Grrl Power #920 – Hench ‘ya later!
I guess HenchWench vividly described her plans to Maxima during the side-flash to Super-super max, otherwise how did Max know she was assuming it would be co-ed?
Okay, so here’s a question. If Henchwench’s powers only work with supervillains, her ability to gain powers from someone makes her a reliable supervillain detector, right? That wouldn’t give you prosecutable evidence, but it’d be like warrantless wiretapping. Once you know you’ve got the right guy, you start working backwards until you have something admissible, or at least know to increase surveillance on them.
This all assumes you’d trust Henchwench not to suddenly abuse “Mind Controlling Teleport Guy’s” powerset the instant she receives it. Which I wouldn’t. It also hinges heavily on exactly how her powers determine what constitutes a “Supervillain” and if that matches a legal definition.
By “every science fiction movie ever” Maxima is referring specifically to Deadpool 2 and The Chronicles of Riddick, both of which have mixed gender common areas in their prisons. I’m sure there are other examples, but those two stick in my mind. I don’t know why they do that in movies. I assume it’s for casting diversity maybe? Or in Riddick’s case, it was so they could reunite him with a character he’d previously met, played by a different actress and who looked and acted totally different, and all that so Riddick wouldn’t have to worry about opening 1 extra gate that separated the boy’s side of the prison from the girl’s side during the escape scene.
Not to be indelicate, but wouldn’t mixed gender prisons be like locking Chris Nolan’s Joker up in a vault full of money, handing him a lighter and hoping he doesn’t do something inappropriate? Like the prison guards don’t already have enough to do. Oh by the way, we’ve locked a bunch of axe murderers up in an AXE WAREHOUSE which is also hosting the National Sorority Slumber Party Championships. So, you know, be on alert.
Well, heck, now I’m stuck imagining what the NSSPC would be like. I assume it would be televised. (Secretly televised, so it matches the uncomfortable creep factor of old R-rated college movies like Porky’s and Revenge of the Nerds.) It’d be all the stuff from slasher and party movies condensed into formalized competitions, like Truth or Dare that immediately escalates to kissing, pillow fights, tickle fights, super-soakers full of baby oil fights, making the peeping virgin mess his pants with industrial strength shower fraternization, etc. Not sure how you’d judge most of that. It’d probably be mostly capricious, like bodybuilding competitions, instead of a rigorous point system.
FYI, I’m in the north Dallas area, and it’s been between about 6 degrees and 19 (F) since Sunday, and we’ve gotten something like 8” of snow that’s actually stuck to the ground instead of instantly melting. While that sounds pretty mild to some of you, Texas simply isn’t equipped for that, especially one or more of the power providers, who have known for over a decade that sub-freezing temperatures would severely fuck them up. So since Sunday evening, a good deal of North Texas has been dealing with managed blackouts. 30 to 60 minutes without power, 30-90 with. It’s better than having no power at all, but it’s a heck of a time to discover that the battery in my UPS is dead. So I’ve been working on the next two pages on my iPad, which is not ideal, but it technically works. At least for penciling. Not sure the iPad can handle all the layers I use when I get to coloring. Hopefully power will be back soon, as will my replacement UPS. If not, then brace yourself for some flat colored art a few pages from now.
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Should have kept that quiet. Lesson Learned :(
Actually, probably not. HenchWench is too much of a blabber-mouth. So now Arriana needs to find HW’s paperwork for Portal or maybe Deus, who employs her, and suspend that as well.
Arriana: Hello, is this the Secretary of State for the state of Arizona? … Good. I am Arriana Mitchel, chief legal council for Archon. It has come to my attention that there is a criminal enterprise registered in your state that I would like you to suspend pending a full hearing to revoke. Believe it or not, the timing can be quite significant. … File number? Let’s see. Yes, it is 09-0000512. … Sure, I will wait as you look it up. … What makes it a criminal enterprise? Well, it is being used by a super-powered individual to gain extra powers. … Yes, revoking or even suspending the paperwork should make it so she will not be able to use the extra abilities. … Thank you ma’am. I will be in touch. [ Hangs up & picks up her cell ] Okay Max, that should do it. Is she showing any other powers? Do I have to hunt through any more jurisdictions for her paperwork?
Max: Yeah, she just started throwing a huge stream of water at me, Heatwave and Mr. Amorphous, water-bending style. She just said something about Alberta?
Arriana: I’m on it, but Canada could be a little trickier on jurisdiction.
It’s not the same portal as Opal’s ones
Opal is currently on conditional parole in Galytin as an agreement between ARCHON and Deus, I believe (the vault thing happened AFTER the comic with her in prison, right?). So it would be weird if HW was subcontracted out to Opal somehow.
Paperwork? Henchwench was going to gain Vehemence’s powers from a verbal agreement to ‘hire’ her to fetch him a milk. Clearly no paperwork is required.
Social contracts in prison are not quite like standard contracts. As long as HW gets “protection” she could technically be defined as being paid. No pay, no contract, no power linkage. She’s an isolation case and will be treated as such within a pressure bubble.
Maybe have Ariana draft a paper stating that HenchWench is voluntarily severing her employment with any, and all individuals and agencies, effective once she signs it. With a lot of other legalese splashed on the page to make it official and airtight.
Yeah, that would be Henchie signing under coercion and, thusly, illegal and invalid
There is illegal coercion and there is legal inducement. The broad legal definition of coercion is “the use of express or implied threats of violence or reprisal (as discharge from employment) or other intimidating behavior that puts a person in immediate fear of the consequences in order to compel that person to act against his or her will.”
Conditions of parole are not considered coercion under the law. (Nor are other acts of actual coercion by the legal system, such as threats to prosecute your friends family to get you to plead to a crime.)
In this case, “We have three practical ways to make sure you do not escape. Pick one.”
Choose:
A: Indefinite solitary confinement. Attempts at teleporting will just result in you exiting a pressure chamber and thus explode your own heart. We’ll find you eventually even if you finde a way to leave because of the gps nanotech.
B: Sign this paper which states you are quitting any and all jobs, negating all contracts, and revoking any and all verbal agreements of all natures from all points previous in time and no such contracts, jobs, agreements or other such options will occur which you will gain any powers whatsoever. All future options will be reviewed by state legal teams prior to their ability to exist and by default none are able to transfer you powers. We’ll arrange you to be out in the least amount of time served.
C: We let the space police person with the “your insides become your outsides” guns and such take you to space jail which… we… really don’t know what will happen to you in but you’ll probably die before that. They said something about assigning you a Nanny Disc?
How could I have not noticed Max’s Power Girl impersonation?
Urrg.. i didnt think it was possible. But HW’s power actually managed to get MORE stupid.
Now she can also have more than one contract?
I suspect her real power is Self Delusion; her power works that way because she convinced herself that it does.
I mean, it depends entirely on things like employment status, fictional entities like companies, and the exact laws and legal details underpinning them. All things that only exist in the human mind, and things that someone in the legal profession especially would be susceptible to mistaking for real things.
Applying that “SUSPENDED” stamp probably wouldn’t have done a thing if Arianna hadn’t been on call to explicitly let her know it had happened.
Everything in life, and fiction, is due to self delusion.
if you don’t exist how are you posting? drifting bit of antithought interacting with the dorsal gamma wave gel? must get that filter changed.
Unfortunately, filter is located at the back of Plato’s cave, where only artificial light exists to cast shadows. And the bulb is burnt out.
you are trying to get me to come up with more technobabble… here look at the BLU and tell me when the level gets to Texas.
Totally agree with you about that, Self-Delusion is one of many issues this girl suffering from.
Its too bad she so twist, she properly going be out picture soon.
That reminds me of an old minor marvel villain called I think the word who had a daughter who was invulnerable and super strong because she had f as with in her father. Captain America broke her faith and she lost her powers.
My thoughts are somewhere along this line… it’s not “delusion” as much as “artificially constructed limitation due to her own inability to recognize the extent of her own power”. More than likely, it either first manifested or was shown to be the most stable for her when there was a formal contract of some kind for her to anchor her perspective to.
My guess? Her power is actually something equivalent to Varia’s. She’s able to replicate any power from someone she has a bond with. I would bet that “close friends” would count, but she doesn’t have the mentality to recognize a friendship like that. Dating or marriage would likely work equivalently, though marriage would end up being another type of “contract” for her to focus her power through. The reason why she’s able to do it as an “employee” is because she likely noticed it happening once like that, and an employment contract is a clear “bond” between her and her boss (in her mind is all that matters in this case). If I’m right, then it wouldn’t matter if her boss is a hero or a villain, just that they have a power she can copy. And, by the same logic, her being the boss and employing supers would net her their powers for use.
Of course, that would be if she ever thought about the advanced logic for it all. She seems to be far too “in the moment” when acting (with considerations only for “how could it turn against me” for planning considerations) to sit and work out that kind of logic. So, really, her personality is her biggest weakness, since it’s likely creating the most vulnerable points to her power.
I would argue a different artificial limitation is in play. It is pretty apparent that her powers work through contracts, you would be pretty hard pressed to explain how she can both get instantly depowered through legalese and resist getting depowered through legalese otherwise.
The artificial limitation that I think it is, is thinking that the contracts have to be framed through a legal system. Essentially, if she had written up a contract to the effect of “you agree to hire me and can’t fire me ever”, then that would work. THAT contract would then only fail if she framed it under a legal system that could void it or if the contracted party dies.
I don’t know why that shouldn’t work.
Signing several deals with different villains on a on-call basis was literally the first idea I had when I saw how her power works.
I wonder if she can be permanently depowered by making her sign a contract with an indefinite non-compete clause.
A power like this simply MUST have a heap of drawbacks with the same theme as its strenghts.
Such as also gaining there weaknesses. Do supernatural count as super regarding contracts?
Well here’s the thing:
It’s only MASSIVELY powerful due to the fact that she has technically no powers of her own. Without being employed she’s just a skilled fighter.
No, her REAL power that makes her broken is that she’s a VERY skilled Paralegal working with Contracts.
See, the group TRIED to fire her, but she was all “GG NOPE!”
Because WITHOUT that contract it’d be pretty easy to murder her by going “I hire you so you can fly. Now that you’re flying high out over the Ocean with me, I’m firing you. Now die as you fall from a great height with ZERO powers”
In this case it’s that she got a bunch of IDIOTS who didn’t read their Contract, She was put in charge of it, making her Unfireable, or so she thought.
Now if she was NOT such a fantastic Paralegal working with ironclad contracts….then she could easily screw herself. It’s not her powers that made her as broken, it’s her JOB that you combine with her powers, that make her broken.
Yet we can see here, how little power she has when she’s forced into her fallback, and without being super charged with several different abilities.
Sub-sub-contracting is a thing. Since she’s apparently got a copy of Opal’s powers, she’s probably knows about everyone who was at Kevin’s shindig.
I’d say HW was originally working paralegal for one of Deus’ companies and that’s when she first figured out she had powers.
Super Planning maybe?
i don’t think that it’s from Opal, the special effect is different. Opal’s was a very thin, yellowish circle of light, this is more like a dark electric crackling, rather thick, tunnel.
I mean. Contractors can have contracts with multiple companies. Landscaping? Contracts with multiple companies. Cleaning crews. Contracts with multiple companies. Lawyers. Contract multiple clients. That was one of the first things I figured she could and would do. She’s smart enough to get a compliment from one of the most conniving legal experts in Archon so it stands within reason she would have some contingency contracts in case something like this happens.
You can have more than one employer at a time. But yeah her power did get even more annoying. :)
In a way, having a bunch of OP villains keeps things interesting given the OP heroes, it keeps the focus on the human aspect when everyone’s super.
You can also have more than one contract. Are you therefore stupid?
Yeah, Henchwench has an annoying power set. But it was a paid cameo character, so that deserves some page time. If we never see her again except in the way we’re seeing Vehemence again (non-focus panels, “where are they now,” dream sequences, etc.) I’ll be happy and I think the cameo purchaser will have gotten their money’s worth.
If Henchwench is hoping to tap into Kevin’s powers that would mean that she knows something about his powers. Makes me wonder just how free Archon is with information about the residents of the Super Supermax prison. Sure there would be people making FOIA requests, but I’d have thought that Arianna would quash most of those for security reasons.
Maybe HW got the invite to Kevin’s bash but just didn’t have the tim eto sogn anyone up, and so didn’t show.
It did seem like the invite went out to absolutely everybody and anybody.
UM… You DO realize that the fight was TELEVISED NATIONALLY right? and seeing as how he lost, it is quite logical to assume that he’s in a prison somewhere, as well…
Exactly.
Also, Vehemence is actually in custom solitary, constantly monitored and drugged – if HW had inside information, she wouldn’t be imagining a generic prison cafeteria.
How would it work with Kevin though? He doesn’t have a well-defined power (kinetic absorption, super speed/strength/defense, flight or whatever), rather he seems to have generic capabilities (change size, additional strength, regeneration, etc) _that are powered by vistric energy_. Would HW become vistric-energy-powered too?
As she said, start a riot in the prison, even if those happen less frequently than she thinks.
Good question. It’s unclear whether Vehemence “counts” for HW’s power. This holds for other abilities, too. Krona, Sydney, even Maxima are different from regular supers. Could she turn into bats if hired by a vampire?
In any case, better safe than sorry when it comes to locking up supervillains.
It has been hypothesized that Vehemence’s power could be demonic in origin, i.e. coming from the same source as actual Malumi’s.
Even if she gets Vehemence’s power, in all probability she has to charge it. After all, in his case his power is different from his power level. And considering how organized their prison looked like, that might not work out well for her (even if Vehemence wasn’t drugged in solitary).
Also, if she shows she gets too powerful? She might start the list Vehemence avoided starting. I doubt Maxima would fool around then.
Simple, her and V start punching each other at full strength, powering them both up at the same time!
Hench should stay quiet now if she wants Max to leave her in any sort of non broken state
Yeah, if she’d kept her mouth shut and waited until they locked her in a van or otherwise took their eyes off of her, she could have been home free.
I suspect her contract-based power is fae-derived rather than demonic and that her constant self-narration and overall trickster nature is in fact an inherited trait.
I think she is just an idiot. That better fits a misapplied Occam’s Razor, in any event.
She has a big personality, to go with her big power potential. She’s very smart but also very impulsive. That’s one of her major psych disadvantages.
The kind of prisons Riddick gets put in are those where it’s a case of the people running the prison don’t really care if you die.
Usually because to them it’s filled with the scum of the universe, and apex predator criminals.
So it’s like sticking joker in a prison with the other costumed yet non-super-powered criminals and villains, then making sure they don’t get along.
So, Arkham City
Pretty much all of DC is a no go as a rich kid with daddy issues can beat nearly all of the headliners.
I’m going to assume that Henchwench’s spooky stary eyes are a part-devil thing.
(See also page 916.)
It’s just super dilated pupils. You have to look a bit closely, but they’re there.
dilated -> constricted.
I like the thought that Vehemence eats with a pinkie extended, holding his silverware all posh and dainty like.
He’s one of the classier villains we’ve seen so far.
You know, when not brawling.
Oh man, stay safe, DaveB. Time to invest in a generator and/or some solar panels. Well, when they’re back in stock – I imagine they’ve been bought out by now. Hope you and your kin are all faring well in that crap weather.
That and when you can get to the store, after the snow has been removed from the roads. Man, you guys got more snow around Dallas than we got around Toronto. Take it slow and drive according to conditions. When the road conditions are still covered in 2 inches of show, the driving style is called “Don’t.”
We got less than an inch of snow in Houston, and the power’s been out for about 30 hours of the last 36. The power companies have really screwed the pooch in the Energy state.
cw: politics/economics
…
Weirdly, it seems like leaving infrastructure in the hands of private interests motivated solely by extracting as much profit as they legally can is a _bad_ idea. And not just in Texas, either. Seems almost like this sort of thing happens in a lot of places.
And just as weird, one can’t help noticing that the weather, everywhere, has been getting really, really unpredictable and bizarre, lately. Almost as if the meteorological system itself had been significantly disrupted, and was now showing the signs of crisis, and eminent collapse.
I WONDER IF THESE THINGS MIGHT BE AT ALL RELATED.
…end cw.
I drive trucks for a living. Yesterday saw me traveling along the I-10, from Van Horn to…wherever the hell i”m stuck at now, a bit east of San Antonio. My delivery is in Katy, but even though I could’ve made it, my company forced me to shut down at dark.
So now, I’m stuck. No place to get a hot meal, or even a stiff drink, while I ride this out. If the power fails again, I won’t even have a toilet, because this gas station (not even a proper truck stop) will lock the doors. This is, in a word, “frustrating.”
…a single, enormously understated word.
Apropos of approximately nothing, but if you are a trucker who spends a fair amount of time in Texas… are you aware of a woman called Redbird? When last I knew, she was driving a truck on a regular run back and forth between Phoenix AZ and Corpus Christi. But it’s been a few years and that’s not likely to still be true. Still, IIRC her house is somewhere in TX.
Sorry honey, I cannot help you on that one. \=(
Ouch. Good luck with the overnight.
One would not know your politics from your choice of projections.
Two words – It’s not.
The government is intimately involved in the Texas utility infrastructure.
That and the Texans are at least as weird as the Newfoundlanders, if not more so.
A mere 2″ of snow, and you’re calling for no driving at all? LOL. That is truly hilarious to someone who has driven in far worse conditions without incident.
I do wish that people who were not familiar with driving in snow would stay off the roads, and that people with SUVs wouldn’t think that they are somehow immune to the laws of physics, but that’s too much to ask.
You drive cautiously, slowly, leaving piles of distance between yourself and other vehicles, make lane changes and turns with even more caution, and cringe when you see the aforementioned SUVs approaching in your rear view mirrors.
The problem is rarely the conditions themselves, compared to people’s familiarity with them. It sounds as though your area gets significant amounts of snow regularly; you’re therefore used to it, know what to do, and have the kit to do so. Areas which don’t normally get snow don’t have that level of preparation for it.
Plus which, a small amount of snow is potentially more of a problem than a lot of it. With a thick layer in cold conditions, it is at least relatively stable. Thin snow implies the conditions are marginal, which means interfaces between frozen and not-frozen areas (and thawed-then-refrozen, which can be worst of all).
Yep. Here in Dallas is we have effectively no snowplows, because there is never any need for them. When snow falls, melts, then freezes, we get snow on top of a layer of slick ice, and the only place that condition clears is on roads where there is enough traffic to melt it back down to pavement in the tire tracks.
Their solution is to drop grit on the snowy roads, to improve traction and also melt ice by absorbing sunlight in points. It also makes the snow easier to recognize.
But, no, 2 inches of snow is not enough for everyone to stay home. 2 inches of snow and sub-zero temperatures is.
“She-Bulk” here we come. Comics getting racy for that prison fight.
I feel your pain, we were without power for the majority of Monday and Tuesday. Lost Power at about 1 am Monday morning, it came and went a couple of times, then went out for good until around 9pm, then went out again at about 11 PM and stayed out till Tuesday night. No “rolling blackouts” here, just blackout. I live with my 79 year old parents with health issues, thankfully we had an old Dearborn heater and a gas outlet to hook it up to. Kept the house from freezing completely.
Just east of Midland Texas. 10 hour blackout Monday early early, 17 hour blackout early evening.
Power has been on for the last 48 hours and counting.
Temperature rising. Should be 70F this upcoming Wednesday.
No water since the first outage. I still have several one gallon water jugs.
Roads should be ice free tomorrow but stores will be nearly empty.
I’m north of Houston. Power went out around 4:45 Sunday afternoon and was out for 3-4 hours. It came back on while I had ventured out to find somewhere to eat dinner since I couldn’t cook at home. Found a Marco’s Pizza that was still open. When I got home power was back on.
It was all good until Thursday morning when power went out again around 11:00 in the morning. Again I ventured out and was able to find somewhere open to eat lunch. Ate, then had a beer after that until my call to Centerpoint’s hot line told me my power should be restored and went back home.
The other problem all day yesterday until this morning was no water pressure. Nothing but trickles out of any faucet. Made trying to take a shower before I went out for lunch a challenge, but I couldn’t go out without some sort of washing up first. People would recoil at the reek. :-{)
Tip: Draw enough water to drink, cook, and clean with for several days.
Turn off the water main. Open the faucets and especially the outside spigots, allow the water to drain out. With no pressure behind it this won’t take long. If you have separate cutoffs for the outside spigots, throw them. (If you don’t, get them installed when you can. It’s a couple hundred bucks well spent.)
This will help prevent your pipes from freezing and potentially bursting. Water damage is right next to fire as the worst damage that can happen to a home.
++
Okay here’s an actual good question about her powers: how do they define “supervillain?”
I think she wants it to be “people with extraordinary abilities who use those abilities to commit crimes.” I think her real power set is “people with extraordinary abilities,” but she has not tried contracting with Archon yet. At this point, she will not be given the opportunity to try that out.
I suspect that she’s incorrect or lying about this.
Her powers work with any super.
Word of God from the #915 author comments confirms that it explicitly only works with villains.
Well now, look who’s getting Opal’s old pressurised room.
No one, because as soon as they cancel that contract, she won’t be needing it
The only reason the 1st contract cancellation happened was because a member of the Swan Yacht of Villainy LLC desperately wanted HW to be shut down and gave Archon a copy so they could find its thermal exhaust port
Oh, GOOD.
She doesn’t get to walk away from this.
Also? This further implies some covert connection between the LLC and Machina Industries, because who wants to bet Henchwench’s “friend” is Opal?
Very different effects on the portals, so probably not.
I’m taking that bet. This looks extremely different to Opal’s portals, with a wormholey shape and crackly lightning all around, whereas Opal’s portal are just smooth glowing rings.
So no, no evidence Machina industries is involved. Also, Deus is all about sublety, good PR and buying loyalty – neither going in guns blazing to extract the gizmo nor treating employees like Concretia is something he’d approve of. It’s, of course, possible, that MI employees and Evil INC members are connected through the “super-scene”, but Deus himself – and so far it seems like he has full control over Machina Industries – is unlikely do have anything to do with it.
Art errors abound in this comic, so don’t rely too much on an art effect to draw (no pun intended) a conclusion.
As an example, just in the past few comics we’ve had Concretia appear to be buck naked in her ghost form, while previously she’s been shown with her standard costume look, and Henchwench also appears with her standard costume look in ghost form.
On again/off again clothing damage, missing choker Archon communications devices, magical changing hair, etc. etc. All of these and more have happened, and continue to happen. So yeah, base a theory on the art and you’re more likely to be wrong than right. Opal is at least a known portal creator, regardless of the art effects.
Eh, those things are generally minor of no consequence, but the portal style is a significant all around change. I could see some details being different being an art error, but this bears zero resemblance to Opal’s portals – even the function is notable different.
Well, the prison in Riddick really didn’t care. Prisons like that are lock up and throw away the key. They don’t care if you get raped to death. They even let out those hounds for sport.
SURPRISED PIKACHU FACE!
I don’t know if I’m alone in this, but Henchwench is rapidly turning into Mister Mxyzptlk for me– waaaay too over-powered for a minor, yet incredibly irritating character, with an even more absurd weakness.
I dunno, I feel like getting tricked into saying your difficult to pronounce name backward is a much more ridiculous weakness than “my powers are contract based, if my contract gets nullified I naturally no longer have the powers.” Like, that weakness makes sense based on how her power appears to work, so not that absurd, and in fact they beat her in basically the exact way most of the people in the comments predicted (nullify the contract, thus depowering her).
On the other hand, Mxy is a fifth dimensional imp who is nigh omnipotent, bound by very few rules, and depending on the writer some of those rules (like the name thing) are self-imposed, meaning tricking him into saying kltpzyxm *doesn’t* banish him (again, depending on the writer), but rather that’s the default lose condition for his games, because where’s the fun if your opponent has zero chance of winning? Honestly, he’s not supposed to make a whole lot of sense, nonsense is kinda his schtick.
Just gonna leave this here… https://i.imgur.com/BtVTb64.jpg
Heckwench is too funny. I get feeling she won’t be back unless some comedic moment. Unless she bamboozaled joining and staying on the team, there no hope for her but in a prison sedated.
Be careful down there, DaveB. Where I live single-digit temperatures just merit a “fuck, it’s cold, oh well” and 6 – 8 inches of snow just costs me a few more minutes shoveling my driveway and brushing it off the car before I head to work. 6 to 8 inches of snow is a very different thing in a state that has no plows, no salt/sand trucks, most people don’t own snow shovels or even much heavy winter clothing, no one knows how to drive in snow, the houses and utilities and everything haven’t been built to handle extreme cold temperatures and snow… etc. Weather that would just be an annoyance where I live is easily a full-scale natural disaster out there.
…I know I don’t actually have to tell you that, since you’re living it, but I think it’s worth reminding people why it’s so bad.
This. I too live in a place with full snow-abatement tools and everyone has weather gear, so 8″ of snow just slows things down a touch if you’re ready for it. But I’ve also been in places that aren’t equipped for snow, and watched a single inch send cars all over the road because no one knows how to steer out of a skid.
And power outages wiping out everyone’s heat in winter is a very serious issue anywhere outside the tropics. If there was as much negligence on grid maintenance and upgrades as it sounds like on the news, there should be some very public tribunals and termination of the management responsible.
you forget the power of . no, the narrative is already starting, the wind farms will be blamed. so more natural gas generators that are not cold weather resistant.
I bet nuclear power plants ARE weather resistant. Not talking about tokamak fusion reactors … those needs to have liquid helium for freezing the superconductors, some ordinary cold is irrelevant for them.
Texas had to take a nuclear plant offline because the circulating pumps for the coolant froze up. Inadequate winterizing for the unusual conditions.
Just curious – what do you mean by ‘the narrative is starting?’ The wind farm windmills freezing has been reported as the reason for the power problem the entire time.
The wind farms freeze, no power is generated from them, and in recent years almost 16-18% of the power was coming from the wind farms. Sudden increase in need of power from the other sources and they can’t handle it all at once.
Honestly it’s understandable that the wind farms were not weatherized though (they have wind farms in Antarctica that don’t freeze but it costs a lot more to build and maintain them) – the current cold snap is unusual for that area and it probably didnt make economic sense to protect the wind farms from freezing in a place where it almost never would. After this they’ll probably make sure to weatherize them so this doesn’t happen again.
So yes, wind farms will be blamed because…. wind farms were to blame. It’s not a grand conspiracy. :) But that can still be fixed so it doesnt happen again in the future.
While it is true that their non-winterized wind turbines are failing, they are not solely responsible for Texas’ power problems, because all their other methods of generating power are experiencing the same variety of problems, including coal, nuclear, and gas. Singling out the wind generators having problems, failing to mention the other malfunctioning generators, and then blaming the problem on the wind generators is absolutely a politically motivated narrative.
I was wrong about one thing. It’s 23% of texas power, not 16-18%. But yes, the reason for the problem that happened in Texas WAS the wind turbines failing completely. Not because of coal. Not because of gas. Not because of nuclear. Except that two of the latter three wound up being over-stressed from a sudden loss of 23 percent of the power grid and they had to make up the difference immediately and couldn’t. That doesnt mean coal, gas, and definitely not nuclear, had anything to do with it. Wind went from 23% to almost 0% contribution to the power grid. Any problems from other grids were mainly not from coal and gas and nuclear electricity GENERATION at the rates they were ORIGINALLY expected to output, while with wind, the problem was with wind-based electricity generation at their expected output rates (since 23 to 0 is a total failure).
Look, I like green energy. But this was a flaw. I’m not even blaming wind for not being able to predict that this would happen, because this was not a typical cold snap for that area, so they didn’t think it would be cost effective to winterize windmills that would almost never experience those stresses, unlike windmills in naturally colder climates.
Singling out the wind generators is not politically generated. It’s based on problem solving. It’s because the TOTAL failure of the windmills due to extreme cold weather was the primary cause, which also stressed the rest of the system (except nuclear, it didnt stress nuclear).
Something initiated the failure, and that something was the windmills… and they were primarily responsible, so if you blind yourself to that cause, you’re just ASKING for it to happen again. If you recognize the cause, you can fix it to prevent the problem from re-occurring.
Let me give an analogy. You have 10 people who are riding bicycles to generate power. Three of them pass out because they were not in shape to begin with. As a result, the power grid is going to suffer unless the other seven bicyclists start cycling harder. But not all of them are capable of doing that at the increased cycling speeds, so another one or two starts needing to take breaks every hour before resuming. You don’t single out the problem being cyclists 4 and 5. You single out that the first three (1, 2, and 3) were not physically capable enough, and maybe you put some more physically fit people on those three cycles so that this wont happen in the future.
PS – nuclear power is actually green energy and probably the best source of power, but a lot of people get scared of it because of Fukushima, Chernobyl, and Three Mile Island.
1) Fukushima happened because of a tsunami followed by an earthquake even though Fukushima was very well managed with multiple redundancies – nothing could have withstood all that happening one after the other. It’s basically the ‘unsinkable’ Titanic having an iceberg going through multiple compartments even though it had 4 compartments that could be flooded without the ship sinking.
2) Chernobyl happened because the Soviet Union frankly sucked at maintaining it. It’s sort of a regular thing with the Soviet Union – they were good at building stuff quickly, but they couldnt maintain anything for their life, just like with Space Station MIR, according to visiting astronauts. Chernobyl was not only maintained terribly, the people maintaining it were encouraged to HIDE the problems from higher ups.
3) Three Mile Island actually was barely a problem. Even after the meltdown, they were able to maintain the faciilty and kept using it for decades.
Probably the BEST green energy would be geothermal energy if we could figure a more efficient way to utilize it, since wind is only really good when… well… it’s windy (and windmills are winterized, etc). Solar panels only work…. when it’s sunny outside. And hydroelectric power only works by a water source sufficient to generate the electricity. Two of these problems could be fixed once battery power advances so that the energy can be stored for when electricity is not being generated (like where current graphine battery technology is headed).
Went off on a tangent there, sorry.
But my point is…. the windmills were the problem in this particular case. It doesn’t mean stop using windmills though. It means next time make sure they’re winterized since during rare cold snaps, you will save money and lives in the long run. Winterizing them would fix the problem in the future, not pointing elsewhere to try to take eyes off the cause of this particular failure.
Not sure why people get so sensitive about it.
I don’t know where you’re getting your information, but the quick internet search that you’re usually so fond of doesn’t agree with you. Both ERCOT and the governor have stated that most of the offline generating capacity is thermal, meaning coal, natural gas, and nuclear, both in terms of megawatts and percentage of total processing capacity. Nor did all of the wind turbines stop producing power.
Without knowledge of the specific stories involved, only of the tendencies of the press, I’d expect it’s a question of diverting the attention onto the political decision rather than the economic one. “Why did we base so much capacity on an intermittent resource?” is a lot easier to sell than “why did we cut corners on weatherproofing?”, especially if you want to be able to run “why are we spending so much money on these things?” columns in the future.
But it was that they cut corners on weatherproofing, not because of wind being an intermittent resource (although once graphene-based battery technology becomes more widespread even that probably will not be as much of a problem).
I don’t even really blame them for not weatherproofing, since it’s extremely unusual for it to have gotten that cold where the windfarms were, far as I know. So they probably did a cost-benefit analysis based on the existing data they had at the time, and they figured ‘why should we do this, it’s like putting solar panels in a cave.’ They wound up being wrong. Now they should weatherproof the windmills and put the money into it because they can see the cost-benefit analysis is different. :)
*But it was that they = But it WAS because they
Little correction on my post because that first sentence made no sense (I wrote it on my phone, sorry)
I’m not trying to dispute where the cause of the problem really lies – for a start, I don’t know the situation well enough. I’m just suggesting that the media reporting the situation can’t necessarily be relied upon to be editorially neutral, especially on a story whose implications could interact with their established or ongoing political postures.
Apparently different people are shifting blame to different areas, both in government and in the public. I’m sure there will be some investigation after-the-fact. Hopefully they’ll just decide ‘it’s too costly to NOT just weatherproof it all.
Seems I was too trusting that people wouldnt turn this into political posturing over what should just be a ‘find the problem and patch it up for the future.’
Most of the problems in our modern lives are self-imposed — or rather, imposed by other people. We have solutions to most of the problems nature throws at us, and bicker over who deserves those solutions and who doesn’t. That’s politics. Whether or not a problem is worth solving depends on who pays the costs, and who receives that benefits. Everything is politics.
> If Henchwench’s powers only work with supervillains, her ability to gain powers from someone makes her a reliable supervillain detector, right?
Arianna writes the contract. The contract instantly ends if she attempts to use the power at all. Then you don’t need to trust her so much…
Trust who? Ari? Yeah, never can trust a lawyer, right Pander? :P
Yes. You can never trust a lawyer. Except me. You can always trust me. I’m the designated honest lawyer for this century. We had a lottery. I lost. So now I have to be the honest lawyer.
(although I think the ‘her’ CCC is talking about is Hench Wench)
Yep, Pander is totally not evil.
I really do love that song.
Maxima calling names? Eh?
See also the ‘Kyln’ in Guardians of the Galaxy
Okay, while the last panel is funny, it’s also bullshit: Maxi may be fast enough to catch bullets, she still has to know where the bullet is going to be to catch it
Oh, right, Maxi caught the ‘bullet’ before it even entered the chamber and went alone with it, gotcha
I’m pretty sure she just followed her through the portal before it closed. That’s the downside to using portals as a means of escape, it is much more difficult to make a clean get away.
It’s still the same building in the background (well visible in #918, panels 2&3; #919, panel 7).
She knew where HW was going – into the portal. The portal never came into action because Maxima acted quick enough, in between when the portal started deploying and HW successfully went through.
The bullet catching itself isn’t relevant, only what it implies about her reaction speed. “I’m fast enough to catch bullets, you think I’m not fast enough to catch you jumping into the portal?”
She pulled her out of the portal before she portaled herself? That’s even more impressive
Doesn’t seem that impressive. HW jumped into it without any indication of super speed, and she was “nice” enough to warn Maxima in advance. Seems like the portal isn’t that fast and the feat is just moderate superspeed on Maxima’s part.
Max shifting her attribute points around appears to be done near instantaneous and even at base she is incredibly fast, not that she would be powered down all the way here as they haven’t completely wrapped up the fight yet.
Using a portal isn’t an instant escape either, and with HW telegraphing her intent and needing to move herself through it, that leaves Max enough time to step forward with her speed to yank HW back out of the portal before it closes.
I’m maybe a little surprised that Max didn’t “accidentiallly” hold HW in such a way that the portal did a Mandalorian on her
Max isn’t a murderer, so why would she do that? In fact she avoids killing to a much greater degree than a regular law enforcement officer would.
In this case in particular, she has gone way beyond to avoid seriously hurting HW. At this point, it’s starting to look like a character weakness.
Has been since way back, when her hesitation to kill Vehemence(instead only blowing his arm off) almost cost her own life.
The reason is overconfidence – she’s so powerful she rarely needs to go all out to deal with a threat, and can usually safely go nonlethal, so she sometimes is slow to realize the situation requires lethal force.
Frankly, though, that’s not the worst mindset a heavily armed cop could have.
It should also be noted though that in this case it worked out – she kept HW under control nonlethally and was able to apprehend her in the end.
She’s also not a killer, she’s formerly a soldier, now she’s a cop, she does not kill unless she absolutely has to
If you don’t count the rebar through the calf, I guess.
Speaking of which, Henchwench should still be suffering from that wound, and a wound of that severity tends to cut down on ones ability to casually quip, and grin, and fantasize about her impending incarceration, and otherwise act as if she isn’t even injured at all, all this while summoning a portal.
It seems like turning her meatbody into her ghostform restored her to ideal condition. Her facial injuries also seem to have been restored.
Or simply and yet again more art/continuity errors. They abound, better get used to them.
At this point, Occam’s razor applies. The ghost restoration is a natural and plausible explanation for everything – it would make less sense to me if the ghost form somehow stored the injuries of the body, and it definitely does’t happen with the rock body.
Continuity error doesn’t mesh with what’s shown on page, and to remain consistent you need to claim there was another, separate error. Rejecting all evidence against your position as errors is not very convincing.
Max is a trained killer who has repeatedly stated that she’s prepared to seriously maim or more anyone who challenges her authority; she’s already casually jabbed a length of rebar through HW’s leg. Showing the public some idiot getting maimed by their own powers while fighting her is entirely the sort of visceral messaging the tank melting unholy bitch would be down with
Max is a trained killer who has repeatedly stated that she’s prepared to seriously maim or more anyone who challenges her authority
She’s claimed that, but Maxima is actually quite hesitant to do so when she has other options. She only went to kill Vehemence when maiming didn’t work, and she only maimed him after punching him out didn’t work.
If she wanted to kill HW, she would have done so during the fight, when HW was actively attacking her and also a threat to LEO’s and civilians, but instead she chose to contain her nonlethally. Cora even remarked on Maxima’s hesitation to finish the fight.
Maxima showed off the tank melting because she didn’t want to hurt people – and since tanks aren’t people, there was no hesitation.
Love to see Vehemence again (even if in a hypothetical situation).
He is a stupid strong force multiplier in combat situations, no way to be hired by ARC SWAT?
V has already said his only interest is causing chaos.
This is like suggesting the Juggernaught be put as part of a peacekeeping mission.
Too dangerous.
A situation that requires Vehemence leaves him too strong to be contained afterwards (because he needs to be as strong as Maxima to begin with, or she could handle it herself, and that kind of fight will gain him a lot of power on top of that.) Maybe if it’s literally the end of the world, so world domination by Vehemence looks like the least bad option.
Almost the textbook definition of a Godzilla Threshold.
You might pull out Vehemence to stop some otherwise unstoppable threat, but only once all other avenues are exhausted and the alternative is human extinction.
For example I can imagine that if the Fell got a serious toe-hold on our world and Archon were unable to stop them, unleashing Vehemence would be preferable to the fell assimilating all human life. I would be surprised if Archon didn’t have provisions for exactly such an event.
Eh….Kevin doesn’t seem that interested in domination?
Basically, he’s a lad, and really loves a scrap. I could almost see him being a bit like Math, in that you might be able to hook him with the promise of repeated super powered Donnybrooks, but….Meh?
World domination in this strict sense is probably preferable to the violent dystopia a power-mad Kevin could bring about. Maybe he’ll restrain himself and only orchestrate a few riots, but one can’t rely on that, and he was willing to kill to furhter his goals.
He was willing to kill where he saw no other choice, but he did make a point of avoiding lethality or even significant injury for the rest of the combatants as far as possible. Anyone out of the fight through injury is someone who can’t continue to charge him up, so the only one to get a death mark was Maxima – and even then only once he realised that she was a comparable threat to him.
Not only that Maxima was a comparable threat, but that she was willing to blow off limbs or kill him to stop him.
He also ran down a few rough scenarios that involved a lot of bloodshed, and then said something like “Ha! Just kidding. I just like to cause some chaos.” And this was when he had zero incentive to lie, since he was winning.
And he didn’t kill Sydney when that was his best chance to continue winning.
So yeah, calling on Vehemence isn’t quite the “Godzilla” threshold that it might seem to be.
The issue remains that he can’t be controlled, is unpredictable, willing to use violence, and only moderated concerned about collateral damage. The restaurant brawl could have easily resulted in several deaths.
While after rereading I tend to agree with your assessment – it’s still a huge risk of misjudgment, or changes to his personality, or whatever.
Okay yeah she’s gone all the way past arrogant and solidly into just plain stupid.
It’s a fine line.
Which she has sprinted across at full speed, all while slapping her ass and hooting like a gibbon.
Im in south texas and i feel the cold. Sadly weve been no power for 3 days now. Thank god for mobile data. Your comics are helping to keep me sane abd happy. Thank you so much for that.
Guardians of the Galaxy too, right? The mixed gender prison thing?
Actually in Guardians of the Galaxy it’s more justified, IMO. After all, who knows whether your next prisoner is going to be from a race that even has genders? Or from a race that has only three? Or whether you even *know* what gender someone is going to be a week or a month or a year from now?
Keeping track of genders has gotten hard enough just for humans. We’re not building an entire prison infrastructure for each of the seven-or-so genders that people can now get on their IDs in various places, nor even for those who’ve transitioned from one gender to another.
Multiply that by a thousand different species, and …. yeah. If I’m the contractor to build a prison to deal with the scum and villainy of the Galaxy, gender’s not something I’m going to feel as strongly about as whether I put the methane-breathers in the same atmosphere as the oxygen-breathers. Priorities being what they are you gotta concentrate on things you can deal with.
Meh, genders.
Well looks like the only option for keeping her locked up is going to be… taking her to a locality where contract law itself is illegal and hence invalid.
….
Such a paradise cannot possibly exist.
Plan 2: Keep her under anesthesia for the rest of her life.
Not really. Contracts bind both ways. Once she has some time to sort it out, Arianna can just write up something like a power of attorney for Hench Wench and get her to sign it, making her legally unable to manage her own contracts. (A power of attorney is just an example, I am sure something more specialised would be needed in this case, but you get the idea.)
Coerced into signing any such document would invalidate it on its face.
Arianna just has to find all her contracts and invalidate them. After that, when she’s incarcerated, she’d be barred from forming contracts.
I think it might be legal as a parole/probation requirement, but IANAL. *lights Pander signal*
However, whether she needs a contract or whether it just protects her from getting fired is unclear.
*sees the signal*
Parolees do not have all the same rights as a non-felon citizen, since they’re basically wards of the state. You can limit where they can go, what jobs they can have, and a variety of other things. Because you’re not a ‘free citizen’ actually when you’re on parole – it’s a privilege they’re affording you to not be in jail during the rest of your sentence, not a right to be free with unfettered rights during the remainder of your parole sentence.
There’s no ‘coercion’ with a contract being required as a condition of parole. She has a choice. She can be on parole, or she can be in prison because of crimes that she is PROVEN TO HAVE COMMMITTED.
It’s the same way they can have Jabberwokky work for Archon as a condition of her release. Because she was arrested for active warrants out for her arrest, for crimes Jabberwokky had actually committed. It’s not coercion. They’re giving her an option which has upside for her, or has the status quo for her. No downside. Either she goes to prison, which she would be going to ANYWAY, or she can work for ARCHON and make a lot of money, plus be out of prison.
With Hench Wench, it would be ‘you can be on parole but have to first sign this durable power of attorney if you want to be on parole. Otherwise you have to spend the entirety of your sentence behind bars, and one of the parts of this power of attorney is that you have to get permission from your parole officer or from ARCHON or from whoever is your attorney-in-fact/donor of the power of attorney before you can accept ANY job, contract or no contract, so they can make sure it’s not criminal in nature, or does not violate your parole for whatever reason.
That’s what I thought, thank you for the confirmation.
My work is done here. Pander awaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!
*dramatic swooping away*
It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s Pander!
Out of curiosity, does the signal look like this or more like this?
It shows a paragraph symbol.
But would a potential employer be legally required to put themselves that they have a super power. Not just talking about a mom and pops diner, but also managers and supervisors at larger chains who would rather keep that information personal to avoid problems with staff and customers.
No they would not be required to do that. They can just choose to not hire Hench Wench.
Or whatever investigation ARCHON does can have them determine ‘We do not know for sure, and we can’t actually invade people’s privacy unless they volunteer the information, so rather than take a chance on it, we will not allow her to work for this employee.’
It doesn’t REQUIRE the employer to do anything. Unless they really really want to hire Hench Wench for some reason. It’s voluntary on the part of the employer – they are not entitled to Hench Wench as an employee if there’s a pre-existing contractual obligaiton that Hench Wench is under.
When I worked at Wal-Mart I had effectively seven people who were in charge of me.
*putting aside how irritating this was as they didn’t communicate with one another*,
the real issue I am putting out is these franchise stores. If Henchwench goes to work at Kroger, Meijer, Wal-Mart, where they could have multiple supervisors, managers, some come and go, or work fast food with the same issue.
heck Henchwench could be working at McDonalds for two months, suddenly a supervisor leaves, new one comes in, and this is a “hard ass” supervisor who likes to push their authority on their employees; Henchwench interprets this as evil, and turns out this supervisor also has a super power, say the “thief” power, ability to teleport small objects to their hand, so suddenly Henchwench is committing crimes again.
Scarier still what if a supervisor transfers in because they know Henchwench has power copy and thanks to internet videos from all the people recording, knows she is good at figuring out feats even the original didn’t know about so tries to get to her to make a deal…even possibly new hires want the job to be her boss to make a deal.
She has become a high priority acquisition for more dangerous potential supervillains out to double their fire power.
“When I worked at Wal-Mart I had effectively seven people who were in charge of me.”
But you were not hired by seven people. There’s a difference. If I’m hired by Pete, who owns the business, who has Doug as his general manager, then I don’t work for Doug. I work for Pete. Doug doesn’t pay me my salary. Doug is not my employer. Doug and I are both fellow workers FOR Pete – but Doug just has seniority over me so can give me orders. But I’m not hired by him.
“If Henchwench goes to work at Kroger, Meijer, Wal-Mart, where they could have multiple supervisors, managers, some come and go, or work fast food with the same issue.”
Assuming the owners of those businesses have superpowers.
Although that does get me thinking… what if she works for a publicly traded company, like Amazon…. and a supervillain happens to own a few shares of Amazon.
Would she then by ‘hired’ by that supervillain?
Honestly I’d think she isnt, since that minority shareholder actually had no say in hiring or firing – it would be based on whoever actually did the hiring AND is her employer (ie, the Human Resources lady that hired you, but only on behalf of the company who ACTUALLY does the hiring, isnt your employer). But that’s just another reason HW’s powers give me a headache if I think about it too much. :)
“suddenly a supervisor leaves, new one comes in, and this is a “hard ass” supervisor who likes to push their authority on their employees; ”
A supervisor isnt her employer. The person who has ownership rights in the McDonalds would be the employer. The supervisor isnt the one paying her, and is most likely not the business owner.
“Scarier still what if a supervisor transfers in because they know Henchwench has power copy and thanks to internet videos from all the people recording, knows she is good at figuring out feats even the original didn’t know about so tries to get to her to make a deal…even possibly new hires want the job to be her boss to make a deal.”
All your scenarios depend on the idea that the person hiring her actually does not have to be her employer in any way. Like if Lex Luthor hires her, but makes … I don’t know…. Lobo…. her supervisor (I know the scenario is ridiculous, just go with me on it), I don’t think she’d have Lobo’s powers. She’d have Lex Luthor’s powers, which is no powers.
At least that’s the only way I can see her powers working in a way that isnt HOPELESSLY broken.
the owner rarely does the hiring in retail, there is a hiring manager, and then there are department supervisors who have direct authority over you and can write you up for incidents. They have direct authority over you as you work in their department, so you report to them. They and you also report to the store manager, who along with both of you can report to the regional manager. Which is how you can anonymously report them.
However that doesn’t change that they still are your “boss” in the most basic sense as they have the authority to tell you what to do in the department. Just because its not a straight line to the boss doesn’t change who is your boss and your bosses boss is also your boss.
if Henchwench is convinced her power only applies to the one who hired her and NOT the one(s) who have authority over her then she’s only going to get powers from HR’s hiring manager and no one else, despite clearly answering to other people.
the store manager, and especially not share holders or the regional manager have any part in general hiring *they can fire you still…which was stressful to be told when they’d visit the theater I worked at that this person we never see but once every few months could fire us on the spot if he wanted to despite never working with us and had nothing to do with hiring us*.
“the owner rarely does the hiring in retail, there is a hiring manager, and then there are department supervisors who have direct authority over you and can write you up for incidents.”
Then I guess we have to figure out whether HW’s powers work based on ‘who is doing the hiring and firing’ or ‘who is HW actually working for.’ They’re apparently quite different and would result in quite different effects on HW’s power.
Although if we base it on Hench Wench’s EXACT words “I gain the same powerset of the supervillains who hire me.” then you’re correct.
But Hench Wench also put that idiotic clause in the LLC agreement where they can’t FIRE her without her consent. That makes me think it’s about who she’s actually working for, not just ‘who hires her.’
You’re making a reasonable argument though, and could be correct. ESPECIALLY depending on how psychosomatic HW’s powers are. ie, as you said “if Henchwench is convinced her power only applies to the one who hired her and NOT the one(s) who have authority over her then she’s only going to get powers from HR’s hiring manager and no one else, despite clearly answering to other people.”
This whole thing about it being so heavily dependent on what HW thinks is the case, regardless of what might or might not ACTUALLY be the case, does make this pretty confusing.
Consider that HW’s Power is said to read specifically from Supervillains, not Supers in general. On that basis, a Powered employer should be no more risk than a Baseline one, provided they are not villainous. There may even be more safety room than that, depending on whether ‘supervillain’ is defined as ‘one who commits villainy through direct use of Powers’ or the wider ‘one who commits villainy while in possession of Powers’. The vetting requirement would therefore be focused on establishing the presence or absence of villainy, rather than the presence or absence of Powers.
one issue there is the super villain only may be/is likely a perception issue on Henchwench’s part, so a super supervisor doesn’t out themselves to their own bosses or Archon out of fear of being drafted or their religious family pushing them away because they believe super powers come from Hell or something. This person is just trying to do their job, one day however they push some extra work on Henchwench because they are too exhausted to do it themselves, or insist this parole come in on their day off to work or they’d call their parole officer accusing her of stealing candy or snacks from the store room.
Clearly this is bad, but not their usual behavior, Henchwench however to her mind regards this as evil wicked behavior, and the metaphysical psionic system or whatever that links her powers kicks in because the right metaphysical tumblers have been unlocked as determined by Henchwench’s psychosomatic psionic system.
and this gets worse, because Henchwench has claimed her powers only work with supervillains. Now the employer and possibly Archon believe someone in the company directly in charge of Henchwench not only has powers but must be conducting some criminal operation. So now we end up with a witch hunt scenario.
{Reply to Rhuen}
Much depends on the details of HW’s Power, which we won’t know until/unless DaveB chooses to elaborate.
For myself, I lean towards the ‘villainy through use of Powers’ definition of supervillain, rather than ‘villainy while in possession of Powers’. Someone who chooses not to use their Powers for anything may therefore be a villain, but not a supervillain. Even if offloading some work is enough to count as villainous, it is not enough on its own to cross that second line.
There’s also the question, as Pander points out further up the page, of who is a valid target for her Power to read from. A supervisor, or indeed anyone in the chain of command, is only the employer if they’re at the top of that chain. Anyone in between is merely a manager, employed to look after their own area but reporting up the chain.
… That is coercion: do this or you can’t do that
Eh, not really. “Give me money or you can’t take this food” is just a grocery store, “sign this contract or you can’t live in my house” is just a rental agreement. This isn’t really a workable definition of coercion.
Not at all – you’re free to find another grocery store or apartment if you don’t like the terms, not completing a transactional exchange is at-will and not getting benefit from it is perfectly reasonable. Having something taken away if you don’t comply, with no option to just walk away, is coercion.
Someone already in jail who refuses parole terms isn’t having freedom or anything else taken away (they’ve already lost it), they’re rejecting the terms of exchange for being given trust again and are in no worse of a position by doing so.
Hey brichins, I think you meant that as a response to G, not to Voyager, since you’re basically saying the same thing as Voyager (who is supporting what I just said as well:) ).
Reading this, brichins, I might have misread your comment. If so, ignore my response below.
If someone, for whatever reason, got evicted and has no way to get a new apartment, me telling them “you can live with me but you have to pay a share of the rent” isn’t coercion either.
If I’m a mechanic offering to replace your brakes so you don’t crash, and you refuse and crash, that isn’t coercion either unless I sabotage your brakes or imply I might. There’s a difference between a protection racket and insurance.
I think important to the definition of coercion would be that refusal would be worse than not getting the “offer”, that the threat is manufactured specifically to put pressure on the victim.
A convicted criminal would go to jail anyway, so they aren’t any worse off for rejecting than they would be without the offer either. The threat of prison isn’t manufactured by law enforcement, it’s their duty if parole isn’t an option.
And in the end, this is a philosophical argument. The legal side of things – which is what matters, as this is a legal topic – is quite clear.
The state has quite some rights individuals do not. “Pay taxes or go to jail” is technically coercion, but it’s legal and accepted as justified by most people.
No, it’s not coercion.
Coercion is where you use threats to force (or prevent) someone to do something they have a legal right to do (or not to do).
Jabberwokky has no right to NOT go to prison when she was legally convicted of a crime. They are giving her a PERK to get out of having to serve her LEGALLY JUSTIFIED PRISON SENTENCE.
That’s not coercion – it’s a completely legal incentive. The status quo for Jabberwokky is going to prison. The deal is BETTER than the status quo.
This is different than, say, Concretia, who was being forced by threat to commit crimes against her will.
If Jabberwokky does not work for Archon, what happens to her is what would have happened if Archon did not make the offer in the first place.
If Concretia does not work for the LLC, what happens to her is NOT what would have happened if the LLC did not make the offer in the first place.
That’s not a legal incentive – it’s illegal coercion. Concretia being electrocuted to the point where she passes out in utter pain is NOT a status quo for Concretia. It’s massively worse than the status quo. Allowing Concretia to HAVE the status quo, instead of being far worse off than the status quo if the LLC did not exist and was not doing this to her, is NOT the same as Jabberwokky’s situation.
It’s completely opposite situations.
Something to keep in mind, though, is that we’re talking PRE-trial here.
What mechanisms are in place to prevent her from using her hidden contracts to escape prior to trial? Influence the trial, Judge and Jury?
So, pre-conviction.
You can do stuff like this even pre-trial, so long as the trial takes place within a reasonable period of time.
The ‘within a reasonable period of time’ is important here, because too much time waiting in jail before your trial and it could BECOME unconstitutional, according to SCOTUS (because of the Eighth Amendment – no excessive bail/fines/cruel and unusual punishment – and the Fourteenth Amendment – due process of law requirement).
It’s why, before arraignment, a pretrial detainee isnt let free to wait until arraignment happens. They’re kept in jail until arraignment. They still can be legally detained until the bail hearing.
This second one is a little less on point (since there is a bail hearing FIRST) but still applies as well.
It’s also why you can require someone to pay bail to stay out of jail pending a criminal trial, which is basically incentivizing someone, LEGALLY, to enter into a contract with a bail bondsman (and this is also NOT COERCION).
1. Concretia’s contract worked although there was almost certainly coercion involved
2. As I see it (and YMMV): What constitutes coercion sufficient to nullify a contract depends on the law governing the contract. It appears from the last page that HW is using NY law (since Arianna’s leaving ultimate disposition up to the NY SoS). Typically coercion involves the threat of doing something wrongful and unpleasant to a person. A prison sentence imposed after a fair trial over her many violent crimes (or – more likely – a negotiation to avoid trial) while unpleasant by design is nothing wrongful, so a contract to suspend that sentence if she agrees not to sign a contract with a supervillain is *highly* unlikely to be considered coercion in court.
Many people are making the same error as you do here. The LLC was a contract, sure. But don’t allow that to make you think that Henchwench needs a contract to have her powers activate. As we see in her prison dream sequence, she can make a verbal agreement to go fetch a milk from the cafeteria, i.e. be “working for” Kevin, and that would have granted her Vehemence’s power set. Nothing so formal as a contract required.
If she can’t actually contact any supers then she can’t form any contracts with them. Solitary confinement would guarantee this, but less-stringent incarceration with non-supers where communications are rigorously monitored so that she can’t communicate with any supers would do it too.
Hench Wench,you need to learn not to blurt out everything in from of Maxima…!
But… but it’s tradition! Even if the villain knows about monologuing! You just gotta get your Evil Gloating in, no matter the risk of being Caught Monologuing!
I fucking love her faces, she almost beats Sydney in that category…
That face in the second to last panel is adorable. :D
Guardians of the Galaxy was also mixed population
Yeah, see where that got them?
their incredibly crappy security is what got them, not a mixed general population. It was embarrassing that the MCU decided to call that the Kyln and not just some generic Xandarian prison.
Dave? We’re good if you miss a comic or two because of natural disaster. Really.
And any of your “Fans” that bitch and complain about it? They can go jump.
Take care of yourself and be safe.
Yes, this
If you don’t take care of yourself (and your family), there won’t be a webic to enjoy
Maybe the change in art style can be chalked up to a Dream Sequence or a Flashback?
Meanwhile, on the Emerald Planet… (?)
Safety First! We love your work but not enough for you to die over it.
—
Also: if you were to freeze to death right now it would be very inconvenient for us because then we’d NEVER see Maxima and Dabbler’s first date.
30-60 off, 30-90 on? Dave is one of the lucky ones, lots of places didn’t actually get the rolling part of the rolling blackout. Where I am we had no power at all for about 48 hours straight. We were lucky enough to have a gas fireplace to huddle around, but lots of people have no heating at all without power. 48 hours of single digit temps with no heating is down right criminal
Could we end this fight soon please? I mean it was good but arc fatigue is starting to kick in a that point
Cereally? This arc has been short, go back and read the Restaurant Rumble fight at the pace it was released
ArcFatigues are what they wear when on duty.
*rim shot*
I’ll just let myself out the back….
Don’t let Arianna hear you say that, she’s already got enough schemes hatching for the existing ArcWear line.
If max knew she meant mixed gender gen pop considering most prisons are single gender so its likely SSM would likely be divided even without inmates getting to interact, then can we believe she is a mindreader? Sydney hiding her teleporting from her might mean zero range power like the TK.
From the author’s comments:
I guess HenchWench vividly described her plans to Maxima during the side-flash to Super-super max, otherwise how did Max know she was assuming it would be co-ed?
Mixed Pop is a movie plot tool, however, in RL, the politicians and braindead, but I repeat myself, are pushing for it. Recently it was legislated that inmates should be placed in an Institution that ‘matches the gender they identify as’. I worked at a male pen that had a women’s unit onsite for awhile, I pity the staff that have to work at female pens. Ten women generated far more paperwork, serious incidents and general mayhem than six hundred men combined. That and they have no hesitation whatsoever in making baseless claims in order to ruin a career if they don’t think you’re doing exactly what they want you to do or if you enforce the rules, they know they’ll be automatically believed because the public has had it drilled into their heads by movies like the ones listed and TV shows that it’s what happens on a daily basis and all staff are sadistic pervers with no exceptions.
Should probably have kept that Particular ace up your sleeve just a liiittle while longer there H-W…
Peggy and Math should offer a contract that nulifies all her other contracts currently existing. The result could be interesting.
Yeah, nah, you clearly haven’t been paying attention: her ‘power’ only works when hired by a superVILLAIN, and Peggy and Math are neither
And don’t forget Math isn’t a super.
He’s just a very, VERY good martial artist.
Who knocked the crap out of Concretia I think? Also, I love how Kevin just has this “I’m eating lunch leave me alone” face.
The difference between trying to discern between his abilities and someone with actual super powers is a futile exercise…
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-97-this-is-the-martial-artists-version-of-pulling-on-her-pigtails/
and he’s “Just human”
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-209-dramatic-speed-lines-ensue/
Math definitely has superhuman powers. Someone who’s forced to obey the laws of physics couldn’t have moved Concretia like that. Frankly, he is talking out of his ass. He has no idea what it’s like to be “just human.”
However, Grrlpowerverse a “Super” is something specific beyond just having powers, so it’s unclear whether HW would get his powers, which I think is what Faust was alluding to.
Peggy most certainly is not a Super
She isn’t a super, but again, that doesn’t mean she doesn’t have powers. Her marksmanship “borders on the unreal”, whether she or Seneca are very skilled humans or have unnatural gifts isn’t quite clear.
Sydney isn’t a super either, and yet Varia was seemingly able to get something out of her “power”.
Peggy is not a super in the same way that Hawkeye or Green Arrow or Arrowette are not supers, yet are still part of the Avengers or JLA or Young Justice. Peggy’s incredible accuracy as a sniper makes her as useful to ARCHON as someone who can throw fire, like Heatwave. :)
Sydney is also not a super, but like Tony Stark, Sydney has access to technology which GIVES her powers. :)
But Peggy adn Sydney are still not ‘supers.’ It doesn’t mean they are not part of Archon though, since having superpowers is not the only way you can be a superhero in Archon. Other ways are to have exceptional skills or unique ‘items’/knowledge, since we’ve seen mutiple others who are members of ARC-SWAT and other areas of Archon, like:
Peggy (already mentioned here)
Sydney (already mentioned here)
Zephon
Gwen (technically she is not a super – but she did manage to learn some magic)
Seneca
Duke (who isnt a super yet managed to go toe-to-toe with a speedster in a knife fight)
Mathias (maybe? they’re still not sure if he is or is not a super because of how unreal his level of martial arts is and how ridiculous his backstory is about his lineage)
Leon (his computer and hacking skills apparently border on unreal, but he’s still a non-super human)
That Gadget girl who works in the lab with Dabber who’s name I forget (maybe?)
The dwarf guy who’s name I forget (maybe?)
Omar – who likes pissing off Maxima to get angry Maxima pictures (he’s not super probably, but he has superhuman bravery to do that!)
Lucas (ARC-Light)(far as we’ve seen he’s decidedly human, and does Data Analysis for ARCHON)
Dr. Frost (not sure if she’s a super or not, might be, might not be)
Being a super and having superpowers isn’t the same thing. Supers grow spontaneously and get perfect physique, but there’s other ways to get powers – magic, vampire transformation, species(demons like Dabbler) seemingly unique stuff like Sydney*, Math, Krona or whatever is going on with Vale.
*This is a bit of a technicality, but Sydney’s ability to command the orbs qualifies as a power. Since she isn’t designing or building the orbs herself, nor can give them to someone else, I don’t think it qualifies as technology.
Peggy or Seneca might just have extreme, but mundane skill, but I actually got the impression that there’s more behind it. I don’t think we know either way, which is why HW employing them would be so interesting.
Sydney and Varia suggest that the power copying of supers is not limited to other supers. We know that, conversely, magic can copy super powers (the super-husk at the warehouse).
On your list:
–Lucas is probably the same person as “the dwarf guy”.
-The gadget girl might be Specs, who is probably is a super, but her spectral eyes are definitely not mundane.
“Being a super and having superpowers isn’t the same thing. Supers grow spontaneously and get perfect physique, but there’s other ways to get powers – magic, vampire transformation, species(demons like Dabbler) seemingly unique stuff like Sydney*, Math, Krona or whatever is going on with Vale.”
Yep. Gwen’s a good example, aside from Sydney, of someone who has powers but is not a ‘super.’ She learned some basic magic somehow. Zephon probably also knows some magic considering he is her boss and probably has a lot of magic trinkets, judging from the silhouette of him when Maxima is describing how people with superpowers, extraordinary abilities, or unique ‘items’ are a national resource. Plus technically Dabbler is not a super also, as you stated- she’s an alien/demon/whatever else she is. :)
“This is a bit of a technicality, but Sydney’s ability to command the orbs qualifies as a power”
It’s a power in the same way that, compared to a caveman, your ability to kill someone from 100 feet away with a gun and a bullet is a power. :) Arthur C. Clarke and all ‘magic and technology’ being indistinguishable at a certain level and all that . :)
“Since she isn’t designing or building the orbs herself, nor can give them to someone else, I don’t think it qualifies as technology.”
Sure it’s technology. Just because she didnt invent it doesnt make it not technology. See the gun example I mentioned above. Or take War Machine or RESCUE from Marvel, for example. They have iron man suits – but they did not create them, and wouldnt know how. But when wearing the suits, you would be hard pressed to argue that they are not using technology. :)
“Sydney and Varia suggest that the power copying of supers is not limited to other supers.”
I do see what you’re getting at. Even though Varia’s powers work on EVERYONE, super or not (with the exception of Maxima), Varia’s powers work with Sydney in a way that it could not have POSSIBLY worked on Sydney prior to her bonding with the orbs. I have a possible theory on this. Maybe the orbs have their own ‘biomatrix’ or ‘life force’ which goes on top of Sydney, which tethers to Sydney. So when Varia is touching Sydney… she not… ACTUALLY touching Sydney – she’s touching the biomatrix of the orbs.
That’s just my theory anyway.
“We know that, conversely, magic can copy super powers (the super-husk at the warehouse).”
That’s true also. But again, that’s still technology, or magic, not superpowers. We see something similar in DC Comics with Amazo’s ability to copy superpowers. Or Black Alice’s ability to do the same thing to divine-based and magic-based powers. Plus Sciona was able to copy powers with her blood cocktail thing where she was fighting Maxima and the rest of Arc-Swat at the end battle.
“Lucas is probably the same person as “the dwarf guy”.”
Yep – Lucas Jorsten is the dwarf guy.
“The gadget girl might be Specs, who is probably is a super, but her spectral eyes are definitely not mundane.”
No, I’m not talking about Specs, who IS a super in Arc-Light. I’m talking about the blonde girl who was working with Dabbler in the lab and wore goggles and started rambling run-on sentences. Probably a ‘genius who has no common sense’ sort of trope. I forgot her name though since it was only mentioned once and I can’t remember the page it was on, since she was only in one panel of one page so far.
I don’ think “technology” as “designed and made by an agent” is a good definition in this case – artificial powers are a thing, this would even exclude super serum. Most importantly, it’s a definition by source, and we have no idea what source most powers have. We don’t know where either super’s powers or Sydney’s orbs come from (Nth tech is just a hypothesis.) If we’re saying technology excludes powers(and if not, the whole technology talk is of no consequence), we need a more restricitve definition.
Hell, Deus has implied he can artificially create superpowers
A caveman with a gun doesn’t have powers – he has the ability to pull a trigger, but so does everyone else, and if you give someone them a gun, they can kill too. But no one can use the orbs except Sydney (and the only exception is a known power copier).
You missed the entire “giving it to someone else” part. War Machine isn’t special – anyone can wear a war machine suit and become War Machine. There’s nothing to War Machine himself that could be called a power.
Plausible and interesting. Connecting to life force might work for copying powers – different kinds of powers.
Okay, but if
“artificial powers are a thing, this would even exclude super serum.”
Yes, Captain America’s powers are technology based… sorta – from a serum. Although I’d say since it pretty much altered his genes, he’s NOW superhuman (I know, supposedly peak human but lets be honest, he does things that are way above even peak human fairly regularly).
Heck, same for Spider-Man, the Hulk, She-Hulk, Captain Marvel, and the Fantastic Four, all of whom got their powers from different types of science-based accidents or incidents (radioactivity, blood transfusion, cosmic rays…). But the also had their DNA completely altered as well.
Tony Stark’s DNA is still a normal human (okay, pre-Extremis Tony Stark’s DNA was human at least – god I hate the Extremis stuff, made him less relatable to the reader IMHO). And in any case, his SUITS can be used by humans. Pepper Potts’ rescue armor, James Rhode’s War Machine armor, Norman Osborne when he was in the Iron Patriot armor, etc.
So when I say ‘technology-based’ I’m meaning stuff which does not alter your DNA. Stuff which is easily repeatable and can be used for other humans as well. I should be more specific in my theories in the future.
“We don’t know where either super’s powers or Sydney’s orbs come from (Nth tech is just a hypothesis.)”
It’s a hypothesis which is being very heavily pointed at, though. As is the idea that the orbs might be able to be given to someone else if Sydney dies – which has been hinted at twice, once with Sciona at the MARS factory, and once with Chunky McSalsabits. Plus maybe a third time where Sydney got the orbs in the first place because, as she theorized, ‘something bad happened’ with the previous owner when he/she/it/whoever made an aetherium causeway to Earth, and they wound up in the Florida Keys underwater).
“Hell, Deus has implied he can artificially create superpowers”
All things are possible through Deus, my child.
But seriously…. maybe Deus actually figured out how Supers are created in the first place. Maybe it’s genetic tampering, maybe it’s something else. He did have years to examine the geode that made Maxima so powerful, after all. Plus Deus tends to know things that most people wouldnt know. I still think he’s either a time traveler or his future self gave his present self a lot of information about the future.
Or he’s just the paragon of humanity. Lets go with that :)
All praise Deus, amen.
“A caveman with a gun doesn’t have powers – he has the ability to pull a trigger, but so does everyone else, and if you give someone them a gun, they can kill too.”
To quote Captain Jean-Luc Picard in ‘Who Watches the Watchers’:
Picard: “Now Nuria, suppose one of your cave-dwelling ancestors would see you are you are today. What would she think?”
Nuria: “I don’t know.”
Picard: “Well… put yourself in her place. You see… she cannot kill a hornbuck at a great distance. You can. You have a POWER that she lacks.”
Nuria: “Only because I have a bow.”
Picard: “She’s never SEEN a bow! It doesn’t EXIST in her world! To you, it’s a simple tool. To her…. it’s magic.”
https://youtu.be/Uii5WrmChbE?t=43
Also a person who has a gun, but doesn’t know how to take off the safety, or does not know what bullets to put in it just has a hunk of nicely shaped metal (or whatever the gun is made of).
As far as the person who’s never seen a gun is concerned, that boomstick is magic! Even if it’s just S-Mart’s top of the line. Sure, you can find it in the sporting goods department, where this sweet baby was made in Grand Rapids Michigan, retails for about 199.95, got a walnut stock, cobalt blue steel, and a hair trigger, which you can get if you shop smart – shop S-Mart.
But it’s still magic to the primitives.
https://youtu.be/pFriRcIwqNU?t=21
“But no one can use the orbs except Sydney (and the only exception is a known power copier).”
And anyone who kills her and then touches the orbs, so that they tether to them instead… plausibly (see the pages with Sciona at Mars factory and the ballad of Splatter McOnthewall the Third).
“You missed the entire “giving it to someone else” part. War Machine isn’t special – anyone can wear a war machine suit and become War Machine. ”
I agree with you completely. Although the Arc reactor could only be used by Tony (and by Pepper), pre-Extermis, because both of them had miniature arc reactors in them when they first were wearing the Iron Man armor or the RESCUE armor (yeah apparently Tony put one in her at some point to save her life or something – I don’t remember which comics or when but it was for a while before she was augmented by extremis). As a result, they could both use repulsor beams, which War Machine could not use because he did not have the portable power cell that would be used to do that, and neither did Iron Patriot.
But yeah I agree with you. The main thing I was saying there was you can be a hero even if you don’t make the technology yourself. Just like War Machine is a ‘super-‘ hero despite not making the technology. Just like Sydney is a ‘super-‘ hero, despit not making her technology. In the same way that there is nothing to War Machine himself that could be called a power, there is nothing to Sydney herself that could be called a power (well… maybe ADHD powers:) ).
But they’re still superheroes with ‘powers’ because of their tech.
“Connecting to life force might work for copying powers – different kinds of powers.”
It’s the only reason I can think of why Varia touching Sydney would let her use the orbs, instead of having some non-orb related power, since Sydney did not have the orbs all of her life.
That’s reasonable(not perfect, because DNA isn’t everything about a human, not even in RL, but I can’t think of a better definition. It definitely captures the intuition about powers being something inherent to the individual.
Now, do we have any evidence that the orbs didn’t change Sydney’s DNA? Even assuming Nth tech, do we know they didn’t rewrite her’s DNA to be able to bond with her?
We understand that this is not the case with a gun – we know the operation of a gun is fully mechanical and only requires a range of motions available to any healthy humanoid. All that’s needed for the caveman to operate a gun is knowledge – completely mundane knowledge that can be acquired by trial and error as well as being taught.
But we do not know the mechanics of either super’s powers or Sydney’s orbs – so we can’t distinguish them on that base. Sydney can’t tell anyone how to connect with the orbs, it seems like she’s the only one who can do it.
I don’t think that has been in question – but when it comes to power copying there’s an important distinction. HW can copy Brüt’s power – but she could never copy War Machine’s power because he doesn’t have one – she’d have to take the suit from him. But when it comes to Sydney …
… this isn’t clear. We don’t know in what ways Sydney was changed by the orbs. They definitely rewired her mind so she could control them – it’s not something she learned. For all we know it changed her just like a super serum would.
I do have to say we don’t know in the other way either – maybe there is a way for Sydney to disconnect from the orbs and let someone else play with them analogous to taking off the War Machine suit. Or maybe not.
“Now, do we have any evidence that the orbs didn’t change Sydney’s DNA?”
Well, we do have Gwen’s magic scans of Sydney before her ‘interview’ with ARCHON, where Gwen went over ALL the things that Sydney is NOT…. which included ‘super.’ And Gwen was not scanning the orbs, because they did not know about the orbs yet, which are scan-proof by everyone EXCEPT the Kaiju worldkiller things so far… and possibly Krona.
Zephon: “What did you see with the scan, Gwen?”
Gwen: “Oh right! Nothing, actually. Nothing at all. She’s not a super, esper, psyker, psion, channeler, gate, focal, no magic of any kind.”
(I wish I could bold it starting with super and ending with kind but I don’t know how to do that)
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-80-she-used-this-spell-to-scan-a-hotdog-once-once/
In any case, I am going by that basis that Sydney’s DNA itself was not actually changed by the orbs. The whole ‘the orbs cover her lifeforce’ idea though would not require her DNA to have been changed, which would explain why Gwen’s scans do not pick her up as a super. Because Sydney is not a super. Just like Gwen’s scans would not pick up War Machine as a super. Because he is not a super.
“she’d have to take the suit from him. But when it comes to Sydney …”
Two ways I could respond to that.
1) It would be a moot point, since Sydney is not a supervillain and HW’s powers only work regarding supervillains that hire her/that she works for (whichever it is)
2) The examples we’ve seen so far about how the orb grants powers to its user and how to change the user seem to have repeatedly pointed to ‘death of the current user’ being a requirement (at least at Sydney’s current understanding of the orbs). I’m not sure that HW would be able to duplicate Sydney’s powers, but she might be able to duplicate the ability to use the orbs, like how Varia could. That wouldnt actually be giving HW Sydney’s powers though – it would be giving HW the ability to use the orbs, which THEN would let her use Sydney’s powers, since that is so far the only thing we’ve seen in the comic that is in any way ‘duplicatable’ (ie, the whole Varia thing).
“They definitely rewired her mind so she could control them – it’s not something she learned.”
I actually have a workable theory on this as well, which does not involve DNA being manipulated (since that would make Gwen’s scan results make very little sense).
Perhaps the orbs, which are tethered to Sydney on some type of psychic link, which lets her control them, also can send data through that psychic link back to Sydney to give her an instinctual idea of how to use the Orbs, depending on how many of the center sphere pips are filled in? That was also alluded to by Sydney when she got the additional two pips before she opened her first Aetherium Causeway. We also know there’s some sort of link between her and the orbs based on the ONE time something scanned her which could actually read anything about the orbs and Sydney – the Squidward Scout’s scan of Sydney and the orbs. I found it peculiar that it wasnt JUST the orb that Sydney was holding that was giving off a reading to the Squidward Scout… there was a second orb, hovering around Sydney, which she was NOT touching, which ALSO was giving them a reading.
See panel 8 below:
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-641-well-thats-probably-not-good/
“I do have to say we don’t know in the other way either”
True, this is all guessing on both of our parts. But it’s fun and I’m trying to base my guesses on what’s happened so far in the comic because that’s what I have to rely on :)
*Pander:
that same image has a curiosity in it, look at the nervous system looking panel of Sydney, inside her head and upper chest we see differently colored circular spots that may also correspond to the orbs. two line up with her eyes but the ones higher in her head and upper chest stand out.
this oddity and the kaiju world killers (defcon 5) reaction are what makes me think of the theory Sydney could be an avatar (Nth level being version of the Sims or RPG)…think an Isekai storyline except on purpose, with no memory, and limiting their powers as a tool with upgrade options to slowly ease into their powers as a kind of game.
of the orbs are a Nth level toy and Sydney is 100% human and these are signs of the mutli-dimensional access ports.
Whether the orbs or the orbs and Sydney, the mecha kaiju giant fel looking guys completely freaked out. Which tells you one thing, they’ve encountered this tech before and/or the ones who made it, and were on the loosing side of that encounter…and most likely lost badly.
On the whole other people using the orbs if Sydney is killed and they take them. Is a conjecture never proven, as we don’t know the circumstance of how theh ended up in earth, the glitch could have been caused by the time jump by the blood portal for all we know. It’s kind of like Child’s play 2 and 3 where Chucky just assumes the clock to switching his soul was reset but he had nothing to base that off of so he just went with it. That being schlocky horror however might have, this however feels more like tactical mis direction like if Sydney dies for all we know they’ll revive her with an extra life feature (another final orb theory), or shoot off into space to find another compatible host, possibly even kill whomever tries to take them who isn’t worthy among a myriad of unknown possibilities.
Gwen checked for a number of specific things and came up negative – this doesn’t suggest Sydney can’t be different in an unknown way. Only that Gwen can’t figure anything out. The orbs might even cloak something like they do on themselves.
Yes, Sydney isn’t a super, but again, that doesn’t mean she doesn’t have powers at all.
The more I think about it, the less fitting the DNA definition seems to me. Grrl Power operates on mind-body-duality, so DNA, being fundamentally biophysical, can’t explain everything about supers. For example, after HW merged into her ghostform, she didn’t even have a body that could have DNA. Maxima(and maybe Vale) had her body messed with on a fundamental level.
Sure, I’m just going to stand behind you pointing out how speculative exactly you’re being :)
You can encase your text in HTML tags like <b>this text is bolded</b>.
The gadget girl is almost certainly Digit, who appears at the bottom of page 338. I want to say that she’s on some other page as well… But I can’t find it.
Thank you. Thats the one I was thinking of :)
Disregard the last paragraph.
But you were right on your last paragraph. Her name’s Digit and you gave the page I was looking for. Thank you. :)
I still don’t know if she’s a super (ie, like Forge or Sage from X-Men, Brainiac 5 from Legion of Superheroes, or Gear from Static Shock) or just a really smart normal human (ie, Tony Stark or Reed Richards).
due to retcons Tony Stark and Reed Richards’ cause for their higher intelligence no longer applies as “normal human”
Mr. Fantastic especially with the whole stretching internal organs as well working on making his brain super wrinkly or whatever.
Okay, I’ll give you that. But lets assume I’m meaning a pre-Extremis Tony Stark (IQ of 270) and a pre-‘stretchy brain’ Reed Richards (IQ of at least 267, but probably a lot higher since 267 was when he was only 16 and the general consensus in Marvel was Reed being smarter than Tony).
IE, they were super-geniuses long before they were superhuman. :) I could say Batman or Lex Luthor if you’d prefer but I was trying to use Marvel for the ‘smart humans’ example :)
Ah, this post ended up in the wrong thread. I was referring to the paragraph that was just a quote from you and a cut-off sentence. ^^
This thread long ago reached the nesting limits, but just so you know, you can use a few basic html tags for things like bold and italics. Demonstrating how to use them… is tricky, but I’ll take a guess at what the system will accept.
<b>bold</b>, for example, should produce bold.
Links are similar, with <a href=”URL”>link text</a>
And know I just have to hope the comment system won’t royally scramble all that.
Case in point.