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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How did Maxima know where HW’s portal was leading to so that even with super speed she could be there to meet her?
Also, how does HW’s powers only work with super villains? Isn’t the definition wether or not they use their power for good or evil? If one of her contractors suddenly did a face turn would she suddenly lose that power?
Also, the weather could be worse. Here I woke up yesterday to -16F temperatures and 8+ inches of snow.
She could have simply followed into the portal.
Thought that as well, and posted a similar comment, and was pointed out that neither had actually gone anywhere
I think the implication is that Max just caught her and pulled her out of the portal before it shut.
Mushy humans can’t survive being yanked at super-speed like that, I think HW just didn’t jump very far (a block or two?) so it looks basically the same. Max either followed her through, or just peeked in to note the location and zipped over and waited for HW to finish going through.
Even without the LLC, there’s no guarantee she’s “mushy”.
You can see the line in the concrete in the last panel at the same position (accounting for different posture in the 5th panel), and also the portal pop from closing (I imagine it’d sound and look different were it opening) is in front of the object one the left of the last panel. If she teleported a couple blocks her positioning and Max’s are pretty coincidental.
Also, jumping a few blocks would be inefficient ^^
*at the same position as in the 1st and 5th
*different posture in the last panel
Sorry, I edited my comment a number of times and forgot to reread.
You’re forgetting that Maxima generates a tactile forcefield like Superboy/Kon-El does, it’s good for more than just lifting up an ambulance by the bumper without ripping it apart but for grabbing people at super-speed and preventing them from being injured by the results (just like how Flash doesn’t generally injure people despite catching them at super-speed).
“Tactile Telekinesis” is an official required secondary superpower of Maxima’s
You’re right, I had completely forgotten her demonstration with the ambulance. The backgrounds looked just different enough that I was trying to rationalize it being close but not identical; Max snatching her back through the portal (from the jaws of defeat as it were) seems like the best explanation.
Yep. They haven’t moved more than a foot or two. The movie-marquis-entrance-like structure behind them is the same.
They’re still in front of the same building. No one went through the portal.
And as Nightmask said, with Maxima’s power human mushyness doesn’t apply, so this is perfectly consistent.
The portal is see-through Maxima could probably see a street sign and realise that it was the same city.
If HW had subcontracted to a teleporter instead then that wouldn’t be an issue.
Maxima can catch a bullet, she just had to move like two feet to stop Henchwench from jumping backwards into the portal.
Also this portal doesn’t look see through, its got this blue-grey rings cloud vortex look to it.
Look at the backgrounds carefully, Maxima grabbed and pulled her back a few feet from the portal before it closed.
Maxima can catch a bullet. In other words she grabbed Henchwench before she fell back through the portal. Remember portals aren’t like teleporters, they have to open and then move through the portal, Maxima just had to move like two feet and grab her before she could do that.
If you look at panel 1 of page 916, you’ll see the background sign is indeed the same as the one in panel 7, and with a bit of examination, panel 9 is just a different part of the same background as 7.
Maxima just texted her back out of the portal by her neck.
*”yeeted her”. Autocorrect, lol.
Damn You Otto Korrect! Messing up really good puns since 2014.
TBH, I would consider it a “yoinking” rather than a “yeeting”
Yeah, they are opposites, not synonyms (anyone for a cinnamon bun?)
This is easily my favorite definition of ‘yeet’ now.
I have a Hunnybun! :D
Ok, I know you are having fun with HenchWench, but she has got to be the most annoying villain in the history of comicdom. And when do we find out she’s working for Zeus?
I find it unlikely that she would work for a ancient greek god.
Ancient? do you even Percy Jackson, tho?
Do you mean Deus? And this isn’t his style.
No? Opal appears to have gone back to work for him after the rumble at the steakhouse, so the connection doesn’t have many degrees of separation.
That assumes the individual she contracted out with was Opal.
Indications are that this is not Opal’s portal.
Opal’s portals aren’t see through windows and don’t have the electric field on the boarder.
minor correction, this portal looks to have a cloud vortex look, electric around the edges and a grey-blue cloud rings like tunnel inside. Opal’s portal was a curtain of energy and a light color.
We don’t have too many cases of power set duplication. Because having supers with the same powers is fairly boring.
We do have many cases of art and/or continuity errors. Because preventing those would take some organization skills.
It’s not the same power, it has a notably different effect. Opal’s portal are just gateways, but this looked like it closes around people and teleports them all at once.
As examples of powers with similar effects, Lightning Bug and Jiggawatt both throw lightning, Halo and Hex are both circled by glowing orbs that give them powers, Concretia and gold vault guy both have geokinesis, Math and Jabberwokky have super martial arts, there’s a dozen brick-type supers …
And I consider this very unlikely to be an art error – because it would be much easier for DaveB to revisit Opal’s portals than to design an entirely new effect, that’s not the kind of thing that happens accidentally. Also, historically arguments by design especially of powers have a good track record in my experience.
And frankly “let’s not analyze anything, it might just be an error” is very intellectually unsatisfying.
I just want to add, you can also get more variety than one might think from the same basic power.
(a cut exert from *deleted* dialogue from my character Rhulan…the dialogue didn’t fit the scene properly so I cut it, but stashed it away in case I wanted to use it later), the character discusses how a lot of her spells are actually redundant, but are still varied in style.
Rhulan: When you lived thousands of years in a place called “The Society of Sorcery” you accumulate ALOT of redundant spells, skills, and techniques. Because you really don’t have anything better to do with your time than study the countless spell books they’ve gathered and copied from countless realities.
Seriously:
Acidic Poison Rain,
Acid Blades Rain,
Rain of Poisoned Spikes,
Snake Fang Downpour,
Poisoned Arrow Rain
Poisoned Arrow Head Rain,
Toxic Icicle Blizzard,
Rain of Poisoned Daggers,
Poison Spears Downpour,
Rain of Poisoned Swords,
-also venom, poison, toxic, acidic venom, acidic poison, …ect…variations of this exact same thing of a crap ton of something sharp falling from the sky that do additional damage with toxic elements-
of course there are plain versions, and elemental versions, and mixes of elements and different types. Oh look,
Holy Toxic Burning Lightning Acidic Frozen Shuriken Blizzard
*seriously, there are so many spells I can do that I just don’t because…I don’t need to, or feel a want to, a lot of these on their home worlds were the ONE version of it, secret spells and diabolic weather manipulations handed down in dark tomes, ect… same with a lot of the other spells.
Not kidding I could probably sit here and name off over twenty basic shield spells, who knows how many variations of a fire ball. Seriously I could fire off a rainbow of flames and even a menagerie of fire balls…as in fire balls shaped like animals, I even have more than one that resemble elephants. Oh, I even have a sweeping flame giraffe neck and head. I think its called “True Fire Lord of the Savannah”.
*me again*
to put this into context to this discussion, you can have a ton of characters with the same basic concept behind their power and still make them unique. Just look at Marvel comics between Blink, Nightcrawler, and Locus. All three are -porters but do it in very different ways.
As I pointed out, in the post you replied to, art errors about, and you can’t go on an effect to make a determination like this.
[…] this looked like it closes around people and teleports them all at once.
Wow, your ability to read into an effect that existed for two panels, wasn’t even fully shown in one panel, and was just a “fizzle” in the second, is amazing! Please, tell me more about the super who obviously created this portal, you seem to be someone who should know their name, gender, backstory, and whether or not they are left handed. I’m fascinated to learn more from you!
And as I responded to that, in the post you replied to, this is very unlikely to be an art error.
You can’t just go around dismissing evidence you don’t like as art errors without justification. You argued that two supers with the same power was unlikely, hence the shown art was unlikely to precise. But if the shown art doesn’t implay same powers, this doesn’t hold, so you have no reason to suspect art errors.
The observation is based on the vortex-shape – this is more of a wormhole than a portal, while Opal’s portals are flat. It the wormhole shape has any physical significance, one cannot just step partially through the portal and be partially on one side, partially on the other.
If HW threw herself through one of Opal’s portal like that, she’d land flat on her ass on the other side, which also suggests the portal does something more than just let her through.
The evidence is definitely on the side of similar, but not same powers enough for your argument to be invalid.
Except the shown art doesn’t just imply the same power, it shows quite clearly that it is the same power. Henchwench even uses the same term for the power, when she says she “subcontracted a friend who can open portals.” Opal can also open portals, and the ‘also’ in there may well be redundant.
I’m not betting the farm on it being Opal, I’m just pointing out that we’ve got far more cases of art errors and continuity errors in this comic than we do of supers with the same power set. Henchwench “just happening” to have a friend who can make portals who isn’t Opal would be a lousy plot complication in an already fairly lousy plot.
No, it quite clearly doesn’t. And you know that, given that you argued the differences were an art error. The art is extremely different, to the point where it suggest the power works significantly different.
And you can’t show “it’s the same power” from two panels. There’s lots of superficially similar powers in the comic. Maxima, Hiro, Stalwart, Anvil, Harem, Vehemence, Mr. Amorphous all have super strength – but we know that they all work in different way, and there’s lots more supers with super strength where we haven’t seen enough to say what unique variations they might have. Flight – Maxima, Hiro, Heatwave, LLC flygirl. Powers are unique, but in the details, not in broad strokes.
That doesn’t mean anything. A three-word description isn’t going to capture all the nuance of a power. “Can make portals” also applies to Sciona and Halo. The aforementioned “has super strength” has loads of variations.
Actually, how many art errors of consequence have there been? I can’t think of one off the top of my head.
Aside from this argument being “I don’t like, therefore it can’t be true”, I don’t think so. On the contrary, it being Opal would introduce plot complications because it could connect Deus to Machina Industries, whereas a previously unknown friend can remain elusive for now, wrapping up the plot, and later appear as a nice continuity easter egg.
Henchwench is cute. I’m sure Cora can provide some alien brain chip tech that will turn her into a good, obedient girl.
Yes, because we’ve seen no end of techno-slavery in this comic.
Yes, unconstitutional as well. “cruel and unusual:”!
Just keep the rapists out of the co-ed parts of the prison, and you should not have any problems. The reason prisons have a rapey reputation is because the heterosexual demografic of inmates are deprived of any potential intimate partners. And without being homophobic, for some, that can be enough to engage in homosexual activity despite being hetero. Further, as the reputation states, it doesn’t have to be co-ed for rape to happen. There is man on man violence and woman on woman violence.
Having co-ed ares might help reduce rape and violence in prisons. This of course would be based on prison being less insufferable if there is co-ed, and modern prisons in the west already have a reputation of being almost three star hotels. It would be like the Big Brother tv show, but without people getting voted out to leave the house.
On the other side, a super prison might not want to be a penetary but a re-education/resocialisation institution, which might be allowed to be more friendly and social, with co-ed areas. Supers like Vehemence would make a killing in a penetary institution.
In this case the rapiness would probably be prevented by super powered prison gangs.
In the worst case, “committed” would be a more accurate word than “prevented.” And that’s a case that sooner or later someone would have to deal with.
Still, you have a point. I don’t think I’ve read anything about the dynamics in womens’ prison populations, but in male gen-pop, those who are in for rape are despised even by other prisoners. And those who are in for raping children are actually so hated that they’re unlikely to survive.
Tell me, why would we not prefer re-education and re-socialization for all criminals?
Many do, but people in the US have been convinced that that’s Coddling Criminals, so is to be avoided.
So prisons become more about punishment than rehabilitation.
It also doesn’t help that inmate labor means a number of places can hire menial labor for pennies compared to a full-time regular worker..
1) Prisons are about punishment, plus rehabilitation, plus prevention of repeat offenses, plus a warning to others. Every one of those is a valid social and public policy function of imprisonment.
2) The pretense that rehabilitation works on any consistent basis has no basis in empirical experience. The ability to accurately predict recidivism on an individual basis does not exist, nor does the ability to reduce what they can’t measure.
3) Harsh prisons that make people VERY determined not to return apparently DO work to reduce recidivism, but have been determined to be unconstitutional.
Punishment is the odd one out there in your list. The others have reasonably obvious social benefits, but punishment does not.
I presume you’re only looking at statistics for the USA. Many other countries have much lower recidivism rates. Many also have much lower incarceration rates to begin with. So presumably it’s possible to do better. We just lack the desire to do so.
It’s a social issue. An outside the prison social issue, to be clear. In the US we’re led to believe that prison is for punishment, not rehabilitation. And that people in prison therefore deserve the crappy living conditions, daily stress of expecting violence, the disregard of the guards and prison staff to any concerns a prisoner might have, etc.
All that leads to is the formation of gangs which might help to keep a prisoner safe from some dangers, but which have a cost in fragmenting the prison population into sets of “us vs. them.” And in exchange for that membership the gang might require some things in return which a law abiding person might not want to provide, but are under tremendous pressure to do so anyway because to be expelled is to be without protection from anyone, including or even especially your former gang members.
I had a friend in High School who committed some crimes in the summer after graduation and went to prison. 12 years later when he got out he was one of the most racist people I ever knew. He also had turned into a sort of “prison lawyer,” constantly on edge about his “rights” being violated, simple office politics turned into crusades for him, he went on a hunger strike to protest some supposed government wrong against some right he felt had been trampled. Maybe you get the picture, maybe not.
On the flip side he used his time served to the best of his ability. He got a BS in Chemical Engineering, he tutored other inmates for the time reduction benefits, etc. He did everything he could to reduce his sentence, because he focused on working the system, which isn’t always a bad thing.
I tried to remain a friend, but after maybe a year I just let the contacts become less often until I finally stopped. He lived less than 20 miles away from me, but I stopped returning calls and stopped calling and visiting. The cowards way, I suppose. But I don’t think sitting down with him to explain why I no longer wished to associate with him would have had any value for either of us. It certainly wouldn’t change him, and without that change my decision to cut ties with him would not change.
In the next-to-last panel, why did the scene cut to Max throttling Barbie, then back to her fight with Henchwench?
I think it’s because Barbie has a complexion that looks a lot like HenchWench’s complexion in that light.
And also because ‘stupid smile that might delay or dissuade aggro giving me time to figure out a new plan when my old plan has gone terribly wrong’ seems to be a default for HW (we saw it just last page, in fact when she inquired about employment).
It just coincidentally happens to look like Barbie’s ‘slasher smile.’
Guess I called it. Of COURSE Hench Wench has a subcontract with someone who has an escape power. Didn’t work though. Max sets a pretty high bar to get away.
Interesting how Hench Wench even knows what Vehemence’s power is. Were his capabilities declassified after his arrest?
It was televised (remember the Klingon kisses?) with a reporter even joining the fracas.
And she probably doesn’t know what his power set is. She just knows he has Powers with a capital P, enough to fight Maxima to a standstill.
His “power reveal” was likely televised, too.
Actually they might now about Vehemence from Concretia, who was at the fight.
The fight was televised, but excellent point about Kevin and Concretia having at least a minor connection.
Further, Concretia may have been able to offer some insight, if not explicit information on Vehemence’s power, having been under the influence of it herself, for the duration of that fight.
Here’s hoping she gets away :) I like her!
If she has to move to get away, I don’t think that will be happening.
This portal power DOES, however, offer a possible route for Brüt basically appearing out of nowhere to punch Maxima – she may have made a portal to get him right to the right spot…
Also, however, makes me wonder why they would bother to have fly-girl take the time-dilation gun – if they knew she had a portal generating power, they would have probably been better off just plopping the gun into a safe place through a portal rather than having fly-girl come down to grab it…
Maybe HW kept that power secret from them – she wasn’t exactly loyal to their goals. Portal extraction wouldn’t have resulted in the big fight she seems to have wanted.
I think Brüt just walked up to punch Maxima.
That would have been a good, efficient strategy, but it looks like HW operates on a “need to know” basis – and so far as she’s concerned, her marks, I mean employers, don’t need to know about all of her other employers and possible powers.
Agreed – she got her escape power from a separate contract, which implies she was keeping it secret as her ace in the (port)hole. She demonstrated earlier in the fight that she was willing to disobey / betray the coalition that hired her via the recently-defunct LLC.
HW may have had an ace up her sleeve the Maxima showed her that there was a hole in her Ace.
So far as HenchWench, my personal theory is that she’s actually a reality warper in the sense that she has complete control over the particles she perceives as comprising her body at the sub atomic level. The reason her abilities “only work on supervillains” or she “only copies powers she’s contracted with” are because she’s created mental blocks that allow her to function and/or not accidentally erase herself from existence.
so she’s a mutant from the X-men.
yes this is/was (I don’t keep up with every retcon), marvel canon on how Mutant powers worked. Every mutant should have every power thanks to the X-gene; however their personalities at the time their power activates and the situation locks onto a specific power and locks out all the others *with some exceptions of a secondary mutation occurring later in life as personalities change*, to preserve their sanity.
Mutants who are less mentally stable tend to get more powers.
However while I agree Henchwench likely has some mental blocks, I doubt she is a reality warper, just a power copier *which isn’t much better in the potential OP scaling*, who has made mental blocks that limit this ability.
“Control over her own body” explains neither the geokinesis nor the portal. Power copier makes much more sense imho.
Gotta say, Henchwench has got the MOST emotive face ever. It has morphed to a lot of different facetypes in EACH pannel. Like come on, she has gotta be consigned under someone who can shapeshift or has facial morphing abilities. Who she working for? Roger Rabbit???
Bugs Bunny
Hi Kevin!
*waves*
Since you and Anvil have the same problem, I can see the enthusiasm for a glimpse of Kevin.
-_-‘
…I fart in your general direction.
(tell him ‘now go away or I shall taunt you a second time’ with an outrageous french accent!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSGkBWYDmrM
And that is why you don’t announce what your going to do, even if you immediately do it.
“Do it? Dan, I’m not a Republic Serial villain. Do you seriously think I’d explain my master-stroke if there remained the slightest chance of you affecting its outcome? I did it thirty-five minutes ago.”
_That_ is why he’s the smartest man in the world.
Henchwench having a -porter power also means Maxima is going to have to keep ahold of her, have Dabbler induce sleep, or if Dabbler or Cora has a wormhole disrupter to prevent rifts from forming..magic or tech *hey if Star vs the Forces of Evil can have one for a reform school*.
then stick her in the pressurized cell…however Henchwench seems like the type to “call their bluff” and get herself killed anyway, so some kind of portal disrupter may be needed for these types of powers in the future to keep them locked up.
Or set up a regular cop with a taser a a guard. If she tries to portal away, she gets zapped, disrupting her concentration.
Aside from the 24/7 guard till/if they can find out who this friend is and nullify that employment, we don’t know id this portal has to be vertical or adjustable. If Henchwemch can open it under her feet for example nothing short of super speed or disrupter is going to stop her just falling into it.
This entire series of events, and even the attempted escape is why you don’t announce what your doing and even hide how, until AFTER you already did ‘it’. Even if you announce while doing so… well gets one speed yoinked by your neck.
“Do it? Dan, I’m not a Republic Serial villain. Do you seriously think I’d explain my master-stroke if there remained the slightest chance of you affecting its outcome? I did it thirty-five minutes ago.”
That’s the real joke here. Had she kept her mouth shut and waited until she was in prison she could have easily escaped.
But she had to boast and now they are going to keep her unconcious until they have her in one of the the teleporter-proof cells we have seen before.
I’m in north DFW and my power has been uninterrupted (we speculate this is due to our proximity to a medical center). msouth at gmail if you need more continuous power. I’m a big fan of the comic so axe murdering you would not be in my best interest. I guess you might be exposing yourself to a Misery type scenario. But just think of the continuously available electricity!
My theory on Hench Wench is that she is Very Much the Mirror-verse, evil twin of Sydney.
(she is even a brunette while sydny is blonde.)
An always suprisingly diverse set of Powers that are wielded by a Min/Maxing power gamer / paralegal
that apparently have the built in desire AND talent for experimentation when determining whatever it is they can or can not do (as you do when you have only a vague what your powers can be)
which means they are both specialized in creating Power Stunts.
Both of which can be cut away from their powers by seemingly silly /weak means. (when it is actually due to the rare time they get out power stunted)
And they also wind up doing the Crazy eyes of Doom when their drug habit coping mechanism wears down
but where’s her goatee/soulpatch?
Have you seen her naked?
+1 internet
Girl rules apply here.
One gets Dark Hair the other gets Light Hair
Men are raped in male only prisons, and women are raped in women only prisons. The issue you point out exists, but it’s probably not going to be any worse than it already is. The problem which would almost certainly be introduced would be female inmates selling their “services,” just as some women guards have been found doing at all male prisons. And no doubt some men and women in single gender prisons. Both for protection, and for whatever the market might bear in such a situation, and even just to scratch an itch.
As for using henchwoman as a supervillian detector, how does that work actually? She has to have a contract with them, right? Making her sign contract with every person she meets seems problematic.
She doesnt actually need to have a contract with them. she just needs to work for them. The contract part was because she wanted to have the powers of everyone in the LLC at the same time, and wanted to make some sort of difficulty against them being able to easily fire her, hence the convoluted LLC agreement, requiring 2/3rds of the LLC members to fire her.
Plus the completely unrealistic and unconscionable part (which would in any sane world be unenforceable or removed in order to save the rest of the contract from being unenforceable as an LLC Operating Agreement) where it also requires the LLC manager to sign off on the firing when she’s the LLC manager.
I always assumed those prisons were mixed gender for budget reasons, and lack of morals. Can’t scrounge up enough money for 2 super powered penals? Build 1 for half the budget! Low on picket money? Build 1 and charge the government for 2!
Britain once had a coed prison. They called it Australia.
And look how THAT worked out.
Henchwench should have waited to call on Opal’s power when she was in the paddy wagon on the way to be processed or whatever. Now she’ll have Maxima sitting next to her for that ride, which will end up with her being in the hyperbaric (or whatever it’s called) chamber that briefly held Opal.
Why did you assume that is Opal’s portal power? Doesn’t look like hers at all. (Not saying that it couldn’t be, just wondering why you thought it was)
To be fair, Opal is the only Portal user that we’ve seen on-page so far. If the assumption is that ‘portals are portals’, then conservation of detail suggests that HW got hers from the same source.
Opal’s portals have had a consistent look . So that is doubtful
Well there was also the sky ripper but yeah.
But I still don’t think it’s Opal’s power that she’s copying, because Opal’s supposedly in Galytin under Deus’s orders, and somehow I don’t think Deus would be letting Opal contract with people who have a habit of being so blatant in their illegal actions, since it could be traced back to him.
And as we all know, Deus would never do something blatantly illegal, since he is a paragon of humanity, and make everyone around him better and more noble people by his very presence.
This reminds me more of the effect of Cora’s ship coming out over the dead Alari homeworld.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-674-space-cavalry/
I think that was more her ship coming out of hyperspace and back into normal space or something along those lines.
But yeah, similar look.
My emphasis on the assumptions involved (namely ‘portals are portals‘ and conservation of detail) should perhaps have been clearer.
If those both hold, then we may imply a connection between Opal and HW. If either assumption is not valid – if the world can support more than one type of portal, or DaveB isn’t too concerned about limiting the amount of complexity – then the implied connection is very shaky at best. The different appearance of the portals calls the first assumption into question, and so far there’s been little indication that DaveB feel overly bound by the second.
The slavish devotion to the law of conservation of detail annoys me for reasons I’m not quite sure I understand. It makes sense from the perspective of the creator, in terms of efficient use of time and resources… I guess I appreciate when a creator splurges, and it irritates me to see an audience demand something cheap when they’re given something extravagant. “No, I don’t want that lobster tail, I want dry bread and water!”
We don’t have too many cases of power set duplication. Because having supers with the same powers is fairly boring.
We do have many cases of art and/or continuity errors. Because preventing those would take some organization skills.
It doesn’t look like Opal’s power, the portals look different.
I love how Kevin looks at her like, “Are you…okay?”
The prison in Chronicles of Riddick isn’t some first country utopia prison with “ethics”. It’s in a dystopian-ish feeling sci-fi world, in a shitty prison on a shitty planet. There doesn’t seem to be many rules or regulations whatsoever.
yeah a lot of sci-fi prisons are just that, dystopian hell holes. Even the more high tech ones…I forget if the prison from Outlaw Star was co-ed or not, but just going there with its high gravity was a death sentence, and the warden was mad with power.
Depending on how the portal edges work, Max might have just made a tactical error. Were HW to create another portal directly in front of her, between Max and herself, Max could conceivably loose an arm (or more) to a “portal cut”.
Presumably it doesn’t work that way, given how lethal offensive “sharp” portals can be, and the fact that HW hasn’t already used them in this fashion.
I have seen four types of portals when it comes to opening with dense matter in the way.
1: Won’t, just won’t engage.
2: Phase aura: the area around the portal puts things out of phase so it can be interacted with, you may not even be able to see it from any other angle but right in front of it. You could walk at it sideways, from behind, and pass right through the area and not into the portal, you have to hit it dead on in front.
3: Impact: the portal pushes all matter away, violently.
4: Slicer: cuts and/or separates matter. The popular one for weaponizing. Remove an arm, a leg, head, ect…or even cut with the edge of the portal.
I was inspired by a character from X-men comics, Locus *I think*…given this was the 90s and everything that has happened with mutants since then, pretty sure she’s dead or depowered now. Well she was a portal generator but could do it as really small portals that sliced through anything. She used this power to cut off people’s limbs, chunks from the body, head, ect… (she was on the same team as a fetus lizard looking guy who ate people, so not a good guy).
on the inspiration part one of my oldest characters (Rhulan) has a “dimension cloth” wrapped around her shoulders as a cape. Basically she can take it off and have it generate a portal to hop through and it can either stay there or fold up behind her, as well as have a portal open in the inside and summon mechanical tentacles or items from her warehouse to use…so kind of like Dabbler’s teleporter come to think of it, only with extra steps, one trick of this was that the edges of her cape become dimensional blade edges when she’d do this, and she weaponized this. She could slice anyone or anything trying to grab her cape, or spin and slice someone that way.
This was a triumph!
I’m making a note here: Huge success!
It’s hard to overstate my satisfaction.
I’m not even angry
I’m being so sincere right now
Even though you grabbed my neck
And choked me
Maxima grabbed me.
She does what she wants.
Because she can.
For the good of all of us
Except the ones who are dead.
Look at me still talkin while there’s fighting to do
When I look at HenchWench I think ‘I’m glad I’m not you.’
There’s arresting to be done
Before Ro makes another pun
At the posters who are still alive.
(Good filk, Pander, but I have to continue from my previous)
And punched me in my boob
Oh man that hurt – Oh yeah, real bad
But the thing that hurt the most was that
YOU ALL RUINED MY FUN
Now there’s no use whining
How my powers don’t work
DaveB just made them up
When he was being a jerk
Now you’ll put me away
And make me rue the day
I got myself
THROWN IN JAIL
Go ahead and leave me
I’ll hang with my peeps
In Super-Gen-Pop
Maybe you’ll find someone else
To help you
Maybe Lord Deus
(That was a joke)
(No srsly)
(Don’t trust him)
Anyway, these cons are great
So powerful and gullible
Now I’m stuck in prison
While there’s crimes to do
And I’m thinking maybe
It’d be nice to work for you
We could show them all
And start breaking the law
But until then, I guess
I’M IN JAIL
I’m quite Chaotic and I’m
STILL IN JAIL
I’m unrepentant so I’ll
STAY IN JAIL
Bring about World Peace and I’ll be
STILL IN JAIL
My grand-kids join Arc-SWAT but I’m
STILL IN JAIL
STILL IN JAIL
Still in jail
Yours was better than mine.
Btw in case anyone else is wondering and is not as massive a nerd as we are, the song should be sung to the tune of “Still Alive” by GLaDoS (written by Jonathan Coulton). It’s the end song from the game “Portal.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6ljFaKRTrI
Although it Hench Wench continues much longer, I might want the song to be “Want You Gone” also by GLaDoS (also written by Jonathan Coulton) instead. (end song from Portal 2)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVVZaZ8yO6o
First thing I thought about co-ed prisons was Guardians Of The Galaxy (there’s that one female inmate looking at a hologram message from family).
Henchwench certainly screwed things up for herself because of her impulsiveness. Instead of waiting until there were no supers around and it was just non-powered humans (like a holding cell) who think she has no powers left she revealed she at least still has one power so now they’ll take measures to prevent her escaping since she revealed her trump card too soon.
On the note about Texas glad you’re at least getting some power unlike far too many people in Texas. It’s just criminal how the for-profit power companies and disconnected grid has caused so much suffering and death that could have been avoided. With insult to injury of morons blaming ‘green power’ for the issues while ignoring that most of Texas still gets its power from dirty coal, oil and natural gas and they’re what all died because they weren’t winterized either. Places running off of solar are still managing just fine.
Then there’s the reason why the grid is separate from the rest of the country: because due to the grid being completely within Texas the federal government largely doesn’t have the authority to regulate their power.
Great job, guys.
One of the guys in charge of comstock is now on the record as having said “This situation is Like hitting the jackpot” with how much they can charge people.
The US has no need to “regulate” Texas power, and any such regulation would not have affected this issue.
Texas is the fifth-highest net PRODUCER AND EXPORTER of power in the US.
These historic EXTENDED LOW temperatures caused a critical and historic level of draw on power. That’s all.
Normally, the hot air in the gulf moderates these cold waves and pushes them off of us in a few days. This time, it was far colder than usual, for far longer than usual. US energy policy intervention last decade, last year, or last month would have had zero effect on that.
Trying to present such a counterfactual claim for a political spin point is pure BS.
Texas supplies power to the Southwest Power Pool. That grid extends all the way to the Canadian border and effects 14 states in whole or in part (the states north of Texas and parts of those adjacent to them)
Their power issues caused rolling blackouts in Kansas City… and I’ll bet we weren’t the only one effected. We DIDN’T get hit as bad as Texas did (ours were all in the daytime), but it snowed all day and the temp was -9 at dawn on Tuesday (it got all the way up to -1). I’ve been a resident of KC for nearly 70 years – we’ve never had weather like this in my life (and that means Texas hasn’t either).
Not really seeing any facts out of you there, because what happened to Texas this year they’ve had previous winter blizzards hit them before and knew that they needed to upgrade before the next one to happen which they would have been required to do under Federal standards. So yes being under federal requirements to winterize their power distribution and generation equipment would have massively reduced if not mostly eliminated everything that’s happened as a result of cost-cutting that’s cost lives and has them charging the people that can still get power absurdly high electric bills because they’re again not regulated as they should be.
I’d be up for the National Sorority Slumber Party Championships. Andante!
Dave, my sister lives in Farmer’s Branch and lost her power days ago. Now the pipes have burst and lots of repair will ensue.
Guardians of the galaxy came to mind for me actually. Also wedlock, escape from New York, almost every iteration of Superman’s phantom zone, assassins creed, the hole prison from the dark knight rises, the gulag from Superman Red Son, several versions of Arkham asylum, Davy Jones’ locker technically counts I think, the Ready Player One debtor prison, pretty sure there’s a couple in Doctor who, terminator salvation showed one, (technically a concentration camp, but prison environment so I think it counts) and most mutant camps from various x-men properties.
At least the original Phantom Zone co-ed imprisonment is perfectly safe as the inmates are just as incapable of making physical contact with each other as they are with the physical world so nobody’s going to be getting any or forcing it onto anyone else (no wonder they’re such sour-faced bastards, they haven’t been able to get any for decades).
The Klingon prison planet Rura Penthe. Probably best known (hell, maybe only known) from STVI: The Undiscovered Country.
Rura Penthe is also the name of the penal colony in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
Reading that blurb at the end, all I could think about near the end was the movie “Dave and Earl vs Evil”. If none of you have watched it. Do so.
It’s a modern take of Creep Factor of old R-Rated College Movies + Tons of Misunderstandings + What’d happen if the Creepy Slasher Villains were normal hillbillies (and those “too dumb to live” college students were the real “villains”. Featuring “The Chad, The Karen, The Ditz, and the r/niceguy.”).
*Cringes.
Tucker and Dale vs Evil
(Sorry just woke up and brain farted like a crazy over the title. Still, the description is accurate.)
*Tucker and Dale Vs Evil.
(Sorry brain farted over the title.)
*Tucker and Dale vs Evil
*Tucker and Dale vs Evil
(Sorry brainfarted over the title.)
Checking through, no-one seems to have mentioned Rura Penthe yet (as a mixed-pop prison).
No Trekkies around?
There’s also the prison in the ST:TOS episode “Whom Gods Destroy”? Nice thing about that episode was it guest starred Yvonne Craig aka Batgirl.
Not so much a prison as an asylum for the totally deranged + minor powers.
Tucker and Dale vs Evil
The Fk? Sorry for all the flood of posts. The Site wouldn’t take the replies, so I kept trying to get it to work. In the end, rechecked the site to see the massive flood, and now I feel rude about it. So apologies.
No need to apologize, it seems that sometimes the server has a bit of a lag, it’s just a thing that happens. I try to tell myself not to re-post … but it’s so hard not to scratch that itch!
Next to last panel is a meme template if I ever saw one.
HW’s biggest weakness is that she thinks this is all a game.
Maxima’s biggest strength is that she thinks it isn’t.
Most of the villains seem to have surrendered by this point, so one Max is done beating HW into submission they still have to deal with the flying villain that took off with the stasis rifle. Maybe she headed for the yacht and the gun has already been recovered by Sydney and Cora, if not, more trouble.
If/when they recover the forbidden alien tech then what do they do with it? Archon may want to keep it for analysis and research, or they might turn it over to Dark Elvis or Cora to be taken off planet. Keeping it gets them into trouble with intergalactic authorities over non-FTL planets having access to advanced alien tech, but Sydney’s orbs also certainly qualify as that too.
I don’t think the Earthicans who take the tech that ends up on Earth would get in trouble with authorities. Of course they’re going to use whatever it is that lands on their doorstep.
The ones who would be in trouble would be the ones that brought it when they weren’t supposed to.
Also, remember the bounty from the Fel ships that was used to get them an FTL ship to reverse-engineer.
There are a lot of examples of co-ed imprisonment in sci-fi. Especially in the super types.
However other than Deadpool 2 (which looked like a regular prison just with mutant power dampener collars as standard issue), most have some explanation for why they are like that. Or just ignore.
there are a few types: All comers Alien prison, Dystopian Hellhole, Technically an Asylum, Specialized Super Prison, Concentration Camp, Slave Camp, Exile,
Honestly the weirdest of these that makes the least sense is the All comers Alien prison. I know a lot of these cases the different aliens are just rubber forehead aliens where they are identical to humans except with different skin colors and some wedge or circle or whatever on their foreheads for the most part. But there are variety, and it seems more the prison system would just be lazy *so likely privatized* and just lump the wide range of aliens into one prison despite drastically different dietary needs (which has been played for laughs in such stories where the human gets the food option for some scavenger or insectivore or has to eat live prey species ect…),
-honestly surprised the co-ed side of that isn’t played up more often, like have the large orc like species where their sexual dimorphism is a size thing so all humans look female to them, or the biped reptile with human like breasts but this is a male display feature so they think male humans look female; among more exotic options like the male is the one that breastfeeds so has the larger breasts (or its like a camel’s humps on a biped on the front of the body for better support and its gender neutral feature).
then add to the mix sequential hermaphrodites who change sex if too many of one sex are around them, or just plain hermaphrodites,
and this is all before going into the more realistic sci-fi options with breathing differences, allergic reactions to foreign bio-matter, and body differences that can make it difficult or dangerous to be around one another. A human accidentally killed by a ten foot tall hulking species, or a human accidentally harming or killing some three foot tall or less thin or tiny species. Can’t see the foot tall globs (thing brain like lumpy blob with a membrane and various tentacles that normally lives in shallow waters) being kept in a prison along side an Ophidian *I ripped off the vipers from Xcom 2 for the look so just imagine that…only some have quills on their hoods*. Or for more general sci-fi imagine a Warhammer Orc being kept in the same prison as a Roswell Grey (or the exaggerated version from Ben 10).
*on the other prison types*
Dystopian Hellhole, Concentration Camp, and Slave Camp, are all fairly the same. Corrupt people in charge, inhumane conditions, the guards couldn’t care less about your safety and in fact may be rewarded for their cruelty. Often the prisoners are innocent people and it being co-ed is the least of their concerns.
Exile is kind of like that too, the Phantom Zone, they are just dumping people into some wilderness to fend for themselves. Same for the knock offs of the Phantom Zone like the Null Void from Ben 10, or any number of “prison dimensions” in magic series…although the one from Jackie Chan Adventures looked to only have that one set of demons in there. Its just a place to trap them.
…that said the Containment Unit from Ghost Busters must be actual HELL for the less violent ghosts they stick in there as they are lumped in with the monstrous demonic spirits as well with no separation method, a literal just drop them in.
*super prisons*
firs the elephant in the room, Arkham Asylum is supposed to be an asylum, a place for treating the criminally insane. The look of the place has changed over the years as they *try* to keep super villains locked up.
Marvel on the other hand has facilities like the Raft and (whatever the name is for that shrunken down prison), as well as another for tech villains and another for gamma villains. These are all co-ed, but it makes sense; they are specialized facilities for specific kinds of powers; which is expensive to build, need modified for each new prisoner, and a general population isn’t usually a thing in these as for safety reasons they need to isolated most of these prisoners. Imagine trying to build 2 of each type of prison, which generally have less than 100 inmates at any given time, a whole prison for the three guys who can mentally hack computers and a whole other prison for the two women they arrested who have that same power. Two separate highly altered and no-tech allowed prison complexes that have to keep all tech beyond a certain level out of a certain radius of the prison. Same with say the gamma mutates, some of which emit radiation and the enforced radiation depletion system has to be doubled because of the fifty gamma mutates being held, ten of them are also women.
Which is really what the super prison comes down to, if you can’t use a catch all turn off their powers then you have to set up some expensive systems, reinforced structures, specialized conditions, ect…just to hold them. Modern Poison Ivy has S-class florakinesis, one orange seed and suddenly she’s able to go all Biollante on the entire prison. So Arkham has to issue a no raw (technically still alive) plants allowed within a certain distance of Poison Ivy. Plus follow complex rules for anyone else with a special power, keeping power thieves and life force drainers out of touch range of everyone yet still get their food and exercise per their rights. ect…
I’m surprised everyone’s mentioning Deadpool 2 as a co-ed prison example….
But no one mentioned Guardians of the Galaxy! :)
they have, that’s why I didn’t. But it is covered under the all comers alien prison which I didn’t cite specific examples because how common it is, Guardians of the Galaxy, Star Trek, Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, various comic books with aliens, cartoon shows like Ben 10 and Invader Zim; pretty sure a bunch of anime has done it too; (I just found it even weirder that such prisons don’t even separate species, its just some toss em in free for all), I mean cartoons play it for laughs when the giant humanoid elephant whatever eats their cellmate, but the assumption is the cellmate was also a sapient alien who was in there for some crime or another as well and clearly these two should not have been in the cell together.
funny thing in the comics the Kyln was such a different prison I was actually annoyed the movie mis-used it as a generic space prison. If the movies later use it properly they’ll have to do a back up and show that it was only one small part added onto the original structure. The original was built by Galactus and various civilizations used it as a prison for their most dangerous criminals; the original parts even had celestial beings locked up inside it.
There were a lot of problems with that space prison :)
Pitch Meeting did a whole thing which made fun of how the prison made no sense on many levels. :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1OZMJtxHl0
Specifically THIS part of the video:
https://youtu.be/t1OZMJtxHl0?t=172
Is no one else going to squee with glee that Kevin is a pinky-up utensil holder?
He’s a villain, not a mannerless heathen.
+1 best post ever.
Perhaps swapping the third-last and second-last panels would make more sense?
So it looks like Henchy was grabbed before being able to jump backwards through her portal, so it then sputters out without her escape.
[surprised Henchy face] -> [portal closes] -> [dangling by the neck from Maxi’s hand]
Nope, definitely the appropriate ordering – the reader is supposed to have the same momentary confusion that HW is experiencing.
“Ha-wha?! …but, portal?!”
Mixed gender prisons in sci-fi is actually pretty old. Buck Rogers, a show in the 1970’s, had a prison episode where Buck allowed himself to be incarcerated in part of a prison work detail, as part of an undercover investigation, and as the inmates were being shipped to their new “home,” he spots male and female inmates in the same transport and voices “boys and girls playing together?” at which one of the female inmates retorts “can you imagine all the problems involved in making prisons separated by gender?”
Buck, coming from the United States, which had gender segregated prisons, just meekly goes “yeah.”
Having prisons be co-ed, or at least having co-ed common area(s) is always about resources, not ethics, or fanservice. Although ethics (or lack thereof) and fanservice can be factors.
yeah my possibly too long post above I mentioned the expense of making multiple prisons for supers. A resource issue indeed. For supers especially it makes more sense to have it co-ed. Imagine claiming for a budget you need to make two giant super reinforced with radiation detectors, magnetic forcefields, radio signal blocking, ect… super prisons for your less than 100 prisoners because some are male and some are female, and a few are shapeshifting aliens or robots.
Max certainly has more patience with idiots than I do.
HW would have had some serious injuries a while before this ending, if it had been me. If it is the end.
Seems to me Max has violated her own “keep the civilians safe” rule by letting HW run riot so long.
You know , all Maxima would have to do here is close her hand and solve a lot of future problems. Never really understood why super villains keep getting chance after chance to put innocent peoples lives at risk
. If you want to be really fair give them one chance at rehabilitation then the next time just remove the problem permanently.
The logical end of your argument is all crimes carry the death penalty.
Nah. With Maxima, the penalty for crimes isn’t ALWAYS being interred (although that could be a possibility, since she once gave a super the choice of surrendering or amputating his face with her fist).
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-717-the-long-foot-of-the-law/
So while the death penalty via Maxima’s fist is a definite option, they can also be incarcerated or in traction.
Or incinerated (although that does mean they’d also be interred I guess).
Or incontinent.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-176-pose-dramatically-much/
Just because you are incinerated doesn’t automagically mean you will be interred, your ashes could become dust in the wind
Hey I’m not going to argue with Maxima about the difference between interred and incinerated. I don’t have an invulnerable force field like Sydney does!
Judge Death: “All crime is committed by the living, therefor, life is a crime, punishable by Death!”