Grrl Power #923 – Telling pause much?
My first draft of this page had a nonomatopoeia in panel 5 that said “TELLING PAUSE?” but I decided you guys are smart enough to figure that out without the hand holding. Love me some nonomatopoeias though. It was a tough call. I wound up using it for the page title instead, cause I got to call it something and I sat here for half an hour trying to think of something else. I might have gone with something ziplocky, but I used that in the stinger.
I would make a joke about “Telling Pause” being the nickname for the mute polar bear yenta down the street, but homophone based puns don’t work as well in text form.
Really, the question Max should be asking is “Why did you have hilariously fatal rounds chambered in the first place?” but mmmaybe Max isn’t asking questions she doesn’t really want answers to. Cora has been very helpful in the past – which doesn’t give her a get out of jail free card necessarily, but it’s not like Max hasn’t killed anyone in the line of duty. At this moment, she’s probably wanting to ensure that Cora is feeling sufficiently admonished that she’s more careful in her choice of ordnance in the future… if she’s allowed to go gunning down Earthings again, that is. Unfortunately Cora doesn’t appear particularly admonished.
So there’s this game called League of Maidens that’s out in Alpha on steam. The primary hook is that you can make a superheroine and fight a bunch of single player MMO-ish type adventures throughout a number of biomes, but really, the whole point of the game seems to be the character creator, which has sliders for everything, like nipple hardness, nipple length, and breast rotation. I’m not sure who thought “My character’s breasts need to be more clockwise” but it’s in there. There’s enough freedom to make some hilarious and/or nightmarish looking ladies. It’s free to download and play, so I already made a Maxima-ish looking character without buying any skin packs, as you can mess with “skin wetness” sliders and overall shininess and make their skin look gold-adjacent. I’m told that under all the T&A, there’s the seed of a competent game, but unfortunately their financial strategy is to take every single annoying thing about free mobile games and combine them into one product. I’m totally fine with cosmetic supported games, I’ve put a few bucks into Overwatch and Path of the Exile, but League of Maidens has at least 3 different currencies, plus I think it has some kind of daily endurance meter which counts down, and you have to buy more endurance to keep playing (in their defense, I’d guess you’d probably be able to get about 4 hours of a daily charge), a cosmetic shop (which is fine, IMO) a UI cluttered with shopping opportunities, and the ability to subscribe to LoM Plus, which gives you a 20% discount in the shops. It’s a lot. I’m not sure I have the endurance to finish the sprawling tutorial, but all that said, if anyone decides they’re into it and wants to post their Grrl Power-ish creations or harrowing nipple monsters, do feel free.
The new vote incentive is up! 
I know a lot of you are here for some Sydney goodness, and the next picture I’d been working on was an A-cup three way with Pixel and Krona. Unfortunately, the whole “Everything is bigger in Texas, including our power-grid failures.” kerfuffle left me with intermittent power for about four days, so I was a little behind this month. I partially made up for that by doing a single person pinup, and Maxima won (or lost) the draw this time. There are several clothing/non-clothing variants over at Patreon, including a special version with guest art direction from JJ Abrams. (Yes, there’s a ton of lens flares, hah hah. I amuse myself.) The a-cups will return next month, so please enjoy this offering in the meantime.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like!
SuperheroThey're super, thanks for asking!
Meatspace ComicSeriously these are awesome. Check 'em out!
Not UpdatingNo longer updating or only updates sporadically, but definitely worth reading.
SeriouslySeriously you guys. If you like Grrl Power the check these out.
"Mature"Mature subject matter and occasionally something explicit but usually safe. Can't guarantee the ads are safe though.
Dongs Ahoy!Full frontal and backal. Lots of skin, sex on some or all pages, explicit or otherwise.
Ok, I’ll bite. What IS she doing there?
Lasagna.
Pointing out that it’s relevant to be able to question your enemies after you’ve defeated them, even if you don’t want to take them alive otherwise.
Perhaps Maxima will find out that Cora does have an entire swan yacht full of people who CAN be questioned, in the custody of the police, and who are not currently lasagna.
Currently, permanently… to-may-to, to-mah-to.
We are in a universe where Scoria is around. Seriously she was shredded at least twice that we know of.
That’s a good point.
Maybe angling to determine the limits of alien medical technology? Pushing back against those Prime Directive boundaries? Seems a little weak, though. I mean, she probably could have just asked.
Masterfully surfacing almost every actual valid point made by the commenters in the last three days.
I love how “military” Cora’s posture and expression is in panel 7.
“I am returning the correct military get-out-of-jail-free answer in the correct military posture. It’s true, even… not that it matters to anyone involved.”
This was my thought as well. “Fine, I realize you have to do paperwork on this event including whatever I say, so here is the answer that will cause the least trouble for everyone. Myself included.”
Almost as if Cora has been in a similar situation before.
Many times before.
Killing bad guys may be fun and games, but the paperwork is a killer!
yeah I got the impression this is the sort of question Cora has been asked many times by various local law enforcements of many worlds and space stations who would like to question the criminals. Cora is a cowboy not a deputy so to speak.
Many? Try every single day she’s on a station. Sometimes plural per day. Probably because she’s done more good than harm when she plays gunslinger with the unwinder rounds.
One would think if things like that happen every day, eventually the muggers will get the hint, and those who do not die out.
or all the lesser criminals put aside their turf squabbles, join up with bigger gangs, pool their resources to get better weapons and hire less law assist6ing mercenaries and escalate the violence.
Cora’s big feature here is she doesn’t stay in one place and isn’t the local law enforcement. Her methods work for the short gain for her strolling into town, do a job, and head on down that space trail.
My impression was Cora has played big damn hero a couple times on Fracture and earned some goodwill and notoriety, but doesn’t live there or even stay long. It’s just a major crossroads, and she has enough pull with the management to get away with some things.
Or they could just stop messing with Cora and go after weaker targets.
That’s what I meant – if that happens every day, like ArtyD suggested, eventually she will gain notoriety as The Mugger Parts Litterer and all but the dumbest criminals (or the ones trying to make a name for themselves) will know to avoid her.
My point was is that it’s more likely this only happens from time to time – enough for Cora to know how to deal with the cops, but not every day.
To criminals, Cora is just a natural disaster. She happens, then moves on. You try to stay out of her way if you notice her first. That’s it.
No point in changing the entire game for someone who is not a permanent (or frequent) aspect of it.
So many littering tickets…
Right. Yelling at her clearly doesn’t make much impression. But the nuisance-value of a littering ticket does.
What sort of round is considered non-lethal with the insane variety in alien biology out there?
-Given with our problem creating a truly non-lethal round just for humans I doubt there is one universal round. They might have something like “works on carbon-based enemies from 50 to 200 kg”.
Yep, Lethality and stopping power depend greatly on the target.
When it comes to some supers, .50 BMG is non-lethal.
Given that there was an active situation ongoing that included multiple alien races and various superpowered humans it is quite reasonable for Cora to have hyperkill ammunition in the chamber. She needed ordnance that was effective no matter how hardened her target was.
What I do see working against Cora is that the comic is set during the time Bloomberg was mayor of NYC, and he is notoriously anti gun. I can see him raising a stink about alien mercenaries and their evil alien assault weapons.
The Unwinder wouldn’t have been effective against, for example, Brüt – it would just have bounced off.
Also, Cora’s gun has multiple barrels. She can have hyperkill in one chamber, stun in another, normal slugs in the third.
We don’t know how the Unwinder works: for all we know, it would have burrowed into Juggernots’ skin
Or unwound on impact and wrapped AROUND him before attempting to slice and dice.
Voyager is making “motivated” assumptions.
“Motivated” by what’s seen on page.
While not, strictly speaking, impossible, both of your suggestions are quite implausible and in no way hinted at.
Unwind – to cause to uncoil : wind off : unroll.
While I agree that it probably wouldn’t work on anything it can’t penetrate what isn’t known is does it go off inside or does it become a molecular de-stabilizer or does it unwind the organs in a second.
Suffice to say having 15 feet of your intestines suddenly decide to become straight is possibly what happened as well. It’s not made to do that… Now if it went after the 100,000 miles of blood vessels…
from the way the rib segments looked cut, my guess is that its a monofilament gyroball delivered into the target via a capsule round.
Honestly wouldn’t be surprised if the time delay wasn’t caused by it burrowing to center mass or spreading nanite lines to form wires to spin about.
The whole thing looked very localized on him.
Technically, it was localized in him: what was formally ‘him’ ended up on everyone and every surface within ten feet of where he had been standing
Burrowing into center mass seems unlikely – I expect he’d notice that. And he clearly wasn’t in that much pain – standing upright, speaking clearly. Burrowing into him sounds a lot more painful.
I have no issue with the rest of your reasoning.
“Unwinder” – and our partial view of the results – gives us just enough information for an infinity of speculation, and not so much that it will ever be resolved.
Well played!
Absolutely nothing is seen on the page about how that round reacts to different types of targets.
If you have contrary evidence, please reference the page and panel number.
On both sides, discussion of what an unwinder does on different kinds of targets (or even plain vanilla human ones) is all invented based on personal social preferences.
Standard ordinance. Littering.
The assertion that in other circumstances the round shows vastly different behavior to what we’ve seen is what would need evidence.
Both burrowing and unspooling from the outside would be an entirely different set of bevahior that would need special engineering, also could be interacted with by the target, making the effort dubious. Also, if your target is tough, even the effectiveness of the Unwinding is unclear – and it’s not like Cora has enough experience with supers to predict that.
So I’m sticking with what we’ve seen on page about how the round works.
Given Max I’m not sure the tzar bomba would be considered lethal.
That said there’s one super who’s power is to absorb amplify and re direct electricity, meaning a taser in in his hand and he’s a living electrocutioner.
Granted another has the ability to absorb and negate or redirect projectiles aimed at him that hit either back to there sender or at a target of his choosing . Baseballs, Bullets, grenaids, missiles, free fall or guides bombs, icbms, even photon torpedoes that actualy hit him so technicaly if he had that superpower he could have shot the round back.
Actualy given that, there’s probably a number of supers who DON’T realize that there’s more to them than they won looks lottery or just got the basic captain America / Black Widow package.
I aN talking about superpowers in general.not specific to the Grrlpower verse
Ok auto complete has gone insane. . .
Run slow like to get you out of there and before you leave your car in your truck and you have a few things to do with your inventory I need you to do a couple of plants and then you have a couple more water pumps that will work on your home if it’s not going out of your power pole or
Ok that’s was amusing for a bit
Hell, given some Supers, nukes are non-lethal.
Well, the correct term these days is “less lethal” rather than “non-lethal”, given just how many people were ending up getting killed by weapons and ammunition carrying the original terminology
IIRC there was nonlethal ordinance used just recently on our golden goddess of destruction.
Also a high strength, fast setting, extra gooey, foam would be able to handle all but the slimiest and gassiest ne’er-do-wells.
Then there are the force bubbles that only need to operate long enough for proper apprehension.
Not for humanity.
And almost certainly suffocate them to death, a slower and more painful way to kill which no law enforcement group should select over the simple *bang* you dead options.
Also consider the damage this magic foam might do to property. Paintings destroyed, carpets ruined. Bullets cause small, easily concealed or patched holes in things for the most part. Blood stains can be an issue, but they are an unfortunate byproduct that isn’t guaranteed to be a result of shooting someone. At least you’re not deliberately hosing down the Louvre with your magic foam and priceless antiquity destroying machine.
While i agree, I feel obligated to post this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnyhkBU1yaw
And this – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiKbsyD8Cjc
https://www.schlockmercenary.com/2002-09-28
in the Schlock Universe, Goober Rounds are nanomotile, and smart enough to migrate ‘away’ from dangerous buildups of exhaled gases, preventing suffocation.
A very valid question, and one which points out the lunacy of Maxima, who carries around a Tyrannosaur pistol, even asking such a question.
Dabbler doesn’t share her tech with we backwards hunams, and neither will Cora (*ahem*glasses*ahem*). So presuming that Cora even has non-lethal options when shooting someone is preposterous.
Max carries that pistol as a tool of visual intimidation and less-lethal option than one of her energy blasts.
Also your logic is completely flawed given Dabbler has bondage rounds as a demonstrated means of restraint, and the alien mercs had a stasis rifle to take down a super (so presumably super effective on flatscans) and Cora fabbed up those BDSM restraint devices in a few moments. It’s entirely possible Cora could have ordnance that instantly teleports the now physically tagged target to her brig, or tentacle room, or several kilometres straight up for the lols
Are you so very limited that in the space of writing a two paragraph response you forgot both that I’d already covered Dabbler not sharing her tech, which makes for no way for Archon to have access to anything other than Earth tech firearms, and also covered Cora not being held to a standard that the entire rest of any law enforcement anywhere on the planet?
Yes, yes you are.
Maxima dressing down an alien for not using a hypothetical and unknown alien firearm to do something that Maxima herself cannot do with her own firearm is ridiculous. Maxima even said “some sort of” for non-existent Christ’s sake, thus proving that she has no fucking idea what she’s talking about and is just applying a different standard to Cora than she would apply to any member of her own team who shot and killed Cowl-Man. No intelligent person, and certainly no intelligent leader of an elite policing team, would ever ask such a stupid question. But it’s Maxima’s turn to hold the Idiot Ball.
It’s not about whether Dabbles will or will not share her tech, it was about if she did or did not have non-lethal options
Yes, Maxi knows nothing about space-tech, largely because up until a few months ago, she didn’t know space-tech was even a real thing
She knows some of the things Dabbles has (her handheld rail-gun for a start), so she knows they are more advanced than Dirt-science, and also knows that Dirt-Science keeps looking for non-lethal stunny types of weapons (which is what the tazer is supposed to be)
One of those stasis-ray things in bullet form, maybe? Assuming that’s possible. It would probably be short-lived due to small power supply.
Actually, there IS a lot of info to be had from a bag of fresh human remains. DNA is but one source.
You mean like hand-reading? “You do not have a life line anymore, which means you die violently about half an hour ago.”
I mean things like nutrients and isotope ratios. From these you can know a person’s diet. From a single strand of hair, scientists can now determine where a person has been living recently, and if it’s long enough, where they lived before that.
We are what we eat.
Ah but you have overlooked the occult.
This is where a biological sample of the deceased would be more than enough to recover the spirit.
You then can interrogate that at your leisure without repercussion.
The dead don’t have any rights, you can’t accidentally kill them, plus there are ways to incarnate spirits.
Yes, the assumption that Dabbler would be unable to interrogate the decedent has not been validated on screen, but is apparently true from her lack of reaction. On the other hand, Arc Dark may have such abilities. We’ll have to wait until after the henches are debriefed to find out if there’s something Boss tartare knew that they didn’t, that Arc needs to know.
Rule of Drama says there must be.
You also can’t coerce the dead into telling the truth either: what are you going to do, not let them in to hell? (that’s a paraphrased quote from a movie by the way)
ACTUALLY, there are specific spells that will summon the spirits of the dead and force that summoned spirit to cough up with the truth to any 3 questions asked REGARDLESS of their wish to lie and/or remain silent. In fact, attempting to even bend the truth or hesitate to answer will cause the spirit to experience pain FAR beyond what a normal flesh and blood being would.
Granted whether such spells exist in the Grrl-verse remain to be seen.
So, you are endorsing torture far beyond what is currently being used around the world?
Well maybe when you do the post mortem questioning seance with angels present they could be offeredparol t9 purgatory instead of hell.
Well in the marvel universe now the dead do have legal rights, and can even be sentenced and incarcerated.
Which would at most be a very small part of what Archon is interested in.
Fortune teller “you have a long life line, it goes all the way into your sleeve”
Rene “what does that mean?”
Fortune teller “you die in a tunnel”
Allo Allo
Do you mind using another user name?
Maybe we could go for broke and have 10 of us.
I see what you did there:)
If you were related to 10 obstetricians you could say “Ten Kin-Obi’s.”
…Or maybe you wouldn’t say it…
No… *pregnant pause*… no, you would not say it.
That League game sounds like about half the games on Nutaku…
Probably just as repetitive also.
With the ‘Naruto running’, it looks like a porny-Champions Online (which had hella customizing as well)
Everyone thinks ninja running looks cool, but all I see is Tina Belcher.
https://youtu.be/C9Txdn3xNl0
Never said it looked cool, to me, it looks stupid
Oh gods, the creator has jiggle physics intensity settings for both breasts and butt, AND genital customisation
Wasn’t genital customisationing part of the selling point for Cyberglitch2077?
I wouldn’t be surprised if they have some people that can question the dead in Arc
Speak with Dead is a low level in most fantasy settings, so apparently it’s not that complicated. There are stronger versions of that spell that will also compel the spirit to answer and answer truthfully. And even some fringe cases where such a spell would inflict pain beyond comprehension should they refuse. The latter tend to be used by individuals that doesn’t have much in the way of scruples, obviously. Of course these are specific settings, so it remains to be seen if such are present in the Grrl-verse.
There was a sale on hilariously lethal rounds at the space gun store.
Acme Corporation’s best customers are toons. Who else is gonna buy rocket powered rollerskates, dehydrated boulders, portable holes, unwinder rounds… [1]
[1] Product not intended for use with living organisms.
Looking at the new invotive, all could focus on, was the cum on the t-shirt
It is supposed to be a Latin version of “With great power comes great responsibility,” but a better translation would be “Cum potestate magna venit magnus responsabilitate.” (at least according to Google Translate.)
It was a (terrible) joke
You’d really start a slogan on Max with the Latin word “Cum”?
She would not be amused.
It’s all a ploy for the Get Maxima to Say Bingo Card.
I bet Dabbler said she knew Magna when she was at university and saw a “Magna Cum Laudy” t-shirt
I can totally see Dabbler in a “Magna Cum Loudly” t-shirt…
Vote incentive sends me to the last month shower scene on patreon. Guess there is a link error
Yep, looks like it. The correct link should be https://www.topwebcomics.com/vote/11940 .
Whoops, fixed the links.
“Ham on WRY.”
Honestly, being a super hero world, and one where one of the common origins is ‘x% alien’ for their power/ability, it would make sense for rounds with much more concentrated lethality compared to poking a few holes and hoping they bleed out. Very little looks like it’s going to shrug off an unwinder round, and the things that are, are probably going to need some real ordinance for. One of the main issues with most overkill is over penetration, something unwinders seem to lack (even if there’s a very large splash zone).
I also stand by my assessment that the unwinder is great for someone like HW/Concretia, particularly once it’s been demonstrated that simple decapitation isn’t enough to stop her. Even if it just slowed her down to force her to make a new body, that’s still a good bit of effort.
I would also be willing to bet big bucks that Cora has some variant of diplomatic immunity, as a possible representative of a foreign civilization, with extremely advanced technology.
not diplomatic immunity, but her civilization could demand her return if she were ever imprisoned, which could go several different ways depending on several different factors.
She wouldnt have diplomatic immunity because she is neither a diplomat nor part of a diplomatic envoy recognized by the United States. The only alien currently who would have that sort of immunity would be Irradon, who represents extra-terrestrials on Earth on behalf of the Council, and the Council does have diplomatic relations with the United States.
That being said, Cora rescued Sydney twice now. Once from being stranded in deep space and once from Sydney being shot in the head. Maxima has a VERY protective big sister soft spot for Sydney and I doubt she’d actually try to punish Cora beyond a verbal admonishment in order to try to make sure it doesn’t happen again, all things considered.
I don’t think it’s all about Sydney though – Max is also the very-visible head of a military team, and has been taking great pains to ensure they are taken seriously and behave professionally. Having a vigilante (space or otherwise) waltzing into their op and gratuitously splattering a perp not only goes severely against Max’s personal sensibilities, it creates a PR nightmare. Even if it had been a random civilian instead of Sydney or another team member.
I don’t think Max is opposed to the actual killing so much as the timing and execution. Like she says in panel 1, barring a clear and present danger (which had yet to be stated) execution is explicitly not Cora’s call to make.
Technically, Cora didn’t ‘waltz into their op’, she was invited along
Cora has probably been involved in more ‘life and death, split second decision’ events than Maxi has had golden showers (even including the entirety of the Gulf Invasion)
She was invited to observe tourists, and field-promoted to babysit disabled perps, but explicitly told not to get involved in the fighting – see my comment on pg 2 linking the relevant strips (was supposed to be a response to someone else).
Yes, Sydney’s kidnapping was sufficient cause to step in, but that’s hardly the same as “invited” to participate.
“I don’t think Max is opposed to the actual killing so much as the timing and execution.”
This is true. She did try to kill Sciona with a kill shot at least once when she fired a plasma blast at her powerful enough to turn a bridge into swiss cheese without knowing that Sciona would be able to BARELY deflect it with her wings. After all, Sciona was bad. :) And it was probably even more questionable than what Cora did, since Cora was actively saving Sydney’s life, while Maxima was just chasing Sciona (although Maxima might argue that, from her perspective, she was trying to stop Sciona from getting to the bridge that she wound up almost destroying trying to stop Sciona).
Which actually strengthens my point though. On top of which Maxima IS very grateful to Cora. Losing Sydney REALLY took a toll on Maxima’s psyche, and I really do not think she will come down on the person who found and brought her back to them. Especially since they had no other means to do so and Cora was risking her life by going to a planet with those worldkillers in order to save someone that she didnt know at all as a favor to Dabbler.
It’s not like she just came to Earth unannounced, and also was invited along by Archon, like G said. They asked for her help. Not to mention that even though she has no diplomatic immunity, Irradon probably would need to be in the loop before arresting Cora (especially for something which has a VERY good criminal defense in any court). I just would be very surprised if Maxima did something like that, given all these reasons.
Hero status, having saved / delivered Halo and helped defend against the Fel. (With information, if not firepower.)
Seeing as Cora is a freelance mercenary and bounty hunter, I seriously doubt she has any sort of diplomatic immunity on a planet that has only just learned about other worlds and has no legal precedent or procedures in place as of yet.
I like the new vote incentive, the contrast between the badass muscles and the big pouty lips is hilarious.
Yeah, but why is Max looking so dour? I know she rarely smiles but couldn’t she crack a grin during the photo op?
‘tiny head’, something no one has ever accused Dabbles of :P
She gives GIANT head :D
See page 922, panels 5 and 6. :D
well… i mean, i doubt she’d be overly opposed to giving tiny people head as well.
She might even deem it a challenge. Somehow.
“Colonel. With respect Arc-Swat walks around with lethal ordinance and utilizes it. Even a shot to the shoulder can be lethal by hitting an artery or the subject going into shock. My rifle was chambered to unwinder rounds in the chance that something arrived similar to the attempted invasion at the press conference. It may not be the most pleasant way to put down a perp with lethal intent. But what was on hand at the time. Ma’am.”
Max has never shot someone in the shoulder. In fact, she’s only shot someone with her gun after confirming some form of enhanced durability.
And even then, only in the leg.
And while technically any hit can be lethal, it’s pretty asinine to assume that Cora and Archon are comparable on that score.
… When did she confirm Juggernot had any form of durability? After he came out of nowhere and punched her across the street? Or after he casually tossed Raymos into her cleavage?
The shot to the leg was the test to see if he had durability (which means, she intended to remove his leg if she was wrong)
In Max’s experience, and indeed what we see as viewers of the comic supports this, super strength and toughness go hand-in-hand pretty much 99% of the time.
And based on how easily that guy punched them both across the street, he obviously had a considerable amount.
Superstrength and super toughness DO go hand in hand. Otherwise you rip your muscles from their attachments on the bones, break the bones, crush the joints, strip the skin off your hand when you punch somebody, and so on, and so forth.
You can pretty much count on somebody having at least toughness proportional to their strength, or avoiding any combat at all costs and having a really interesting medical history.
It’s like Spiderman in the comics: “Invulnerability” isn’t listed among his powers, technically, but he’s been hit by cars and apologized to the driver about the collision damage, and routinely taken hits that would homogenize a normal human’s internal organs, and shrugged them off.
It would be pretty funny for someone to have superstrength (and durability against their own use of that strength) but low durability against others. They’re ok in a fight if they get the 1st punch, but they crumple if anything comes back at them – code name is “Superflinch”.
Maybe they should stay out of the crimefighting game and go into construction.
There’s a character in the Magellanverse who has super-strength, but normal durability. She has to wear an exoskeleton in order to use her strength, or she will shatter her bones.
Durability against your own strength and bullet resistance less related in Grrl Power than they should be:
DaveB on Maxima herself with overcharged strength: “Still she’s got that ‘super strength toughness’ at the moment like you see in comics, where she’s not particularly bulletproof, but still somehow doesn’t rip all the skin off her hand when punching him hard enough to cause a localized tectonic upheaval.”
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-283-tectonic-uppercut/
the sort of thing that made me declare the power levels in the dragon ball series didn’t count as Omega, Omegha-Delux, Cosmic, Mega Cosmic, Giga Cosmic, and so on…
because despite the amount of energy and force they were supposedly unleashing relative to before, they both weren’t really doing anymore damage to the area around them; and their own bodies were somehow still physical, had to breathe, eat, could be burned, and could be harmed by bullets *super doing this in direct contradiction to the original dragon ball series*,
so new power levels had to be devised for characters who are showing insane levels of power yet somehow in direct contradiction are beholden to mundane physical weaknesses.
power levels such as Stupidly, Ludicrous, and Ludicrously Stupid.
(I still like the show, but at this point the characters are toons that can die and stopped being ki enhanced and what not long ago),
my suspension of disbelief has criteria after all like having a body to match the power *especially if its physical power or stated that the energy comes from within and the character isn’t just channeling it from another dimension*.
Interestingly, Maxima herself is kind of an exception – she has strength and toughness, but independent of each other.
So far, she’s the only one like that, but she has been gambling a bit on him not being number two.
Even Max’s base form is very super human, If I remember correctly.
Yes, but not in proportion to her strength if she maxes that attribute – one couldn’t derive Maxima’s toughness from her shown strength at any given moment.
Not reliably at least – Max’s power mapwas shown with 5 different attributes (and points in 3 separate ones) during the restaurant battle. With enough time and observation, you might be able to come up with a reasonably-probably estimate, but how would you ever quantify her exact allocation or how hard she’s fighting against a foe who also has unquantified power? Especially if neither of them is actually doing much, like when Max and Kevin were at a standstill and barely moving?
It would mostly look like people just grunting and shouting dramatically about their powers, without much fighting actually happening.
Another possibility is that, over time & with plenty of practice, Max has learned how to boost her Toughness to at least proportional to how much she boosts her Strength…To the point where keeping those two attributes in conjunction with each other is pretty much a reflex-action.
However, she can also “de-couple” her Strength from her Toughness, as we saw in the battle with Vehemence…To keep him from choking her, she had to sacrifice a lot of Strength in order to boost Toughness. At the time, he (wrongly) thought that it was the electrical current he was using that sapped her Strength & thinks of that as being a weakness of Max’s.
any action creates an equal and opposite reaction, which means that his fist and arm could take the same impact that she received from the punch without any damage.
Unless the punch is psionic in nature, of course.
Exactly right. Superstrength without superdurability would be a horrible power to have. You’d risk seriously injuring yourself all the damn time!
Yup, which is what happened to Shizuo Heiwajima in Durarara!!: he lacks the unconscious limiters that should prevent him to use more strength than his body can bear AND he also lacks the ability to keep his temper in check once someone hits a button on his berserk keyboard (not helped by the fact that he’s the favourite target of troll supreme Izaya Orihara), so he spent years wrecking his own body by throwing fridges and vending machines at people or beating them up with telephone poles. By all rights he should have become a crippled mess, but somehow he kept coming back stronger, until after hundreds of broken bones he became tough enough to use his strength without harming himself.
I have seen this used for zombies a few times, no restraints on the strength, but also results in tearing up their bodies needing to have them repaired or regenerate (different kinds of zombies).
imagine if a superpower was the reversal of every action has an equal and opposite reaction. You’d have to react to create the action required
Yup. Corrwct link is (if it doesn’t get censored): http://topwebcomics.com/vote/11940
And vote incentive question.
cum amplus potentia venit amplus onus = when there came a large extent with the power of the burden of
So uhm Google seems to have failed me. Better translation, please?
I think it’s suppose to say ‘With great power comes great responsibility’.
Personally I think it would have been better to go with something like ‘Magna potenta magna onera’ i.e. ‘Great power, greater burdens’
Great power often comes with two greater burdens for female supers like Maxima.
Tell that to Krona. She has great power, but her “burdens” are fairly small.
Kronachrome isn’t a Super though, just super adorably cute :P
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MostCommonSuperPower
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BoobsOfSteel
:P
with great power comes great responsibility
With great power comes a huge utility bill.
Thank you HanMK and Blackie. That makes way more sense.
Panel 7
Anyone else feel that Cora has had cause to practise that statement more than once?
If you recall her ‘rescue’ of Sydney from that space station a while back.. y’know, the very poorly advised potential mugging, Cora is very well practiced at giving excuses a lot like that one.
Yes. Yes, I do.
You mean that with her combat experience she entered combat ready to shoot a bullet that is always lethal, but mostly three second after it was shoot? Yeah, I can smell the bulls**t from here and I this comic is not broadcast in Smell-O-Vision(TM).
Either she didn’t know what she was facing, and then the unwinder is a tactically bad choice in so many scenarios… , or she she knew what she was facing and she picked the unwinder on purpose, hence bulls**t.
Cora handled the situation with tactical perfection, if you don’t care about the life of kidnapper slaver would-be murderers, if you want to save the hostage 100%, and if you implicitly believe that big girls can handle a little gore (which she’s already seen Sydney do once.
All claims about tactical imperfections are pure bullshit. Nothing we’ve seen on screen creates any likelihood that it would have gone any other way than it did. It’s all invented from people’s personal preferences.
However, see maxim 43: If it’s stupid and it works, it’s still stupid and you’re lucky.
Imagine if he was a super with, for example, Heatwave powers? he is hit, but he is alive, turn off heat aura for defense, even if the unwinder is not melted at that distance Sidney is charbroiled. And that is just one possible example.
Unless she knew he was not a super, then it means he entered in the room with the intention to kill him, and that “i had no time to swap bullets” is bullshit. (note:she can swap LIMBS in the blink of an eye, and you want me to believe she is unable to swap weapons/bullets?)
I mean “turn on heat aura”, of course
Yes, or imagine he was a unicorn in disguise, and the unwinder round spilled deadly rainbow farts across a third of the city.
You can make up any contrafactual, but that’s all you are doing.
All that is required for Cora’s response to be accurate is that she saw the tactical situation, watched the Boss’s gun go out of alignment with Sydney, decided that the unwinder round would WORK, and pulled the trigger.
Changing weapons is not a zero phase action. If she had taken however many milliseconds it takes to do so, the tactical situation might have changed before the new weapon was ready.
She is not required to change her loadout at the risk of her friend the hostage. There was no REASON for her to decide to risk changing the loadout.
Everyone claiming that there WAS is blithely ignoring the critical risk to Sydney.
“Yes, or imagine he was a unicorn in disguise, and the unwinder round spilled deadly rainbow farts across a third of the city.”
well, at this point I would not exclude it as a possibility in this setting.
What so weird with the concept that the pople kidnapped Sidney could be superheroes? One of them was, why not more? and Supers come in all shape so many powers can make the unwinder useless or worse.
And my point stand “I could no swap ordinance” is bulls**t
statements made by characters need not be completely factual, people lie and make excuses all the time and as such characters can be expected to do the same. given Dabbler’s head-shake hint, i believe that she just came up with a bureaucratic excuse for having used that round after the fact while being questioned by Maxima. we’ve seen Cora do this when interacting with the law enforcement on the space station that Sydney was stuck on.
also, Maxima doesn’t know what an unwinder round is, nor how it works, let alone how long it takes after impact to “unwind”, so Maxima has no way to call Cora on her bullshit.
Exactly. It’s worth pointing out too that her gun is multibarreled, so even having the Unwinder loaded is no reason to not have something else loaded.
Sidney’s description was pretty accurate.
Given the three-second delay between firing and effect, I suspect that the unwinder round is a smart weapon. The delay is for analysis of the target to ensure lethality, but minimize collateral damage. Which suggests to me that it could have a wide variety of effects.
If you need to kill someone, you need to kill them IMMEDIATELY. Not after they’ve had three seconds to do a final act of defiance, such as pushing a button or squeezing a trigger or uttering an arcane word.
Her choice of round was tactical BULLSHIT. It was the kind of thing that a bad guy does because they’re holding the villain ball and petty sadism is more important than getting the job done.
Against a slow-moving super like Concretia it would have a fine choice, but she wasn’t the main threat when Cora got there.
I’d assume that the unwinder round isn’t just delayed action, it’s delayed action with the option of canceling the massive damage finale.
Only Mr. Lasagna didn’t respond to being shot by surrendering.
No indication of cancelling the detonation was evident in dialogue, weapon design, or pitifully short countdown.
Every indication has been given that Cora is a violent sadist who at least has found a career where she can channel that in a mostly acceptable fashion.
He wasn’t asked to surrender, and he didn’t respond with violence, so there’s no reason to detonate it. Also, from her behavior she certainly wasn’t planning to no detonate it.
I mean, it’s fairly plausible that Cora had control over the fuze – it just implicates her even worse.
I was expecting Maxima to say “Your services are no longer required.” to Cora and leave it at that.
If there is an inquiry I don’t know who would have jurisdiction.
Sydney, Concreata and Henchmen One and Two could make statements.
I don’t think she’ll get anything greater than a verbal reprimand she’s already received.
Max will tell her chain of command “Eh. Aliens. What are you going to do? It’s a different society with different concepts.”
They would have to find Goon A and Goon E first, and convince them to tell the truth
I believe the implication was that Cora arranged to have them tracked. However, that has not been stated, so we’ll have to see what happens on screen.
You would still have to convince them to tell the truth
It’s not clear Archon ever actually engaged Cora’s services – Dabbler asked her to give Sydney a ride home, that’s it. Ever since then she’s just been hanging around, and happened to get involved with the Fel and now the alien super-kidnapping attempt(s). But even if there was some sort of official or even de facto relationship, firing her after the fact wouldn’t change anything about the investigation except perhaps increasing its difficulty.
Also, “aliens have different social norms, oh well” not acceptable in a ‘verse where there is an official alien presence in both the civilian government and the Council, and especially not from Max who is responsible for keeping Archon’s official alien consultant in check. It’s not even acceptable in the real world when a foreigner breaks the law at any level. “Our turf, our rules” is fairly universal.
“the whole point of the game seems to be the character creator”
If you want a game that’s primarily character creator, why aren’t you playing City of Heroes?
https://play.cityofheroesrebirth.com/
Its an old MMO that closed in 2012 and there are a number of private servers out there (all free).
Rebirth is the best (imo).
Personally prefer Homecoming, myself.
And no, it’s not all about the character creator. In fact, after seven years of playing the live game I still hadn’t seen all the content.
But yes, go play it. It’s free now and all over the place.
o.O O.O
CoH has FTP Servers! I thought she was lost and gone forever!
THANK YOU!
There are CoX servers all over the place, catering to all sorts of fine tuned desires. Some have even started putting out new powerseets and content.
Hell, unless they’ve gone down from silliness, even 4Chan had a CoH server up for a while.
I don’t get the last panel, she gets what?
Maxima’s point that you can’t interrogate a corpse
Indeed. There is a line from some old Tom Clancy novel has always been sticking with me on these situations:
“You can’t interrogate dead people and executions can always be arranged later.”
Ah right, gotcha!
Just ignore the mages, some of whom might specialize in necromancy.
In a world where a cop can shoot a “suspect” in the back or a kid with a toy pistol with impunity I find it hard to tolerate Maxima’s ratting on Cora. Sydney was literally seconds aways from being shot and she is a police officer in eminent danger. No judge is going to fault Cora for using lethal force. Max ought to be grateful that she saved Sydney’s life but not so much as a “Thank you” or even an acknowledgement seems to be forthcoming.
Also I think it is a bit hypocritical of Max. Wouldn’t her power blast at Sciona that took out a bridge have been lethal if it had connected. As it was, there probably were a few civilians that died from the resulting accidents or when the bridge collapsed.
Max quite reasonably (and accurately) suspects Cora of using sadistic ultraviolence because she wants to and she can. It was, technically, justified ultraviolence this time. Next time it might count as a war crime.
+1
There is a difference between just killing someone — justified or not, deliberately or not — and killing someone in a brutally horrific fashion that leaves even someone aware of your propensity for violence emotionally traumatised
Max obviously holds herself and Archon to a higher standard than the cops in those departments.
What, are you saying you *want* Max, as a law enforcement agent, to be less stringent about rules of engagement and force authorization?
I’m sorry, but if you actually want incidents of “Whoops, I murdered some kid/civilian” to go down, then it requires people like Max being anal about how one should act in the field.
>Wouldn’t her power blast at Sciona that took out a bridge have been lethal if it had connected.
Yes, because she observed Sciona flying at super sonic speed at a bridge of civilians. Sciona, the genocidal terrorist. So she wanted to knock her off course.
>As it was, there probably were a few civilians that died from the resulting accidents or when the bridge collapsed.
1)The bridge didn’t fall.
2)Even if the other stuff was true, how is it at all relevant to what Max is saying now?
“Yes, because she observed Sciona flying at super sonic speed at a bridge of civilians. Sciona, the genocidal terrorist.
Except Max was mistaken about what Sciona was doing. While she was trying to escape Max who was in pursuit, she was NOT endangering the bridge. Maxima was right to assume Sciona might, though, and I’m not actually coming down on her for thinking that. Although she was pretty reckless in the use of her plasma blast when she had other options, given Maxima’s superspeed greatly exceeding Sciona’s speed.
“So she wanted to knock her off course.”
No actually she was trying to kill Sciona. There was nothing said about her ‘trying to knock her off course.’ Sciona had spotted her, and was heading towards a bridge to try to evade Maxima (Alari are capable of teleportation once they are stopped, as we later discover). So Maxima moved to intercept because she mistakenly (but understandably) assumed Sciona was going for the bridge. By trying to kill Sciona, or at least injure her with extreme violence, with a plasma bolt fired DIRECTLY at her back. Center mass. Maxima was only reckless because she should have first made sure of an Alari’s capability to deflect a blast with their wings, since Maxima has Dabbler as an information resource.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-614-stratotail/
Then Maxima lied and said that Sciona took out the bridge as a diversion. Which, as bad as Sciona is, the facts do not support. Sciona did not take out the bridge, as a diversion or otherwise. Maxima took out the bridge accidentally because she did not realize that Sciona would be able to block a lethal plasma bolt with her wings. And it definitely did not look like Sciona was planning anything beyond (do not die) at that point.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-615-whoops/
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-616-superhero-triage/
You’ll notice – Sciona and Maxima both make exclamations about it. Sciona because that was a kill shot that was narrowly deflected, and Maxima because she ACCIDENTALLY BLASTED A CIVILIAN BRIDGE. Then when she reported in about it, she said Sciona did.
“1)The bridge didn’t fall.”
Not because Maxima did more than the minimum to prevent it by giving Arc-swat about 30 additional seconds to fix the mistake that Maxima caused.
“2)Even if the other stuff was true, how is it at all relevant to what Max is saying now?”
I think Skulker is just pointing out that Maxima can be a bit of a hypocrite.
Which is true. Maxima can be a hypocrite. She was also like that with Dabbler when Dabbler shot off Sciona’s leg, even though Maxima had done something even more severe just a short while earlier. It’s understandable for Maxima to want to have her people show restraint, but still hypocritical when Maxima does not always show the same restraint (ie, Maxima destroying a construction place during the beginning of the Vehemence fight, ignoring the very advice she gave to Sydney before the restaurant was destroyed).
But I sort of like that about Maxima, at least from a storytelling perspective. Maxima is often arrogant, sometimes reckless, and sometimes jumps to conclusions without thinking things through better. I like when heroes have human foibles and are not perfect. Perfect people are boring.
“What, are you saying you *want* Max, as a law enforcement agent, to be less stringent about rules of engagement and force authorization?”
I think it’s good for her to be very strict about it. Like you said, she’s a law officer in a very visible position of power and should set a good example for her people.
But Skulker is pointing it’s a still a bit hypocritical of Maxima.
Personally, I don’t think it’s likely that she’d do more than admonish Cora, both because of what Cora has done for Archon, what Cora has done for Sydney (Maxima’s shown a clear protectiveness for Sydney), due to Cora acting in defense of others, and because it could cause an intergalactic incident.
Spec-ing into super-speed drains from other attributes.
And they’ve known about/been talking about Sciona for days by then. If Dabbler actually knew about the deflection, she would have told her. Also, irrelevant; the bridge didn’t fall and no one died, as far as we see. Simple as that, so the assertion is false.
“I think Skulker is just pointing out that Maxima can be a bit of a hypocrite.”
But in this scenario, there’s no real hypocrisy. Because Max, in fact, doesn’t go around killing criminals willy nilly. Unless the interpretation of this admonishment is that Max is against all use of lethal force.
“Spec-ing into super-speed drains from other attributes.”
True, but what else was she using when she was flying. Strength and Speed. Was she using strength? Armor? No. She decided the third part of her ‘golden triangle’ when chasing Sciona was a plasma bolt. She could have just as easily put more into speed, and overtaken her, without trying to make a kill shot on her.
But that’s sort of the point of second guessing Maxima, and why she’s sometimes a hypocrite, like she is here with Cora, second guessing what Cora should have done. Cora was the one there, and Cora had the expertise in the situation. For Maxima to come down on Cora, while justifiable from a ranking officer standpoint, is still hypocritical, since she has regularly done the same type of thing herself in the past.
“If Dabbler actually knew about the deflection, she would have told her.”
Whether Maxima knew or did not know, I can still show her to have been either reckless or using undue force (at least in the same level of undue force that she’s accusing Cora of using).
1) Maxima knew/Dabbler let her know fully about Alari capabilities – Maxima should have then known that it was possible for the plasma bolt to be deflected off the wings. She should have used a different tactic to take Sciona down, like speeding up and tackling her into the water. THEN a close up plasma bolt if she was really married to that idea, when Sciona’s wings would no longer be as useful for blocking. She clearly was able to do that over the water, because she did that later over land.
2) Maxima did NOT know/Dabbler did not tell her because she was not asked or had other stuff on her mind – Maxima would have then been using undue force to try a kill shot when less lethal options were available as far as Maxima knew. The very same thing she’s accusing Cora of.
Either way, Maxima made mistakes, and yet she doesnt think she made any mistakes. She just blames the bridge on Sciona ‘taking out the bridge’ – when it was Maxima who took out the bridge. She’s accusing Cora of using too lethal an attack… when Maxima herself uses very lethal attacks as well.
Which, again, is what I believe Skulker is getting at in his post.
“But in this scenario, there’s no real hypocrisy. Because Max, in fact, doesn’t go around killing criminals willy nilly.”
Again, Sciona’s survival had nothing to do with Maxima’s lack of trying to kill her. Sciona was able to be brought down in ways other than a plasma blast, and more effectively and less lethally. So HERE… yes, it’s hypocrisy.
And I should mention I don’t mind that Maxima is hypocritical sometimes. Maxima has very few, if any, physical flaws. Her flaws, instead, are behavioral. She’s arrogant and sometimes a bit of a hypocrite. She underestimates people because she IS so naturally superior to almost everyone else. That’s fine. That makes her a more well-rounded character when the character has exploitable flaws or things you can point at to say ‘look lady, you’re not perfect, so stop assuming you are.’
:)
>But that’s sort of the point of second guessing Maxima, and why she’s sometimes a hypocrite, like she is here with Cora, second guessing what Cora should have done.
Except she doesn’t, which is why I call this mild admonishment at best.
As soon as Cora said, “I don’t believe I had time to switch to non-lethal ordinance.”, Max immediately drops the “undue force” issue. She’s only holding Cora to the same standards that she herself to.
>Maxima would have then been using undue force to try a kill shot when less lethal options were available as far as Maxima knew. The very same thing she’s accusing Cora of.
As the very page we’re talking about shows: Max actually believes Cora that there wasn’t enough time.
>She’s accusing Cora of using too lethal an attack… when Maxima herself uses very lethal attacks as well.
Again, this assertion makes no sense unless the interpretation of this admonishment is that Max is against all use of lethal force. Which she quite clearly isn’t.
Your ire is misdirected. We should be more focused on doing something about the cops killing unarmed citizens and harming children with impuny.
I think we already showed last strip that police based on the past several years that police shooting unarmed suspects is actually exceedingly rare. Something along the line of 55 people a year who are unarmed are shot, out of approximately 2 million police interactions with the public per year on average, and out of 1004 people who are shot in total, armed or unarmed. Plus that 55 includes both justified and unjustified shootings, since as someone else had responded to me with (Torabi I think), people can still be a deadly threat even if not armed (for instance if they are charging the police or grabbing for the police gun, or grabbing for another person). There can also be justifiable mistakes involved (the toy gun example people keep throwing around if the toy gun is realistic looking, or if the suspect is making a sudden grab for something and the police are not able to tell that it’s not a gun).
Also not to mention that all of the unarmed shootings are thoroughly investigated, and when there’s no reasonable justification, the cops are fired and arrested themselves. Even when there IS reasonable justification, the cops are sometimes still fired.
So I wouldnt call it ‘impunity.’
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Fortunately the answer to your question is a name that’s already in Latin.
Deus Ex Machinae :)
All praise Deus, amen.
I think the point of the unwinder round, and why Cora had them loaded, is one of deterrence. If the possibility exists of having to face multiple aggressors, hitting one of them with an unwinder is more likely to persuade the rest to rethink their attack, as well as life choices in general, then hitting one, or even multiple attackers with the “Painless Deathray That Leaves No Marks”. Is it all kinds of messed up? Absolutely, but in the long run, it probably means less people get killed. At least that’s the reasoning I can see Dabbler and Cora using.
But it WASN’T a deterrent, was it? At least, not until she had used it, and any large-calibre round would have had the same effect.
It deterred the Goon’s from sticking around, didn’t it?
Goons are not known for being good at self preservation but they usually run when you get their boss. No sense in sticking around where what used to be your boss is sticking all around.
Right, so it deterred them, 100%. Next contestant.
What, it did not deter violence by the henchmen? So they continued to fight after seeing their boss lasagnafied and distributed?
What page and panel did THAT happen on?
“Continued to fight” would imply they were fighting before the Unwinder exploded, which they weren’t. Seeing how they were trying to stop Bitch Lasagna, it also wasn’t very likely they were going to from Cora’s POV. And if they were, they would have attacked before the Unwinder triggered.
And I certainly wouldn’t want to surrender to the bloodthirsty bitch Cora presented herself as.
I don’t buy the whole ‘deterrence’ thing but people making her out to be a sadist are also wrong. She is so revered by the space station that they gave a fine for littering despite obviously shredding some living beings. Her methods may be gruesome, but when your experience includes fighting enemies like the Fel, who can annihilate entire planets? We already know there’s individuals and organizations which can top even them. Her action is not only justified but makes a lot of sense within that context. The question is whether that context remains valid when encountering supers – and the answer is yes.
The fine for littering was an act of spite by the officer who knew she couldn’t make murder charges stick.
The fact that Cora does nominally heroic things in no way prevents her from being a sadist. The fact she shredded Mr Lasagna with an impish smile clearly as payback for his own brutality very handily demonstrates this. She enjoyed him dying and the manner in which it happened.
The fact you had to add “nominally” to offset the act of saving an entire space station filled with living beings – multiple times – makes me disdain you. You’re undoubtedly one of those people who complains about firemen dousing your burning house with water.
No, she clearly enjoys the violence. Look at that satisfied smirk in panels 4 and 5 of the last page. At least she only indulges in violence in combat, and she overdoes it only subtly (as evidenced by about half the comment section considering her recent actions justified.) And otherwise, her heart seems to be in the right place.
Nevertheless, my point wasn’t that she’s an unhinged sadist, but that her behavior made her look like one, hence discouraging surrender, as a counter to the argument that her actions were motivated by making the mooks surrender.
The point as I see it, isn’t to encourage opponents to surrender, but to encourage them to flee. Surrendered bad guys need constant minding, food and water, or at least room for a sufficient number of stasis pods and a steady supply of power. Bad guys who run away need none of these things, and will actively council others against further engagement. Establish a reputation for such bloody antics, and fewer people will be willing to fight and risk bloody-violent-splatty-death. The real weapon here isn’t the unwinder, it’s fear, and it’s one that is well known to Sci-fi bounty hunters like Cora. Boba Fett is probably the best known example, having to be warned by Vader that his quarry is to be taken alive, “No Disintegrations!”
You don’t really want them to flee. Because then they can return to take revenge when you least expect it, or do all other sorts of shenanigans. This goes double if they have a history of sneaking up on your friends and trying to kidnap or murder them. Triple if you’re law enforcement adjacent, who want them captured as an end in itself.
It makes more sense when you consider the nomadic lifestyle of the Space Bounty Hunter™, and the likelihood that a lot of the goons they’ll be facing don’t have bounties on them. Yet, at least. Could they return to try and take revenge? Sure, but that’s likely to require a level of dedication and more importantly, funding, to try and track them down, then your average henchman possesses. In jail a low level goon is no good to anyone. Alive and free they can either decide to give up their life of crime without a criminal conviction weighing down their options, or they can keep henching, and likely end up wanted, with a price on their heads, and thus potentially profitable for the aforementioned Space Bounty Hunter™.
“In jail a low level goon is no use to anyone” – balthazar
True, if we assume that he’s given up all the information he knows under interrogation prior to being jailed, and that no further questions will arise while he’s in custody (e.g. in relation to the arrest of another gang member). You’re evaluating at the wrong point of the process: his value while in jail may be close to zero, but that’s because most of the value he has can be extracted while in custody prior to jail.
Also note that even if the goon’s value does drop to zero while he’s in jail, the likely alternative is that he rejoins his gang (or a similar one) and thus effectively gains a value that counts against you. Picking the zero-value option might not put you ahead of where you were before the choice, but it does leave you better off than picking a negative.
Of course, this is more of an issue for operatives with defined responsibilities and areas of operation, such as ARC, who may be trying to actually dismantle the gang rather than simply avoid it. For the travelling SBH, the ‘negative’ value is more likely to be indirect: negative value to the place you may want to visit again, which may make you less welcome there in future if it’s sufficiently large and/or attributable.
Or maybe they only run to cover before turning around to see if they can’t stop you from unwinding you too by shooting you first. Or sneak up and sabotage your ship before you can leave. Or get ready for when you might return and greet you with a sniper round to the face if you do.
At the very least it isn’t universal enough to default to without thinking – and then she’ll have to realize this is a quite different situation.
I suspect, as a freelance bounty hunter, she should probably have non-lethal ordinance as an option as a matter of course. Seeing she has the same armory-to-hand- tech that Dabbler has, plus she can use the effects that simulate arms and legs as weapons, the Unwinder round was absolutely deliberate. Dabbler’s initial reaction confirms that as she also thought the whole idea was hysterical.
I say the round was deliberate, but I don’t necessarily believe Cora is a sociopath or even automatically sadistic. First off, i don’t think Cora normally puts that much thought into consequences of actions. But more importantly, I think her amusement was more of a Punisher style effect. She, and Dabbler, found it entertaining because in their minds it was what the villain deserved. Poetic, hysterical, goopy, justice.
He was a threat, now he’s not, nor will ever be again. Pragmatism.
I suppose the real indication on if it was truly excessive or not would be the answer to “Why did she have Unwinder rounds loaded on a planet full of lasanga bags in the first place?”
I wasn’t aware that Cora WAS contracted to provide services to Archon in any case. More a case of Max managing Cora’s presence as best she can, consonant with facing alien and super-powered opponents whose abilities, level of threat or even existence she can’t define with any degree of confidence.
Also, I daresay there’s some sort of hand-wave explanation and I’ve missed it, but how did Max manage to dive into the river, then fly back wearing a torn department store outfit? You’d thing she’d be walking around naked, by now. She has had her clothes blown, or torn off before – is it like Roger Rabbit’s handcuffs?
Dive? She was teleported. Are you asking why she’s dry?
She’s been wearing that outfit since the department store on page 890. The rip occurred in panel 1 on page 915.
No, she surfaces very quickly (see “cavitation” sound effect) then flies across town, back to the Square.
I’m not sure of your point. Use more words. She flew out of the water she was teleported into. Her personal resilience shield protects her clothing against most effects.
I told you when and where she got the clothes, and the rip. Apparently, though, the “Arc Swat” logo didn’t hold up as well as the fabric, because it disappeared along the way.
Maxima’s power creates a telekinetic field around her, which is why the bola-bomb nuke during the parking lot fight only blew a relatively small hole in her clothes when it would have rendered someone like Achilles completely naked.
Or anyone else, slightly dead in at least two (million) pieces
Now I’m almost curious what would happen if an Unwinder round was fired at Achilles…
Poor traumatized Sydney is going to need a whole extra allocation of counselling.
Also, I call BS on Cora. Whatever else the Unwinder does, “immediate take-down” isn’t it. The perp had ample time to pull the trigger on Sydney, for one of their accomplices to do so, or anything else requiring not more than three seconds.
Cora walked into a known close-contact, hostage situation, in which she might well have been familiar with the principal perp, loaded for bear. She is a known, self-declared bounty hunter and mercenary, whose background is only known to the extent that she has seen fit to disclose it. The inference – that she was well aware of who or what she was facing, and had an interest in killing them – is inescapable.
Cora shot him in the shoulder of his gun arm causing him to drop his weapon and could see his accomplices were actively trying to stop him shooting Sydney.
Frankly at that range the shock of a wound that size would likely have incapacitated him anyway, so the Unwinder is definitely overkill on a regular human; if you know you’re targeting a regular human in advance.
She’s a fucking alien, non-terrestrial, bounty hunter and mercenary. This is her first time on Dirt
If she is familiar with Lord Lasagne, hen that means he was not from Dirt and was a greater threat than he first appeared
Show of hands, who wants to see the little old granny polar bear?
I am imagining something like doddering Mrs Bapka from Lackadaisy Cats, only seven feet tall and built like a linebacker…
So Cora rescuing Sydney takes a back seat to pureeing some scumbag? Hypocrite much, Max? This exchange is sadly reminiscent of some Civilian Review Board Monday morning quarterbacking a LEO’s split second decision in dealing with some perp. Walk a mile in my boots, sparky, then give me your opinion.
Kinda like most of the commentators either complaining about what Cora did, or the ordnance used, or both (and some were arguing about one while defending the other, and others were doing the other way)
To properly reduce the rate of officer misconduct in the field, frank scrutinizing and investigation is a bare minimum requirement.
I’m sorry that you think the people we entrust to enforce the law and take lives are held to too high a standard and must suffer the inconvenience of being *gasp* questioned when they kill people.
Cora isn’t an officer, but Max gave her leave to act. So Max is at least tangentially responsible for her actions.
Frank scrutiny indeed. So far we have Cora:
Pros:
– Rescuing a LEO and ostensibly preventing that LEO’s death.
– Taking down a likely serial murderer judging by their words and actions.
– Providing time and space to allow for the rescue and possibly recruitment of a ‘gray super’ who has an excellent power set.
– Dispersing multiple potential combatants without a fight.
Cons:
– Pureed a guy, which was messy and traumatic to the now not-dead LEO
Maxima:
Pros:
– Loud? Maybe a con.
– Gold.
– Shiny.
Cons:
– Was the focus of the attack. (Yeah, don’t blame the victim, but as a military officer she should’ve been a lot more prepared for the decapitation technique.)
– Took much longer to capture the combatants than most of her teammates teammates had or would have taken despite her overwhelming moveset.
– Let a key combatant go (HW) for no apparent reason other than raw ineptitude.
I’m being somewhat sarcastic but point is the ethics review takes a backseat to group unity while still on the field and in a potentially combat-ready state (one opponent having, yanno, a f’ing portal). Doing this now when Syd is sitting there shellshocked is hardly helping. Not her, not Max, and not Cora. Heck it looks like Max is just venting her frustration over her own inadequacies to the one person who actually did something worth lauding (though still requiring an ethics review later).
“I’m being somewhat sarcastic but point is the ethics review takes a backseat to group unity while still on the field”
That’s the kind of attitude that leads to fucked up things happening in the field. And the attitude of officers not even entertaining the idea of questioning their peers.
You can’t seriously think Max’s brief questioning of lethal force on a different part of the field is a serious threat to team unity. Especially when no active hostiles are in sight.
“That’s the kind of attitude that leads to fucked up things happening in the field.”
No, it’s an officer’s inability to contextualize before reaming their reports that leads to fucked up things happening in the field. Cora is an exception because she doesn’t report to Max, but do you think reports who get chewed out before even being allowed to explain themselves will make an effort to report wholly and truthfully in the future?
No. That’s just human nature. And it applies at all levels. Much of the bullshit that happened in Vietnam was not actively ordered by the leadership but happened solely because the troops were given nonsensical orders detached from the real-world scenario. So the reports said, fuck this, I’ll do my own thing. Cue sickeningly comical loss of life and absolutely brutal behavior.
Rules of Engagement bind what a combatant does while criminal penalties bind those who break those rules. Anything else, like a mid-battlefield ethics review where the CO is judge, jury, and executioner, is not only risky and bad form, but is often prohibited by the actual ethics board.
“Especially when no active hostiles are in sight.”
PORTALS. Christ.
>but do you think reports who get chewed out before even being allowed to explain themselves will make an effort to report wholly and truthfully in the future?
Cora was allowed to explain herself.
>Much of the bullshit that happened in Vietnam was not actively ordered by the leadership but happened solely because the troops were given nonsensical orders detached from the real-world scenario.
Max did not give Cora nonsensical orders.
>Anything else, like a mid-battlefield ethics review where the CO is judge, jury, and executioner, is not only risky and bad form, but is often prohibited by the actual ethics board.
Max is just asking for clarification.
>PORTALS. Christ.
Other team members are on watch. And there’s not much that can be done about “suddenly there’s someone who can teleport”.
As far as they’re aware; the fight is over.
What does LEO mean? I know from context that you’re referring to Sydney but I have no idea what the acronym stands for, and I’m curious.
And immediately after pressing enter, I realized it stands for Law Enforcement Officer.
Not hypocritical, just focused on the aspect of the operation where the controversy resides and clarification is needed.
Gratitude for saving Sydney is taken for granted. It does not create a free pass for deliberate murder, even though certain circumstances may justify killing in defence of others. Maxima is simply trying to establish whether those circumstances did indeed apply, and whether there was any way to do so that did not involve wholescale destruction of evidence in a crime scene.
I am wondering if this MAY be a hint on what the unknown orb functions. As of now it is shown that Sydney has a really weak point that if the orbs are contained and where she cannot get to them. Could the last orb be some sort of set it and forget it. protection device, think of our battleships that have doors that can be locked in case of an emergency. Eh, just wondering.
if that’s the case, then it works on different rules than all the other orbs, so i find that to be unlikely.
Maybe it’s the remote control for the others, once you know how to use them.
Cora isn’t law enforcement, she’s a space adventurer type. Why does Maxima even assume she’s packing non or less than lethal ammunition for her personal weapons? I even doubt all races would design weapons with “stun settings” like Star Trek or Star Wars (for some reason). What might stun a human might only tickle or even enrage a different species, and that’s probably not something you want to be experimenting with when the other being is pointing something that will definitely kill you if they hit.
To capture VIPs or enemies with vital intel.
And the different enemies thing applies in both directions. What stuns a human might also kill someone from another race, and what kills a human might only enrage them. To be ready for everything, Cora needs a wide variety of loadouts.
Yep, and that one ended the violence perfectly, with only one human terminated, by a single shot.
A regular slug, used the same way, or a stun round would have ended the situation without any casualties. And the Unwinder didn’t offer additional safety, whereas an immediately deadly round would have decreased the risk of failure.
That unwinder round is some serious space magic.
First, it sticks in gun so it is impossible to reload on the flight over there. It also seems to remove all other weapons from the wielders arsenal of multitude.
Second, it has just enough penetration to not go through normal humans shoulder but has enough penetration incase the one it is shot at has super powers, personal forcefield or bounce-the-bullet-off space magic of his own.
Third, it seems to take down only one human, calculating its body position and not harming anybody else in close contact.
And fourt, it seems to give the target only limited vocabulary, excluding frases like “shoot”, “kill them all” or “push the trigger on that bomb we had stashed in the orphanage”.
Number three is accurate, the rest are delusions of wit.
The unwinder was the round that was chambered when Boss Lasagna’s gun went out of alignment with the hostage. It was strategically sound to use that round, and that plus a little grandstanding to focus the kidnappers on Cora for the three second delay saved the hostage with only one round fired and only one casualty, the kidnapper/slaver/would-be-murderer.
I think that was the point – satire about the round being reverse plot-armored.
As to the point about Unwinder not hurting anyone else, the space-tech we’ve seen so far actually makes that kind of believable with a bit of hand-waving. Perhaps the 3-second delay was the internal nano-tech fusing to the target’s nervous system and electrolyzing it into det cord for the second stage, which would explain the final results.
Max: “Do as I say, not as I do!”
Max has played fast and loose with the laws she was supposedly enforcing several times previously in the comic, in at least one occasion using lethal force on a fleeing suspect (in a manner that backfired on her quite severely).
Was Cora’s action the best tactically? Probably not. But given her previous actions, Max doesn’t have much of a moral high ground to stand on here.
You mean Sciona, the homicidal terrorist confirmed to be running around with dangerous, magical artifacts with clear intent to do harm?
Sciona, someone who has already made attempts on the lives of multiple, high level officials?
Sciona, who has already killed several officials?
You do realize that context matters, right?
You can understand that Scion and, for example, some kid running after shop lifting at Walmart, aren’t on the same scale of threat, right?
Cora’s choice was perfect tactically. The scene played out with Cora in 100% control of everything that happened, and none of the bad guys went off script in the slightest.
The claims about her being wrong has to do with legal, moral, or strategic implications, not tactics.
Cora’s response was absolutely horrible and Sydney is lucky that the guy didn’t realize he had three seconds to do something as a final gesture of defiance. Had he not been so arrogant then Cora’s response would have been, “Welp! I killed the guy who was threatening Sydney… but not until he’d killed her first. On the plus side, I was able to retrieve her orbs.” Beat. “I’ll hold onto them for you guys. Earth isn’t ready to have this kind of technology… so yeah, I’ll just take them off your hands…”
and why would he have suspected that he had a few seconds to live? and why would he have suspected that trying to shoot Sydney wouldn’t result in him getting a bullet between the eyes before he could accomplish that task?
if i had been in his shoes, i would have suspected that the shoulder shot was a warning and that Cora intended to take me alive, it’s only because you know what happened after it happened that you can even come up with these scenarios, but since the dude wasn’t precognitiant, he had no way of knowing what would happen three seconds before it happened.
Even if he didn’t, he was still attacked – and when someone has a hostage, you DON’T PROVOKE THEM. Being shot was already an attack upon him, albeit a seemingly nonfatal one. That’s plenty of time AND inclination to do something vile, even if he didn’t know he was a dead man walking.
So, the latin on Maxy’s shirt in the vote incentive: Cum Amplus Potentia Venit Amplus Onus
(With great power comes great burdens? I think?)
You’re not going to get an exact translation from Latin to modern English, but the intention behind the expression is “With great power comes great responsibility” cause I thought it’d be funny for their official seal to have Uncle Ben’s advice for Spidey on it. If there’s ever a Grrl Power movie, that’d probably need to have some legal review, but for now that’s what it is.
It’s quite a good motto for a law enforcement agency made up of people with superpowers.
I always liked Tom Smith’s variant:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnWKnSczaRc
(With great power, comes great power bills)
Google translate comes up with “cum potestate magna venit magnus responsabilitate”
Unrelated to my previous comment, I’d read some reports that the League of Maidens game that Dave mentions in the comic may contain a background bitcoin miner process, and that said process isn’t necessarily concerned with the safety and longevity of your GPU and CPU. The site I’d read this on tends to be sensationalist, so I’m uncertain of the accuracy, but it may make sense to approach the game with at least a modicum of caution.
If any app pegs your GPU/CPU then it’s one of three things; a miner, a benchmark, a bug. These kill your hardware via what’s known as focal heating.
Repetitive actions tend to produce constant use of specific electronic components. Typical cooling equipment cools the whole chip equally. Therefore, if one part of the chip heats up more than the rest – it doesn’t get cooled. Often this focal heating does not get detected by overheat protection.
So if you hear electrical ‘screaming'(coil whine) and you aren’t intentionally doing something incredibly taxing like rendering FurMark: shut the damn thing off NOW. That sound is electrons hammering some circuit so much it’s vibrating. That’s not healthy.
Funny thing is, against a lot of Supers, the Unwinder round would not be overkill. It would be an inconvenience. First, it has to penetrate the skin. (If it doesn’t penetrate, does it become an entangling round? Hmm…) Second, if a foe has really tough skin, the Unwinder round might very well be a flesh wound. Third, with regeneration? They just grow back from that. So given his outfit, in theory, Cora could claim she didn’t know he was a baseline human.
Then again, that might also be the question that Max is asking. “Was this a human, or a super? Did you bring in any DNA evidence (besides what’s on Sydney) so it can be scanned and determined? (And DNA evidence is useful in tracking down the organization behind this incident.)
Against Concretia, an enemy combatant, it would have been a minor inconvenience.
The main issue here is trying to do damage control. Someone being shot can receive medical attention and even with the stasis stuff you could in theory shoot someone in the heart then use stasis to keep them alive long enough for medical aid.
The problem is that she used stupidly deadly force to kill a target that could have been taken down by less extreme measures, while giving extra trauma to the time displaced young recruit who is experiencing nightmares about being trapped alone on an alien death world.
Then lets not go into the problem of how normal people might react to this. Even the super villain on a power rush had just caused a super brawl without harming any civilians, but knowing aliens have pistols that could reduce you all to paste? That’s something you do not want to have the public trying to adjust to aliens being real…. And wonder if they might turn you to paste if they think you are a threat.
Though considering Max also has dealt with Dabbler… She may be trying to ensure that you do not get repeats of this situation. Even space cops who see her as a hero said “That’s too much to stop a bunch of muggers”.
Yes Max does do some heavy damage, but only after confirming that the enemy can SURVIVE current or normal power. Max is the one who can not hop into a space ship and come back after the media and public react to the fallout of the attack.
What the fuck are you talking about? Maxi didn’t check to see if Sci could survive her blast, specially considering the damage it did to the bridge
What ‘stasis stuff’ in particular are you talking about? The gun that was nabbed and flown off with earlier? Or the pod that had had it’s power core removed?
Just because ‘stasis stuff’ is possible doesn’t mean it was on hand to be used
Cora ended a hostage situation with a single shot, with the only casualty being the person who was actively attempting to kill the hostage.
While you might prefer a less grisly outcome, there is no guarantee that the less grisly options would have resulted in an unharmed hostage, and as few casualties among the bad guys, localized in the sole person of the kidnapper/slaver/would-be murderer.
Cora almost got the hostage killed by using a type of ordnance whose only rational reason for existing would be if it were originally intended as a time delayed demolition round, for giving the person using it time enough to get behind cover before the detonation.
It’s not the fact that she killed him. It’s the fact that she used a method that was not only sadistic, but also STUPID. You need to kill someone with a hostage (or any other form of “I can do a bad thing in a fraction of a second”), then you DON’T give them several long seconds in which to act. You simply end them, immediately and cleanly.
Taking what Cora was saying to Ray before regarding her definition of deterrent (which is very short gain and not the sort of thing any real law enforcement or government should ever use and expect to last more than a generation or two), but for someone who is essentially a treasure hunting adventurer mercenary space cowboy makes sense.
A demoralization weapon. The idea being you face a group of thugs, you plan to get them to back down so you need to sufficiently demoralize/terrorize them a “I don’t want to kill all of you but I am definetly going to kill at least one you, your boss; and should the rest of you decide to not back down I have no problems dispatching of the rest of you as well.”
make it appropriately twisted, and horrific to witness and most opponents will flee in sheer horror.
Be the bigger bear approach.
which to repeat, terrible for law enforcement, perfect for getting the horde of goblins to run away in all directions after you turn their champion inside out.
> Time-delayed demolition round
Are you for real, right now? Seriously? Are you gonna demo a building by shooting it? Christ, I swear people are becoming more stupid every time I read something on the internet.
Like I said, it’s the only RATIONAL reason for it. A compact explosive for, say, breaching doors. Explosives come in all shapes and sizes, and for a variety of purposes – not just “blow up the ENTIRE building all at once.” Hell, look at the bangalore torpedo – literally, a tiny explosive on the end of a pole. It’s used for clearing wire barricades and other light obstacles without exposing yourself to fire.
You really shouldn’t mock people for being “stupid” as a general rule. There’s always the chance that you don’t know what you’re talking about, and that just makes YOU look like the idiot.
Oh, yes, let’s shoot something at high velocity so the chances of it ricocheting are thousands of times higher than with grenades. I mean, we’re talking about a civilization which uses hard light as a form of body mod, never mind the number of shields which must exist. Your idea is stupid and that’s why I called it stupid. Same reason YOU used the word stupid. Incorrectly, I might add, since a tool does not only have one use and you seem very dead-set on self-destructive ricochets being the only possible reason for having an explosive round.
You’re stupid, stupid, and stupid. Bite me.
There are rational reasons for it to exist – it does a lot of physical trauma and is therefore useful against the type of epopponent who need to be to cut to small pieces before they stop moving, while apparently doing no collateral damage, unlike a grenade would.
Those opponents could be of the type that allows for a delay, or the fuze could simply be programmable or remote triggerable.
Hat said, there’s certainly no reason to load it in this situation.
What Cora should point out is that she was walking alone into battle where the strongest enemy was a super with a concrete body. Tha Unwinds was a fine weapon against that.
May or may not have been… we have no idea, since it has not been shown onscreen. People against Cora have assumed the exact opposite.
Technology can’t talk to the dead, but thankfully ARC has access to magic, and communing with spirits is a thing.
Talking of Vote Incentives, when does it get to be Arianna’s turn?
We don’t seem to have body. What is the evidence that someone is dead?
We probably do have the body, if anyone is prepared to put the jigsaw back together. Would you be volunteering, in this situation?
Let’s just recall that Earth would only be the latest in the list of planets where Cora has a poor reputation with the local constabulary. She is well known in interplanetary civilizations to have a very liberal policy towards ordnance and escalation of violence. Cora is absolutely bullshitting here (with Dabblers’ prompting), and Max is well-justified in questioning her motives and her actions. It’s just as reasonable to think that Cora could have used some of that high tech to ascertain beforehand the relative threat level of the bad guys (assessing hardiness, density, armor, etc), and acted in proportion to the threat. But Cora is a mercenary who operates on wild-west justice standards and not within the confines in a well-maintained (-ish) civilization with due process rights, so she didn’t care to do so.
Due process is never afforded during battle. NEVER. It is always allocated before and after. Rules of engagement bind how we respond to enemies and criminal penalties bind how we respond to those who break the above. Max gave Cora the go-ahead to engage without ever briefing her on Earth’s rules of engagement. That is Max’s due process failure – not Cora’s.
Max did not give Cora the go-ahead, she told her to stay out of the fighting, and wasn’t consulted at all on Sydney’s rescue, Cora just took off while Max was fighting Hench Wench after getting a message from Sydney.
See my longer response (accidentally a new post instead of a reply) with the list of Max/Cora conversations on page 2 of the comments.
Uhm, she was instructed to do ‘guard duty’ on the very page you used as evidence; i.e. being told to not fight runs counter. They were informed of not being LEOs but how exactly does that inform them to ‘not fight’? More importantly, where was Maxima’s admonition after they ‘volunteered themselves?’ She said nothing and now we see the consequences. She did not properly inform them of their role and they took liberties.
Look, you’re drawing conclusions from things that weren’t said on-screen. And these discussions clearly and obviously did not translate to the outcome you’d expect if your assumptions were correct. If she had literally told them to “not fight” then they shouldn’t have been fighting, and ‘not supposed to use lethal ammunition’ is a hell of a lot weaker of a statement than ‘absolutely do not use more force than necessary.’
I don’t really understand why people are so willing to give Max a pass for her weak leadership.