Grrl Power #921 – Watergate-SG1
Before you go scrambling to google, “obstroculous” is a word Mrs. Slocombe of “Are You Being Served” made up. Based on context, it means “obstructive” or “being difficult” as in a person, not like a math problem. There is a word, “Obstropulous” meaning “noisy or rough, especially in resisting restraint or control,” and arguably, Mrs. Slocombe might have been saying that, but to me it’s funnier that she’s trying to sound fancy, but is doing it with a made-up word. Yes, yes. All words are made up. Like “matmass,” apparently. What we know for sure is that HenchWench watched “Are You Being Served” and is convinced Mrs. Slocombe said “obstroculous.”
The speed of sound in water is 3316 MPH or 5336 km/hr so it is almost 4.5 times faster than in air. The source I found that states this doesn’t take water pressure into account, and the speed of sound varies depending on altitude/barometric pressure, so I imagine the above figure is for a single additional atmosphere of pressure, which I think is like 37-ish feet. So yeah, Max is unhappy at the moment. It’s actually a little silly she’s going that fast underwater, and I debated changing this, but I ultimately decided to leave it in so you guys would have something extra to talk about. I suspect moving this quickly through water would have some additional effects, like vaporizing a massive amount of it in your wake or something. I’m not sure anyone knows what really would happen, as it would be insanely difficult to test it. Probably the only thing that has moved that quickly underwater is a meteor.
I came up with this page, imagining that the Hudson or East River or the Upper Bay, or wherever HenchWench portaled them to, are like 300 feet deep. Something that would be actually be pretty disorienting. Of course, getting zapped into any depth of water under about 15 feet at night would be pretty disorienting. Anyway, most of the rivers around New York are like 30-60 feet deep, which is really surprising to me. Parts of it are as deep as 160 feet, but really, a river is only as deep as its shallowest point if you’re trying to sail it.
I think that’s the Brooklyn Bridge Max is popping out by. The interwebs say the water around there is between 24′ and 108.’ So I guess HenchWench has done some underwater scouting for a good emergency bail spot?
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To be fair I imagine that arresting HW will actually be trivial.
They have her real legal name from the contract.
They have photos of her face and know that she’s a paralegal, probably meaning that she gained a qualification for it given that she’s pretty good at her job.
A bit of time hitting the databases and they find her address. covertly monitor it and watch for when she goes to bed, then Dabbler comes in and knocks her out with sleepy-time juice and those restraints that they used at the Vehmence battle.
Hell, give the knockout cuffs to some mundane FBI agents and they will probably have her within 48 hours.
Then it’s a matter of tracking down known accomplices that have powers (There are a a lot of supers it he US in absolute terms, but few are villains and outside of the LLC they probably don’t advertise their presence much. So it shouldn’t be hard to compare with ARClight databases to find the portal expert she made a deal with.)
I question whether her real name would be on the contract, and whether using an alias instead would matter for her power set. Contracts are about intent, and treating HW as a DBA for paperwork seems as reasonable as anything else about the LLC’s organization.
One would suspect that “Hench Wench” is a DBA, and her birth name is something bland …
UNLESS her SECRET ORIGIN is something like that song:
“A Girl Named Hench”
My mom left home when I was three
And she didn’t leave very much to pa and me
Except this sexy top and
And my last name, which was “Wench”
Now I don’t blame her cuz she ran and hid
But the meanest thing she ever did
Was before she left, she went and named me Hench.
Well, I grew up quick and I grew up mean
My fist got hard and my wits got keen
I went to paralegal school to hide my shame
I made an agreement with the moon and star
I’d search the underworld and bars
And seek compensation from the mom that gave
Me that awful name.
When they meet at last, her mom says:
“This world is rough,
And if a girl’s gonna make
She’s gotta be tough,
And I knew I wouldn’t going to be
There to help her along
So I give her that name and I says good-bye,
and I knows she’s going to have to get tough or die
And it’s that name that helped
To make her strong.”
At that profound shock, Hench Wench’s powers manifested … and the rest is herstory
This is good stuff and makes about as much sense as any HW origin story could.
“And if I ever have a kid, I think I’m gonna name her… Mary! or Sue! Anything but Henchwench! I still hate that name!”
Her real name would have to be on it because she is listed as the manager. That requires an actual name, not a ‘dba.’
But the workaround to this is if her actual name was changed legally to Hench Wench, which I could see her doing because the girl is nuts. :)
She’s nuts, but also supremely overconfident. If she legally changed her name to Hench Wench then she’d be even easier to look up.
Either way, her name would… or at least should by anything resembling logic and common sense… be easy as pie to track her right to her apartment, bank account, license, etc. especially since the comic had an entire shpiel about how difficult it is in modern times to not leave any tracks with modern police and government and commercial detection techniques and technologies. I will post alink with that strip when not on my phone.
But so far most common sense stuff has been going completely out the window with HW as this drags on.
This is the link I was referring to about how, as Zephon states,
“Given modern forensic science, the idea of a secret identity is nearly laughable, but someone who is diligent enough can still slow our work.”
And then shows a vigilante who is EXTREMELY meticulous about covering up his superhero going-ons.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-366-successfully-unwarranted/
Hench Wench, on the other hand is not extremely meticulous about covering up her tracks. She’s not even remotely trying to do so.
Of course, it’s possible that she’s leaving traces that are altered by her power… like her boss’s DNA rather than hers, or a blend of the two.
That time she was hired by Undetectable Man sure must come in handy.
*polite golf clap to this post*
Meh, all the forensics in the world doesn’t help you identify a person unless there are records to compare against. If a person hasn’t been fingerprinted before, all the fingerprints in the world collected from crime scenes only allow you to say “Yep, it’s a match,” and that only after you capture and fingerprint them.
For example, I’d have to be like that extra special careful vigilante, because I’ve been fingerprinted by the cops of one specific county (for a youthful indiscretion involving a harmless 5 leaved plant), the DoD, the Justice Department, the Treasury Department*, and the US Army. So I’d be easy to identify if I ran around leaving my fingerprints at crime scenes. Some random citizen without my same background experience, not so much.
DNA evidence even more so. Unless you’re looking to match samples collected at old crime scenes with those taken at a new one, all you can do is match your samples to some one you arrest after the fact.
.
.
* Who for reasons which almost certainly only involve empire building within government agencies issue their own clearances. Because I held a DoD TS at the time I took a contract at the IRS, and still had to go through their process for a Secret clearance… Waste, fraud, and abuse.
If the prints are from a known source and you can prove said source left those prints (i.e. camera) then it’s not grounds for arrest but can be used to gather corroborating evidence. For example, they have her legal name already. Add the prints at the scene and now you have cause for a search warrant. If prints at the search location match you now have evidence someone who lives there was at the crime scene. Obviously, this stretches the warrant process, but judges have given warrants for less.
Also, dude… You’re frequently wrong about random things and consistently refuse to admit fault. If you have TS clearance then you’re literally part of the reason our government is like that.
Speaking of which, requiring multiple clearances creates what’s known as an “information silo.” In information security there’s no better firewall than “access denied.”
Maybe you should figure whether something annoying exists for a reason before complaining. You sound like my mother complaining about passwords.
Trivial? That’s well below hackerman’s ability. I bet the only thing keeping her powered is the legal paperwork must be printed first… damed printers.
there are laser printers that work in Pages Per Second. big beasts of a laser printer, and they print greenbar. I think in this case we can live with greenbar.
Soo.. what’s the tsunami risk? That’s a lot of energy and think of the fish.
Did you know a hand grenade in the water is deadlier to a swimmer than one on land to a suntanner?
Minimal. Tsunami’s move WAY more water.
Correct. The amount of bow wave you can build up in less than 100 feet of movement, directly up, is likely to be pretty small.
Chances are, that cavitation didn’t even have time to form.
In essence, the total work done cannot exceed the cost to move Max’s weight the vertical distance, plus the cost to move the water above her.
Won’t SOMEbody think of the FISH? /fakesimpsonsquote
I hope for her sake that another one of her employer was a shapeshifter and she’s been using a fake face this whole time, because otherwise she’s pretty much fucked. Kinda hard to find work as an actual paralegal when your mug is on wanted posters.
That Hunt for The Red October reference got me laughing. Very nice.
Same. Especially since I recognized Jonesy by his face alone. Good likeness.
Since Hunt For Red October came out, ALL senior sonar operators are called Jonesy…..
“But sir, my name is Smith!”
“Not any more, Jonesy, not any more…”
I think it’s a navy regulation……
This whole Henchwench storyline should have ended two comics ago when Arianna got rid of the contract. I would have found it annoying how much she was focused on to the detriment of the pacing of the story, but been okay with it since it ended showing how Arianna is more versatile than just as “fun police”/Marketing manager.
But these past two comics have just been bullshit and annoying. I’m not sure if it’s because the Patreon didn’t want their character ending up in jail or if Dave just didn’t have any idea where to go next, but it’s just not well written or entertaining, for reasons explained in detail by previous comments. Honestly, I’d be happy with just a little one panel blurb in the next comic showing/saying how she was dealt with before moving on. Really don’t want to waste any more of the comic time on her.
I cant agree more with this post. Especially with how it would have been better to wrap this up two strips ago with Arianna.
Story pacing wise I will agree, however the current events seem to serve the purpose of removing her from the story without killing her. So the arrest and follow up will focus on other characters. But yes unless she has convenient friends in the underground she should be a priority arrest.
I don’t care if she’s arrested or killed honestly. The bending-backwards of people to have HW get away with some of her power stunts and legal ‘maneuverings’ is beginning to be ridiculous, and there was already a pretty much perfect resolution with Arianna, where HW could have gone to jail.
I get that some patreon person is the reason she’s in it. Fine. The patron definitely got her moneys worth.
But cmon… it went to the point where it annoys a lot of the readers when it didnt HAVE to annoy half the reader base with how it kept on going, and going, and going. HW could have been a fun little side villain. Now she’s just an annoyance. It -is- detracting from the story in ways that that spider-lady demon hunter (wasnt she also a patreon person?) did not.
Most people who now wish the character was dead only are wanting that because it is SUCH an unsatisfying resolution with how she did not get arrested for reasons that defy the characters’ own statements, and require the readers to go through hoops to try to make sense of why her powers would work to basically do anything with no narrative help beyond a throwaway line.
Jonlevir is correct. The last two strips were not entertaining or particularly well written, which mainly stands out because usually the comic is INCREDIBLY well written. It’s basically a story insert that overstayed its welcome when it had a perfect end-point (even though it had already jumped the shark once by then).
I mean… I can even give a way that Hench Wench COULD have pulled of her ‘I can hit you but you can’t hit me’ thing without ‘turning her body into a ghost’ ridiculousness. And it even would have had her temporarily get away, AND would have let Arianna have the win at the same time.
Instead of saying ‘I’m combining my powers to do things that those powers can’t actually do’…. JUST PORTAL HER SOLID FORM AWAY SINCE SHE APPARENTLY HAD PORTAL POWERS.
Then once again…. Maxima can’t hit her… she can hit Maxima. And Maxima wouldnt know where her body portaled away to. Probably because she’s busy fighting ghost HW who still can attack her with concrete-kinesis.
HECK…. she could have portaled her body back to her apartment even. Have her cat take a nap on her face or something, since cats are evil (I have cats. They are adorable but evil).
Then Concretia can come in, fight with her, HW can wind up kicking Concretia’s astral butt, then Arianna’s phone call comes in and as soon as the LLC is suspended, HW goes ‘uh oh’ and suddenly is snapped BACK into her physical body in her apartment.
Result? Arianna wins. HW isnt arrested. But has cat butt on her face when she is back in the apartment. Which I can attest is alarming to wake up to.
Then move on to the rest of the story.
Also maybe in the flashback scene have more than just Brut and Flygirl there so we can see that she has more powers of people who might not be at the fight scene btw.
Good post. The “power pulls” would have been more logical if she was a telepath (re, Emma Frost possessing Bobby Drake and using his powers in ways he never thought about at the time), or demonstrated some degree of tactical prowess (such as Taskmaster). Instead, she is the epitome of “whatever you can do, I can do better”. The character’s actions remind me too much of Giant Girl–demonstrating knowledge that was never addressed or foreshadowed in the narrative.
I am surprised that she was able to teleport. It did appear that HW had limitations on the use of the powers she “borrowed” (e.g., members of the LLC were within a specific physical radius of her). Nope, the next page proved me wrong. Other power duplicators (Rogue, Mimic, Synch, Super-Adaptoid, Parasite, Amazo) have restrictions placed upon them that are not too far fetched. We do not expect Rogue to heal unless she has absorbed someone’s healing ability. HW loses a couple of teeth? No problem…change into a different state and viola, good as new.
The idea was creative and intriguing, yet the execution…could be improved.
There was never any verbal indication of a radius of effect… which would make zero sense for how she initially defined her power – “When I work for a supervillain, I get their powers.” The limitation is the work, not the distance or whatever.
That’s implicit in the fact that Brut had to make more than one call to get 2/3.
But, yes, another figure there would have been better, and hinted at at least one holdout power.
> it went to the point where it annoys a lot of the readers when it didnt HAVE to annoy half the reader base with how it kept on going, and going, and going.
I haven’t been following the comments for a while, but are you sure this is true? Personally, I’m still having fun.
Parenthetically, it feels to me like you don’t like any scene that isn’t over quickly. Why is that?
“Personally, I’m still having fun.”
That’s nice for you. A lot of people are not.
“Parenthetically, it feels to me like you don’t like any scene that isn’t over quickly. Why is that?”
No, i’m fine with scenes that take a while. Sydney vs the Kaiju took a while. Sciona’s arc not only took a while, but is ongoing and great. The night on the town arc took a while and was very satisfyingly concluded as well. Plus introduced a new side character that was entertaining AND had an in-universe ‘dabblers science corner.’
But when the scene seems to go way past the resolution because of a lot of ass-pulls of new powers that come out of nowhere, it’s jumping the shark. It’s making the character annoying instead of fun. It happened with Vehemence because his fight took an entire year. I’ve seen Dragonball Z moves that took less time. :) And with this, it’s gone past two VERY reasonable and satisfying conclusions to reach a very unsatisfying one. That’s what I don’t like. Unsatisfying resolutions when something goes on too long. And I’m capable of critiquing it. But then for some reason, certain people try to strawman the critiques in order to make an argument to argue against that’s different than the critique I’m actually making.
Anything can annoy half the readers
If the fight goes on too long (ie more than two pages): “When are we getting back to the fun?”
If the ‘fun’ goes on too long (ie more than two pages): “When are we going to have another fight?”
You seem to know how this arc is going to end, mind telling the rest of the class?
don’t forget, half the readers are likely people who still think instant gratification is the best thing since microwaveable toast.
But… microwaveable toast takes too long… I always buy mine precooked in the fast open pack, so I don’t lose interest while waiting.
“If the fight goes on too long (ie more than two pages): “When are we getting back to the fun?””
G, this is not just ‘more than 2 pages.’ You’re exaggerating and making a strawman argument. There are completely valid critiques for this fight and character.
Wasn’t referring to this fight
And no fucking duh! it was an exaggeration
You use to feel the same way about the complainers, until you joined them
Wow, you danced around that with grace, didn’t you? Pander has legitimate complaints about HW’s power set. I disagreed for a bit until he pointed out her powers were effectively unlimited and prone to asspulls like, oh I don’t know, portal powers? Also why tf did Maxima let go? That doesn’t seem like a valid response for someone who fought Vehemence without once backing down until Sydney stepped in. Sorry G, everyone can see your trolling from a mile away.
Honestly, this is what Hench Wench reminds me of.
https://youtu.be/K5eDDPD1slo?t=27
Homer liked it at least.
I wish to respectfully disagree with your viewpoint on the following grounds.
1: the henchwench storyline is a vehicle for the more important concretia storyline. Basically it went on as long as it did because story wise there needed to be a rescue of concretia. From moment of rescue to end of story was only 4 pages. And it tells more like a Chekhov’s gun moment here. This exposed a weakness in Archon that we all knew existed. It was a matter of time took someone with op power set. It also showed our Golden Girl is too sure off her own abilities. Everything she did was ” ok that will do it”. Expect her to learn and take steps to ensure an event is neutralized, and stop showboating. The moment HW was solid Maxima should have knocked her out
What purpose did the past two pages serve with regards to the Concretia storyline? Because Concretia has just been standing there doing nothing the past two pages. My point was that this should have ended two pages ago. Then I could have agreed with you that HW served a purpose of the Concretia storyline.
But that’s invalidated by the past two pages when everything HW had been solved, and then she pulls powers and master of powers out of the writer’s ass to get HW out of Archon’s custody. My problem is not with Maxima, or her reactions. My problem is that she is a Mary Sue whose only purpose seems to be ‘look how awesome and cool this Patreon character is’.
For me, it reminds me of the quest “Deal With The Devil” in Pathfinder: Kingmaker. It was a quest that was written by a Kickstarter backer who paid several thousand dollars to have everyone who played the game forced to play through a quest that allowed for no choices, no work arounds, nothing but marveling at their Marty Stu self insert character and how amazing they were to be able to pull a fast one on a demon lord, with no regards to the player’s morality, plot progression, or character progression. It was grating, frustrating, and senseless in context, to the point that a number of people have cited it as the breaking point for the game for them.
Now, as several people have pointed out, we do not pay for this comic, unlike the Patron who got their Mary Sue put into the comic in this fashion. That’s true. We don’t. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t give critiques about the story, pacing, and what makes sense from our perspective as readers. If Dave didn’t want us to do that, he wouldn’t have the comments section here.
I appreciate that you disagree with my view, but I don’t see your points as something that makes sense in the context of the story. It’s not just that HW has an “op power set”. It’s that her power set changes to fit the fact that Dave didn’t know how to end the storyline and kept it going past a logical end point for whatever reason.
Maxima being “too sure of her own abilities” doesn’t make sense, because her abilities as shown should have been able to handle this situation. There is no logical reason her super speed was able to grab HW out of a portal in one page, but then not able to do it in the next. She was not ever portrayed as “showboating”, or taking the fight with HW less than seriously. If she had taken it more seriously, the only point she could have taken it further is amputation of limbs and/or death. Need I remind you that she put rebar through HW’s leg to try to take her down non-lethally and without severe bodily harm? If anyone was “showboating” in this scene, it’s HW.
Wouldnt that immediate speed from underwater, in a populated and utilized body of water, be catastrophic for the coastline? I feel like that amount of speed may have been a poor choice for max, she should know better.
No. It wouldn’t be catastrophic for the coastline. I don’t know why you would think it would be. It would be annoying to any sonar using aquatic life in the area, NOAA’s listening network operators, people in submarines nearby, etc… but it it wouldn’t be “catastrophic for the coast line”
cavitation and water displacement my guy, she just killed most sealife in the immediate area and caused not a small amount of turbulant water.
Super cavitating torpedos exist irl and are much longer and wider than maxima. Probably causing much greater displacement than her. Now I don’t know the exact speeds required to get a super duper cavitation but given the water isn’t being instantly converted to plasma it’s not that impressive.
Let’s say she exceeded the speed of sound in water, about-ish 3300 mph. impressive but probably not ecologically devastating
tidal waves traveling at approximately 500 miles an hour are devastating, a human sized object traveling at 3300 mph under water is not going to end well for anyone in that particular vicinity. im no physicician, but rods from the gods dont have a big boom but the principle of moderately sized object going excessively fast through not air ends badly usually.
Assume Maxima has a mass of 120 kg moving at 3300 mph(mixing my stupid american units with proper units makes my amateur physics-ing much funner). Measurements heavily guestimated, super cavitation from torpedos with a proper nose cone requires much less speed than 3300 mph and I don’t know Maxima’s mass.
Maxima Kinetic energy = 130579000 J. or 0.130579 GJ. Or approximately 0.03121 ton of TNT.
“In the case of the system mentioned in the 2003 Air Force report above, a 6.1 m × 0.3 m tungsten cylinder impacting at Mach 10 has a kinetic energy equivalent to approximately 11.5 tons of TNT” https://handwiki.org/wiki/Physics:Kinetic_bombardment
11.5 ton TNT is approx equivalent to 48 GJ.
48 is significantly larger than .13.
Would less than a ton of TNT detonated underwater cause significant tidal waves? It’s probably more damage to fish populations than I was expecting. I’m tired so I’m not going to look up explosives detonated under water studies.
Apples and oranges on all counts. The energy from Max’s ascent would be a very short event, whereas the issue with tidal waves is not so much the energy (which is indeed unfathomably* huge) as the duration and sheer mass of water mucking around where it doesn’t belong. As for an RFG, much of that energy is due to the large mass of 9 tons; Max is 1-2% of that even if she’s extremely dense, but probably has a similar cross section. If an RFG landed in the water (at a estimated speed of ~6500 mph), its small cross section would prevent it from converting/transferring all that kinetic energy immediately; there would be a localized explosion that made a big splash, but the sonic boom (shockwave due just to velocity) of any fragments traveling through the water wouldn’t be much larger than Max’s. Although of course, it’s hard to say what would really happen since an orbital bombardment experiment hasn’t ever been done, but rocket sled tests even below Mach 1 (air) show basically complete disintegration so there wouldn’t be much left to develop a shock cone.
Regardless, the general consensus in the comments seems to be that Max is not travelling at Mach speed relative to the water (~3300 mph), but relative to the air in the cavitation bubbles (~767 mph). It’s unclear how much water she’s displacing, but it’s impossible for macro-scale objects to go anywhere close to the sound barrier in water** because of all the weird effects (cavitation, sonoluminescence) that happen well before that.
She’s still going to mess up some nearby fish, but definitely not going to destroy everything on shore.
* a-ha ha, ahem.
** This link has a reference to an article stating the Navy made a water-Mach 1 torpedo, but the article in question is undoubtedly wrong in that it quotes a specific speed only in an image caption, but makes no reference to it in the article body and gives no source for the military tests. Every other reference I could find to the same tests gives speeds of 220-260mph for the US prototype (and other nations’) – which is still 4-5x the speed of a normal torpedo, but only ~Mach 0.1 for water.
Tidal waves cause so much damage because there are millions of tons of water involved, moved by millions of toms of earth. One Maxima moving really fast might harm or even kill nearby fish or human swimmers, might capsize a nearby small watercraft, but it isn’t going to move millions of tons of water into a shoreline.
I’m surprised water wasn’t flooding out of the portal and onto the street.
the portal looks to first encapsulate her and whatever is near her and then teleport and release at the target location rather than an open rift.
Maxima let go of HW? Why?
Because she trained herself, after almost becoming an only child
Because after Henchwench was depowered by halting her fistfight with Concretia in order to listen to some legalese from a few yards away across a cell phone microphone, the idiot ball needed to be passed on.
And obviously Maxima was selected.
If you’re looking for a plot, you should look elsewhere. This comic is about some pretty art and a few lame jokes, and that’s about it.
As I’ve said before I’ve really enjoyed Hench Wench. Its great that we actually have a antagonist that provides a challenge for our hero’s especially when we have quite a few that are arguably OP or broken with there powers. So its nice to have someone on the opposite side that can provide a counterbalance.
As for all the people wanting Hench’s death or are unsatisfied that she got away. You fail to understand the importance of a “Recurring Antagonist,” this isn’t a movie were there may not be a sequel. This is a comic, if the hero’s always imprisoned, killed, or got villains to joined them by Brainwashing like with Jabberwacky then there’d be no antagonists and this story would have no conflict. So I’m glad Hench got away, as she could again prove to e a powerful challenge to the hero’s latter.
Though I do Question how Max is able to rocket herself do deep underwater without getting serious decompression sickness, or the fact that Hench’s apartment would have allot more damage than a flooded floor.
Yeah, we seem to be in the minority over Henchie :(
You guys do remember that Sciona is still out there as a recurring antagonist right? So are the vampires who were siding with Sciona. Plus there are multiple other people on the villain (and Deus, the paragon of manly brilliance and perfection that we all need in our lives) splash page who have neither been captured, killed, or even featured yet. Only Vehemence was captured.
The water can’t have been so deep. Else Hench Wench would have died from the decompression much earlier than the indestructible Maxima. I see absolutely no problem there.
The primary problem with compression/decompression is nitrogen dissolving into the bloodstream under pressure, then forming bubbles in the bloodstream as it undissolves, which is a bad thing(tm). Henchwench wasn’t underwater long enough for significant amounts of nitrogen to dissolve, conceivably no more than a second or two, so she doesn’t need to worry about the bends. Max is underwater for longer, but still not a significant amount of time. If Henchwench dropped her 11km down at the bottom of the Marianas Trench, it would still take Max only about 12s to surface even if she’s only doing Mach 1 (in seawater), and anywhere else on the planet would be considerably less. In practise she’s probably only exposed to pressure for about the same time as Hench Wench as her transit time to the surface is probably measured in fractions of a second, and is inside the supercavitation bubble.
Also, the bends is only an issue if you’re breathing pressurized air. That’s because as you go up and the pressure drops the nitrogen ‘inflates’ and causes compression sickness. If you are freediving, or suddenly appear under water the way these guys did, or are breathing non-pressurized air in a bathysphere / submarine, then you aren’t in any danger. The reason the bends is an issue is because SCUBA tanks compress their contents in order to have more air available.
You can read the other comments pages for the nitty-gritty details on decompression sickness, but it isn’t an issue here because it takes minutes to develop, not seconds. Any decompression incident more dramatic than the bends requires either greater pressure or much more exposure time.
Things i liked about Hench Wench:
A. The intro.
That was fun.
B. The idea.
Up to a certain point (see below) this was a very cool idea.
Things i don’t like about her:
1. The Mary Sue factor.
She is better at everything than the owner of the powers she copies. That is just a too much Mary Sue for my taste. Also the backup contract. If she was truly limited by her powers to one contract that would have been a cool but limited power set. The LLC is a way to get around that, but that was still cool. The backup contract not so much because it negates that weakness.
But as a comic evildoer we readers can overlook this.
2. Lack of motivation and sense.
I see no motivation for her to fight after her contractors surrendered. Why’d she do that? Fleeing makes much more sense. Being evil just to be evil doesn’t pay your rent.
Then there is the legal thing: All damages of the fight are part of this due to this being a conspiracy – they created the LLC just for this – including the blackout and all consequences of this blackout. This comes on top of unprovoked assault on federal officers and all the other stuff. Not to speak of the felony murder / accomplice liability thing with the guy that went splorch on the construction site.
She was a paralegal. Now she’s completely ruined and forever set on the path of a criminal. As soon as they find out who she is she will loose her job, her home, her connection to her family and/or friends, everything. She’s got no way out of this and will forever be on the run. Should a paralegal not have known better?
IF she returns i hope to see a bit more of her background to better understand this.
I agree with this as well. And while I really don’t want to see her return but it seems very likely she will since she escaped after trying to murder people, and it would be incredibly inconsistent for Archon not to pursue her.
I agree about the Mary Sue factor, but our intrepid author touched upon that, in that she is able to see some innovative methods to use powers due to her ability to mix-&-match powers that the original owners may not think of due to their single power set.
I disagree with it, but it’s at least semi-logical of a reason.
As for a lock of motivation & sense – if she surrenders or flees, her employment is ended, & she loses access to her powers, which seems to have been her primary goal – to gain access to a lot of power to make herself more powerful & dangerous that most currently-known supers. Why else would she have written such a cockamamie contract that made it virtually impossible to terminate her employment?
Everything about her interactions seems to imply that the powers was what she ultimately wanted/wants. She almost seemed to be gleeful at her imagined prospect of getting a chance to talk to Vehemence – they don’t come much more powerful than that.
Admittedly, it does seem as though Henchie didn’t think too far ahead, such as what happens if her evil plan fails & she loses all of those powers….now she’s gotta try & get a new job with her secrets exposed. She won’t be able to get hired as a paralegal except by the most underhanded law firms out there, & she’d have a hard time convincing super criminals to trust her once word gets out about this fight.
I can understand how this came to be, though. I do some RP’s with friends of mine. Unless I take time to flesh out a character & develop a full personality & background for them, then they tend to be one-dimensional beings who exist only to do this particular task. Henchwench doesn’t seem to have been intended for any reason but to be a challenge for Arc-Light to overcome.
You should see the bulk of my super-crooks…whoo! Power-wise, even some of their interactions, I think they can be pretty cool, but as a character they are so one-dimensional that they are actually comical.
Remind me to tell you about Captain Vegetable. :P
Yeah it felt like she was just out to get a hold of their powers, then once their plan was over skedaddle and leave still keeping their powers since she was the only one able to dismiss the contract.
Responding to some of my previously-posted suggestions as to how this page played out in hero-logic, I accidentally came upon a new question.
If Maxima was so disoriented by the teleportation to the bottom of the Hudson River (or wherever they were) that she actually let go of Henchwench & couldn’t recover in time to catch her again….
….how is it she managed to avoid taking in a lungful of water before realizing she had to hold her breath?
I wouldn’t be surprised if she turned out to only need to breathe out of habit and her body gets all the energy it needs from an extra dimensional source. Honestly been expecting that like she can live in a vacuum or shield up and go into lava….granted there was the bubble to the vault thing that implied she couldn’t breathe underwater, but maybe she doesn’t know.
Honestly that is on the list of powers one can have and never know they have (unless grew up in a culture of others with the same power) as the conditions to discover it could lead to death for normal people. right along with stuff like nuclear radiation absorption, cloud walking, a feather fall that only kicks in after like fifty feet of free falling, ect…
Welp. that apartment is ruined.
Hudson river water…
No amount of cleaing can fix that.
The molecules are in a low enough energy state and close enough proximity that cohesive forces dominate, which is why it’s a liquid and not a gas. With the molecules more or less in contact liquids are inelastic with high coherence, severely limiting flow rate. Thus, cavitation occurs well below the speed at which sounds travels through liquid phase water.
2 minutes tops before Max bursts through a wall/window.
Kitty NOT happy.
Minor quibble, the speed of sound in any particular medium is only dependent on temperature. The change with altitude is because the air gets colder.
Temperature and pressure, not temperature alone. Pressure drops off quite consistently as altitude increases, temperature doesn’t.
Wow… lotta hate. You’re not paying for this content.
Get a grip. You’re reading a comic precisely zero of this is realistic. HenchWench having multiple employers is not exactly unreasonable, she’s got form for being resourceful and just because you got no foreshadowing you’re all whining. Seriously…
Dave keep at it, I’d ask you to take a look at the art work, I think you can improve here with the faces and getting a consistent style. I actually think your art previously (fair few months) was better than now. It’s probably just a case of being in between style evolutions so keep at it. It’s been a great journey :).
I feel like I am spoiled by Isekai stories to the point everything Henchwench has done makes sense to me as I’ve seen it before.
sure she has no analysis ability (that we know of) explaining how her newly gained powers work to her, or like how Kirby and Rimuru Tempest can use the powers of those they consumed to do things the original couldn’t because they are more powerful…heck Rimuru could shapeshift into the evolved form of the monsters he ate because he was that much stronger than them;
and alot of us predicted she’d have a back up employer with an escape power, this is just validation of that theory, a surprise no different than Lex Luthor backed into a corner revealing he had a boom tube built into his suit to escape Superman. or Dr. Doom doing the same thing, or those stories where they caught the criminal but the criminals had another member on stand by to teleport into the paddy wagon and get them out.
I love Isekai. Problem is, Grrlpower isn’t Isekai and even if it was, HW isn’t the main character. Actually now that I think about it, a two-Isekai story where a villain returner repeatedly battles against the MC sounds pretty awesome.
Just because Superman is popular doesn’t mean the authors always came up with good plots and were never lazy. That ending sounds pretty dumb to me and is probably why I never liked American comics.
Except her real name was on the contract and her home and identity are now compromised.
Halo’s Bio on the cast page needs updating, by the way. It still lists two orbs as unknowns.
As for the final orb, could that be the respec/configuration control orb, and it doesn’t do anything at the moment because she hasn’t unlocked a second configuration yet, or if the slot is unlocked (probably one of the two paths on its skill tree setup is the number of configurations that can be set if I’m right?)
If that’s what the last orb does, she could have a means of changing her skill point configurations on the fly.
Every Bio on the cast page needs updating
why is there a picture of danny deVito in an Andy Warhol wig?
I thought that was an Einstein wig
Next just to aggravate anyone who didn’t like Henchwench , the comic shall now introduce.
Make Up.
who has the power to transform into the likeness of and gain the powers of (with a power limit at S class so no ludicrously stupid power levels)…of any animal, individual, or even fictional character by wearing make up in their likeness and/or putting on a costume (or) mask of them….which wears off in 2 days and the make up vanishes and costume poofs away into smoke.
so limited by the S-class cap (so no Broly costume giving Ludicrously Stupid power class), and their budget to buy or handcraft masks and costumes of various
animals, individuals, and fictional characters.
YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Cool, but I would name this character “Cosplay”
Hmm, I had an old fashioned stage performer image in my head but, yeah, modernize, that works.
Heck make it two characters, Make Up the original master with a dramatic theater arts take on their power, and their young offspring *gender fluid both of them*, modernizing the aesthetics of their inherited power going by the name Cosplay.
“Moon Prism Power, Make Up”
Why did Maxima’s super speed let her stop HW’s portal once but not the second or third time?
From the beginning, remember the not dodging fear throw-up? Maxima can still be surprised, and in this case massive disorientation from suddenly being a few hundred feet underwater.
That explains the third one, but not the second one.
I think she was grandstanding as Max is wont to do. Like, sure you can teleport me, let’s see if that makes any difference. Her letting go is the one that bugs me a lot more. Confusion or not it isn’t Max’s character to let go of a Criminal she’s already holding by the neck. Given her power set her doing so means she’s admitting they pose a lethal threat. So any ‘confusion’ would – and should – be met with a lethal reply. She does not know if that portal was actually a setup to kidnap her (yanno, what started this fight?) so the first order of business would be to take out the portal caster when the environment on the other end was unexpected.
This page is a classic case of one of my most hated tropes, “superhero forgets that they have superspeed and slows down” as needed to allow villain to have a chance. Usually seen in the supergirl show, but there are lots of others. Previous page Maxima is bragging about being faster than a bullet, and this page she is crawling around at human speed letting the (thousands of times slower) hench wench make a portal to a river, crawl through that portal, close it, open another portal, go through that… all without Maxima taking a single action. At any point of that(to her) hours long process, she could just have tapped hench wench with a finger to knock her out and have ended the escape. But no, she forgets that she has super speed and just sits there at human normal response speeds. She doesn’t even go through the second portal, even though she has LOTS of time to decide what to do and do it, she just sits there looking grumpy. And then when it’s finally too late, she remembers that she has powers and flys out of the water.
I picture Max exiting the water in a timely enough fashion such that her super hearing hears the big KERSPLOOSH in Hench Wenches apartment, where she will momentarily knock on the door. When HW opens the door, Max will renew the Golden Death Grip and this time take her in, or at least render her unconstipated.
Hmmmm, two thing – one, they can’t be that far underwater as Wrench had to inhale before transport (though someone has good control as water wasn’t coming out as they went in), and two, it’s a good thing that Max has trained herself not to close her hands at the unexpected otherwise Wrench might had a (slightly) crushed throat (along with the water) …
She should have a crushed throat. Completely crushed. Remember, Maxima has already admitted HW is a lethal threat. Confusion means the lethal threat has done something potentially lethal and you now have zero seconds to figure out whether it was lethal or not. So, Max letting go due to confusion is literally suicidal.
I never noticed this before, but why does she have a picture of what looks like either Andy Warhol or Bruce Villanch over her couch?
Rereading this I love how henchwoman’s cat is like ‘bitch are you for real?’.