Grrl Power #917 – Tata karate
To be honest, I’m not sure how that rebar got through Henchwench’s leg, if Brüt’s knee could take Maxima’s .557 round. I will say though, Max wasn’t using an armor piercing Tyrannosaur round. She knows she’s not Archon’s best shot, and she was aiming at the guy’s knee, not his billboard of a chest. She didn’t want to put a hole through everything between Times Square and the Statue of Liberty if she missed.
Yeah, so Henchwench can definitely use powers better than the original super sometimes. This mostly happens when she has access to multiple suites of powers, like Brüt has some pain resistance, which is why GhostWench doesn’t seem bothered by MeatWench’s shin-ka-bob, whereas Concretia could definitely feel people zapping her meat.
Although GhostWench doesn’t have pain resistance… well, she has pain resistance to meat pain, but not ghost pain. Look, super powers are complicated.
I read a book I liked! True Hero (Champion is Playing Book #1) I’m going to break my own rule, and recommend a book that takes place largely in a video game. It bypasses my cynical resilience to the… uh, it’s not a genre, really. The framing device. It’s a book about people playing a game as a competition, not a book about people for whom the game is reality because the author was too lazy to come up with a better system for the characters to have magic abilities and stat screens.
The premise is a guy gets Isekaied into the relatively near future (this point seems largely irrelevant to the book other than putting the MC in a position where he’s ignorant of just about everything) where all aptitude for employment is determined by everyone playing a multiplayer DOTA/AoE type game. (Age of Empires, not Area of Effect, you yoots.) The upper class of people literally go to school to learn the best strategies, and the main character, knowing almost nothing about how to play of course proceeds to kick everyone’s ass up left and sideways, almost entirely by accident.
That by itself isn’t such a unique idea, but the reason I decided to check the book out is that it switches POVs to his opponents after most major skirmishes, and they’re all going out of their minds trying to figure him out and predict his next move, assuming he’s some super-genius savant, and not a lucky idiot. And that is pretty funny to me. I’ve only read the first book, and I don’t know if that gag would be sustainable through the next two books, but maybe books 2 and 3 do something new with the idea.
I’ll also say that the people in the book who make the game must be super frustrated that no one before this guy figured out the millions of hidden systems in the game, like… this doesn’t happen in the book, but for example, if you chop down a thousand trees (and why would the player when he can assign peasants to do it) then he gets the ability to move through forested areas without incurring any movement penalties or something like that. Everyone else just plays their version of critical path, and this guy does a bunch of crazy stuff and it all pays off in spades.
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She didn’t think of that…
Hench hasn’t “unphased” though. :(
you mean:
she is not unphased.
Well if she is unphased currently, and in phase when she’s meat, then i guess you could say she remains and/or looks unphased.
Really depends on your definition of phased out or phased in.
Maybe she did not take it for granite
Nope
Oh, sense Concretia is helping, does that mean her body was recovered?
Nah, it could be she’s taking advantage of her handlers being gone for the moment.
It’s possible that, now that she’s figured out how to control her concrete form remotely, she’s doing the whole “two places at once” schtick, placating her evil bosses on one end, while aiding the good guys on the other. It might be a lot of juggling, but learning to multitask is a useful skill.
Timeline-wise, it’s possible, but seems a bit hasty. However, she may feel confident enough that her body’s about to be recovered to help the heroes. It results in much the same effect; she’s more than happy to do what she can, if she feels like she’s not in danger.
While I posted it last minute on that page I did come up with a pretty quick possible timeline, Cora could potentially have save her body in just a few minutes given the stealth drones, detecting things like unique life energy signatures, an astral link imprinting through sub-space, or just a ship that has to have a generator constantly going even when docked for the life support system on-board. Add her ship in stealth run.
and either a quick snatch and grab or (speculating here) a stealth drone shoots a tracer onto Concretia’s body and the ship then teleports the body on-board (assuming Cora’s ship can teleport larger mass than the hand held teleporters Cora and Dabbler use).
*splash and grab. as in ‘what’s left of the bag guys is splashed across the floor and three walls.’
Henchwench turned against her bosses, so it’s probably safe to beat on her from Concretia’s point of view.
This.
If Brut only managed to convince the 67% of the shareholders that was necessary to fire HW, HW’s response to it probably convinced most of the rest. She’s probably down to one supporter besides herself, though that will probably be the largest shareholder. I’d guess around a 10-15% share.
The people guarding Concretia? If they’re paying attention to the fight going on, they’re probably not guarding her anymore, unless they are being coerced into their roles, too.
“At least”, not “only”. There’s no indication that anyone said “no”.
With a name like “Ms Pedantic” you should be a lot more careful with pedantic corrections. It may be slightly embarrassing when someone starts a sentence with “if” and your reply ignores that conditional.
It is a fact that Brut convinced “at least two-thirds,” changing “only” to “at least” would make the “if” inappropriate, because we know this as a fact, it is not just a possibility denoted by “if.” But as was stated it is a possibility that he convinced only 67%, since there is no indication everyone said “yes.”
Aguest – If that were the only sentence in the paragraph, and if I were responding solely to that sentence, then you might have a point. My response was to the entire paragraph.
There is no indication that ANYONE said “no”, let alone what such person’s shareholding might be.
You definitely need to change your name. There is nothing in my post or Some Ed’s that is countered by the fact that it is possible that everyone said yes. The part about shares was a pure guess, I assume based on making up drama irrelevant to the story.
You had 2 sentences in your previous post, the first was specific to 1 part and would have made that part wrong the second is irrelevant, because the existence of a different possibility does not eliminate the possibility of the scenario Some Ed proposed.
Her bosses just fired Henchwench. She’s probably allowed to help, possibly even ordered to.
Though I suspect that Sidney and Cora are on a rescue mission.
However they may wonder why she is here, instead of interrogating/transporting/containing/whatevering their kidnap victim.
I think after seeing Cora in actions she was like “I have just seen what this woman will do to help her ally, I want to be an ally of her allies, not the ally of the enemy of her allies. I would like to join team “not reduced to a bloody mist” please,”
She was already considering it before Cora showed up
Concretia already was quite unhappy with the situation and only contained by threats. She can only change sides when the threat to her real body is removed. Cora wouldn’t make much of a difference, especially given that Concretia’s rock/spirit form can’t be killed, so the threat of shooting her holds much less sway.
Oh thank god, I was thinking “JESUS lady, will you ever stay down? And shut up?”
She probably CAN’T shut up. She shows all the signs of clinical logorrhea, the pathological need to talk even when you have nothing to say. It’s a perfectly real, extremely annoying, psychological condition.
Your explanation of clinical logorrhea was too terse. A proper descriptive explanation should take all the electrons.
Clinical longorrhea? Why so fancy? We just call it verbal diarrhea.
Seems just as fancy to me.
Probably already been speculated, but trying to fire Henchwench is sensible but also a thought trap. The other supes should just quit the company.
With the way this fights going im sure she put some fine print in size .000001 font saying no one is allowed to quit ever or something.
But that would make it an illegal contract, and therefore be null and void already… yes i know a bad guy contract in the first place sounds silly. and un-enforcable, but if that’s how she gets her powers, then she needs it to be a “legal” contract to work, but that clause would make it “illegal” and therefore it should break it once she reveals that she did it and someone points that out to her… her powers should disappear kinda like how gravity fails to work on Wile E. Coyote for a few seconds after he runs off a cliff chasing The Roadrunner…
She still has Concretia’s powers though. If there is a separate contract that binds them, that is still signing under duress. Which makes the contract void, but she still has the geokenesis powers anyway. Does that mean Hench has to be TOLD that the contract is void? or told that she was fired for the powers to be taken?
Power of attorney for “comatose” patient?
You can’t just use power of attorney to override the whole “don’t subject fellow humans to utterly inhumane levels of torture.” Or however they phrase it in the lawbooks.
Tell that to doctors who keep a patient on lifesupport for longer than necessary, just to continue
billingmilking the grieving familyIs that usually the doctor’s fault, or a culture that thinks no amount of suffering is worse than death?
Or rather, a culture that thinks suffering is an important part of life, and attempting to escape it is cheating and must be stopped at all costs.
Some doctor’s take their hypocritical oath far too seriously and believe they are GOD!
Plus their egos won’t allow them to ‘lose’ a patient, even if they are only being kept alive via machines
No, G. They usually just dont want to be found guity of a crime, since euthanasia and assisted suicide is considered a felony in 42 or 43 states. Doctors generally dont like going to jail and hospitals dont like being sued.
Doctors are usually quite blase about the idea that patients die.
In my experience as a nurse, Doctor’s are just bad at explaining to the patient’s family that modern medicine can’t do everything. The patient’s family members insist that the doctor do everything they can to extend the patient’s life by any means possible – because most people incorrectly believe that medical science can do anything. And then the doctor sighs and says “Okay, if that’s what you really want.”
It’s an ongoing problem in the medical field that we don’t have the death talk with the families of our older patients who are getting close to death. DNR’s and advance directives should be much more common than they are.
There are some great articles about how doctors choose to die when they get old, or a terminal illness. The majority avoid the hospital and don’t even consider prolonging their life. They stay at home and just look for some quality months or years on hospice.
it seems at this point the contract was never bound by state laws or anything but was a “devil’s contract”, a type of spiritual contract bound by will and faith; and internal logic of the individual.
*although beings that tend to make such contracts have powers that bind themselves to their word, hence having to be very tricky as they can’t outright lie on a contract or make stuff up later*,
A Devil’s LLC?
sure, multiple parties isn’t unheard of. Re-framing a cult contract into a new context to have equal multi-party command of the same “devil” in the contract.
Concretia signed under duress
This contract is already ten sorts of illegal. But it looks like common law doesn’t apply to her contracts
ORRR – it’s based upon the belief of certain parties that it’s a legitimate contract. if that party stops believing in the legal enforceability of it, then the power(s) is/are no longer available to HW
Clearly the contract is whatever HW thinks it is. HW apparently has to cosign her own termination, which wouldn’t be a restriction that would hold up in court, so an HW contract is effective even if illegal…. at least until someone convinces HW that it isn’t.
Looks like Arianna gets her shot to legally nullify the LLC, and/or the other members all quit, and/or Dabbler wakes up and uses some Demon/Devil-specific MacGuffin.
I hope so. Because at this point the LLC agreement can basically be whatever HW wants it to be. If HW wanted to add into the agreement that she can add other people as members without their signature (like Maxima), then by the same logic, she can do that, because hey… it’s not supposed to be a legal contract. Even though the whole point of an LLC operating agreement is a legal construction so that HW can be hired by multiple supers instead of just one, which one would have THOUGHT would mean it has to be an actual legitimate legal contract.
Considering the “only get superpowers from villains” shtick, I think her powers are partially constrained by her own belief system. What constitutes a “villain” from the universe’s perspective? A really nasty rock? A badly-cooked burger with salmonella?
But a power must have rules to be useful, which makes me think she needs the consent of the participants OR whoever controls those participants, thus allowing Concretia to remain in the fray. If we assume it was “everyone” she’d get every power and then explode due to conflicting abilities and a general lack of fleshly ability to contain them all. Which wouldn’t make it a superpower so much as a self-suicide technique.
I mean, even if we assume she can designate people to keep herself within the limit, someone with her level of ADHD behavior probably couldn’t stop herself from trying out “just one more.” On the same token; maybe that’s a downside of her power. More power = more crazy. She was clearly competent enough to muss up the contract in front of several more powerful (at the time) supers, but after the fact couldn’t keep her mouth shut for a moment.
Anyway, consent and intent are a strong part of devil lore. The consent part being the third-party signatory has entered into the contract through some process. It’s usually simple a signature though it sometimes involves blood (stricter) or a verbal agreement (looser) to set the terms. In nearly all stories the signature isn’t possible under direct duress; results vary, but from what I’ve seen the signatory is simply not able to close the contract. Otherwise the devil could force lots of people to sign and become super-immortal thus making the story end. That’s not a very good story. Rather, they often have to invoke outside parties (a lover, a friend, a family member) and use those to torment the signatory. The intent part is twisted quite readily by the devil, but is almost always contractually binding to the limits imposed by the various meanings of the words used. “I wish for a million bucks.” *is trampled by 1,000,000 male deer* Again this would vary depending upon Dave’s aims, but he’s already hinted she might be part devil, so there you go.
My main problem/confusion is that the contract isnt actually about the employment, which is where everyone is trying to use this whole ‘infernal contract’ workaround. It’s about forming an artificial person with multiple powers for her to work for, which is the reason for the LLC existing. That would NEED to be legal, under actual laws of the state they’re in, in order for that ‘artificial person’ to work.
Otherwise why not just say that she can add anyone to the LLC, regardless of whether they signed or not. Or why not just add more caveats to allow the ‘artificial person’ that the LLC represents can have the sum total of a year’s worth of power in advance (ie, so she’d be more powerful than the LLC members in each of their powers).
Although she’s sort of proving she IS more powerful than each of the LLC members in each individual power already, so hell, she probably did write that in after all. She’s doing things that Concretia can’t do, and seems to be tougher than Brut too. This is just such a dumb use of a contract that it does seem it’s just a ‘Hench Wench is a power duplciator and just THINKS she needs a contract for this LLC thing to take the powers of several people instead of one, since the actual contract is gobbeldygook nonsense at this point.
on your second point.
You cannot put someone else’s name on an infernal contract (or any supernatural contract for that matter) and make it stick.
Hell some will actually magically change the signature to your name if you try to forge someone’s signature. Hell this has happened in stories before; a person signs the contract, laughs because they signed someone’s else’s name; but then the devil shows them the contract and there in red is their own name.
What matters is WHO signs it.
-the only exception to this is fae/divine contracts where you can list a dependent, or not as yet born children as being subject to it.
You can’t just say, yeah, you also get this other person involved…who is not your child, dependent, or yourself…it doesn’t work that way. It is a spiritual contract between the signer and the power behind that contract.
Also yes, Henchwench is clearly a power copier whose limitation is based on perspective. We’ve been theorizing this since the moment she insisted she had to work for a “super villain” which is a moral perception not an absolute fact; especially if she doesn’t know them.
I need to make an amendment to what I just typed.
There is one type of demonic pact where you can sign your underage dependent or child. The betrothal pact; also known as the on-going prosperity pact. In short sacrifice them or hand them over to the demon at a specific point in time.
-common misconception is you can sacrifice anyone, but if its not personal its not a sacrifice as you don’t lose anything.
*feeding random strangers to a monster for continued prosperity for your town is a different pact and probably didn’t involve anyone signing anything and was more the local supernatural entity pulling a mafia scenario where you give them what they want and they help you, don’t and they punish you. Or the Land spirit version where they hold anyone living on that land as beholden to the contract as a kind of land lord deal…but those tend to be simpler..as well, and don’t require the current inhabitant to sign anything.
the on-going prosperity tends to be more an agreement for a specific family and they prosper personally from and know to make regular or once a generation sacrifices; or the devil shows up personally to collect the “tithe” sort of deal.
*always important to know WHAT you are dealing with as terms will vary*
but no the signer of the contract is who prospers, the only way Maxima is getting on that contract won’t be to empower anyone but as a “I will grant you this power but in exchange you must kill (or) deliver this person to me”.
The signing someone else’s name thing as part of the contract as stated above typically applies to the condition of (payment), not empowerment or benefits from it.
funny enough the betrothal pact often has a clause attached, the impurity clause. If the chosen sacrifice does not fit specific criteria at the time they are to be sacrificed or handed over to the demon in question the pact is voided for future generations and the current generation will be made to pay in full…or suffer in other words. and yes this criteria is often things like be a virgin. Funny enough there are also cases of “never laid eyes on a man”, and “never fell in love with anyone else”.
so yeah, there are times someone else can be part of the contract but they are not benefiting from it.
(and no, I am not considering the cases where the demon actually takes care of their harem as benefitting as the perception of the signers can’t be that its a benefit to be sacrificed…although in a cult mindset may still ramble on as it being an honor; although they’d never want to be sacrificed themselves or anyone they really care about, so you know they are full of it just trying to convince themselves it must be done).
But her powers are not based on a contract. That’s the problem. Her powers are just based on who she works for. The contract is just a way for her to work for several people at once. So I don’t know how all this ‘infernal contract’ stuff would fit into it. The LLC has nothing really to do with her powers in any direct way. it’s just a way to say ‘she works for several people’ instead of ‘she works for one person’ – and so I keep getting rather stuck on how it should actually be… yknow…. actual human laws that the contract, an LLC operating agreement, is based on.
If it’s not based on laws, I have no idea why it should matter if she just has someone else sign as Maxima’s proxy since none of the other legal constraints on an LLC agreement have been recognized so far.
Her power is power copy. The contract is a standard demon servant contract with multiple masters. That’s really all it is. The benefactors of such contracts are those who agree to them and thus sign. In straight simple terms she would serve those who signed.
If someone does not sign themselves then the spiritual acceptance factor does not come into play. Ergo you can’t put someone else’s name as a benefactor of the infernal agreement.
Henchwench getting their powers for the sake of understanding the game of Demonic pacts should be ignored as it is an outside factor caused by a pre existing ability.
In short you sign here I serve you until I breach the contract, terms are met, or payment comes due.
“The contract is a standard demon servant contract with multiple masters.”
What you’re describing sounds more like an employment contract. That’s not what an LLC agreement is. An LLC agreement is just a way for create a ‘legal person’ in the form of a company, which would be made up of mulitple owners called LLC members. It’s different than an employment contract, which is an entirely different contract.
Honestly I’m not even sure why Hench Wench would have been signing the LLC operating agreement in the first place, since she’s NOT an LLC member. That would be a completely separate contract. I dunno. Maybe DaveB confused an employment contract with an LLC contract,or maybe Hench Wench confused the two. because, like you said, she’s actually a power copier who just has no clue how her powers actually work and has constructed this elaborate pseudo-legal reasoning because she has watched too many reruns of Boston Legal.
I hate to break it to you, Pander, seeing as your livelihood kind of depends on it, but law is nothing more than a shared delusion. It’s a religion, a belief system about how people should or will act, based in part on the record of how people have acted in the past. Is the law found in the text, or the intent of the writers, or in the judicial outcomes? The law has no more power than the people give it. The legality of an action has no bearing on whether or not it is possible, only on how people will respond to it.
The LLC probably isn’t even necessary: they formed it under the presumption that HenchWench could only be employed by one person at a time, despite many people working multiple jobs to make ends meet, and sometimes working those jobs simultaneously, though usually without the knowledge or approval of any of their employers. Everyone’s hung up on all these other arguments about HenchWench’s power, but what does it even mean to be employed? Her power certainly seems dependent on semantics or belief rather than any factual state of the universe.
I’m not trying to use any infernal contract workaround. I’m explaining what I know about what was hinted by Dave. TBH what he said is probably just to handwave the actual legal problems you’d already sussed out. The more I think about this, the more I can’t seem to include Concretia in my OWN reasoning, even for an infernal contract. After all, one major part of devil lore is that you can’t flat out torture someone into agreeing; it has to be some kind of mind-break where they become willing through their own free will or at least a trick. But Concretia seems rather smart; I don’t see her getting tricked into agreeing to a contract which gives her less rights than other members. *shrugs*
yeah she clearly signed under duress, human or demon contract that won’t stand up in either’s court.
Could have a nasty forfeiture clause, though. A punishment for early termination. Though given they no longer have anything to gain, they might as well.
Even though the contract as a whole is illegal, it’s framed in legal terminology so that it can still function in the spirit of the contract.
Yes, every party of every contract must have a way to “opt out” for every party that had entered into the contract.
Yes, firing Henchwench would indeed work in order to make her lose the powers she gained.
What HW did was to make the terms & conditions complex & unwieldy enough that it would be it difficult and/or time-consuming to fire her.
In short, the usage of legal legal terminology, red tape, & a bureaucratic run-around is a lot more common than most people would think…Consider the pages & pages of legalese BS you would have to slog through just to sign into the End User License Agreement for software you’ve just downloaded & installed as being a good example of this.
That doesn’t make any sense. If the contract is illegal then it’s also illegal “in the spirit.” You can’t start off with an illegal contract and then it magically becomes legal just because someone decided it was so… Unless that’s Hench’s power. But we’re talking a real edge case; don’t try to apply that to real contracts.
A contract can be illegal, but you would still have to have that decided by a judge before you could force the other party to cease attempting to hold you to the terms of said contract. And that hasn’t yet happened in the case of EVIL, INC. LLC.
Hell, it might even be illegal to call your LLC a corporation, not that would necessarily make the LLC contract itself illegal or void.
Yes, you are correct and that is also one of my prior arguments. I am just pointing out that if the contract is illegal then it can’t “function in the spirit of the contract” because it’s not binding. What we’re talking about then is nothing more than a verbal agreement that people decided to write down and sign. Unless as noted it’s part of Hench’s power set, in which case illegality doesn’t actually matter.
Makes me wonder if Henchwench is conning them about the contract, and that burning the signed original is what breaks it…..i.e. her power attaches to the contract itself, not the employment.
one, Henchwench has just put herself in vehemence territory. I think she might get an invitation to stand down one more time. if she continues with crazy, well we won’t need to debate her powerset anymore.
two, if she stops fighting and ‘lives’ (having dirty rebar rudely shoved through ones lower leg has significant health consequences) its going to be important to figure out where her legal foundation actually is. if she’s using distorted US law will she recognize US legal authority? I.E. can someone say from SCOTUS point out the contract is void from the start? or is she working infernal law? or is she just that insane?
any rate- I am currently sitting at 60% not going to be an issue. I don’t think hench is going to have a second appearance.
That would be awesome. XD
HenchWench:
Weakness: The Supreme Court!
XD
@Rippy: Holy fuck! That was hilarious and would be the best weakness. Just have someone (Sydney) who specializes in Rules Lawyering and a passing knowledge of the law. Then throw them at Hench Wench in the middle of battle. Or teleport in (Via Harem) a judge from the Supreme Court to auto No Sell her.
@Palmnvos:
1) 100% agree with you. Although she’s not crazy as much as she is drunk on power from having so many movesets to play with. She was intelligent enough to:
– Know that forming an LLC would let her have tons of powersets to play with.
– How to game the powers to be more efficient and more powerful (in some cases) than the original owners.
– Get the LLC Members to ignore her villainess monologuing under the guise of “practicing her villainy”.
– Fight Maxima to a stand still for longer than a few seconds (which anyone can attest is really hard to pull off).
And
– She was only stopped fully by Concretia punching her boob (which hurts like a mofo. Seriously, guys talk about how painful it is to be kicked in the balls, but I bet that’s nothing compared to the heart stopping pain of getting hit in the tits. Like I’m still sympathy cringing for her.)
But yeah. She definitely needs to join the Rogues Gallery along with Vemmy, Deus X Machina (Name, X scar, and his business) (and his minions), and Sciona (honestly at near the 1000 mark. There’s not a whole lot of rogues, and most of those rogues don’t really do anything villainous most of the time. As we deal with 1 shot villains.
2) With her going full ghost. I’m sure that it would auto fix the damage and rust. That and it takes a while for rust to cause tetanus.
2B) I doubt she’s insane. Rather, she’s that opportunistic. I think she works off of a mix of Infernal Laws, Distorted Laws of whatever region she’s working in, and most importantly looks for ways to opportunistically get a legs up. (In the last panel, when we saw her doing the contract. They were all signing the contract. She signed last, and went wide eyed, and was full of glee to see that they all signed it to where she was the Owner / Manager of the LLC. Meaning they couldn’t fire her, and she could keep her toys without being fired.)
So less crazy, and more “Happier than a child at Xmas, that’s been allowed to go to a candy store with infinite funds.”
Sorry for the long post.
TL;DR: Hench Wench definitely needs to be added to the Rogues Gallery that’s sadly lacking in Rogues, and she’s less crazy, as much as she was extremely happy to find a legal loophole thanks to the other member’s not reading the contract, that let her keep her toys.
That and we’re definitely loving how opportunistic and savvy she is to not only pull that off, but be able to use the powers of the owners better than the users themselves ever could. (It’s like seeing an evil, super powered Twilight Sparkle, that’s human with questionable fashion sense.)
English is my only language. and sometimes it does not work. I think of hench is as crazy as the individual who stole a Hellcat and outran both the police copter and the news copter following him. power mad may be an adequate description.
as far as phasing- I’m not so sure that the damage would be healed. that suggests that phasing uses the dominant self image to reconstruct the body rather than a memory of its last state. what phasing did is allow hench to escape the fact that the rebar was also imbedded in the asphalt. using dominant self image means that it is possible to heal diseases and old age by phasing.
true tetanus takes a while… but injuries like that bleed a lot. and there are several vital systems that could be damaged that way. Max is not a surgeon either. a vein, or an artery cut or nicked (and there are more than just 1 of each down there!) would be a very immediate issue, for example. there is a reason the first aid people tell you in an impalement- do not remove the item. I can believe that while she is insubstantial she is fine, but she might want to journey to an emergency room before phasing back.
she’s already in the Rogues gallery. But do look up what Max says about those in her Rogues Gallery. If hench doesn’t calm down soon, well supposedly its less paperwork that way.
My gut says that HW’s not going to stand down, that MAXIMA can’t touch her when she’s all-ghost, and that Concretia will have some trouble containing her fully – I am getting closer to thinking that her defeat will come at the hands of someone skilled with rules-lawyering (Sydney or Arianna)
I don’t think Grrl Power is lacking in the Rogues Gallery. The sheer numbers is huge & many of them are competent enough to hold their own if they’re organized around a well-thought plan.
The big problem with the Rogue’s Gallery right now is that a lot of them are already in jail (Vehemence, Death Tolls, Shadow Claw, others)…If they’re not in jail, they’re in a dubious enough legal position (those who were at the big parking lot battle but were released because they were coerced to fight) that they have to stay low & quiet until they can get in position to execute a plan of action.
As far as it goes for many of the villains, they’re basically on a “hiatus” for the meantime but you can bet that DaveB has a lot of resources to call upon so that the rest of the comic won’t get boring…
I don’t know what DaveB promised, but killing off a paid cameo character seems … rude at best. That’s not to say that they become main or even secondary characters, but killing them puts an end to any further use.
And yeah, I know my quote from you doesn’t say “killed,” but you implied it a bunch in your post and I didn’t want to quote the whole thing.
Legally the contract is non binding Concretia, was forced to sign under duress which means it holds about as much water legally as a bucket with the bottom blown out. Never stopped a villain though right, unless their powers are derived from that contract having to be legally binding in the first place.
How does that even work? How does a physical meat body merge with a ghost so that the meat just loses its substance? Did the meat get disintegrated?
She essentially made herself intangible to “phase” out of it.
She basically just ascended herself to elemental status.
Or to be less awe about it, she just pulled a Danny Phantom and went ghost, figuring if she can project what is essentially an elemental spirit as an astral projection she might be able to phase her body into the same dimension and take on a fully elemental spirit’s properties…which for elemental-morphs is actually fairly common. See a wood-morph merge into the sides of trees, petromorphs turn intangible and fuse into stone to form bodies, ect..its really the more common version of this power than what Concretia had going on.
Honestly when we first saw Concretia in the parking lot brawl that’s what I thought her power was, turning intangible and aligning her astral quality with the asphalt to form a body from it. Finding out she did as a project was the weird and different part to me.
I have no idea how it works. No combination of her existing powers should be allowing that unless there’s some other LLC member who maybe has some sort of ‘shapeshifting’ or ‘matter alteration’ power or something, for her to combine that with Concretia’s power.
I’m still trying to figure out how she’s talking both through her real self and her ghost self.
unless this is something Concretia could do, but it would be too strenuous or painful for her to do and Brut’s power is stacking to give her the added strength and pain resistance to pull it off.
the simple addition of “more power” can add a lot and new feats to some powers.
“unless this is something Concretia could do”
But HW specifically said she’s doing it by combining multiple powers together. Which is still making me wonder how the heck that would work with the people who’s powers she has. I just don’t see how Concretia’s power can let her remove her physical body from existence itself. It’s basically getting rid of the one weakness Concretia has.
I’m only assuming that this is just a way to give HW any power needed, by saying ‘oh there’s a person in the LLC with that power as well, but we havent met him or her yet.’ Which seems…. sort of annoying honestly, because it basically makes her potentially omnipotent, and omnipotent characters make for boring characters (IMHO at least). If she suddenly decided to teleport everyone away, we could then assume that Opal’s in the LLC as well. If she suddenly mind controls people, we can assume that a telepath is in the LLC, etc. It’s just so open-ended right now. Heck we can assume right now that she can pull OTHER people out of their bodies, just based on this new power she just came up with.
I feel like it’s becoming more and more inconsistent on how her powers work as this goes on.
Stacking means combining in terms of powers. The rest of my post answered how. you just need Brut to amplify/boost other powers with the increase of strength adapting to apply to other powers beyond physical might. Also Henchwench may just be guessing on how she is doing it.
A whole lot of your reasoning really does seem to rely on Hench Wench having no real idea how her powers actually work, it seems. :)
The sad thing is you may be correct.
Unreliable narrator seems pretty common in this comic. Which makes sense and is standard in deconstructionist and neo deconstructionist era super hero stories. It’s like powers are part of your body but they don’t come with a manual or book of skills or a heritage of this power like Supernatural beings have. So unlike older comics it makes sense they wouldn’t instantly know everything about what they can do and it’s all trial and error filtered through their frame of reference.
You are 100% right on this. I wanted to say that considering I’ve disagreed with some of your other points. I’m not a fan of open-ended power sets. Too many stories are like, eh, dump a buncha junk in my bag of holding; 32 years later – ah there’s this thing I needed. I don’t think it’s intentional in this case so much as Dave either didn’t think through her powers or perhaps her “limitations” being a red herring were the intent a la Vehemence.
So if Henchwench’s termination of employment kicks in while she’s a ghostie, is she going to be stuck in that form?
Doubt it, given that’s Concretia’s power.
Depends on if Cree was (is?) part of the same L.L.C. or a different one (Henchie is smart, wouldn’t put it past her to have more than one L.L.C. going at the same time, and none of them know about the other(s))
Were I Hench Wench, I’d have written it so the LLC in question had 1 employee. Which is to say, Hench Wench. Well, actually, I’d probably set the LLC up as a shell company owned by a subsidiary of an incorporated entity of HENCH WENCH INC, itself a subsidiary of HENCH WENCH CO.
not because it isn’t still technically illegal, but because it would make it just that much harder to fire her. Given the technicalities involved, discovery could take 6 months per iteration, never mind getting on the docket and before the judge. And as long as the CEO of HENCH WENCH CO. responds with alacrity to all legally rendered requests (Once you find the blasted company), and can provide documented evidence demonstrating that the CO had no idea what it’s subsidiary was doing, the limited liability aspect of the LLC still kicks in to safe-guard the parent company.
This doesn’t help with her criminal case, but it does let her keep her money.
(Criminally, since she has 3+ years of using Cree’s powers, thanks to the above wrangles, to her mind, turning herself into State authorities is the better option. They can’t keep her astral mode in check, and she gets credit for turning herself in, and for time served, even if she isn’t technically “in there” – in the same way a prisoner in a coma still gets credit for time served (based on the current definitions. there are SO MANY laws that need to be patched in light of super powers))
*Turning herself in to state authorities. “Turning herself [i]into[/i] state authorities” would be shapeshifting and self-duplication.
we need more things to charge her with impersonating an official might be fun and easy to convict.
“akes a while for rust to cause tetanus. Rust does not cause, the Tetanus Bacterium causes, causes Tetanus.
Unlikely, because she has merged an astral form she got from Cree’s power back into her regular body to alter the regular body. If the power goes away, then both the astral form and the alteration on the body would go away.
On the other hand, we haven’t had an on-screen origin or radiation accident, and we don’t know how HW got her powers, so this could be an opportunity for something maniacal.
Punch to a ghost hooter probably hurts even worse than a punch to a meat hooter, because she would feel it in her soul.
not so much more painful as differently painful,
kind of like the difference between too hot and too spicy.
So how much time does she get for “cospiracy to commit yada yada”? And is it twice as much as “conspiracy to commit yada”?
No clue, but it’s definitely a hell of lot more than conspiracy to commit nada.
What about committing Yoda?
Commit it she did, hmmmmmm?
Multiple times she did commit she did last night.
Essentially, it adds additional penalties to sentencing if found guilty, as compared to the normal penalty for a single “yada.”
She seems pretty determined to make sure she doesn’t get time in prison. Just sayin.
Yeah I can totally empathize with concrete being upset that some upstart is more creative with her powers than she was. Also if they haven’t rescued her body yet maybe she can use the whole Halo promise you rescued me to get me to turn on my kidnappers to get lean during her trial
I’m a bit concerned about how they’re going to contain someone who has so many powers and a grasp of legal fu enough to get around virtually everything they’re throwing at her. Like they can put her in jail, sure, but all she has to do is get the right people to agree to a contract and she’ll be back at it.
Admittedly, I’m working from the principle of supervillain jails being useless because that’s how the bad guys get to keep coming back.
Solitary confinement in ultra-supermax while Arianna legally nullifies her LLC/contract.
I guess nullifying her LLC/contract won’t be quick or easy even for Arianna since she shrugged off the firing thanks to her fine print and her powers acknowledged it as valid. In the meanwhile they need special containment measures for her intangibility else she walks out of any supermax.
I mean maybe. At this point it feels like the small print of her contracts has small print below that, and small print below that, just in case.
True. If the demonic relationship of HW powers holds true, any pact with the devil can be theoretically undone in some way, but nullifying her contract likely requires retrieving and analyzing the exact terms by crack team of top lawyers. I suspect summary nullification by a judge won’t work. Unless HW can be persuaded to cooperate, but she seems too power-mad and malicious for that.
Alternatively, Archon needs to work with Concretia to devise a way of defying her specific form of ghostly intangibility. It looks like she just needs safe retrieval of her body and a little orientation and paperwork to join Archon on a work-release program like Jabberwocky.
It’s small print all the way down to the turtles.
Honestly, skipping past solitary and just giving her her own prison far away from anyone else would probably be the safest bet, but denying a perp all forms of interaction with the outside world probably treads dangerously close to cruel and unusual.
Maybe her manic sociopathy could be grounds for declaring her unfit to enter any contract without consent from a court-appointed guardian? Though that’s banking on her powers being beholden to the local legal system, which is kind of an unknown quantity right now…
If HW is as smart as she thinks she is, she probably has a retainer from a couple of villains with powers that will help her escape. The contract takes effect on her capture, and results in her having to perform a job for them.
That’s a possibility. No one really knows enough about how her powers work. Realistically, sometimes you would just have to plan for a super-criminal to escape. and close gaps in your security by trial and error.
I have no idea what she has a grasp of fu-wise, but it’s definitely not legal-fu, because nothing she’s said about how an LLC operating agreement makes sense if you use any legal knowledge. It’s like she got most of her legal knowledge from watching Lionel Hutz on the Simpsons.
Oh god, she probably did, because that would be funny.
I swear her logic is making my brain ache. :) Mainly because there is no actual logic, and she keeps making up new stuff, which goes against how an LLC agreement works.
Firing yourself only if 2/3rd agree (which actually can make sense if she’s the non-member LLC manager), but Brut not knowing about that? Okay fine- he’s a proper idiot. I’ll accept that. BUT…
Firing yourself only if you agree to get fired? No. THAT IS NOT HOW AN LLC AGREEMENT WORKS. ARRRRRGH. (if there was an emoji of pulling my hair out in frustration, I’d put it here)
Then everyone saying the LLC agreement is actually an infernal contract for some reason, even though…. why? Why would that have anything to do with infernal contracts when the only reason to have the LLC agreement was to have an artificial entity that she can be hired by which has all the supervillain powers in one group? An LLC would need to be subject to the laws of the state to be an LLC after all. I dunno. Brain hurts from this.
Depending on the Hell this contract as an infernal contract will work until it is challenged, and Henchwench being only 1/8th devil supposedly means she may have needed a pure devil co-signer and/or notary to be recognized by the infernal courts. The contract works for now due to the binding will of the summoned (the terms), because that is who is enforcing it. However should someone question the contract and invoke diabolic review, the lack of proper authority recognition and infernal channels may result in voiding the contract.
Also the not being fired unless they agree to be fired is oddly enough a fairly common term in demonic pacts. You can’t unsummon the demon/fae/elemental you summoned (dismiss their services) as this is an insult to their honor (oddly enough in fae law the general term is you have hired them to serve you as your legal guardian; which they may invoke the status of should you attempt to exit the agreement); unless they have breached the terms of their own contract, or the terms of the contract allow for an (out), the out is generally something unpleasant *and death is rarely an out and more the completion and terms of payment due*. The only contracts that really allow for a general “you are fired” are the ones where doing so is an unwanted conclusion, such as “the genie game”, where sometimes even the conditions for being fired can be really loose if the genie didn’t want to serve in the first place.
to put in perspective the human in such contracts is at best has the legal rights of a minor, but more common the rights of an animal, pets, livestock, and at worst pests. Devil contracts are less strict legal foundations of law and order and more…a game; which does have strict rules…but you aren’t the players humans you are the pieces.
I honestly thought DaveB was making a joke about the 1/8th devil thing, but everyone seems to be running with it so maybe I’m the ‘odd man out’ here in that I took it as a joke.
But in any case it’s a bit disappointing what’s happening with Hench Wench, because when first described she sounded like a very interesting and innovative supervillain concept, but the longer this goes on and the more ridiculous the contract and HW’s ignoring how laws work goes on in relation to her powers, the worse a character she becomes – less original and more ‘she just does whatever she wants to make up stuff as we go along.’ And now we might have to watch another several pages of a fight between Concretia and HW instead (who is either is now free of the LLC or is doing something the LLC leadership wants her to do), unless HW suddenly surrenders, which would be sort of a letdown in how the fight is resolved. I sooooo wanted Arianna to be the reason for a sudden depowering of HW.
It’s just a shame. I was liking the whole ‘person who gets powers amplified from a normal legal document’ concept. It was original and fun, and there’s usually not THAT much originality in superpowers :(
I am the opposite. When described as a contract my suspension of disbelief wrote it off as psychosomatic limitation to her power copy ability; which the “super villain” part likely still is as that is a moral perception.
But a metaphysical ability being hard-wired to be limited by an abstract social agreement that is written and interpreted by the taboos and norms of a current society seemed really odd. Like if she moved to another state or country what mechanism is making her power shift with it. So it really felt more her perception of it was what was limiting her and it had nothing to do with the contract. I stated before it might have been the social bond power share limitation where they gain the power(s) of those they are close to, like friends, family, and lovers; and she got this twisted in her head to include business connections.
the infernal contract started to make it make more sense to me as that is a metaphysical, spiritual, connection between the contract maker and those who sign them. Granted being done in a weird way, rethinking its not exactly an empowerment contract as no one needs empowered. Concretia’s power is doing that part of the job, so its just a standard demonic servitude contract which Concretia is abusing thanks to the parameter of her power.
I took it on a completely different tack. Suppose HW is a person who knows she gets the powers of any supervillain she works for. She has found by trial and error that she can work for more than one, but it has to delegate from one simple chain of command. And she doesn’t actually have to be doing exactly what her boss says.
So, she researches contracts and figures out something she thinks will work to obey what her empirical experience has taught her about working for multiple supers. And it does; she gets all their powers. Maybe the contract isn’t really LEGAL, but it is effective for the purpose.
Now, until something happens on screen that sets the “actual” limits of the delegation of super powers, she is the equivalent of an unreliable narrator: we know what she says about her powers and about the contract, but we do not know any actual facts about them. For instance, the name “HenchWench” and her description of her powers could be red herrings – a complete con by her to get people to go along with whatever REALLY gives her her powers.
More likely, though, she wrote a contract that she empirically felt would work, and it has done so, and until someone convinces her otherwise, it will continue to work. Until a judge or magistrate of competent jurisdiction rules on the contract, arguments about the legality are mere speculation.
Thus, Arianna’s face may appear on a Times Square billboard in a second announcing to all parties that the LLC has been declared void at inception by a judge, or the LLC charter has been revoked by the State Registrar, or any of a number of other things.
It would be particularly hilarious for the various voids and annulments to be announced one by one, with HW’s powers dropping away one by one.
“The Secretary of State has discovered irregularities in the filing documents and suspended the charter.” (all powers go to half and sputtery)
“Because she is held under duress, Concretia has been declared a ward of the court and unable to enter into contracts.” (poof goes that power)
“Brut has surrendered during commission of a felony and his assets are hereby seized via civil forfeiture, including his ownership interest and rights in the Evil Inc LLC, if any.” (poof)
“Judge Jethro Dean has ruled that the Evil Inc LLC was formed for an illegal purpose and has no legal existence.” (the rest of the lights go out)
Agreed. A contract doesn’t have to be legal to be a contract. An employment contract which might be rendered invalid by any court that looked at it even briefly is still an employment contract until rendered invalid by that court. It might be utterly unenforceable, and there might be zero repercussions for an employee who broke terms in that contract, but it is still a contract.
Hench Wench might be riding on the theory of “bound by until some other power says you’re not.”
“Thus, Arianna’s face may appear on a Times Square billboard in a second announcing to all parties that the LLC has been declared void at inception by a judge, or the LLC charter has been revoked by the State Registrar, or any of a number of other things.
It would be particularly hilarious for the various voids and annulments to be announced one by one, with HW’s powers dropping away one by one.”
I really, really wish that would happen, because I both thought that was how this would be resolved plus it would have been hilarious, but I don’t think it will after how long this has dragged out.
I’m hoping you’re right though.
You’re not the only one who took the ‘part Devil’ comment as illustration rather than literal character-building. I had been taking the ’employment’ aspect as being dependent on the mental relationship rather than the specific paperwork – the employer simply giving HW consent to borrow their Power in order to serve their purposes – and wasn’t really expecting it to require the intricacies of actual contractual small print until DaveB put it on page.
I would assume Max uses special handloads, though perhaps she didn’t have the right one for the job with Brut’s knee.
The calf muscle would be a much “softer” target than the bone in the knee.
Honestly, I’m more than a little surprised that Max didn’t simply choke her out hard enough to cut off the blood flow to the brain. Need to breathe or not, you’ve still gotta get the waste products out of the brain.
I presume since she kind of tried that several comics ago, and HW countered it pretty easily, Max decided to up her game without going full lethal. She seems to have a keen grasp on incremental escalation of force while some people would go full nuclear option and raze the city by accident.
It was a mosque, not a city. And it was ONE TIME!
There’s also potential question over what the shot to knee was trying to achieve. It was Maxima’s first attacking response on Brüt after he’d caught her in stasis, so she didn’t really have much reference at that point for his durability. She may therefore have been firing to test rather than firing for effect, applying a known level of impact and using his reaction to calibrate her own direct attacks.
Maxi’s look in the last panel: “Now what? And where the fuck did she come from?”
Next panel, Sydney pops up: “Don’t worry Max, she’s with us, sort of, if we help get her body back, and give her immunity from prosecution, and a back rub.”
“And a sandwich. Pretty sure there was a sandwich in our negotiations, somewhere.”
Yes! Yes there was.
but Hiro has to get it and his black shirt must be ruined in the process.
That’s pretty much a given, no matter what the process.
the shirt is now somehow part of the sandwich
The sandwich comes wrapped up in his shirt, also useable as a napkin/washcloth.
On the powers feat, Concretia now has two things to try out, moving her body and the golem at the same time when she gets back to her body. and this unity of forms power (which honestly defeats the point of projecting…to some degree, a projection being taken out by a spirit being would be less concerning than your original body in spirit form being targeted by a spirit being).
addition, if Concretia figures she can also pull her body into the same elemental spirit plane then if her body isn’t already rescued she has a way now to rescue it.
phase below the ground and water level so as not to be spotted (to avoid them shocking her body), come right up from the sea bed directly beneath her body and quickly as possible get to it and try to pull it into the elemental plane.
It depends whether the body->spirit thing is pure Concretia or a synergy bonus from combining Concretia’s powers with some other villain’s. Based on what Hench Wench was saying immediately before pulling it, I’m assuming it’s the latter.
I am thinking it may just be a force modifier. Concretia could do it if she had more power to draw from and or more resistance to the strain and pain it may cause. So Brut’s strength and durability may be giving henchwench that power amp and pain resistance to pull it off.
Nah, it’s more the fact Cree has either never thought about some of the things Henchie has done (control both Meat and Rock bodies at the same time, she kinda implied that she had tried but found it was too difficult so didn’t bother trying again) or has never been in a position to try it (like being impaled by a rebar)
I have issues with the idea that just because one used a super-power for committing a crime that it somehow qualifies as a separate crime on its own, the idea of it would basically turn the same crime into something worse for a super even if they were basically identical crimes. An example is the person that shoplifts from a store using a dimensional pocket to hide things in versus a criminal that simply hid the stuff in a false lining in an outfit. Why should the former suffer a much harsher sentence simply because they used a super-power? If anything it would encourage super-powered criminals to be more vicious and dangerous because they’d suffer more harshly if caught. Imagine the criminal that used their harmless ‘put everyone safely to sleep’ power on a bank before stealing what cash he could. He’s performed what’s really a non-violent crime in robbing the bank but is going to get a WORSE sentence than the regular, violent bank robber because he used a super-power even though you could get the same results as someone using a knock-out gas.
Well, you do get a harsher penalty if you use US Post for nefarious purpose. And I think the reasoning behind this is similar: to make people less afraid of superpowers. Like “look, if a regular guy robs you at gunpoint, we might be a bit slow on the response, but if a super robs you on a tonguepoint or whatever, we’re going to hit him with a ton of bricks, and he better hope we mean it literally”.
Most countries distinguish between robbery and armed robbery. Its not unreasonable to imagine a similar legal definition for crimes involving the use of powers.
I think your points are fair, which is why judges are usually given some room for manoeuvre when sentancing. But thats the difficulty with written law in general. Law makers are going to be thinking about the most comon and frequent occurances and not edge cases :(
It does seem a little odd to punish someone for who they are.
The only thing I could think of is if it’s like ‘assault with a deadly weapon’ as opposed to just ‘assault’ in that it escalates the severity of another crime but isn’t a crime in and of itself.
But as you point out shoplifting with a dimensional pocket vs good ol’ fashioned sleight of hand doesn’t seem like a huge difference in the crime itself. On the other hand using a more dangerous super power (like being able to hurl fireballs while robbing a bank) might be needed to be treated more harshly, and I’d suspect that one would have a hard time arguing that a given superpower is a weapon given that it is an innate part of the person.
And frankly where would you draw a line on superpowers that doesn’t include more benign powers or things like Math’s pseudo super fighting ability?
a dimensional pocket would make the crime much easier to hide. If someone steal something with sleight fo hand you can just pat him down to find it, if he steal with a pocket dimension how a guard is supposed to prove he stole something?
And about math fighting bility, in some place if you have a black belt or similiar combat training your hands are considered lethal weapons for legal purposes.
as others have noted- there’s a lot of leeway given to judges for this reason. I also believe that anyone who has a nonlethal sleep power or the ability to create a dimensional pocket who is stupid enough to use them to commit crimes. (non-random example If someone can put a volume of people to sleep imagine what someone like that can do with a protest turning into a riot) will get a rapid education in the lucrative nature of their powers used under legal cover after they are caught.
this is of course a major problem with supervillains in general. an automaton that can tell friend and foe with some sensors? can navigate a city and strike a specific target? dude, you do not need to rob the bank. they will happily fill your bank account legally just renting that thing you made. let alone if you also can manufacture them.
finally- Max is not a lawyer. that statue she is citing may be specific to violent felonies.
She may not even be citing statutes, she may be ad libbing. You think Congress and the state legislatures have written those penalties into law in only four months? They are still arguing over whose pork will be in the bill.
You could make the same argument about using a gun… that people are more likely to resist an unarmed robber, so using a gun makes it less dangerous, thus not justifying an escalation of penalty for the gun.
Remember, law is a VERY blunt instrument. The more details you write into it, the more odd situations you create. Your argument for “equity” is one that could implicitly be made to the jury or to the judge during the penalty phase… that essentially the robber made the robbery more safe by using the powers.
Maybe a judge might buy it, maybe not. But writing it into law? Nope.
It’s not an argument for “equity”. It’s an argument for equality.
The same crime is the same crime regardless of who commit it.
Giving harsher punishment to those you perceive as being stronger is what would be “equity” as that’s exactly what the equity bullshitters push for when they want to make a crime committed against a “oppressed” guy more severe than the same crime committed against an “oppressor” by adding the word “hate” to the description and pretending it’s now different.
But again, this is not about WHO commits the crime, but rather about HOW. Same letters, different order. The same law would apply to a non-super who somehow managed to use superpowers in a crime (e.g., if Sidney robs a bank using her orbs) and NOT apply to a super who commits a crime without using their superpowers (although it might be difficult to prove — for example, if Maxima gets into a bar fight, it would be a lot of arguing whether she used her super-strength, or just normal fighting skills of a trained soldier).
It probably depends on if laws on superpowers define superpowers as a tool/weapon or as simply a part of that person.
If it’s defined as a tool or weapon, the logic would be ‘assault with a deadly weapon, that weapon being superpowers.’
If it’s defined as just part of that person, it would be an unconstitutional law because of a number of reasons, including anti-discriminatory laws going against the 14th amendment, and also against Article I, Section 10 of the US Constitution (no bills of attainder – which basically just means you just declare someone, or a group of someones, to be guilty of a crime without actually being guilty of a crime by a trial). To say that merely having superpowers is a criminal act would go against what Maxima said specifically to Halo way back during the interview with Sydney.
I don’t think that, based on what we’ve seen in the comic, the law says it’s illegal to have superpowers, but it probably does treat superpowers as something external from the person itself if you can be charged with ‘using superpowers in the commission of a criminal act.’ Sort of like you are allowed to legally own a knife. Without having any soft of license or whatever (using knife so as to not get into an argument on gun rights). But if you use that knife to stab people, you’re now committing a crime that you can be arrested for (assault with a deadly weapon, etc).
Btw I meant Article 1 Section 9 and 10, not just section 10. And mainly section 9. Sorry.
I guess the tricky bit will be proving to the court whether a crime was committed ‘using’ Powers or only ‘while in possession of’ Powers. They’re not quite like a knife, that you can easily leave at home if you have no plans to use it that day! And it’ll be even less clear-cut for those with Powers that aren’t obvious when used, or that exceed Baseline capability in extent rather than nature*. Does it count if a Powered defendant does something that’s within the remit of their Powers, but not outside the capabilities of a skilled Baseline?
*e.g. Strength: Strongman lifted 100-odd kilograms above his head – but that’s well within the Olympic record even at the lightest weight class. Luck: Fortuna rolled three natural 20s in a row – but that’s only a 1/8000 chance, and even Baseline Bob got five in a row (1/3200000) at D&D the other night.
I’m going to guess that powers are treated as an external action when it goes above the human peak level. IE, you can drive a car – you cannot drive a car into pedestrians on purpose. You can own a knife – you cannot use that knife to stab people. You can own a baseball bat – you can not use that baseball bat to bash people in the head. You can own a toaster – you cannot drop a plugged-in toaster into a bathtub where another person is in the tub to electrocute them.
You can have powers – having powers themselves is not illegal, because that would essentially be a bill of attainder (which would be unconstitutional). However, you can’t use those powers to commit crimes, just like you can’t use ANY other things to commit crimes, and doing so would be an ‘aggravated’ charge (ie, where circumstances make it worse or more serious than it otherwise would be).
Aggravated = The same thing as the underlying crime, but where the defendant uses or brandishes a deadly weapon.
Anyway that’s my guess. That the law has some sort of definition for superpowers in this context for ARCHON’s charter. If a super commits a crime without using their powers, it’ll be a different charge than if they do use their powers, or maybe using their powers to commit a crime will be the same charge as using a deadly weapon to commit a crime.
The problem is the inherent inequality in unequal punishment for committing the same crime.
Let’s go with this example then: two guys standing next to each other are peeping into an apartment building window. The guy on the left is using binoculars while the guy on the right is using Telescopic Vision. Go on the left gets sentence X for peeping, guy on the right gets much harsher sentence Y because he used a super-power despite the fact they’re the same identical crime but because one used technology while the other used his inherent natural ability receives a much harsher sentence. How can something like that be considered a just or fair sentence?
Because crimes have social consequences beyond those directly affected; the legal and judicial systems serve as deterrents as well as justice. If a crime is easier for someone to commit or get away with, then presumably a greater punishment would be required to deter that person from committing it.
If you’re weighing whether the punishment is worth the crime, then the punishment isn’t sufficient. The punishment isn’t supposed to be a cost that you can decide to pay, it’s supposed to deter you from committing the crime in the first place. For example, flat monetary damages often end up being exceedingly punitive for the poor, and trivial for the rich, who treat them as a cost, rather than a deterrent. They get slapped on the wrist, and keep on doing it.
In that particular example, I would expect the effective sentencing to be similar even if the actual words on the charge sheet differ. Both are peeping using enhanced abilities relative to an unaided Baseline Human, even if one is enhanced by artificial aids and the other by intrinsic ability.
The tricky bit would be if the Baseline were not using binoculars (or any other aid), and the Powered claimed not to be using his inherent ability. It might be easy to show that they were in similar positions, thus implying that the Powered Peeper wasn’t using enhanced Sight, but implication is weak compared to direct evidence. How can the prosecution prove (or the defence disprove) that he saw more than a Baseline would have seen from the same place?
Unless the Powered Peeper trips up and inadvertently reveals a detail that a Baseline would not have been able to see, I would argue that he should remain Not Proven Guilty* of the aggravating factor of using a Power to commit the crime, even as he is Proven Guilty of committing the crime itself.
*As opposed to Proven Not Guilty, but that distinction is a long rabbithole that we’ve addressed to death elsewhere.
In Texas, a “deadly weapon” is defined basically as anything you can potentially kill someone with when you are trying to kill them. “Panties” have been found to be a deadly weapon, when you use them to strangle someone.
I’m sure that if someone had a movement power that offset a handicap – for example, a quadriplegic who had telekinesis and levitation – that such person, on being charged, could defend using the claim that the superpower was inherent and involuntary, and that charging aggravation because he used his method of locomotion would be discrimination… and some judges might buy it, others not.
I would love to read the transcript of the Dallas Panty Strangler and how he was finally incarcerated. :)
Btw, I agree with your scenario about the quadriplegic but that seems like a very niche case scenario. :)
What makes a crime a crime? The action, or the consequence? If you strike someone strong, you may not even hurt them, while striking someone weak with the same amount of force may kill them. Would you argue that the penalties should be the same in both of those cases?
You are asking one of the classic questions in criminal law: why should there be enhancements or additional crimes for the same harm done by a particular means?
Why should a killing be punished more harshly if it is deliberate instead of accidental, or as an act of terrorism instead of in the course of a robbery?
Reasonable minds can differ on this topic, but in general law is about maintaining order (hopefully but not necessarily in a moral way) so crimes that represent additional threats to order get additional punishment or count as additional crimes. Just as a killing as part of an act of terrorism disrupts orders more than “merely” making one person dead – it is intended to inflict fear on the whole community – so too crime using superpowers does more than “merely” the crime itself – it inflicts fear of super powers on the whole community and encourages other supers to misbehave.
It may in some sense be “unfair” to add “use of superpowers in a crime” as an additional crime, but as they say, “Fair is a place where you get cotton candy and ride the tilt-a-whirl”. Law is about maintaining order.
Reasonable minds may differ on this, of course, and when Earth reaches the point where supers are merely people who can do innately what others can do with technology, the “super enhancement” may drop away as unnecessary. But that’s a ways off.
Judging from the power balance between top-tier Earthly supers and typical galactic technology, that day is very, very down the road.
Criminal correction is not all about punishment, it’s also about keeping dangerous individuals away from the population, as well as giving them a chance to reform.
Someone that intentionally hurt someone is more dangerous to the population than someone that accidentally ended up hurting someone. Because if it’s an accident they are likely to self-correct, and therefore don’t need correcting from correctional facilities.
If someone robs you while keeping a gun in his holster, he’s not threatening you with deadly force, even though he has a gun with him.
If it’s someone’s intent to risk other people’s life, then THAT becomes a factor that increases the needed punishment. But if someone don’t intentionally risk other’s life then the crime is less severe. Risking someone’s life is it’s own crime.
It’s like what Maxima demonstrated with her finger.
Is she threatening anyone she points at with deadly force? Because that seem to be the only way to interpret a super doing a crime as being inherently more severe.
Is someone that threaten deadly force, but are actually using blanks that could never harm someone committing a more severe crime than if they were unarmed? I guess you could add causing mental trauma as a factor instead.
Portal guns appear to be in high demand since the pandemic started
If she doesn’t regenerate, the hole in her leg will bleed a lot when she materialise.
Also why does maxima look pissed in last panel?
She’s not pissed, she’s confused
This is starting to look like Powers As The Plot Demands a bit too much for my taste.
sometimes I wonder if the people he has review his stuff before he publishes it have time to think this stuff through. this is the second or third time he has come up with a potentially world breaking power. and its the limits that are messing us up this time.
You believe DaveB has someone to review his stuff before he publishes? o_O
This may be the second or third time he has ‘come up with a potentially world breaking power’, but he has also come up with ways to counter those powers, not His fault the readers aren’t smart enough to figure them out before He reveals them
More importantly, it is totally traditional for villains to appear impossible to beat. Until they are beaten. Then the method to beat them, is in retrospect, obvious. We already have four different ways to beat HW in these threads, and it’s just a matter of Dave pulling off the Rule of Cool, the Rule of Drama, and/or the Rule of Funny.
(With the Rule of Sexy being a very dark horse… Dabbler could use that kiss thing on her as method number five.)
Ooops, number six – you could nullify the individual powers of the supers, rather than voiding the contract. For instance, if Krona were to “cut” the villains out of the story and “paste” them into a holding cell somewhere out of phase, the powers might also go away.
“Potentially world breaking power” is kind of the superhero genre as a whole, is it not? In a world otherwise without super powers, even The Filmer has a potentially world-breaking power, especially if he doesn’t actually need to wear a ridiculous costume with his microphone strapped to his head.
It’s just that so many powers have obvious balances. I’d guess Dabbler probably also has some stuff that would work against Ghost HW.
Oh Dabbler should, various sleep spells,
as well as spells to hit ethereal opponents, both for people using phase shift technology and supernatural beings that are natural intangible. Astral Bolts, enchanting weapons to strike them, and the many variations there of. Pull a Louie the Rune Soldier and enchant her fists to punch the crap out of her.
on the legal side as this is looking to be a devil’s contract, summoning a devil (or similar entity) to act as the higher court authority to renegotiate the terms of the contract or challenge them. is also an option. Or pull something that would probably tick off a bunch of people accusing the comic of pulling random things, suddenly reveal Dabbler has a law degree of Hell University and can legally challenge the terms of the contract; or pull some *as a higher legal authority and that the application of the contract was used by the subject of said contract to use the powers granted to them by the contract against the higher authority, they thereby by the authority of the Infernal courts render the contract void due to attempted subversion *with or without prior knowledge* a higher infernal authority.”
-honor, power, and rank. If you were granted powers by a prince and used those powers to attack a king; the king has the authority to dissolve the contract on the grounds of insulting or assaulting the higher authority with them.
-there is one other problem-
Henchwench if 1/8th devil has a dilemma.
She is both the author and the subject of the contract.
Naturally a devil’s contract ultimately benefits the being that wrote it more so than the subjects. (I get your soul, servitude, power, in exchange for…) and the exchange of (I shall serve you for a time) is one of the common conditions, the infernal genie, familiar, type of deal. She agreed to serve the members of the LLC in exchange for getting their powers.
However such a contract should have the strict rule that the condition is they SERVE the earthly “master(s)” till the terms of the contract expire or are broken. Refusal to serve without there being a proper loop hole violates such contracts. Now Henchwench did say she did not agree to go to jail, however she was ordered to stop fighting, not ordered to go to jail, a regular devil, demon, fae, djinn, ethereal or whatever would have interpreted this order as to (flee) the area; possibly taking their contractor with them; which Henchwench had as an option with her powers (enhanced strength plus flight), *it likely wouldn’t have worked*, but an attempt at least was in order rather than ignoring the order. Now Maxima gave chase and she was forced to defend herself after the order could not be carried out; THEN, there is an infernal loop hole
(for demons this doesn’t normally happen as they’d just portal out of the area and contact their summoner later…Henchwench is an unusual position for such contracts).
actually, DaveB once made a power that he later admitted he hadn’t thought through and has put that power on indefinite hold because the comment section and some reviewers went bonkers after he introduced it.
which power was that? I don’t remember.
Krona’s save point.
Oh yeah, that had they game mechanic vs in universe lore problem. Like the revive spells and potions don’t exist in story for most RPG games as they break the suspense . But speaking of Sciona should still remember that and from her perspective Sydney teleported with Pixel right out of her grip. So Sciona at least should have another misunderstanding of Sydney’s powers if nothing else coming from that
No, Sciona was within the area of effect of the save-and-reset, so like everyone within that area other than Sydney, she was reset to the beginning of the event. I’ve forgotten if Harem was present at some point in the process, so she might have an asterisk if she was.
I think it was explained not to be an area but focused on those individuals. As it didn’t actually manipulate time just acted as a save point like a snap shot of their states and location they were standing in with only Sydney remembering as she was what initiated the save reset.
Fairly sure the aoe was the rooftop, otherwise it would potentially cover the whole world if they moved far enough away
“Ribbed for her agony”! Lol.
I still have “diarrhea sommalier” stuck in my head. Love the writing. And the art.
Ya know… if I could get a little dose of GrrlPower daily (pencils, story notes, etc) daily, I’d be happy to kick in $10 a month on Patreon.
She did admit that the ribs were rubbing against the bone…
That just reminded me of taking the hardware out of my leg because it was getting caught on the quadriceps when I was doing my physical therapy exercises. That was a memory I didn’t need to relive.
It wouldn’t take long of a session on the gymnast’s Pommel Horse (yes, this is a thing; look it up) to make it feel like you’ve been trampled by a real horse, huh?
I’m thinking Meat-Wench must have resistance to pain somewhere in her power suite. It might not be broken bone or getting shot levels of pain but it would be some “go into shock right now” levels of agony for a normal person.
It’s interesting that Henchie can have two separate conversations going on at the same time, while impaled on the rebar!!
I know. It’s really inconsistent to me.
How is it inconsistent? Inconsistent with what?
Never said it was a problem, just interesting
It’s inconsistent with how Concretia has described her own power and how Sydney explained more about how Concretia’s power worked than Concretia knew.
I can understand HW being able to animate the concrete version of herself while in her own body, or when in her ghost form. But what I can’t understand is how, when HW is in ghost form, she can control both the concrete body AND her meat body while not IN her meat body. Also I do not understand how she can be TALKING from her ghost body and her meat body in different statements at the same time, as if they’re separate people with separate brains/speech centers/etc like Harem.
Hench Wench will be going to jail,thus having her contract terminated or not!?
must be hella annoying to see some random girl doing best with the powers you had your entire life to work with
That author’s note is really cursed Dave, are you okay Dave?
wouldn’t it be funny if all the people from whom Henchie gets her powers just… quit?
She probably wrote in a “no quitting clause” in their contract.
“Probably?” I would say “Definitely” – also probably has something to do with a “one years notice, in writing, in triplicate, carved on platinum metal plates worth a minimum of 1 million dollars each.”
On the other hand, it’s an LLC. If HW didn’t write in clauses to prevent it — which admittedly are boilerplate in many LLC contracts — the villains might be able to SELL their stakes in the LLC to an unpowered person like Arianna. Thus, HW gets nothing.
Except she would gain the super lawyer power to realize that her contract is ridiculous.
Thus breaking her own Power FOR ALL TIME!!!! MUAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!
Ahem. To paraphrase Arianna.
My brain hurts in how nonsensical and not-based-on-law the llc operating agreement is turning out to be.
Beware! for you are dangerously close to the Ultimate Defense of a contract written subject to the law of the Infernal Plain: if you understand the contract, you go insane.
I wouldn’t be very surprised to learn that, among all of the Cosmic-Level Lovecraftian Monstrosities that Man Was Never Meant To Know But Does, the most insidious one has remained hidden from view even as its unwitting minions & unknowing worshippers have brought cases before the Bar.
Known as the Infernal Advocate, this Eldritch Horror specializes in making & enforcing contractual obligations to commit evil. Even the merest attempt to navigate through this bureaucratic nightmare has driven men mad. The proverbial “Devil’s Contract” is not proverbial…
American society practically operates on the idea that companies are legally required to be evil.
That explains why Google had to remove their “Don’t be evil.” motto. :)
SHOT TO THE HEART, AND YOU’RE TO BLAME!
I doubt the contract is legally binding. If the only termination clause amounts to “I can only be fired if I agree to be fired, and none of you may escape the contract unless I agree to it”, I’m sure a judge would nullify the contract.
Furthermore, if Archon could get a judge to rule that in addition to being imprisoned, that Hench Wench must be under a conservatorship, it would prevent her from legally signing any more contracts, thus robbing her of her powers unless her conservator is the one who signs. Just make the conservator be someone at Archon.
HW’s power set is not specified as requiring a contract, just that she works for a supervillain. She formed the LLC in order to create a synthetic supervillain she could work for.
Given recent developments, I am starting to assume HW’s powers are truly akin to a diabolic pact. Once a contract with the devil is agreed to, even w/o checking for the fine print or as a Leonine Pact, it can only be nullified according to its own terms, by a Logic Bomb, or by the appropriate supernatural authority. Her powers could not care less about what US laws says whether a contract is legitimate, legally binding, or a judge’s decree to nullify it. According to lore, that kind of authority only works if the supernatural being consents it to (e.g. the Devil and Daniel Webster).
The contract has already weathered being set up for illegal purposes, Brut and Flying Mask not being aware of the fine print, and Concretia signing under duress. At this point, I very much doubt a judge’s ability to nullify it on general principles of US law is going to work.
its time for Sydney. her Genre savvy and small business owner law experience will combine to form deadly logic lawyering, with a side order of paperwork nightmare for somebody.
In essence, Sydney IS the “logic Bomb” because she’s already so adept at the practice to “rules lawyer” a game that involves supers in it.
Dang! Way back in the beginnings of this comic, we saw how Anvil referred to Sydney as “the big guns.” It’s not just Sydney’s sheer power, but it’s also her general savvy sense…
Provided Sydney comes back to the fight fast enough (easy to do since Concretia already arrived), I am betting on a Sydney/Dabbler rules-lawyering team-up as the best and easiest solution to the HW puzzle right now. Dabbler to provide the necessary knowledge of Infernal Contracts in the Grrlverse, Sydey to apply it in creative ways, either or both to realize HW power copying works with that kind of supernatural logic and the LLC stuff is a red herring.
Time for her to use all those powers she has access to and run!
HW should have done that the minute the battle started going badly. I think she wanted them to fire her and trigger her contractual poison pill.
I feel like HW’s issue could be all the powers she got: each power she gained is intoxicating. She’s so loopy with all the powers she has, she *still* thinks she has a shot at winning. She’s so interested in trying out all the combos she has available to her, she’s not considered that those opposing her have more.
After all, she’s *mostly* fighting Maxima, whom *everybody* knows just has super strength, super durability, flight, and that finger blast thing. Apparently, she also has super speed, but that’s probably it. All the other people on her team can be disregarded, because they haven’t engaged and brought anything to the table.
Okay at this point, no offense and really hate saying this but HW’s powers are officially Vehemence-levels of ridiculous (ka pants levels with the new powers), and the method of Maxima beating her is unsatisfying when the “how she got a rebar through her leg” is “I don’t know” :/. Maybe there will be more to make it more satisfying in comic tho. At least it didnt last a year like Vehemence did but its an unsatisfying resolution.
Did they find cree’s body for her to suddenly help btw?
Also, I guess whoever said the llc contract doesnt have to be legally binding or even make sense for HW’s powers to use it was right. My lawyer senses are in pain from this.
Just think Devil Pact, rather than Legal Contract.
Scratching the surface on devil pacts, most of them would not be legally recognized most places in our world, because one of the terms being exchanged is not a good that is recognized as something that exists. Many deals with the devil are for abilities to violate the laws of physics, not just cooperation with ordinary consenting groups of people.
Even when HW first appeared, her power fit far more in the framework for a devil pact rather than a standard legal agreement. It’s just that we were distracted by use of the term LLC, which is generally not used in devil pact stories.
I do admit, even for a devil pact, Concretia’s inclusion seems difficult to swallow. That said, we only have Concretia’s word that she was forced into the LLC after she was kidnapped while astral. For all we know, she signed willingly and was just the first (or one of the first) to realize she’d made a mistake and tried to get out.
Did someone mention Devil Pacts?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSMYjZVCdFg
DaveB’s blurb last page said she may be 1/8th devil. Why I was saying in the comments that, that should be mentioned on panel to make it applied canon and not just “word of god”.
Note, for some reason I didn’t see that link the first time when I posted a reply there.
As Devil Pacts typically go, they are valid as long as the victim consents to them, even under duress or when tricked. Signing them to avoid a different evil that the demon caused in the first place is legitimate and occurs all the time in fiction. Salsa Man could have driven Concretia to sign by threatening her body in various ways.
How Maxi got the rebar through Henchie’s leg is simple: she pushed it through, that whole ‘Slow blade penetrates the shield’ jumbo-mumbo
We still have nothing to indicate that Cree is part of the same L.L.C. as JuggerNot and Flygirl
> How Maxi got the rebar through Henchie’s leg is simple: she pushed it through, that whole ‘Slow blade penetrates the shield’ jumbo-mumbo
While I agree that there’s nothing surprising about Maxima being able to push through – it’s well established that her strength is immense, and the downward push means HW’s leg can’t get pushed out of the way; a .577, while quite powerful for a handgun, is nothing against the force needed to throw around a tank – Pander might be referring to the fact that DaveB doesn’t know, and what that implies about the story.
> We still have nothing to indicate that Cree is part of the same L.L.C. as JuggerNot and Flygirl
While it doesn’t change anything about the topic at hand, this is still an intriguing consideration – it would explain the contracst between boisterous supervillains on one side, and shifty organization on the other. The deployed tropes don’t go well together here.
It’s also the fact that once the slug hit JuggerNot’s leg, the force moving it effectively ended, whereas with the rebar, the force was continuous, and whatever enhanced durability JuggerNot has simply wasn’t strong enough to counter that
How long does Concretia need to be acting as a hero before she stops being one of Hench Wench’s **supervillain** employers and HW loses her powers?
You don’t have to be a hero to punch out someone you don’t like, or is using your powers better than you ever imagined (villains beat up other villains almost as often as they beat up heroes, but not as often as heroes beating up other heroes :P )
Also how does HW have pain resistance to her physical body being in pain? Isnt that specifically how they were forcing Concretia to work for them??
We have already seen Henchie can do more with Cree’s powers than Cree has done
Forget the whole ‘ignoring the pain’ bit, did you not notice that Meachie and Spirichie were both having different conversations at the same time? So Spirichie being able to ignore Meachie’s pain is kinda understandable
Thaf literally make it less sense, not more sense.
I am thinking the enhanced durability and strength from Brut has amalgamated/stacked with the spirit form to provide increased resistance to the pain feedback.
The both talking at the same time may just be a matter of being different people. Henchwench’s mind may be treating the projection as a dream form projection (its still you, but another aspect of you; like the characters in your dreams; and the differences can be so subtle with a dream projection type astral projection that you’d have to sit the two of you down with a psychologist and questionair to tell the difference…its more common to have drastic changes like a decreased inhibition, more scholarly, more comedic, ect…that way the audience gets the (oh its different aspects of their personality) bit; but the dream projection can be a lot more subtle than that. Even understandable for someone powerful enough that these different aspects could even just be different powers they have with some personality quirk amplified by that specific power (a multi-elemental made to dream project has a fire only aspect that is a bit more of a partier or has a slightly higher libido or what not because the person associated fire with being “fired up” so their mind combined the two aspects when isolated into one projection).
to use my own as an example, I have a character (one of my oldest..and thus also one of my most convoluted), who has dream form projection as one of her major powers, she has attempted to defragment her mind but despite this when she goes to sleep one of her forms will usually project into another world rather than dream like a normal person. In a recent event one of these forms even attacked her own youngest daughter because the dream form lacked the abilities to recognize her in disguise (her youngest was being a superhero and they fought because the dream form had wiped out an entire battlefield of every side of the conflict and would have hurt the girl’s superhero friends had she not recognized the spell attack and shielded them before it went off); however the subconscious mind did recognize her and stepped in when things were going too far so the separate mind pieces fought each other for control ultimately needing to wake up her “primary form”.
the general idea being related to the fact that in a dream everyone you meet, every character, even monsters coming after you even as they seem like separate autonomous beings.. are ALL YOU. Your mind creating different characters and roles to play. So stack super powers and the ability to project the mind with a form and work in different places at the same time.
All I’m saying is unless someone in the LLC has the power to merge with other people, then I have no idea how Brut, the flying person, and Concretia together can allow HW to change from corporeal to incorporeal with no existing body left at all.
It just doesn’t make any sense to me how three powers, none of which seem to help with the result, would achieve that result.
Ah, I was just thinking either mutation caused by amalgamated powers.
or this is actually something Concretia could do but never even thought to try or had the strength to try. Henchwench just thought of it; it may also be painful for Concretia to try this; or required more strength than Concretia has.
like how Harem has a weight limit to teleport other things and can’t teleport people. But if we added super strength to her, she may as a consequence also gain the ability to teleport other people with her when she teleports.
so thinking that Concretia’s power plus increased durability, pain resistance, and strength, is allowing her to yank her Earthly anchor out of the physical world “sediment reality” into the elemental plane with her and become one. Something Concretia may not even have the strength or pain resistance to do.
As a potential precedence. Concretia’s -kinesis we’ve seen so far has been some stuff out of the floor; we don’t know if Concretia can make the giant earth-worm that Henchwench did; if not, then that increased mass able to be controlled at once may also be due to the power stacking with Brut’s super strength.
conversely the flyer may also be responsible (IF) the flyer uses dimension sliding flight (collapse and expand spacial relations around themselves to move through the air…like pulling yourself forward through a sub-space vacuum effect via your sub-space self anchored to your physical self. So (IF) this were the case, or something akin to it, then combine that power with the elemental projection and she may have felt she could yoink her physical self from the physical plane into the elemental plane and thereby align with it as one.
-the increased force being available from Brut to give her easier access to more strenuous abilities for Concretia seems to the more likely candidate.
Its not unheard of, in fantasy with magic and super hero stories a “with your powers and my might behind them I can achieve great feats your feeble meek body never could have imagined being possible”.
-and no I don’t remember which JRPG I just paraphrased, or anime, its probably multiple sources.
As per using the plural, Brut called multiple people, not just flygirl. If it were just three, then one call would have gotten him a 2/3 majority.
There is probably at least one more power suite at play, possibly two.
Because of strange interaction with Brüt’s power. As DaveB said:
“Brüt has some pain resistance, which is why GhostWench doesn’t seem bothered by MeatWench’s shin-ka-bob, whereas Concretia could definitely feel people zapping her meat.”
Concretia doesn’t have Brüt’s power, so she isn’t protected.
Okay I’m willing to suspend my disbelief on that I guess. That…. sort of makes sense at least. Grudgingly so, despite how DaveB also said her ghost form does not have any pain resistance.
Actually upon re-reading DaveB’s blurb, yes Voyager’s completely correct on the reason the shishkabobbing didnt affect the ghost HW. But I’m still confused because looknig at meat HW, she doesnt LOOK like she’s resisting pain. She seems to be crying from the pain, in fact.
Hence more confusion for me. But not enough for me to not suspend disbelief at least. I guess.
if you were in actual extreme pain could you make joke comments like ribbed for her agony?
She is in pain, but it seems to be registering more like a small abrasion than impaled through the leg.
There is apparently a point past which it stops registering properly – not somewhere I’ve been myself, thankfully, hence the ‘apparently’. Where you know something’s gone very wrong, and you sort-of-know you’re in for a world of hurt once the endorphins (or whatever self-doping agent it is) wear off, but for the time being you’re in your own semi-detached world of only minor ouchie.
Yes, that exists.
It’s definitely weird, and DaveB admits as much.
A possible explanation is that the pain resistance might work separately – on the meatbody itself, and then again on the psychic link connecting the meatbody to the projection.
To be fair, BEING A GHOST usually counts as infinite pain resistance. This page is far from the first time in fiction that the only thing able to do real damage to a ghost has been another ghost, since they exist on the same non-physical wavelength and thus are effectively physical to each other.
Would love to see that because she’s messing with powers and combining them, HenchWench got herself in a bad situation. Has she done this before and knows that she can “de-phase” her body? What if she manages to lose access to the powers that let her undo this? If she loses the power to control stone, she’s effectively harmless as she can’t interact with others.
I for one would love to see Hench stuck as just this astral form. It would serve her right with the power high and flagrant disregard for her boss and orders. Maybe at some point as part of her sentencing or reforming she gets helped out of it and back into her body.
Still waiting for a ARCHON lawyer walking up and informing HenchWench that the LLC has been forcibly disbanded by the government at part of the legal required by the government when forming a LLC…
Mortal laws and authorities do not have any influence on devil pacts unless the demon consents to, and HW powers seem to work more and more like one, even if reference to an LLC may be misleading. It may be looking like one, but in practice it works like a supernatural contract.
At this point, I do not expect that US law has any relevance on that contract or ability to force its nullification. I assume they need to invoke an appropriate supernatural law or authority, deploy a Logic Bomb, or work to fulfil the terms written in the contract to break it, no matter how hard it can be. IMO it is much better to ask Dabbler, Silhouette, the Arc-Light mages, the Twilight Council, and/or the Xevoarchy for help than Arianna and her team, or a Muggle judge. Dabbler is already on the scene, she is the first they should use; maybe Cora too knows something if galactic law has any relevance for demons.
Although, given all the fine print HW put in the contract, I doubt anybody can do much w/o analyzing the contract in depth. Unless they can make someone like the Living Tribunal show up and deliver a summary judgement. Good luck for that; cosmic entities never get involved for anything less than universal threats and devil pacts have loads of precedence.
Of course, Arianna can still help a lot if she works within the framework of a supernatural pact and the terms of the contract, likely in cooperation with friendly experts in devil pacts, but she needs to assume mortal law is useless unless HW consented to it in the contract.
“Still waiting for a ARCHON lawyer walking up and informing HenchWench that the LLC has been forcibly disbanded by the government at part of the legal required by the government when forming a LLC”
That would so completely save this storyline arc for me in the ‘makes sense’ department, but I’m doubting it will happen at this point.
Yeah this, HW has reached the point where the hand-waving needs to be something like, she’s a reality-bender and has whatever powers she thinks she has – at least until she forgets how they’re supposed to work, which explains the rebar-shaped hole in her leg.
“To be honest, I’m not sure how that rebar got through Henchwench’s leg, if Brüt’s knee could take Maxima’s .557 round. – DaveB
Cutting, Piercing, and Blunt-object (which includes bullets) are very different challenges for protective equipment, and many of the technologies that can protect against one will not protect against another. In that light, it’s not unreasonable to see a Power with similarly asymmetric protection. The shot to knee, and the punches that followed it, were all blunt-object attacks. Maxima’s improvised skewer appears to have a nicely sharpened piercing point, and the broken end may also have sharp enough edges to add some cutting action.
There’s also, as mentioned up-page in a reply to PD, potential question over what the shot to knee was trying to achieve. It was Maxima’s first attacking response against Brüt after he’d caught her out in stasis, so she didn’t really have much reference at that point for his durability. She may therefore have been firing to test more than firing for effect, applying a known level of impact and using his reaction to calibrate her own direct attacks.
Yep ultimately looking at PSI, relative surface area, dispersal of impact, resistance, and structural integrity *human skin is terrible at defending against thin surfaces…paper cut*.
Saying that, last page I was arguing it makes no sense for Wonder Woman to still be susceptible to bullet and blades; its not that it makes less sense that they can get through where a blunt impact is more defended against, but rather the relative durability and resistance to damage. This is the PSI and Resistance issue. If someone is durable enough to be smashed through a mountain *with all its little pointy rocks impacting all that exposed skin*, so various zones of impact over her skin. Then it makes no sense for regular bullets at their regular speed and materials to fare any better, same with a sword, sure with a strong enough material and swung by a strong enough opponent it makes sense to cut where a punch wouldn’t do. But a regular sword swung by a regular person shouldn’t be doing more damage to that same skin surface than her body’s own pinch point or being slammed through solid rock hard enough to shatter it.
-of course comic book logic, like seeing a criminal hit superman with a crow bar and the crow bar bends…sorry even as durable as Superman is, the human criminal lacked the strength to deform the bar on him like that, it should have just bounced off and maybe hurt the guy’s arms. Same with someone trying to cut superman’s hair with scissors, if you aren’t strong enough to break those scissors on a steel beam it doesn’t matter that superman is more durable, you lack the strength to do it, you should just be struggling with the scissors, they shouldn’t just break.
but back here, Maxima is holding a reinforcement steel beam for concrete, that is more metal and denser than most ammunition fired by a gun, especially with the structural integrity enhancement from Maxima’s zero range telekinesis and the amount of force she can put behind it. Henchwench has Brut’s durability, which I’ve mentally compared to Sabretooth from Marvel comics given his strength and the damage he has taken without being sent flying high into the air.
Some will point out Maxima’s speech about not throwing cars, you can hit harder than it can. Yes that is because of PSI, your first is a smaller surface area than that car so more of the force is focused on that smaller surface area vs the car going through the air at whatever speed you tossed it.
This principle applies to swords and other sharp objects, so long as their resistance is high enough, all that force is now focused on the smaller surface area of the wedge or point. So the super human stabbing with the steel bar can apply a lot of PSI to that single point onto a single point of the opponent.
We don’t know how the durability works with Brut and Henchwench, if it is enhanced skin integrity, then you just need to find that breaking point over the surface area and pierce it with something more durable over the same surface area with higher force. (straw through a brick wall in a tornado).
couple of key points.
the rebar was from behind. the surprise factor could have played a big part of why it works. several reasons why- Hench is using a group of copied powers, some of which likely conflict in subtle and in significant ways. a simple way to resolve this- not all powers are active at any given time.
Max has zero range telekinesis its very likely that bruts enhanced toughness is also a form a zero range Telekinesis. this means.. its strength of mind. now who’s got better concentration and focus? the military trained admittedly very deadly destroyer of mosques or this rules lawyering overpowered high on adrenalin Hench wench?
It’s Maxima’s zero range TK at work. A normal super, Brute, say, trying to push a piece of rebar through something really tough, the rebar blunts and bends. THIS piece of rebar is reenforced by Maxima’s intent that it NOT yield, just like that ambulance way back when didn’t bust when she picked it up by the fender.
It isn’t the strength of the steel letting it penetrate HW’s leg, it’s Maxima’s strength.
Pressure is one aspect, and the direction in which the force is applied is another. Some penetrators try to push straight through the plane of the resisting material, as if they were going to punch a plug of material out the other side (Mode II/III cracking, for the structural engineers among you). Others try to push the material in-plane and/or bend it, creating in-plane tensions (Mode I) that tear or displace fibres a lot more easily.
Maxima’s advice about not using cars when fists will do is probably based not so much on the impact area, but on the solidity of the impactor. Modern cars are designed to deform when they hit something: the deformation absorbs some of the energy, and also spreads the transfer of the remaining energy over a longer time, meaning lower peak forces on both the thing hit and anything attached to the car. Which is great for minimising damage to both the driver and the tree if someone misjudges a corner, but less so when you want to hit something as hard as possible. Fists will have far less momentum behind them than a car travelling at the same speed, due to the much lower mass, but if you have the Durability to go with the Strength they’re far more solid.
This is honestly getting super annoying. Watching a villain pull out more and more abilities, every single time they appear defeated… It’s tedious, it’s dull, and it makes everyone else look like bumbling idiots.
and yet Dragon Ball is one of the biggest franchises on the planet.
and Henchwench at least is showing some precedence and natural progression with her powers, its not she got angry, spit out an evil her, that then ate her to gain her powers despite coming from her to begin with but when that part is removed from her instead of reverting back to the previous evil form instead shifts to a completely new form that is declared to be the original form before they had absorbed some other guy in the distant past as the evil form had been completely forgotten about as being a thing at the start of this sequence.
Hench Wench is sort of becoming a villainous version of ‘The Wesley’ Trope. Where the audience really hates a character because she’s becoming just ludicrous, but the creator seems to really like the character for some reason. Like Negan in the Walking Dead or Scrappy Doo from Scooby Doo. I dunno – I’m still waiting for the conclusion of this storyline arc to see if DaveB clears this up in comic. :)
I sort of had the same problem with Vehemence, although at the time I thought it was because the fight had been dragging on for an entire year RL. Now I think it’s because of the whole ‘powers coming from nowhere’ thing, which also happened with Vehemence.
Sciona was a well done villain though. :) Even when she gained new powers, it was completely logical on how she gained them instead of ‘she just got new powers.’ Because she was a blood magic user who had been experimenting with other being’s blood for a variety of purposes, and one of those purposes apparently was to try to give her temporary superpowers from superhuman blood.
I might just be particularly not liking how this is turning out because of the legal aspects of this, admittedly, and I was really hoping super-lawyer Arianna would wind up being the reason for her defeat because the LLC operating agreement is so ludicrously wrong at this point.
I still love the comic. Just not really liking this particular gimmick of this particular character. Seriously no disrespect intended to DaveB on this.
At this point, if the LLC contracts don’t have to be based on law for HW to be able to get powers from being hired from an LLC, why not just put into the contract that they can make other supers members of the LLC without their agreement, then make Maxima a member of the LLC then she suddenly has Maxima’s power.
Seriously the LLC Operating agreement makes no sense at all at this point.
I know that HW does not get her powers from the contract. She gets her powers from being hired by a supervillain, and the LLC was a way to let her get powers of multiple people instead of just one.
However:
1) Concretia is not actually a supervillain. So if she only gets powers from supervillains, she shouldnt be getting powers from Concretia, and if she can, they might as well put in the LLC agreement that Maxima is a member. Even if she’s not able to be a member without signing, apparently legalities of an LLC agreement doesn’t seem to matter, which is really messing with my head here. It makes about as much sense as saying that someone needs to agree to be fired in order to be fired. Which brings me to problem #2.
2) You can’t have an LLC agreement saying you can’t fire someone without their permission to fire them. You also can’t have anything that’s unconscionable in a contract if you want it to be an actual contract. And if it’s not a legal contract and is an ‘infernal contract’ then my problems are in #3.
3) If it’s more like an ‘infernal contract’ then again, why not just say in the contract that the power levels are to be quadrupled in output per LLC member for one year in advance begin given at the current employment (sort of like saying you’ll get paid one year in advance on the first day), then suddenly she has 4 times as much power as Brut or any other LLC member. Since Brut and the others seemed to sign it without bothering to read anything. How would HW know how infernal contracts work even, when her powers don’t actually rely on contracts, they just rely on her working for another supervillain?
I’m guessing it comes down to the fact you can’t get blood from a stone, flight from a flightless bird or the ability to breath in space from a parakeet. She can’t contract for what they don’t have. Beyond that it all gets very meta.
I wouldn’t use Concretia as an example of anything though. Aside from the fact she’s was being forced to work with these villains, we really don’t know anything about her. She could be on the side of the angels or a supervillain that annoyed the wrong employer.
HW powers get frustratingly illogical and nonsensical if you keep focusing on the LLC red herring and barking at the wrong legal nullification tree. If you reconceptualize her power copying within the framework of an infernal contract limitaton (either genuine or psychologically self-imposed) the situation makes a lot of sense and is rather vanilla.
1) Infernal contracts are valid as long as the subject consents, even if they are tricked or duped, sign without bothering to read or ask about the fine print, or agree under duress. Concretia may have been tricked into signing before becoming a prisoner, or Salsa Man may have just told her “Sign or you’ll get tortured more”. Her supervillain status up to now is fuzzy, but her participation to the restaurant fight probably qualifies for IC standards, and any degree of mercenary cooperation with the Brut team before being captured surely does.
2) HW cannot get the powers of supers w/o tricking or coercing them into signing an appropriate contract. She never got an opportunity to do that with Maxima, even leaving Max’s legal/moral status and the ‘destroyer of mosques’ stuff aside.
3) Unless the demon explicitly agreed otherwise, infernal contracts could not care less about human law. Their typical successful outcome is eternal slavery and to get your signature, the devil is free to trick you, lie by omission, or offer solace from an evil they may even have caused to you in the first place.
4) HW ability is power copying. She may find more creative or skillful ways of imitating your abilities, but she cannot copy powers you don’t have in the first place, or exceed the raw output of your abilities.
5) People make pacts with the devil w/o bothering to rules lawyer or checking for fine print all the time in fiction and it is always their problem. Johnny Blaze made a pact with one of the many devil expies in the Marvel Universe to save his father figure from cancer, and it worked… then his friend died in an accident soon afterwards. Disney’s Megara sold her soul to Hades to save a lover who then left her. No one got a refund, or a chance to get the contract revoked in a human court. As a rule, an infernal contract can only be nullified according to its own terms, by causing a logical contradiction, by using an appropriate supernatural law, or by deploying divine levels of power.
6) We have no clue about how HW got her powers and became aware of them short of Dave’s footnote about her being 1/8 demon, but various possibilities come to mind.
Irioth covered the main points of the infernal legalities. But I just want to address the quadruple power comment.
At the heart of all of this Henchwench is a power copier whose limitation is (those she works for, and perceives as super villains).
the contract aspect only comes into play thanks to some 1/8th devil trickery to get more power.
Now going by an infernal contract she can’t get Maxima’s powers unless Maxima signs it. Its still at its heart a contract not a genie bottle, she isn’t a reality warper.
Now on the power aspect, while this contract is a tad backwards (reversed) to a standard empowerment contract some aspects can still be applied. One being you can’t get more power than can either be channeled through your mortal body *or limited by your amount of mana or astral endurance*, there is still a pool you are drawing that power from.
Under a normal empowerment contract you (the human) are gaining power from the demon you contracted with. it is their power flowing through you. Now as a mortal being your body can only handle so much at once and the demon isn’t about to share so much that it actually weakens them. This type of contract is normally only successful with a higher end powerful demon…lesser demons may attempt it, but those end as “bad possessions”…
but staying focused here. Using a higher end example. Bayonetta. Baytonetta contracted with the elite demon Madama Butterfly, Madama Butterfly lives in her shadow, enhances her speed, strength, durability, perception, prevents her from ageing, and enhances her powers; and even calls on parts of the demon for attacks. The payment of this is that when Bayonetta eventually is killed by something her soul will belong to Madama Butterfly to do with as she wishes.
*Note: Bayonetta 2 confused me as Jeanne ended up being dropped into a random part of Hell and her soul gobbled up by a random demon, and her contracted demon Madama Styx wasn’t even in the story. I personally feel the game had this patch worked story going on as they had two different stories they wanted to do and ended up stitching them together, a journey into hell, and a separate…rehashing the timey wimey Balder whatever plot of the first game into a paradox loop…personally I’d have preferred it stayed focused on hell…but speaking of staying focused.
back on topic: Some contracts involving people with powers may result in them being swallowed by the demon upon death and trapped inside the demon which gains their powers. Usually the earthly side of that was less a gain more powers and more a gain more fortune in exchange for “serving” the demon in death.
on the power exchange side Henchwench is sort of in the reversed angle of most empowerment contracts as she is gaining the powers of those who signed the contracts while they are still alive and while she is bonded to their service. She can’t increase her own power beyond what’s available as she is the source of the contract and they are the source of the power.
Which again she is a power copier muddying it up by trying to apply an infernal contract in the mix.
She may display greater feats due to creativity and the combined power. I suspect Brut’s power being copied is acting as an amplifier/booster to the other powers, allowing her to use aspects of said powers like Concretia’s that would normally be too strenuous for Concretia to use herself.
In short: Power copier.
Contract: exists only to get multiple powers, can’t enhance them, because they are the source of the powers and SHE is the source of the contract’s power. So unless she already had a power pool to draw from (like being the avatar of an eldritch or something) to amplify the powers she simply can’t As far as we know she’s a super with a tiny drop of devil heritage that only helped in making contracts.
Excellent analysis. In the end, HW is just the equivalent of Amazo, Super Adaptoid, Mimic, or Taskmaster with a “needs infernal contract to activate and maintain” psychological or supernatural limitation. She compensates this limitation with a likely unlimited number of power slots, being often able to use the abilities better than the original owners, skillful use of infernal rule lawyering, and permanent duration of the copies as long as the contracts last. She is the kind of super that could easily evolve to godlike power in the right circumstances. Given her villainous mindset, no surprise she got in the thrall of one heck of a manic power trip.
Given her infernal law framework, I am much more skeptical the limitation of her power copying to supervillains actually exists and is not a wrong assumption on her part. As supernatural contracts typically go, in all likelihood no super except maybe the most saintly or godlike are potentially immune to her copying, at least as it concerns inherent abilities, and nobody in Archon or the Twilight Council probably qualifies.
Did you honestly just say ” You also can’t have anything that’s unconscionable in a contract if you want it to be an actual contract.” with a straight face ????
Are you familiar with this planet? Are you familiar with current hiring and employment practices in the United States? NDAs and non-Competes? There are unconscionable aspects to MOST employment contracts, and have been for decades, and they are just NOW getting around to nullifying them in most states. They are still enforceable in otehr states.
Heck, you know all this. A contract with unconscionable aspects is still enforceable up to the point where a court declares it is not.
True but at some point, a contract is going to be seen as de facto unconscionable. Like when you say you cant be fired unless you agree to be fired, or wgere tge contract says you must work without getting paid ever.
btw, Non competes also have points where it is or is not unconscionable in the law based on scope, time, and area, supported by multiple statutes and decades of state and federal case precedents.:). Unconscionable, as a legal definition at least, means “ one that is so one-sided or so unfair that it shocks the conscience” rather than just ‘unequal and not perfectly fair.’
And no, a contract is not enforceable if its unconscionable. What I think you mean is that if no one argues with a contract unconscionable requirements, the question about it being unenforceable will never arise in the first place.:). Yes. If no obe finds out you are keeping workers as indentured servants/slaves, you wont lose their servitude until soneone disputes it. It doesnt mean slavery or indentured servitude is legal though. Just like a crime is still a crime even if you have not yet been caught.:)
I said ” A contract with unconscionable aspects “. There’s always a severability clause, so just because there’s another clause in an overall contract that is later ruled unconscionable, it usually doesn’t invalidate the entire contract. (Noncompetes are an exception in some states, where if any part of it is unconscionable, the whole thing is thrown out.)
In this case, if the “HW must approve firing of HW” were thrown out, it would not necessarily invalidate a “firing of HW must have two weeks notice” clause … which in a freely negotiated employment contract would not be per se unreasonable. One could argue that a contract allowing them to order HW into a situation where their powers were necessary for her safety, and then allowing them to fire her with instant effect, precipitating her into mortal danger, would be clearly unconscionable.
Did you have to make me envisage sex acts involving portals DaveB? Especially ones with portals inside of people!!!
*looking around for the brain bleach*
*gives Yorp an bottle of Super strength brain bleach and a box of Yorpie snacks to remove the taste*
Just because I hate mysteries and loose ends… :)
I’m guessing one of the LLC villains is either a gadget whiz or a master manipulator. The kind of person that can take a box full of junk and turn it into a death ray or use the cast of Glee plus some D-list villains to take over a country. With that talent available to her, Henchwench might manifest the ability to “synergize” and create powers stunts or applications not readily available the original power holder like Concretia.
Henchwench isn’t smarter or more talented than the original power holders, she just has a talent they lack.
Just a thought and personal mileage may vary.
Brut made multiple calls. If there were only FlyGirl, Brut and Concretia in the LLC, then he would have only needed one to get 2/3 vote. So, yeah, there’s someone else.
Thats true. Just annoying to not know what other llc members have powers because its so open ended now.
I hope Concretia joins ArcSwat. If for no other reason than “These people can show me how to use my powers better, maybe find a way to monetize them”.
I mean, her powers are hard to monetize. Sure she can fight, but does she actually want to or is she currently being forced by the baddies? What can she do to make money? It depends on the level of control she has in manipulating the material she is possessing. Can she possess a mass larger than herself? If so, she could be useful in clearing large amounts of land precisely, like road construction in mountainous regions.
Arc could branch out and help empowered individuals learn to use their powers and find commercial applications for them. They could even turn this into a self-funding endeavor.
Heck, if Arc doesn’t do this, I am sure some enterprising individual will figure out how to turn this model into a very profitable business.
Cue the next new venture from Machina Industries?
“Potentia Consulting: making your Powers work for you.“
There’s another webcomic called PS 238 which actually does have a business like that, I think :) It’s not nearly as good as Grrlpower by a long shot, and doesnt update as quickly though.
I’m aware of that webcomic, but never had a chance to try it. To be honest, I’d have been surprised if no-one had come up with the ‘Power optimisation consultant’ concept before.
her powers can’t be monetized …..
I do not want to know just how black a deal a construction company will make to have her shape their concrete. If she takes some courses on concrete and how it works? and she can bend rebar inside it? she will probably make more money than Sydney. If her golem form does not transmit damage, and has the absurd range she appears to have? she can get up close and personal with The Elephant’s Foot safely. maybe even break it up. I’d pull her into Archon as an on call backup, use the awesome medical plan to keep her in the fold, then rent her out to the various industries at per hour rates that are lawyer level obscene.
Ohhhhhh, Think of the good PR (and piles of money) that she could make working Nuclear cleanup. (assuming she is immune)
Chernobyl might even get renamed after her. Only crazy people want to live in Chernobyl, but everyone will flock to………. Contretia city….?
OK, don’t rename the city after her, but still rename the city. Give her a giant statue instead.
Honestly I’ve liked Hench Wench. Its great to finally have a villain that the hero’s cant just steamroll over like they always do.
Cant help but see some pettiness in this page on both sides. From Max not being able to easily beat Hench Wench so she just stabs her. Pretty sure its illegal for a cop to impale someone. To Concreata’s obvious jealousy.
It may not have been standard procedure for a while, but I am pretty sure it is legitimate for a cop or soldier to use a sword to deliver a stabbing wound in lethal combat and has been been so for millennia. The rebar used this way is just the improvised equivalent. HW crossed the threshold of making deadly force legitimate against her long ago. Heck, if collateral damage were not an issue, given HW’s willingness to indulge in acts of terrorism, Max would be entirely justified to atomize HW with one of her nuke-level blasts.
^^^This
The more idiotic rules you impose on a combatant, the more your own combatants… Die; horrifically maimed. As Vietnam so graphically showed.(1) Cops are combatants when anyone draws a weapon on them. They’re not literal soldiers, yes, but the lesson from Vietnam applies just as strongly.
(1) Warning, graphic: https://thumbs3.imgbox.com/eb/01/abtwCuaJ_t.jpg
you do know that it is established law the Max can lie to suspects about most things with impunity. one of the few things she can’t say is ‘I am your lawyer’. Hench has established herself as a very large threat and is actively engaged in physical combat. right now Max could use a power blast from her finger to ash Hench wench and she’d get a medal. when its discovered that Hench was doing a distraction to cover kidnap/murder of Sydney? Max is likely to get reprimanded for not killing hench sooner. I wouldn’t be too quick to say what Max legally can and can’t do.
RIGHT in the TIT! OWOWOWOWOWOW!!!
Okay- what is the point where assaulting a federal officer & terrorism charges allows them to just straight up kill you to limit the collateral damage? Because I think Hench Wench there passed that point several pages ago.
Surely at this point Dave is gifting HW with some serious Joker Immunity b/c she is long past the point where a normal felon becomes target practice for SWAT snipers. Ofc her level of durability creates a serious threshold problem to overcome and the related risk of collateral damage but delaying escalation just leaves her free to create as much collateral damage or worse in her wanton power trip.
It is hard to see why that rebar could not have gone through her vital organs, or Max and/or Dabbler could not say grab her, move up in the air or far in the Atlantic, then throw her away and nuke her. Not to mention Dabbler potentially having access to spell attacks HW might not have special resistance.
OTOH, her recent development of intangibility changes the picture and makes her immune to anything most of the Archon field team currently engaged can deploy. Concretia may have hurt her in ghostly melee thanks to surprise but quite possibly not be able to incapacitate her, also b/c her flight powers may well make HW more mobile. Dabbler may have something in her arsenal to deal with intangible enemies that works with her but I suppose finding the right soution takes some serious trial and error or guesswork.
Because they are (or at least Maxi is) still trying to take her alive
Speaking from a practical mindset, I cannot see any good Watsonian reason why Maxi should still be trying to take her alive. Archon already has a super with a similar power set (Varia) to study, and HW has given no real sign she might be liable to a heel-face turn and suitable for work-release. On the contrary she has shown glee to indulge in a manic power trip, wanton disregard for the lives of Archon combatants & NY civilians, eagerness to escalate and fight to the bitter end, and readiness to betray her allies for petty reasons. She is just as toxic as Sciona, which the Twilight Council rightfully tried to execute and Archon shot on sight, and for similar reasons.
The only good reason why HW still breathes is her unlocking of intangibility makes her much more difficult to kill with the powersets of anybody but Dabbler, but it does not justify why that rebar didn’t go through the head. Maxi is under no orders to take HW alive, and already got prisoners that seem able and willing to spill out the beans about their organization. For all his obnoxiousness, Salsa Man died for much less.
Hows about: because it’s her fucking job to take them in alive if possible
They are not trying to recruit her for fungus sake!!
And this whole “Watsonian vs Doyleist” thing is a load of monkey bullshit: Doyle was the writer, Watson was one of his characters
And Watson was nearly an idiot.
Maxima may have lost all patience with HW’s shenanigans, but being an Officer of the Law (as opposed to a freelance vigilante) is a core part of her identity. Even if she knew for a fact that HW was destined for a short trial and a date with Old Sparky, that aspect of her character still obliges her to take HW alive if possible – it’s not a legal execution until there’s a court verdict giving the order.
1) Max doesn’t kill without an overriding reason.
2) HW has not even endangered bystanders, let alone shown herself to be a killer.
3) There is no reason for Max to kill HW.
Yes, but Maxima is the good guy. She only uses as much force as she needs to, and so far she had the situation under control – HW was getting smacked around by her, and therefore contained. She only goes lethal when she needs to – like when Vehemence can’t be stopped otherwise or Sciona threaten civilians.
This whole interaction underlines a difference between Max and Cora which was decently lampshaded in #908). Each had the choice of life or death, made different choices, and spawned a thousand comments. It’s nice when writing has clearly defined characters!
It’s also worth noting that while this fight has gone on for several months IRL, giving us all time to chew over all the possibilities, from Max’s POV it’s been just one long punch-out for a few minutes at most. Maybe the after-action analysis will suggest Max should’ve gone lethal sooner, maybe not, but she’s in the moment, has to make immediate choices, and her choices are consistent with her goals, training and experience. IRL non-super LEO are not supers.
Remember a few thousand years ago real time when Max blasted a bridge full of civilians in an unpredictable accident. At the start of the comic she was a huge advocate ‘for check behind your target,’ ‘use your powers safely,’ ‘don’t endanger civilians.’ She was in mission mode so she had to make a choice and trust her team in the moment, but the after action reports probably hit her confidence pretty hard.
This level of nonlethal and relative caution makes sense given where she started and the events she accidentally set in motion. If it turns out that she let a civilian get crushed by the concrete or the blackout caused a loss of life while she was busy trying to take the criminal alive she’ll feel pretty bad. There’s always going to be something she could have done better.
Well, I would assume HW started to threaten civilians and hence justified Maxi shifting to lethal combat when she started to carelessly rip and throw around huge blocks of concrete and cause blackouts in the middle of the city.
Not entirely related to the comic but rather comments.
A PSA for all human lawyers.
If you do not understand the demonic pact laws and regulations.
Good.
you shouldn’t. You learned human laws of your specific human society.
If you find yourself in a situation where you have to defend a human client who signed a demonic pact or finds themselves the subject of a pre-existing contract pertaining their location or vocation; your JOB is not to understand, rationalize, or comprehend the ins and outs of demonic contract law. Your job is the prey on the ego of the demon so they make the Webster Folly, get them to verbally or in signing agree to follow the laws of your human nation for a trial or review of the contract.
The demon doesn’t know human law. Trust me, they never do, because human law is based on social agreements, laws designed to protect and guide a large number of people to form a stable society. Demon law is based on a 1 to 1 interaction, it has nothing to do with their own society and humans are treated more like toys or animals in these agreements. This is what works against them when you convince them to agree to abide by human laws. Their contracts will start to fall apart very quickly *usually*.
But that’s the cornerstone, if you can’t get the demon to fall for the Webster’s Folly, then you don’t have a case…also you aren’t a lawyer to them anyway until you do.
But they will be bound by their agreement if they accept this condition.