Grrl Power #1122 – Villain shaming
I, too, am disappointed in Varia’s… I don’t know, ethics? Honestly the very first draft of this scene in my head went down a very different way. I won’t say what that was, cause this probably isn’t the last time the two of them will cross paths. It was definitely very cool and/or funny. Okay, I hadn’t fully decided exactly what that outcome would be. When it does happen, the rule of cool and/or funny will likely be a factor, but there’s a chance it will be totally story driven. Not a huge chance, but a chance.
The original version of this page had Varia twist a bit which caused Jiggawatt’s dangling arm to swing forward, and Varia reached back and caught her wrist. But then my brain thought, “spankies!”
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Hmm she beaten him and put him down but she no smash him… meh his defeat that way is… acceptable. *nods in approval* Yes.
He can probably push the bars away with human strength. It isn’t a real threat; just part of the insult.
It’d be difficult. Notice the bars are jammed into the wall. Likely bent on the other side of the cinderblock as well. Human strength could probably do it, but not without a lot of effort.
That and whats to say those cinder blocks don’t got re barb in them? If I done that to him I’d have the bars twist around the re barb inside the cinder blocks to make it that he can’t get loose even with great effort.
Those bars are deep into stone. I don’t think he’s moving them.
Smashing a bar into the stone doesn’t seat dick. That’s why we used epoxy to glue them into things(construction. +30years). They are no more in whatever they are driven into than any other projectile driven into something. The only thing holding those is friction. And cinder blocks would just shatter. They have no reinforcement in them of ANY kind. And are two glorified hollow cement bricks ‘stuck’ together to make a bigger one. Reality is they wouldn’t be holding him there at all cause all the blocks the end of those bars were driven into would shatter and be so much rubble on the floor, NOT holding him in a cage.
Lots of cinderblock walls have some of the cells filled with concrete and rebar. A cellblock designed for holding super experiment subjects should definitely be reinforced. But yeah, those bars aren’t holding much.
She had magnetism powers capable of putting in the ground. How hard would it have been to hook them into the ground. You are very weirdly narrow minded for a comic book story.
I kind of feel bad for him. That kind of burn followed by a very personal rejection. He kind of put himself out there, metaphorically extended his hand (and physically) and she slapped it away. He is bad, make no mistake, but I still feel for him.
You can’t really dislike a dork who’d pick a name like that for himself. You can just tell he does all this more because he thinks it makes him seem cool and imposing, rather than actually wanting any of the results from the operation. He’s a dork with a really poor tendency for allies and causes, but a dork nonetheless.
While you’re not wrong, Varia is unique enough that being referred to as “kindred” by him could have hit a nerve. This was very much a dressing down that, after his (kind of) pride, I think he needed.
What happens if Varia touches multiple people?
Going by that time Vahriah, Heatwave and Jigs got into a brawl in the locker-room, believe it’s the first one takes priority, as long as she remains in contact
I hope their combined superpower is…. Tamer Enhancer Book 3 !
Dave your Enhancer books are every bit as enjoyable as your excellent web comic. I hope you keep writing.
I second this hope.
Why is Varía not listed in the Who’s Who section?
Typically only characters that speak on the page get an entry, and Ace Ventura wasn’t here to help Varia make the cut.
I’m builidng a GrrlPower Wiki so that this stuff can be crowdsourced, would you be interested in helping contribute? I’m at a stage where I’m bringing in all of the comic pages (thumbnails) next. https://grrlpowercomic.fandom.com/wiki/Grrlpowercomic_Wiki
DaveB got the tags wrong
Mistakes happen.
For Whom the Death Tolls really deserves the most awkward, overly elaborate, non-poetic post-battle zingers just to make fun of how bad his name is.
“Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it does not toll, death time, for you, is not now, see because you’re not dying just going to jail. Thee.”
“I hope you’ve brought your imported goods form, villain, for your misdeeds are about to take a heavy TOLL. (It’s a homonym!)”
“Something about ‘saved by the bell’, but not, cause you left out the word bell when you picked your dumbass name.”
“For Whom the Death Tolls, notably not even wanted for murder, going away for life anyway. Looks like we’ll never find out for, uh, whom the. Death. Tolls. Damnit.”
I hope he is just disappointed, not that he feels remorse. Such a bland put-down making him rethink his life would be a bit of a let-down. Seriously, “you are a bad person!” is not a convincing argument to anyone more intelligent than a literal dog.
That she rejects him on moral grounds is one of the arguments, another is his complete lack of understanding of her. The “You are a bad person” part is just for emphasis.
But he didn’t even say anything implying that he understood her. He liked the symmetry between her powers and his, and was curious as to how they would interact.
Telling someone who is barely an acquaintance that they don’t understand you is kinda… obvious? This has all the emotional impact of a college student shouting to a cop that “pigs are evil!”
She was telling him off, not debating him. It didn’t need to be a rhetorically good argument.
Let me see if I got this straight. He has the power to match or counter other people’s power’s, a little like Nemesis Kid of TLOSH. But he has to touch them. So he wears gloves – that are hard to get off.
Almost, he has exactly the same power as Nemesis kid. The touching people thing is for Varia there, She has a gestalt power that requires her to have to touch people, think like the copy touch power except she doesn’t always get the same power as a person and cam get a power from people without powers as well. Death Toll was taking his glove off to tempt her to make skin contact with him.
AWWWWWW….he looks so sad!
Good, he should feel sad, now, let us never see him again
I hope that the dork uses this as a learning experience and gains real personal growth out of it. Because, yes, he should feel bad. Yes, he should be ashamed. But if he has a shred of decency and gains some self awareness out of this, maybe he can become a more conscientious person than he is. The first time we saw him, he received a ‘Get out of jail free’ pass because of Vehemence. No real incentive to change his ways, just find smarter allies who have a better plan than ‘attack the heroes while they’re eating dinner’. This time, though, someone who he on some level identifies with and maybe even looks up to, thinks he sucks? That he’s not just a bad guy (basically cops and robbers) but a bad person? Maybe that can spur some introspection and give him impetus to change for the better.
Move steel! The power of Jiggawatt’s booty compels you.
For whom the sad tolls.
Would be nice if he turned his life around after this. I mean, I’m not going to hold my breath, but would still be nice.
If he didn’t after literally getting knifed in the arse last time, doubt this time will be different
Huh. Shouldn’t his power have given him a way to get out or block her magnetic powers?
Indirect power usage. The power wasn’t used on him, just near him, nothing for him to counter.
He has Nemesis which counters powers used on him
So do defense against indirect or environmental changes. Adapt is the power that allows one to adapt to indirect changes.like growing gills if you end up under water or teleport if trapped etc..
He can’t do that unless someone aims at him directly.
“no” defense. Autocorrect changed the meaning of the sentence
Now that’s how you handle a Nemesis super like a professional.
I *so* want to see him contemplate how he got to this point by pulling from his pocket the googly eyes from that night to stare at them and remember.
Is it just me or was he crushing on her and got dumped hard?
He’s a mask guy, they’re mask guys… I think he just hung out with the wrong crowd. I really hope for Death’s Toll ends up realizing how much cooler it is to be an overdramatic hero with a dark past then an over dramatic villain.
Complete idiot. In more ways than one.
Seriously, put your back to the wall, brace your legs against the bars and even with the ends embedded a little into the brickwork, he should be able to get out of that one in short order.
But not in time to stop them from leaving. In addition, we don’t even really know his real motivations, or why he’s here. This might have just been the last rebuke on a really bad day.
It would actually be really fun to see his POV for the last couple months, getting more and more disillusioned with his new employers, and then trying to put on a brave face today after the other henchmen were especially mean in the cafeteria.
Surprisingly smart move.
I could have sworn I post it on this about a week ago. Rereading the comic I can’t help but think if all he wanted to do was check and test the limits of his powers he could have gone to the good guys after he got paroled and asked for training.
Sad thing is if he’s just curious about his limits and wants to use his powers he could have asked the good guys for training.
Apparently he does not, in fact, have the power to counter anything, because that looks like it might’ve hurt.
(Unless he’s just getting comfortable waiting for someone else to get him loose.)