Grrl Power #97 – This is the martial arts version of pulling on pigtails
Not an auspicious introduction for Anvil, but she’ll get her moment later.
Here’s the part where I grouse about poorly drawn action on this page. I’m sure quite a few of you aren’t even sure what’s happening between Math upside down on Anvil’s head and her landing on the sofa. You don’t see how he go up there, which is ok actually, that doesn’t really require a shot by shot sequence, but then suddenly she’s landing on the sofa. I have those two tiny panels where she tries to grab him and flubs it, which is the wind up to the actual action piece, but I skipped the panel where he’s spinning her. Sequential art is an art form in and of itself, and cutting what I see in my head down to panels is challenging, and especially so with action. I know how I’d redo it to make it clearer, but I’d have to make it two pages to break down the action better. It wouldn’t be as much of a problem if I could put out 2-3 pages a week.
I cut down to the break room for the Harem/Heatwave confrontation (which bled into the Math/Anvil scene) cause I wanted to have a bit of a break from the ballroom, which is feeling long in the tooth to me like the bank parking lot. I think I’ll focus on that till I’m able to move on to the next scene.
Update: Ooh, look who’s got a cameo in one of my favorite webcomics. (mildly NSFW)
Edit: Fixed the requisite omissions, this time Sydney’s missing orbs.
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That’s some pretty good balance he’s got there.
it looks almost like jedi quality balancing to me
Oh… So he’s THAT good. Not surprising since Peggy is also considered an asset.
At least she just boped him on the head and notbreaking the cue over his head.
….. This time.
Then again, Goth Harem has just showed that his kung fu is not invincible. Good.
Look to me like overconfidence is what keeps doing him in. So far, anyhow.
Right.
Being “that good” is a weakness in itself sometimes.
Harem actually did him a favor there.
And when he meets Sydney, he’s going to get taken down a notch the her size.
Tongue-grab, hip-toss!
Math: So you really stopped one of the bank robbers? How did you do thaaaaaaa ?
Oops, that was meant to be:
Tongue-grab, hip-toss!
Math: So you really stopped one of the bank robbers? How did you do thaaaaaaa [splat] ?
My splat disappeared because I put it in angle brackets and the Script Injection Preventor stripped it as a disallowed tag. Oh well, live and learn.
you should have reversed the first two lines
It looks like it is a really bad day to be Harem.
Some days are just like that. Nothing go’s right, and you end up Karma’s Bitch. The good news is Karma usualy has a short attenion span and starts picking on someone else.
But with five copies of yourself,you have a five times higher chance to be the target of karma.
Karma’s like any other god. Always looking for amusement.
It’d be weird if DaveB introduced a charictor who was named Karma who could give you either good or bad luck.
She couldn’t use it on herself, and to give somebody good luck she would have to take it from someone else who then would have bad luck.
sorry, but that’s not a flaw in combat. give your teammates epic good luck, and have your opponents so unlucky that they start tripping over air.
I’m Thinking that the pool table is in a gallary room overlooking the breakroom.
Stupid place to put a pool table, Think if somebody launched one of the poolballs over the side and it landed on somebodies head.
(applauds pickle3719’s common sense.)
Somebodies got to have some, or else it wouldn’t be so common.
Obviously it’s deliberate, to teach the staff to always be on their toes and keep an eye out for danger ;)
there are times when it seems that it should be put on the endangered list!
or they try to use Sydney’s power-balls as pool balls and she has fun messing with everybody
Yeah that’s a good point. Oh well, too late now.
At least we know how he got there so fast now.
Good point.
Could always claim a door was left open.
You honestly think in a set-up where they’ve got access to Dabbler’s Clarke III technology, they can’t fit some sort of sensor/catcher system to stop the balls leaving the table? This could have the additional benefit, depending on how it’s done, of being able to turn the system into any one of several effective tactical assets in a last-ditch base defence: if the balls themselves can be manoeuvred in mid-air by some sort of automated ‘soft’ catch-and-return field, you’ve got 15 or so mini-missiles; if it’s just a hard-field ‘temporary wall’ to stop them leaving the table, that could still disrupt attackers and their projectiles.
Or maybe like in Firefly the balls are holographic.
They actually don’t have access to Dabbler’s technology. This will obviously be explained later, but she has sort of a Prime Directive thing going on. She can visit a Type 0 civilization like ours, but she won’t hand us crazy technology, and she has safeguards in place to prevent anyone from lifting tech from her.
Very understandable. If I were to visit another world, I wouldn’t want the natives to steal my teck goodies.
They would have to pay for it like everybody else.
Fair enough. I can think of several groups who would think they had a ‘legitimate’ claim on such tech, but who I wouldn’t trust as far as I could throw them. I suppose in that case, getting Dabbler to do it as a black-box job wouldn’t be viable either, due to the potential for ‘misappropriation’ and reverse-engineering.
Oh ye of little understanding of designers for bars ….. I used to go to one where the pool tables were on the second floor balcony …… they moved them 6 months latter closer to the far wall after a Corona Moment >_< …… Never assume intelligent design without first verifying the intelligence.
Holy shit, I have to hear about this “Corona Moment.”
Sounds alot like a Noodle Incident to me
Remember adamas, according to Freefall, Calvin got framed for the Noodle Incident. It was actually Sam Starfall. ;)
I love the expression on Goth Harem’s face in panel 6.
She’s reacting to what happened to Sporty Harems body.
Hence her boping him on the head.
Harem’s main disadvantage seems to be that each copy feels all the pain that is inflicted to one of the others. With five bodies it makes her five times the target.
Of course she is not coordinating herself now, just being at five places to experience all.
*looks around, cautiously* Psst, Dave. Sydney’s orbs are missing.
He’ll fix it. He’s been on vacation all week.
It wouldn’t be a Grrl Power comic if something wern’t missing.
Yep yep. Not a big deal, I just wanted to let hiim know as soon as possible, so he can get the jump on it before too many other folks notice.
Currently, they’re hidden behind her speech balloon.
I can accept that for panel 1, but not for panel 4.
Hah hah yup, wouldn’t be a Grrl Power without some omission. At least I put her glasses in her hand to explain why they were missing on the previous page.
“At least I put her glasses in her hand to explain why they were missing on the previous page.”
Yeah, but unfortunately they’re all but invisible against the patterned carpet. If you hadn’t have pointed out that’s where they were I would not have seen them.
“wouldn’t be a Grrl Power without some omission”
And finding them has become something of a game for us – like hunting for the rabbit head on the cover of Playboy.
Behind Max. Or off-panel, far right. ;)
No, Sydney rendered them all invisible, or put them back in the tube again. Take your pick.
No, she cleaning them on the bottom of her shirt like she did her glasses last week. ;)
No, they are self cleaning.
Didn’t they first tell soldiers in Vietnam that the M-16 was self cleaning? Which led to a lot of extremely unpleasant situations in the middle of firefights until the Army got around to issuing cleaning kits?
You are not telling me that these orbs from a science hundreds if not thousands of years away from a clunky M-16 are any way similar are you? Just to “win” the argument.
That works great for panel 1. What about panel 4? Nothing to hide behind there.
As I said, off-panel to the right. ;)
Obviously, they changed position between panels.
Mmm, yeah, I wasn’t sure at first whether she was falling on the sofa, or if she was running past it very quickly – I had to re-read it to get it.
I guess you could have experimented more with the layout, for example putting the two tiny panels between panels 5 & 8, along the eye’s diagonal path from the bottom of 5 to the top of 8 – this would give more space for an additional panel. If successful, that kinda thing makes for more dynamic reading (but if you mess it up things get even more confusing, so…).
Or you could make panel 5 smaller (it might even gain a bit of clarity from being more cartoonified, or possibly frameless, without background) to gain more space that way.
Actually, the pacing is pretty good for the comic as a whole. The one page a week is what makes it seem extended. I only started reading a couple of months ago, tho.
Yeah… That was really hard to follow, sorry. Also Anvil is REALLY ticklish apparently, most girls I know would be too busy being grossed out by sweaty boot-toes on their ribs to notice the tickle, particularly in mid-fight.
Plus I’m still not clear what they were fighting about, unless he and Anvil are dating and she was ticked he went to oggle carmelized cleavage.
I think it was his comment about Anvil in the last frame of #92 https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/524
Nah, the *boom*s were Anvil running to get to the kitchen. So unless she’s a pre-cog she wasn’t running to the kitchen to avenge herself for the comment Math made about the noise she produced while running to the kitchen.
I still say she was already in the break room when Math showed up. The BOOMs where Max testing out Sydney’s force field. The comment about what Anvil was eating is what set the big girl off.
dave said as much earlier
I think she was ticked off by his implication that the concussive booms propagating through the building were produced by her digestive system.
She’s 6’ft 7. Big girl, when my stomach growls it makes an impresive noise. Nowhere near Sydney’s level of stomach growling but it can be heard across a room. Whith someone as big as Anvil, you probably could hear it in the next room.
She has a superhuman body. It probably also takes a lot of food to keep her fed.
Fus Ro Dah!
heh, still makes me laugh, especially following Godzilla’s Greonk!
I was looking at the Top Comics list after I voted and it’s already at #2.
It’s now #1. OK keep on voting and let’s see how long we can keep it at #1.
That might have something to do with the Dabbler vote incentive.
WHACK!
Ow!
LOLOLOLOL
Math is lucky that she is the type that opens the hand when tickled. She could also have tightened her grip.
DaveB, on the cast page are you going to put him in the supers catagory or the non-supers catagory?
That’s a good question. Him and Peggy are in the same category, along with a few others on the team, but I have always thought of him as a Super, probably because his skills are the flashiest. That and he can beat just about anyone on the team when they’re sparring. The only real exceptions are Max and Dabbler if she’s really on her toes, but even then it’s a close fight. Then there are cases like Sydney. If she’s using her powers smart, he couldn’t touch her, but flying 6 stories above him inside an impressive force-field isn’t sparring.
The real question is: If Max or Anvil landed a punch (unpulled), would Math splatter like any other normal?
He is human, but like a young Jackie Chan in a Hong Kong produced martial arts flick, he can take a hell of a beating. But yeah if he took a direct unpulled punch from Maxima he would react the same way that a normal human would if they were, for instance, shot by a tank.
did you know he does all his own stunts?, been hurt a few times as well
A few? IIRC there isn’t a single unbroken bone in Chan’s body. That’s why he said he was retiring from the action stuff. He’s almost 60 now.
He also did not stop filming to heal, check the ending credits for Rumble in The Bronx, he did the whole Hovercraft chase with a broken ankle, they even show you how he broke it during the credits.
that’s the point unlike the actors today who seem to need stuntman, body doubles, etc just take a dump. He one of the few that aren’t afraid to have a go (of course you could also say he’s mad), he does talk to the stunt team for advice before he tries it
Actually the stunt teams were part of His company. And he took care of any of their medical expenses himself because Insurance companies wouldn’t touch him.
yeah I think he broke it during the stunt with the sword and the Hovercraft’s airskirt
He broke it when he jumped off of a fire escape.
did anyone notice that the hand-held game console he gave the boy at the start of the film didn’t have a cartage, yet the boy was happy playing it?
Also Peggy doesn´t have a “P” Choker (at least in the cast), so these chokers could concievably be reserved for supers.
That would answer the question too.
She should have a throat mic since she’s field personnel. And maybe a handle too.
I don’t know whether Peggy was a pilot or other such notable individual in her USAF days – given her specialism into sniping, I’d doubt it – but if so she may well have her stage-name already. If my (very limited) information is correct, ‘notable’ personnel transferred across services tend to keep their callsigns so as to avoid confusion: the person transferred doesn’t have to learn a new alias, and anyone who knows the alias from before will know to whom it refers. I think the line for being considered ‘notable’ is whether you’d be expected to be referred to specifically over the radio – the pilots probably yes, the ‘crew’ and ‘troops’ probably not.
Unfortunately, the low effective resolution limit of the throat-mike bands probably limits the use of a crosshairs motif (too complex a design, and it just blurs at real-life ranges and/or at the zoom levels the audience sees). Perhaps a P, with the hole in the loop bullet-shaped, if the stage-name also starts with a P?
With extreme marksmanship skills that places firmly in para-rescue territory. She’d almost certainly have a nickname.
In the USAF, pilots are officers. According to the cast page, Peggy is a sergeant, so she was not a pilot, but support personal. In her case, that probably means making sure that landing areas are kept secure from potential enemy combatants. As a sergeant, she would likely be in charge of a team of similar support personal.
The cast page is becoming a bit of a liability at this point. I’ve learned quite a bit about military stuff since I made it, so Peggy is an office, probably a Lt. She was a pilot and was used as such in Afganistan, but despite her skill as a sniper, as far as I’m aware, women still aren’t deployed to the front line. Now, in an occupying action like Afganistan, defining the front line is difficult at times, so she definitely got to play whack-a-mole with a few unfortunate insurgents, but she was never actually deployed as a sniper.
You can always redesign it.
Use the existing layout, but fix whats wrong with it like how you can’t read whats on half the cast page because of the art under the writing.
You don’t have to rush it. Take your time getting it right, and improve the sight a bit at a time.
Peggy could have an “O” for Overwatch. She’s a sniper, right?
Hmm, that’s not bad. She actually is going to suggest a name that Maxima won’t entirely Grok with, maybe Max will counter with that.
Snipers are LRK’s aka Long Range Killers. Put an “a” in it and it becomes LaRK.
Works with her being both a sniper and a pilot.
I thought of pierce and longrange (the real LR may be honored by the reference while he was drone operator/sniper)
Also sniping him with her PPO orb on the ground. If it is light based no way he can dodge.
It’s sort of like dodging a shotgun. Sure you can get out of the way of most of the blast, but odds are you will get a taste of it, and with the PPO a taste can mean loseing a arm.
Dodging a bullet (for a human) doesn’t mean moving faster than a bullet, it means looking at where the gun is pointing, and stepping out of the way as the trigger is being pulled. It’s really pre-dodging. The same could potentially work with energy blasts. You’re not dodging the blast itself, you’re reacting to the tell that it’s being fired.
How much of a “tell” would there be in the case of Syd’s PPO? It’s a sphere with a rounded emitting surface and she aims & triggers it by thought.
It’s got no direction of pointing, like a gun barrel, for him to sight off of and she’s got no “twitchy trigger finger” for him to time off of.
Actually that’s easier than you think.
1: She has to hold the orb
2: She aims it with her hand and arm, thus the surface not facing her palm will be the source of the beam.
3: and just like with a gun, a good tell expert can judge a person’s facial expressions for when they are about to pull a trigger and not have to look at their hand (like they are bracing and being decisive), so Sydney would likely give a facial clue she was about to fire it.
You think?
Remember, we haven’t seen her actually fire the thing. For all we know the orb has some mental link to its user, or innate safeguards for the user that allows Syd to do things like fire beams through the cracks between her fingers without harm to her or curve the beam to it’s target after it’s left a free part of its surface. Or maybe the beams don’t even need to come directly from its surface but from a large field that develops around both it and the hand holding it. We just don’t know.
And as for reading Sydney’s face. . . the girl is not that predictable, she can switch from being calm and cool one second to being batshit crazy the next, and back again.
Or she “Fires” it by holding it over her head but from there it’s a 360 firing arc without Syd actually having to point it at the target.
Exactly, with Syd point & shoot is passe.
We were shown a flash back of her losing control of the “beam thingie” not to many pages back.
No, we were shown the aftermath of her loing control of it. In that scene we only saw Sydney trying to put out a fire by beating the flames with her coat(?).
I based what I said on how most magic orbs typically work from my experience with RPGs, we assume there is a defensive aura protecting the user like with energy blasts, fire blasts, electric, ect…when magic is involved as a built in safety measure, or a natural means to absorb the backwash *physics* so the user is un-harmed.
Unless of course the orb is one of those fancy (we want a cinematic) types like this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAHXRMcqHaQ
Yeah she probably has a fairly big tell. I wouldn’t be surprised if she yelled “Kamehameha” or “hadouken!” before she fired it either. :)
Or she could use the tv trope combo word: Kamehame-Hadoken!
OTOH, as a “critical” reader of comic books, watcher of movies, etc. she might have more than a passing knowledge on the dos&don’ts like telegraphing, monologueing, etc. and therefore avoid doing them.
considering how hyper and reactive she has been so far, and the whole ADHD thing (I have some pretty good experience those, having it myself to a lesser degree) I’d view that as a divergence from her character.
I wouldn’t be surprised if her tell was grabbing it, leaping back, striking a pose, and yelling out
“Kamehahmeha, Hadoken, Dragon Slave, Delux!” and letting loose while yelling and maybe laughing maniacally.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if her tell was grabbing it, leaping back, striking a pose, and yelling out
“Kamehahmeha, Hadoken, Dragon Slave, Delux!” and letting loose while yelling and maybe laughing maniacally.”
OTOH, given how manic she can be that *tell* could be a false lead. You know it’s leading to something – but what exactly?
All I’m saying is the PPO has no sighting so even when you know she’s going to fire it you can’t tell if the shot is coming in .01 second or 10. Nor can you tell if she’s going try for a head-shot or pepper the ground around your feet to make you dance. You can try to dodge by jumping to the side but you wouldn’t know if she was only trying to scare you and was actually aimed to the side of you when you jumped.
When she is doing things she thought about yeah. But I bet when she just reacts (especially when angry) there is no tell just BAM 95 pounds of chaos kicking ass by any means possible.
Except in this case it’s coming from an orb with no visible sight, so no tell Long range reading of eye movement isn’t likely to work well enough.
Does Halo’s name have anything to do with the way her ba.. erm marbles float around her?
We call them orbs. Or at least I do.
And to answer your question. Yes.
You were about to say “Baubles.”
I thought he/she was gonna say “badass items of super awesomeness”, but that is just me.
I call them “Sydney’s Spheres.” For the alliteration.
When Anvil said “Cheater” my first thought was the old milatary quote” If you ain’t cheating, you ain’t trying.”
vaguely remember a film where a think one of the characters just won a card game and “we are both cheating, only I’m better at it”
Mavrick
I’ve heard that quote attributed as a Special Forces motto.
Seals, Marines, and Air Born all use it.
Yup. I found the bottom center panel confusing. I had to mull it over before coming to the conclusion that Math had pulled a manuever that sent Anvil flying.
Or at least made her unstable on her feet and she basicly fell on the other girls. TIMBER!
Transfer of momentum. He went up and she went sideways, into the couch.
What I would like to know is why is there a giant nose floating in the air above Anvil in the right-hand insert in that panel.
It’s Math’s bare heal.
Opps…. that should be heel.
Yeah they’re terrible panels, but I ran out of space and didn’t know how to transition from one to the next.
Your learning as you go. Your already a good artist, picking up little tricks of the trade will make the storytelling better over time.
Just keep trying to improve what your doing and we will enjoy the story as it unfolds.
Once I was oriented that panel of Anvil falling over where the other women were sitting made sense. So don’t sweat it too much.
Dave, you know us, your watchers/stalkers/potential customers, would wait an extra day or two to make the comic larger to do what’s needed to be done to convey what you want more clearly. Just write a post about it and everyone will be happy.
And if people are not nice about it. adamas and i will gladly hunt them down, and use them as food for your pets that you keep on the basement.
What? OH! I wasn’t suppose to talk about it….OPPS!
I´m a little confused.
Maybe that is an expression i´m not familliar with in the english language, but what does “Gangway” mean in this context?
Or is that just one of these instances where you try to warn someone by just saying something, regardless of the sense in the situation?
Old sailing refrence. Started out as the plank bridge between a ship and the pier or shore. You could only have one perso crossing at a time and if someone realy wanted to get over quickly they would shout GANGWAY! for the others to get out of the way.
At least that’s how I think it started.
In other words it’s another way to say “MOVE IT!!”
There’s also an implication of “i am unable to stop”. You shout “Gangway” when you need clear passage, not just because you feel like it.
“I am coming through and unable to stop – please make a passage for so that I don’t hit you” all compressed down into two syllables – amazing what you can do with the english language at times!
Thank you.
Your welcome.
It’s questions like this that make this an intresting site.
Also i noticed something.
With Harem there is the typical horizontal stripe around her choker, and when it ends, ther is a horizontal one, ANOTHER horizontal stripe, and then the “H”.
No one else has that, so i thought it was a way to differentiate her. I.e. No stripes: Original, One: First copy etc. Would make military sense, even though the are all pretty easy to tell apart.
Anyway, i realised that is not the case since they all have the same pattern.
Oh well.
i think you mean vertical not horizontal.
I think the big thing with Harem’s choker is the multiple Hs, to indicate multiple Harems.
On a side note, if you vote, the new voting incentive shows Sydney’s choker for the first time.
An “H” that’s part of a golden circle on a white background – perfect for the name “Halo.”
whats Goth harem got on her head? looks a bit like headphones
Not headphones. It’s a skull hairpin. A skull hairpin with gogglie-eyes to be exact. Harem Goth is what one would call a hardcore goth.
I think it’s also a hat tip to Eerie Cuties.
Possible, but it’s not changing it’s expressions. :P
In hindsight it was… let’s call it unintentional homage. I had the vague notion I had seen googly eyed skulls somewhere and I thought they’d make funny hair clips. The weird thing about posting the comics online is that other people are sometimes better at recognizing my sources of inspiration than I am. But, let’s just say that Harem reads Eerie cuties and bought the clips off their page. I don’t think they actually sell those, but that’s the other major difference between this world and ours. Super powers and Pixie Trix comics sells googly eyed skull hairclips.
Works for me. :)
I thought that she was wearing one of those mind-control aliens from “Futurama”.
“Mind controllers” are green, translucent and have only one eye. I found the emoticon skull hair clips funny. Both on “Eerie Cuties” and here on “Grrrl Power.”
mind-control aliens? sounds like one of dabbler’s “pets” has got loose
I believe that [Futurama] calls them “Brain-Slugs”…?
There is a webcomic called General Protection Fault that has something like that, only its a slime mold.
the hair clips are real and on market at comic/ game shops
I might not be able to see exactly what is happening, but isn’t that the way with all greatest martial artists? A bit of the “uh, what happened?” dish
Math’s skills approaches those of the Masters who have been depicted in various Japanese movies as having essentially super powers. Speed, strength, dexterity, balance etc are all so highly developed they do seem super-human. (Similar to in the ancient Hindu stories where the gurus don’t need to eat, feel pain, hot and cold, can run for miles without tiring, even old age is kept at bay can call upon powers that would out strip anyone else not of their level.
Well, clearly somebody’s been slipping him some highly advanced lessons in Sinanju, the sun-source of all the martial arts. Chiun will be furious.
Not to be confused with Chun, the Unavoidable.
and who’s to say that Remo isn’t already on the team?
I guess Math forgot that the Harem that just got knocked over and the Harem upstairs are the same person (love Goth’s expression when the other was hit). Anvil needs some serious martial arts training, she should have been able to predict and counter his moves better. Math is really good, but she was just sloppy. Well, at least it looked that way to someone who took martial arts for several years :)
Anvil’s a competent fighter, she’s mostly a grappler, she’s learning Aikido/Sambo/Ju-Jistu, with some fake ass American show wrestling thrown in for a stylistic flare – she’s strong enough to actually do DDTs and flashy moves like that in a real fight, but Math is a savant. He’s like a Street Fighter character and can do things that seem physically impossible like changing directions mid jump or punching a hostage but transferring all the energy of the punch to the hostage taker behind them. Also Ultras. :)
Just for clarification if you meant “sambo” what kind of martial art is it? (It has an older racist nomenclature too.) Or did you mean “sumo?” (High Probability.) Sure could use either a ‘delete’ or better yet an ‘edit’ button about now.
Sambo is Russia’s Martial Art, primarily revolves around grappling techniques and joint-locks.
Sort of MMA for killers.
There’s some Sambo on youtube if you want to see it in action.
Also demonstrated on Burn Notice a couple of times.
oh oh
i think we have discovered another super power of harem:
RIGHTEOUS ANGER
the ability to hit any male who did something stupid
example: akane tendo
Most heroines in anime have that ability, especially when the offender is male! :)
that and being able to pull out a hyper-sonic mallet
Two words: “Inuyasha, SIT!”
I thought the phrase was, “Sit, Boy!”
only in the english version
the original word is only “osuwari!” that is “sit!”
Don’t forget Urusoy Yastura(spelling?) Lum with her “divine retribution” lightning strike.
Couldn’t you, instead of one page with 12 smaller panels, do 2 pages on monday with 5 or 6 larger panels when you want to cram more action into one update?
Does it cost that much more time for 2 pages of 6 panels than for 1 page with 12 panels crammed in there?
As for Anvil v.s. Math: I thought she rushed over to the exit and knock Harem and Dabbler over in the process.
When I read your explanation I thought he stepped on the back of her head for an extra step to the gangway.
Yeah I’ll experiment with that the next time I do an action scene.
DaveB one lil trick is to do smaller panels- but go chibi for them and draw a spiraling cartoon arrow ==> to indicate as it wraps around a panel and over another and finally points at the character that took that path through the panels… thus from when Math tickled anvil you’d start the arrow and then circle and spiral it through the middle micro/normal panels to show the directions of his movement through dead space between action panels and end up with it pointing right at him when he lands next to Harem upstairs.
You don’t draw it over a panel, but maybe corners if it loops over it, it’d go under and such. A spiral twist in the ribbon would indicate Math was twisting and a loop a flip… sound effects or special effect sounds can be writ along it to indicate moments of action or just for extra fun…
Sounds like when “Family Circus” does a kid action one-panel strip.
Yeah Dave, Muchacho NL has a good point: Posting multiple pages on the same day seems like the way to go in a case like this.
Splitting pages to expand fast-paced fight-scene panels would probably work, but you’d need to be careful about the execution. The usual arguments about art quality vs. update size/frequency apply, albeit perhaps in reduced form if the pages are already planned out. If the pages need to be on different pages of the site (I don’t know whether the hosting system has size restrictions) you’d need to make it clear how many pages were new since last week, and perhaps have some sort of link to the start of the update. Or if not, you’d have to bear in mind the page break, and make sure that they both worked as single pages.
Personally, I rather like the use of mini-panels: it picks up on the fact that in any fight, an expert observer will find it easier to pick out the details of how an action is put together (the holds/leverage points/parry-ripostes), while a outsider would only catch the major effects (such as landing a hit, or sending your opponent flying).
I’m all for posting more pages, even with less content – it would help me make the page count of a book better. Really my concern with that is I like having each page sort of be a complete… not a scene. I don’t know how to phrase it. Make each page be able to stand on it’s own to some degree. The problem with splitting even an action scene into two pages is that I post the first one on Monday, and by the time the second page goes up on Thursday, I’ve got 300 comments speculating on what will or should happen. Don’t get me wrong it’s a nice problem to have, but it seems like whatever the setup for the second page is, it will be telegraphed too much by the time it rolls around. Maybe I’m worrying about that too much. I’m sure it’s going to happen sooner or later anyway, cause as I’ve said I’m not pleased with the action on this page at all, so I have to try something different.
Making each page “stand on its own” isn’t that much of a requirement in book format. Two page spreads are common enough. Just make sure the “action” is on either side of the staple.
I know. Maybe I should be thinking long term more, but I guess I’m concerned about posting a page that gets a lukewarm, “guess I’ll check back later for the rest of this” response or something. But the next time an action scene comes up I’ll try it and see what happens.
Wait…Dabbler has hooves?
She’s purple with green stripes, has four goat horns, eyebrow/ear/antennae, four three-fingered hands and a barbed tail, but hooves surprise you? Besides, we’ve seen them before. They show clearly in the “Science Corner” strips, for one.
Well, I was surprised, too. Dabbler may be a strange-looking alien. But everything we’ve seen of her thus far seemed to suggest she was otherwise humanoid. And, let’s face it, there are not very many superheroes with hooves.
I never noticed the hooves in the science corner before now.
The hooves are my only turn off for Dabbler. Hard to play footsie under the table when said foot is almost solid Keratin. :P
Well stay tuned, she’ll get her official introduction in a few pages here.
Sydney meeting a hot demon/alien/cyborg hybrid. YAY!
More fun: The hot demon/alien/cyborg hybrid meeting Sydney.
Whichever way you want to say who meets who, Sydney and Dabbler’s introduction should be fun. The idea of the two of them becoming friends should probably terrify everybody in that boardroom, as soon as they think about it. Dabbler actually has the power and (I believe) the motivation to follow through on the crazy things Sydney thinks up. Just imagine the chaos that could be wrought with the two of them working together.
I think the alien, with her wide range of interests and experiences, might have some info on Sydney’s orbs.
hey! you’re right!
sydney and dabbler are two peas in the pod!
in fact now i wonder how they controlled dabbler
let’s face it even maxima would have problem with someone who can do a bit of everything
hum… now that i think of it i wonder if magic and psionic are weaknesses of maxima
i reread the story and her bios and it seems that her invulnerability cover only physical threats not metaphysicals and psychics
Don’t forget not being able to participate in shopping for shoes ….. the sadness.
[ As a Draenei in Wow has taught me – No Shoes for You! ], the upside is that extra sway to the hips with the bonus swing of the tail as compliment …. in all things there is symmetry / poetry in motion XD
You are behind the times my friend LoL
https://wereworld.comicgenesis.com/d/20120205.html
(careful, while that page is safe much of that comic is NSFW)
Also you’ll notice, Darkhound forgot to mention she also has four breasts).
I’m not sure whether the ‘extra’ pair are official or not. They are present in her Wereworld days (same character, unknown time offset), and seem to be in her cast picture, but they aren’t in evidence for Dabbler’s Science Corner, and I seem to remember DaveB saying something about ‘removing’ them to make things less awkward art-wise.
official word at presant is wereworld is after this so they may be future growth new level of development as alien or demon
She also used to have two sets of tits, but DaveB decided that it made her look fat.
Personaly I think they looked OK to me, but he’s the artist and it’s his charactor so he can do whatever he feels will make the comic better.
Put me down as another vote for ‘she looked better with two pairs of breasts’. She still looks great with the new design but Wereworld is the link which brought me here.
Lol at the bugged out skull this Harem’s wearing. So appropriate.
Took me several viewings to realize Math was pushing Anvil onto the couch as he used her like a springboard to get back up a floor.
Man, when Sydney and Math meet for the first time…I wonder who will out-spaz the other first.
Im sure he will end up on The List right away, and then we will find out what happens to people who end up on The List.
If the bank robbery scene with the toung-fu is indication, it should be intresting and entertaining.
Cassie Cain aka Batgirl III (or IV, its a little mixed up with Batgirls) aka Black Bat is much like Math in terms of Martial Arts abilities. In one issue she was being observed by government scientists, who believed she was superpowered based on her abilities in combat.
true
i think cassandra and math are what we called “natural genius”
that’s people who have a gift for a very narrow branche of human skills
Cassandra was raised from birth to be the best assisin in the world. Both her mother and father are counted as the best male and female assisins on the planet. Becoming Batgirl was her rebeling, sort of like someone who’s family are gangsters becoming a lawyer or a cop.
Except that Lady Shiva being Cassie’s mother directly contradicts her statement to Batman and Jason Todd that she had NEVER had a child. Myself I felt that part of Cassie’s story to be the beginning of a long, long, decline for DC, along with killing Kon El and Bart Allen, then the stupid, stupid crap they pulled with the “emotional spectrum” in GL (even though most of the qualities they list arent emotions). This is why I dont read their comics anymore, well that and Flashpoint (too many reboots).
I don’t read either DC or Marvel any more.
I’m more into Top Cow and Image Comics now.
Azrael, I wonder what thiose scientists would have made of Ranma Saotome?
Yeah but when someone changes gender based on the temperature of water which hit them they clearly have powers, even if involuntary ones. So far as Ranma’s Martial Arts skills go he is probably past Batman level into the realm of Richard Dragon (DC) or Shang Chi (Marvel), I mean come on the guy can make a ball of water hit like a punch and shatter a mountaintop.
Now that I think about it though Math reminds me more of Kuno mixed with Happosai, now he just needs to say “pigtailed girl” in a near growl. :)
Don’t forget both Ranma and Ryoga have energy attacks (not learned till season 6 or 7 in anime terms), that focus emotional power. Ranma confidence and Ryoga depression.
I always put the Ranma crew at a kind of between Rival Schools and Street Fighter level. Shame the figting game was so poorly made for this show. Ranma though is more about brute strength, he’s fast, but doesn’t train much on that (his girl form is much faster but never trains much on strength in that form)
and we have reason to believe that if he would get overhimself and train in his girl form he could potentially
unlock crazy psychic powers (evidenced by seperated girl form having them).
Honestly if you look at all the martial artists in that show the only one with “realistic” abilities is Akane.
Yeah but lets not forget that Akane can pull a giant hammer out of “Highlander storage” (if you follow me).
exactly the hyper-sonic mallet i mentioned in response to evilpuma’s remark
Hammerspace…?
Real scientists would have taken a bucket of hot water and a bucket of cold water and seen whether or not they could turn Ramna into a futanari.
I have made a scientific observation of the cursed springs effect.
water has to be be in a liquid state to have any effect, solid snow/ice as well as steam have no effect.
Also its really easy to get splashed in their town at random times. LoL
i read a fan-fic somewhere set just after Ranma and his dad got their curse’s, Ranma asked the guide about them “hot water will change you back” came the reply, Genma dashed of to get some water, which they boiled up and poured over themselves, it didn’t work, when asked where the water came from Genma held up a sign “the spring outside” (the spring of the drowned girl). Ranma’s now stuck as a girl and Genma is stuck as a girl panda.
The local zoo back in japan were some what surprised when this cute girl donated her pet panda “Ding-a-ling” to their program. they couldn’t work out where the panda learned to write or where she got all her signs from.
Sydney really works the “Spock” eyebrows thing, and ambidextrously. You know she took the time to actually learn how to do that. Makes her even hotter.
You ain’t kidding on that one, the “Spock” eyebrow (alternately known as the Teal’c eyebrow) thing took me months to train myself to do and I never did get myself trained into ambidexterity.
Same here, several months of practice. I can do it on either side deliberately, but when I do it without thinking it’s always the left eyebrow.
Try doing the Vulcan V without extending your pinky. The only reason I can do it is because I watched the show as a kid and trained my hands to be able to flex like that.
I think Teal’c, I think of conveying emotion via the quivering jaw/temple muscles.
Perhaps but he does do the eyebrow thing too, on the opposite side from Nimoy’s Spock, so on the same side as Quinto’s Spock. Which contrary to popular belief was a deliberate choice to visually demonstrate the alternate timeline. Sorry, been “aggressively debating” with some people on trekmovie.com.
Oh yeah, she definitely sat in front of the TV practicing.
Syd’s not the only one doing it on this page: Harem may be doing a weak one in panel 2 but Max is surely doing it in panel 4.
For a supposed martial arts master he’s a bit of crybaby.
*tsk* Pay attention to the context. When the girl you’re playing pool with whacks you over the head with her cue, that is not the time to go “Ho! Your pitiful attacks cannot harm me!”
If you are at all interested, you go “Ow! You hit me! What’d I do??”
Bwahahaha!
that’s a typical ranma answer
he just needs to put “uncute tomboy” to be perfect
lol i can see the reaction of harem being staggered between her other selves
hey i think i figured out what the 2 mysterious orbs are for. if she gives one to another super, and grabs the other one, she can assimilate their power….just a guess.
My personal favorite is that one (or both) add to the protection from the force field.
– protection against light based attacks
– air bubble that protects against gas and gives breathable air when underwater or in space.
I am going with one being a universal translator,
and the other something that you’d never figure out unless you were told because otherwise you’d never chance the circumstance, like breathing underwater (or just an airfield in general so other airless environments) or something like walking on clouds, seeing through illusions, (I think it would be funny if both worked automatically)
She just hasn’t met/realized people who arn’t speaking english / she thought those folks in the resturaunt earlier were speaking english kind of deal.
the auto illusion sight would be funny, if she meets Mr Amorpheous and Achilles and recognizes them; having been able to see through that magic camoflague during the bank robbery and not realizing they were diguised at all.
Uh, Sydney didn’t have the orbs active during the bank job… so, no; that could not happen.
My feeling is one of them lets her breath in outer space, I’m not sure what the other could be.
the only person who really knows is DaveB and he’s not talking, of course that might mean he hasn’t decided yet.
but my latest theory is a “create end-less debate in the readers” power
As a game master I would design the two unknown powers from the beginning. To keep them secret you need to know them. You can still change them later though.
last week’s pic of Harem in the bathroom has been mucking with my mind, sice they share feelings, wouldn’t they all want/need to go to the bathroom at the same time>, also does this mean that they all are Synchronized?
I thought of this too, but a think I remember Dave saying somewhere in the comments something along the lines that only strong sudden feeling transfer.
That said, if two of her really needed to pee, and one went, I wonder if the other would have trouble holding it? Of course, she could just teleport all that needed a bathroom to a bathroom, and ones that didn’t to take over whatever the others were doing… No problem them.
Their cycles probably are. It can happen with women living together, so a 5 in 1 woman sharing knowledge and sensation would almost certain sync. Not to mention that at some point she was one, and so would have started out synced.
Of course external factors could have an effect, so its not guaranteed.
THE HORROR ! THE HORROR !
That poses another question. Are all the super girls on base synced up?
there was a joke a few years back about how once you’ve fu*ked one borg you’ve fu*ked then all, well the same could be said about Harem.
It can also happen with women who just work together, which is why my job is sometimes much, much, more hazardous than it should be.
Again, this isn’t true, it’s just that people remember when cycles drift into sync, and forget or discount then they drift out again. That being said, Harem’t not in sync with herself. When one of her is unteleported, she’s essentially suspended in whatever state she was in when she was last… ported. Corporeal. Whatever.
I anticipate a series of gags when one of Harem gets a bad sunburn.
since women all seem to go to the bathroom in a group, and Harem is a group, why should she be any different
wellll I must say he did Ask for “his” shot and Herem di give it to him.
I don’t think you want to hear it, but, being ticklish is directly related to the density of muscle build-up. If someone has large muscles they aren’t ticklish.
That has not been my experience.
yes, i thought it was more a story of skin sensibility
y y y y y y cant i stop reading this
I don’t know if it was intentional, but you have a bit of a Peanuts homage there when Anvil bowls everyone over on the couch. People and popcorn flying everywhere.
And Mathus deserved the crack on the head.
this may be a silly question, but, whats Joel doing?, I mean as far as he knows Sydney just went down the bank to pay some money in, somehow got involved in a bank robbery, got on TV, made fun of a big gold colored woman with purple hair and a female reporter (and according to channel 5 news and Sydney ferret balls are the standard unit of measuring surprise and the Holy space llama is on his way), then got taken away by said gold colored woman
I have this mental image of Joel sitting in the shop with his elbow on the counter and his chin in his palm and a blank look on his face. We see a wall clock behind him going tick – tock – tick – tock. That’s panel 1 & panel 2 & panel 3 & panel 4 & you get the idea. The gag is: Joel doesn’t move an inch, the only movement is the clock, the shadows, etc. (maybe there’s even a spider spinning a web off of Joel)
that gives the impression that ppl only go to the shop when Sydney’s there, insert image of Sydney using the jedi mind trick “you will visit the shop”, “you will buy this”, etc
Not a silly question.
Didn’t see a TV in the shop. Guess it is possible Joel could go online if things are quiet (and they seem to have a lot of quiet at the shop), and so pick up the news.
Could also happen that mutual friends phone, text or e-mail him – “OHMIGOD! SYDNEY IS ON THE NEWS!, etc.”.
I suspect that, upon viewing Sydney’s TV performance, Joel’s reaction will probably be a deep sigh and a headshake. Certainly, he’s seen comparable levels of crazy and worse from her in the past.
It will get interesting when Sydney “finally” tells him she has superpowers – and that she is now part of some official supergroup. That might shake him up some.
I would say he hears it on the news, either through television, facebook or youtube.
His reaction is likely just a sigh, he knows her.
I guess Sydney will tell him about her powers after she gets the job offer from Archon.
Though I wonder how he will react, after all he usually can tell when she is lying.
Not gonna dig for it. But Joel called Syd and she told him about the robbery. So he’s probably thinking Syd’s still doing the whole Police Debriefing thing.
and if he knows Sydney it could be a long time
At least until Joel sees the news, or somebody he knows does so and lets him know.
forgot the footage leo…err some responsible Hactivist uploaded onto youtube
couple that with the fact the news cameras were still rolling and close enough to hear everything during Max and Syd’s super-human scuffle.
I can just see Joel watching that footage seeing Max yanking on the tube of mystery, being tripped up, and it flying through the air to Sydney and her Jedi comment.
Joel looking at the footage on the computer news site with a *seriously?* look.
looks like the shop is going to get a lot of visitors, they not buy anything, they all want to “was that Sydney on the news?”
whats the chances of Joel convincing them that Sydney don’t have superpowers it was just a publicity stunt to get more customers?
Or every geek and nerd in the city patronizes the store because of Syd’s antics.
When they ask Sydney to join the team, she could have some of the supers visit the shop on a regular basis as a condition.
It could save the shop if people know that real live superheros sometimes visit.
I can just picture what happens the first few times Syd has to leave the shop after the anouncement: A flock of nerds jump into their geekmobiles and follow her like those damn poparazzi who chase after some star who’s just left a club.
lol, she goes running into a building, etc, to “beat up the bad guys” comes out to be met by the Halo fan club and not forgetting nerds in their Halo costumes (and the women)
I’m thinking of the Maxima fan club that you know is going to start up.
I can just imagine some poor dumb asshole painting himself gold and trying to hit on Maxima.
club would disband after max hit back the first time
It’s not actually that long (in comic time) since the Bank Job happened; maybe an hour or so, including waiting for the ARC-marines at the bank and Max’s de-briefing prior to the Interview. Joel might just assume that she’s still in the queue at the local police station – or that the interviewing officer is still trying to stop her demonstrating every move on incoming suspects.