Grrl Power #1404 – And I would walk 63,500 light years…
It’s safe to say this guy’s stride to inseam ratio is an outlier. You need special mathematical notation to indicate how many standards he deviates. Cases like this are why functions like “trimmed mean” are necessary.
So yeah, dude went out for a stroll. From somewhere, probably in or near our galaxy, on a celestial object, presumably orbiting the galactic center in a certain direction at a certain speed, onto a ship that is almost definitely moving in a different direction and at different speed. A FTL speed. It’s safe to say this guy slays at hopscotch.
I’m not really sure what else to say that doesn’t give away who and what this guy is, even though to me, it seems fairly obvious. }cough{
Oh, one other thing. Originally this was a standard sized page, but I’m really getting tired of cramming important moments into panels the size of 1/9th of a page. So I expanded this one, and I will probably do it more in the future. It doesn’t necessarily mean I can make those big panels all crazy high detail or anything. It’s not like I suddenly have a team of background guys that can draw 3-point perspective cityscapes for me while I concentrate on foreground art. I just want to give the important moments a little more weight, and in comic lingo, that usually means more page real estate.
But in expanding the now final panel, I wound up cutting the planned final panel. Originally, he shows up and looms as you see here, then there’s a panel of him leaning over Sydney, looking at the orbs, and that’s when he says Curious, etc. That panel made it clear he’s 1) there to check out the orbs, and 2) no one can see him. I think this version of the page is slightly more ambiguous in those regards, but not so much that I think it’ll throw you guys into a maelstrom of confusion, cats and dogs, etc.
A hint that he can’t be seen is that while he is backlit by the viewscreen and so is Sydney, he’s not casting a shadow on her. Which made me realize that if you could be invisible and somehow still see yourself (you wouldn’t be able to) you’d either be absolutely pitch black, because light would be bending around you and you would therefore not be illuminated, or you would be fully lit, without any shadows or ambient occlusion, because light would be passing through you equally… but there’s no way you’d be able to see yourself like that. Or see at all, really. But still, you’d look like a 3D model that was evenly globally lit.
Yes, yes, a magic spell that made you invisible could include an illusion that only you can see of yourself so that you can still pick locks or whatever non-fumbling-around-blindly activity you need to do. But then that illusion would have to make some decisions about illumination.
There’s also the option of not being invisible and just blocking people’s perception of you. That’s difficult because you have to block perception of footprints, cast shadows, B.O., etc. Not that standard invisibility block odor or anything. And there’s also the complication of perception blocking in a world with electronic cameras. It’s one thing in a fantasy world, but if blocking the perception of digital eyes requires a whole other level of hand-waving.
But then you have a guy who can amble a jillion parsecs like it’s nothing, and you don’t even need to try and justify anything. They’re at the “dude can do some shit.” level, and that’s all the explanation needed.
Ooh, look! A new vote incentive! And it’s updated with color!
Well, in progress, obviously. I have another one that’s actually a bit further along, but everyone was all, “Sydney Kobold vote incentive!” So I switched to this one. Plus the other one was a multi-character picture so it will actually take me longer to finish. I hope to have an update for this one each week, so stay tuned. There is a slightly higher res version on Patreon.
By the way, this gunmetal blue-ish background and teal pencils are how I draw the comic. I set it up this way so I don’t have to spend all day staring into a bright white blank page.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
I see that and all I can think is “IGNORE ME!”
Putting me in mind of an old character of mine (no accusation, I never even drew the guy), called Zahnon the Dimension Walker, I pictured a similar head but more golds and yellows, and wearing a yellow cowboy hat and a poncho over a Marvel’s Celestial style armor body. Funny enough the one time I got him involved in a story he took on the form of a puppy wearing that same hat and acted as the familiar for a summoner alongside his sister Sahralia the star killer and their mother Rokonaka the Dark Empress of the Void…as a blue ferret with horns and a dark red fox-squirrel respectfully. and typing that I wish I had made that series its own thing instead of at the time tying it into this whole other monsters tournament thing I was into at the time, LoL (decade later hindsight).
I’d watch that.
“That’s difficult because you have to block perception of footprints, cast shadows, B.O., etc. Not that standard invisibility block odor or anything.” …The number of stories/ideas I’ve made based on these thoughts is pretty high. (My favourite approach is “it blocks scent, sound, cast shadows, reflections, etc” but does not negate the impacts you physically have on your environment. So, say, if the floor would creak under you, that is still audible to those around you, if you bump a chair, they can still notice it’s moved.
Which is real fun when you write an intelligent character who has to fight a series of enemies(low tier demons, in his story, whom he didn’t have spiritual perception to see),he cannot perceive.
STEEEEEEEEP made me think he was producing a beverage almost but not quite entirely unlike tea.
It’s M(s/r[s]) Nth!
You know they are from an VERY advanced civilization, cause he (?) can wear a turtle neck with that head.
Since we are all just tossing around theories….
It seems to me that an Nth guy would have already seen lots of Nth tech. While it may be the orbs that originally caught his attention, it is quite possible that the ‘delightful surprise’ here may well be Daphne and her superpowers.
I remember a few pages years ago where Deus sort of explained to Dabbler and others that the origin of superpowers seemed maybe to be due to some transcendently powerful entity messing around with the fundamental nature of the universe, somehow focused on Earth. That sort of thing might require the next level of tech beyond the Nth (Nth+1?), which would presumably be interesting even to the Nth.
Given what those matrushka objects are theoretically being used for (And demonstrated in Schlock Mercenary) Could he be a mental projection of the object’s (watchman?)
Did we just notice the Travel orb light up? And Sydney noticed it? I thought maybe the orb someone is going to go into leveling mode, but now I think it lit up to alert the user that someone did some traveling in the vicinity. Is Sydney going to do a ninja scan when she realizes what her orb was telling her?
Oooh, that means maybe flattop also has orbs, but they’re enclosed in the flattop???
Magical Invisibility is really just a matter of uncoupling yourself from any Platonic Ideal other than “nothingness”.
Then even when they perceive you their mind simply translates you into a version of Nothingness.