Grrl Power #1443 – Have costochondral separation, will travel
Yeah, so fighting super monsters and ultra bots is not without risks. Ya’doy!
I rewrote this page a few times. The original version just had a word bubble… or a narrator bubble… I should probably know what that’s called. Anyway, it summed up Maxima weaving through tunnels and sneaking invisibly onto the ship while dodging like a zillion drones from news agencies, governments, criminal organizations, and everyone in between. Scary powerful contestants that no one knows anything about cause interest to skyrocket, after all.
But I occasionally go back to find a reference in the comic (usually someone’s eye color) and wind up reading a hundred pages or so. Takes longer than one might guess. But doing rereads makes me realize that the pacing of the comic is… consistent, in kind of a bad way. Like there are very very few establishing shots, no splash pages to set up a scene or anything. Not that every comic needs a wide city shot, then 5 pages of various panels of store fronts, telephone poles, bicycles parked in front of a school, etc, etc. Yeah, I know, you’re all conjuring images of the last manga you read.
So basically I thought it’d be okay to spend a few panels on Maxima doing instead of me telling. I’ll probably only get the urge every once in a while.
Ah! I thought I had more time till March. I’m bad at looking at dates apparently. The new one is underway. I should have a draft ready to go for the next Monday comic?
Here is Gaxgy’s painting Maxima promised him. Weird how he draws almost exactly like me.
I did try and do an oil painting version of this, by actually re-painting over the whole thing with brush-strokey brushes, but what I figured out is that most brushy oil paintings are kind of low detail. Sure, a skilled painter like Bob Ross or whoever can dab a brush down a canvas and make a great looking tree or a shed with shingles, but in trying to preserve the detail of my picture (eyelashes, reflections, etc) was that I had to keep making the brush smaller and smaller, and the end result was that honestly, it didn’t really look all that oil-painted. I’ll post that version over at Patreon, just for fun, but I kind of quit on it after getting mostly done with re-painting Max.
Patreon has a no-dragon-bikini version of of the picture as well, naturally.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
I don’t know, DaveB. I -like- the consistency of your comic’s pacing honestly. It’s refreshingly different.
Also I see that Maxima is not ‘completely’unstoppable after all. I’m wondering who in particular did manage to hurt her – whether it was UMBRage, the pixie’s black holes, the initial blast from that robot or maybe it’s lasers afterwards, something that happened offscreen during her fight against the grey anatomy, or something that happened during those 29 seconds in the faerie’s realm with the gate guardian.
My guess would be the black(ish) hole. Maybe her force field doesn’t do anything against tidal forces?
Though the Unbrage stomp might be it. Might just be that being stomped into solid rock, while it couldn’t break her skin, still subjected her innards to a bit more force than they’re comfortable with.
My guess would be it was all of it dealing cumulative damage as it drained her ‘battery’, and Max being forced to steadily put more energy into offense than defense as the fight wore on.
My guess is Max had to shift more power from defense to offense as the fight wore on to deal with her opponents in a decisive manner, and the damage that made it through adds up. The problem with a properly challenging fight is that the other guy can also hit – and hurt – you, and Max tends to prefer to blitz her opponents, even in situations where turtling might have been a better option – even if only briefly.
Contrast this with Sydney’s fight with the Calamarians; where Max does shock and awe, Sydney used hit and run, making full use of mobility and defense.
I’m betting on fae mischief. It would be a pretty damning weakness if her defense field didn’t extend to the inside of her body, she’d be dead the first time someone decides to try and telefrag her (which would presumably elicit a response of “I didn’t think that would work” from the would-be heroine slayer)
First contact with potential Orb Makers during the travel? That would be interesting.
Props to Max for not saying anything about Sydney’s bigger chest (if she still has it), but that’s Max for you. Always business first. If she still has it when she swings by Earth though some of the others might not hold their tongue as much.
Modesty and prudishness almost always takes a back seat to internal bleeding and pain. Ask any EMT. At least, it does for the people actually in pain. Family members of the person in pain can still cause problems regarding modesty of the victim.
Maybe she ran into the same issue as Sydney and expended so much power that her power now needs to spend some time recharging?
I don’t quite remember if anything came of that last time when her orbs seemed low. Did they ever figure out what was going on there or did her orbs just recharge in the background without anyone mentioning it?
When Max stopped Sydney taking some of the ARC women on a shopping trip to Fracture, it was mentioned Dabbler thought they were slowly recharging, but it would take months.
Also, separately… after nearly being lost in another dimension for potential years, Maxima is now apparently badly injured. Requiring a round trip to Earth to withdraw another major asset (in which Shenanigans will undoubtely occur), since she doesn’t seem willing to give Frix a chance.
At what point does the Bad Idea level become critical?
I await Dr. Chevy’s opinion on that, expressed with her more emphatic than empathetic bedside manner.
“I dunno Max, don’t want to let those orbs run too low. Remember what you were saying about space jaunts if not completely necessary, and opening atherium causeways near an UCBA event might attract attention to Earth. Cora tracked me to Fracture, after all..”
Well now, that’s interesting. Maxima discovered there is an upper limit to what she can power through. This might have some consequences for A.R.C.H.O.N.’s strategies for the future.
We knew she had an upper limit when she was pinned and about to be killed by Kevin/Vehemence. And he wasn’t even at full power at that point, if he even has a “full power” upper limit. Since this is an 8V8 format where he could hide and absorb energy while the other 7 fight, Kevin may have been the better option to partake in this tournament. I was expecting to see Ixah have to face off with him in either the finals or semi-finals, but he would have to have been entered by Tom or maybe Deus.
Sheesh, Bluce. Sex positivity aside, this isn’t the naked news network… Slow your roll a bit, buddy.
You know Max is really hurting when she doesn’t comment on all the toplessness and near-toplessness going on.
Narrator bubble? Wouldn’t that be a “caption”?
It seems to me that Harem is a better gofer here given that she can teleport Antony she can carry and she doesn’t have to open tethering causeways to do it.
Harem has a weight limit that is less than a human, also it was established she can’t teleport other people (only exception being Varia, and the only reason she is an exception is due to how her power combos with Harem’s).
Hrmmm. Perhaps entering a no limits death battle on short notice, with no real information or preparation, wasn’t a smart idea. I’m sure Max still got this though. It would be interesting to see if Max ends up a little injured and on the mend for a bit after all this. Would be cool to see how the team operates without one of their heavy hitters on the field and also maybe Max deserves a break after all this.
Maxima left her disguise on so as not to show Sydney how F-ed up she is.
Or is it holding her guts in?
I’m actually glad to see Maxima suffering physical pain and/or exhaustion. On account of the “Superman dilemna.” How there’s only two real conflicts one can bring to a Superman story.
1: A moral/mental dilemma (i.e. Superman is placed in a position where his powers are useless to solve the problem, and he must find a solution that relies on his intellect, morality, or both).
2: A physical obstacle of such magnitude that even Superman is sorely pressed to overcome it (i.e. Darkseid or a similar overwhelmingly powerful villain who responds to claims that Superman is invulnerable with “cute. Let’s test that theory.”)
So far we’ve seen some great examples of the first conflict, where Maxima is presented with obstacles she can’t simply punch/energy blast away. Now we might see some examples of the latter. Maxima, bleeding, damaged, but defiant and refusing to give up. Teeth bared, fists clenched, and reminding everyone that it’s not just the powers that got her promoted to Lieutenant Colonel.
I’m not going to speculate as to how badly Maxima is hurt, since I have a more pressing question! Just took a look at the vote initiative and noticed that there is something yellow or gold colour dangling from the blunt end of the axe. It’s really small and even magnifying the page doesn’t really make it much easier to see, but would I be right to guess that it’s a tiny upside-down yellow duck?
The responsible thing to do would obviously be to call the whole thing off and return to Earth ASAP. Of course, this being a webcomic and that being the boring option, I fully expect Maxima to continue along in the tournament against doctor’s orders.
Not a surprise. This random assignment elimination battle featured two former champions (KILL-7 and UMBRAGE*), and she’s been beaten before by Kevin/Vehemence. Granted with V it was because she was still in “cop” mode, holding back from lethal force for way too long, not knowing it was allowing him to power up enough to beat her. She could have easily beaten him had she gone lethal earlier. But the point is we already know she isn’t invincible.
Note*: Considering how easily it was taken out by magic, and especially if it has been upgraded since the win, I am surprised that a pure melee contestant like Rambo-Barney was able to completely win this tournament in the past. I’m thinking the 8V8 format must inject more than a little luck into whoever is the ultimate winner. Say, all the magic wielders were taken out by other contestants in the tournament it won.
I’m really curious what Dr. Chevy can do that Cora’s doctor can’t do. I can understand why they didn’t bring another doc on board though because someone’s gotta take care of the supers on earth. I thought about hoping that nothing too bad is wrong with Max, but I think it’s safe to assume that she’s in super critical condition right now or else Cora’s crew could handle it.
Btw. I like your pacing. It’s fine to overthink things because that’s what passionate artists do but I don’t think most readers notice that stuff (consciously anyway).
Dr. Chevy has “healing super powers”. Since this is a web comic centered around super powers, we can assume that super powers are better than even alien technology. Plus Dr. Chevy has been working with Max for years, and we can presume they proactively did every test they could to figure out ways to “fix” her in the case she was injured. Frix wouldn’t have access to that information, and I assume nothing he has would be able to penetrate Max’s skin to fix anything inside her body.
It’s probably not a matter of what but how fast, Dr. Chevy is a super that can accelerate healing, combine that with the future medical technology and Max will be fully healed in almost no time