Grrl Power #1128 – Get the heck out of dodging
I thought about attributing Super Massive/Suck Hole’s speed to actual gravitational time dilation, but he’d need to be putting out a lot of gravity to for it to register as super speed. Like, if you’re standing or sitting, relativity is at work, but the difference in the height of your head would be like 1/1×10^36 of a second. Someone who somehow lived on the peak of Mt. Everest would, over their lifetime, accrue a few nanoseconds over their twin brother who was born at the exact same second due to some weird dual C-Section incident and who lived on the bank of the Dead Sea all their lives. GPS satellites have to correct for relativity due to their speed, but also due to the fact that they orbit at an altitude of 20K kilometers, so they’re far less affected by Earth’s gravity than the average GPS receiver usually is. Still, it’s only 7 microseconds per day.
So in order for Super Hole to achieve noticeable super speed? Well, I did some googling and have no idea if this is right, so feel free to offer corrections, but one source says that you’d need 520 million gravities to halve the passage of time. Double speed definitely qualifies as super speed, but as Maxima says, her default is “many times faster than human,” so if Suck Massive is faster than her, then the amount of gravity he’d be able to produce could basically kill anything and everyone.
Also, gravity falls off at inverse square, so the amount of gravity and time dilation those around him would experience would change massively if they moved even a few feet closer or further away. That’s the real reason things like black holes are dangerous, because you can get close enough to them that the gravity leaps up to an unmanageable level. Yes, also the whole event horizon thing, but I’m just talking about gravity here. For instance, if you were standing on the surface of the sun (which is just a maelstrom of exploding plasma, I realize the sun doesn’t have a solid surface – at least, not on the “surface”) and it suddenly became a black hole, the amount of gravity pulling on you wouldn’t change. In fact none of the orbits of anything in the solar system would change.
Okay, yes, there’d probable be some violent event as the sun somehow “became” a black hole. I mean if a Q came along and did a flashy snap solar swap out. The difference would be that now you could get much closer to the source of that gravity. Instead of being stuck at 695,ooo kilometers from the center of the sun, you could get within 1.25 km of that gravity source. Now think about that inverse square law and you’ll see why black holes are scary as fuck.
All of this is to say, Super Massive has impressive gravity powers, and moderate super speed, not Class-5,000 gravity powers (in Marvel RPG terms). Or to put it in JRPG terms, S++++++++++++++ class.
Now, about that final panel. One, yes, I just got through saying that his gravity powers, while impressive, are not a star-system-level threat, and yet he’s bending energy beams around him. I don’t know what to tell you, it’s a power stunt. Two, he himself should be distorted and look like a ripple in a pond because how is he bending the energy beam around him but not the light in the room? Well, Maxima isn’t shooting a laser, she fires particle beams of some sort. I don’t know what sort, maybe it’s mesons, top quarks, W bosons, maybe it’s even a stream of protons. The point is, they have a lot more mass than photons, which have literally none, so they’re easier for him to affect.
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What if the super speed (and I’m guessing some super strength) is a byproduct of the standard “own power immunity” package. Like, because he has gravity powers he operates on a level that can ignore gravity to a certain function.
Like he’s almost operating in a frictionless universe while being massively dense and he’s actually using low levels of his powers to just operate NORMALLY. Him going super is often a case of him turning OFF his safety controls.
When your whole power set is “I make physics go cry in the corner” you really don’t have to worry too much about them making perfect sense.
“Like he’s almost operating in a frictionless universe”
just like that one custodian with the body grease.
I thought exactly this.
Nice to see a fellow TTS enthusiast!
Yes to the “required secondary powers”, but more “if fly by making myself the center of a mobile black hole” that gravity time or canceling normal physics.
I would guess that he keeps the micro black hole in the pit of his stomach?
So, everything he’s doing *could* be gravity related, but if it were, he’d have destroyed the continent he’s on already. I mean, superheroes, yes, but this is really hurting the part of my brain that suspends disbelief more than Maxima’s multipower does.
It really doesn’t need to hurt your suspension of disbelief that much. He just has more than one superpower. It’s like how Mr. Shifty from the game Mr. Shifty can teleport and also has superstrength. He clearly doesn’t get his superstrength from his teleportation, he just has both things. I guess a better example would be an in-universe example… like Anvil. She has kinetic absorption and superstrength but she doesn’t need super strength to be able to use her kinetic absorption. It’s just an additional power. This guy has some powers that aren’t related to each other. It happens.
It’s probably more a matter of, he has one “telekinetic magic” power that he uses “gravity” themed names for, but that isn’t really a gravity power.
Doesn’t even have to be more than one power, so far every super seems to just have one (except Max and Sydney who are non-genetic supers). If he can warp space, he gets super strength by warping the gravity gradient to make his target object far lighter, or super speed by shortening the distance of the path he travels.
Hiro has not only strength and flight (those two could be the same power), but also sonic absorption, Concretia has geokinesis and spectral projection (which together give her the golem avatar), Anvil has super strength even without her main power. If Sydney has multiple powers, then so does Hex.
Shortening distances doesn’t improve his reaction speed, which would be needed to counter Maxima, and making objects lighter wouldn’t make him punch harder.
I am using the established bespoke quantum field as the source of superpowers as the mental go around for forces, matter, and energy not obeying conventional laws of physics. Rather the interaction between the fields producing a variant force or else the synthetic “Superion field” is providing a facsimile force, something that resembles and cosmetically does what other forces and such do yet is in truth not the actual force it is being thought to be by these individuals
Multiple characters in this webcomic have multiple powers that don’t come from the same source. Hiro has flight, super strength, super toughness, and sonic energy absorption/release. Heatwave can fly as well as control heat. Why is it so difficult to imagine Supermassive might just have multiple powers like they do?
The only reason his powers can’t all be filed under “curving space” is that doing that enough to do time dilation would insta gib any opponent. But still, his powers can’t be just “gravity” and it makes much more sense to view it as directly curving space. Heck, if he is able to curve time directly and more efficientlythan gravity does it, that would also just explain the time dilation.
His power is to bend spacetime, the main way we encounter that in nature is gravity, and the effects of bending spacetime have many of the same effects as super high gravity, but it has fewer limitations (curving out as well as in, being able to make the curve steeper than normal gravity which makes collateral damage a null issue, etc)
Max, I think it’s time for you to hand him off to someone who’s better able to counter him. With that ego and need to beat someone, I’d suggest Achilles.
… but seriously, I know those powers play better in Arc-Light or Arc-Dark, but you’d expect SOMEONE in the front line to be able to do a magical sleepy-time takedown…. oh, wait, Dabbler’s trapped on another continent.
Gravity diminishes with the square of distance. If that orb is 300 gravities at the surface and 10cm across, then modelling as a uniform sphere of mass it will produce only 0.03g 10 metres away. This is 3% of earth gravity. A full kilometre away it would make only 3 microgravities. That’s the power of inverse exponentials!
But then again maybe its just power shenanigans.
Whoops, I meant to reply to “gravatar? halfatar!”.
Sacrificing your dignity on the Allatar. I never had any.
Would he even bother with smacking around Achilles when he can take on Maxima? Achilles isn’t really dangerous, he just won’t stay down.
Because Achilles isnt affected by crushing gravity and primarily uses grappling, not punching?
He sure is. He won’t be hurt by it, but he will be flattened to the ground or another surface unable to move, and if Supermassive then collapses something on him, he will be stuck for a while. He can’t use grappling either if he never gets to Supermassive, who is also faster than him.
While I agree that Supermassive can collapse something ON him, it will stop Achilles (if only because Achilles won’t be able to move the object off him since he doesnt have superstrength), why would he be flattened to the ground if gravity alone is used on him? Also, he managed to grapple Sciona, who was also faster than him.
In simple terms because that’s how gravity works. Achilles isn’t able to fly, the only force he can exert to remain upwards is with his feet, and he doesn’t have superstrength. If the curvature becomes steep enough and he is falling down fast enough, eventually there is a point that he just can’t stand up any longer.
If it was a power that directly affected him, sure, he might be immune. but gravity exists as a form of just how the curvature of spacetime works.
“Achilles isn’t able to fly, the only force he can exert to remain upwards is with his feet, and he doesn’t have superstrength. ”
Yes but the reason he normally would not be able to move would be the crushing force pushing down on his body.
If his body isnt going to be AFFECTED by the gravity, not sure why he wouldn’t be able to move when there’s nothing physical stopping him from moving. We’ve already seen that whatever SM is doing is not exactly how gravity works normally in the first place, since gravity generally is supposed to be based on the attraction of mass to other mass, and he’s making gravity out of nothing with those ‘gravity ball things’, rather than just manipulating existing gravity from objects that have mass.
> If his body isnt going to be AFFECTED by the gravity
Why do you think that? He’s certainly affected by normal gravity just like everyone else.
> We’ve already seen that whatever SM is doing is not exactly how gravity works normally in the first place
Only in being created by a different source. We haven’t seen anything suggesting the effects are different, nor Achilles would be interact with it differently.
“Why do you think that? He’s certainly affected by normal gravity just like everyone else.”
Mainly bcause of this: Achilles can’t be poisoned, suffocated, starved, irradiated, CRUSHED, cut, pierced, burned, frozen or injured by any method yet discovered.
When I hear someone say that he can increase the gravity to keep him from moving, I’m guessing htey’re meaning that SM would be trying to use gravity alone to crush him downward. But with no actual object to do that, I keep thinking that particular power stunt wouldnt do much to Achilles. I am not saying he’s not affected at all by gravitational pull, because obviously he’s not flying, and he isnt floating into space since gravity keeps him on Earth, but SM’s powers don’t operate like normal gravity. They seem to operate from what I’ve been seeing with crushing people down, or pulling them left or right or up and down via those gravity ball things.
“Only in being created by a different source.”
I literally don’t see any ‘source’ of the gravity in today or yesterday’s comics. Just an onomatopoeia of ‘gravity whiplash’ and ‘gravity yoink’ and ‘gravity gravity.’ Hence my confusion.
He won’t be crushed, but he’ll still be forced down. If you put him in an industrial press, he wouldn’t be harmed, but he’d still be stuck because he wouldn’t be able to overpower the press. The crushing is merely a side effect of the force – if the crushing is prevented by durability, the force still applies.
The source of the gravity is SM’s power. Once’s he’s created a field, we have no evidence suggesting it doesn’t behave like natural gravity.
“If you put him in an industrial press, he wouldn’t be harmed, but he’d still be stuck because he wouldn’t be able to overpower the press.”
There’s an actual object on him with the industrial press. There isnt any with Supermassive’s gravitokinesis.
Achilles is invulnerable, not immune to everything. Nothing can damage him, but he’s still affected by things like force and gravity. He can be thrown and shoved and pulled. He’s stronger than most ordinary people, because he can use 100% of his muscular power without risk of self-injury, but heavy gravity is still going to make it harder for him to move.
“Achilles is invulnerable, not immune to everything. Nothing can damage him, but he’s still affected by things like force and gravity. He can be thrown and shoved and pulled.”
Yes but why would he be unable to move? His invulnerability is so annoyingly absolute that one would think his hair wouldn’t even be pressed down from the gravity alone, as opposed to having something physically pressing down on his hair.
If you mean that SM can use his gravitokinesis to make him go flying in different directions, that’s different than ‘not letting him move’ which was the original post about Achilles. Although even then…. not sure why gravity on its own would be doing anything when there’s no mass involved with the gravity that SM is creating.
> Yes but why would he be unable to move?
Because he’d be pressed against the ground (or any other surface) with too much force for his muscles to overcome, just like Varia was pressed against the wall.
> His invulnerability is so annoyingly absolute that one would think his hair wouldn’t even be pressed down from the gravity alone, as opposed to having something physically pressing down on his hair.
Gravity is just as physical, there’s no relevant difference here.
> not sure why gravity on its own would be doing anything when there’s no mass involved with the gravity that SM is creating.
Because that’s his superpower, making gravity fields without needing mass.
“Because he’d be pressed against the ground (or any other surface) with too much force for his muscles to overcome, just like Varia was pressed against the wall.”
Without touching anyone, Varia is essentially a normal human woman in peak physical condition for a human of her size and age. Achilles always has his annoying level of invulnerability. Also I’m assuming SM might have problems doing this to multiple targets at the same time.
“Because that’s his superpower, making gravity fields without needing mass.”
Yes but why would we assume that it would force Achilles down flat to the ground since it his joints are likewise invulnerable, without some physical object pinning him down?
“Gravity is just as physical, there’s no relevant difference here.”
Gravity is a force. An object with mass and weight is not. There seems to be a difference from how I’m seeing that. At the very least I would think it’s not guaranteed to work on Achilles.
> Without touching anyone, Varia is essentially a normal human woman in peak physical condition for a human of her size and age. Achilles always has his annoying level of invulnerability.
So? The invulnerability only makes him invulnerable, it doesn’t do anything else. Varia wasn’t hurt, so it should have no effect here.
> Yes but why would we assume that it would force Achilles down flat to the ground since it his joints are likewise invulnerable, without some physical object pinning him down?
Because his muscles aren’t strong enough to keep him upright against the force.
> Gravity is a force. An object with mass and weight is not. There seems to be a difference from how I’m seeing that.
A heavy object on you pushes you down because it transfers its own gravitational force on you, and you’d have to overcome it to stand up. Achilles has no power that interferes with either.
“So?”
So I have no idea why you’re using a non-powered Varia as a comparison to how gravity will affect a powered Achilles.
“Because his muscles aren’t strong enough to keep him upright against the force”
How? If he doesn’t bend the knee, what will happen to his knee ligaments? Nothing. It won’t break. How will he go down?
“A heavy object on you pushes you down because it transfers its own gravitational force on you, and you’d have to overcome it to stand up.”
Why do you think the heavy object will actually push him down? What it will do is bury him, and since he doesnt have superstrength, he can’t push it out of the way to get out of where he’s buried. That’s not a factor with just gravity alone.
> So I have no idea why you’re using a non-powered Varia as a comparison to how gravity will affect a powered Achilles.
Because Achilles’ power is invulnerability and Varia wasn’t hurt, to Achilles power makes no difference. (Well, he’s stronger, but not by enough to matter.)
> How? If he doesn’t bend the knee, what will happen to his knee ligaments? Nothing. It won’t break. How will he go down?
He will bend his knees, because his muscles aren’t strong enough to keep them straight under the pressure. Even if he has a perfectly balanced position where he doesn’t have to use his muscles to stand straight (not sure if that’s a thing biomechanically), as soon as he tries to move he will exit that balanced position and be forced down. Or when SM changes the angle of attack.
> Why do you think the heavy object will actually push him down?
Because gravity makes the heavy object experience a downward force, which is transferred to what’s under it. Have you ever lifted a heavy object? You need to use strength to hold it up against its weight. The same holds for your own weight. If you don’t have the strength to push your own body up, you can’t stand up. You can’t move either, because you can’t overcome the friction, which depends on the downward force. Whether the downward force comes from an external object on top of you or your own body doesn’t change this.
I am not reading all of that. I don’t need a hard scientific explanation for his powers, I’m not conducting a superpower plausibility review.
Though I will say Maxima’s attempts to saddle him with unflattering aliases seem rather presumptuous in hindsight. Turns out ol’ Supermassive Ego actually has the power to back up his name.
which is all kinds of awesome. Super fights are what you come to superhero comics for!
It’s too bad Sydney isn’t here to comment “More like Gravity Falls!” at the end of the fight.
I think Stalwart needs to crawl out out the hole the made and tag in.
Maybe think of it a little more like the spell reverse gravity from D&D. He can control where it gets put and maybe the direction as well instead of following the rule that gravity affects equally in all directions. Maybe he has certain controls that change what is affected. Like all passive matter is unaffected but anything moving at a relative speed over 5mph gets the whammy. How about he makes himself the opposite of a black hole so that nothing short of light and a black hole can hit him. All of his movements are merely gravity, or multiple gravities, assisted and his sub-power is the effortless use and understanding of his own gravitational movement. Hell, he could probably go to the bathroom once a decade and just drop a dark matter pellet like Nibbler from Futurama.
Halo would make short work of this guy. Bubble + molestorb = game over
Probably? I mean, she doesn’t float up into the air when she bubbles up, unless she uses the flight orb. That could mean the shield doesn’t stop gravity, or it could be, as I’ve hypothesized, it stops EVERYTHING, and just provides a picture of the outside painted across the shield, and a convenient gravity level, and replicates transmissions it thinks the user might want.
Since his powers would kill her almost instantly if Mr. Bubble didn’t stop them, that would be dicey to test.
OTOH, we’ve already established that she can transmute air into inert gas, and that would take him out in a few seconds. Permanently.
Yes, that one power of hers makes her a genre killer… although she doesn’t have to actually kill anyone to use it in an OP way. A room full of CO2 or N2 is just as good a way to turn a villain “off” as any, and neither one is inherently fatal.
Neither is inherently fatal given almost instant and extreme medical attention. Put somebody in a bubble of inert gas, and their lungs very efficiently remove all the oxygen from their blood in just a couple of breaths, the lights go out, and you reflexively keep breathing using up the last of your oxygen, which shuts down your heart.
At that point it’s pure oxygen under pressure combined with CPR and then a dose of the paddles, right away, or the lights STAY switched off for good. Basically you’d need to have everything prepped to bring them back BEFORE you ‘turned them off”, or it’s all over.
It’s not like people go into a power save mode if you cut off their oxygen. People have walked into inert gas in rooms, and typically they just drop in their tracks without even noticing what happened, and never get up again. The ones who lived typically were just breathing reduced oxygen atmospheres, not pure inert gas.
Yeah given the tech level it’s not unreasonable to assume the shield is actually a selective membrane of folded space projecting over it’s surface an image of the outside to the user and an image of the user to the outside (unless she learns a switch to turn that off). With a possible adaptive feature related to how it flattens on the ground while a sphere in the air that keeps her in relative position to a planet’s gravity. Not unlike some hyper dimensional beings who explain they naturally align themselves vertically to a gravity well’s center (planet core) so they keep a standing position despite not really being bound by the gravity in any real way.
This is pretty cool. It’s a neat set of powers and it’s nice to watch Maxima in an even fight where she has to think her way to victory. I’m hoping somebody will prove capable of helping her out some seeing as how Sidney isn’t around but I think she’s probably got the capacity to overcome this on her own. I’m also excited to see what some of the other masks have got in store.
I think if Maxima just grabbed him, tanked the damage, and flew him into the upper atmosphere, it’s be a shorter fight. If she has a hold on him, she would no longer need to have super speed. Also, depending on how she grabbed him, his strikes might be less than effective, so could lower her armor. That should give her enough points to overcome his gravity with her flight powers.
There’s absolutely nothing stopping him from using his gravity powers to create his own atmosphere and carry that up with them.
we need Varia to touch him now. Part of her power is that she becomes immune to his power. So she can just use him as a standard style punching bag.
That’s not how it works. She gets a power from touching other people, whether or not they have superpowers. However, if they do, the power she gets is usually related in some way to their power. While she presumably gets immunity to the power she gets, she does not necessarily get immunity to any powers the person she’s touching has. The person she is touching does get immunity to the power she gets.
WTF is happening here? I can’t work it out and judging by the comments, I’m not the only one. Can’t we just have another shower scene or Sydney goofing off?
Suck Hole has Maxima trapped in a high-gravity field. She needs to keep a large chunk of her power devoted to armor and flight so that the gravity doesn’t crush her. As a result, she doesn’t have enough points available to match Suck Hole’s superspeed, so she’s having trouble hitting. As a separate problem, he is repeatedly changing the direction in which gravity pulls her, thereby throwing her around and keeping her off-balance.
In other words he’s like a boss battle that won’t stop casting slow, and confusion (the inverted control type) or other status ailments that reduce your accuracy and speed while boosting their own speed and evasion. Which like Maxima if you are high level enough makes the fight less a threat and more annoying as you know one good hit and you will take them down while they will take all night to chip away at your HP.
I feel like the visuals and text provide plenty enough context to explain what’s going on. But it seems to me like you’re less concerned with readability anyway and more frustrated that you read this comic for jokes and boobs and there’s a fight scene going on and that’s taking the focus off of jokes and boobs. Well, I read the comic for jokes, world building and heavily mechanically involved super fights like this so I personally vote “no” on your plea to leave the super hero fight to go back to more cheesecake. If that frustrates you, maybe you can take some satisfaction in knowing that while you’re enjoying the next shower scene we get, I’ll be impatiently awaiting the next fight.
Well said, and seconded.
thirded!
I do like the cheesecake and puns, thank you very muchos, but its the over the tops fights that burn my time
Talk about your tough luck as this is getting to be a challenge for even Maxima to handle…
You make science-like noises about this guy not being able to create enough gravity to dilate time, but then you put him fucking curving light(bending spacetime) to a much greater degree than a black hole does, dozens of degrees over a meter, rather than over thousands of AU.
Please stop making science noises, you come off like the grunting of an undereducated chimp. Stick to tits and fake power superheroes
Stop being an ass.
Except he’s fucking right. The SUN doesn’t lens light that much. And if you dropped even the SUN’s gravitational field RIGHT ON THE SURFACE OF EARTH, that destroys the earth. Little thing called the Roche Limit.
Perhaps Maxima’s plasma blast is not actually light. Why be so angry at the science behind SM’s power stunt but ignore that Maxima’s power might simply be differently effected by gravity than a laser beam or something. The Roche Limit may simply not apply here because its not light being bent.
Think of how Cyclops’ eye beam works in XMen. It does kinetic force, despite seemingly being light. Which mesns its not actually light.
my guy, it costs you zero dollars and zero time to not make posts like this
How did @Maxsimal’s comment get approved? That’s super rude.
Because idiots have the right to be idiots and make idiot posts (case in point)
Not everyone runs from harsh commentary, even if questionable?
Yeah, like we have any reason to consider your opinion valid. If you have trouble understanding what Dave wrote, you DON’T HAVE TO READ IT.
Dave specifically checked the numbers and said the powers don’t make sciencey sense as gravity powers. His statements make scientific sense, and that’s all he said.
That doesn’t mean the guy’s powers don’t work. It means that they use some trick of metaphysics that isn’t yet known to the viewpoint characters or possibly even the author.
*I* think that SuperMassive is actually deforming space, and that the “gravity” is a mere localized side effect. So, SuperMassive can create steep gravity gradients and “knots” in a purely local way, but he isn’t actually generating “gravity”, per se.
Thus, everything that he is doing in that room is not sending huge gravity waves off into the distance, it’s more just creating tiny gravity vibrations that self-dampen over a few meters.
Putting aside your tone and the easy dismissal as it’s super hero genre fiction which makes up it’s own rules much different series with magic will… remember that in this setting it has been established super powers are originating from a bespoke quantum field created by a tier 4 or above civilization. It can have unique forces or unique interactions with contemporary physics that can resemble known forces yet not obey the same rules. These supers however are self describing their powers from their own frame of reference. So yeah they can say gravity because that’s what it looks like to them, they don’t know what the reality bending super aliens may call this force . So let’s just call it quasi gravity or pseudo gravity if it makes it easier to wrap one’s head around it.
Are you ok, dude? Like, are you having a bad day or something? Disregarding your uncalled for insults, Dave literally clearly stated that Max’s exploding bolts aren’t light and that SM is therefore by no means bending light. The beams are made of particles that have mass as can therefore reasonably be diverted by gravitational powers. Like Dave explicitly addresses this. Are you too stressed out to read or something?
You do realize that there are ways of making a critique without being rude or just plain mean, right? The insults were completely unnecessary.
what is really impressive is that he can create point sources of gravity oriented in whichever way he wants them and in multiples too. so he could be creating a localized gravity gradient and then countering it in such a way as to eliminate the gross effects and keep the effects he wants. Gravitic monopoles mean that he could create a black hole if he wished.
Jeez. The tank’s engaged, now where’s the rest of the team? This guy needs some kind of crowd control on him, stat. He’s still gotta see and hear to hit things, he’s still limited in how many things he can deal with at once, and he still needs to breathe.
Agreed, they apparently have a welcoming committee of more than just one, probably including the teleporter we already met – where are they? Probably defending other entrances, but surely they heard Max’s entrance.
Max told them all to back off when she realized they had a gravity manipulator. Maybe she’s second-guessing that decision.
Think, Max, think! What Would Sydney Do?
Area of Effect… You can’t gravity dodge away something that encases your entire location.
“Gravity dodging” means making space itself dodge you, so you can’t catch him in the area of effect.
Curse like a drunken sailor?
Calling him ‘suck hole’ might have been a bit early/he’s pretty solidly earned the name supermassive. It’s nice to see Maxima on the back foot.
It’s his attitude that earned him that moniker, not his powers or control
And Maxi is often on the backfoot, until she gets smart puts her foot up their backend
It looks like his power stunt is on the order of Magneto’s shields where he can basically tank anything. I’m not sure Max can win. Another Archon will have to step in. Heatwave could probably cook him with microwaves, I doubt he could bend EM emissions like microwaves. If he could, then it’s game over.
Is using her hands to project the beams a self trained handicap that’s unnecessary? She might damage her clothes firing through them but still…
Yeah, bad form to start shooting from her nipples
… I don’t think she can shoot rainbows out of her ass…
*snerk* ‘Hey Dave, can you make Maxima (and the rest of the team) into My Little Ponies?’
Which version? FiM is the horses arse and should be burnt from existence
My Little Brony, Science is Magic.
He uses “gravity” naming conventions in order to keep people from figuring out what he is really doing. His powers aren’t actually gravity powers… he’s affecting the curvature of space, which just sort of seems like gravity powers.
In actuality, he generates cartoon physics, where objects and space act like rubber.
So, when he generated what seemed like high gravity on … Jiggawatt or Varia? … what he really did was bend space behind her into a steep negative sideways gravity, and bend the space she was in into a steep positive sideways gravity.
There was no net change in gravity.
The hair grab is the result of literally trying space up into a little knot and then moving the knot.
That sounds like it would work. Been suspension of disbelief ing this as super powers come from a high tier civilization’s synthetic quantum field so how it’s properties interact with the rest of the quantum fields or what forces it produces of it’s own would not be unreasonable to simulate known forces, and laws of physics yet result in odd interactions between them and the synthetic field and display properties that others could easily mistake for known forces despite displaying counter intuitive properties under scrutiny.
I was about to post the same (similar) thing.
Now, I can’t recall if it’s a plasma beam she fires, and not a laser beam. If it is plasma then it can clearly be affected by gravity like it was and he could have the dual super-speed/gravity power set.
But if it’s a speed of light laser beam then the only real answer would be that he’s bending space-time. Simply creating that curvature would create the apparent gravity effects. It could also explain his super speed, not necessarily by making himself super fast, but by slowing down Max instead. Since he’s manipulating local space-time he could fake an effect like that without having it be the result of a gravity gradient. So it wouldn’t ripple out and effect anything else. It could literally be that a human sized field is all he can manage.
Yeah, it’s a soft sci-fi “timey-wimey” explanation, but it would create an interesting power set that would make him super strong against a single opponent. But not strong at all against multiple, the more targets he’s fighting the thinner his effect gets spread. Had Sydney been there she’d be seeing Max moving super slow-mo and misnamed-villain just prancing around at normal human speeds.
I was thinking along those lines as well. Not gravity powers, but space-time manipulating/shaping powers.
If it was just gravity, that beam would very much not deflect the way it does.
Whatever is inside that warping space ( in this case Doofus mcEgo ) would be utterly and completely *Splorch*ed by the opposing forces within the area needed to make that curve if it was just gravity.
“Immunity to own Powers” be damned, that’s opposing neutron star gravity levels of particlebending, in the volume of about 2 cubic meters. That’s well beyond Black Hole territory.
So it’s not gravity, but something else. And given that mcDoofus’ brain/ego *does* have the density of a neutron star, he “translates” it as gravity powers.
Problem is, even if he’s “just bending space,” if he’s doing it to create gravity-like effects, then it’s LITERALLY no different than “just manipulating gravity” to the same extent. It would require just as much energy, and pose just as much of a threat.
I don’t mind when super stories invoke science, but if you’re gonna do it, there should be some level of consistency. (Not that I’m saying Dave has shown any inconsistency yet, but if he pulls the “he’s just bending space really strongly” card he would definitely be.)
We can invoke unreliable narrator, as super powers don’t come with manuals so the user may think they are doing one thing when it’s Really something else that just has a cosmetic similarity. One thing I liked In My Hero Academia was this idea and they could reregister their power upon discovering what they were actually doing
Actually, light is affected by gravity just as much as W-mesons or pudding or anything else: it experiences exactly the same acceleration in a gravitational field as any of those. But light is going much *faster*, so its path curves much less. If I throw a baseball, its path will curve down to intersect the surface of the Earth much closer than if Carlos Rodón threw it, even though it would experience the same gravitational acceleration (and would in fact hit the ground in exactly the same time, if we both threw perfectly horizontally).
I wanted to comment this, but you beat me to it! (Thanks.)
Though, one minor quibble: a dropped ball would actually hit the ground sooner than a well-thrown fastball, because of air resistance (which has a stronger effect the higher the object’s total speed is). I found some analysis online, and it looks like the effect of air resistance on the vertical speed of a good fastball is around 10%, so not negligible.
Yeah, except for the fact that the sun barely provides gravitational lensing, so if this guy is supposed to be able to pull it off, the first time he does the entire world is dead. This kinda shit is supermassive star, neutron star, black hole lvls of shit. AKA, enough force to rip this world to shreds. As he’d be effectively his own celestial body as far as gravity is concerned. Placing him WELL inside the Roche Limit. Ya know, seeing as he’s standing on the bloody planet.
Agreed. So obviously whatever this is has little to do with our understanding of how SpaceTime begets Mass and Mass begets curvature of said SpaceTime.
I guess we will have to chalk this one up to *active* Superion field chicanery violating the physical laws of the universe With the Major Caveat that this *and all commensurate effects* can Only occur within the range of the aformentioned superion field.
One could make the argument that the vast bulk of energy expended by the Superion field is to counter the rest of the universe saying “No. That is not how this works.”
Thus beyond the range limit of this Superion Field bullshit … natural law doesnt just resume but also cancels out to a certain degree.
Interesting note Most supers met sofar have a range of “Personal” to immediate vicinity (A dozen meters or so) and in rare special cases very small (yet potent) effects extendedout to “Line of sight” (beam attacks).
So there is a case for a Superion field limit.
Extra note. Sydney’s Nth tech vac suit for space traveling octupi certainly does operate within those superion field limits under normal circumstances, but only when convenient.
If it needs to exceed those limits to do what is required it can certainly do so.
(Atherion gateway/Macross Spacefold to bypass crossing an event horizon for example)
Which could be why its effects seem more “permanent”.
According to Deus, the superion field isn’t countering the laws of physics; It’s an additional bespoke law of physics that’s been snuck into the universe’s operating code, essentially. Somebody reached the point where they could re-write the laws of physics.
There’s a quite obvious and far easier way for suckhole to make himself faster.
All he has to do is put his hole infront and slightly above himself, so he falls into it. If he could ONLY make 1g, that’s 9m/s/s .. if he has access to 10G, well, It aint liniar, it’s quadratic. He’d move QUITE fast, 343 meters per second to be moving the speed of sound. 10G of acceleration means he’d be there in a fraction of a second.
I too remember OHOTMU…
If only writers at Marvel actually ued it intead of retconning at the drop of a hat.
It honestly would be a nice change of pace to see Maxima get a proper ass whooping. Torn clothes included of course
Got a bit of an issue with the last 3 pages (counting this one). Everything is so damn gray. Gray set pieces, grey suits, gray effects. Its making all the action an unpleasantly muddy mess.
She’s not in the best place for her to fight. If this was out in the open like with the sand guy, she’d have an easier time.
Another FASERIP reference. Jazzed!
Also, fun page today. Love gravity – or even “gravity” – powers.
Super Massive Suck Hole will be his code name from here on out!
I think this does just confirm that Max is shooting a particle beam instead of just a fuck off lazor blast. It explains why it’s so powerful, though. Hitting something with ionized air is all well and good, but if it’s got particles moving at near lightspeed, then the power grows exponentially more devastating. Though it having mass also means that she burns calories to do it, unless some other explanation like Cyclops’ optic blasts happens and she’s pulling something from a pocket reality to do it. To keep with the law of conservation of matter, it does mean she’s at least expending energy, or exchanging it to pull in matter that wasn’t there a moment before. Either way, she has got to have one hell of a metabolism. How much does she need to eat!?
Depending on what type of energy source she’s tapping into, and how she’s doing it, she may not necessarily have to expend much energy to generate a beam, if any. For all we know, she may have to consciously expend energy to PREVENT the energy source from flowing out of her at too high of a “flow”–which would be quite a worrying prospect.
This ass-clown is starting to get on my nerves too, lets get Sydney in here and solve Max’s annoying sparing partner! Or at least have Max call her for advice, this guy hasn’t beat her but I really want that smug suck hole shut down. Or maybe while he’s focused on Max, Sydney could wrap his head with the litehook and blind him long enough to let Max finish the fight with out any more embarrassment?
I hope she’s been practicing her ground work.
Gotta watch his footwork too, to spar with Max.
Amp defense atk and the super speed. You should be fast enough to bypass the gravity.
When a star becomes a black hole, it releases a massive amount of radiation called a gamma lance. If a gamma lance from the nearest black hole to earth were to hit it, which is several light-years away, it would still have enough power left to strip earth of its atmosphere and vaporize everything on the planet, leaving nothing but a dead rock behind. So creating black holes would be BEYOND dangerous, even if you could control the gravity field perfectly.
That radiation burst is caused in part by the total mass of a normally created black hole, which is going to be several solar masses.
If you collapse, say, a baseball into a black hole, the radiation burst from its formation would be correspondingly smaller.
Now, the energy released when the blackhole evaporates from being so small on the other hand, well, following E-MC^2 I do believe a baseball would basically make a giant nuclear bomb. Just no fallout.
Now, the smaller the thing is that is turned into a black hole, the less energy will be released when it evaporates. Which is why we are not worried about creating black holes in super colliders: even if we manage to do it, they will evaporate instantly, and the only trace will be the recordings made by all the sensors.
So black holes alone are not the issue, the mass of the black hole is an important part of the equation.
Easy peasy. It’s not gravity powers, exactly. He’s bending spacetime, which has the side effect of looking like gravity when used to pull, push, and bend. Normally, gravity would bend spacetime, and that bending is what causes acceleration and time dilation. Like you said, you’d need an insane amount of gravity to do what he does. But if he just takes a chunk of spacetime and bends it like other supers bent electromagnetism, he can do all that gravity-looking stuff, AND space bendy stuff like walking through a pinhole, AND potentially warp drive level travel, but he’d need to figure out a way to survive in space first. You can limit him by limiting how precisely he can control spacetime. Pinching a cone of it to pull things or divert beams is simple, trying to hold onto a bubble of gas without accidentally superheating it, very complicated.
We’ve reached Post Crisis Superman fighting the Beyonder levels of silly now. Max is a difficult character b/c as one of the most powerful supers on the planet it’s hard to come up with things that actually challenge her. Vehemence was one thing, b/c his power set basically makes him Pre Crisis Superman as long as enough violence is kicking around.
Suck Hole here? It’s like fighting a slightly less boring telekinetic. A really scary telekinetic creates a sphere inside your bran and either expands it, contracts it, or holds it still and let’s you lobotomies yourself as you move. This guy has the ability to create localized gravity capable of effecting matter and energy with incredible precision. Based on what we have see so far there is nothing to stop him from holding Max still, or holding part of her still and letting her own ridiculous strength rip her arm off.
I recognize it’s hard to write characters who have stakes when fighting Max, but this guy either should have won already, or he is an idiot.
The thing stopping that is her flight powers. They work by neutralizing gravity to a degree. The more power she pumps into it the more she ignores the effects of gravity. Its why she has not been fast enough to fight him well as she needs to pump up flight.
Yeah. No. I don’t fucking CARE no. The fucking SUN doesn’t have enough gravitational presence to provide more then a minor deflection of light due to it’s field. If this guy is supposed to be able to generate enough gravity to pull off gravitational lensing, THE ENTIRE FUCKING WORLD IS DEAD.
For fucks sake, there is no reason curvature caused by super powers would follow the same inverse square law, he can just bend it at whatever angle he wants.
Is his power *actually* gravity? Or does he bend space, an act which can emulate gravity?
For that matter, to what extent are supers actually aware of their exact powerset? Like, say, a super thinks their power might be water manipulation, but in reality it’s the ability to control any dipolar fluid?
There is no difference in the two. Except, as I’ve been saying, that if he was directly bending space time he could achieve higher feats without any collateral damage. Equivalent to being able to focus the energy of a firestorm down into a curcible.
Gravity just pulls things in towards it, but that defense of his pushed Maxima’s beam away and into a semicircle around him before releasing it to continue on it’s (more or less) original path.
I don’t know what the heck that thing is, but there’s no way it’s gravity based.
So megasuck there seems to have some kind of gravity increase ability, some levels of super strength and super toughness, some kind of super speed, and some kind of invisibility light redirection cloak for attacks (or at least the beam variety).
I kind of wonder if he actually has an illusion power for some or all of that stuff.
Yeah, I know, super powers don’t care much about physics and the like, but still, they usually try to pretend to know physics exist.
Gravity curves space time, it doesn’t suck.
He just curved spacetime away from a point rather than towards it, same way heatwave can absorb and emit heat.
Well…. Can he dodge a shockwave?
Just blast yourself. Or the ground. She can probably tank it.
If someone is great at dodging, deny them volume in which to move.