The sword I designed for Max isn’t the one she chose when she visited Cora’s Starforge. That one can accept channeled power to increase its cutting ability. This one is the more defensive mana eater that had been discussed briefly. It’s a bearing sword, which is a ridiculously sized ceremonial sword that usually looks like a 7-foot long greatsword or claymore. I’m not sure I have the proportions quite right, and they traditionally have a much larger cross guard as well. I am attempting to build it in Blender, so I can place it with a consistent design in the comic, but I’m sure at least some of you are aware of my failed attempts to learn the program previously. Still… it’s a sword, not the rifling on the inside of a barrel or something relatively complex, so maybe I’ll be able to figure it out?

Maxima is a surprisingly competent marital artist. Nowhere near Math’s level, but early on, she became determined to not only rely on always being faster and stronger than her opponents, and learned a bunch of martial arts fundamentals, joint locks, jujitsu holds and redirect-your-opponent’s-strength/momentum stuff like Aikido. What she really needs is someone to teach her how a martial art that is designed for someone with super strength/speed/armor.

I think most of the Marvel movies are pretty good, especially up through Avengers: Endgame – actually, I think most of them are amazing and a lot of people have gotten spoiled/jaded on what a good superhero movie is, which is a little weird, because most of the time Marvel was doing their thing, Zack Snyder was making sure people didn’t forget what bad superhero movies looked like.

Anyway, my point is that as much as I enjoy those movies, there’s still a lot that can be nitpick. For instance, in Endgame when Thanos was standing over Thor, pressing Stormbreaker down into his chest, well, Thor can toss tanks around. Thanos doesn’t weigh that much, and doesn’t have any sort of rooting or gravity powers, and in fact, neither of them weigh an extraordinary amount. Maybe more than a similarly sized human, but still, like, maybe 1,000 pounds? (Okay, 985 according to a quick search) So an actual super fight between the two of them would obviously look very different. With strength like that, punching someone simply isn’t your best move. I think I’ve talked about this before, but high strength doesn’t necessarily convey high damage with a punch. A punch is about the mass of the fist hitting you, and the speed at which it hits. Yes, the strength behind the fist is important, but only in that it will mitigate the speed from dipping when the mass of the fist (and arm) intersects your skull. Obviously given the choice between getting punched by a powerlifter or a pro boxer or a Karate champ, I’d rather not get hit by either one, but you can start to see my point. Strength doesn’t scale infinitely into punch damage. That graph levels off fairly quickly I think.

Think of it this way. A guy puts a boxing glove on the end of a broomstick and jousts at you from on top of a moped. The average punch clocks in at about 25 mph, so yeah, that’s going to sting when it hits. Now consider the same setup, except the boxing glove jouster thingy is mounted on the front of a car, which, again, comes at you at 25 mph. That will probably hurt more, not because there’s more kinetic energy in the hit, but there’s more inertia behind it. Now imagine you’re standing on a pier, and the boxing glove thing is attached (at face level) to the front of a battleship, which hits you at 25 mph. No one would expect your head to explode because there’s “so much strength” behind the punch. I don’t think there’d really be any difference between that hit and the one from the car.

The calculus changes completely if you have someone pinned against a building or a mountain, then the hits go from kinetic transfer to crushing damage. But, if you have them pinned against the ground, the 300 pound guy who can bench a tank punching down at someone without somehow bracing himself is going to launch himself into the air like he’s doing a Hulk super leap.

So a martial art that really takes super powers into account would have to be extremely flexible and situationally aware. A fight between the Hulk and Superman or Maxima, realistically… well, realistically, why would either one of them engage him in a melee fight? Supes and Max both have ranged options. But they also have near Hulk level super strength (at least until the Hulk gets especially angry) and super speed, which means the Hulk’s punches, if he ever could connect, would realistically just knock either one back a dozen feet until their flight overcame it, while they could both deliver tungsten-rod-from-orbit levels of hits.

All of this is to say, Maxima does have some of the fundamentals of footwork and spacing down, so when learning to fight with a sword she’s not starting from absolute scratch. But… not all that far off, either.

Finally, here we go! I took the suggestion that I just use an existing panel for a starting point, thinking it would save time… I guess it technically did, but a 5 character vote incentive just isn’t the way to go.

Patreon, of course, has actual topless version.

Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.