nor would anybody else be with Mr. Faster than a bullet. So if Cop!Superman then said “he has a gun” and shot me a bunch that would be kinda excessive, wouldn’t it?
There’s certainly a legal argument to be made that Hench Wench “poses a significant threat of serious bodily injury or death to themselves or others” But if Maxima believes nobody(except squishy delicate Heatwave, why is she still there, seriously she could die at any moment) is going to get hurt then …. idk. Superpowers are fun
when you start throwing around a giant stone cock the size of an apartment complex it is easily argued that the lives of innocent bystander squishy humans in nearby buildings, subways, walking along the street, are in danger, and lethal force is plenty justified, but Back to the earliest lessons Halo got, “Before you shoot at someone, expect to miss and hit whatever is behind them.” Max can’t let off a tank melter in the city unless she’s shooting almost straight up. Her best (and most obvious move) is to dump heavily into speed, leaving enough invulnerability to take a hit, and enough strength to hold onto her, grab Henchy by the throat with one hand, hair in the other, and fly straight up.
Either take her high enough for her to freeze or black out from thin air, or piledrive her out into the middle of a desert or ocean where she can’t cause significant property damage.
it occurred to someone else that dabbler should just figure out a sleep spell or something, mental powers ftw
so anti-climatic but the most reasonable option.
Which for writing a spectacle series, once you’ve established a character can perform this non-lethal, instant conflict de-escalation move its hard to justify them NOT doing it. I made this mistake in a fantasy series as the peaceful “morality chain” character to a revived *de-petrified* dark sorceress knew a powerful sleep spell. So when I’d reach a point that should have been a major conflict of morals facing a dangerous creature or bandits that nagged at me like..oh right..she can just put them to sleep, and anything a spell like that wouldn’t work on wasn’t much of a moral conflict because “oh the horrible villagers eating demon beast can’t be put to sleep peacefully…yeah a shame…blow it up I guess…”
all that said, Dabbler did get socked in the jaw by Hench Wench and hasn’t been back on panel since…of course Achilles was off panel for a few pages and just popped back into frame and we assume each page is in their time only seconds apart so, if she’s out of the fight *which seems unlikely given her demonic heritage, adventurer history, and word of god fight with Maxima…although this now makes twice in the same night she’s taken her eyes off an opponent and paid for it…the first time against the alien with the sword and nearly lost another arm, and now she took her eyes off Hench Wench and got sucker punched for it…
if she is still in the fight, yeah, it all depends on Hench Wench’s mental resilience but while she seems to know her contract law knowing a lot of one topic is not a sign of will power. So it is worth a try, now that the fight has carried on long enough and a rather nasty hole has been made that is going to take some times; especially as it is New York street construction (I could say American in general, although the downed electricity may make them actually work on it quicker), if just the road work they seem to want to take their sweet time on that.
Fairly sure Dabbles is still sleeping off the punch Henchie delivered a couple pages back
“One might like to think that major centers of business would have some redundancies in their infrastructure, given human stupidity, laziness, lack of foresight and wildly overstretched budgets, I would easily believe a single incident with a poorly planned groundbreaking is just as likely to knock out all the traffic lights in a 60 block radius.”
Short version, I don’t know about this particular part of NYC, but a single severed power line could very well knock out power for a couple city blocks in a major city, and it has nothing to do with human stupidity, laziness, lack of foresight, or wildly overstretched budget. The power grid is built like that worldwide, and works impressively well, because the likelihood of a power line under a major street gets accidentally severed is extremely low. (Undergoround electrical fires in NYC, however, apparently common.)
It’s not unusual for big industrial facilities to have power coming in from two different lines, and big city commercial buildings *might* do this, but just as often the solution is simply to have generators onsite or assume that the 0.1% of the time the power is out you’ll just deal with it.
Also, most traffic lights have batteries in them now.
Plus a lot of the power grid is going to be *smart*. “Oh hey, big fault over on third and main. Trip the breakers to prevent damage!”
Once the electrical company comes out, they’ll isolate the break, so that ONLY that spot is without power, then flip some switches.
Teal deer; once the fight is over, it’ll be an hour or so for the power to come back, except for four or five buildings.
Note about the book review. Elliot Kay is a big social justice warrior outside her stories. But to give respect where it’s due, she isn’t turning her books into propaganda pieces.
You know, I think that the best person on the team for beating Hench Wench is Ariana.
“An employment contract for criminal services like backing up your employer while he attempts to kidnap a federal agent is an illegal agreement and therefore void.”
“What? NOOOOooo!” *depowers*
Heh.
*dew claws up*
Or:
Correct, but that’s not what I’m contracted for.
I’m contracted for gardening. I’m helping them completely voluntary
Zack Tilly!
If Henchie is smart enough to arrange it so she is hired by an L.L.C., she’s gonna be smart enough not to get caught out by something as minor as that
You’d think so, but… she tried to beat Murphy by making her contract MORE complicated. The more they overthink the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain.
Not gonna make any speculum’s about how they are going to stop Henchie
Personally hoping she will be either another Kevin (not really a bad guy, as evidenced by her reaction to the power cut, just a little power-mad), or a Sci-fright (able to get away to become a recurring ‘problem’)
Except she’s already been shown to be working FOR them. By her own admission, the actions she was doing were in furtherance of the LLC.
Plus if the LLC is for ‘a gardening business’ then they are operating outside of the LLC’s scope right now (by their own admission in the past several strips, including Hench’s own statement, they are a mercenary group), and you can still get rid of the LLC.
Yes, she is working for the, doesn’t mean this action has anything directly connected to the L.L.C.
A postal worker who goes on a kill spree, does that mean they did the killing on behalf of the US Government?
Actually the post office HAS been ‘vicariously liable’ for several postal shootings when done while he or she is technically on duty, despite the actual crime not being a proprietary funciton of the government. Usually because the employee had a history of mental instability and the government should have known about it.
Sooo no, while they are not doing the killing on behalf of the government, the government can nevertheless be responsible vicariously. Not criminally, but torts-wise, yes (especially if it falls under one of the waived immunities in the Federal Torts Claims Act of 1946).
But aside from that, an LLC is different than a government employee. Mainly because the government institution may sometimes have sovereign immunity which they’d have to drop first in order to be sued, while an LLC does not.
Use UPS instead – they’re a private company, and can’t even TRY to use a sovereign immunity defense. If a UPS worker decides ‘screw it’ and runs down an pedestrian, UPS could be held vicariously liable for not taking care to screen the employee if they had a screw loose the whole time with a history of reckless driving and homicidal tendencies. It’s rather clear why Hench Wench was hired by the LLC already, and her penchant for violence, according to DaveB, pre-dates this LLC. Which would have been found out by even a cursory search during employment.
Or better yet, use Arthur Andersen. During the Enron case, the company was held CRIMINALLY liable for the actions of its employees, even though the job was to be auditors, not to basically cook the books of Enron.
Here… it’s rather obvious to a judge.
She is working WITH the other members of the LLC, during the exact commission of criminal acts WITH them. It’s prima facie evidence sufficient to establish a fact or raise a presumption unless disproven or rebutted. The LLC will be liable, and any judge would agree to that. Even if the judge was wrong (which they would not be), the LLC members would have to argue it later, to get their LLC reinstated.
During that time, Hench Wench has no powers.
And again that’s assuming they go the judge route instead of just going to the Secretary of State directly.