Grrl Power #976 – Air Master
Max is just having fun with this. It’s not often she gets to cut lose. She can spar with Hiro and Stalwart, and while most supers heal faster than your stock human, they could still wind up being laid out for a couple of weeks if she really lays into them. A guy like Vehemence can heal like Wolverine, so short of knocking his head clean off, he’ll be back in a fight in 1D6 rounds.
Naturally being so busy with the comic and doing the bonus nudie pics and writing T:E 2, I decided to do a 14 panel double page. I tried to make up for it a little as the next page has only three panels, which might be a record for Grrl Power, but the point is, I’m bad at time management.
The monthly nudie pic is almost finished. (see above paragraph) The last one only had a few clothing variants, so I’m doing a few extras for this one. I’ll post it with Monday’s comic at the lastest, but I hope to have it up a little sooner.
Speaking of books, Aether’s Revival 4 is out. This is Daniel Schinhofen’s cultivation series, which is my favorites of his behind Binding Words, which is one of my overall favorite series. Which is just a roundabout way of saying AR is pretty good and maybe check it out if you like books that involve a lot of studying and pill popping.
It’s kind of a weird subgenre if you think about it. It’s so specific. Like, if someone wrote a book where a cyborg had to upload skill programs every night and drink a pint of STP every morning in order to increase his agility… that would technically be a cultivation book, right? Yeah yeah, cultivation is about unlocking or developing your inner spirit or becoming a mage in a very verbose manner, buuuut… the hallmark of cultivation really seems to be the studying and performance enhancers. What about a vampire that drained peasants instead of taking mana pills every night, and drinking blood also taught him new skills from memory absorption? That’d be like a 2 in 1 cultivation sort of.
Tamer: Enhancer 2 – Progress Update:
Did some editing, think I might have the final fight figured out.
August’s vote incentive is up! I know, that thumbnail isn’t so enticing, but I promise, the rest of the picture is worth it.
Nude version is up at Patreon.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
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SeriouslySeriously you guys. If you like Grrl Power the check these out.
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Whatever agreements were made for this session, looks like V is reconsidering them
They gave him rules that said no fancy powers, then Max violated that. He’s just reminding her of the rules of engagement.
Maxi didn’t violate shit, they had finished the sparring and the testing
Well she did say no using any fancy powers other than fighting. And she’s been using flying, which I’m assuming is something fighters typically do, even if Muhammed Ali did say he would ‘float like a butterfly.’ :)
Flying isn’t ‘fancy powers’ though
And again, that ‘no fancy powers’ was only during the sparring slash testing
The rules said no fancy powers. Whacking with a rock isn’t fancy nor a power.
Flying may be fancy to him(?) – I would say the aura he can cast/project is fancier than flying, and Maxima’s energy beams and super speed, probably, but… the status of flying either is or isn’t moot, depending on whether you’re more of the American or British persuasion. It’s open for debate, is what I mean.
Also, I think the underlying motivation of the event is to make sure he doesn’t die from lack of violence (that’s what he gets out of it), and to test some of her theories on fighting people with powers like his (that’s what she/Archon get(s) from this). Also maybe a revisiting / wake up call for her underlings, to make sure they realize there are still dangerous folks out there, though this one is in custody
I don’t know why but this comment about “whacking with a rock” really made me giggle.
Glad to be of service. ^^
He asked to “fight for real”.
Which inludes “fancy” powers like flight for maxima.
It looked like Vehemence reached rock bottom but he made a smashing return.
Trying to save face in front of a pretty girl.
I don’t know what he’s complaining about here. I think she’s being fairly magma-nimous.
Well, in panel #9 maxima tried to clean his “clok” so in return, he’s trying to rock her world.
He’s looking to settle his quarry with Maxima by inflicting gravel injuries.
If we keep digging ourself deeper in the puns we may end up in quarry-tine.
Keep Digging and Quarry On. We’ll make it through to the other side, together!
Yeah, we’ve been getting boulder about doing puns.
I figured he was in deep Schist …
… but he’s Tufa than I thought.
I just hope those two continue to play gneiss.
They might be able to talc out their differences, but not before the puns get boulder and this thread hits rock bottom.
Regardless of our sediments about puns, Pander will undoubtedly try to haul us before a quartz of law.
She’s managing to feldspar with him with a more-or-less stony expression, too.
The question of whether flinging rocks is ‘fancy’ isn’t really either/ore. And Max’s BEST tactic is still just flinging him at the ground. You can’t do better than just smashing him on the fluorite? Of quartz, that could cause an avalanche which would be a slide bit of trouble.
We take for granite that this story is on rock solid ground.
I am gone for one day and you people go out of control with the puns!
Ninja hit squads! Ninja hit squads for all of you!
Ninjas rock. Rock, ninjas.
… and now that the subductions are out of the way …
Tuff luck, Pander, it should be crystal clear by now that we take any opportunity for puns.
By now the punning is set in stone.
Puns are the highest form, of intellectual humor!!!
No Sasha! Do not be lured in by the false glamour of corny puns! Theres still time! *tries to rescue Sasha from the puns*
looks like my post was eaten, I had mentioned that Kevin seemed to be taking cliff notes
… okay that pun was sort of good. No ninja hit squad for you…
… for now.
https://memegenerator.net/img/instances/60871951/you-get-a-panda-1-everyone-gets-a-panda-1.jpg
and you get a Pander, and you get a Pander :)
I gotta hand it to max for keeping a cool head about this. One might even say that Max’s attitude here is stone-cold.
…Then again, one might not.
Vehemence was told to not use any auras or other special abilities, only fair he demands Maxima limits herself in a similar way.
He gets regeneration++, Max gets to fly. The limitation was on the auras and particle beams and what-not. As far as super powers go, as far as *Max’s* powerset goes, flying is not particularly fancy.
Further, Vehemence has (practically infinite) power scaling; eventually, it doesn’t matter how shitty a lever he’s using, he’s moving that mountain. Max’s best way to deal with that within the constraints of the rules is to take advantage of the fact that flight means that she can have basically what ever leverage she wants.
Normally, when we throw a punch, we are using the force of the ground we stand on to actually throw it with any meaningful force; if we were in a free fall, we’d essentially be cutting our strength in half. But with flight, up to super sonic speeds, it’s not unreasonable to think that Max could potentially make an attack while stationary in the air than she can if she were merely standing on the ground, since all she needs to do is accelerate herself to exactly cancel out the backwards motion that throwing said punch requires, which we know to be more than heavy armor or concrete can handle.
So if she gave up flying for this fight, eventually each hit she puts into Kevin will force her into the ground; even her zero range telekinesis would likely fail as the stone beneath her feat pulverized into gravel and sand. Or she can keep flying and let Kevin do the catch-up game; he seems to prefer it that way anyhow.
probably also super speed (at least excessive super speed)
He asked to “fight for real”.
Which includes “fancy” powers light flight.
Max is just obliging him.
Vehemence sould invest in air movility.
Even if he isn’t fighting a flying tipe super, [Almost said pokemon] with his level of punching power it would be easy to make airborn enemies. As Max is demostrating, 3d movement can be a good advantage.
And, frankly, if Vehemence can “wing it” some powers if suficient V-Energy is absorbed, it could be an excellent triunf card.
Vehemence have a very diverse set of powers. Some kind of flying ability should be possible.
Probably, but like all his fancy stuff it’s going to consume an unreasonable amount of energy, for probably not that big of a benefit. He can’t counter Maxima right now because he lacks the experience, with more training he would be better prepared.
A bigger issue is flying + ranged attack, but just throwing rocks is an option then.
It’s been said before, but I’ll say it again:
Having “up” as a movement option gives you a huge advantage.
Only if “down” is a *controllable* option as well…
I have little doubt that he could jump to go airborne but once he leaves the ground he’s lost all of the leverage that using his strength requires. Even though guys like Vehemence may not be able to fly he can still *land* with the best of them.
Face or feet first?
Likely whichever he prefers at the time, lol.
Anything he lands on is gonna be the worse off. All V will have to do is brush off the dust & walk away.
Holding the high ground has been an advantage in combat and warfare since mankind was using sharpened sticks.
Except for formed cavalry charges, the LotR film notwithstanding, in which a very very gentle upslope is advantageous.
Yeah, fortunately for the cavalry, they had the high ground
This is why The Legion Of Superheroes has flight rings; after several centuries, someone figured out that augmenting superpowers with technology is a Good Thing, a flying is a great place to begin.
OT (but maybe not so much OT) questions: If you’ve played a TTRPG superhero game, which one was it? And if you’ve played more than one, did you have a favorite?
For myself, I love Champions, the Hero system. I bought, and may still have, the first iteration when I was much younger there was no Hero system, just Champions, and instantly took to it. What can I say – I love number-crunchy systems.
Before that, I played Superhero: 2044, which was all over the place, but still a load of fun. Also played the first edition Villans and Vigilantes and Superworld. I wanted to like the GURPS supplement for supers because I liked the rest of the system, but I really didn’t. Despite its name, GURPS doesn’t scale well at all to anything outside the human norm.
For super heroes I don’t think you can beat Champions and the Hero System tbh.
There is a 6th edition but 4/5th is perfection as far as I am concerned :)
Agreed. Wish I had nearby gamers, it’s been decades since I’ve been able to cut loose with interesting use of special effects.
Masks is very good for a very specific type of superhero game. If you liked the Original Teen Titans, Masks handles that amazingly.
Considering the earliest pages of this comic are almost an advertisement for DC Heroes/Blood of Heroes/MEGS, I think Dave has spoken on his preferred system.
Can’t say I blame him either. Almost the flexibility of Champions, but a much easier system to understand. And only two dice needed.
To be fair, I’m a huge fan of the Hero System as well.
Also GURPS, Heroes Unlimited, Villains & Vigilantes, Enforcers…
I’m seeing a pattern here.
While I know several systems I mostly used Superworld simply because it was based on Basic Roleplaying and I was a fan of these. The problem I see with most systems is that an attack that (for example) Wolverine would just shrug of would kill (to stay in the same universe) Cyclops. And smart villains and henchman would attack the soft targets. And I hate playing stupid villains as a game master.
Another problem is that most supers don’t know how to fight and just use strength or speed, but that’s graphic novels for you.
The Marvel Heroic (Cortex-based) system works pretty well for this. You can defend any attack with any ability that would make sense for that character and it’s not too difficult for you to create a character with a d12 in *something*. For example, Tony Stark would use his d12 “Tech” to defend against Hulk’s d12 “Strength”. And even for characters that don’t have a relevant high skill, the way damage works still allows for pretty much anyone to survive a few hits and players can create stunts to give dice to other players (for attacks and defense) so its easy to stay relevant in a fight even with characters with vastly different power levels
The only one to come close to the Hulk, is Thor; The Hulk, fought Thor to a stand-still, in an earlier comic. I am old enoug, to have read the original Marvel line!!!
Comic books rarely have smart characters of any kind, for the same reason that Spock in ST TOS is constantly labeled and treated as smart in the script, but never ever does anything a smart person would do (and Worf, he gets randomly kerstomped).
In order to write a smart character (tough/fighter), the writers have to be smart or know smart people (be tough/know how to fight). You are playing a comic book based game, but you aren’t willing to do underlying tropes and handwavium necessary since comic book writers are seldom the best writers, so of course it doesn’t work for you. I think you might be too smart or have the wrong temperament to enjoy playing that game.
Someone with a 2.3%/”normal”. is very smart, comprising only 2.3%, of the population!!
And yet that’s still common enough that someone at that level can walk into a room and discover that everyone else there is smarter than them.
I played Mutants and Masterminds, but I feal the health system is wonky
SuperWorld and later Champions. Small bit of the Rifts Super stuff. I played SuperWorld the most due to having it longer. It was clunky at times with the calculations but made coming up with house rules to work around them very fun.
Played Champions from 1st edition thru 6th. Just recently been playing with Prowlers & Paragons UE (finally available in print). Scales well, you get to roll thunderous herds of dice, but only as crunchy as you want it. It’s more narrative than Hero, so stuff is more up to the players & GMs to set. (Pro & Con in one)
It’s got a bunch of the contributors of Hero involved and the founders of the system like it.
I’ve done a little Mutants and Masterminds, but found it a little overcomplicated.
So I made my own!
I call it “Good Old Fashioned Nazi Punching”. You play allies in a WWII where a super-serum was developed, that may or may not give you incredible, random powers.
Mutants & Masterminds (the D20 edition), so easy to make a character and blend the traits into just about anything you wanted.
That said, it was a very easy system to break, so generally had to run with the ‘No obvious minmaxing’ rule.
I’ve played two Superhero genre games. Champions you’ve played so there’s not much I can say about it that you’ve probably not already realized for yourself:
Combat is incredibly slow, both due to the mechanics of the rules (the 10 phase combat turn being just one such slowing mechanic), the handfuls of dice needed to be thrown, and the many modifiers which may need to be applied to the chances of success for any action taken.
Combats with more than a few opponents tend to really bog down because of the above being multiplied by each added combatant.
When I ran games I learned early on to make my mooks mere silhouettes of characters. They would have a hard hitting attack, or some special effect intended to annoy (flash, etc), but I didn’t bother with their defenses or endurance or body (the Hit Point equivalent in Champions, for any who aren’t familiar). If they took a hit they were removed from combat.
The other game I cannot recall the name. It was pre-Champions. It broke heroes down into three categories: Ubermensch, Natural, and Toolmaker. The Ubermensch were any strong man type characters such as Thing or Hulk. Naturals were those with powers they generated from themselves, like Cyclops or Storm or almost any other mutant you might care to name. (Frankly, the ubermensch are just naturals with a focus on punching things and strength) Toolmakers were those who used equipment of any kind, such as Iron Man or Hawkeye or Black Widow. You can tell this was an early version of a superhero game because of how rigid these divisions are. It couldn’t handle Thor, for example, who is either an ubermensch with a tool, his hammer, or a natural with a tool. Or even an ubermensch/natural hybrid who also has a tool… My Google-foo has failed me, so I cannot find the name. I don’t recall combat being anywhere near as bogged down as it is in Champions, but I think the limitations of character creation would still make most people choose a game with a broader range of characters possible, even if that brings with it a more limited combat system.
I’ve played a lot of GURPS, but never GURPS supers. But I have paged through the source book. Not enough to really have a handle on character creation. GURPS combat is every bit as bogged down as Champions, however, and I can’t imagine that the supers genre managed to avoid that issue with the core rules.
Panel ten, nice face
Aww… page ended with a cliff-banger…
Here I thought Kevin was taking down some cliff notes
In panel 10, it looks like she DID knock his head clean off!
He’s just saving face.
No one commenting on the Wrath of Khan quote?
I wanted to, but you beat me to it.
I came here just to comment on that quote. Even to this day it occasionally pops into my mind on its own.
I saw it immediately but the comic has been up a while so I will just validate your observation :D
> No one commenting on the Wrath of Khan quote?
I’m afraid I KHAAAAAAAN’t.
The thing about a really smart person failing to display smarts is that it could also be the setup for a suckerpunch. I once took the bottom third of Italy in the first three rounds because I’d never played it before but I’d been watching them all morning. I was counting on them not expecting me to doublecross EVERYONE except where it served my purpose and they delivered. Unfortunately in round four they all ganged up on me which was I thought was grossly against the spirit of the game because the lot of them were using god’s-eye intel not available to them in game context.
Damn… apparently there is much more to Kevin, than was let on to begin with.
Panel 1: This is my hole! It was made for me!
Bad things to say on a date for 100 dollars:
Things a Hobbit Would Say.
A hundred dollars? That was the best bid you could get?
…between the sheets.
To be fair, I’m a huge fan of the Hero System as well.
Also GURPS, Heroes Unlimited, Villains & Vigilantes, Enforcers…
I’m seeing a pattern here.
Vehemence uses [Baseball Bat] It is mildly effective.
So we know that when he regenerates in a way that restores a body part it comes back stronger, but now I wonder, if that restored body part is broken again and then restored once more, does it get another upgrade or does it restore in the same way?
I would guess that when he regenerates, he has some control over its form (and power/strength), going by how he enhanced his regenerated arm to shock Max before. That is, it’s not the act of regeneration making it better, it’s him using the opportunity given by the regeneration to make it better.
Also, anyone else find it interesting that his regenerated bits have, so far, taken the form of apparent cybernetics, or at least dermal plating?
That’s almost certainly the case, seeing how he healed his nose and knee just before without making them stronger.
That’s because they weren’t literally missing
At any rate, I’d bet Archon saves a good chunk of money with Kevin…no matter how much he “cooperates” with the combat training, they’ll never have to deal with the expense of doing medical (& dental) work on him.
We’re all picturing a couple of house cats having a lark, right?
It’s not just me?
Now I’m pasting my cats heads onto their bodies.
Whenever my housecats start fighting, I wind up having to separate them before they scratch each other and cause a huge vet bill for me.
Trim claws, and try using caps.
…
Seriously, you are missing out on the most adorable and entertaining thing _EVER_.
Ok now I want to look into these ‘caps’ if only for the cuteness factor.
I don’t think it’s so much that his patterns indicate 2D thinking. It’s just that he can’t fly himself so…
Maxima’s hair has grown far longer than what we saw her first. I wonder if she will have it cut down to a more combat friendly size, or simply won’t bother with it.
I wonder if cutting her hair is an ordeal due to her powerset. Like she has to dial down her armor to minimum and use bolt-cutters or a 100 tonne shear press or something…
The Barber-arian might be able to cut it if it gets too long.
He actually asked the others to let Max know he had diamond sheers on the day Dabbler coerced him into breaking Leon’s chair.
I want more Barberarian.
Seriously, let him have a shop on the Archon campus.
Yeah!!!! :)
If he opens a pub he will be a Beerbarian.
Then he just needs to train up an animal bartender, so he can advertise as the Beer-bear-inn.
He should team up with the fashion ninjas.
He totally should. Honestly it makes a ton of sense for them to both work in the Archon complex, that’s where the majority of their local clientele would be already.
It’s not that much longer
By virtue of our comments Max’s hair will become a Chekov’s Gun to be weaponized either by her or against her at some future date.
Perhaps another hairy-go-round? https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-253-vehemence-unleashes-his-mane-attack/
Hemingway disputed Chekhov’s Gun. Fatuous insistence that everything has meaning and purpose leads to absurd notions like religion. Books have window dressing. Life has meaningless coincidence. However, the paranoid who is wrong 99 times and then right is better adapted to survive than the optimist who is right 99 times and then fatally mistaken. Hilariously, natural selection is probably responsible for religion by producing people who see eyes in the dark, figures in the shadows and purpose in everything.
“Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar”. I threw that phrase out there but Checkov’s Gun is probably a bit over used. I was just making a comment that we haven’t seen the last of Max’s hair. In this case, we the readers and commentators have made an element of Dave’s art explicit. If Max’s hair is used by or against her, in our magical thinking we will insist that our comments made it so.
When Vehemence gets knocked into a mountain so hard it creates a cave, then it really IS like “gumdrops and ice cream” for him. :-)
Yes, I’m making old DBZ abridged references.
But who will be his Nappa?
“He is intelligent, but not experienced. His pattern indicates 2-dimensional thinking.”
Groan…
KHAAAAAAAAAAN!!!!!!
And… How many people TODAY will even GET that quote?
Gotta say that scene was my favorite in any of the Star Trek shows/movies.
Seeing the Enterprise come up out of the mist behind the Reliant STILL gives me goosebumps to this day. Yes, the acting was hammy. Yes, the fiction was less science than fantasy. Yes, by today’s standards the CGI was pathetic. Who cares?
‘Z minus 2000 meters. Stand by photon torpedoes.’
I appreciate the screenwriter’s desire to Have A Moment, but from the first time I saw it I thought – didn’t Kahn come from a planet where aircraft do loop-de-loops?
(Of course, my favorite board game as a kid was American Heritage’s “Dogfight” where loops were a killer move!)
Khan, was an augmented earth-human!
Where aircraft did loop-de-loops (a little thing called World War One and World War Two and something called ‘dogfights’)
In Star Trek lore, Khan Noonian Sung was augmented. He was a super soldier and very good at what he did. He was created to conquer Earth and very nearly did just that. He was very intelligent, adaptable, ruthless and had a totally understandable rage at what had happened to him and his people on Ceti Alpha V. Anyone would be angry at such and Khan spent years in a hellhole, losing most of his people. So, it is understandale that he blamed Kirk. Ricardo Montalban did a wonderful job of bringing that character to life.
That said?
He was NOT an aviator that I know of. It is a different mindset. Thinking in three dimensions is not something that most humans come by naturally. We generally don’t have to. Even as superior as Khan was, he wasn’t omniscient. Kirk played him like a fiddle.
Still one of the most true to life military moves I have seen in science fiction. ‘Enemy outclasses us? Change the rules.’
His rage towards Kirk was totally justified. Kirk dropped him on a tough planet, fine, that was merciful under the circumstances. Kirk also said he’d be checked on from time to time.
That didn’t meaningfully happen. Kirk just dropped him off and forgot him, basically. And almost all of Khan’s people died due to that negligence.
Taking it out on others, not so justified. Of course, Khan wasn’t a nice guy, so it was in character.
Khan knew the planet (Ceti Alpha V) would be rough when he agreed to go to it in the TOS show (instead of a federation prison for trying to take over the Enterprise). Khan actually liked the idea Of the challenge of taming a rough, unsettled world. It just became nearly uninhabitable after Ceti Alpha IV exploded, which devastated Ceti Alpha V’s surface. The federation and Kirk did not even know that Khan’s planet was in such a bad state because it wasnt when they put him and his people there. Whrn Chekov went there he thought it was Ceti Alpha 6 because the Federation dud not know a planet exploded and threw its neighboring planets out of their normal orbits.
Soooo Khan’s rage at Kirk was NOT justified. He was just angry and decided to blame Kirk as the one who ket him settle on the planet, because his wife (who was a crewmember of Kirk’s Enterprise) died from the only indigenous creature on the planet that could still survive there).
Also a reminder – Khan was basically in the same league as Hitler, Stalin, and Mao according to the history books. He was a rather cruel and murderous tyrant that conquered a third of the Earth before he and his superhuman cohorts were finally beaten in the Eugenics Wars of 1990.
Remember the Eugenics Wars? Back in 1990? That was a really crazy time for me to grow up in.
I appreciate that there wasn’t any CGI. It was all done with scale models and matting the actual film.
Spotted it as (Kirk’s) Star Trek, didn’t place it as Khan. Does that count?
STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KAHN. Miss Ricardo Montalban. Loved that movie.
Was that the one with the glowy swords and magical samurai?
now that is one hell of a fly swatter. wonder if he could use his vehemic energy to fly himself, just hasnt figured out quite how to channel it that way.
I think the real question is whether he’s unable to conceive of flight as a solution due to his current state of battle-gasm / berserker rage, or if his power doesn’t allow him to use the energy in non-violent ways like flying.
Flying can be pretty violent-related if used the right way.
Also his powers are not limited to violence-related use unless you think pants are inherently violent. :)
Ka-pants!
If Crawler was empowered by violence and adapted metalic.
…
Damn muse- now I want to write that fanfic.
Crawler was one of the only times I was ever satisfied with the handling of an ‘adaptive evolution’ powerset. Like, no, a beautiful human body is NOT the ideal form for survival!
You say that, but remember that a beautifull human body makers lots of things easier soms of which are pretty detrimental tot survival.
This works both fort functioning in society tot collect food and shelter as that it’s a pretty healthy form for tour body to function in.
Even in a combat situation it’s a pretty good way of survival(, just ask any drillsergant) as long you’re restricted tot humanoid forms.
That’s something of a context-dependent question. Yes, a Baseline Human body does have some advantages in terms of survival – but not nearly as many as it would in a world that has not just had billions of Baseline Humans spending thousands of years adapting the environment and/or creating new environments to accommodate that body type. Similarly for combat: Baseline Human has a far larger repertoire of known techniques to work from (and tools designed for it) than anything more exotic, due to the sheer amount of trial-and-improvement that’s been done in (and for) that body type, but that does not preclude other types being more effective like-for-like.
There’s the old saying that the madder hulk gets, the stronger he gets. However, there *are* ways to defeat him such as refusing to attack him & talking him down. If caught by surprise with a gas-based attack, he can be knocked out. If you can keep him surrounded with an airless volume of area, he’ll eventually have to stop holding his breath.
That’s a few but there are other ways. No matter how long the fight continues, no matter how strong Hulk can get, he can still get tired…His biology can only handle the extra adrenaline for so long before his glands run down. Vehemence doesn’t really have that problem because he can use V-Energy directly to keep moving & fighting…With his other powers & abilities based on V-Energy, he can also get stronger (& more versatile) the longer that battle keeps going.
It makes me kind of wonder…DaveB said that he wanted to create a villain that others would react to him in about the same way as heroes react to seeing the Hulk (“Oh no! Not him! I’d rather face Galactus than to fight him!”). Yet I think DaveB actually came up with a villain that would be able to not only stand toe-to-toe against the Hulk, but have a reasonable chance of beating him in a straight-out fight.
I thought that X-men fights against Juggernaut should be shorter than they usually went. The X-(wo)men have at least one person with telekinesis. Just pick up Mr J. and keep him suspended until you can think of a place to put him. He can’t get any momentum going and he has no ranged attacks (unless he wants to throw his shoe or something). If TK is not an option, just throwing him into a large body of water should keep him from pushing against things to get moving. I think I remember him sinking in water in one comic. He doesn’t need to breathe, so dropping him into the Marianas Trench should keep him busy for a week or two trying to find his way back to dry land.
Prediction: when the sparring is over and they tell him to stand down… Vehemence will pout but otherwise immediately comply. As DaveB said, he’s intelligent – and as such, smart enough to understand that there’s no point in trying to escape, when he’s already getting what he wanted.
If anything, he’s more likely to play the “long game,” working to engender trust until they’re willing to let him hang out with them… at which point he might just end up joining the team, and get to run around smashing things and feeding on violence AND being praised for it. There’s an entire trope about this: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CutLexLuthorACheck
Yes, that could be a moment of dramatic tension, or at least I hope so. I don’t *think* he wants to escape and conquer the world of something, he’s just looking for a meal and (to go by his dialogue last page) a hot lady to stick her boot in his face.
Maybe he considers this a 1st date.
I feel like it’s probably gonna take him a few to calm down a little, during which time everyone’s going to be VERY concerned.
So, here we see the difference in how fast he powers up.
“Oh, that hurts so good! Stop it some more!”
Originally I think from some iteration of the Addams family, but it also makes sense for Vehemence.
Hmm. I expect the aftermath of that CLONK will set off even more speculation over what does or does not constitute violence. We’ve had covered (extensively!) in previous pages’ comments the question of whether A unleashing stored chemical energy against B via an inanimate object counts; now we have the case of A exploiting B’s own kinetic energy.
Myself, I’d say it does. It’s a deliberate action by Maxima to deflect Vehemence into the ground, exploiting his existing high-energy (i.e. fast) state. At the point of her action, Vehemence-at-speed was much an exploitable part of the environment as a rock-at-height or a bullet-in-gun. But if we try to break down and correlate who acted with intent and how much energy they respectively supplied…
Vehemence provided effectively all of the impact energy, intended to be an act of violence against Maxima but redirected against himself – if intent is required for it to count as violence, does it carry across the enforced change of target? Maxima only provided a relatively small amount of energy to steer, but that change of direction was crucial in determining what was hit – was her input enough to be assigned responsibility for the full energy of the crash, and if not would the remainder be attributed as violence by Vehemence on himself?
Maxima is putting more energy into it than Vehemence is using and that’s basically all that matters. It seems like all actions count, but things can be less violent depending on how much force they use, how much damage they create and what it takes to overcome them.
Maxima can increase the pain without increasing the damage, she can redirect energy without adding to it and above all, she can make Vehemence work harder, while fighting smarter.
The clok is about exploiting an opening and redirecting force. It will count towards vehemic energy that he can feed on (as most things do) but she’s not adding much there, especially compared to previous actions.
I’m not subscribing to the theory that intent matters. I suspect all that matters is that things are coming together with a lot of force. So he’d get a lot of energy from a particle accelerator or a nuclear powerplant by feasting on the residual energy. Nuclear decay is an extremely violent reaction on a molecular level. Even gas molecules in the air would imo create vehemic energy that he can feed off, but a calm atmosphere would be like a shark trying to survive in a marine dead zone (a place with very few, if any fish). In short if people are being happy, it’s not exactly a good environment for him to feed, where as chaos and things bashing into each other is. Of course people are easier to set against each other repeatedly than say a falling rock which tends only to be able to do something like that once…
Intent doesn’t matter for Succubi, so I have no idea why it’d matter for Kevin here. All fun and games really :D
Or he just got stronger because it was a really powerful hit that injured him more.
Who wants Maxima pancakes!?
I question whether she even got hit, given super speed and battle-ready anticipation. But even as much as I like her, I kinda want to see her get knocked around a little to keep things interesting (and to prevent Kevin being completely deflated as a character).
I don’t think the GROUND is hard enough. IMHO Maxima will end up in Maxima-shaped hole.
Did Vehemence rock Max’s world?
If we fought by the book, hours would seem like days.
Max has pointy ears. Maybe she is just trying to find the most logical method of fighting him.
Not everyone is logical just because they have pointy ears.
Called it. We get several pages of Max proving what a badass she is compared to Vehemence. Not only does she have to beat him, but she has to make it look easy.
Meh.
Well, what did you expect to happen?
The established level of power, and feats, in this setting made what was going to happen obvious.
I think he’ll get some good shots in over the next few pages, Dave’s a better writer than just having the most viable threat to Archon come out only to get knocked around and slink back to his cell. He may even try break out, though I doubt he’s impatient/dumb enough to try that on his first outing.
This whole reminds me of my theories on how Batman could handle Riddler (the versions that aren’t murderous psychopaths) a lot better. The non-murderous versions of Riddler is less obsessed with crime and more interested in proving his mental superiority over everyone else. Batman could stop his criminal enterprises cold by just organizing an irregular game night with the man.
Looks like Max is getting a little bit too cocky.
If half the point was training against someone like him, the training is moot like this. Him operating on a handicap not being allowed to use his fuller robust power set makes it pointless. They already have experience fighting super strong/durable targets. If nothing else they have members of the team that they can spar with for that. On top of that, Max flying is cheating a bit since that pretty much means that V has to wait for her to come into range or start throwing boulders that she can easily dodge.
This was mostly about letting him ‘feed’ without getting strong enough to escape
It’s like that time Superman told Darkseid that fighting on Earth was like punching wet cardboard and he always had to be careful not to tear up the planet too much.
You mean the “World of Cardboard” speech :)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Cl_5UwS57X8
I think Vehemence is in love now. Max is like the ideal woman in his eyes-she’s violent and powerful.
Willing suspension of disbelief aside, brutal fights like these always leave me wondering what the heck their clothing is made out of. Max is certainly tough enough to bounce back from the impact of that stone column, but as it shatters around her powerful frame, the jagged edges of every little chip of stone should be stabbing through and tearing the much less durable fabrics covering her, not to mention the stresses of that sandwiching impact. As Patreon-friendly as it would be to have Max emerge from that in only tatters and strips, Dave is trying to present a story and anyone can read and so, her clothing must survive. This is why Marvel invented unstable molecules, just saying.
Maxima’s powers involve zero point telekinesis sorta. Like superboy (Kon-El’s tactile TK), or superman and supergirl’s kryptonian biomatrix. It extends her “armor” (invulnerability) around her clothes to an extent.
“Air Master” is an anime I enjoy.
Max, just toss him into space, into the sun; he’s more threat than benefit. If you happen to somehow become incapacitated, he’s going to be more than a handful for the rest of the team to manage.
You probably better monitor his path all the way into the sun, too. Comics being the way they are, he’ll hold his breath and accidentally hit some poor spacecraft and take them over. Then he’ll come back to destroy the Earth sooner or later, just trying to defeat you.
He like ways less than seven tons. Halo puts him in a large tentacle bubble that simply bounces when he hits it, and flies him straight up into the stratosphere.
Vehemence! Vehemence! Vehemence!
We hope Max had her invulnerability tuned up high enough.
How did Vehemence manage to say “That’s” when he’s missing half his teeth? Practice. He’s had lots and lots of chances to practice.