Grrl Power #94 – The Step-Mother of all Origins
And back the story. “Story” used in the broadest possible sense of course. I’m experimenting a little with trying to fit just as many jokes and content on a page with fewer panels. I think this one came out pretty good, but the next page… We’ll see how it works out.
And as Zeph points out, just finding them underwater does lack the drama of spelunking an ancient temple or a prophetic inheritance or something, but it’s all part of the plan.
Edit: Fixed the requisite typo/grammar errors
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I thought the story was she found them in egypt?
Man I could of sworn page 22 or 23 said that.
I don’t think she ever said that she found them in egypt.
She did say that they were ancient artifacts that give her superpowers.
I just checked it’s never stated where she went on holiday.
check the comments for that and other pages there. I believe it was Peru mentioned first time around… maybe it got editted or we just ran with that from a comment DaveB or someone else made in that region?
I think many people are confusing speculation with what DaveB actually said. He claims he never said where the orbs of power were found.
it says she came back from vacation. It doesn’t state where, so I’m assuming she doesn’t go overseas for vacations.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/167
When they did a background check on her they said she had been out of the country a few times.
Aparently, just underseas in this instance.
My guess would be the Bermuda Triangle…it’s off the coast of Florida, and the presence of uncontrolled Power Orbs could go a LONG way to explaining why ships and planes might have been disappearing.
Could even be artifacts of ancient Atlantis…
What are you thinking, dude? It’s ALIENS, I tell you. ;)
Nonsense! It was clearly just methane gas! Just like all those weather balloons! … >.> …
Alien-induced methane eruptions underseas, by the aliens who happened to have landed their huge-ass space-ship called Atlantis in the triangle.
HaHa! You mean when the aliens landed their space-ship called Earth on our home planet, Bermuda, right?
Nice idea.
Their leader was Binky, the Clown and they came from the planet Haagen Dasz.
But Atlantis being the home of aliens isn’t new. Nadia: Secret of Blue Water, Stargate Atlantis…
Can you imagine the fun Sydney would have if she filled a bunch of weather balloons with water?
Aliens ran Atlantis, didn’t you get the memo, or listen to Giorgio Tsoukalos? (The guy with the hair on Ancient Aliens)
Must confess, I’ve always wondered how many channels he picks up with that hair.
50Hrz-5000KHrz radio 10 tv and 300 sirious radio plus wi-fi internet.
Not to mention, a certain type of rent-a-car?? ;)
Its kinda funny how accustomed she is becoming to the orbs now that shes not hiding them.
No more burden for her. Keeping a secret- including something as powerful and dangerous as her orbs- will wear down anyone trying to responsibly conceal them. And as silly and ADHD as Sydney is, she was actually being very responsible with them.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/168
Wow. that is some rough art.. Great job on improving Dave.
Thanks! When I started noticing little improvements here and there I was anxious to see what my art would look like in 10 more years. Come on…. >bounce bounce bounce<
Liked the light effect on Sydney in the underwater panel.
Thanks, I’ve never done water light patterns like that before. Wasn’t technically hard but I was surprised I couldn’t find a nice water pattern texture with an alpha channel already set up so I had to draw it myself. I’m sure if I had spent enough time skulking around a 3D rendering forum I could have found something pre-made.
At the rate you are going for improvements these will be animated before 2017 if not interactive and 3D by 2020! I only slightly exaggerate here. So far this comic has only gotten better and refined both in style and you are getting bolder too. And I am a sap for Easter Eggs like you have in this one and others. I do so myself in my writings. Only those who know will know them. Sometimes it takes me years to figure out things in some old stories I have read as to their Easter Eggs.
Dave, if you want a really good 3D modeling/texturing community, look on http://www.polycount.com. It’s where a lot of pro’s and amateur’s spend their time showing off stuff, tutorials, and various other things. I myself troll the TF2 thread but I know there’s tons of other threads that you might want to look into that could help ya. Only tutorial I can never find is how to get a google sketchup model converted into 3dsmax without having to basically remake the entire thing once I import it, lol.
Krull for the win!
Beat me to it! Well played. Points to David for the Krull ref.
And since it’s standing next to a lightsaber: Which one is the better fantasy sword?
The glaive isn’t a sword, its a magic boomerang that can kill an alien demon king.
Actually it was the holy flamethrower handed to the hero via his bride who the villain was also interested in that did him in, the glaive merely gave him painful paper cuts for all the effect it had once it was stuck!
Admittedly he also blew out the side of the villain’s teleporting castle and after escaping the castle then blew apart right back up into the sky, must have had pretty good insurance!
They did call it a Schwert (sword) in the German translation if memory serves me right. Which is the version I’ve seen, me being from the German speaking part of Switzerland and such.
Now, is Sydney telling the truth here? I wouldn’t be surprised if this is just a ‘cover story’ for what really happened!
I’m thinking Sydney is telling a reasonable version of the truth, probably with the crazy suppressed to protect the emotionally frail. Superhero origin stories typically stack up enough coincidences and synchronicities to physically blot out the sun, and that could be what is happening here.
On The Other Hand, while it is possible that Sydney might suddenly decide she wanted to ‘try out’ scuba-diving, I can’t help but wonder if she was working towards a specific purpose..
may be some higher power/alien made a small and insignificant change a few thousand years ago which set motion a sequence of events which resulted in Sydney deciding to try scuba diving thereby being in the right place at the right time to find the orbs
Sydney!? Reasonable!?
The Joker on crack is more reasonable than her!
…on the gripping hand, it’s also possible that the obs were drawing Sydney to them – thus inducing her to take scuba lessons, and the vacation.
Ah – a “Niven”-ref!
:)
Ya she received a mysterious package, delivered by a mysterious ninja mailman
Along with the newspaper from tomorrow…
not unless she has a cat
She had a cat, It’s therapy is going about as well as can be expected.
pay attention to the tail it was a cabbit
… Hence the need for therapy.
Just try to resist the temptation to push the button, even if you will get a million dollars.
Me thinks she’s still being majorly evasive with her story. Making it look cooler than it really was (ie while in Peru (where she was said to have found them earlier in story, or in comments– but like all writing subject to revision and changes… Neh? :P ) ) Mayhap because she got kicked out of Peru? Destroyed some national monuments or treasures by accident chasing the rolling balls around? Or she fiddled with something she shouldn’t have, and caused a collapse and fell into the chamber with maybe the previous now dead owner of said Power Balls? again State Dept of Peru and Dept of Tourism majorly unhappy with her? That’s slightly more in character with her.
Yep, checked, she was on vacation in Peru- her co-owner mentions that she’s been evasive and more secretive since she got back from Peru in a previous comic.
Guess DaveB can go back and change that.
But, Sydney, on Spring Break? Somehow I see her haunting lil Havana and Jamaica City for their spicy foods and laughing at their attempts to make the white girl cry. But there for sun and fun? I’m sure her friend might drag her down so they can look at the boys a bit. Scuba diving though? B——e—–l—-i—-e—-f <— Belief being stretched. (grin)
But gotta love the rolled up magazine. WHAP! NO! BAD STUDENT! He must have been dealing with her and other children (in past) for more than a few hours already.
D/
Maby she enroled because the instructor looked a bit like Logan. People have done a lot stupider things for less reasons.
no thats more tenchi universe possibly mehoshi relative I belive. and who said she didn’t side track to the keys on the way to a peru comic search / vacation. alternately she detoured to the keys on the way back from peru.
Peru? I don’t recall mentioning Peru. I was waffling a bit about where she found them, but I’m pretty sure Peru wasn’t one of the places on the short list.
Peru came up on the discussion page a few months ago when we were wondering where she got the orbs.
It got talked about a lot so some people came to associate Peru as where she got them from.
Dave, I think they’re referring to Peru – the Planet, from somewhere out there in the Haagen-Daaz Galaxy.
:P
Just turn left at the 3rd Super-massive Black-Hole on your left, then at the 8th Quasar turn anti-spinward & leave the plane of the ecliptic – you can’t miss it!
;)
:)
Even if it was a trip to Peru that triggered her new, more evasive behaviour, that need not mean that it was there that she found the Orbs. Having seen her flashback of testing the Pew-Pew-Orb, she probably decided almost immediately that she needed a more remote area to continue her testing, both in terms of collateral damage and media coverage. Australia’s got more empty area to blow up, but Peru has less things that will kill you. Or Peru might just have been the best place she could get a cheap ticket to. Or she just wanted to see whether the bears liked marmalade sandwiches*.
[*Is Paddington Bear as well-known in America as he is in Britain?]
I remember it. But Salt in the coffee…not as good as he made it out to be. Lemon juice on the other hand ;)
I doubt she’s taken any trips on a plane since she’s gotten the orbs. She’ll worry that airport security is going to want to see the contents of her carry-ons. Those trips Zephan referred to were likely pre-orb.
OTOH, now that she can fly under her own power I bet she’s taken lots of trips under the radar.
I can imagine bugs, birds and dirt evading her just because of her Sydney-ness.
She wouldn’t even need to fly all the way. She could easily board a passing cruise ship under the cover of night, or attach herself to belly of an airliner while using the force field as a windscreen.
Like IronMan in the first movie.
Yeah that was my first thought. But now that I think about it I can totally see Syd having some fun with the passengers:
Perching on the wing and waving to someone, lying flat on it with her hands gripping the leading edge and pretending she’s screaming & trying to hold on, walking along the hull and tapping on the windows, or my personal favorite, acting like the gremlin in that Twilight Zone episode with William Shatner -“Nightmare at 20,000 Feet.”
I’m imagining her standing on the nose of the plane striking a superman flight pose.
Then turning around and sitting right in front of the cockpit window waving at the pilots as they have a shit fit.
Good thing Syd isn’t evil because now that she knows how strong her force field is. . . well, remember when that flock of geese brought down that jet in New York?
We already know, thanks to Gwen’s magi-scan, that the Orbs don’t show up on conventional or conventional-magic scanning technologies. I doubt the Customs people would want to look into a poster tube that looks empty in the X-ray machine, as I don’t think posters generally show up much anyway. From earlier, it isn’t clear whether the Orbs’ stealth powers hide the entire contents of the tube or just themselves; if just themselves, Sydney could put some sort of decoy item in the tube to give it an alibi.
I doubt *most* Customs people would either but there would always be the worry that some overly diligent agent would try it: Have you seen the news stories about the airport security guard who “patted down” a three-year-old boy in a wheelchair at O’Hare airport in Chicago, or the six-year-old girl frisked at a New Orleans airport?
I recall some dude being unhealthily floored at an airport because he kept wanting to bring a plastic knife onto the plane, citing that the airline would hand them out anyways. The customs-guy didn’t like his attitude and introduced his face to the floor.
So, the flight was terribly late. Turns out the dude with the knife was the pilot of said plane.
hmm – where’s the Peru that was in there before? I could swear that was in there… Being Sneaky DaveB>? o.0
He has been writing thi thing for two years now, so may have changed up how she got the orb’s.
It would be pretty hard to smuggle something like the orbs out of Peru, where they are looking for smugglers all the time.
Damn now that is a display case of 80s TV and movie weapons. Weapons from HeMan, Zelda, thundercats, star wars, and Krull.
Are you sure that’s the Master Sword? It vaguely looks like it, but it also vaguely resembles the Sword of Erdrick to me (which, unlike the Master Sword, *does* come from the 1980s).
Well, never mind. At a comment further down, DaveB says it’s the Master Sword.
Panel four: That Ass.
The girl in panel four looks to had a run in with Sydney already.
See the bandaid on her knee and the look of fear in her eyes.
The bandaged knee is not an uncommon injury when learning to use SCUBA in a swimming pool. As for the look of fear, the lady in red has seen Sydney’s erratic behaviour and is realizing what could happen if Sydney gets her hands on the spear gun.
Heh, track the back guy in panel 4’s line of sight :D
after copying and pasting into my graphic program he’s cross eyed, his left eye is looking at the lady in reds face, his right eye might be looking at her face or the back of the instructor.
It looks like he is actuaky looking at her face.
That’s the problem with working at 600 dpi. Sometimes I forget how zoomed in I am and how some of the fine details will be lost when I shrink it. I think photoshop had to make some choices when shrinking his eyes down to little dots that could use some refinement. He’s definitely supposed to be sneaking a peek.
That’s what happens when you put quality goods on display with quality packaging.
And of course, these days, it’s considered environmentally friendly to reduce the packaging!
She was a SCUBA instructor once… ’til she took a harpoon to the knee.
Nice to see I’m not the only one here in the shallow end of the pool. Myself I was noticing that Syd looks hella cute in that scuba outfit. Also while nowhere in the same class as Maxima or Anvil her boobs are bigger than I expected. B, where i was expecting AA
In Canada, we call a AA-cup bra “Training”. The bio says she wears an A-cup, which is still below average (C in North America). Wearing a tight outfit like that makes things stand out a little more.
I have been to a few comic book shops that had display cases that looked like the one in the last pannel.
Except for the He-Man sword.
Can you imagine how much a sword like that would weigh if it was made of steel?
I’d sprain my wrists just trying to swing that monster.
Maby if it was made out of foamed alumium.
You know the huge swords aren’t inch-thick slabs of steel?
Swords, even the huge-ass two-handed swords in museums, that were meant to be used aren’t anywhere near as heavy as Hollywood and early 20th century fantasy literature would you have believe.
The really heavy swords, and the ones those authors and early movie proppers got familiar with, were the well-preserved CEREMONIAL swords available in castles. As well as the decorative gothic plate armours you see Douglas Fairbanks Sr and Jr using as springboards.
Sure, a real plate armour was heavy, but it wasn’t a friggin torture decide where you locked up to be rung like a bell by anyone with a sling.
Having taken a few mideval fighting classes I can testify that you can move very fast for short bursts in full plate.
main word being SHORT bursts. And yes, most actual battle swords weighed about 2-3lb. Obvious exceptions being the Great Swords where their main purpose was to cut the legs out from under a knight’s warhorse.
I was actualy talking about someone making a replica He-Man sword.
Imagine someone using six to ten Lbs. of steel to make a replica, it would be realy hard to swing or hang on the wall.
i read somewhere that you can do a back flip in full plate Armour
I’d love to tee that on youtube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xm11yAXeegg
You gotta remember Armour was made to be used while fighting. They had a hundred years to figure out where to put the joints.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6aqRkxTjV1c
I’m glad for this. Some superhero origins are way over dramatic. This is simple but has mystery.
I like the Dori cameo. ;D
Love the number of artifacts in the last panel.
Lets see …
The Orbs … well one of them
A Mogwais … aka Gremlin
Light Sabre
the Glaive from Krull
He-man power Sword (forgot the name)
The Eye of Thundera (The Sword of Omens)\
The last swords….I know it but I can’t place it … I’m sure someone else with name it (^_^)
I think its from zelda
I think you might be right.
Couldn’t place it either. I think its from Dragon Ball. I never really got in to that serries so I’m not sure.
Legend of Zelda. Master Sword.
it’s the one from skyward sword
I googled “master sword” and that was the most distinct looking version I found of it. It’s different looking in each game I think. That or everyone making replica swords likes putting their own flair on them.
If I ever knew a Chinese or otherwise shop like that I’d either by just about everything or walk out packwards.
Remember: even buying a cheap-ass used car can have dire, world-saving consequences.
Okay, I feel a lot less geeky now for knowing everything that Chinese guy has on his shelf.
YOU SAY THAT WITH PRIDE!!! =P
you for got the BIP! BIP! BIP!
i see with my little eye the krull weapon that when thrown has blades on the ends and comes back to the person that owns it
but everything else you found
this is what i get for reading to fast never even saw you mentioned the krull glaive
dave the last case with the strange sword, under sword of omens is that the new he-man power sword from the newer series? it looks like it but i cant be certain, if it is then its good drawing with out going nuts on how they made the new power sword
He-Man’s sword is just called the Power Sword. More specifically, it’s his half of the Power Sword; Skeletor has the other half.
I was a little surprised to see the Master Sword rather than the Magic Sword from the original Legend of Zelda.
I have to wonder now, if she found them all. Or could there still be more out there that she missed…
If it was anything like when she just touched the first one in her tube to reactivate it and they all leapt to life around her head; https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/472
she would only need to find one underwater and the rest would find her.
Except the one the other orbs call ‘Grumpy’ (c8
Sydney leaning on the orb in panel 3 is just GENIUS!
Yeah, she’s got that “flying in an aggravating manner” thing down pat. :)
So, no scene with Max hitting the force field then?
Guess not.
You mean besides this? https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/526
Oops. Guess I forgot about that one. A week of (admittedly funny) guest strips will do that to a guy.
Sydney see’s harpoon on wall and suddenly she’s Capt. Ahab “Where be that great white whale?!”.
In the real occurrence where the giant Sperm Whale killed a whaling ship for the first time ever the whale won and swam away. They called the queerly intelligent and belligerent whale “Mokadick.” Just like the two young male lions of Tsavo hunted for human only and killed and ate differently from normal lions too, this sperm whale acted in a way that if all those of that species did humans wouldn’t be hunting whales unless in military styled gigantic ships. And fewer people would have been living in Africa either. Mutants? Will we see more of them as time goes on till humanity is reduced to more livable levels on the planet? Good fodder for a horror story eh?
Message for Sydney – the Mermen called, they want their balls back!
Good one.
Seriously, it or a variation of it might be. The previous owner of the balls could come calling, or the heroes could be dispatched to investigate where the balls were found, which could lead to … So this dull origin story could become a major plothook fairly easily.
BTW Anyone else see Dory and Nemo?
Oops, Nemo is not there that was a gauge of some sort. I guess we have to Find Nemo. :)
shouldn’t he mean: Anticlimactic? Anti-climatic means you’re against the weather.
Congradulations, you win the prize for finding the typo, hidden on each page, totally on purpose. ¬.¬
Isn’t supposed to be “Divers” Instead of “Drivers” when she’s talking about licenses?
Nope. She’s saying “drivers” because it’s further proof that she’s responsible enough and not a child. Legally, at least.
No, “drivers”. She’s emphasizing that she is in fact an adult in the eyes of the law, over 21 and all that…
While we are finding typos, “Driver’s License.” It is the license of or for a driver. Drivers License would be using the plural noun “Drivers” as an adjective for the one license.
I want to play too!!! I just pulled out my hardcopy evidence of authorization to operate a motor vehicle, issued by the state of Wyoming, and it says… “Driver License”
I am going to go out on a limb here and say that they belong to a pirate or something, that or she found them in the Bermuda triangle.
Might be from Atlantis.
I’m sticking with spaceship tools. The Bermuda Triangle would be a reasonable place for something like the orbs to come from.
Yep. Alien spaceship manufacturers have been mining in the Bermuda triangle for those things. But they haven’t taken them all.
Kraken eggs. But when they hatch, the baby krakens are imprinted on Sydney…
still waiting for someone to comment on the fact she has that tentacle and still has blue ball errrrr guess I did it.
So we can still go with the alien spaceship origin theory, just it crashed in the ocean off the Florida Keys instead of in, say, a Kansas corn field or the in the woods behind her house..
Or Broken Bow, Oklahoma.
Joke, joke joke, jokejokejoke, joke -gasp- joke -gaaaaasp- joooooke… So many jokes!
I notice the Master Sword in the last panel. Awesome. :3
I’m sorry, but I just can’t see someone like Sydney in a Mystical Chinese Pawn Shop(TM) that sells FREAKING LIGHTSABERS… and she instead goes with the mysterious orbs.
Well, maybe if they leapt off the counter at her and immediately manifested their powers, but short of that. Dude. Lightsabers are the most awesome weapon of all time. Search your feelings, you KNOW that it is true!
Well, she might already HAVE a lightsaber …
Maybe the orbs were the only thing she could affod?
Well the fact that she was kidding and making a point with that gross exaggeration you are right. I wonder if a small quake had damaged that coral and she found them before they would be covered over by that coral? Who knows some of the power emanations may help the coral to grow.
As is says on the tag: Set of 7.
Sydney might have gone for the discount or something.
the last frame was a bunch pop culture references compiled together in an amusing way.
I can see taking out a loan on ehr comic boom store just to by everything that old Chinese dude has to offer.
Pop references are interesting from a humor standpoint. They’re not jokes really, but they can still be funny. I enjoy them when they’re used right, but some things use them as a bit of a crutch in place of humor. I’d like to think I provide enough humor on my own that the occasional dive in to pop references is forgiven by those who are sensitive to it. I wonder if there’s a name for the sort of amusement derived from recognizing references, or even half recognizing ones. That’s part of the joy or watching something like MST3K. You get most of their references, kind of get some, and have no idea about a few of them. That’s why it’s best to watch with a group of friends, so you can clue each other in.
and I’m the nerdy one who always gets their Dungeons and Dragons references…and laughs at them.
well nowwe know where David Bowie lost those spheres from Labrinth….
And he held all of them in one hand! Wow…
What I want to know is why the Chineese man in the last panel is winking?
Either that or he’s missing an eye and dosn’t wear an eyepatch or a glass eye.
What? You never saw Gremlins?
He’s not winking, he has “sleepy eye.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ptosis_(eyelid)
In the two Gremlins films the shop keeper had one white blind eye. I think this guy was influenced by Egg Shen from “Big Trouble In Little China” which I wish there was a sequel to.
Wait does she also have a divers licence for she said had a drivers . For you need one to be able to do the deep dives.
Spoted another mistake.
Or she was refrencing that although she may look young she is old enough to drive.
You decide.
No she’s saying that she has documentation of some sort showing that she’s legally competent. Arianna’s hesitation was implying she thought otherwise. Though given my history of typos and issues with grammar, I can see why you’d think I meant “diver’s license”
Given this is Sydney I can easily see her, at some point in the past, having to prove she is legally competent and/or at least passably sane. And her knowing she needs to keep track of said paperwork on account of she might need to do it again some day.
Aw man that gives me an idea for a way better joke than the one I used. I’ll have to save it for later.
If i remember correctly, there was a bank who gave you a free rifle for a new deposit.
the questionaire you had to fill out contained the question: ‘Are you criminally insane?’
So, as long as I’m normally insane it’s okay to have a rifle?
Then again, the USA are a country where some dude from Texas who ran six companies into the ground gets to be President.
Wouldn’t that be “heroically insane” in this instance?
6 companies, a state (as Texas governor) and then the country (as president). The scary part is he still thinks he did a good job, despite starting a war based on false intelligence (of course that could describe the man himself) and running up more government debt than anyone else in history in a time of relative prosperity, when the government should be paying down the debt.
No, the scary part is he was pretty tame when compared to any of the clowns who ran to be the candidate this year.
And even scarier? They were the best that “State” politics could offer up for national review.
I bet he killed Kenny too!
Nice job breaking it!
If the orbs are spaceship rpeair tools, maybe the PPO isn’t actually a weapon. If it actually changes what it’s used on (meaning Sydney changed the target in the forest into something unstable) then it could be used to repair damaged parts – by changing them into undamaged parts – and to turn asteroids into fuel and containers of food/water/air.
Of course, this would take a lot more training and mental focus than Sydney is likely to achieve any time in the near future.
She probably only used it once, and it caused a forest fire. As cautious as she’s been not to call atention to herself once was enough.
Panel 4: I’ve never seen the Aquabats actually do anything to do with water…
There was that one track called “Pool Party”…
I think Sydney’s pulling a McGuffin and not telling where she really found the orbs. lol
of course, what do you think they’ll believe?, she found them whilst scuba diving, she found them in a Chinese shop, or she really got them by sending in a zillion tokens from breakfast cereal boxes?
I hope you go into more details about this find.
I’ll pepper in more info as we go, but this scene is getting a little long, so I won’t have her go into every detail right now.
I love that the scuba instructor is going after Syd with a rolled-up newspaper! BAD SYDNEY!
according to his shirt the “scuba’s down”, maybe it’s awaiting repair, but the “surf’s up”
No, it’s being literal: Surf is above water (up) and Scuba is below water (down). But it’s popular to say “Surf’s up” when the waves are good. It’s a play-on-words.
Interesting…
Depending on how the bonding process works, this origin story opens the possibility that there might be one or two extra orbs lying about on the sea floor…
Hm, this COULD be a pretty dramatic origin story: Half the orbs buried in a reef; pick up one, and you’re bonded to all of them – and then you can’t stray out of range. Better hope you get them all before your air runs out!
That makes things hella-interesting. Maybe One of the unknown orbs is an activator, and the other is a locator; always active because it’s always searching for it’s lost brother. This is getting me exited!
A simpler reason for why the one she found was active (when we know they go to sleep when not being use) is that they only need to be touched (by something living so as to act like a filter???) to be reactivated. There are lots of thing in the sea that could have occasionally brushed against the orb to keep reactivating it. But until Syd found it there was likely nothing with enough mental energy for them to bond to.
I know, one of the orbs she doesn’t know what it does in fact make it so she does not need to breathe, but she did not notice at the time; she was a little distracted at the time by, well, stuff.
…isn’t the shop owner in the last panel the tour bus driver from “Big Trouble in Little China”?…
Another pop in that mix of culture.
Aso: great movie, I should watch it again.
He does look like Victor Wong but the reference suggests Keye Luke from Gremlins.
It’s Wong, at least to the degree that I could draw him. That last panel is just pop culture mish-mash.
I can just picture Syd glupping for air in shock as 7 orbs awaken upon her touch and race out of the sand to position themselves around her head.
I can also picture the skull of the last owner of the orbs being left behind in the sand as they find their way to Syd’s head.
And it’s a Predator skull.
I’ll so go and watch Prometheus once it’s on here in Germany.
Seems like we finally get a bit of info on the Pilots.
Interesting minor point – The orb in the picture is glowing *before* Sydney touches it. Either it had just been dropped there or something about Sydney made it wake up once she got in range. Otherwise it would have stayed asleep.
Question for DaveB – Were the Orbs sitting on the coral or were they sitting in the coral like they had been there long enough for the reef to grow over them? The picture is slightly unclear.
In either case I imagine it is pretty safe to assume that once Syd activated the first one the others flew up out of where they were sitting to meet her, possibly breaking out of coral in the process.
That was my first time drawing coral so it could have been clearer. On the next page which I’m actually going to skip for brevity’s sake, she speculates about warming oceans and dying coral reefs, which is why they were never found before now. I’ll work that stuff in later. They’re not done talking about the orbs, but I can leave some of the finer points to work in later.
Looks like great minds think alike, and less than a minute apart too.
BTW: Props for knowing who David Attenborough is. I’m continually shamed that most Americans seem to have never heard of him. (They actually dubbed over him in the US showing of Planet Earth! Why?!?)
I think most Americans have heard him, but maybe not heard of him.
Also the man’s list of credentials is amazing, it almost looks like a joke from Monty Pyton.
SIR David Attenborough, OM, CH, CVO, CBE, FRS, FZS, FSA
Don’t forget the IOU from the BBC.
they may not of heard of him, but they should of heard of his brother Richard
A few comments:
1. Sydney is looking a bit “full-figured” in the first panel. I would expect her to be built more like a cross between a long-distance runner and a gymnast, especially with her metabolism and hyper-active nature.
2. Location? DUH! Near some comic event and/or role-playing convention that is starting soon or has ended recently (I can’t see Sydney leaving the convention just to go scuba diving). Being a part owner of a comic book store probably doesn’t bring in enough money to pay for vacations. A business vacation on the other hand… Or visiting family. I could see dragging Sydney on a vacation simply because of the energy and enthusiasm that she would bring.
3. Of course “scuba diving”! She’s obviously going through an Aquaman phase; hence her enthusiasm over the spear gun with the spearhead that looks kinda like Aqauman’s (the newer, grittier version) prosthetic.
I basically really only know how to draw one body type well (arguably) and that’s the hyper sexualized super heroine. And I suppose the super hero, so whenever I’m drawing Sydney and Joel/Leon, etc, I have to force myself to scale it back, which I do to varying degrees of success. Let’s just say her wetsuit has a built in wonderbra?
Maybe she traded those two orbs for the other seven?
It’s the affect of being underwater. Curves become more obvious. Something to do with buoyancy vs body fat or something.
Also she’s wearing a form hugging scuba suit as opposed to the usual form hiding loose shirt and cargo pants she usually affects.
I look at it as evidence of it being skin-tight more than anything else. Sure, she’s an A-cup, but that doesn’t mean she’s a board. She’s also got a cute butt, for that. She’s just not at the body extreme of someone like Anvil or Maxima, so comparatively she might as well be concave.
Well, here is an artistic reference for various athletic body types that I found absolutely nifty. https://ninamatsumoto.wordpress.com/2010/12/18/athletic-body-diversity-reference-for-artists/
Not everyone who is fit is ripped!
We’ve only seen her wearing a loose T. Who knows what wonders lurk under it? Even A-cups can look sexy in a tight wetsuit.
Give her yellow spandex!
Anyone else notice Syd is displaying bidirectional gravity in panel 3?
She’s standing “sideways” against the wall but holding herself “up” by pushing down on the orb.
The blue orb makes her fly, she’s just doing it in an aggravatingly wierd manner.