Grrl Power #90 – Grand Mal Willies
I figure that working in a comic book shop, restocking, opening boxes, Sydney’s had her share of papercuts, and of course she conveys her dislike of them in her usual subdued fashion. Fortunately she has remarkable recovery time.
Yeah, and 13 panels on a page? Definitely not the ideal way to do a comic page. I could almost break out each row and post it as a separate strip M-Th or something. Well, we got through all the orbs anyway, maybe I can decompress just a little.
I got some fan art from AndyO! of TMI Comic, which is often a little NSFW so use your own judgement. I’m sure more than a few of you already read it. When the comic that showed Sydney’s predilection for spicy food came up, there were a few who noted the similarity with Ace.
SuperheroThey're super, thanks for asking!
Meatspace ComicSeriously these are awesome. Check 'em out!
Not UpdatingNo longer updating or only updates sporadically, but definitely worth reading.
SeriouslySeriously you guys. If you like Grrl Power the check these out.
"Mature"Mature subject matter and occasionally something explicit but usually safe. Can't guarantee the ads are safe though.
Dongs Ahoy!Full frontal and backal. Lots of skin, sex on some or all pages, explicit or otherwise.
Paper cuts are a pure bitch. They sting like hell and heal real slow, because of serration.
Working in a store there is something even worse. The dreaded cardboard cut.
I was catagorizing that in with the paper cut. I’ve had a few of them myself.
And don’t forget the box-cutter collateral damage which you don’t notice till you wash your hands.
Those don’t sting as much and tend to heal faster.
i’ve had all three, in my line of work, sometimes at the same time, and cardboard can be the worst if you get cut by both the top and bottom layer, otherwise its papercuts, with an exception for reaally deep razor cuts. in my line of work (food production) you get a major appreciation of cuts and burns :/
even worse: the cuts form plastic strapping tape
Paper cuts are the tree’s way of getting the last laugh.
I’d be worried too, Syd, Still knowing what we know from the fa I’m more worried for Maxima
Like how the orbs varry in their flight path, with Sydneys movements and emotional state.
I like how, in panel 7, Syd stands up so fast the orbs are having a hard time staying in orbit of her head.
Cue Max nursing broken knuckles :P
Im going with sydney being launched like a beachball.
Sydney flipper!
Imagine Sydney with the inirtialess flight orb and a bouncing forcefield.
Bouncing around the room like a superball, and when she stops there isn’t a hair out of place and she’s screaming “Do it again, that was fun”
that came to mind for me, but maybe she’ll learn what at least one of those orbs do
Or maybe like McKay in that one SG:A episode, with his force-field generator. All it took was an energy-vampire-cloud…
I loved that show.
Too bad they landed an epic fail with SG:U. COuld’ve been awesome…
Oh, well. fanfic-time!
That wasn’t SG-U’s fault it was all on SciFi, sorry SyFy, SGU got continually better as it went, it they had gotten more time it would have worked out fine.
But of all the people, it had to be Eli…
More like a cannonball with Max hopping about waving her hand and yelling “SONUVABITCH!!! THAT HURTS!!!”
I’m going with Max hurting herself, Sydney becoming a force-field enclosed projectile, and the conference room losing a wall.
Better yet, sydney goes flying, bounces off the wall and takes out maxima
I can see any one of these situations in my mind’s eye, and each one is funnier than the last!
*is laughing like a maniac while reading these*
I say combine all of the above
Seconded!
thirded
fourthed
I’m only saying “Fifth-ed!” here because I’m curious as to how deep this nesting might continue.
Sixthed. I wonder how far the nesting could get before there is no longer any room for a comment…
‘Bout that far
If Syd used her tentacle orb to anchor herself while she’s inside the force field Max could have a nice game of “tetherball.”
actually, that’s an interesting way to clear a room, Have Max swing Shielded Syd around like a ball and chain, or play Hammer Throw with her.
Dude…
*Hands over an Internet*
You like me! You REALLY LIKE ME!!! *BOOM!!!!*
Thank you Sally feilds.
A reference to this?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TKK6d3-h2U
Pretty much yeah.
Or she could have a paddleball competition with Anvil.
Nah…Volleyball!
If Maxima couldn’t pull the poster tube containing the spheres away from Sydney at the bank, I’m guessing that force field could probably withstand even her super strength.
Of course, for Syd’s sake in case I’m wrong, Max can just pound the part of the field furthest from Syd.
One of the unknown orbs is the link, the tie that binds Syd to the other orbs. Destroy that one then the others fall away. Too bad it’s indestructible. \m/
The other projects a confusion aura, making it impossible for anyone nearby to predict what you are going to do, and keeping them flat-footed all of the time.
It’s power is completely wasted on Sydney.
Oh man… the squigglies make me think this is true! that’s funnier than the alien invasion!
Heh, reminds me of when some friends were playing a Pokemon RPG. I designed a Magikarp for them that had only one power. Splash: a super powerful nigh-unbreakable pan-sensory illusion effect that made anyone in perception range think he was flopping around on the ground uselessly. The catch was, it was only activated by flopping around on the ground uselessly.
It was super effective…!
geez.. talk about messing with reality…
Saw the fan art. Looked like she was preoiled for the massage.
Noticed the same thing with the spicy food refrence.
Maby she can make a pepper spray/ hot sauce dispencer like Ace did when he was a kid.
Im betting on some kind of weird interaction that destroys something besides Syd. Like the forcefield ball rolling over Ariana…. or bouncing off the wall
That would be so cool. Think if it rebounded the same amount of force directed at it.
Maxima first tapping it with enough force to break cement, Nothing happens. Then Maxima tries a haymaker at the feild and she is bounced across the room through the wall.
Maxima is bounced through the wall.
Well, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction… So, whatever force Maxima imparts on Syd in one direction gets imparted on Max in the other. So, unless one or the other activates their flight powers, they should go flying in opposite directions, with the ratio of their weights effecting their relative velocities.
f = m x a (force = mass x acceleration) ==> a = f/m, the same force acts on both, so, if we knew how hard Max could punch, we could find acceleration
As (Acceleration of Syd) = F/61.2kg (Syds mass from the bio page)
Am (Acceleration of Maxima) = F/77.4kg (Max’s mass from bio page)
Then, given the duration of the punch, we could calculate final velocity! Not going to even try to guess how hard Max can hit or how fast though.
Oh no! I’m learning!!! Getitawaygetitawaygetitaway!!!
Reference in panel 12
Boris: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXW02XmBGQw
I kept thinking it was Pavel Chekhov.
Spotted the Bond quote right off.
As often happens with villains, that guy used that line once too often.
LOL< I also recognised the Boris quote from Goldeneye (there was a Bond Movie Marathon on yesterday). Maxima is gonna have fun taunting Sydney after the stress she has given them.
also, ugh. Papercuts are evil.
Like the to serve man bib on the alien.
I know! The two mystery orbs have plot device powers! :D
lol,,, this is gonna be GREAT,,,,and i fint it weird that both unknown orbs make some kinf of glyphs apear around them,,,, one could be a kind of translation orb,,, pass it over a text ot hold it while hearing an unknown language and it translate it ,, would be rather cool
Babel Fish in a glass.
These orbs are spec’d out like an alien mechanic’s toolkit.
Cutter/welder
Remote sensing/communication
Protective outerwear
Manipulator
Locomotion (better than a ladder)
For the two unknowns, I would surmise: PDA/data recorder, keyring, air-production/filtering…
…and possibly portable urinal.
That could be what they actualy are.
Dabbler walks in the room. ” Hey! Where did you find those Zobixian ship tools? Those things are antiques.”
I think the urinal idea is correct, but more generally a complete physical clean up device, so everything is handled. I think we’ve seen it in action. When Sydney threw up, there was nothing on her clothes and she did not complain about a bad taste in her mouth. Subtle huh? She was sitting on the curb with a bottle of water but that could be just a response to fluid loss.
Claiming you’ve gone through all the orbs when we still don’t know what two of them do is cheating I say!
There are some powers that need a specific thing to activate them.
Healing, reanimating the dead, realighning reality are but a few.
Make up a list of what the orbs powers can be, so DaveB can have a great selection of ideas to choose from.
How about one of them grants their bearer imortality?
Oh wow that’d suck, considering you’d have to hold it for the power to work, running around with an orb in the hand for the rest of eternity is not my idea of a good time.
Superpower duplication – or suppression. Maybe one absorbs an effect, and the other duplicates it.
Otherwise, what about meta powers? – something affecting the orbs themselves and her relationship to them, like allowing her to lend one out, set a time-delayed command, or boost their power.
The ability to bend time in some way.
Okay trying to look at this logically and assuming that Sydney’s suggestion was bunk.
Max’s theory that they do something based a pre-existing condition or are a power source.
Now since Sydney says they show the effect of ‘activating’ when she uses them we can probably eliminate power source. A power source would be always on..
Since she experimented with these orbs and and knows they only work in pairs we can safely assume (dangerous word there) that she has tried the two orbs in conjuction with the others and seen no expanded or altered effect.
So that leaves things she could not find out alone and healthy.
Duplicate a held object that is not an orb.
Healing/regeneration.
Healing another being.
Phasing (seriously how many of you try and see if you can walk through a wall?)
Repair an object
Teleportation (requires you to think of a destination. Either one the orb knows or one you do very well.)
And sudden thought. When did they say supers began appearing? When did she find the orbs? What if she has been the one giving powers to random people?
sydney is the source of superpowers in the world? awesome!
Given we’ve already had a ‘Galaxy Quest’ reference, maybe one of them is an Omega 13 device. ;)
Specific condition, well Maxima covered healing (Horse talisman), we have immortality (Dog talisman), not sure if it needs to be held or just on them after it is used.
There is energy absorption and re-direction, (or any variant there of),
Immunity to various things like poison, venom, ect….
Life force drain (would need to hold the orb to another living thing)
Molecular breakdown limited to touch distance (again need to hold the orb to something)
Iron-Gut…kind of weird for an orb to be needed to activate the ability to eat anything
Power Copy (going to throw out power canablism like Kirby just because): copy the powers of other super-humans nearby.
Raise the dead or revive
and there are two biggies on my list of (you’d never figure out you had this power unless you had another power or were in a situation where you would have died with out it, or were raised in a society that knew you had it)
Water Breathing,
and
Cloud Walking (with out also having flight this power is really hard to find out you have LoL)
if it allows her to copy powers, does that made her the original KopyKraut? (with out the fake German accent), may also explain her argument in on the first page
that does make sense… why else would she make that kind of arguement like that if she didn’t (besides it being part of her personality)
One could be a power augmentation: hold it with one of the others and the other one gets supercharged.
The other could be a binary switch: hold it with one of the other balls and the other ball gets an alternate power (e.g. superspeed instead of flight, pocket dimension instead of tentacle, cold instead of heat, telepathy instead of telepresence, invisibility instead of forcefield)
Alternatively one could be like a cache: hold it with a ball in the other, then you can let go of that ball, grab another and you still have the first power, then grab a third one – now you have all three going so long as the “cache” is still held. In theory you could weild all 5 at once and leave one hand free but that it difficult to do and requires more experience with the orbs – at the moment it could only cache one.
The major downside to Syd’s powers is that in holding a balls of that size the only manual actions available are through the tentacle
please tell me those 2 will be revealed as the story continues and not just “I want 7 doo-dahs, but I can’t think up 7 powers that make sense…sweep under rug, tum-ti-tum-ti-tum”
as a side note; those thingies, DO WANT
DaveB originaly had the powers of the orbs planned out, but it’s been a few years since he started this comic.
Think of all the powers and abilities avalible in your imagination.
What would you REALY want to have if you only had seven to choose from?
I’de need only one, the ability to learn abilities just by seeing them.
If it was only one, and couldn’t be immortality, it would be Command Voice like in Preacher comics.
If I was allowed to have any *one* super power it would be super intelligence. Once you have that you can figure out how to give yourself a lot of the others.
First on my to-do list is Ironman’s armor.
Super inteligence where you can think 5 times faster than normal.
IN the parlance of cybernetics it is called “weak A.I.” where the human mind is templated onto is mother board that has the computing that gives it the speed of the machine. A strong Artificial Intelligence can out strip such a mind ins speed and multitasking. That would be good to have. And the other orb resurrects you if you die. Now that would make you “inweenceble”,/i> to be sure! But not something you would like to experience and still live.
Thinking five times faster means learning five times faster if you actually apply it. Humanity has proven time and again that, given sufficient time and resources, we can make just about anything. Money wouldn’t be an object because with superintelligence one could apply existing mathematical proofs to a number of gambling situations. Ever see the movie Rain Man?
Imagine going to Las Vegas on Friday with five hundred dollars, and breaking every Blackjack table in the city by Monday. (And that’s after clearing half of the roulette tables.)
From there, take the winnings you have– we’ll go conservative with $500k, because I don’t feel like mathing right now– and examine the international stock market. Learning the concepts of stock watching would be trivial, and you’d have a mental capacity far in excess of what would be necessary to spot trends and be a one-person stock broker breaker.
Bam, you’re a billionaire. Apply half of that money to creating and managing a business with low cost to output ratio, spend a couple years learning how to engineer and drafting plans, and you’ll be flying about infringing on Marvel’s copyrights in no time.
A concept kinda explored in the 2011 movie “Limitless” https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1219289/
Harem does the learning part with her ability to be in multiple places at once.
Not that I would know anything about this or anything, *glances around suspiciously*, but do you think that the Las Vegas casinos (or any casino actually) would sit by while you clean out even one table? You would be kicked out for cheating very early.
Or have your kneecapps broken. Still happens.
They do actually have rules against card-counting and stuff like that, not to mention that the people there are trained to see it.
Thinking five times faster? The horrors – accelerated ADHD?!?
Last year’s episode of “Fringe” had a fellow whose intelligence went so far away that he had trouble communicating and had to use a computer interface to do it. Calle “Gray Matters.”
Ooh, nice one! “NEEDLESS” reference? Or am I off my rocker?
needless, rouge from X-men, Peter Petreli, his father, and Syler from Heroes, and probably a few other series that i don’t know
the Mimic – early X-Men: eventually went crazy and turned against the X-men. This particular character was replaced with Morph in the first run animated series. mmmm-kaaaayyy
Mimic is back, I think a member of The Dark X-men.
Hope Summers also has power copy of mutant powers.
Power copy, Power thief, and Power Cannabilism are powers I don’t much care for, its like we want our guy to have everything as a way of being “broken”, (but not as bad as a Power clone, like Seth from SF and Cell from Dragon Ball that are created with the powers of others)
A Static Shock reference to Gear is first one that popped up in my head
Sylar…
I again wonder if Sydney got all the orbs.
Obaki ( AndyO ) is scratching around for a story. At first, every page of his was a play on Too Much Information. He then told a couple of gripping tales. Now he’s holding on with cheesecake and fan service. His health and his tech career problems are distracting him. I hope he comes up with something soon.
You are enjoying great attention just now, but you’ll need a story arc with drama to hold this audience. Sydney’s ADD is well portrayed and I suspect resonates with many of your fans. Maxima’s comment “Stay on target” was very VERY well done. You finessed what too many would have hammered.
Looking at some of the latest TMI comics there seems to be a storyline developing as a sideplot to the regular story. The main charictors just haven’t noticed anything yet.
Thanks. I know there will eventually need to be a story, even though my concept for the comic is really more of a day in the life of tale. Once I get my into wrapped up I’ll get into that stuff. I already have a story planned that makes me wish I could put these out 5x a week cause I want to get to it. :P I know I can’t coast on physical comedy and wacky antics forever.
I put stuff like the “stay on target” in 1) because that’s just how the scene plays out in my head and 2) while something like that is sort of funny, I don’t think it’s punchline funny, which is part of the reason I went with a page format instead of doing strips. I don’t think the way I write is suited for Establish/Setup/Punch.
you’ve gone for about a year on physical comedy you can probably go for quite a while on it, unless you are running out of situations
I was worried about that when I started the comic, but after finding my footing with it, I go to jot down a joke now and come up with 3 pages of material. If I was doing 5 pages a week, I’d start worrying about running out of material a year from now, and that’s if I stopped writing down new jokes.
It’s still a good Star Wars trench run referance :)
“The Legend of Bill” comic shows that artists working together can run multiple storylines. Just a thought.
He just started a new storyline with the Ghost that tried to kill Luna’s old boyfriend. The one Duece told Ace would be waiting, and angry, for him when he got back home the last time Ace was in the hospital. It’s been a long time and I half expected it before now, after all they moved back in some time ago. I think it’s still less than a week Comic Time though.
If you folow the shape of the force field, it looks like it completes the circkle somewhere around her knees.
I’m guessing it still envolopes her fully though?
Yes it envelops her in a sphere-ish shape. I drew that curve about 8 times before I gave up on getting it perfect. Paint Tool SAI doesn’t have an elipse tool. :P
Given that the orbs are controlled by Sydney’s brain, I would be amazed if it Ever came out as a perfect sphere.
If the shape is controlled by Sydney’s brain I am surprised it comes out using Euclidean geometry.
Escher’s Staircase has nothing on Syd’s brain.
The comments section needs a “like” button…
Ok! Now we’re getting somewhere.
I wonder how long Sydney will bounce around the room, like a ping pong ball, after Max hits her…
*Shudder* I just got a shiver from buttcrack to forehead at the thought of it. I once got a papercut from elbow to wrist while looking at drawing paper and tried to catch a bunch of drawing pads falling from the shelf. Let them fall, trust me. You can pick them up afterwards :P.
The question you asked in the last comics comments has been answered.
Reading the comic since a month now (and loving it enough to read through all the archive twice).
Really looking forward to what will happen to Max. If action equals reaction and everything that pushes gets pushed back just as hard… and I don’t know how to write Newton in English, sorry. Should be interesting, anyways.
So, yeah, what I originally wanted to know is: What the **** is NSFW? Because you keep talking about it in artist comments. Or what would be artist comments on DevArt.
Bounce back forcefield hopefully.
NSFW = Not Safe For Work
Hopefully not squick-inducing or on par with a grudge match that levelles a small town. But seriously; Sydney has to work on her brain-mouth filter. Can’t wait until somebody upsets the apple-cart in her shop and wants the owner.
Once had a sit like that. the owner of the store I’d worked at got harassed by some unfriendly non-lady, of the unbearably nasal, snooty, and condescending type. She demanded the manager.
Manager comes: “Wassup, boss?”
lol. Are there any comics that can be read a work safely? They’d have to be like “how to use Work more effectively” or something like that, wouldn’t they? I mean, isn’t reading comics at work a no-go anyway?
NSFW usually means something more risky than just wasting company time. Things like nudity/porn.
oh. Well, I don’t think anything on this comic qualifies for that so far… But then again, I’m from Europe. In Texas some of this stuff might.
The only thing NSFW about this comic is that it will make you bust a gut laughing, and then your boss might get involved.
lol, yes indeed
In some companies, laughing at this comic will induce certain unfavorable situations involving hot beverages and sensitive computer equipment. Read with caution while at your place of occupation.
Good thing I don’t drink coffee…
Isn’t that the same people (Texans) who don’t know what came first?
New Testament or Old Testament?
Well, at least to Bill Maher (you have to love that guy).
Texas is a big state, we have room for all kinds of people here.
Big and small, smart and dumb. It takes all kinds to make the world go around.
I believe that law is “every action has an equal and opposite reaction.” Dang, I clicked reply and there were suddenly two other replies to you comment.
yes, that sounds like it. And yeah, answers come fast on this comic! Wow.
also, now I can’t wait to see Max fly back with the same force she hit that forcefield… or something like that…
Why do I have the feeling that Max has been waiting for a moment like this to present itself?
Because paybacks a bitch, and her name is Miximilia Leander?
That would make a great t-shirt, with a picture of Maxima.
Well said good Sir Pickle, I’d say that is the right answer!
That line SO needs to show up in the comic.
Papercuts are one of the many torments of the Hell of Bureaucracy. Though perhaps only the 4th most annoying.
As soon as I saw the alien panel, I had to think of Zephan’s thought of what was in the tube, “The harvest begins!” And isn’t that Dave himself all tied up? After Dabbler’s Science Corner, you trying to tell us something, Dave? :P
And actually nice to see Arianna getting her own back in some way. But I agree with Sydney, paper and cardboard cuts are EVIL INCARNATE!
Looking at how the guy is strapped up, that has to be one of the most uncomfortable ways to tie someone up.
I know there are worse ways to be tied up, but this one is up there.
out with the anus probe
After I colored the hair brown I thought yeah, that does look a little like me, but if I draw myself tied up once too often people will get the wrong idea, hah hah.
Yeah, judging by your FA submissions, it would be the wrong message alright >:)
Interesting that Sydney’s visualisation of “Brain sucking aliens” has almost the same colour scheme as Dabbler. So is this what a Succubus looks like ‘normally’, or just another shape-shift for extracting different juices?
Hah, it’s got the same color scheme cause I need to be more creative with my color schemes. :P
He likes purple.
REALLY likes purple.
favorite color?
It may be that purple is a universal color indicating “danger”. Hence the reason we subconsciously assign it to royalty.
Love Syd’s scared expression in the last panel.
Oh boy, I definitely want to see that !
“On the blue corner, the strongest woman on Earth who’s fed up with discussion! On the red corner, a so-called invincibility field! Ladies and Gentlemen, here goes nothing!”
Maby not up there with a unstopable force meeting a immovable object, but it should be entertaining.
IE what happens when something made of Uru metal slams into something made of Vibranium….
Really wish you could update more often, this would go from being on my list of top 10 webcomics to top 3 if it was updated 2/3 times a week. Still love it though.
He see’s this quote every single week. He has a full time job, and only dose this because he want’s to.
DaveB why don’t you put in a donations pannel.
Been so busy drawing the comic that I haven’t had time to look into making any money off it, otherwise I’d have added some Project Wonderful banners already, or update the cast page. There are two big conventions coming up that will occupy my whole weekend (A-kon and Quakecon) and I’ll need to put in some extra time before then to get additional pages done. Maybe after A-kon I’ll be able to look into doing some minor updates to the page.
It’s really nice to know that I’m not the only person who says “eenweencible” though I find that including a super-villain-ish laugh with it makes it much better.
As for powers, I’m guessing one of them might be regeneration or healing or something like that. Something that wouldn’t come into play until needed, such as suggested with the “being sick” suggestion. It might explain her tolerance of NBC-levels of spicy food.
Yeah, I was thinking the same thing.
For the other orb I still think something to explain why Gwen couldn’t get a reading on the contents of the tube is in order. Maybe a stealth field, or one the negates the effects of other powers.
Negates magic. It was probably made when magic was more commonplace, so having a tool that negating magic would be a great asset.
Only on Syd’s body and whatever container the stones are in? Or maybe an actual field around Syd that she could possibly control.
Somebody throws lightning at Syd. Syd yawns because the lightning vanishes half an arm in front of her.
Evil guy tries to cover her in lightning, she breaks out the sausage on a stick.
lol
That makes sense, especially if it absorbs magic. Like something that absorbs light appearing black something that absorbs magic would look like a totally empty space if looked at through a magic scan.
Absorbing energy (whether it be magic, lightning, even just the kinetic energy of Maxima’s punches) might be the answer to how the orbs power-up. If all forms of magic are absorbed, that would explain the probe’s lack of readings before.
The Earths EM feild is a simple way for the orbs to be powered.
“I could almost break out each row and post it as a separate strip M-Th or something.”
That is a GREAT idea! …. really! … it is a great idea. Maybe not something you would ever want to do on a regular basis BUT definitely something to mix things up once in a while.
[it couldn’t hurt the weekly site visit count either BUT you would never do that on purpose during a contest or some such *twitch* now would you?]
I guess stuff like that happens a lot in the webcomics world?
it’s always fun when the nerd slur kicks in
Tune in next week folks for Maxima’s broken hand!
Because she hasn’t been unwittingly victimized by those orbs in the past, right? No way… Nuh-uh… Never. This’ll end perfectly in Max’s favor, I just know it.
:D
Not really a fan of TMI but the fan art is ok.
Oh look Max finally gets to hit Sydney wonder in the shield holds.
Another option for an orb power is a nullifier. Maybe the green orb blocks magic. At that point it wouldn’t appear to do anything, but could be plenty powerful and would explain the earlier “detects as empty” result from the scrying attempt.
it was more like “detects as LESS than empty”
I think you’re right, at least in the fact that it foiled the attempt. What remains to be see is if it 1) absorbs magic or 2) prevents detection. Absorbing magic seems much more powerful, but could be in line with whatever the orbs were created for. Give the diversity of the powers, it seems almost like someone wanted to create a way to get a lot of power with minimal expenditure (relatively speaking, of course).
Of course, if one of them is absorb magic, then it’s possible that it can’t be turned off, and maybe the previous owner dies of a would he couldn’t use magic to heal.
So many possiblities! Can’t wait to see, well, everything! Keep it up, Dave, and I’m sending more readers your way!
I think the Orbs may be built along the Zen of Unix commands. Each orb is an expert at one thing. When combined with other orbs, they have great combined effect. The force field giving “perfect” protection from outside forces on the inside. So I don’t think the Force Field would prevent Sydney from being knocked back by a sufficiently huge force, say Maximima for example. If Flight orb truly establishes it’s own inertia frame of reference, and combined with the Force Field orb, Sydney may be able to become the proverbial immoveable object.
Or the proverbial pinball. She could cause much more damage if she was in a inirtialles shell bouncing around. Expecialy if she could controle where she bounced. Like that guy from Marvel Comics who was blamed for the explosion that caused the Civil War arc to start. I forgot his name.
Speedball.
ohgodwhydoiknowthat
Because you read Marvel comics?
Speedball blamed himself, but the explosion was actually the villain Nitro.
The rest of the world blamed him also, because of the news blaming him. When he woke from his coma, and found that he was in prison where the inmates and guards hurt him pretty bad.
Well I didn’t actually read Civil War, just some summations, and the more I hear about it the gladder I am that I did not read it.
However, if Sydney and everything in the force-bubble were rendered entirely inertialess, the instant that Maxima’s fist was no longer in contact with the force-bubble, propelling it, the bubble would stop moving, as Sydney would not have accumulated any inertia to continue moving.
To an observer, it would appear that as soon as Maxima’s fist makes contact with the field, it retreats at the exact speed of Maxima’s punch.
Maxima would feel extremely little, if ANY pressure from punching the shield, since due to the lack of inertia, she wouldn’t be imparting any energy to Sydney and the bubble. She might actually be unbalanced by the strike, since she would have been bracing/preparing for expected resistance/impact of hitting a very strong object.
Sydney is bouncing around the room, but inside the bubble she dosn’t feel like she’s moving. No shaking, because the feild gives her a specific gravity to how her body is oriented.
During the 70’s or 80’s a serries of books were written with starships that had inirtalless feilds. They could accelerate at tremendous rates, turn on a dime and the people inside wouldn’t feel any movement.
Sort of moving like those UFO’s you see around the naval airbases in Florida.
They show them in a few UFO documentaries, it looks like a tube wirh legs.
The inertialess drive idea goes back considerably further, to at least 1948, where it was used in the Lensman series of books by E.E. “Doc” Smith.
There was a critical improvement made to the drive by a scientist named Bergenholm (in the story), which made the drive tolerable for civilians, so they named the improved drive after him.
Minor correction: First publication of the stories began in the 1930s.
That might of been the series I was thinking about. It was republished in the early eighties and I read them around 1986-7. I’m not shure exactly when.
Thats where I got the idea of Sydney bouncing around like a pinball and not feeling any movement.
The glyphs probably say something like THIS ABILITY IS UNAVAILABLE AT THIS TIME – PLEASE TRY AGAIN LATER.
Or BATTERY CHARGE AT 20%.
Or NO COMPATIBLE MATE IN AREA.
Error 401: Power not found. Please refresh or read the instruction manual.
or YOUR PAYMENT IS OVERDUE, PLEASE LOGIN TO SPACE-VERIZONWIRELESS.COM
BELL OUT OF ORDER – PLEASE KNOCK
ARE YOUR ORBS NOT GREAT ENOUGH? CHEAP DISCOUNT PRESCRIPTIONS INSIDE! 100000037559266741 Unread Messages.
Symbiotic partner orb set not found, gestalt abilities not available.
Gestalt, with Sydney? Not being available is probably a good thing for all involved.
Thank you DaveB for a great comic that makes me laugh like no other. Even tho this is an intro into Sydney and Co., I find it so hillarious that it hurts. Keep up the great work,
You’re welcome! Glad you like it.
I find the contrast between the glyphs the red and green orbs produce to be interesting. The red orb’s glyphs are more jagged and angular, while the green one’s are more swoopy/curvy. This suggests a dichotomy between the power each orb produces (especially as they’re the only orbs to manifest glyphs, I think); perhaps the red one is offensive, while the green one is defensive.
Maybe because Syd’s holding both, they’re canceling each other out.
Well a few pages back we did have the theroy that different combinations could produce slightly different effects, those two could be “Key” orbs for that effect. “Red “Glyph” Orb + Tentacle=flamethrower, Green + Tentacle = increased tentacle strength” kinda thing
possibility limitless. but Syd could learn to juggle.
Something tells me that those two orbs are something important.
I also think that Maxima has been looking forward to doing THAT for a long time, she was so tempted to smash Sydney but she didn’t but NOW she has her chance.
Super Monkey Ball meets Pinball Wizard!
… THIS POWER IS NOT AVAILABLE IN YOUR COUNTRY. WE’RE SORRY.
ON YOUR PLANET
it could be her space travel orbs, if they get in a space battle one lets her breathe in space and the other is a version of the pew pew orb that can not be fired while on planet
Death Star in a can. “Pretty powerfull…”. Indeed.