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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Clever. I really thought she had her. Very Grrlpower, the villain is smart – but the hero is ALSO smart – then the villain is smart AGAIN…
I wouldn’t call her smart for this.
She just pissed off Maxima. Vehemence had his arm blown off last time she got this mad. Sciona lost a leg too, iirc… So…. HW might be an amputee shortly. Or just be in a full body cast.
Based on Max’s promise to supervillains?
Incarcerated, in traction, or interred.
And she was willing to kill Vehemence already by the end, so interred seems like a good bet for Henchy.
Agreed, her chances of survival diminish by the minute. She has proven herself to be a threat that is better eliminated than contained. Her unhinged and narcisstic attitude merely adds to this.
The fact that she seems utterly ignorant of her own situation makes this even more likely. However, I think this is more likely to be a Peggy- than a Maxima-solution.
Nope. Henchy didn’t kill anyone. There is no predicate for termination at this moment.
Max doesn’t have super hearing, so it will be interesting to see if the team has a way to find Henchy.
[quote]Nope. Henchy didn’t kill anyone. There is no predicate for termination at this moment.[/quote]
The relevant determinator isn’t whether she killed someone, but whether might kill someone. And she would have killed Heatwave if Amorphous hadn’t saves her. She’s dangerously powerful with zero restraint.
Yes, because law enforcement (Maxima is not military) can just kill those who haven’t killed. :p I’m sure there’s law enforcement rules to be followed for Maxima.
You type that sarcastically, but both past and modern history show that is factual. Police kill all to frequently, people who haven’t killed anyone. Or even committed a crime of any kind.
And in Arch-SWATs fantasy world case, the “rules” favor them dealing with “threats”. Hench Witch is coming increasingly close to a swift neck snap. She’s now resisted being detained multiple times, demonstrated willingness to land killing blows, and so forth. The next step from Max would a verbal warning to “surrender or die.”
Small point of clarification – Maxima IS Military. Air Force Lt. Colonel. All of Archon is military. They have an on-site General as their leadership. That isn’t to say that Maxima has carte blanch to atomize everyone in her path; The military, and Archon, certainly have rules of engagement.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-148-just-say-it-its-about-presence/
And law enforcement rules say deadly force is justified when the officer believes the subject in question poses a threat of serious bodily injury or death.
Conversely, there’s nothing about “has killed before”. Police aren’t executioners.
So, yes, police can indeed kill those who haven’t killed.
And “Maxima is not military” isn’t true either, considering Archon is this weird hybrid between military and law enforcement, with military ranks and command structure.
They already know it for a fact due to the falcon punch OH GOD WHAT DID I DO TO AMOPHOROUS!
“And law enforcement rules say deadly force is justified when the officer believes the subject in question poses a threat of serious bodily injury or death.”
That’s someone who poses an _immediate_ threat to life, not just is probably going to be one at some point. You can’t just walk up to someone sitting and having a coffee and shoot them in the head because you think they will kill at some point. They have to be on the point of causing serious injury right this moment. And deadly force is still usually caveated with ‘and there being no practical non-lethal alternatives’ even in that situation.
Fleeing felon rule. Sure, if HW just surrenders when hunted down she shouldn’t be shot, but she’s not going to do that, so the moment she opens a portal, pop a cap in her ass.
She did not kill anyone but not for lack of trying. :) (ie, Heatwave and Amorphous)
Technically, Sci was all Dabbles
Unfortunately not smart enough to wear a mask
You’re assuming she doesn’t have another subcontract with a shapeshifter.
Maeby she is the old lady in the foto back over the aparment.
Pretty sure that picture at the back is Danny Devito
Yeah that’s danny devito as ongo gablogian the art critic from always sunny
I was briefly convinced it was the Edna Mode of Earth-2.
Knew it was Danny, just didn’t know which character :D
Facial recognition software, right?
Well that and her name will be all over those legal documents
Chances are, she’s got a Jumper-esque situation going on where she never leaves the apartment on foot — which could become a way to track her down, but that will take time and research — and said apartment is not her listed house address.
Though, I’m already pleasantly surprised HenchWench lasted this long — I remember reading that she was a requested character and thought she was just a gag character who would get shut down pages ago — so, maybe my speculation is going too far and she’ll get cuffed soon.
Or cut-off at the neck.
Hench Wench seems to be much smarter than she acts. Kind of like Halo but a supervillain.
If I had to quantify it, she’s very smart, but has incredibly poor impulse control. Given time to sit down and think with clearly defined goals, she produces some amazing plans. But put her in the moment, when she’s riding the adrenaline lightning, and she’s all over the place until her situation triggers the memory of a plan. You can imagine either ‘she’ in that situation.
Oh dear. HW has just made it personal :(
HW just head to go for the fade away Escape. At least this time she did it while Max was disoriented and under water.
I’m… incredulous that Max would actually be disoriented and her grip weakened sufficiently to force her to not get HW again, by the throat, or by the hair or something…
I have this gut feeling there’s some alternative method for getting HW that will play out before long, and so actually, Max more or less said, “goodness, this lady is getting annoying… I’m going to let her think she’s winning for a bit, and get her a little later”
her super strength and speed, combined with military combat training and fighting supers for years should have let her maintain grip if she actually wanted to. I suspect HW got away because Max intended her to… we’ll see though.
All it takes is a good (and fast) shove to one side as she’s opening the gate
And I had just made the comment last page about her potentially escaping a 24/7 guard if she can just do the portal under her own feet feat.
clever
YAAAAAAAR! YER LAND LORD NOW BE A SEALORD, LASSY!
+100! That comment made me laugh so hard!
+100 from me, too.
She bailed and now she needs to bail.
I think her lease is the least of her problems.
Oh. She has a cat.
She bailed and now she needs to bail.
I think her lease is the least of her problems.
Oh. She has a cat.
Is that Danny DeVito?
Well, at least it’s better than needing to post bail.
at least he’s not a Starlord
https://nerdist.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/guardians-star-lord-who.gif
Having seen the filename for that GIF, I was then sorely disappointed that it didn’t feature an impractically long scarf. Or a fez.
My apologies. I saw Starlord and my mind goes to Guardians of the Galaxy, not Dr. Who. :)
Admittedly an impractically long scarf would have made the gif 20% cooler.
Safe to assume that Arianna has Henchwench’s real name and home address, since she had the Evil Incorporated paperwork. Arcswat simply takes her out with a tranquilizer dart and hauls her off to super supermax prison. HW had best port out of the country ASAP while she still has the chance.
Yeah, i was thinking the same. For a contract to be legaly binding, the real names/companies has to be on the dotted line, right?
Nope. You can enter into a contract under an alias, no real address needed.
Ah, but can you be the legal CEO of an LLC under an alias? I REALLY doubt that’s possible… The entire purpose is to establish who has liability for what.
The question of what, precisely, HW put in that LLC is open at the moment.
An LLC only has to have a physical contact address. It can be an attorney’s office.
Sure you can. There is no legal requirement that you use your birth name for anything, except those things where reference to that is specified. (Driver’s license, passport, etc.)
Now, employment records require SSN, but whether the manager of an LLC is an employee by that term is open, and those particular documents are not required to be filed more than quarterly, iirc, for a company with less than 50 employees.
It’s totally an author’s prerogative question how much paperwork was filed with truthful information, and how much of that Arianna got right off. Rule of Cool and Rule of Funny apply.
Me, I’d say that she used impenetrable aliases for everything, but filed it online from her own home computer.
Because funny.
If we’re going rule of funny, she gets caught because her downstairs neighbor alerts the fire department because of all the water coming down.
I’m betting on the insurance claim.
Actually an LLC Agreement does require your legal name. Not a nickname.
Unless Hench Wench legally changed her name to Hench Wench.
Which at this point I’m willing to think she might have done.
Henchrietta “Hench” Wench. :)
Actually, Hench might be a plausible Nickname for Henrietta Charlotte or something.
Real easy to change name – civil court. Just can’t use made up language glyphs like Prince tried to.
It would be consistent with comic book logic for her name to be something like Henrietta “Hench” Wenchington. Like Harleen Quinzel = Harley Quinn. :)
Or how a guy named Victor Freis gets cold-based powers. Or Julian Gregory Day is Calendar Man, etc. :)
I’m still partially convinced Dr Frost has ice powers of some sort, and Dave short-changed the financial advisor as a ruse so she can have a reveal in a later arc.
Maybe.
More likely she has empathic or telepathic powers, if any powers at all (ie, a play on Emma Frost from X-Men), plus it would fit with her being a psychiatrist.
Orrrrr she could just be a normal human who’s an incredibly skilled psychiatrist. Archon has both types extraordinary humans and supers working for them.
True about the financial advisor :)
She does have the super body type, which is quite rare among “normal” women. But that’s only circumstantial evidence.
Only if she was personally a member though, right? Couldn’t HW instead hire out / take membership under her own sole-proprietor LLC? Or perhaps under a US-registered DBA, owned by her off-shore company located in a country that wouldn’t disclose ownership details to the US?
No she would have to have her real name because she was, apparently, a non-LLC member manager. The LLC operating agreement has to be specified as to whom is the manager.
Ah, I was focused on keeping the power acquisition anonymous and forgot about also holding the manager role. I need to crib your campaign notes until Dave publishes the rulebook.
I just have a pretty good memory. No notes needed.
But I’d definitely buy it if DaveB put out a bunch of collectible cards in a Magic the Gathering style game.
The cast page (may it rest in peace) sorta has character cards, seems like it would be easy for DaveB to mock up some Magic-style character cards. Figuring out accurate stats and abilities for an actual game system would be much harder, especially given the pedantry of the fan base (myself included). Or he could just add new cards periodically, like he does with the character tags once they reach major milestones.
It would actually be really cool to have multiple versions of the characters as more powers are revealed, and play them off against themselves. You could for example pit Recruit Sydney, Captain Cora, and a handful of Varias (Variants?) against Dark Halo Advanced, early-stage-tinkerer Cora, and Sciona.
Have you considered the renter’s agreement? Utilities? Any related insurance?
Funnily enough, Hench Wench actually inspired me to rewatch Stargate. Was just about to start now when I saw this.
wouldn’t her apartement be absolutely filled with water in mere seconds?
the amount of water in the last panel seems only enough for a bathtub, while I would expect it to be filled to her knees.
It seems like the portals don’t pass objects trough them, but instead move around an object to move it to a location.
That’s why it just transports a cilinder of water in the shape of a portal throgh instead of all the water
You would think that an open portal with 2 atmosphere water on one side and 1 atmosphere atmosphere on the other would spew water like an oversized fire hose.
Water is, effectively, in-compressible. Water at 2 atmospheres has the same mass and volume as at 1 atmosphere, the “spew” would be the same.
Pressure effects flow rate so no the spew would be faster and higher so yeah she should have gone up on a plume of water…
Correct, higher pressure water would spray more (perhaps that’s why the cat is wet?), but Grrlverse physics of portal boundary effects has not yet been established, so “whatever Dave draws” is how things work. We do see some big air bubbles in panels 3 & 4, so air was brought into the water with one or both portals, but it’s hard to say which. I suspect portal boundaries in the Grrlverse have a stabilizing effect preventing anyone from actually draining the ocean.
Cat isn’t wet, just pissed at the sudden appearance of their pet
Or, those air bubbles are from Maxi
It’s not the compressibility of water that would give the ‘spew’, but the pressure behind it. No compressibility just means that all of that pressure differential goes into shifting fluid rather than compressing it, reducing efficiency losses.
And the difference is not between water at 1 and 2 atmospheres, it’s between water at 2 and air at 1. Air, being a gas (mixture), is very much compressible and very easily displaced by water at a higher pressure.
I think my comment (posted at the same time) actually answers yours. It is not a two-way portal and only teleports whatever was wrapped up within the electric cocoon thing it forms. Think of it like an elevator, it doesn’t start moving until the doors are closed.
By the same logic, there would be a rush of water back through the first portal, transporting a deluge to Times Square.
But it really depends how the portal power works – it may create a temporary pocket of space as a “buffer”. Open a portal to this buffer, and whatever makes it in to the buffer is what will end up on the other side. The “destination” portal may not open until the “departure” portal is closed… (?)
Look at panel 3 closer. There are two portals in that panel (one at the water’s surface). HW is multi-jumping and doing it pretty fast (Max DID warn her she could catch bullets). She does least 4 jumps in three panels…
On the other hand, the remark, the smirk, AND taking time for a hand gesture? By the time that first jump completes, Max should have been holding her neck so tight it interfered with blood flow.
AND, Max train with Harem. Anyone doubt she has a method of tracking HW’s jumps?
That assumes max kept her super speed up. She most likely panic reshuffled to have her armor up once she realized she was getting teleported to a possibly dangerous environment or a possible outright ambush.
+1 for an explanation that doesn’t make me incredibly disappointed in Max-the-invulnerable-bullet-catcher’s reaction here.
It was established way at the beginning of the comic that Maxima can be taken by surprise, and super-speed doesn’t always save her, when Sydney vomited on Maxima’s boots.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-46-yoga-hwarf/
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-47-at-least-her-boots-are-waterproof/
Given HW — who doesn’t recognise the meaning of cease and desist — has already portalled once, it seems unlikely that Max would be surprised by it happening a 2nd time
That doesn’t make a lot of sense. Maxima is very confident in her power – her reaction to an ambush should be mostly speed to survey the situation, with only some armor. Armor only protects herself, but speed allows her to help others, stop enemies from acting, and also helps with defending herself from attacks that might bypass her armor.
When stasis-beamed, she immediately sped up, which also was the right decision.
Looking at this I’m guessing the portals aren’t portals at all, but actually they wrap around a target and then after enveloping it completely only then do they transport. This would explain why the teleport location couldn’t be seen through it (last page) or why water isn’t flooding the streets in the second panel.
Very likely. I’ve already been suspecting her portal works like that from last page, this confirms it.
That’s the only explanation that would make sense, yes.
An underwater sonic boom would be devastating. An important lesson to learn about water is that it is essentially incompressible. Max just killed hundreds of sea creatures, and possibly caused a tsunami.
In short, don’t do this, kids.
It’s not n explosion, she only moved water out of her way, so not a lot of water is actally getting moved around.
Tsunamis get created when tectonic plates move, a small explosion won’t do it.
But yeah the fish around her are totally dead.
It’s effectively like throwing dynamite into a pond. There will be a fish kill.
The term your looking for is steam explosion. That speed would cause compression heating of all the water before her into a cascading steam explosive shockwave….. NY City just got a salt water fog bank as the steam explosion cooled….
Water itself is pretty much incompressible, but the gas dissolved in it can definitely be compressed. And gas in aquatic animals even more so. So yeah, that shock wave? Crushed fish, for a start.
At that speed, she would generate enough heat to boil a large amount of water into steam. When water transitions to steam, its volume increase by a factor of 1700. That would create a sizeable “explosion”.
Assuming she actually attained that speed underwater. More likely, her upper speed, even at her full “push”, was retarded by the water, and that she wasn’t mach-plus until she cleared the surface.
NVM I realized I’d scrolled down past the art too quickly, only now saw he’d specified underwater sonic boom. My next guess would be to say that since sound travels slower (and farther) through water, she wasn’t going the 600+ MPH we think of as “mach speed” but decidedly slower. Still damn fast, but not THAT fast. Even by presenting the smallest possible profile (headfirst), there’s going to be some friction drag. Her face will probably be nicely burnished.
NO, that’s not right either, dammit. Speed of sound in water is FASTER, and Dave said so in his notes under the comic. Max wasn’t going that fast, wasn’t going 600 MPH, probably wasn’t going anywhere near her top speed in air either…..because water is a denser medium. That’s really what I’m driving at.
Flight power is reactionless, no “equal and opposite” exhaust trying to project itself downward. Max simply moved upward at maximum speed. There would be a lot of local turbulence. Water, as an incompressible and thicker medium that air, isn’t as amenable to rapid fluxes as air is. As a small and (from that profile) waterdynamic object, Max didn’t displace a lot of water; hence, no tsunami. She vacated the water pretty quickly, which means whatever effect she had on it was momentary. The sonic boom could ONLY take place in atmosphere. Likewise for mach speed itself; she probably wasn’t able to attain mach speed until after she broke the surface!
The displaced water has to go somewhere, and the faster you go, the faster it’s displaced. At supersonic speed (yes, she explicitly was going supersonic underwater, the author comments say “it’s a little silly she’s going that fast, but I decided to leave it in”) she pushes the water out of the way at supersonic speed, and there’s at least a ton of water above her. The pressure wave is going to be quite significant.
If an object is moving faster than the speed of sound in the surrounding medium, then it will create a shockwave – a sonic boom. The required speed is indeed higher underwater, but it very definitely exists. Size and hydrodynamicity might affect the amplitude of the boom that’s produced, but they can’t prevent it.
remember speed of sound in water is faster than in air , at 5328 km/h (3311mph) that will be one heck of a shockwave
With her speed, it wouldn’t surprise me if Maxima had tagged Hench Wench with some form of tracker.
Which probably means Hench Wench will just have time to take a shower before someone arrives to arrest her, right after they’ve picked up something to prevent her escape by teleporting.
Henchie’s cat looks none to pleased.
I think at the very least Maxima/Archon will be getting a very angry letter about the fact that she 100% just murdered the entire Hudson River ecosystem. Which, a cursory Google search informs me, is possibly “the most scientifically scrutinized river in the world”.
So yeah. A lot of scientists and animal rights activists are going to be VERY unhappy.
Is Maxima susceptible to pressure? Would she get the bends? Going down suddenly to 300 feet underwater would be a MASSIVE pressure difference, and be super difficult for your ordinary human being. Does Hench Wench get resistance to things like that when she teleports?
Mxima has the contact forcefield thing so probably not, for hench wench her eardrums would probably burst, which would make her deaf for a week or so, but maybe she is subcontracted to someone with a power that helps against that?
Right! And her lungs! It would definitely hurt to suddenly have that much pressure crushing them all of a sudden. It would be interesting if she were subcontracted to someone else who had contact forcefield powers, because the existence of that power elsewhere would presumably make it easier for interested parties to work out Maxima’s powers. But there are obviously other possibles. Basic invincibility? Invincible inner organs?
The bends aren’t caused by the depth that you free dive to. They are caused by the compression of the atmosphere you breathe (through SCUBA gear or similar). If you’re wearing SCUBA tanks and breathing air compressed at 300 feet, you certainly will experience the bends if you rise to the surface at speed. But, if you freedive and the air already in your lungs is compressed (along with everything else in your body under the hydrostatic pressure), you’re pretty much “just fine” from almost any “reasonable” depth near the surface. I think the world record is about 500 feet? Or maybe close to 800? For us normal, real world humans. Not googling it right now, but it’s insane deep.
Additionally, it’s Maxima. She’s likely indestructible at such trivial pressures & shockwaves. We’ve seen the equivalent of artillery shells explode while wrapped around her body and it takes some of her clothing off and “stings a bit.” I’ve been curious since the comic began if she could fly into the atmosphere of the Sun.
Dave’s writeup mentions the depth around the Brooklyn Bridge. She’s coming up from a depth of about 150 feet at the most, probably a bit shallower.
Well, of course I HAD to look it up.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Nitsch
Herbert Nitsch (born 20 April 1970) is an Austrian freediver who has held world records in all of the eight freediving disciplines recognised by AIDA International. He is the current freediving world record champion and “the deepest man on earth”. This title was given to him when he set a world record in the “No Limits” discipline at the depth of 214 meters (702 feet). To date, he has achieved 33 official World Records across all freediving disciplines, and one world record in the traditional Greek discipline of Skandalopetra 107 m (351 ft). He surpassed his own No Limits depth with a dive in June 2012 to 253.2 meters (831 feet), suffering injury in the process.
Luis, from what little I read when I googled ‘the bends’, it says that you can get the bends anywhere over 30 feet deep if you ascend too quickly.
Ascending instantaneously, I’d think you’d DEFINITELY get the Bends (well Maxima wouldnt but anyone who did not have powers would).
Please have faith that I know what I’m talking about. I was certified in open water SCUBA, and openwater SCUBA safety, and took close to 50 dives one year as a research scientist studying geology and water chemistry of rock formations down in the 40-60 foot range. At the time, I could calculate the depressurization times in my head based upon time underwater and estimates of the depths I was operating at for various durations.
You don’t get the bends unless you breath compressed air from tanks. If you free dive without tanks, where you take a deep breath and go as far down as you can and still come back up, the nitrogen toxicity and degassification doesn’t occur in your body because everything compresses and then decompresses without your flesh & blood getting super-saturated from breathing air at a dozen or two atmospheres. You take a breath at one atmosphere pressure, you go underwater to whatever depth, you come back to the surface and everything is still working properly at one atmosphere.
That’s also why deep divers who have to stay down for a long time breathe a helium mix, where the nitrogen is substituted with helium. It virtually eliminates the bends, you can stay down for days or even weeks. There are other serious problems when doing that, though. Point being, it’s compressed nitrogen that does you in.
“Please have faith that I know what I’m talking about. ”
I’m sure it’s likely you know more than me, since all I know about it was from a brief google search. Especially since you’re certiifed.
So are you saying if someone goes from pressure at 100 feet down to surface instantaneously, it wouldnt harm them at all? (assuming they arent invulnerable like Maxima is, I mean)
Or are you saying you don’t get the bends from it since it’s not caused by what I thought it was caused by, but could still get messed up physically?
ie, are you saying what Hench Wench did would be totally plausible and without danger to herself (assuming someone was capable of instant teleportation obviously)?
The speed of transition from high pressure to low is what can cause problems, but the extent of the problem depends on what’s happened prior to that transition.
The bends is caused by nitrogen dissolving in the blood at high pressure, then effervescing out as the pressure is reduced. (Other gases probably contribute as well, but nitrogen dominates as it makes up so much of the air.) Gas solubility increases with pressure – dissolution/effervescence is a reversible equilibrium, which can be pushed either way by changing conditions. It also takes time for the gas to dissolve in the liquid, and it takes time for the blood to circulate around the body. You could consider it like a trap that takes some time to arm properly before it can be triggered for full effect.
A short transition like this doesn’t give enough time for much nitrogen to go into the blood, so there’s not a lot to come out, and when it does it’s still near the lungs to escape. If they only came into the high-pressure environment with one breath of air, then that also limits the amount of nitrogen available to dissolve. The trap doesn’t have time to arm, so it doesn’t matter (as much) whether you hit the trigger on the way out.
The problem arises from spending an extended period at high pressure, especially when breathing at that pressure. More time at pressure, especially with a plentiful supply of air, allows the solution equilibrium to stabilise at a higher dissolved concentration. It also allows the highly-nitrogenated blood to circulate around the body. The trap is now armed.
Reducing the pressure slowly lets the nitrogen come out of solution slowly, at a rate that the body can deal with and get rid of safely. The trap is carefully disarmed without setting it off.
Reducing the pressure too quickly lets the nitrogen comes out of solution faster than the body can handle, and potentially in more awkward places. The armed trap is set off, and the diver suffers for it.
That’s why hyperbaric – literally, ‘high-pressure’ – chambers are used to treat divers who do ascend too fast. Increasing the air pressure pushes the solubility equilibrium back towards solution, so the excess nitrogen is no longer trying to get out of the diver’s blood at such a rate. They can then be brought down to surface pressure, releasing nitrogen as they go, in a more controlled manner.
Of course, this doesn’t address the other problematic things that high concentrations of dissolved gases in the bloodstream can do to a diver, without the need for pressure changes. Swapping out nitrogen for helium as the inert fraction of the breathing mix sidesteps nitrogen narcosis, but oxygen toxicity is a bit harder to avoid.
Gotcha. Thank you Luis and Scott for teaching me about the Bends. :)
PS that’s not a sarcastic thank you. I like learning new things.
Not a problem. Thanks for your tutorials on the Law and everything else!
That’s the East River (maybe 100 feet deep at the deepest), and they’re not on the bottom. They’re nowhere near deep enough for the bends…
And the bends is a physiological reaction to nitrogen in the breathing mixture. No one was there long enough to take a breath (and nothing to breathe but water – which is a more serious problem anyway).
Yep, only about 50 feet is visible on screen.
The bends are from dissolved gases in bloodstream at high pressure forming air bubbles as they un-dissolve at low pressures. Most damage occurs in joints, but air bubbles in the blood can travel to your brain, heart, or lungs and cause a heart attack, stroke, or respiratory failure
I was gonna say it but ya, luis wu and okbkcq pretty much hit the nail on the head. I’ll just leave you with a metaphor that might be a little more understandable for the layman.
Imagine a soda. It’s fizzy nature is caused because the manufacturer dissolved a bunch of gasses into the liquid using very high pressure, in this case carbon dioxide dissolved into the otherwise flat soda at 1200 PSI. It’s fizzy because those gasses are slowly coming out of solution, making all those delightful little bubbles that give you the fizz! But if you make those gasses come out of solution faster, like shaking it up, you can get quite a mess.
When you spend extended periods of time scuba diving you spend extended periods of time breathing air at high pressures and therefore metabolizing it into your body tissues at high pressures. Kind of like when the soda manufacturer shoves a bunch of carbon dioxide into the flat soda. If you come out of those high pressures slowly and carefully, you’re fine. But if you surface to fast then it’s kind of like shaking up a soda, the gasses that dissolved into your body tissues at high pressure are going to quickly and violently come out of solution and it can lead to the situation that okbkcq descrived.
I think my original comment didn’t go through but if it did and I’m just double commenting now, I apologize. Anyway I was going to explain the bends but luis wu and okbkcq pretty much nailed it on the head. Instead I’ll leave an analogy that’s a bit more understandable for the layman. Imagine a soda. It gets its fizzy nature from the manufacturer dissolving carbon dioxide gas into the otherwise flat soda at 1200 PSI! When crack open your soda the pressure starts to even out again as the gasses dissolved in the liquid start to slowly come out of solution, creating all those wonderful little bubbles. But you can make them come out of solution much faster by shaking up your soda and making quite a mess. When you scuba dive for extended periods of time your breathe gasses at higher than normal pressures for extended periods of time and those gasses dissolve into your blood and even your bodily tissues. If you ascend from your dive slowly and carefully, it’s kind of like politely sipping your soda and you should be fine. But if you ascend quickly that you get the shaken soda situation, the gasses dissolved in your blood start coming out of solution much faster, leading to the consequences okbkcq described. So why are neither Henchwench nor Maxima at risk for the bends here? It has to do with time and the amount of air they went under water with. They each went to depth instantaneously with one lung’s worth of air at a pressure of 1 atmosphere(atm) and came right back to 1 atm almost instantly. So they weren’t breathing high pressure gasses and even if they were they weren’t under long enough to metabolize it into their blood stream and tissues. No risk of the bends. There is a risk of imploded organs though because the air cavities in your body; particularly your lungs, airways and ears; would instantly shrink to a fraction of their size. Ruptured ear drums is a given, I’m not sure what would happen to your respiratory system though.
I don’t know who to feel sorrier for. Seaman Jones hearing the sonic boom. Or the poor soaked kitty.
“Jonsie, what was that?”
“Sir, I thought I heard…villainous cackling”
Glad I’m not the only one who Recognized Jonesy
That must be a really loud noise if Petty Officer Jones can hear it up by Iceland…
Spontaneous cavitation like this has been observed on a small scale, and it is the reason why a beer bottle breaks if you slap it hard enough (it can spray like mad if you do it wrong, but the bottom will fly off when done right, the Slow Mo Guys did a video on it).
Additionally, spontaneous cavitation like what Max causes here is sometimes accompanied by luminescence: the cavities collapse so hard and fast around gas already in the solution that the gas is compressed and light is emitted. The cavities collapsing behind Max would definitely cause major shock waves, and I expect a good bit of light emission, since the river is aerated and will have a lot of gas being compressed in those cavities.
Final point: those cavities would usually be larger than the object causing them, based on speed, and when the cavities originally collapse, they can bounce off themselves and oscillate in size a few times until they die out. Again, Slow Mo Guys video (firing a gun underwater this time), it’s quite fascinating.
Wait… why didnt Hench Wench also get disoriented from the sudden shift? She no longer has any other powers aside from portals, right?
Maybe she practiced this manuever a lot?
Still, you go from land to being 100 feet underwater with no power and no scuba gear, that’s going to be disorienting if not really dangerous for you. no matter how much practicing you do….. suddenly having a rush of water all around you is going to be disorienting, if not deadly to someone who doesn’t have some sort of protection against that.
It makes very little sense to me. But most stuff about Hench Wench has made no sense to me ever since the add on stuff about how she couldnt be fired. Then her being able to merge powers in ways that make absolutely no sense. Then just happening to also be hired on a side job by a portal person. This is just an additional annoying thing about the character. In addition to Maxima somehow having enough time to give Hench Wench a dirty look, but not enough time to just grab her again and THEN shoot up out of the water fast enough to render HW unconscious. Feels like she was passed, in trope terms, the ‘idiot ball’ in order for HW to get away.
Of course, someone else will probably say ‘oh she probably also was hired by someone who lets her breathe underwater or not experience disorientation’
Which is another reason to hate the character of Hench Wench, a character who can basically have whatever power, without any foreshadowing, without anything to build up as to why, a LITERAL deus ex machinae get out of jail free card for her in any circumstance, because wheneever she’d be in a scene, you can say ‘oh she can ….. turn you into jello because she happened to work for a guy who can do that. Oh you just shoved her through an aetherium gateway by a black hole which was foreshadowed as something Sydney might eventually do? Well she just so happened to be hired as a side job by a person who is a gravitokinetic so created an anti-grav bubble and also was hired by someone who doesn’t need to breathe in a vacuum so she’s fine. Oh and yeah still a portal so now she’s back again.
Oh you disintegrated her, Dabbler? Oh don’t worry, she was hired by someone with powers like Lobo who can reconstitute from even a single atom. Or she was hired by someone who is disintegration-proof like Achilles.
It just gets annoying after the third time she pulls something that had no foreshadowing whatsoever as a… tush-pull.
Max was surprised, Henchy was prepared.
Probably because unlike Max, she was expecting it.
She doesn’t seem prepared or practiced or expecting it, because if she *did* have that much foresight, why did she go straight to her apartment? She would have practiced going from [danger] to [deep water] to [seldom used alley] to [apartment].
Henchy expected going into the water because that was where her mind went; doesn’t mean she knows the consequences of what she is doing. Max had no idea where she was going to end up so she was definitely more surprised.
At the same time, super speed also means super perception as a required secondary super power. I don’t think Max was as disoriented as Hench Wench thinks she was. Disorientation +5 against Max’s perception +900 or +5 million? I really don’t think Max was forced to let HW go at all – whatever her motivation or follow-up plan, I feel like it was probably a conscious decision to let HW think she got away…
I agree, now that they know there are more people shes working with, they need to find the rest of her contacts as well. Im guessing some sort of tracker on her.
Or Max could just be a victim of the trope known as being ‘handed the idiot ball’ where she has to be uncharacteristically dumb in order for the other person to get away or win (in this case, get away). I’m not really sure what the point would have been of Maxima letting HW escape on purpose.
Are you keeping up a list of things that HW should have done? I’ve only got about 150Gb on my hard drive…
She can also have any power that the author decides to give her at any time with any new contract. If Ariana decided to do her job properly, she would have looked at all the contracts under Hench Wench, specifically looking for anything that might give her powers, and had them all cancelled due to being used for illegal activities.
That’s assuming Arianna somehow had access to all the contracts HW has ever signed on to. The Swan Yacht of Villainy LLC had to be filed with a government agency, that’s how its existence was public information and Arianna could do something about it. There’s no such requirement for other contracts.
She doesn’t need a contract to have a power, just to have someone be her boss. The contract was just to form an LLC to have multiple bosses at the same time and be secure they couldn’t fire her under those rules . The portal comes from her friend who is her boss, for all we know she could consider a Dom her boss. This is clearly based on her perception as the limiter.
Author comments in Page #916 states that her powers are contract-based, and Page #915 states they only work with supervillains. This would mean that there would be a required contract that might be possible for Arianna to find and legally suspend, pending a trial to determine the status of said contracts (similar to what she did originally).
I will concede to Ruffalo’s point about what access Arianna has to her contracts and that it was probably targeted to the specific contract she had with the specific organization. However, and unless I am wrong with this assumption, Arianna would then have access to Hench Wench’s personal details and could discover other contracts she has and get them cancelled as well (although probably not as quick as Hench Wench could portal out of there). Maybe just not make the gloating phone call and cancel it without her knowledge, so she doesn’t know what is going on and instead of smoking the cigar, continue researching to find any other potential contracts that is still legally binding.
I will also concede that, as my understanding of her powers right now, we don’t know if the contracts need to specify what powers she gains or not. This could mean that she just finds supervillains, gains a legitimate job (say, working in a call centre or as a cashier or something else) and is granted access to their powers without them knowing. This contract could be harder to cancel as the contract itself is for a legitimate job and not for the purpose (for the employer) to commit crimes.
Arianna just needs to get a judge to file an injunction prohibiting HW from entering into any contracts and to void all existing contracts currently in effect.
That would only apply under US law. She could still enter into contracts under foreign law, and we don’t know if Hench Wench’s power recognises judgements against her as an absolute injunction given it’s primary use is conspiracy to enter into acts that are illegal under US law anyway. Sure, Arianna knocked out her immediate powers, but she still has the right to appeal that judgement Give Hench Wench an hour or two to dry off and her paralegal brain will start poking the legalities looking for a way around it.
Remember, we’re only a few weeks past a lawyer trying to argue that the Stewardship of Gondor created a precedent for overturning the US election and disbarring all sitting representatives from ever holding office. Legal stuff can get seriously weird (cf US vs Approximately 64,695 Pounds of Shark Fins – which wasn’t the US vs Approximately I was looking for, but is actually even better).
The important question is whether the contract needs to be writing.
From the daydream, clearly not.
There is no requirement for citizens to file contracts with anyone. I am under dozens of NDA contracts due to consulting, and literally no one in the government knows anything about any that are not government contracts. Each organization knows about its own, and any others that I may have disclosed to them for specific contractual reasons.
Likewise, no judge would have the authority to preemptively declare all of MY contracts invalid, regardless of parties or jurisdiction. IF HW has a verbal contract with someone in another state or another country, a NY judge would have no standing to make any declaration whatsoever with regard to that unknown contract.
I meant she doesn’t need a signed paper contract. She has stated twice she can gain the powers via a verbal agreement. the imaginary situation last page illustrates this.
If she met Vehemence, she could enter a verbal agreement to work for him, to get milk, and that would be enough.
As someone who has ridden along and even driven off road, I can assure you that you typically grip TIGHTER when you are experiencing unanticipated changes of movement. Introducing the Headless Henchwench, however, would run counter to the theme of the comic. Just as showing all the people killed by the collateral damage would.
On the same note:
Max has being shown to activate her powers, including plasma shots when her brother suprised her with a paperbag pop. So she probably has TRAINED herself to do otherwise or she runs the risk to obliterate a kid if they try to jumpscare her.
It is something “comon” to trained soldiers/guards.
And also why there’s a push for Police in the US to get proper training. Most of the folks who get shot every year is because you have improperly trained officers given firearms.
Well, it runs deeper than that – significantly so – but for the sake of this argument, “improperly trained” works as a surface-level explanation.
…which seems to support my contention that HW got away because Max decided to let her – why? well, we may find out, but I doubt with super perception +1000 or higher, that a disorientation +5 would jar her at all…
There is a bit of a threshold between SS [supersonic] speed and HS [hipersonic] speed. And mainly the diference is wen the object makes the aura of combusting material infront of it that is so comongly associated with reentry velocities. Mainly becouse the first human made HS speed was a shutle in crash trayectory.
I do not know the math or the stats, a nerdier fan can verify/correct me, but I think Max is under the mach 4. Enough to make bubbles behind from superheated water but not enough to make the HS corona.
In either case, it is a state of her endurance and speed. Yes, the speed with the local stasis gun was NUTS. But she can spect to all speed and “0” defence.
Here, she needs armor or she is flattened.
Our mainly 2 reasons for not acheaving HS speed underwater yet are: 1st the water resistance is absurdly high if you mach it against air. 2nd, our main HS engines need O2 for combustion. Something water do not like.
On the other hand, Hench also has a bit of compresion resistance. Presure of water that quickly is probably equivalent to a small grenade or a exploding barrel of gas. [Minus srapnel]
PD: [Pardon my English]
PPD: PLEASE TELL ME THAT ARC LIGHT/DARK HAS PORTAL TRACKING. That would be hilarious.
There’s no set definition of hypersonic. Most commonly it’s considered to start at about Mach 5, which is well below the speed needed for an ionized wavefront, which is up in the Mach 10-25 range. The first vehicle to exceed the Mach 5 boundary was Bumper, with Mach 6.7 in 1949. Mach 5 is the regime in which the various new hypersonic missiles work.
WRT supersonic speed in water, there is a solid likelihood that we can achieve it with currently existing technology. The Russian Shkval torpedo, which dates back to the 1960s, uses supercavitation – sheathing the vehicle in a bubble of gas – to reduce resistance and an underwater ramjet using seawater as the oxidiser to reach 200-250 knots, with 300 knots considered possible. Higher speeds would just require a more powerful engine, supercavitation will still work.
Okay, she made it back to her apartment. She better not stop there. Better keep running, Henchwench, you’re now the #1 most hunted super on ARCHON’s list. :P Mostly because there aren’t any others who aren’t already in custody.
She’s moving up to “in traction” or “interred” rather rapidly.
Or incontinent!
Well, she did just make a really big puddle on the floor.
I believe the speed of sound in fresh water is constant. Barometric pressure is not a factor, only density and water, being incompressible, doesn’t change density with increased depth. It does change density with salt content and there are layers in the ocean where sound travels faster and farther than normal. Both whales and subs take advantage of it. ;)
Also: The pressure increases about one atmosphere for every 10 meters of water depth, or 32.8 feet. Not “37-ish feet.”
Yeah, the pressure of water at 37 feet is significantly more than 1 atm, as demonstrated by the simple experience of going underwater in a normal public swimming pool’s deep end and going to the bottom. The one I did this in first just had a depth of 8 feet deep, but that’s easily enough for me to feel some additional pressure.
Based on your numbers, the pressure at 37-ish feet is roughly 2.1 atm, because it doesn’t start at a vacuum. (Of course, ones atmospheric pressure right above the water also matters.)
Solids and liquids are called “incompressible” but they can be, and are, diferent densities and flow becouse of it. That’s why the bottom of the occean is almost allwais 4ºC. Is the most dense it can be. And presure is still a thing. There is a reason for human made objects not being able to travel to the deepest parts.
PD: They are called “incompressible” becouse the amount of force needed to change its volume in a meaningfull way is absurdly high comparing it to gasses. But it is not an inmobable law of fisics. Just remember: a Black Hole with an Earth worth of mass is the sice of a pebble or a marble.
PPD: Pardon my English.
Black hole is not compressed matter. Black hole is singularity and works with completely different set of physical laws.
However, neutron star is compressed matter, with density of 10^17 kg/m^3. Water has about 10^3 kg/m^3 and yes, you can make a neutron star from water if you compress it with enough force.
It depends on the degree of aeration in the water, as well. Water is incompressible, but the gas dissolved in it is most definitely not, and the more gas there is, the slower the sound moves when the gas comes out of solution. You get, in effect, the density of the water and the compressibility of the gas, both of which lower the speed of sound.
Is the hudson river really consider fresh water though? Whats the chemical composition of that “water”?
This shouldn’t have worked. Maxima, as she pointed out just last page, has super speed. She should have had plenty of time to see this coming and fly both of them out of the portal or at least prepare her mind and grip, and if HW has time to salute her, she has time to catch her again.
This is a plothole. Good old “super speed turning off as the plot demands”.
Remember when Sydney yakked on her boots, and later used that information to beat Vehemence? Speedsters can be surprised the same as anyone else.
She has to “unspeed” to be able to talk to regular people. So she cand be surprised then. It is the vulnerability of speedsters: Regular/rest time.
Yes, but the switch must be instantaneous otherwise she couldn’t have grabbed Henchy she was surprise-portaled the first time.
The switch was helped by HW being stupid and:
A)Mentioning that she has portal powers.
And
B)Making one she needs to jump through. Which a even a normal person could maybe react to.
This time she was smart and made one directly beneath them.
Super strength and flight would mean a portal right underneath them would need only sit there. Maxima would hold HW’s neck and that would hold her torso… unless the portal moves to envelop them, they’d most likely just float above it… so there wouldn’t be any difference to her opening one behind her or above the two of them….
If the portal DOES move to envelop them, which I think is the case, I still don’t think Maxima would have trouble avoiding going through it or keeping HW out of it
I’m definitely thinking Maxima went along with the portal to the water and then let go of HW on purpose… to track her with some device? who knows?
Maxima’s reaction time should be more than sufficient to handle the situation, so I think she wants to let her go
I think it’s pretty obvious that Max just lost her grip for a second because the water surprised her. Which was long enough for HW to portal herself away.
Also, based on the current and previous page, the portals open and close nigh-instantly. HenchWench was the slow one, not her power.
The enveloping takes time – panels 3 and 4 are the same portal enveloping HW.
No, she does not. She holds a conversation with Sydney while ready to catch a bullet.
In the last page she showed she could activate her super speed quick enough to deal with HW’s tricks at moderate readiness. There’s no good reason she should be able to react last time, but not when HW tries the same trick again. Especially since HW was calling her attempt, so Maxima should have been warned. Fear vomit was in a conversation in a non-hostile environment, not apprehending a violent criminal.
Also, HW’s escape was two consecutive moves. Even if Maxima somehow wasn’t ready for the first one, she should have been sped up by the second one.
Agreed. Maxima jobbed an already overdrawn fight.
Maxima has super-speed. Unfortunately, as demonstrated repeatedly, that doesn’t enable her to think super-fast. She should have rendered HW unconscious the moment she knew she could generate portals.
I assume she let HW go because she wasn’t certain the portal couldn’t cut her arm off.
I don’t remember anything like that. Conversely,
-she disassembles a grenade while the world around her is slowed down
-she contemplates the best way to deal with Vehemence’s punch while his fist is travelling towards her face.
If she had the presence of mind for that kind of deliberation, she definitely could have sped up and pulled HW out of the portal instead.
You ignoring the fear-vomit? All over her boots?
She has to be ready to super-think: with the grenade, she had warning from Sydney
That’s when the super speed is turned off.
In this situation, she is apprehending a violent criminal, just had to use super speed for that purpose, even if she still turned it off for some reason, she would have had time to turn it back up for some reason.
She. Can. Still. Be. Caught. Byfucking. SURPRISE!!!!!
We have no way of knowing how fast the second portal took to form, do be noting that it is already at shoulder when Maxi noticed it
She can be caught by surprise when not ready to fight at all. Not so much when HW already failed to surprise her a second ago. Not when HW announced she wasn’t giving up. Not when after she got surprised there’s still another move she can intercept.
We do know the the third portal was slow enough for HW to pull a mocking salute – time for Maxima, who should be sped up by now, to react.
Also, HW won initiative by popping them underwater, so she earned an extra roll.
Also also, mocking is a free action.
She could have pulled her out of the portal, but she tried that already, and HW is still trying to get away – maybe let HW think she got away and keep tabs on her, so you can be prepared to actually capture her next time. Have Harem ready to vorp into any portal HW makes? tranq dart? idunno – regroup and give her a false sense of security, THEN nab her.
It definitely makes more sense than the alternative, but her reaction doesn’t fit. You don’t say ‘grr’ when you just played your opponent and things are going your way.
Super-speed without super-thought-speed is kind of useless for anything other than grand slams.
You may not be consciously aware of thinking about how to walk, but that’s something part of your brain does (assuming you’re someone who can walk). When you run, jump, and catch a ball, multiple parts of your brain had to be involved.
That doesn’t necessarily mean that your brain would be good at strategy at heightened speeds, even if you’re known for good strategic thinking normally. The thing is, strategy’s hard. Sometimes, ones good strategic thinking is due to experience. Other times, it’s due to thinking fast. If you normally are using your super speed to do your strategic thinking, it’s not going to happen fast enough to matter when you need to do it to decide your actions while physically doing super-fast stuff.
Hey kids, It’s Jonesy!
Thank you. I was trying to remember that guy from THFRO.
Fairly sure he had glasses
Okay, just looked it up, and he doesn’t wear glasses (no idea why thought he did, unless getting him mixed up with the guy from “Die Hard”… and probably got that wrong as well :( )
Yeah, but he let them hang from a lanyard almost immediately
Why did Max let go of her?
I get disorientation, but most instinctual thing would still be to hold on, not to let go.
Also, she could probably just crush Henches spine the moment she tried to do anything
That’s… actually a pretty good argument for Max letting go. HW just got depowered, and Max is treating her as a ‘squishy human’ again. Grabbing her throat tighter during a sudden environment change would’ve been bad for them both; Max can always find her again, but can’t un-crush her larynx.
Not sure why Maxima didn’t just grab her again. She had enough time to make a stinkface at Henchy so I’m sure she could yank her out of the portal again. Or follow her.
Would renters insurance cover water damage when the water came from a portal created by the renter? Insurance claims adjustment is probably more interesting in a world with supers in it.
This wasn’t actually very clever…exposure to cold water causes someone to clench not ease up. The way this would have ended, given maxima’s strength is a broken neck for henchwench (or more likely, pressure induced decapitation).
She escapes this entirely due to plot armor.
Its also defeated by the logic of the logic of the comic, since the way they captured the last portaller was to hold them in a pressurized room and portaling would lead to explosive decompression. Given Maxima has time to fly to the surface, henchwench should be suffering a bad case of the bends.
The bends are caused by gas bubbles forming in soft tissue when depressurizing. We don’t know how deep they were, but they were only down for a few seconds at most, probably no more than a second. Otherwise Max’s disorientation would have ended and her super speed would have come into play. They were not down at any kind of depth for long enough to set up the conditions that would lead to DCS.
Apparently Max has enough training and control to not rip someone’s head off with an involuntary reflex.
That may have been precisely WHY she let go…to not rip HW’s head off.
Part of the trap for Opal was the fact that the amount of pressure was unknown. Also, I think the bends is not just from having been at high pressure, but from having been there for a while and adjusted to it. luis wu up above asserted it’s from breathing pressurized air, which makes sense. Wanderer, also above, indicated it’s from the nitrogen concentration in the compressed air, which also feels plausible
the bends are not associated with nitrogen. The problem with Nitrogen at depth is that it becomes reactive and random nitrogen compounds (think ammonia, etc) are not healthy. Deep divers use a helium oxygen mixture because helium is non reactive. aside: oxygen over atmospheric 21% causes undue ‘oxidization’ (or burns) in lungs.
Correct, the many risks of uncontrolled decompression make a correct pressure adjustment of vital importance, and you can’t prepare an escape chamber of equal pressure unless you actually know the pressure to a fairly accurate degree.
I think I recall the strip where she wakes up also mentioned some monitoring alarms, which would prevent her from opening a tiny portal and equalizing the pressure without being detected. She could potentially have a couple dozen decompression chambers set up someplace with a range of options and determine the best one quickly with a pinhole portal, but she’d have to be in range.
Hello Danny deVito in a wig back there.
No shit you shouldn’t have! They have a dozen ways to track you down, you just pissed off the most powerful super in the world, qnd you chose to teleport to a location they *have on file for you because they have paperwork of yours*. Wenchy is clever, cunning even, but she needs common sense.
Might want to add a bit in somewhere in the next few comics about Arianna chewing Maxima out for busting all the sonar equipment in the area, not to mention damaging any local aquatic wildlife sensitive to that specifically.
As for That Swedish Guy’s comment on legal items, your name does not have to be what you use to bind a contract. Your corporate identity is sufficient if you are a legal representative of said corporation, and in some cases, your legal and/or birth name is NOT recommended as part of your corporate ID as a security measure due to the hazards that come with the job. Private security firms have their employees names on files, typically under separate files from the ID badges they actually wear so that real names and privet information don’t get combined during a security breach of their own offices.
It has also been noted that in many countries, even to this day, a legal signature does not necessarily have to be legible. So there are a number of ways to sign a legally binding contract and not actually give away any usable information on yourself, provided you’re prepared… and HW seemed pretty prepared…… legally speaking. She also seemed a bit like a blond ditz, repeatedly. (To smart to be dumb, to dumb to really be smart… might be an interesting reoccurring villain.)
A signature is any mark made intending to be a signature. Legibility is 100% not a factor.
Interesting ad in the back of panel 1. Looks a bit like MixxItUp from Cyberpunk 2077.
OK, very, very condensed, very dumbed down theories about how all of these things worked for this page:
1> Supersonic & human-sized cavitation underwater not causing ecological disaster – Maybe Max was able to shape her shield into a more streamlined shape to cut through the water much more effortlessly, thus mitigating the cavitation & the shockwave. Or maybe her power was pushing the water out of her way in way other than brute force to lessen the shockwave.
2> Not breaking Henchwench’s neck out of surprise – I agree with a previous post….she probably trained herself to let go rather than grip tighter when confronted by unforseen sensory experience, so that she specifically does *NOT* kill every Tom, Dick & Harry that she encounters in public.
3> Why didn’t she grab Henchie again before she ported away – maybe she had to divert extra power to her shield at the face of the abrupt shift in pressure, & her default is to shunt away from speed, which combined with her disorientation & surprise may have been just long enough for Henchie to escape.
4> Why wasn’t Henchwench crushed by the water pressure – barring the excuse of her having additional super-powers contracted, maybe her portal-opening friend actually has a few bonuses to help him or her adapt to changes in environment, such as tougher ear canals or chest muscles. Alternatively, maybe they weren’t as deep as everybody seems to be assuming them to have been. I doubt Henchie could have lasted very long, but assuming they weren’t at ‘human jelly-crushing’ depths, she would have had a few seconds before the pressure actually overcame her body’s resistance to squishifying.
5> Why didn’t Henchwench’s portal vomit a horrendous amount of water per second out into her apartment – as was previously suggested, her portals may not be the ‘open a hole in the air’ kind, but rather be an ‘engulf the target & shunt it through subspace’ kind, which would only take with it whatever water was around Henchie when she activated it. You may notice in Panel 3 that there are actually large air bubbles around them, which would the air that was around them when they got portaled down.
============
Or:
1> Why did any of this stuff happen? – because the artist & author wanted it to happen for the comedy & for the sake of the story.
One of the biggest reasons I hate DC Comics – in spite of having some pretty awesome characters – is that they make characters who are stupidly, over-the-top, defeat-anything-&-everything-that-they-come-across powerful, & then ignore the vast majority of their powers & limits whenever it suits them for a particular story, giving them no real consistency.
Seriously, how could a man that moves faster than instantaneous travel ever lose to a guy who throws f*cking boomerangs??
Those all sound very plausible.
It would make no sense to default away from speed when surprised. Speeding up allows her to immediately survey the situation and take appropriate action, which is gonna be useful to react to different situations. She doesn’t need flight, strength and firepower until she decides on an action, so she would put some points in durability and the rest in speed.
And when caught in the stasis field, she did default to speed to figure out what was going on.
That makes sense – but then it doesn’t make sense for her to not train herself to speed up when surprised to regain control of the situation as quick as possible, because that’s gonna be even more beneficial.
My explanations are – as previously stated – very dumbed down theories that I slapped together. They should not be taken to all be connected to one another, or even remotely accurate.
Though I do agree with what you suggested about #3 not making a whole lot of sense from a strategic standpoint (it would make a whole lot more sense to divert power from energy projection first), it was just a spur of the moment thought as to why she would have let Henchie go & not re-grabbed her.
Upon further reflection, maybe the angle of the portal played a role? When Max grabbed her the first time, Henchwench opened the portal parallel to Max, so she could actually reach into the portal & grab her. When Henchie dumped her underwater, the portal was opened perpendicular in relation to Maxima’s position….maybe the portal has some sort of shield that prevents Max from breaking the ‘rim’ of the portal, preventing her from disrupting it, & thus also prevented her from reaching Hench.
I know it doesn’t explain why she didn’t even seem to *try*, but these are the places my head goes. It sometimes takes me quite a few steps to get from ‘what the f…?’ to ‘feasible argument’.
Maybe instead of being a physical forcefield, it was more of a mental barrier that stopped Max from trying to grab Henchie because doing so would have broken the ‘rim’ of the portal?
As for #4, extreme water pressure doesn’t turn you into Jelly. You yourself are made up mostly water. Water is not compressible, it is the same volume in your water glass that it would be in the depths of the Mariana Trench. The danger is your gas pockets. So airways, lungs and ears mostly. Going instantaneously from the streets of New York to the depths of the river would almost certainly rupture your ear drums. I’m not sure about the immediate effects on your airways. But I’m mostly taking issue jelly comment so for sake of argument let’s say you could safely descend to a given depth in a submarine. You wouldn’t be jellyfied walking out into the depths of the ocean. There would be a host of problems, but jellyfication isn’t one of them. The air pressure in in your lungs and ears just needs to be equal to the pressure of the surrounding water, but the rest of your body will be fine as far as human jelly is concerned.
I’m just surprised HW didnt get the Bends.
She didn’t catch the bends because she wasn’t at risk of catching it. There are several better explanations in the comments here, I think on page 2 of the comments, but I’ll give an abbreviation. The bends occurs from breathing gasses under high pressure for extended periods of time. If they went to depth instantly without tanks of air then the gas in their lungs is the thesame air you would breathe at sea level, not at depth, and even if it wasn’t they spent ~two seconds~ under water which is not the extended period of time needed to contact the bends. However, you can be surprised that her eardrums didn’t immediately rupture.
Yeah Luis explained in another post how the bends doesn’t work like I thought it worked:)
And since I’m not an expert or even have an average amount of knowledge on the bends, I’m going to accept the explanations of others who seem to be a lot more knowledgeable than me on the subject. :)
But I am still confused how she went from 100 feet deep to nothing without any physical trauma, especially since the way they were able to hold a portal maker like Opal in prison had to do with pressure differentials, if I recall of 1 atmosphere vs hard vacuum. I figured at the very least something similar would happen here. Also I was not entirely sure what the bends was – I figured it was something having to do with that and also something about bubbles in the bloodstream or … something like that.
All my knowledge of the bends comes from a few deep sea movies and the Metalocolypse cartoon. :)
As I understand it, the Bends, eardrum rupturing, drag force, & any other form of physical trauma you can think of from travelling too fast through water would not be a huge consideration for Maxima.
Even without her shield, her outer shell is a lot tougher than most people’s. I have to assume that this would include canals that reach *to* more sensitive inner organs such as eardrums. Yes, I know that just because her ear canals are tough doesn’t mean that it would stop the pressure from reaching her timpannic membrane, but bare with me while I babble-logic this out….
….shield or no shield, if Maxima is as tough she seems, she could probably be able to resist a lot more pressure than normal….which would also give her a great deal of resistance to harm caused by pressure, such as the Bends or eardrum ruptures. her skin is also highly resistant to distortion, which means that drag forces wouldn’t cause her much harm even travelling supersonic through water.
Even if that’s all a lot of bantha poodoo (sorry, been doing some star wars RP of late), let’s look at her zero-range TK shield. When she got her bearings, she may have dialled up her shield in a way to equallize the pressure that is immediately pressing on her body long enough for her to break the surface, which could negate the effects of the rapid ascension.
This however, brought up a question that I myself hadn’t thought of. If she was caught so off-guard by being dumped at the bottom of NY Harbour (or wherever they were), how was she able to actually avoid taking a lungful of air before realizing that she had to hold her breath?
I wasn’t talking about the effect on Maxima, who has invulnerability. I was talking about the effect on Hench Wench, who no longer has invulnerability.
Fair point, but as has been pointed out, pressure-related health problems are not instantaneous.
Henchie was down there for all of a whole second. Certainly not enough time to develop the Bends. Even the most asthmatic chain smoker can hold their breath for a second under pressure. Any other pressure-related health issues that I can’t think of atm are not going to happen in 1-second.
Plus, let’s not forget that we know very little about the physiology of Supers beyond the fact that they’re all well-endowed & have no body hair. Even though she doesn’t currently have any powers (other than one), she’s still a Super. Maybe Supers have a natural resistance to certain types of damage (like how many super-beings in comics are superhumanly-resistant to impact damage, even if they’re vulnerable to cuts, bullets & diseases).
Maybe her teleportal friend has some measure of resistance to harm.
Maybe she’s actually combining both of their toughness/endurance together.
Maybe, as I pointed out before, they’re not as deep as we are all imagining.
“Henchie was down there for all of a whole second. ”
Not sure where you got a second from honestly. She was down there long enough for Max to release her grip on her, then for her to open a second portal, then for her to give a parting haha hand motion at Max, then for Maxima to give her a dirty look, instead of… yknow… grabbing her again, which Maxima should have been able to do. Even if it HAD been a second, which it doesnt seem like it was.
“Certainly not enough time to develop the Bends.”
Yes I know. I’ve already had it explained to me by both Luis and Scott on how the Bends actually works. Stilll… going from low pressure to high pressure shouldnt be something she can casually flick off without additional powers like super-toughness. Heck, at least she could be as disoriented, if not moreso, than the omega-level golden superheroine TRAINED SOLDIER with about a decade of experience.
“Plus, let’s not forget that we know very little about the physiology of Supers beyond the fact that they’re all well-endowed & have no body hair. ”
We know they’re physically fit, even without powers. But we also know they still have human limits if they don’t have powers to augment those limits (supertoughness, superstrength, etc). It’s not like all supers have a default ‘superstrength and supertoughness’ level, as we’ve seen with both Heatwave and Jiggawatt, not to mention others like Hex and Glowbug. Even Jabberwokky was sporting injuries when she hadnt been turning on her powers like Crusader’s Shield.
“Maybe Supers have a natural resistance to certain types of damage (like how many super-beings in comics are superhumanly-resistant to impact damage, even if they’re vulnerable to cuts, bullets & diseases).”
Yknow they literally went over why that is in the comic earlier. It’s because of bad storytelling, according to Maxima. Because of a need to show off powers of healers like Wolverine vs needing to show off powers of non-healers like Cyclops.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-126-what-if-the-thing-hes-best-at-is-getting-stabbed/
To quote Maxima: “That’s not how the real world operates, Sydney. You’re talking about bad comic book writing.” (panel #5)
“Maybe her teleportal friend has some measure of resistance to harm.”
Again, that’s pulling even more powers out of nowhere. A major problem with Hench Wench as a character who’s basically a villain sue at this point.
“Maybe she’s actually combining both of their toughness/endurance together.”
And that’s not how her powers work, according to Hench Wench herself. She copies POWERS of super-villain employers. She doesn’t copy other’s physical non-superpower physiques.
Oh, I forgot about that bit with Maxima talking about bad storywriting.
Obviously I don’t go too deep into research for these things, I simply let my imagination drift when I’m trying to come up with some sort of plausible explanation for X, & I sometimes forget about things that pertain to X, such as W or Y.
My whole ‘all of a second’ thing comes from the belief that all of those steps that you pointed out would have happened in quick succession.
The way I see it, if Henchwench was prepared for this excursion into the Hudson, then she would have dropped them into the water as she did as an opening move – she seems to me in the panel to have opened a new portal before the old one was even finished closing, indicating to me that she had opened the new portal before Maxima had let go, banking on her doing so due to her surprise, so she started steps without waiting for Max to react.
She obviously is saluting Maxima while her new portal is enveloping, & I assume that Max is glaring at her simultaneously.
Remember that comic panels don’t *always* happen in sequence. Sometimes they are showing the same moment in time from different angles.
We obviously have no idea how long it takes for Henchie’s portals to go through a full envelope-teleport sequence, but for her to imagine having a chance of escaping at all, I’d have to assume that the whole process of opening a portal to closing it behind her would be fairly quick.
All told, I still think that Henchwench was down there for a second at most.
Max not grabbing her again is a whole separate issue, which I have also hypothesized about in another post.
You do bring up some good points in my other theories, such as the fact that not all Supers have super-strength or toughness. Again, I was merely trying to come up with a plausible explanation without remembering the whole picture. I suggested that maybe Henchie’s portal-friend had increased endurance as a possible explanation.
I do totally agree that Hench Wench is a total Mary Sue. But once again, I’m only trying to come up with feasible explanations…..fair or good are secondary considerations for my miswired little brain.
That last one, of combining their toughness….yeah, I phrased that badly. I had intended that to be combining their ‘super-toughness/endurance’. I knew that she couldn’t just copy their natural traits, only super-powers. The theory that I was banging on there was that neither of them (Henchie or her portal-friend) have anything more than a bare token level of enhanced durability on their own, but she merged the two to give her enough endurance to survive the depths of water we assume that she went down to.
So it’s hard to explain the bends without going into a detailed paragraph about it and people have already done that on page 2 of the comments here. But suffice to say it’s not the pressure that kills you but the pressure releases gas into your tissues and blood and if an air bubble gets into your heart or brain that can cause stroke or heart attack. I definitely believe Max can resist pressure with her super powers but can her super powers stop a gas bubble from forming in and traveling through her arteries? Can her powers prevent a heart attack or stroke? I realize I’m probably just overthinking it at this point but what else are we going to do in the comments.
I am prone to hyperbole.
I know that you don’t get immediately squishified when exposed to ocean depths-level pressure. But I have also seen the episode of Mythbusters where the tested the effects of differential pressure & the meat dummy they created got squished into his diving helmet. Yes, it was not instantaneous, but it *was* a result of sudden pressure differential. Sort of the opposite effect of the Bends, if I understand it.
I do realize that it’s not the meat that gets crushed so much as the open pockets *between* the meat. That’s what makes oceanic depths so dangerous to you puny surface dwel….us! *US* surface dwellers! (yeah, I covered that up pretty well).
I just…I like to think of myself as an entertaining storyteller. I tend to exaggerate things for the sake of the story. The pressure *would* be dangerous down far enough, & it’s caused by pressure crushing in on you….hence, ‘jellification’.
I remember that episode and now I’m trying to think of why it would get squished into the diving helmet. I think the diving helmet might actually be the part that made it fatal. I mean it definitely would have been fatal anyway probably but without the helmet, you would be even squished from all directions. The helmet creates a space to be squished up in to. I wonder what the results would be if they did it again without a diving helmet.
Now that you’ve said it out loud, I think they may have actually explained that in the episode….the old-style diving helmets create a low-pressure space for a diver to get squished into, compared to the high-pressure of the ocean depths outside of the helmet. Without the diving suit being filled with equalizing-pressure, all of that soft squishy material is going to go up into the void.
& did. It was actually kinda disgusting.
The helmet itself also got severely damaged by the pressure once the air got shut off.
Oh! I just read #5 after having to deal with #4 and I think you hit on something no one else has yet! So to answer #5 sort of, if the portal is an envelope that gets moved from one location to another and not a hole that gets moved through, then the water would be just that much surrounding her. As I stated in my previous comment, water is not compressible and is therefore the same volume no matter what pressure it’s at. However the bit that gets me excited is the air bubbles you pointed out! They are quite large. Reading through these comments I believe someone said that it was ‘the east river’ in New York and a quick google says it gets as deep as 108 feet or roughly 32 meters. Now pressure under water increases quite linearly at 1 atmosphere(atm) of pressure for every 10 meters. Also the volume of a given gas decreases inversely to the amount of atmospheres of pressure it’s under. So 32 meters would be just a little more than 3atm, meaning any gas would be 1/3 the volume it would be at seal level. So if they were in the deepest part of the river and Henchwench takes one of those bubbles in her face from 3atm at the bottom of the river to 1atm in her apartment, that bubble would instantly triple in size, creating quite the shockwave.
Did no one else catch the typo on the page?
CAVITATON vs CAVITATiON
Nope, missed the typo. Good catch.
I realize upon reading my last few paragraphs again that I may have come across as dissing Dave’s work by comparing it to DC comics in such a negative way.
I apologize for that….I actually really love this comic. My brain, as I may have mentioned before, is a little miswired.
I was giving a one-sentence explanation of why the comic page turned out the way it did, & then I went into a tangent that was pseudo-related, but the circumstances are a bit different.
In DC Comics, they basically create unstoppable god-like beings (Superman has literally lifted infinite weight!), & then ignore a mammoth chunk of their power so that some lowly human schmuck with a trademark weapon can hurt them. The Justice League are so far beyond their mortal foes that it’s laughable to even think they could ever stand a chance, & yet the likes of Lex Luthor, Toyman, Captain Boomerang, Heatwave, Mirror Master, Black Manta, & other such ordinary humans with oddball weapons are considered to be some of their most dangerous foes.
Grrl Power is much more reasonable. Max is powerful, but she has limits. Her foes have a chance of beating her, or else it’s laughably obvious that they don’t stand a chance against her. Plus, the comic directly challenges comic book logic.
Please keep up the good work, Dave. I love your comic, especially for how you tackle comic logic head on….well, that & watching to see how Sydney monkey wrenches everybody’s day :P
I think Superman is the worst character concept from a dramatic writing perspective ever. Not that I don’t like Superman I just think he’s a very dumb character to write for. Super strength, super speed, invincible, laser eyes, more I’m sure I’m forgetting. There is nothing that threatens that character at all and so you have to invent magic rocks or different colored suns or equally unreasonable villains to essentially invalidate the premise of the character and have a threat to move the plot along. I don’t really hate Superman, but I hate him as a concept for sure.
Depends on which version of Superman.
Silver Age Superman? Yes. Silver Age Superman sucks. He gets powers as the plot demands, often with absolutely no reason for how he got those powers. Nothing pre-existing to explain it. No semblance of consistency. Problems that remind me a little of Hench Wench honestly pulling new employment and new legal clauses out of the aether.
New 52 Superman or New Earth Superman? They’re a bit better there, because they finally decided to explain how the heck Kryptonian powers work. Occasionally you’ll get a stupid writer who is put on a Superman or Supergirl book that has no clue how powers of the character that they’ve been tasked to write about works (which usually results in a really badly written comic book), but in general, New Earth and New 52 have a basic idea about kryptonian powers. Most of it is based on the Kryptonian Biomatrix (which also can manipulate localized gravity) and solar radiation absorption and manipulation (in a limited way). Which is actually VERY similar to Maxima’s zero point telekinesis.. It explains Superman’s strength, his invulnerability, his ability to fly, his superhuman stamina, his superhuman speed, and his heat vision. It even explains x-ray vision if you are willing to ignore a little about how x-rays actually work, since comic book writers often have a hazy relationship with hard science (high energy wavelengths can be x-rays between 1×10 to the -8th power and 1×10 to the -12th power).
Although it still doesnt really explain frost breath.
The solar radiation angle is because the kryptonian biomatrix evolved to be able to subsist, in an emergency, on solar radiation of a certain wavelength. The higher the energy output, the more power the kryptonian biomatrix can feed into a kryptonian’s cells. Red is the shortest wavelength (there’s a reason it’s called shortwave radio), and has the lowest energy output, so a red sun only will give the barest amount of energy to a kryptonian, so they are basically around the strength level of a human being. As the wavelength goes from low energy to high energy, it makes a kryptonian more powerful by giving more energy. Kryptonians are basically living solar batteries. Orange means they have some power, yellow is Superman level power like we know in the comics, green and blue pretty much make them unable to control their powers.
To quote Bender from Futurama, “Like putting too much air in a balloon!”
https://comb.io/KE7ATM
“There is nothing that threatens that character at all and so you have to invent magic rocks or different colored suns or equally unreasonable villains to essentially invalidate the premise of the character and have a threat to move the plot along”
Well there’s also magic, which isnt really a weakness, but it’s something against which he has no more defense than any other person who has no defense against magic. It doesnt negate his powers. And there’s mind control. Also huge outputs of electricity can hurt him as well, apparently. Like city-level amounts of electricity (see Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns or the character Livewire)
But in general, you don’t attack Superman straight on. He has too many physical abilities to have a good shot at victory. You attack him where he’s weak, not where he’s strong. You use strategy. You manipulate that he does not ever want to kill anyone (unless you’re Zack Snyder who seems to have no clue about Superman). You make scenarios in which he cannot be two places at the same time. You attack his public image to turn the world against him. You target his mind. Also you can use advanced technology sometimes, to at least slow him down or misdirect him.
That’s why someone like Lex Luthor winds up being a bigger threat to Superman than even the very few supervillains who are equal or superior to him in strength, like Mongul. It’s why Batman has beaten Superman in a fight multiple times, while Captain Atom has not. Because Batman relies on the idea that Superman will usually hold back and has a psychological need to be good. It’s how in Justice League: War, Vandal Savage altered Batman’s counter-plan – by relying on Superman being an intrinsically good person.
https://youtu.be/r6RKU5SnmRw
It’s how Batman was able to beat Superman even when he was being mind-controlled by Poison Ivy.
To quote Batman from Hush:
“If Clark wanted to, he could use his superspeed and squish me into the cement. But I know how he thinks. Even more than the Kryptonite, he’s got one big weakness. Deep down, Clark’s essentially a good person… and deep down, I’m not.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTjGg14RbVs
It’s when writers don’t remember this key trait of Superman that Superman becomes a really crappy character.
Well I’m glad it’s gotten better. I have no real knowledge about the comics if that wasn’t obvious. I imagine a lot of that silver age stuff was cold war propaganda. But ya, I’m definitely a child of the movies more than anything.
Yeah, the movies were definitely Silver Age superman style powers. Great Wall of China Wall Building vision!
Turns out Superman really only has a single power, which encompasses all the other powers – manipulating the inertia of any matter he is in contact with.
I did enjoy DC comics in between the Silver Age & the 52…..the 90’s & 00’s were my favorite era for DC comics, because their heroes were still powerful, but not to the god-like levels that they are now, & (most) had limits that made battles seem more tense & balanced.
Of course, that was the era of Wally West Flash, so….yeah….a guy who can run faster than instantaneous cross-universe travel, & who literally outran death to a point in time that death could no longer exist?
Yeesh.
Needless to say, I’m a Marvel fan :P
Ignoring the issue of potentially vaporising water due tot he pressure/speed (since there seems to be plenty of coolant around), another issue of moving that fast, all in a sudden, without much in the way of gradual acceleration, would be water displacement, even with an object as small (relatively speaking. I know Maxima’s amazonian statue is not what most people would call small.) can cause some majour waves. Maybe not “Deep Impact” level, but enough to do some localised damage.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercavitating_torpedo
Ok short version realize I’m trying to do this based on old data with certain assumptions.
If maxima is supercavitating at the speed of sound underwater, assuming a contact point of 5mm then the initial cavitation bubble will have a temperature of roughly 1700 Kelvin, at that point it’s not water or steam but degenerating into oxygen and hydrogen plasma. Thermal transfer will result in the water around and slightly behind her her flashing into a mix is steam and disassociated oxygen and Hydrogen, but as she passes any given point the steam column will basicaly undergo a collapse and rebound cycle, with the hydrogen recombining about 3-4 meters behind and then possibly degenerating again because not enough energy has bled off as light and thermal radiation from the superheated air, and cooling from water. Assuming the first cavity that she is flying through, is 1M, the following cavity’s will be roughly .46 m then .188m then .077m, and at that the last pulse will appear to be mostly foam due to Rayleigh–Taylor_instability. Any residual pressure pulse will at most look like boiling water, then hot rising water as meat radiates away from the column of her passage.
Realistically When she breaches the surface it will look more like a cross between sub launched inert cruise missiles and a water heater blowing. Depending on how far down she was when she started off the rising column of hot water can persist for a couple of minuets, but odds are she was less than 100m under. Even at that why she did not immediately fall to the floor in her apartment from compression and decompression pressure shock is interesting to say the least.
She being hench wench, not max. sorry. We had a diver who on a safety line whose impromptu lifting from 20 m to the surface from the governor the lifting cable resulted in ruptured eardrums, bleeding in the lungs and other injury but then he had a normal descent prior the hardware failure.
Huh. Max is surprisingly dumbbrained there for a bit for letting go when being teleported. you’d wanna squeeze a bit instead~
Question… henchwomans powers require subcontractings, right? Don’t contracts usually have to include stuff like real names, and proper ID to be legally binding? I mean, usning an alias is nice for superhero fights, but everyone can call themselves names… for proper contracts, wouldn’t it be required for someone to prove they really are who they say they are before their signature is considered valid? Especially if filed with the authorities as her L.L.C. obviously was?
And IF that is the case… then… well, Arianna DID review the whole thing… might it not be the case that she has all the info Maxima might need to make a housecall (and this time make sure Henchwomen is knocked unconscious before she can portal around, and then wake up in Opals old cell?)
I mean, it’d be -just- the kind of “smart-dumb” oversight that some people dazzled by their own cleverness would make, right? ;-þ
Nope. You can use an alias and a PO Box if you wish. Many contracts don’t even have addresses. Henchy here is probably in the clear.
Utilities? Renter’s insurance?
…are only relevant if you already know who she is.
I hope Hench Wench has renter’s insurance….!
I’m only commenting because of the ‘Down Periscope’ reference in the bottom left panel.
As someone who watched that movie on the regular, I’m sad I didn’t catch that.
Wrong movie, comrade
God dammit I CAN’T WAIT for this bitch to show up again
/sarcasm
*tap*
…
*tap*
…
*tap*
…
*blink*
Is it broke?
*notices the date under the comic, looks at today’s date*
…
Fuck
I caught up
doncha hate it when that happens?
Now you can join in the debates and chats :D
And may God have mercy on your soul.
Just kidding, the forums are fun.
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