Grrl Power #938 – Fast friends in high places
Hmm, take the stairs up one floor to the roof which you then intend to jump off, or just take the elevator down three floors? You have to admit, Anvil is thinking like a super.
I imagine most women, and black women especially would like to have a hairstylist with super speed. Or at least someone that can speed up chemical reactions. (And presumably, someone who can apply their super speed without yanking out half their hair.) Anvil doesn’t have a natural afro though. I attribute that to some quirk of her being a super in my head, but there’s no reason it would be. Red hair and kinetic absorption have nothing to do with each other, just as straight hair and super muscles have no relation. She just happens to have wavy red hair cause I liked they way it looked when I first drew her like that.
I do like the sort-of-but-not-really dreads look on her, but… it’s kind of a lot of work drawing all those leather ties, so I don’t know how long it’s going to last. Honestly, part of the reason I decided to change it was to set up a joke that might take a long time to actually pay off.
I know that Anvil looks completely different on this page. If my art has one weakness, it’s consistency. Fortunately, my art has many additional weaknesses, hah hah. Seriously though, on the prior page, I was looking at a picture of Gina Torres (Zoë Washburne from Firefly) when I drew her. I don’t often have particular actors in mind for most of my characters, but Torres and/or Angela Bassett could play her. Torres for the face, and Bassett from back in the day when she was buuuuff.
Anyway, I guess I should have kept using Torres as a reference, though I have to say I like the closeup of her face on this page better, even if she looks ten years younger from the previous page. That’s not a slam on Torres either, just how the art came out.
The new vote incentive is up! I tried something different this month – instead of doing one well painted picture with a bunch of dress variants, I wanted to tell a bit of a story. Hopefully it makes sense without any dialog or sound effects. So, instead of one picture, you guys are getting nine. Well, you are over at Patreon. The vote incentive is just the first one. And yes, Pixel is bendy enough to do a full on T&A pose.
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.
“I’m going to scream the whole way down.” “I know.” — thank you, those fit the characters perfectly!
One is super chill.
One is super the opposite.
They’re delightful together!
Don’t you mean,
“One is super chill.
One is super manic!
Together, They Fight Crime!”
Together they are super Chiic!
She’s going to scream the whole way down… but only because it’s more fun that way; https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-74-adrenaline-junkie/
Well, of course….One does scream on rollercoasters and other such high-speed attractions
“If you wanna go faster, ya gotta scream louder!”, as the wise(?) one once said.
weird thought, if she absorbs all the kinetic energy on impact with the ground from this jump, this means of course no energy is transferred into the ground/floor so naturally no damage to it….but what does this do to the friction resistance of the surface she is contacting? Is it going to be like landing on a slippery surface for her for a split second.
*waves hand vaguely*
Assuming Anvil lands nearly vertically, effectively all of the friction involved after the initial (absorbed) impulse at the instant of landing would be static friction. Since that’s resistance to initial movement from a fixed position at rest, and therefore has (again, effectively) nothing to do with kinetic energy, I’d expect her feet to stick just fine. Even with her powers activated, and she’s apparently practiced this maneuver before, so… *waves hand slightly-less-but-still-distinctly vaguely*
her ability to also expel that kinetic energy as strength would need to be really precise, which her falling and not absorbing any shock from the impact or transferring it to someone she is holding she will need to expel just a little kinetic energy to stay standing and prevent her momentum from throwing her over like landing on a slippery surface as part of human balance is pushing against the ground to form a stable point.
even just to walk she can’t absorb that kinetic energy and has to be able to turn it off or expel a little intentionally or else she wouldn’t be able to walk properly.
When walking you exert kinetic energy into the surface, as that surface is more stable and has more weight than you, which means it has the greater resistance your force has an equal and opposite force, basically the floor/ground pushes back in a sense and that moves you forward.
if you stand there and absorb ALL kinetic force without exception then your interactions with the ground during that time are going to get awkward.
all that said it looks like she has some pretty precise control on how much she absorbs and expels.
All that said, a straight fall and then stop absorbing right after, the friction should prevent any slipping around, really thinking about it, this become more a problem if she is trying to absorb and walk at the same time.
In bipeds, forward locomotion is more like falling face first and stopping yourself with your leading leg, not actually getting moved forward.
Moving forward is quadruped territory, and it’s more like a push pull thing.
kinetic exchange is still required, and apparently I walk different because I can feel my foot pushing off the ground when I walk, I don’t just lift the left and flop it down.
Standing friction does not involve kinetic energy (momentum), it’s just an applied force – no motion required, or you’d never be able to start moving. It is proportional to weight (mass * gravitic attraction), which Kenya’s power doesn’t appear to interact with, so I don’t think her footing would be affected at all here.
Running might be a touch different than a vertical landing, but without doing actual research/math I think even there she’d be able to stop on a dime at any speed, rather than doing a frictionless Scooby-Doo impression.
Called, controlled falling!
She probably can control that as a secondary part of her power
I have the very distinct impression that Kenya was only recently promoted to the officer corps.
She acts like a Chief (Gunny Sarn’t), and a god damn good one at that. Definitely someone I’d follow into a firefight.
Or a backyard bbq.
…
Or both.
Once saw a gunny stop and point at a recruit so hard that the recruit pissed himself, from about 30 feet away.
It is one of the 108 Techniques.
…the recruit undoubtedly screwed up.
There are very few things that transcend all military services in virtually any country on Earth.
‘Angry NCO’ is one of those.
I have so many stories, but most are NOT for public forums.
As I recall, Anvil is a sergeant. I don’t know if she is gunnery, staff or master. I think it was explained by Dave during Sidney’s utility belt escapade. So she is no officer.
Maxima is a Colonel, Hiro a Major and Peggy a Lieutenant. Harem is a Corporal. On what ranks Amorpheous, Heatwave, Stalwart and so on linger at is unclear to my limited knowledge, though I would presume Specialist or Corporal.
I think Dabbler is not really integrated in the chain of command, being not from Earth.
According to the Cast List, she’s a first luey. *shrug*
No, Maxi is a Lieutenant Colonel
Guessing the Dumbigo’s (Morph, Les, and Heatwave) would be Privates (or what ever the lowest rank is), due to them being vigilante’s before being Shanghaied into Archon
I think Kenya WAS a NCO, but maybe a Warrant Officer now?
She definitely still acts like a sergeant though.
Her entry in the cast list literally has her listed as a 1st Lieutenant.
Or a BBQ at a firefight.
If you’re lucky, you can follow her to a log ride, or maybe a roller coaster.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0QJNNIS-pY
Hopefully not one of those lame dinosaur adventure rides though. War can be hell.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HxK8yRYna8
This weekend romp is getting more interesting by the minute. X’D
I take both my BBQ’s and my South Park references seriously :)
I hope everyone has been having a happy holiday.
Today marks the anniversary of Richard Nixon’s death.
And if you’d prefer to commemorate religious freedom in America, it’s also the day of the annual David Koresh Memorial Barbecue.
*celebrates*
Hark! Mine eyes must doth deceive me that you hath not mentioned the most important of all holidays.
For tis today that one regails in celebraion at that most blessed of days, and if thou hath ignored it on purpose, then a pox upon you and your family. For, you see, today is….
National Talk Like Shakespeare Day.
Forsooth.
You mean, the most celebrated plagiarist and intellectual thief?
unfounded accusation, not even made until 230 years after his death, with some believing he was the front man for a number of authors in the same group for name recognition.
However there has not been any substantial evidence to back up these claims.
I dont see itbeing called National Talk Like Beacon Day! :)
er…. Bacon
That’s because every day is Bacon Day!! :D
His entire family were illiterate (his parents, siblings and children), and he was the most influential writer in the history of words? (half of which were complete made up bullshit)
Not formally trained in the standards of English at the time => made up a lot of cool sounding words. Yup, it checks out.
Almost certainly not ‘made up the words himself’, more like ‘earliest person to [i] put certain existing words in writing and [ii] have those texts survive to the point that people started looking for earliest uses’. He almost certainly wasn’t the first person to meet part [i] of that definition, just the first to also meet part [ii]. There’s no point relying on a completely new word in a mass-audience play, as your audience won’t know what you mean by it!
Unless, of course, it is obvious in context what the term means. Pretty much the same as any word made up by a scifi author or any screenwriter.
Then again, since spelling had not been standardized, a pajock by any other name might be the same thing.
you are aware in his time those plays were low brow plays, made for the poorer people to enjoy, they are also full of dirty jokes and references for that audience.
that a bunch of snobs decided to adopt it as the greatest things ever written is a reflection on them and not the original works.
The idea that today’s highest-brow classiest classy snooty texts started out as a series of dirty jokes … inspires me.
It’s neither one nor the other, in truth. There is a bunch of political satire embedded in them as well, and thinly veiled references to current events.
Shakespeare wrote in the 1500s-1600s. The mistake is in believing that Victorian “upper class” morals and behaviors and distinctions from the 1800s are meaningful 300 years before.
Wrong date.
Boooooo! Monumentally bad joke!!
Red hair and kinetic absorption have nothing to do with each other? You’ve never heard of a red-headed stepchild???
Hah!
Reminds me of Andy Parsons talking about when he went Skydiving, he asked his friends who where waiting for him on the ground “did you see me ?”
the answer “We HEARD you”
Apprantly rather than “one thousand, two thousand, three thousand” he scream “FUCK” all the way down
not a bad response to be fair
Absorbing kinetic energy is all well and good, except we’ve only ever seen her absorb it through her own body. That sudden stop should actually hurt Sydney quite a bit, especially if she’s being carried.
no, if Anvil absorbs all the kinetic energy of the fall, there won’t be any backlash for Sydney.
I’m assuming Anvil has carried someone before without incident, and therefore knows that Sydney will be okay. After all, she wouldn’t want to have to explain to Max why Sydney is suddenly in the infirmary and in traction.
As long as she’s not incarcerated. Or interred. Or incontinent. Or…
(Incoherent was a losing proposition from the start.)
Anything outside Anvil’s body should still be beholden to physics, considering she actually had to touch the kinetics to absorb them in the brawl. Vehemence even made a point about her leaning into things just to absorb their hits.
So if she’s held in a princess carry, then her arm on the outside as well as most of her torso etc should still have kinetic energy supllied by the drop and sudden stop. A lot less due to Anvil absorbing the energy from actually hitting the ground, but gravity is still a thing.
Additionally, if Kenya aims to land on her back while holding Sydney, she can also absorb the kinetic energy from Sydney ‘landing’ on top of her.
This is also a good idea because it might get Sydney’s mind thinking about powers utilization in combination with her own, e.g. The Acme Special ‘Dropping an Anvil’ on a supervillain.
Sydney already did that, against Kevin
of course, shuri explained it this way: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uu6PGbBWbjA
but I agree, the way Dave uses it, Anvil has a field of inertial absorption/delivery. Perhaps it is a two-way dimensional shunt. Mebbe she can expand it to include extra mass/passengers. Sorry, I would have HER being examined non stop by scientists to unlock the biggest weakness to high speed maneuvering…..heck, she would have cleaned up on the football field……Earl who?, Hershel what?, and, nowadays, Derrick I don’t know?
btw, there are several very involved explanations of Wakanda’s cat suit on the interwebs
Physics always works both ways.
There is no real difference between getting punched in the face and head butting a fist. The math is the same.
If Anvil is carrying somebody that somebody will be imparting energy into Anvil at the bottom of the drop, she can absorb that too.
I once head butted a fist that was thrown at my face. It broke the guys elbow.
Jack London had that being a trick experienced bare knuckle boxers used on the noobs. tbh, bare knuckle boxers rarely hit the face/head because, long term, that destroys your hands. and some fights went on for hours
If I recall correctly, the general rule is ‘hard surfaces to soft targets, softer surfaces to hard targets’. Note that I’ve never been a bare-knuckle boxer, and as far as I’m aware neither has the person I’m paraphrasing that from, so we’re running on at third-hand levels of reliability at best.
Louis L’Amour writes that stuff from first hand (and second hand people he knew personally) … but it’s been a long time since I’ve read anything he said specifically about this subject.
Yea, head shots are a terrible idea for bare knuckle. Most of the bones in your head are tougher than the bones in your hand. Go figure we keep important stuff in our head so its well armored.
Much as the movies love to do it, punching somebody in the face is a good way to break your fingers.
In martial arts, they teach you how to do it, correctly!
I still remember the *Snap* that went crazy in comic fan circles. And yes, I am THAT old.
Though I think we can hope for a prettier outcome here. Not only i Sydney being carried, instead of being stopped by a web, but I think Kenya isn’t the type of proposing weird and crazy stunts willy-nilly.
I feel like Anvil said Sydney’s name one too many times in one of those speech balloons. It reads like Dave was undecided between two versions of the first sentence, and finally settled on using both, but left both of them reading like they’re the main point.
Comparing them, “Think like a super” makes a better main point, though “I absorb kinetic energy is still important to say – so it should be “Think like a super, Sydney. I absorb kinetic energy. This is like stepping off a curb for me.”
why would she not just fly down?
Never mind i see why now.
Just in case someone doesn’t look it up or understand like you did – when sydney has her “skill tree” opened up, she can’t use any of the orbs until she has spent her point(s)
What if Sydney’s orbs decide that the sudden fall is life threatening and they do some sort of emergency action of their own which blows away the point Sydney just popped? She really shouldn’t be trying crazy things while she has the setup menu open.
Or in her screaming panic during the fall grabs an orb which commits her to spend it on that one.
I could maybe see them closing the skill tree in an “emergency”, but I highly doubt that they’d take away her point.
I also doubt that Sydney will panic-grab an orb when the reason for the fall has been carefully explained in advance.
The orbs let Sydney free-fall twice while Max was testing her flight early on. She came to her senses and grabbed the flyball, so we don’t know if it (or Mr Bubble) would have auto-engaged at the bottom like the airb appeared to in the pool.
“CANNONBALL!!!” *aims for pool*
This could be a solution to last page’s problem. Have Dabbler do her ‘recharging’ on the couch under the poolside patio cover. Then the next day one good cannonball from the roof could make a wave big enough to wash away any incriminating evidence.
I’m sure The Barberian would rather not be referred to as ‘incriminating evidence’.
Having sydney around must be fun for many of the supers there…. they all treat what they can do as “work” or as training. With sydney there though, they get the uber geek reaction to when they do cool stuff, and it reminds them of the fact that what they do is actually pretty cool.
(as an example, when maxima took sydney flying, she remembered how fun it was)
Not relevant to this comic in particular, but… I recently found the Multiverse mod for FTL and have been playing the hell out of it. Last night I dreamed an FTL/Grrlpower crossover dream with Sydney on the Ship trying to save the Federation. The details are pretty blurry at this point, but I know it was in still frame comic page format with text bubbles. Pretty cool dream. :)
We will, of course, take into account that she has excellent control of her ability and will not randomly explode someone shaking her hand after absorbing the kinetic energy from this yes? Or, more specifically to this case, Not be startled by Sydney on the way down into an Accident?
looking at the skill tree I wonder what the ppo, flight orb connector on the skill tree spot does? does it allow autonomous use of the connected orb if you are using one (after all sydney seems to be of the mindset that she can only use the orb she is touching) or unlocks a combo ability if both spheres are in use? (I don’t think sydney has used both flight and ppo since the power showoff press event and since then she’s gotten a lot more experience at using the orbs)
Me, I’d like to know who the fourth person at poolside is but I guess we’ll find out next week.
Not sure whether it’s a person or an errant pixel, but it made me go back and look at the various panels on the prior 5 pages … and I realized that Detla’s training uniform has no place for her picture ID to be attached.
I love the line “think like a super”. Silly things like the laws (of Physics) don’t apply to them. lol
Can anyone recommend a Kindle book that has a “Hogwarts for Supers”? I see “Cape High” but can you recommend it? {Yes, I remember that Disney movie.}
My Hero Academia may be something like what you’re looking for, and is available for Kindle through Amazon.
Books of “kids going to Super School” as the story.
Cape High – R. J. Ross – Each book is a different super kid story, and all the books can be read separate, but they are in a series order. (all ages can read this one)
Please Don’t Tell My Parent… – Richard Roberts – Children of superpowered people going to school come into their powers. Not a school for supers, just regular school that many supers seem to attend. (all ages can read this one)
Super Powereds – Drew Hayes – People can get superpowers, but a few get broken ones. 5 “Powereds” are picked for a medical procedure that fixes them, so they all attend a colledge that is also one of the secret schools for professional Heroes. (Has mature themes, so not kids)
Wyvern Academy – Atlas Kane – people train to use martial arts and chi to fight demons that occasionally invade our world, and the best fighters try to get into the best schools. (not for kids, can get explict)
These are all ones that i have read myself, and are all good enough story wise to keep on my kindle (not always great story, but good enough for me to keep them)
PS238 is a webcomic, not a book, but pretty much established the superkids-in-school genre:
http://ps238.nodwick.com/comic/12072006/
Idk if it’s available on Kindle or not, and I was kinda disappointed with the writing style. I actually though Lackey was having someone else ghostwrite but was told she had to dumb down her usual style for lower level readers. All that aside, “Shadow Grail” series by Mercedes Lackey. It is about children who are taken in by a school that teaches them more than just the average curriculum. Think like, Hogwarts, except MOST of the teachers really don’t care about your survival and many actively eliminate students. Like some disappearances were linked to faculty dropping the barrier in the school to allow The Wild Hunt onto the campus. There is a modern day Arthurian mythos twist.
Interesting if you can get past the writing style of the series.
Lack of consistency and executive dysfunction are the two things that have kept me from trying my hand at comics.
My hands, shake!!!
Anvil may absorb kinetic energy… but what about Sydney while Anvil holds her? I mean, that’s gotta be uncomfortable dropping that far. Kinda like in Xmen when Quicksilver holds Magneto’s head before going super speed. Or say, Spiderman where Peter did not really think of this before “saving” Gwen.
Anvil is absorbing the kinetic energy from the impact, Sydney is in her arms at impact, if the kinetic energy from the impact is absorbed by Anvil then there is none to transfer to Sydney as Anvil isn’t emitting any either.
Looks like my previous comment got ate.
Was wondering if Anvil holding Sydney means force won’t be applied to her as well.
Like Quicksilver holding Magneto’s head to avoid whiplash. Or when Peter Parker didn’t think about whiplash when “saving” Gwen Stacy.
Hmm…. it showed the first one as not posting. Sorry for the clutter.
If it simply doesn’t show your post (with no messages or notices), then it’s simply a glitch and you just have to give it time to show
I half-expect her to shout “WRONG LEVER, KRONK!”
Why do they even have that lever?
A screaming ‘death from above’ attack may not be taken well by an alien unused to our customs.
Or anyone else for that matter.
Small issue.
Syd FLIES.
What’s the issue with taking off and cutting flight closer to the water?
Sydney flies with the orbs, and she can only use them if she spends her new upgrade-point.
But she’s looking for Max to inform her, so she can get Dabbler (and others) to advise on where to place the point.
So no, at this particular moment she can’t fly.
Isn’t Sydney supposed to have 1 pip filled in the sub tree of the flight orb? That’s what lets her use the causway thingy, right?