Grrl Power #900 – Recapitation
Something something Cyberpunk…
I played a little bit of it last night. I think I’m still firmly in the opening tutorial bit. I haven’t even done a “Upgrade your cybernetics” bit yet, but I’ve shot some people and been driven around small chunks of the city. Honestly, I’m the worst partner for anyone to have though, because in the middle of the first firefight, I’m taking time to look corpses and weapons off the floor while the big guy in the other room is laying into us with his “My gun is so big that when you pick it up you walk slow and can’t put it in your inventory,” and I’m like “Ooh, that pistol looks cool.”
Oh, I guess I should talk about this here comic page.
Woo, page 900! Kind of… an inauspicious page I guess, but here we are.
I’m not sure what Sydney was digging for in her utility belt because… well, I knew the attempt would fail, but as I was working on the page I started to think about what possible thing she could pull out that might help. Attacking Concretia is basically a no-go. The golems she forms are pretty tough (tough being an entirely relative term, especially in a world of supers) and if you break one, she can just make another if there’s a ready supply of stone around. I say stone, but we’ve only seen her form golems from concrete and asphalt so far. When she’s in her specter form in between golems, she can’t be hurt by pedestrian physical attacks either. We haven’t seen her get attacked with energy or magic in that form so we don’t know how effective that stuff is at this point.
I figure the best thing Sydney could pull out of her utility belt might have been a flare? Like an emergency flare that you can launch by pulling on the back like a holiday cracker, something you’d find on a lifeboat or maybe a survivalist hiking kit. (Is there such a thing as a non-emergency flare? I guess people could use them for light, but if you’re using a flare for light, you’re probably in an emergency situation already.) She could try and fire the flare out of the tarp and hope someone sees it and posts about it on social media and that someone at Arc-LIGHT is monitoring anything tagged #NYC on twitter. Or… she could try and fire it up into the false ceiling where she hid the stasis pod and, you know, hope the building catches on fire and a fire alarm goes off. That’s the kind of thing that could get her a commendation for keeping her cool under pressure while also getting written up for destroying seven stories of private property before the fire got under control.
To clear up one or two misconceptions about the orbs. The orbs have a limit as to how far they will move away from her, (let’s call it four meters) that much has been established, but within that perimeter, they can be pushed around, especially if she’s not paying attention to them. She doesn’t usually let anyone else near them though unless she’s using them to clonk someone on the head or doing a double testicle crash test. This is the first time anything like this has happened.
And I know what you’re thinking. Concretia’s stone fingers shouldn’t be able to use a touchscreen phone. There’s a reason smartphone styluses aren’t made from cement. Well, several reasons. Maybe she tore off a piece of tarp and used that to dial.
Evidently I should keep pimping the incentives, because people who swing by the comic on days other than the first post of the month don’t always catch them, and it would be irresponsible of me not to point out that there is a modest collection of nude pinups over at Patreon.
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Uh oh this is not looking good.
Nah, Concretia just told Arc where to find Sidney. Doesn’t matter who Concretia *thought* she was calling, affer Sid’s aborted call to Max, using a phone from Arc, the good guys surely started monitoring it.
No. She is most likely calling the flying super to come pick up the stasis pod. Why would Concretia ever talk to Archon? Sydney is alone right now, and Max and the others are too distracted to notice.
CC, I dont think Garbler meant oh the only number she could call is Arc, I think Garbler means that Leon would be flagged, why is Sydney making a call during a fight? Someone is getting Alerted, this is Sydney after all.
My thought was that Max would immediately call Leon to track the phone. I’ve worked on gov’t computer systrms that advised every one signing on that every website, mouse action and keystroke was recorded. Seems like a small step to recording content of every phone call as well. First thing Leon gets when looking into it is Concretia telling him the address to save sidney.
Maxi is currently busy right now
Concretia telling Leon to save Sydney from Concretia? I dont think that is whats happening. Actually, this brings up a bigger question. Why did Concretia capture Sydney? She didn’t have to do that. Sydney would have left the stasis pod there than Concretia would grab it or phone it in to the flyer with out anyone knowing. If Concretia cared enough to not hurt Sydney, then she should not have shown herself at all. Unless, capturing Sydney is the goal to get her portal powers. If other countries get Sydney to go to fracture station to get their own alien tech, they could compete with USA and Deus.
Or Dave just wanted Sydney to get captured in the story for some reason and Concretia is only calling the Flyer to pick up the stasis pod.
Misunderstanding things, CC. Concretia is calling “someone”. It doesn’t matter who, because it’s Sydney’s phone, and the general assumption is that Leon is monitoring it. So unless there’s a superpower preventing him from doing so, Leon now knows where Sydney is, or at least where “known supervillain” is telling someone to go.
As for the goal, I agree with you. There’s no point in Concretia stepping out and “announcing” her presence like that, or pinning Sydney, unless “capture Sydney” was part of her goals. (It could have been “capture a super”, but Sydney seemed to be the easiest one.)
As an alternative: … This could be a perfectly legit job for Concretia, in security. Just being a little overzealous with “detaining trespassers”. In which case the call could be to Archon, or a security contact to pick up a trespasser. (With a power like hers, she could potentially handle multiple locations… just not efficiently.)
I dont think Leon is monitoring though. Most likely, he is playing video games back at base. I dont think he monitors all radio and phone communications everytime they go on mission. Their original mission was to just be temp TSA for the aliens. Also, the only reason she would use Sydney’s phone is because Concretia cant carry one when she uses her powers. If they need to find Sydney, they would just ping her collar, and Concretia didn’t destroy the collar. So they will probably leave Sydney their alive. If the goal isn’t to capture her.
I say alive, because we don’t know who the flying super is. They might try to shoot Sydney, but hopefully by then Sydney will somehow figure out how to use her specials glasses to call for help. Or Cora and/or Dabbler just so happened to follow Sydney. Or maybe the baddies will get away and Sydney will be found after the fight and very angry.
Why are people guessing Concretia is security? Sydney is law enforcement. If Concretia is security, she wouldn’t have captured Sydney in the first place. Instead, she would have popped out and said, “What are you doing here?” and “Do you have a permit?” and that would be that.
Are you kidding? Leon is the ‘man in the chair’ for ARC-everyone. They were already responding to a possible Situation, of course Leon is on station at his computer. There’s zero chance he wouldn’t be. And any team communication would be carefully monitored, if for no other reason than to produce after-action reports where someone is… no longer able to give one.
That Leon isn’t at least monitoring the phone call is about nil.
Ok fine. Leon is sitting in the chair monitoring the situation. He is currently monitoring the coms, making sure police have cornered off a piece of NYC, and keeping an eye on the power outage to make sure it does not spread. Monitoring radio chatter would be expected and would probably be the thing he is doing, however, he would not be monitoring phone calls because that would be illegal. Phones are private, and keeping them bugged would be against the law (Fuck you NSA). Police need to use their radios so they can be monitored and recorded. Sydney’s phone is not being recorded, unless ARCHON wants to risk possible lawsuit. The phone can be tracked after the fact, but after getting permission from the phone company. You could pull the number logs as well but the mercs are probably using burner phones anyway.
As for the other team members listening to their radios, Max already lost hers due to grenade in shirt and pants, and the other team members are occupied with the annoying Hench Wench. Well, the super team members anyway. Never saw Cora or Dabbler. Who knows where they went. To save Sydney? Keep an eye on alien mercs? I hope we find out soon, because our adorkable hero is in dire need of saving.
Seems prudent that part of the ArcContract is consent to having your phone tapped.
You don’t like it? Don’t sign the contract.
Responding to what Situation?
You mean the Alien Tourists just showing up in Times Square? Anyone with a working fucking TV would have been able to see that happening
Wait guys. I just thought about this. Why isn’t Sydney’s phone password protected? How is Concretia just using Sydney’s phone? Does Sydney not have a digit or word password phone? Unless Concretia had a decryption device but why have that on you (if such a thing is portable) and use it to make a call when instead carry your own phone and take Sydney’s phone back to homebase to decrypt in a safe environment?
So it begs the question, why isn’t Sydney’s phone password protected?
“Why isn’t Sydney’s phone password protected?” – Cobra Commander
It may well be, but note that Sydney had it out and unlocked in order to take the picture for later location reference. How long it takes for the phone to lock itself when inactive will depend on what settings Sydney applied, but the
fightcapture can’t have taken very long. It would not require a significant stretch of the imagination for the phone to still be unlocked and therefore easily accessible.As for why Concretia would use Sydney’s phone rather than her own, I think it may be a limitation of her power. We’ve seen her take a shell from a wide range of materials, including adding (de-saturated) colours, and use free shaping for relatively coarse-resolution shapes. But we haven’t seen her manifest anything with complex functional details, and I doubt we will. Building materials lack the trace elements to recreate a phone, even if she does know the sub-micro-scale circuitry well enough to build it blind.
I think the reason peopke are making guesses that Concretia is security is because:
1) it would be an interesting twist compared to the obvious answer of her being part of the LLC.
2) Its about half a mile from the combat zone, although I doubt she is security for the building because security would not need to give the building’s address, just the floor number.
Garbler, I do believe you are 100% right on this. Good call. (pun intended)
Sorry brain isn’t all here this morning yet. Not only is Leon flagged that Sydney made her phone call and is not in possession of her phone (also assuming Concretia’s voice pattern is now on file after her “debriefing”) but perhaps he also got who she called from Sydney’s phone as well. Concretia may have just really messed up trying to save her minutes.
Concretia’s phone is AWOL. In her astral form, she doesn’t have pockets.
True – I still find it funny to think of a low-tier villain trying to save minutes on their prepaid phone though. >_<
Even without the aborted call to Max I’d expect Leon to monitor cellphone activity for the field team. We know Sydney isn’t going to sell off the alien tech and then claim it got lost but Archon shouldn’t assume that.
I sure as heck hope that the tech powers that be are doing this! It would be delightful not to have Sydney constantly getting separated from the group.
Also, perhaps you meant LOOT corpses…
Body art. “Hey look, corpses!”
A non emergency flair is basically fire-works.
I’ve called these things flares before:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Cyalume-Chem-light-Snap-light-Glow-stick-Military/dp/B017H6AUEU
They’re the sort of thing you activate then throw down the deep pit in the movies.
oh i was thinking something like a battlefield illumination round for artillery
Yep, if in doubt a 5 inch starshell round will solve most problems. Although I am not sure if Syd could keep too many 32 kilogram ( 70 pound ) shells in her utility belt
What’s the point of stealing her shirt? I get phone and utility belt and fancy communicator, but jacket/shirt?
And as for what she’s pulling out… Let’s be generous and say it was her phone or backup emergency locator lol.
You’re right though, nothing in there would have helped with the concrete business.
Anyone want to place bets on outcomes for this?
Main options I see are
A: orbs are stronger than she thinks and can break concrete with effort (perhaps at a key moment in plot to surprise the bad guy)
B: orb does something like “return to user” when away for too long and she can activate it
C: somehow ADHD’s herself out of the chair (presumably by wiggling vertically over the back to remain in radius of the balls)
D: saved by plot convenient enemy or ally, or kidnapped by plot convenient enemy or ally.
There doesn’t seem to be a “return to user” function, Sydney found them underwater after an unspecified, but by implication quite long period during which the original user was nowhere to be seen. They transferred to Sydney with no visible issues, presumably by some internal preset function
The previous user was probably “pining for the fjords” when Sidney found the orbs.
‘ee’s restin’
He is an ex-user.
No ‘e’s not. Look ‘e moved! *nudges him*
Sydney was probably too entranced with the orbs at the time to do a thorough search of the area and see if there was a body nearby. Most likely, the previous user is dead, but then again, maybe they stowed the orbs on a backwater planet for safekeeping until they could return to claim them. (But the Florida Keys would be a terrible spot given how much traffic they see)
How long could the orbs have been there? I doubt the Florida Keys saw as much traffic, say, 2417 years ago? It’s also possible they were “cargo” that had been lost in-transit and just happened to fall around there. There’s a lot of unknown about the orbs and their origin… if they’re even from the current universe in question
3 days prior to Sydney finding the orb.
Higher Dimensional beings on a picnic the mother securing the youngest in the “car seat”, turning to her older child who is busy texting their friends on a transdimensional gigaverse band tablet, “Make sure your little sister got all her toys in the pod before we leave.
oldest texting friends glances sideways,
sees a doll (that to humans would have been an unstoppable golem of destruction)
sees a plushie (that to humans would have been an oceanic eldritch kaiju)
sees a virtual pet (that would have become a monstrous supernatural super villain)
*glances back to gigaverse band tablet, “yeah, everything’s in the pod”
-completely missed the little sister’s toy space ship whose tether has it floating just outside the pod, the take off enough to sever the string making them plop into the ocean.
My guess would be that pulling the comm device off Sydney’s neck was a mistake.
I would expect that to trigger some alert back at base and would expect Harem possibly to appear.
Harem has to be able to visualize where she’s landing – either because she’s been there before or because one of her other bodies can see it. Also, unless the was just going to vorp in, plant a de-pinned grenade on Concretia, and vorp out (or something equally likely to cause damage to Sydney while doing little more than inconveniencing Concretia), I’m not sure what good she would be…
Maybe vorp to the orbs, if she knows or can figure out where they are, and do the same?
I would assume yanking the throat com off probably has a similar effect to a sideways alarm on a patrolman radio, basically signalling “this patrolman is now flat on the ground. officer down.” and someone should be arriving soon to help. Between Max, Dabbler and Cora even HenchWench should be down for the count in a handful of seconds once they know Syd needs a rescue. Partly affection for Syd, partly if Syd dies and a villain somehow takes the orbs, whoooees, badbadbad.
Presumably those ‘sideways alarms’ have an option to alert base ahead of a deliberate sideways? It would be rather inconvenient if the cavalry deployed when the street cop was just fishing a ball out from under a parked car!
I’m not sure if there’s actually a “sideways” alarm. Firefighter PASS (Personal Alert Safety System) alarms are based on (lack of) movement. Even just standing still or sitting still, a person moves a little bit, compared to the utter lack of movement that occurs when they’re unconscious (at which point the alarm goes off). They can also be activated manually as a “come to this sound I need help” signal.
If you watch on-the-scene videos of the first tower falling on 9/11, after a short delay there are the sounds of scores of PASS alarms spontaneously going off all over the area…
a. I hope this is what happens – it would be so cool.
b. Probably not, at least given what we know about the orbs so far.
c. This would be cool also but I don’t think this will happen.
d. This… would be cool too.
I like your ideas. :)
Also I think she took Sydney’s jacket in case she had any hidden pockets in addition to the utility belt. Concretia’s read enough Batman to know the hero does not put EVERYTHING just in the utility belt. Sydney even said, when making her belt, that she’d have ‘some additional loosies (lockpicks) hidden on her person.’
I have toa gree.
Also, i really love the Concept of Conretia.
Untouchable AND Tank in one. And nice looks.
So I find moving statues interesting, so sue me!
Toa: a valiant Polynesian warrior
+ Gree: Scots term for pre-eminence, victory or superiority in combat
——–
Truly one b*d*ss multicultural combatant
Probably friends and sparring partners with Jose, the Mexican Scotsman
Thank you, you made my Typo climb Olympus while Ra battled Apophis. ;)
:D
Thank you for elevating my Typo to Olympus, while Ra was busy battling Apophis.
It was a typo worthy of legend, rejoice.
Jacket had more pockets.
I was wondering the same thing. The only reason I could come up with for taking Syd’s jacket/shirt off was to remove some of her protection (isn’t that thing bullet resistant?)…maybe to make her vulnerable physically so that she’ll be more responsive to threats when people start questioning her…or whatever it is they intend to do with her.
Also, aside from the extra pockets, Sydney’s uniform has armor. Both the ooblek stuff for bullet proofing and whatever extra protection is afforded by the powers of the guy who makes the uniforms. So she’s both disarmed and unprotected now.
Why remove her shirt?
A) Sydney has already proven resourceful and intending to use items on her person, so better to make sure she has no other pockets to access.
B) The shirt is armored. Concretia may not know this, but she probably suspects there is some sort of tech involved with the shirt that someone may want to take a look at.
C) It can be useful to have a uniform piece if you maybe want to infiltrate a military outpost. I served in the US Navy and we made sure to safeguard our uniforms when we were away from base for this exact reason.
– A more important question is: HOW did she remove her shirt? If Sydney is literally trapped against the concrete due to her distance from the orbs, how can Concretia remove her shirt?
Producing it may be PROOF of something…
As to how she could get out, my thought is spinning the orbs similar to a drill, either as a whole or each one individually. Yes they are round and may have minimal friction, but spinning them might generate enough heat to melt or weaken the concrete and let her break through.
the Jacket part may just be because it has pouches and Sydney can move her arms well enough she may have had other gadgets, back up coms, and the like in it.
Or as a trophy. Considering she bothered to reveal herself rather than wait for Sydney to leave and just take the stasis pod, it doesn’t seem like the objective. If she wanted to kill Sydney, well suffocation by concrete bubble was on the table right now, or just crush her throat with a concrete hand, ect… She clearly wants Sydney alive for some reason.
there may be a bounty on Sydney,
or is pulling a the most non-lethal move a mafia type can pull the “humiliation” move, show the new shiny cops they are helpless and can be taken down so they better think twice before coming back to this neighborhood..
or Concretia is a vigilante and has a major distrust of cops and thinks Sydney was planting a bomb, government monitoring device, alien pod for an invasion ect…
or Concretia is with Arc-Dark or the CIA and suspected Sydney was helping Dabbler keep alien tech out of human hands *yeah it is suspicious Dabbler thinking the fight was nearly over would have Sydney remove the now powerless stasis pod from the area instead of just bubbling up*
or any of the above but Concretia is an old school comic fan and is going to pull a “You think you’re a super hero? You wear your emblem under a police uniform? You’re no hero, you’re nothing but a government stooge. a mercenary for the wealthy elite.”
and then leave her there waiting to be rescued like a damsel in distress while Concretia casually walks out with the stasis pod, achieving her objectives the stasis pod and demoralizing Sydney.
That jacket would probably bring a fortune on eBay, if she could manage it anonymously and somehow still prove authenticity. Concretia is playing by The Rules though, and I think they forbid auctioning off trophy trinkets from the other team – those must be kept on display somewhere in the Lair.
E: Neither a good-guy nor a bad-guy. Opal portals Deus in to give Sydney some game-changing info on the down-low, something that completely changes how she views Archon and which she can’t dare share with anybody (if Deus is being honest, at least), then tells Concretia to return her stuff and all three of them leave Sydney there with her mind blown.
Utility belt? More like futility belt am I right? Sorry.
*hits Ro Jaws’ nose with a rolled up newspaper*
No! Bad! Bad poster!
*hits with a rolled up newspaper a few more times in hopes Ro learns his lesson*
I just can’t resist the bad jokes sometimes.
I liked it. A quality pun is its own reword. geddit?
Dear god don’t encourage him. We will all die uncontrollably cringing from dad jokes. Think of the children!
Dad jokes? More like ded jokes am I right?
One more of those and I’m sending out the ninjas to end this, Ro.
Ninjas! I didn’t see that coming.
Always. Expect. Ninjas.
You can never prove the absence of ninjas, only their direct presence. Ninjas understand quantum mechanics a lot more than people realize.
Because not even quantum mechanics wants to mess with Ninja
(actually that was hilarious Ro :) )
But I wanted it to be bad. I like it when people cringe at my bad jokes.
Oh don’t get me wrong. It’s horrible and awful and very bad and so very bad and in certain circumstances could be mistaken as a war crime. But it was still hilarious. :)
Pander knows her Monty Python.
I’m a renaissance woman. :)
There’s a level of bad when it loops all the way around to being funny again.
This is where you were.
Until Ro said, “Sorry”, which spoiled the effect. Take no prisoners, make no apologies, let the bad puns roll!
Good point.
laissez les mauvais jeux de mots rouler? y’know, instead of
laissez le bon temps rouler. or were you going for a Bama football roll tide roll vibe?
sorry, spent formative years too close to New Orleans and was born in Tuscaloosa
the beauty of a pun is in the “Oy!” of the beholder
It’s not a utility belt unless it contains a flask.
*flees for dear punning life*
I feel bad for Sydney. She has been through a lot already. I hope she can get out of this situation
I can see Concretia doesn’t play around. Immediately disarms Sidney of her best weapons, then breaks the gun after establishing it won’t do anything, disables communications, removes utility belt and leaves her stuck (?) on a throne without even a phone. It’s good to have villains like that to prevent the talkative ones from getting repetitive.
Ooooo. Makes me wonder… is Sydney going to use her ADHD to get out of this? torment Concretia so much in the next five minutes that she either runs away or… who knows — probably clamp her mouth shut with a concrete gag, honestly…
Concretia is the type to literally not wait around for all that.
She’s told the team (whichever team it is) where to pick up Sidney. Now she’s off to her next mission.
No explanations; explanations are for losers.
Hey a bad guy who knows the Silver age rules. You don’t unmask the hero but you can still take away their toys.
Yep, the “obvious accessible focus” must get taken away every 4th encounter and encumbered half the time, but the “secret identity” disadvantage can’t be exposed until/unless bought off.
Ok, now let’s hope Sydney had the forsight to go full on Batman here and has a smaller back-up utility belt with communicatiosn stuff in it.
Honestly a tiny remote with an SOS transmitter seems like it should be standard equipment, at least from now on
Like her glasses?
Im just wondering if she calms down enough to remember she can do email with her glasses. Leon or Dabbler. I don’t think anyone else would notice an email at this time.
Cora, Fritz?
Fritz. Because it might be sexting.
Frix.
She knows how to receive, but did she ever learn how to send?”
Ho shit! I forgot about what her glasses can do!
Well there are several kinds of signal flares.( marking drop/ landing spots for example)
We also used a kind of flare to temporately light up the field ahead in the military training.
On the case of taking her jacket,i guess she wanted to make sure halo has nothing else like her ultility belt stored in there. Hidden tools or weapons and the like
This is where someone tries to force them further apart from her and bad things happen.
Hopefully she remembers her glasses can do video call (or at least video messages)
but did she ever learn how to *send*?
Now’s the time to explore the menus and find out!
Stealing the shirt is faster and safer. You are sure to take everything rather than waste time patting her down or worrying about hidden pockets/equipment that you could miss.
What would happen if someone were to make Sidney go far away from them, like Maxima picking her up and carrying her? Would it be physically impossible? Or would Sidney survive intact?
I’m surprised nobody has mentioned this in today’s or yesterday’s comments though:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/haim-eshed-aliens-book-israel-trump-b1768777.html
If the orbs have safety features for the operator, after a certain amount of force I’m going to assume that the orbs would break through whatever contained it rather than to have it hurt the operator.
That might just be wishful thinking though.
I actually did address this yesterday. The orbs apply no force to Sydney herself, as we saw when Maxima tried to give her road rash when she was hiding under the ambulance. If Sydney herself was dragged, the orbs would break out of whatever was holding them without hurting Sydney.
I disagree – she was unable to walk away from them at the restaurant, and Tubey didn’t even shift in the seat. I think if Concretia wanted to keep pushing, then (barring an orb safety feature) the invisible tether would squish Sydney against the seat.
in the way back machine of the bank robbery you can see Max, even powered up, isn’t strong enough to force the orbs away from Sydney’s ‘orb range’
That Throat Mic had a “GPS chip” in it, her location history has already been recorded. And she still has her glasses.
At least she still has her glasses!
Seriously, though. She’s using several powers she literally never used in the first fight. I know she was only in a couple pages. But if she could manipulate concrete aside from her golem body she would have used it on Math.
And I know she was inside the restaurant. But there is still concrete in the floors/foundation.
She also literally fell apart once damaged. And now she can not only keep moving after half the golem head was gone, but can reattach? Either there’s someone or thing out there that can amplify or increase super powers, or the author just wanted her to be less useless than her first showing.
She might have been training to use her powers and didn’t know when Vehemence “recruited” her that she could do that.
Yes, while the good guys are practicing and leveling up, so are the bad guys.
Also, getting your head blown off and taken out of the fight repeatedly is a strong incentive to learn to work the body without a head.
Another point, if Vehmenance had used his aggro aura to get Concretia to come to the restaurant fight, she might not have been thinking clearly enough to use her powers at their strongest
Her powers might ONLY work on concrete and asphalt. They might not work on plaster and sheetrock and wood, which I’m assuming were what was in the restaurant itself.
Plus even if she an manipulate sheetrock and plaster, sheetrock and plaster are pretty weak.
She might also literally need to be somehow touching the concrete/asphalt in order to manipulate it, hence not being able to manipulate the concrete in a building’s foundation. I’m just guessing though.
It might just be she didnt think of doing that.
Lots of ‘mights’ and ‘maybe’s’ in those comments, lol.
And not one said anything about her suddenly being able to put herself back together and not crumble like the other two times she broke.
Think it’s maybe possible she didn’t put herself back together during the Rumble because people were blowing holes in her every time she did?
Do you have any idea how fucking annoying that is? o_O
Which is why Cree went after Peggy directly, only to get claymore’d for her troubles
Well I’m unsure, hence the modifiers :). I’m not DaveB where I can give a definitive statement on the character. More’s the pity, I’d like to have artistic talent. :)
Also someone said it a couple of days ago to me, regarding Concretia’s powers.
I can’t draw, due to my shaky hands!
And I can’t draw due to my inability to draw well. :)
Math didn’t exactly give her the opportunity.
From start to finish their “fight” lasted three seconds at most.
It was pretty well established that everyone of the villains was “stupid fighting” due to vehemence’s aura. He wanted a brawl, not murder or incapacitation.
Secondly, concretia was not anywhere near a focus character. There was 30+ supers at the fight, we saw them display a fraction of their total powers.
Did not does not mean could not.
Concretia getting sniped at the Restaurant Rumble tells her one thing very clearly: she’s standing in the sniper’s field of fire, and will keep losing pieces as long as the sniper can see her active. Far better to bail out of the shell that’s become a bullet-magnet, and respawn a new one out of sight.
Not using concrete-shaping at the Restaurant Rumble is less clear-cut. It may be that there’s a limit on the speed or force which she can generate, or that it takes so much concentration to do that she’s better off sticking on hand-to-hand fighting. This would then imply that, if Hench Wench’s trainwrecker to remove Brüt from Max derives from Concretia’s powers, HW found a boost from one of her other employers’ powers – or that Concretia’s limitation is in her mind more than her capability. If she’s generally been a sneak-thief type of villain to date, she may simply not have the habit of ‘abusing’ her lockpick/utility power as a weapon.
Okay this answers several questions
1) Yes, apparently Concretia is probably working with the LLC. Although she might be working with a different group. But it’s looking like she work with the LLC. And the word ‘Vermillion’ will probably come up soon if Sydney is a hostage.
2) Sydney is about half a mile (0.5 miles) from the combat zone + 28 (.06 miles) stories up, in a building facing away from the blackout. Still seems really odd that Concretia was here waiting, unless she somehow followed her instead.
3) Concretia cannot regrow her face – she had to pick up her face and put it back on then basically smoothing over the concrete to repair the cracks. She manipulates paved stone/concrete – she cannot create it.
Oh and 4) Concretia’s read enough Batman to know not only to remove the utility belt, but also anything else which might have hidden pockets like a jacket/cape/etc.
Because she’s wearing clothes, I’m betting that Concretia has some kind of “teleport though cement” aspect to her powers. THe alternative is she was on site napping, but that doesn’t match with that she’s doing.
deus es PG machina is the reason concretia has clothes. Vagoos and aureolas are not to be viewed….even if made of building supplies
That reminds me of when the censors forced comics to put clothing lines on characters with solid metallic bodies like Silver Surfer and Nova (Frankie Raye).
To be fair does anyone want to picture a naked Dr Manhattan in the comics? Didn’t go over that well in the movie adaptation. :)
Ah, the perils of a non-static medium. Where you can’t keep your characters and the foreground in just the right alignment for unobtrusive scenery censoring…
Actually, Concretia could be making a fortune doing concrete work at night – given a pile of raw materials*, she could probably do the work of several crews in far less time.
*such as concrete debris from demolition sites, which she could also charge for hauling away
That would be a wonderful setup for the ‘Cut Lex Luthor a Check’ trope, but I’m betting she is part of the LLC. I hope she’s not though and this is all a big misdirection red herring, but everything seems to be leading to her being part of the super mercs wanting to take Archon members as hostage, like they wanted to with Maxima because of the rewards on their heads (according to Brut earlier)
Just relax Sydney, Concretia’s got you. Put that ADHD mind to work on a solution to the problem of your captivity.
I still don’t understand how she’s able to use a smartphone. Tarp won’t work either. Styluses are made of some sort of rubber or foam rubber. And I think they work because the styluses themselves are made of conductive metal which travels through the rubber foam, but I might be wrong about that part.
They are called ‘touch-screen’ for a reason: you touch them, and they do something
Stylus’ are used because they don’t leave greasy smudges like fingers do, or because your finger is too dry
Yes but Concretia does not have normal fingers. She has concrete as fingers. Concrete doesnt work on a smartphone. Stylus tips are not made of concrete or stone or metal or even felt/cloth. They’re made of rubber or foam rubber because that works with a smartphone screen and those other things do not. I’m not sure how Concretia can use a touchscreen without normal push buttons at all, let alone Sydney’s phone.
From experience, when I put my phone face down on concrete, it can cause random things to happen. So potentially concrete can affect the screen.
Seriously. If you run a piece of stone or concrete across a smartphone screen, nothing will move. The only thing that might happen is you may scratch up your screen. Heck, a touchscreen usually won’t even work for a human hand if a thick enough glove is being worn, because there’s no conductive surface disrupting the electrical field on the capacitive screen. I’m just trying to figure out how it would work for Concretia.
So far the only possible idea that someone mentioned that might work is Concretia somehow pushes her astral form a bit beyond the concrete finger, and the astral form is somehow conductive. Which…. I guess could work if you’re into the whole paranormal stuff about ghosts and electrical fields? Maybe?
She has a bit of plastic covering on a finger tip to be “skin”. Or its a “super person” version of a phone, and has it built in to react to “super energy” or just has a smart OS that is made to recognize fingers
I’m still thinking the whole ‘astral form gives off an electrical displacement’ thing makes more sense. Cell phones don’t work with plastic styluses, unlike, say, a Nintendo 3DS which does. Different type of touchscreen technology.
There are a large variety of ways to make a touchscreen, several of which are not based on conductivity of whatever’s pressing on them but simply on pressure. I think all or nearly all cellphones use capacitive touch though, even military-grade ones.
Yes there are a variety of touchscreens – but most SMARTPHONE touchscreens are capacative, like the link you gave shows (anything that has capacit- in it means it’s based on disrupting an electrical field, which requires either metal and a foam rubber stylus tip, or human skin or some sort of human skin analog).
That’s why 3DS screens are different than iphone/samsung touchscreens. 3DS screens are not capacitive, they’re resistive, which is why they can work with even a plastic stylus.
My point is still that Concretia’s fingers would not work on a smartphone touchscreen, since those are capacitive. The only reasoning i’ve seen which gives a good excuse is that maybe her astral form acts the same way on a capacative screen as human skin or foam rubber on metal does – ie, it’s a human skin analog somehow.
That’s what I’m going to go with so I don’t obsess over it. :)
We talking about late TwentyTeen’s Smartphone’s? Or pre-TwentyTeen’s Smartphones?
I’m talking just smartphones in general. Most smartphones are capacative in one form or another from what I’ve read, and have been since Apple and Samsung got the majority of the market between the two of them.
Don’t do phone’s in general let alone ‘dumbingdown-phones’, closest would be some tablets mum got for her Witnessing work, and experimented with one of them last night and wool cloth don’t work on them (which is probably why they make the fibre cleaning cloths to help clean the screen)
I’m sorry but I don’t understand what you said in your post.
Yup, modern touch screens work through picking up the electric disturbance your finger makes, not through physical pressure.
Hence my confusion about how Concretia is able to use the smartphone. :)
Maybe the tarp is conductive? it would have to have a reasonably high capacitance, I think, though…
Maybe the tarp is made from plotinite, like Tubey, when it was able to make MAXIMA lose her balance without the orbs tearing through it
Cloth is not conductive any more than concrete or plastic are. That’s why your phone won’t work if you are wearing heavy gloves. They’d need to be thin enough that your skin still affects the electrical field on the screen. With Concretia, there’s nothing disruptive of the electrical field, no matter what you use on top of concrete.
UNLESS her astral form itself disrupts electrical fields enough to be like a human skin analog.
Cloth in general, at least. If you need it to be conductive we can make it conductive, but it does take a bit of designing-in and/or specific treatment.
Maybe Concretia licked her fingers first.
That wouldn’t matter.
1) Wet concrete is no more disruptive of a capacitive electrical field than normal concrete.
2) How would Concretia lick anything? Her tongue is also made of concrete.
What about 2010 smartphones?
Remember, the comic is set ten years ago
Didn’t Dave say this comic is set on standard superhero comic time (It’s always kinda contemporary despite what flaws in continuity and realism that may cause)? Or maybe that only happened in my head.
Nope, still set in 2010
Maybe after Sydney catches up with herself, DaveB will skip ahead a few decades to ‘line up’ with the then-current time
She is an astral body piloting a concrete shell through an extra dimensional manipulation field.
Let’s just assume her astral body (like when Kitty Pryde phases) can disrupt electrical fields to some degree and this translates through the concrete or other rock shell she has formed as a mild electrical disruption so she can use the phone.
I can suspend disbelief that much to accept that reasoning:)
If Sydney can’t free her orbs,is she off the team or will she do…..something!?!?
Well we know for sure that she’ll get out of this somehow, eventually, or at least she isnt off the team since this is all still a flashback.
Still it’s sort of a testament to DaveB’s storytelling ability that we KNOW Sydney has to be okay and yet we’re all still worried about the character.
I like how, in the last panel, Sydney’s main concern isn’t that Concretia’s calling in reinforcements, but that the bad guys will now have Sydney’s phone number in their call history.
That’s so Sydney. :)
*freeze frame, cue laugh track, roll credits*
Superhero physics. Not only can she use cement fingers to use a touchscreenm she even can use cement vocal cords to talk.
I can think of a lot of ways that a super-person can talk without vocal chords. Like her astral form is what’s talking and it has some sort of ability to vibrate in a way that gives off sounds, just like plasma can. Watch The Sorceror’s Apprentice :)
But I can’t figure a way that concrete will work on a smartphone touchscreen.
Honestly, maybe her astral projection form is actually doing the “touching” – she’s not an infant, so as long as she’s had this ability for a while, she may very well have figured out a way to trigger a phone’s capacitive circuitry(?) – I think that’s actually more likely than that anything she’s manifesting for her golem is doing the “tapping”
Good point. just protrude your astral finger slightly from the concrete hand and you’re done. Astrals can ticklify electrons.
Is ticklify the scientific terminology?
Cement, has water as an ingredient, water conducts electricity, as long as is is not “Pure”water! A stylus, uses a different conductor, than water. If you wet the head of stylus, it conducts, a used stylus, eventually lose it’s conductor, unless the conductor is embedded into the tip!
What I remember from physics!
It looks like she is made from dry cement though. But perhaps she use water powers to form it into desired forms.
Sasha, concrete is not conductive, period. Wet or dry, it’s not conductive, unless it’s so wet as to be almost liquid (ie, the pores in the concrete are so big that water is just touching water, since water IS conductive. And even if she was that wet…. there’s still no electrical field for the conductivity to travel along to disrupt the capacitive screen’s electrical field, which is how touchscreens work (I’ve found after a night of googling).
Plus Concretia is made from concrete which has already dried anyway, rendering that whole point moot.
So far the best answer I’ve seen is that her astral form is conductive and she pushes her astral form a bit beyond the concrete to make the touchscreen work. I’m mostly trying to go with that idea since it has me doing the least work in suspending disbelief of the action being taken. :)
remember, after Sydney blew the top of her head/mouth off, Concretia was talking. In some way, Concretia’s astral form is talking; so we don’t have to get bogged down with talking rocks.
She already called max and was cut-off mid word, so it’s pretty obvious that she’s in trouble.
Max should be here any second.
Max’s collar was destroyed by the grenades, right? Might take a little while longer if the collar was the antenna or was needed for hearing teammates as well as containing the throat mic. Might have to bounce through a few people, or Max may have to make a decision that requires her to stay instead of running off to save Sydney
Excellent point. By calling Maxima, did Sydney limit her call to the one person who cannot receive it?
Hopefully ArcHelpDesk records all calls and flags any calls for help (…a decent AI could do that automatically…) but it’s a new organization, maybe it hasn’t figured that out yet.
What would happen if the Orbs are forcibly separated from Sydney a distance greater than the maximum separation distance? Can the Orbs break out of the concrete? If not, and if Sydney can’t move, then what happens?
Why isn’t Sydney trying to move the Orbz laterally?
Some up, some down, some left, some right but still their maximum distance from her to burst the bubble they are encased in?
I was lead to believe they exerted an irrestible force.
1) She hasn’t got to that, yet. She’s still working with what she has.
2) It’s immovable, not irresistible. Remember at the beginning, the jeep didn’t move, but Sidney stopped going away.
It seems that there are two different sides to orb movement laws, let’s call them “TK link” and “tether”. Tether fixes a reference frame (current planet’s surface or something) and, whenever Sydney and orbs would get farther than tether limit, both are decelerated to zero speed in that reference frame. Thus Max couldn’t move orbs from stationary Sydney (and orbs in this mode provide fixed acceleration, no matter what other forces are influencing them), but Sydney couldn’t get away from stationary orbs. This effect probably allows Sydney to levitate if she were to leave orbs somewhere high and go down (with unclear degree of discomfort).
TK link allows Sydney to accelerate orbs with a thought, but this acceleration is “force-like”: when they encounter something relatively solid, like a skull, they stop without explicit command to do so (otherwise Dabbler would have a hole in her head). It also doesn’t allow Sydney to grab two (non-flight) orbs and levitate by moving them up, otherwise I expect that would’ve been mentioned.
Of course, we didn’t see any attempt to exploit ball abilities, Worm-style (sans pool training). It may be that tether effect can be weaponized, after all.
I think Concretia just works construction on the site, is just taking the opportunity to negotiate on coming in from the cold.
Can’t be that: she already had someone to call. Either she’s a competent member of the bad guys, or she’s already a good guy. Perhaps Concretia = Marble Maiden incognito after recruitment.
My love for Sydney’s priorities of concern is boundless.
I feel like she might actually have called Max, not her villains.
why? she wanted the bomb thing. She did NOT want Max on a hunt for her.
THough that wouldn’t leave her a ton of exit plan time.
So she could actually just be calling someone to talk to syd. I doubt kidnapping
Even though Concretia’s not harming Sydney, she wants something (most likely the statis pod) from this encounter, or she wouldn’t have broken cover. If it’s just the pod, she could’ve waited 30 seconds for Sydney to leave without revealing her presence.
Either there’s a political agenda of demonstrating to someone she can capture Sydney but not harm her, or she’s after Sydney (or at least a team member) specifically – but that seems a bit too convenient. Sort of an inverse plot armor effect.
I see Concretia has the Odo thing going on. You can tell she is a non-perfect shape shifter because her face has flat planes, and her hair looks like a lego snap-on piece, but boy, she spent a lot of time improving the polygon count of her cleavage!
I’m kind of surprised Syndey hasn’t gone into one of her patented swearing rants. Maybe it’s coming up as her tactical options are removed and she has nothing better to do with her voice.
Hopefully she will soon. And she’ll use the word vermillion in her swearing rant.
Note to self: keep high frequency sonic emitter (or some equivalent) in boot. You know, to turn stone and whatever else into sand.
her necklace really should have built in safety measures when someone removes it without an “Ok” and confirmation.
then it should send message “User disconnected” which they really should notice anyways.
If that’s Sydney’s phone I’m surprised Concretia got it unlocked so fast. Unless it’s facial recognition unlocked and she just pointed it at Halo first in between panels.
You do remember that moments ago, Sydney was using her phone to take a photo of the location of the Pod, right?
ok – I’m just gonna go ahead and be the guy that asks what are Concretia’s clothes made of?
Since they’re purple, I expect the same material the Hulk’s pants are made of.
Purple Bannerium. it’s the stretchy one
Not actually separate items to Concretia herself, but different colours in the material?
Sydney’s kept her new glasses a secret from everyone, so they’re no go. Besides, Concretia would simply crush them if Sidney made a move for them.
Honestly, it’s about time Halo was given a weakness… besides being obviously the weakest super of all. (She’s really not even a super, just a lucky lady with toys, and if you’re smart enough to keep her away from them, she doesn’t have anything to fall back on. That needs to be adressed now, if she’s to remain in ARC)
Why would keeping her glasses’ tech secret from the folks on Earth make them a no go? I believe someone else pointed out that she could contact Cora and Cora could probably contact Dabbler. I mean, that would mean she might have to divulge her secret tech, but that’s only a “might.” They also might be able to explain away how Dabbler got wind of Sydney’s situation, especially since Dabbler does seem to adhere to the concept of not giving tech to societies that haven’t reached that level of development on their own.
And I don’t think Sydney would have to reach for them to use them. She’s been able to use them just by moving her eyes before. Even if she did reach for them, since they aren’t known to be special tech, Concretia would have no reason to act. People with glasses adjust them on their faces all the time, so Sydney’s movement could just as easily be perceived as normal and non-threatening.
That is, nobody outside Cora knows about them, so she can’t send them messages without a LOT of explaining.
And likely a major dressing dowqn for cheating, having them confiscated, etc.
And second, Concretia isn’t the sort to take risks. If she’s trying to touch an article of clothing, better to destroy it. Surprises are NOT good in her line of work.
Cora’s in the fight. Assuming she’s not otherwise disabled, she’d be a great candidate for a quick text.
I’m insanely curious as to who she called. I mean, it could be anyone in Bad Guys LLC, but if that’s the case, which one in particular is she calling? And who was behind the idea to band together to go after Archon again? I want to know who’s running this show!!
You would have thought that Sydney would have known better.
Never. Split. The. Party!
The way Sydney is stuck in that chair makes it look like the orbs are anchored to her butt rather than her head.
Center of mass, most likely.
There’s a rule about masks?
For the writers, an astute villain, would remove them too!
although half the time an astute villain wouldn’t have to as most masks aren’t that great.
The venture bros had a funny scene like this where Wide Whale mocked The Monarch (who was dressed as “The Blue Morpho” whose mask was a blue disco mask), saying something along the lines of “doesn’t he sound and look familiar,” “cheek bones that’s the only way we can tell who someone is”
funny enough an inverse of this is a famous moment in Justice League’s animated series where Lex Luthor switches minds with the Flash and unmasks him in the bathroom mirror and has no idea who he is.
but yeah, if you are doing an edgy 90’s comic or a 2010’s Neo deconstructionist comic taking the mask off becomes the first thing the villain does…*if the hero even has a mask*…masks were hit and miss on new characters in the Dark Ages and Deconstructionist age; the current “neo deconstructionist age (in which you try to treat it like the real world but also allow more edge room for more fantastical elements like accepting super powers, magic, colorful costumes…fun…. than deconstructionist did), its become this sort of odd ball thing, where the mask is more a symbol (see MCU movies, Spider-man is the hold out trying to be a bronze age hero in a neo deconstructionist world).
all that said yeah, not taking the hero’s mask off was more a silver age into bronze age rule for the villains, even if bronze age did subvert it a few times as more a convenience of the plot that the mask wasn’t completely removed or something happened to trick the villain into thinking the real identity was a trick.
Well, I’d think Spidey’s mask helps keep the identity secret, just as Tony’s did, until he decided he’d just tell the world who he was, right off the bat.
I don’t think anyone else in the MCU actually wears a mask to try and keep their identity secret. Maybe Scott and Janet, but the feds know who they are.
Ant-man told two random kids in End Game he was Ant-Man. It feels like Spider-man was the only super hero really trying to hide their identity in the MCU.
Mostly, from Aunt May!
Whoops, For the writers; an astute villain, would remove the mask; like what was tried, in the first batman movie!
Yes, a good writer would have the villain attempt to remove the mask, and have something to prevent them; a great writer will have that ‘something’ not be shit
In one of the original Spider-Man trilogy (can’t remember if it was the second or third), Osmond had Spidey unconscious and removed the mask, only to find his best friend under it, he subsequently lost his memory… for awhile, but eventually remembered and then learnt his father was an arsehole who basically killed himself, not Spidey’s fault
Concretia is evidently still playing by Silver Age Rules.
My question is where are the halo orbs tethered, if its her head or heart, she should be able to get out of that chair by doing a squat. So it seems they are tethered to her hip? It seems an odd choice, but if they were tethered anywhere else, she would be able to squirm out of that chair by contorting herself a bit.
I’m guessing center of mass.
magnet rules most likely, an all over attraction and not like an actual invisible balloon string.
I quite like the unwritten rules comments here. “Utility belts are fair game. Masks are against the rules”. Etiquette between supers starting to show itself, which considering in universe general awareness of supers is relatively new (I know they’ve existed for some time, but the public appearance of them seems to be recent, as in a few years at most) it means people are already adjusting to the new normal.
Supehero COMICS have existed in this setting since the 40s, though.
life imitating art and all that.