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
SuperheroThey're super, thanks for asking!
Meatspace ComicSeriously these are awesome. Check 'em out!
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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.
just noticed. look just below syd in the first panel. one of the fishes from finding nemo.
wetsuits are really good for being skin-tight, syd has a wonderful derriere.
Yead, Dori and Syd have something in common – ADHD.
Isn’t that ADHey look, a squirrel?
in halos case ADHey look I’m a squirrel.
Anyone notice that little blue fish under Sydney? From one of the Pixar movies I have not seen “Finding Nemo” but can’t think of the character’s name. She is forgetful and ADHD like Sydney has.
I supposes it is ‘anti climatic’ because to us off the Florida Keys aren’t normally considered exotic. And yet how well has humanity swum around those islands and the sea around them? (Just be careful of any stray Deep Ones wanting a nosh as the oceans heat up.)
The name you seek…is Dori.
Strange, that guy by the pool seem to looking at the face of the girl sitting next to him…
Also in the ‘discovery’ panel is that just one the orbs showing or are they all inside a larger orb?
I think that just one of the orbs is being foreshortened.
Dang. Sydney looks good in that wetsuit.
I am just in love with Sidney’s midair/relaxing pose XD
Dori? Really? You had to throw her in there? XP Lol I’d probably be the same way during that course, getting distracted all the time by sharp shiny objects. (Or just shiny objects, either way.)
Well she was the first famous fish I thought of besides Nemo (or his dad) but they seemed too obvious. I… can’t actually think of many other famous fish off the top of my head besides Mr. Limpet. And Jaws, but putting him in would have changed the setting a bit.
Could be how she found out what the P.P.O. could do. Hilarity ensues.
I wonder how many people besides yourself and myself would know of “Mr. Limpet.” I rather like the movie more now than when I first saw in 1964. But then I am quite a bit older and hopefully more knowledgeable than when I was 7.
===[I wonder how many people besides yourself and myself would know of “Mr. Limpet.”]:
You may include me in that list, Good Sir. I also recall watching Don Knotts’ starring role in “The Reluctant Astronaut”, wherein his character ran a kiddie “Space-Ride” at a carnival…
…although pathologically afraid of heights.
And ‘The Ghost and Mr. Chicken’. He made several comedies around the 60’s and 70’s. ‘The Increduble Mr. Limpet’ was one of the first to combine live-action and animation.
I too know of Mr. Limpet, but I first saw it on latenight TV when I was older.
The DVD is nice, it has several items I never saw. Including a special showing of the movie at the small fishing town they used for the live action scenes. And the stars were there too. The animation was of Disney quality too.
I would too, who can forget the fish who helped us win WWII.
(thank the gods the remake was shot down; they need to stop trying to remake classics).
Why remake when they could build on the original and have grandson of Limpet save us from World War III and the Rise of the Deep Ones?
You know, I thought this comment was funny until today.
I just saw a promo for a movie called “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter” (a painful reminder that Hollywood has no limit to how far they would sink) and all the laughter just drained out of me. :(
I recommend the novel it is very good. I have high hopes for the movie. It will be rated “R” at least.
It’s part of a genra of books that have been poping up the last few years.
I can see the chinese curio shop guy thinking it might possibly be a bad idea to sell Sydney pets or objects with blades. If he didn’t know what the orbs did, these would be the most likely things he would direct her to. Get her to buy harmless things to avoid liability suits later.
Sydney and a Mogwai!?
I’ll be taking the next spaceship to Mars, people!
Seriously, she’d just accidentially drop him into the sea or something.
I have to admit I wondered what’d happen if someone did that. Even if it doesn’t work with saltwater, there are some mighty big lakes and waterparks out there.
and rain, morning dew, high humidity, fog, mist….it is a very flawed concept to have them reproduce when splashed with water.
So what in nature was keeping them from just over-populating? I’d like to think there are invisible pteradactyles that prey on small fast reproducing supernatural creatures to keep them in check LoL.
and my sleep deprived mind just did something weird unrelated, it wandered what would happen if a Facehugger grabbed a gremlin….
Would a facehugger attack a zombie?
Equally unrelated and equally scary.
sure, Facehuggers just react to movement and attack the head. Xenomorph biology then forms a template that takes some qualities from the DNA of the host. Honestly a xenomorph out of a zombie probably wouldn’t be much different from a regular Xenomorph.
Same too with Borg, (people forget its not just a head and shoulders that is organic, but also many internal organs), but the question arises if the Borg nanites could get into the developing embryo and out hatches a cyber-xenomorph out to assimulate all borg and normal Xenomorphs as a the new “perfect” being (Borg mentallity). *scary thing, in the comics they did have a Xenomorph pop out of a synthedic, and it had the protocols of the synthedic in its genetic memory.
Yeah, some rules of magic need to be specific lest the incur fridge logic later. I’ve heard similar arguments about Ranma 1/2.
Isn’t that what fanfics are for?
Funny thing about that, the author refused to answer the question about what would happen if Ranma got pregnant, yet answered indirectly in a later manga when a tribe that only fathers men was found that uses the cursed water to turn men into women in their tribe; the answer is if pregant then he wouldn’t be able to turn back until after giving birth.
A simular problem always bugged me, can other cursed waters actually work on them? We saw many attempts in the series by enemies to splash each other with other cursed waters, or turn back to normal or something else, and never happen. In my headcannon it was that it wouldn’t work, you couldn’t overwrite a curse with another curse of the same strength *or funny yet, if they negated each other and this was actually the way to cure the curse, fall in one spring just jump into any other*
Also I always doubted that the springs were each home to where something else drowned (especially when one was spring of drowned frog, and another was “Yeti riding ox carring goose and eel”) I always assumed the locals just named them like this and the springs were just cursed on their own.
It just got ridiculous when Moose showed up! Spring of drowned duck?!?!?!
…
Pantyhose Taro later gets another curse added on when he takes a dip in the spring of octopus.
I did not see that one, or did not get that far. (is the Manga still going?)
So the curses are “added on”….sounds…complicated. So if Ranma had been splashed by water of drowned duck he would turn into either a female duck or a female humanoid duck creature (given what Pantyhose Taro could turn into)…trying not to picture it.
Oooh! Could get nasty when the midnight snacking starts… or when the sun rises.
Somebody would make a fortune from cleaning that mess up.
Read Monster Hunter Internatinal by Larry Correia.
Why is she diving without a buddy? That is literally day one stuff.
Well… I could say that I’ve only been scuba diving once and I didn’t know about the buddy thing because we were all in a big group, but I could also say, that’s a good point, that’s totally on purpose, or at least I can make it look like it was when I revisit this scene. :)
Nah! They’re just out of frame.
so what happened when she found the orbs?, did her dive buddy get some or did she keep them all to her self, although if Sydney used the orbs to become a hero maybe her dive buddy used his/her’s to become a vilian
Solo diving is not unheard of – it’s just strongly discouraged for any but the most experienced divers. (And even they will hesitate, because there are good reasons for a buddy – there isn’t a whole lot of room for error when you are further from air than one breath.)
This is Sydney were talking about. She gets distracted and next thing she knows she is a hundred yards from her dive buddy and looking at the glowing orbs.
Oooh! A shiny!
You know its actually pretty awesome how relaxed she is when flying/defying gravity. It shows a lot about her.
@Unlisted
We only see her in the picture due to her being the main character. Her partner may be off somewhere else and she just got lucky no one noticed the orbs.
Also agreeing with the guy who said “That ass”. Sydney is nice.
Cripes, Gremlins scared the crap out of me when I was little. I only got over my fear of the dang things when I realized I was big enough to rip one apart barehanded.
You know the state of Florida has laid official claim to any and all artifacts, coins, gems, or ships that have gone down off her coastline? I’m out on the Treasure Coast myself, Mel Fisher’s house is a stone’s throw from me, not that he’s alive to be in it anymore. He quit pulling treasure out of the sea because the state began to tax/fine him more than the gold he was bringing up was worth. Since then, there are practically no treasure hunters who bother with sunken ships off our coastline. It means it’s entirely plausible that all kinds of stuff is down there we don’t know about. I had planned a short story featuring a sunken ship containing an artifact that a portal to a pocket-dimension containing the bones of a dead South American god… Don’t remember what happened to it.
It also means that Sydney’s greatest enemy is gonna be Florida State, who will be wanting their property back.
well they’ve just been trumped by a bigger collection of paper pushers who day she gets to keep them.
besides, how are they going to separate her from hem? even max can’t do it……at least not without taking syds head off
Think you just answered your own question there
You really think they’d do that?
Then again, as stated in Criminal Minds.
“How bad can it be?” “It’s Florida.”
As a nearly life-long resident of Florida, I have trouble knowing how bad it can be elsewhere. But, when it comes to corruption and authorities intimidating people, I suspect we’re ranked pretty highly. I’ve seen police draw guns on schoolchildren and demand their phones in order to destroy video evidence of what the cops were up to. And our governor passed into law a requirement that people requesting child welfare be drug tested. If you fail the test, you can still get the welfare. The point is that the governor is the majority shareholder of the company the state hired to do the drug testing, so he’s basically pocketing federal money. There’s no doubt in my mind that the state would make someone disappear if it would benefit them enough.
Heard about the drug-testing, IIRC didn’t the courts say that the state had to repay the costs for all the tests? And all they found out was welfare recipients used drugs at less the half the rate as the General Population.
The state has to repay the costs, but the tests are still ongoing. So, while the state is being drained, the governor is still making bank. And you’re right, turns out poor people use drugs less often, who knew?
You forgot to mention his ‘suppress the vote efforts.’
Is that still that <90IQ Texan's brother-in-law?
Nope. Not Bush. They found someone smarter. And significantly less scrupulous.
Hmmm which would be worse, Someone who is at least fairly scrupulous but not really intelligent, or someone who is intelligent but completely lacking in ethics?
Doesn’t matter, as long as thery’re Sith… eh, Republican.
come to the dark side. We have cookies! (mogwi does rimshot on drumset of the ewoks)
From the way Senator Palpatine acted when he was a politician, he was a Democrat.
Can we just allow that politicians = ebil!, and leave it at that?
I really wish I could do this comic 5x or even 3x a week. There’s so much about the orbs that I feel I should glaze over to keep the story moving that I’d love to get into. I’m taking notes for later though. :)
Kewl. But if you do a Lovecraftian pocket dimension containing the bones of a dead god which warp the minds of all who seek to unlock its secrets, we’re gonna have us some words.
The only way you could do it 3X to 5X a week is either lose the color or hire some more people because all the other ones I know of done in color is one done 3 X a week and that is Girl Genius. Better to stick with one in full color. (But you can sketch out other intermediate pages that fills in blanks you could hold in reserve for a possible book one day. But I don’t know how busy you are though. Just some thoughts from your friendly neighborhood mutant geek. [You could always do a special on the orbs sometime and fill us in.]
Note that Girl Genius has a dedicated colorist on staff, and when something bad happens to him, they put comic out sans color and add it when he becomes available again.
Having a staff would be sweet.
Making enough money from this comic to be able to afford a staff would be sweeter.
There is actually at least one that updates DAILY in color – & has done so without missing a single day for more than 10 years:
Howard_Tayler’s webcomic: “Schlock Mercenary”
…but it’s safe to say that your superior level of artistry more than makes up for your (current) lack of longevity.
Don’t sweat it – just keep on keepin’ on, & you’ll get there. “Quality, Not Quantity”. Before you know it, we’ll be celebrating your 10th anniversary too!
the monday update would have only been syd underwater tues convo with lawyer and glittergirl wed at scuba class ect ect.
Yeah, I was thinking about this a while ago, and basically, Schlock Mercenary does 2 full pages a week. A single horizontal strip Mon-Sat, and a full page Sun. Plus, the art is much simpler, and used to be simpler still, and he recently (relatively speaking for a 10+ year old comic) got himself a colorist.
DaveB, on the topic of more updates, the way I see it is that your art has improved a lot since you started this comic. If you were content to keep the quality as it was in the beginning, you probably would have time for 2 pages. Not that I am requesting that, just commenting that you are choosing to improve in quality rather than quantity at present.
In a way I have sped up, cause I’m doing the comics in a similar amount of time as when I started, but obviously with some improvements to the art. It actually does take a bit longer, but that’s because I’m doing backgrounds on every panel. I could shave a little off if I did the occasional “color arc” background that a lot of strips do, I don’t think it would impact the quality. And honestly once I’ve drawn a few pages in a setting like this ballroom, I can do a little recycling.
Least I Could Do by Ryan Sohmer and Lar Desouza also publishes daily.
Of course it’s in a comic strip format so it would take less time to draw, but it is a very entertaining webcomic. Some of it is NSFW.
Schlock and LICD are doing their comics as full time jobs though, they’ve built enough of an audience that they’re able to. If I suddenly got some grant that let me do this comic full time, I’d definitely go to two days a week, which would leave me some time to do ancillary stuff, like making shirts. I have several ideas that I just haven’t had the time to sit down and draw. I also need to find time for stuff like the leaderboard art for the facebook page, the vote/bonus art, etc. If I had a colorist I’d reasonably be able to do 3x a week I think, that seems like a sweet spot. If I had 10x the readers, that would put me in the same ballpark as Girl Genius audience wise, but I suspect at only 1 update a week I may plateau a bit before I reach that. Sort of a catch-22, but if I get half that size audience, it might make me enough in advertising to hire a colorist, then I can update more, and eventually maybe sell some books.
It’s a long term plan, I’m not going to quit in frustration that I can’t pay my mortgage off the comic 2 years in, I knew this was a long road going in.
Try looking online for grants for artists out there. There are millions of dollars in grants every year that don’t get spent because people don’t think to look, or just say to themselves that there sure there’s nothing like that out there for them, when all it takes is looking on the internet for a few hours one day to find lots of $$$ that is just sitting there waiting for you to apply for it.
Would a site such as [https://www.kickstarter.com] possibly provide the “platform” needed to finance such a project?
Actually, Kickstarter can’t be used for this: They require a ‘finished product’ at the end. (Paraphrasing.) You can use them to develop a new product, but not to finance the startup of an ongoing service.
Yeah I’ll probably investigate something like kickstarter when it comes time to do a book, but it would be chaos if a person could use it to try and turn their hobby into a job.
I don’t know whether it might work to do things like the Origin Story, and any other tangential side-things that might come up (Dabbler’s Guide to Japan?), as extra-content mini-comics? I read a few webcomics* in which the author has the main storyline as publicly accessible free content (as you do), and then occasionally releases paid-for downloadable mini-comics of a dozen or so pages that are “off-stage” to the main storyline; sometimes filling in the details of an event referred to in the main storyline, more often simply additional world-building. The reader doesn’t need to know what happens in these “off-stage” mini-comics to understand and enjoy the main storyline, they just add a bit extra for those who want it.
[*I know of Chimneyspeak (not always safe for work-type places), Sluggy Freelance, and Darken; I’m sure there are more. Gunnerkrigg Court and Not A Villain do similar side-stories between chapters as free content, but that only really works if you have definite chapter breaks to begin with.]
Spinnerette does an extra “Book only” chapter when Krow publishes a new book. Once you get to the point where you’re comfortable and able to publish a book or two it might be a good way to entice people.
Question for Dave B. – Hopefully I haven’t asked this before: How did Sidney afford her stake in the shop, dive training, her newish car, etc. at age 22? I’ve been guilty of more than a little fridge logic (TV tropes) on this one, and she’s either just barely out of college or skipped college altogether, so how did she get the tens of thousands of dollars needed to build up a comic shop inventory so quickly and the other stuff? My bet is that she financed the shop while Joel came on board to run it.
The best ideas I can come up with are some kind of (now spent) inheritance from a recently deceased relative, some really big business loan, or modest lottery/gambling winnings that she put towards the shop. Otherwise, her parents are probably rich, which would maybe complicate her personal life, though it would explain her dad’s insistence on “passing on the family legacy” with a same-name child. Rich people are often into that sort of thing.
If any of these will be revealed in the comic later then I retract my nosiness, but it’d be nice to know if these issues will be addressed. Much thanks ;-)
Fridge logic always gets ya. Up to a point, I was confident that I had put more thought into the comic than anyone else, but as the number of readers grow, at some point, the collective time spent thinking about the comic/characters/story/logic will have exceeded my own, and at that point, the cracks will begin to appear. Actually I’m pretty sure that happened several months ago, especially given my general lack of worldliness – but I’m certainly willing to use those collective brain cycles to improve the comic.
That’s probably a very good question. I’m sure there is a very good answer. With the understanding that I haven’t sat down and done the books so to speak, the short answer probably involves a business loan backed by her upper middle class (lower upper class) parents. The vacation was mostly financed by them as it was a family vacation. Though now that I think about it maybe there some humor to be had in the tale of how she acquired the comic shop…
Perhaps in her world they trademarked the Scoville name so they get paid a fee every time it’s used. Not F U money but enough for small investments like the store. Typically she immediately (at 18 when she got her share) spent it on a comic shop.
Another spot where the hilarity of exposition is all but begging to be told? Joel. How he me Sidney, and how he decided to go into business with her.
Come to think of it, it’s possible that her (lower upper class) parent(s) co-signed the shop’s business loan right out of high school, but she was still going to college while working part time at the shop, which partial absence may have contributed to the shop’s lack of profitability to this point. Or she was young-ish graduating college and only opened the shop with Joel very recently. Gah, I need to stop theorizing and let you write your own story! Sorry, compulsive habit.
Either way, methinks that once it gets around that their comic shop is owned/operated by a real life super, Joel will be hard pressed to keep up with all of the massive spike in business as nerds swarm from a three county radius to see her in person. Advertizing problems: solved.
It says in Sidney’s write up that she is good at using powers in innovative ways. Maybe she figured out a way to make cash from her new found powers.
Yes, it was a poker game no one shall soon forget!
The comic shop is a franchise of The Lounge…
https://thelounge.keenspot.com/
Except she went with comics instead of solely anime, and she is using the revenue to pay back the franchiser (The Lounge) which would be a part of her overhead. Any profit would go into buying the car and vacations and such.
Business owner to entrepreneur business loan to start up a franchise.
Bear in mind that acquiring a share in a struggling business is not always all that expensive. It could be an employee buyout of a failing business, those are sometimes very cheap.
Minor inheritence would explain a lot. An uncle/aunt/grandparent leaving around $100k would explain some short-term vacation/adventure binging, followed by investing in a small business and buying a new car, followed by the budget getting tight again. Also, legal settlement. Sydney does seem to be incident prone. HA! I pity her poor lawyer.
That would be my guess – The inheritance could also have been the store building or something of that sort, with little to no money on top of it.
The trips can be quite cheap, especially if you are willing to impulse-buy a deal. College kids can get some amazing vacations if they are willing to listen to a sales pitch for a timeshare they can’t afford if they wanted it. ;)
Sydney bought into the comic shop with all the money she got after suing the guy who robbed… tried to rob her for her pain and suffering. Actually he flat out offered to pay her that much just so nobody would ever know he got his ass kicked by a skinny beanpole.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/416
I could that one happening
The comic shop was found underwater while she was scuba diving as well… or it was a settlement by Proffessor X to keep her away from Wolverine… or it hatched out of an egg…. or she drew the appropriate card from a non standard d&d Deck of Many Things (comic shop replaces small keep)… it fell out of the sky and landed on a witch (Sydney called dibs on it since she happened to be closest to it)…
The comic shop could also have grown up from a comic book she planted there when she was young (requires frequent watering)… She won it in a contest… It was given to her by accident by a shadowy government organization that was doing subliminal messaging research (!)….
or Joel may be better with money than Sydney…
Sydney won the money for the shop in a high-stakes underground Magic the Gathering game. After pulling off a ridiculously complicated play, she took the money and ran!
litteraly
Each plot hole like this is just more comic fodder for future stories.
actually she most likely is getting disability with her ADHD depending on how high her dose is and how she acts screams disability check and she used that to get the ticket and help Joel with the comic shop. given how she acts she wouldn’t be able to hold down a stable job again that says a disability check.
Simple, she’s actually a Trust Fund Baby who got screwed by a crooked accountant. That’s why they’re worrying about the shop now.
There are federal grants (up to $10,000 I think) for starting up small businesses.
Maybe it was given to her by the previous owner(maybe and old person or cancer) because she frequented so often.
plus it’s possible that Sydney graduated high school early(like 16) and in fact graduated college ~1 years ago. it is possible, I know someone with a toned down Sydney like personalty that did it.
If one of your relatives works for one of the major airlines like Contiental, you can get tickets for ridiciously low prices. I’m talking 50$ in country and 100$ outcountry. You don’t need to be rich to fly if you have conections. Or one of her parents could be in the military. If you schedule long enough in advance you can catch a flight practily anywhere for free.
military space A sure you took 10 days to get a seat but it was $20 international flight.
I’m going to go with “she’s the daughter of rich people”. That way the insistence on passing down the name to a “junior” becomes eccentric rather than insane, and so does Sydney
Ahhh… Now I see the reason for her aversion to Ninja’s! She’s an Aquapirate! *nods*
The pop culture references raise the awesomeness of this update to > 9000!!!!
OH! There you are. I was wondering why absolutely nobody had commented on the whole “Aquapirate” thingy. Good on ye mate.
Also, a question. What does attenborough mean? I have never seen chat code like that before.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Attenborough
He was huge during the 70’s and 80’s.
And still going strong to the present day, in his 60th year of broadcasting and at the grand old age of 86!
She is impersonating nature commentator and documentary maker David Attenborough, similar to how Adam Savage in known to from time to time on Mythbusters.
I wonder if I am doing too many Wikipedia edits recently. I think it might be affecting other things I write.
Catation Needed.
Make that Citation Needed.
Catation?
hmmm…
Citation with a LOL Cat!
Even better!!!
wasn’t that also the name of the guy who spammed missals in Gurren Lagan?
@ Thraxus908
Attenborough as in DAVID Attenborough, he’s famous for animal documentaries, the idea is that you imagine Sydney doing an impersonation.
DORYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!
Just keep swimming, just keep swimming, swimming,, hmmmhum um humm hum
Once that song gets stuck in your head, it’s there forever, and so glad I am not the only one who noticed Dory, but now, someone tell me just what that is on the floor under the display case in the Chinese shop? I recognize a light saber, I know I’ve seen the two broadswords somewhere, and that star thingy, but not the bottom item. And I am sticking to that being Ahab’s actual harpoon she’s nabbing!
if i had to guess it is probobly the master sword from legend of zelda
The “Star Thingie” is the Glaive from “Krull” (Which is nothing like a REAL Glaive, they just used a name that sounded cool for their super bladey whirling remote controlled shuriken of death…
the two broadswords are from He-man and Thundercats!
And to think Gizmo and the lightsaber are the only movies I’ve actually watched, out of the “nominated contestants” for shop items.
One of them is from a video game, and two are from eighties cartoons.
Glad someone else noticed. (c8
My My, all the 1980s Items of Power in that little shop, along with the squinty-eyed actor whose name I can never remember. Still think he was best in “Big Trouble in Little China”.
*eyes the panel again* Hmm… No Six Demon Bag?
He must have left it on the pork chop express.
Note to self: toss magic items in deeper water LoL.
Man this practically stabs at something I’ve said for ages, if you really want to hide powerful magical objects where no one will get to them, just go out to sea and toss them in the water.
sink it in the darkest, deepest ocean, and a fish will ALWAYS swallow it and get caught in a fisherman’s net within a week. Standard Scheherezade plot device.
Thats why you put in a chest filled with lead weights and wrap it in chains and razor wire.
If you want something to stay really hidden, you seal it up, build it into a major public works project and destroy the documentation (apart from a last-chance warning on the box). Nobody knows it’s there, and they’re not going to take down an earthquake-resistant hydroelectric dam on the off-chance.
The bad guys still would take it down, you have the All-spark in the Transformers movie,
and there are the numerous accounts of powerful items built into the foundation of a building, in the walls, or on display in a museum as just another piece of art, and bam, eventually someone who knows what it is, or someone the artifact will react to, shows up and all hell breaks loose.
And one singing frog. :-)
Hello! ma baby,
Hello! ma honey,
Hello! ma ragtime gal
That cartoon will never go out of style. It’s been replayed fo the last 40+ years and is still going strong.
Just as it should be. We did it end anyway? I have always wondered.
Riiibiit!
Didn’t they try that with Megatron as well? We all know what happened then.
Note to self: take evil alien robots apart, melt the pieces down and forge soemthing for the good alien robots.
Remember what was done to the Terminators (Sara Connor Chronicles) after they were deactivated and stripped of flesh? Burned in a bed of magnesium. It is the only way when you can’t nuke the site from orbit.
or hide it in plain sight
Best either takem whatever it is apart and destroy each part in a different way, or just throw it all down into the next volcano. It worked on that ring…
Actually thinking about it, given the whole Chinese shop thing, surprised you didn’t have the Witchblade in there too. Granted most the things in there are 80’s while the Witchblade was introduced in the 90’s.
I would have liked to see Galtar’s Golden Lance.
Galtar>He-Man
At least Galtar had a hot girlfriend.
He-Man was the supposedly strongest man in the universe. Yet he still needed lotsa help to beat some orkish opponents and couldn’t even fly.
Or some of the artifacts from the D&D cartoon from the 80s
So..Many..References…Head…Explodin- okay not really, but i did love guessing what al those things were in the last panel
My head exploded a long time ago just watching Sydney eat all that spicy food.
A) Loved Dori’s little cameo in the first panel, B) loved the scuba instructor’s rolled up scuba magazine, ready to smack Syd on the nose like a bad puppy, and C) loved the way Syd has perfect control over gravity with the floaty orb in panel 3, since her hair and identity lanyard are both following the effects of gravity as she “leans” on the blue orb, but her legs are tilted off to the side and her pantlegs are behaving as if they’re under a different angle of gravity. It bespeaks a very fine control of what can and cannot affect her while she’s being all floaty-orb-y. (Which will lend further credibility to the Rule of Silly/Cool when it must be applied in the future, wherein gravity’s effects, or the orb’s effects, will be “conveniently forgotten” simply because the scene calls for something either Silly or Cool. Or even both. Sydney swings both ways, you know!
Well, okay, she swings mostly Silly, but occasionally she can be Cool, so it still counts!
Have you ever been smacked on the nose with a rolled up magazine? It will seriously get your mind off the Shiny Shiny Harpoon!
*I* loved the stars in Sydney’s eyes….
Anyone else thinking, “Where’d you get the orbs?”
al la Monty Python that is.
Last panel i love that that you have Egg Chin, Gizmo. the krull throwing star thingie (i still have the board game lol), and He-man sword. I also recognize the thunder cat sword and vader’s light saber. but the bottom most handle i can only guess to be the handle to the Voltron (5 lion version) star sword? i don’t seem to have that in my fictional armory.
looks more like the hilt of the master soward to me
yep it does… also not in my armory of fictional weapons. Duly noted and thanks for pointing it out.
the weapons are from top self to bottom left to right as follows.
1. The Orb
2. The Glaive
3. Lukes lightsaber
4. The Sword of Omens
5. The Power Sword
6. The Tri-force Sword
Yes I are old nerd new most off the top of my head.
Except it’s the Master Sword, not the Triforce Sword. Otherwise, very well done. :P
And yeah, the antiques shops often have the best stuff. Even if it’s actually just a teapot, and not cursed at all.
there is such a thing as an antique teapot that isn’t cursed or haunted?
Pet peeve – it’s ‘anticlimactic’. ‘anticlimatic’ means you’re against the weather.
It’s already been posted.
Ok, since no one sead it.
Well Dory found Sydney, now where is P. Sherman or 42 WallabyWay?
Looks like that blonde wanted to be a Baywatch girl, untill Sydney nailed her with an arrow to the knee!
I *just* noticed that big ol’ knife she’s holding in panel 1. Is that a standard scuba diving thing? And if so, who the hell would willingly give her a knife like that?
She may have been looking for perls.
Prople use knives like that one to get perls out of oysters.
Sorry, Pearls.
or perils depending on point of view
Semi-standard, especially alone in open water: There is old fishing line, nets, ropes, etc. all out there, and it’s often a good idea to have a quick way to get free of them if you need it.
It would look less scary if someone else were holding it. Six or seven inch sheath knives are common diving equipment, big enough to get out of old netting without being too bulky, but they seem lots bigger with tiny nutters holding them!
Syd may soon be placed in combat situations: I think we WANT her to be scary.
Her dad may be a Marine drill Sgt. with the way she cusses, snd seems to be able to take care of herself in a fighting situation so she should be alright.
The rest of the team and any enemys on the other hand….. Dosn’t look promising for them.
Every villain Sydney gets handed will need some R&R in GitMo after she’s finished with them.
“I’d like to go to jail now, please.”
Dr. Light from teen titans quote?
Best ending ever.
would also explain why she is dive trained but has no chance of ever passing a class on it plus gives a reason for her to have high density muscles while being unusualy flexable.
First and foremost, Rule of Cool! Besides, compared to the other ladies at Archon, she is not that developed, muscle-wise (or concentration-wise either, but that is another story altogether). Even ignoring the powerhouses like Max and Anvil, the ladies, like Harem and Heatwave, show a remarkable level of muscular definition. This might be because of their recent military strength training or just Dave’s drawing style, or both. Sydney shows a lot less definition than the others, so the flexibility might be natural or what her exercise program focuses on. Her recent show of strength was principally fueled by adrenalin not strength-building exercises.
It’s the nature of “Supers” in my universe. They happen to look like superheroes, which in my mind means the women look like fitness models (with boobs) and the guys look like decathletes at a minimum. All of the other women I’ve drawn in the comic have had sweaters or sports jackets on (with the exception of some of the earlier pages) but I’m going to try and have some varied body types for people who aren’t “Supers”
When you go diving one the tools of the trade is a knife. Another could be a harpoon gun.
a girl’s got to protect herself, you never know when a the ninja going attack you
Aqua-pirate vs. ninja-SEALs.
lol
The local Deep Ones eat them all. Yum!
I love the rolled up newspaper he’s getting ready to use on her heh.
Rolled up newspapers are dangerous especially when hit on the nose, just ask any dog
got the html tags, but I couldn’t remember who attenborough was until I looked him up. derp
As for the money for the car, comics shop. I figure as manic as she is she tried (and failed) and dozens of schemes every since she was a kid with a bicycle. But being Texas, maybe she was avoiding the summer sun by a convenience store dumpster and found a near miss lottery ticket, which she promptly cashed in and tried to buy all her favorite comics’ back issues. The shop owner, said “Look just buy the store why don’t you?” …. and she did. The car was a graduation present from her decently well off parents who realize to get anywhere in Texas you got to have a reliable car.
BTW great getting to chat at A-kon
I have issues with this page.
If she found the orbs while diving what did she do when she got back to the boat? Her family and the boat workers would have seen the orbs weather they were floating around her head or even if they were still “asleep”. It would be hard to carry seven balls in your arms while swimming and trying to get back into a ship…
easy out, family vacation, or alone on a vacation as she is an adult, and in a very foolish decision decided to scuba by herself.
Some people do that, when I was in San Diego I saw a guy go out on a little boat by himself and scuba dive around a small area.
Honestly I think that is very foolish to do.
add-on, as it is Bermuda, the water is very clear and looks like she is in a shallow area (a good chunk of water around the islands is like that), so she and her family may not have thought much about her doing a little quick diving near the hotel or what ever.
If she is 22 her parents would probably have just started ignoring crazy shit like this over the years.
You know, there’s no reason to believe Syd taking scuba lessons and going for a dive off the Keys was a “same day” event. It’s possible she took the lessons while still a teenager and has been diving for years. Given her adversion to sunlight going underwater would be a good way to avoid it, and all those trips out of the country could have been to some of the world’s diving hot spots. If she has that kind of experience she might think nothing of diving alone. And going diving your first day and finding power orbs is too much of a McGuffin but finding something after years of diving I could buy that.
Forget about her safety, I think any potential dive buddy is going to look at this crazed munchin with a knife and worry about their own safety.
Picture the dialogue of two guys on a dock as Syd pulls away in a boat.
Guy 1: Dude, you just going to let that little chick go out diving alone? Wha’if she meets a shark?
Guy 2: Pal,I went diving with her yesterday. [Points to his bandage.] I pitty the shark.
for some reson, the strip reminds me of the movie “Sphere”.
OK, Chinese Antique Shops have nice MCGaffins, but the best by far are from ancient Egypt.
Yeah, wouldn’t have wondered if that guy had a ZPM, DHD or even a Stargate.
The boring answer would be one or both of her parents took her out there on holiday exactly why she was alone when she found her ioun stones is another story!
The interesting one would involve them later discovering that Sydney has never taken a scuba class in her life… well this one at least!
Her family probably knows better than anyone else, when she get’s excited give her a fifty foot clearance.
Hold on Mogwai, Orb, Krull throwing glaive, lightsaber, he-man’s sword, the sword of omens and is that she’ra’s sword?!!!
Good god they really do have all the best artefacts!
Of course it is an imagined scenario of Sydney’s when she was being sarcastic.
Oh its the Triforce sword?
Was the only one I didn’t recognise!
Yeah, She-ra’s sword pretty much looks exactly like He-man’s sword except for a jewel in it.
Yeah it’s some variant of the Master Sword, apparently it looks slightly different in each Zelda game.
I have just sat and read through every issue of this, and I have to say this webcomic is fantastic. Not only does it break a couple structural rules of traditional comics, incorporate anime styles fantastically and keep my interest spellbound BUT it is fantastically original. I am massively jealous of not thinking of Sydney’s power orbs myself! Thankyou very much for an enjoyable time reading, and I will keep looking out for more updates in future.
Every Monday morning around 6am Central time. ;)
Thanks a lot, glad you enjoy it! I honestly don’t recall of how I came up with the orbs, as far as I know it’s a fairly original idea, but I’m sure there were lots of influences, possibly Empress Lynn from Gold Digger, which you can see in the Top Web Comics vote incentive on the side/bottom of the page. Surprisingly I had actually not heard of Ioun Stones before I did the page with the reveal on it, some people in the comments mentioned them, though Ioun Stones are a little different, conveying passive bonuses.
Is…is that Dory from “Finding Nemo” in the first panel?
Yes that is Dori from “Finding Nemo” as others have said early on. Best to read all the comments.
THE AQUABATS!!
Best Superhero tee ever!!
There are definitely worse shows to watch if you have a 6 year old in the house.
i have a question due to the fact i’m french.
what are the keys?
and zephan is right antique shop ARE the main source of potential artefacts that reveal their power to only those worthy
and OH MY GOD i just picture Sidney having her first driving lesson…
how many times did she try to pass it?
or perhaps she frightened her teachers into giving it to her
… hum … no. The panels where we saw her driving didn’t show an atypical driving method (except perhaps how she entered her car. LOL!)
The Florida Keys are a series of islands trailing off the southern tip of the state into the ocean. Many are connected by long highway bridges (parts of which get blown up in True Lies) but many are only really accessible by boat. No idea why they’re called the Keys though.
“Key” is derived from the Spanish Cayo, meaning small island.
cayo [cah’-yoh]
noun
1. A rock, shoal or islet in the sea; key.
Also, they are sometime spelled “Cays”, which is probably more appropriate, but still pronouned “Keys”.
Or, more correctly, “Quays”
thanks
cultural differences can be a pain in the ass, right?
oh my god i just envision myself as a french super-hero meeting sidney and co…
i wouldn’t survive 5 sec…
In French, a similar sounding word would be Quai, which means wharf or dock (noun). Nothing to do with those islands named by Spaniards.
I could just see it now. The ladies are watching TV of a couple of guys, that look somewhat similar to Rick Harrison and Chumlee of Pawn Stars, selling an sword to a woman. As she puts her hand around the grip, she lifts it into the the air and cries out “For the honour of Greyskull!” Her clothes then change under a swirling light effect.
While the effect is on going, the younger one looks at the bald one and says, “It never did that for me.”
The old bald guy looks back with a concerned look on his face, “You tried that?”
“I had make sure it worked, right?”
Fortunately they never got their hands on any of the Sailor Scouts artefacts although there have been word of a group of bishonen sailor scouts but thats left for the movie!
I bet it’s similar to SpongeBob. The instructor just gave her the licence after her umpteenth try so he’d be rid of her.
Notice how the wetsuit she’s wearing while diving is the same one she’s wearing under her shirt during the lesson, but nobody else is wearing one? That tells me two things: #1 the dive school wasn’t issuing suits at that stage of the lesson plan which means #2 Syd was so committed to learning to dive she got her own suit ahead of schedule.
Diving for her was not just a summer fling, she was planning to be diving for many years.
Also I couldn’t really imagine Sydney in a bikini. A one piece maybe but she’d still probably want to wear a shirt over it.
Not sure if this is commented on but nice putting dori in there…seeing how they both have the same attention span.