Grrl Power #982 – (No longer) Sleeping with the archenemy
This may shock you, but Dabbler’s been around.
Yes, it’s the return of the dumb joke from page 77. (And 92. And 200. I still stand by that Status Quola joke. That makes me laugh to this day.) Started of as a little gag I thought of on the spur of the moment, and now it practically needs to be listed as one of Harem’s legitimate superpowers. This page is also a callback to both 176 and 186. So, yay for planning ahead? Huh, we’ve actually met over half the players on that page now. Might have to come up with another gallery of villains soon. And by soon I mean like… 4 years from now. :/
The boyfriend is holding stadium speakers on the soda can there, Say Anything style. No idea what it’s hooked up to or powered by. I would try amarula flavored soda. Although now that I’m googling for relevant links, I realized I screwed up. Amarula is the liqueur (which is pretty good IMO), Marula is the fruit. Maybe Harem is secretly drinking Amarula flavored beer on the job.
Tamer: Enhancer 2 – Progress Update:
Worked some more on the final fight. I wrote last time about how most fights generally need to be close matchups or else a book can either lack tension or you wind up wondering why the book is following a particular group of characters if they get their asses kicked to within an inch of their lives every time there’s a scuffle.
Right now the fight’s kind of even, but I don’t know if I want a close fight or a slam dunk. I guess we’ll see how it turns out.
September’s vote incentive is up! It’s been over a year since Max was featured in one of these, so I figured it was time to revisit.
If you just popped by to see it right when it went up, you might have missed the update. Her nipples were a touch high in the first version, and if you poke through the comments there, you can see the reference I used, only that model’s boobs were about 3 cup sizes smaller. Anyway, I flew her nipples south for the winter and updated the relevant pics.
Nude version is up at Patreon.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
SuperheroThey're super, thanks for asking!
Meatspace ComicSeriously these are awesome. Check 'em out!
Not UpdatingNo longer updating or only updates sporadically, but definitely worth reading.
SeriouslySeriously you guys. If you like Grrl Power the check these out.
"Mature"Mature subject matter and occasionally something explicit but usually safe. Can't guarantee the ads are safe though.
Dongs Ahoy!Full frontal and backal. Lots of skin, sex on some or all pages, explicit or otherwise.
I am assuming that Vehemence never had access to that much power and has never really had a chance/reason to not just dump the energy into the ground. and never knew something like that could happen
or he did it on purpose so he can scamper off while they deal with the newcomer
If there’s about to be an epic battle there is no way Kevin would bug out. The dude’s an addict and vehemence is his drug.
I think even if Kevin did have enough power to dump into the ground, it wouldn’t have had this effect before. This was “big power dump into the ground, close enough to Xuriel, after the great burning.” The great burning was pages 173-176.
i just dont get why he’d dump energy to begin with? A bigger charge would mean he’s good for longer, even if he wastes power playing while in “lockdown”.
Maybe he knows that he acts ‘different’ while hopped up on that much negative energy and doesn’t like it but accepts “I need it to survive and thrive!”
well i am sure they would not allow him to go back to his cell fully powered.
they need to keep an eye on him after all.
Man, we haven’t seen Heatwave in forever….
Um, Sydney. Rather than just standing around, glaring at Harem, you should be thinking “SHIELDS UP!“
This occurred to me as well – no particular reason for her not to be reacting in SOME way to something so huge…
…aaaaand that’s what she said
cue spin thargoth guy is her brother and she borrowed his sword with out asking XD
Neah, she’s definitely his ex, that’s in one of the linked pages. On the other hand, “Seriously Xuriel, I just want you to return my Elvis records” would be a hilarious starting line for the next page.
Hey, we sell non-alcoholic beers & wines at my supermarket (we’re connected to liquor store, so carrying actual booze seems a bit redundant). I suppose it’s actually possible to have Amarula-flavored drink without any actual alcohol involved.
I wouldn’t drink it (even if I knew what Amarula was), but it’s possible, right?
Oddly enough it’s a real thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amarula
So… which of the villains from the cameo page have not appeared yet?
The cleansing guy, the Arabic guy the masked person definitely never appeared. I don’t thing the show people has appeared yet but one of them might be Dr Had Issues with Women.
Isn’t this the Arabic guy?
No, that is the super ugly creature that is probably the only one of its kind. We have no idea what it looks like. The arabic guy is human. His face is covered but you can see his neck and shoulders. Presumably, he is the guy that is assumed dead when they mention at the first press conference that only 2 people have ever fought Maxima to a standstill and one is dead.
Agh, apparently I tied the page link to my name somehow…
Well, hopefully now you know what the website URL input box does
yeah I think the Arabic guy was the death eye Deus Henchman, the cleansing guy I suspect is tied to the robe guys Sydney fought (or is just some deranged redneck who thinks supers are demons and angels and this is the apocalypse), the mask character however has this final boss vibe to them (her maybe), but I could be bias, as I have thing for ultra powerful villains who wear weird masks.
The arabic guy is not the guy/girl working for Deus. That person’s name is Cthillia.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-573-fair-play/
And Cthillia is not Arabic. There was even a joke entirely centered around that she (or he) is not “one of them Akbar types.” Although Cthillia is a fan of traps though.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-532-monster-hunting/
The arabic guy is most likely the only other super that either beat or had a draw in a fight with Maxima, other than Dabbler (before Vehemence). Presumed dead but clearly not dead. Prior to being in Archon, Maxima’s job was as a soldier fighting in the middle east and eliminating enemy supers in Iraq and Afghanistan.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-150-not-sure-where-max-stencils-her-kill-marks/
According to the author’s notes on 530, Cthillia is female. I feel like there’s been other indications in the comic dialogue, like pronoun usage, but can’t think of a specific page.
Oh okay, I missed that. Good point. DaveB said she so she’s female. I didnt see any indications of it in the comic itself so I didn’t catch that (aside from Cthillia sounding like a female name).
Check the waist and hips!
Not really a definitive proof since Cthillia could have just been a lanky male or had a weird shape, given her body is clearly inhuman. Sort of like Copperhead from Justice League. So it didnt really click for me as proof. :)
But since DaveB said she’s female, then she’s female.
Show people? Do you mean panel 5? I thought that was Vekter and Opal, from the Vehemence fight.
It is either them, or the vamps who were working with Sci-fright
No, it wasnt Vekter and Opal. It was the two vampires who were working with Sciona, who are part of the Council. It’s sort of obvious from the hairstyle of Gunnhildr the vampire.
The ‘show people’ did appear – that’s the vampires, Gunnhildr and whatshisname who were working with Sciona. Check the hairstyles. :)
The ‘Çleansing’ guy and the lady(?) in the cat mask.
“Xuriel, I’ve finally tracked you down!…..Your mother and I have been so worried. You never call.”
“Xuriel, your Gricka misses you, I can’t get him to stop clawing the furniture. Please come back.”
At some point I’d like to have a discussion with Dabbler about the sheer logistical considerations and technomagical infrastructure required to boink a boyfriend that size without getting injured. ‘Cos seriously, aside from being a fascinating topic in its own right, there is some pent-up real-world demand for that.
Devoting some time and attention to foreplay definitely helps, but at some point even that becomes impractical. There are limits.
He’s probably a size-changer. Someone who looks a lot like him appears in the far-left bottom panel of #311, and he was small enough for his keymaster to fit snugly into her gatekeeper.
Alternatively, he could just be a race that doesn’t stop growing, and he was a lot younger back then.
Dude, that’s a Balor or Pit Fiend out of D&D. (Patterned off of a Balrog)
Just to be sure we’re talking about the same character, I’m talking about the one on the far left wearing a white shirt and brown pants, not the one in the center clad in a bowtie.
That said, how would you know whether either of them look like a balrog or pit fiend? Tolkien was pretty vague about what a balrog looked like; the depiction varies a lot depending on the movie/artist/whatever. As for pit fiends, one of my pet peeves about D&D is that the drawings in the Monster Manual change so much from one edition to the next, that I suspect that in most cases the artists never even looked at the drawings in previous editions. The OG pit fiend in the AD&D MM looks nothing like the 5e version, and you can find radical variations in every edition in between.
Clotho brews the sodas.
Lakhesis cans them.
Atropos labels the cans.
Nice
but Mac makes the beer.
Dresden represent!
Well, i guess it’s a good thing Vehemence is with them today. Hopefully he’ll be willing to help out.
There is no doubt he will be very willing to help out. The question is if he can. Unfortunately it looks like he might be out of the fight.
At the very least he’s in *flight*
Depends how violent the fight gets.
Bring anvil into the mix. Have her do her halo jump then dump all her stored kinetic energy into vehemence :D
We are people assuming Thothie is Dabbles ex-sexual partner?
He was always shown to be her ex-Arch nemesis
Because the soda can specifies ex-boyfriend. And given Dabbler, it doesn’t surprise me that an ex-boyfriend would become an arch nemesis. Or boy friend and arch-nemesis at the same time, and ex-ing both statuses at the same time.
she did kinda dump him in a bad place. he seems a little upset. Sydney, its time for some PPO diplomacy. 2 blasts ought to get his attention. shields up and get out your angry ex jokes.
Why not just assume both?
Well… That prophecy came true quickly after being shown to the audience.
… I wonder if there is such a thing as magic batteries. Vehemence and the rest of the capes here would have infinite power if they did- a few fights a week and all the magic-artillery you could ask for in the field!
I suspect Kevin putting the energy into the ground is due to his belief that there is such a thing, and that the planet is a really *big* one. But it’s also open for general use.
One common practice in at least one group of people who believe in real magic is to start working a spell by “grounding their energy, centering themselves, formulating the actual spell, and then pulling the energy they need back to cast it”. This lets them do the tricky part of working out how the spell should function while not being distracted by the energy they built up to power it.
I believe the reason for this is they only know of emotional energy, and things like lust, anger, and so forth tend to skew ones perspective. Though, to be fair, I’d guess if there was such a thing as ‘raw mana’, even without it having emotional charge, it would still tend to skew ones perspective, in much the same way that any kind of power corrupts.
As far as whether that actually *works* in real life is not really something I find interesting. It’s the thoughts behind it that seem potentially relevant to me.
Mana potions exist. Do those count as magic batteries?
… or do they need to be rechargeable batteries? I think they need to be rechargeable in this context.
A poster of Sydney’s pose in panel 1 would be really nifty. It’s a great superhero pose for her.
Just need to the crazy blond dude or the Arab supervillain and we’ll get a 186 bad-guy Bingo!
wasn’t the Arab guy in the villain shot the one henchman who works for Deus and also helped Sciona in the heist?
I think all that’s left is crazy guy (who has pimp slapped away and arrested low grade villain vibe to him; unless they get ahold of a normal person in the back swamps and declare it the end times trapping them in bunkers against their will).
the mask one however, it may be bias on my part, but between the mask and silly stickers on said mask has this child like god vibe coming off of them; so they could be a final boss type threat.
I had the idea that Cthillia is not a dude. Note the pronoun usage in the author comments. But the “Arab guy” looks like they probably are one.
Cthillia might not be male or female, or might be both from the “big fan of traps” Akbar joke. Probably not a super though since sciona described Cthillia as unique “only one of your kind.” Sort of like how Krona is the only one of HER kind as well.
Pretty sure the ‘big fan of traps’ comment was referring to the fact that they were about to send Cooter to his death in the middle of a bunch of vault-defense traps.
Also, I love how much re-read value Grrlpower has. I didn’t previously notice that Cooter ejected a perfectly good shotgun shell for the sake of making that menacing ‘racking the shotgun’ noise. https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-532-monster-hunting/
“Pretty sure the ‘big fan of traps’ comment was referring to the fact that they were about to send Cooter to his death in the middle of a bunch of vault-defense traps.”
True. I guess it can have multiple meanings depending on where my headspace is at.
been waiting years for that guy to show up!
Something tells me there is going to be a lot more violence right now…and we have to wait until Monday to see!
Okay so clearly Dabbler knew about the Aethereum causeway as she is not reacting to that, and Detla might still; although a more immediate concern has arisen, with much of the team there already exhausted from sparring save for Dabbler *who has beaten this guy before, but we’ve also seen her get sucker punched because of her confidence; but hey, lethal force and magical overkill should be authorized against Shabratrigon here), Vehemence should still be in the game although he’s dumped a bit of his mana he should recover it quickly fighting Not Surtur here all Hulk style. Halo’s offense was practically made it seems to fight things like this (heck other abilities of hers seem specifically tooled to counter magic), and of course Maxima is still in the game.
everyone else should go seek cover. Actually Hiro doesn’t seem as banged up, so can help too.
but this feels like Maxima, Dabbler, and Halo lining up and beaming this guy together all Ghostbusters vs Gozer style to push him back through the dimensional rift would be a way to go to avoid unnecessary risk.
If avoiding risk was this group’s style, Kevin wouldn’t have gotten all powered up so this wouldn’t be happening now.
Well… they wanted to document his limits for future unplanned or planned issues and the guy apparently start to literally die if he doesn’t get his violence fix every so often.
Thot ho goth?
Really?
… goddammit.
He’s been mentioned a few times. Twice in flashbacks of Dabbler, and Cora mentioned him once to Dabbler, asking if he was why Dabbler was hiding out on Earth.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-737-succubus-couture/
Panel 4 btw.
I never noticed the name.
Does anyone make Durian flavored soda, and does it stink to high heaven like the actual fruit?
Yes there is a durian flavored soda.
https://www.etsy.com/listing/1041343091/durian-soda
Cue scene, next downtime, of Dabbler offering Harem “Workplace Orgy” brand soda. (“Makes your taste buds orgasm en masse!”)
Longest Chekov’s gun I’ve ever seen wasn’t sure if it was ever gonna fire
Felt pretty sure once it got brought up a second time in conversation with Cora.
“Xuriel, We’ve been trying to reach you about your laboratory’s extended warranty”
what level of patreon funding to get this in the comic….
I mean – the one where you can get your character or likeness added to a comic seems like a feasible route
It could be a be lot worse, Dave. That could have been canned by Azarath and Metrion , the makers of Zinthos!
Even worse if they make them 3 packs…
btw: anyone else notice how the demons summoned by Trigon in Justice League vs Teen Titans look suspiciously like The Demons Three from films like Justice League Dark?
Okay Harem. Now crack open a can of “Tentacle Grape” soda.
roflmao,yes, pls.
wouldn’t that be “Tentacle grope” instead?
trent approved!
https://giphy.com/gifs/xT9IgHCTfp8CRshfQk
Tentacle gr()pe where the o is the anarchy symbol so it is both
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Yt0b_QBP_A
Nah. “Tentacle Grape” is an actual soda :P though it does feature some grope on some of the labels.
Ah, here it is, the one where Max reminds Dabbler of Thotogoth
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-177-intergalactic-baggage/
Cue “Goofy scream” from Keven;
“EEEYAAAA-HAAA-HOOIE!….. Yahoooie!
i… how.. did i not notice the running gat on the sodas until it smacked me in the face?
Really wondering exactly how vehemence’s ‘get stronger when injured’ thing works. The metallic face seems to have disappeared during the previous page but I’m wondering when and why.
He gets stronger from his being proximal to violence. It’s usually by enough that he’s able to repair any injury he sustained from it and have power left over.
I think the metallic visage of his repaired parts tends to go away when he depowers.
The “regenerating also makes him stronger” is probably just that when he is injured, he has the chance to grow back that metallic/armored flesh rather than just normal flesh
Quick Harem! Open this soda! It might be your only hope!
https://untappd.akamaized.net/photos/2021_04_11/3888faa64c94656017fc351a105c14c8_640x640.jpg
Deus is the solution of every problem right?
I think we found Pander’s soda.
https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1426/3142/products/0000_Panda_soda_grande.jpg?v=1603962731
No, he is the problem for every solution (unless it’s sulphuric acid… acid is a solution, right?)
Yes, it is!!! Sulfuric acid or sulphuric acid, also known as oil of vitriol, is a mineral acid composed of the elements sulfur, oxygen and hydrogen, with the molecular formula H₂SO₄. I thought I remembered that!!!
Deus is the solution to everyone’s problem. For he is the paragon of humanity and the hope and purpose that guides us all to the goal of a brighter future for all mankind under his wise tutilege. Trust in Deus.
All praise Deus, amen.
https://imgur.com/a/xiusgfj
made that for you with some lettering I found online
Yup. Vehemence is my favorite character in this comic. Yup. Solid top spot.
that dude on the can is like 26ft, maaaaybe 30ft max.
so perfect for a parody of a 1950s American monster movie.
be surprised how often the size is wrong, heck the American edit of the original Godzilla called him 400 feet tall despite the actual original footage being unchanged and its height clearly being the much shorter 150 feet.
same with Attack of the 50 foot woman where her size changed between shots, heck King Kong was anywhere from 18 to 60 feet depending on the scene.
consistent giant monster size wasn’t a thing American movies seemed to care about till very recently…and I mean very recently, 1998 Godzilla’s size even changed between shots.
soda jokes on them i see…
Yeah, go Halo! Not at all phased. “Harem, this is absolutely your fault.” Going to call this the “Soda meme”!
Well if we learned anything it’s that Dave plans ahead. 186 tells us that Dave’s planning on going long. Like Sluggy Freelance long. I salute to thee Dave! Your journey is a proud and noble one!
August of 1997 was a long time ago.
The movie was by Sony, I do not consider, that monster to be Godzilla. I and many purists, believe that!
Is a super making those drinks?
Greek Fate demigoddesses. Check the tag line.
We saw the big red guy back in 311, didn’t we?? He had a bow tie on.
“You never call! I got worried!!”
When your inofficial joke-power is prevalent enough to get noticed in-universe.
Does it count as teleporting whatever’s on the can into your vicinity?
Then it’s just an extension of Harem’s “teleport to self from somewhere else” ability.
This, along with some mild subconscious precognition, is actually a pretty good explanation. Or maybe she just has 30-second foresight and a wide variety of soda stashed away for just the right occasion.
oh, well, that’s a question I haven’t seen asked – maybe nobody thought it worth asking – Dabbler has two extra arms, but then each hand has one less finger than a human – if she has fewer toes as well, then she only has 4 more fingers and toes than us…
d’oh! Hooves count as what? 2 toes? if so, she has the same number! huh
well – feel free to discuss if anyone’s interested
“Forewarned is forearmed”
Dabbler has four arms
Therefore …?
Well, he seems friendly.
Harr! Amelia FTW