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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If mr Super AH actually has a gravity based power like he claims all Maxima has to do is trace a maximised blast across his neckt. At some point the beam will be exactly head on to him and not be deflected to either direction.
Of course that will be a fatality and Maxima may not want to escalate from attempted arrest to lethal force quite so quickly. Especially since these guys have in fact shown some, if not much, of the same restrained themselves.
Ya know. I had assumed he didn’t have this kind of power, since he needed Death Toll to protect him from Jigawat if he can effect rime and light then he can affect electric power as well. Maybe he just needs to have some time to activate his full power or something. I really kind of expected Maxima to perform som amateur dental work on this guy, when he neglected to Bring Death Toll With him.
Maxi tried, or did you miss that page?
Key word there was ‘expected’. SH aka GG has proven more capable than she expected.
Super, goomba, massive, hole, gravity, suck and the possibility of More. Clearly the Weight of the names he can be pinned with has escaped him.
I am thinking that maybe Stalwart will hit him while he is distracted with Maxima, and because Stalwart csn make his mass VERY high it might be too difficult for SM to use gravity to make Stalwart miss.
That would be Utter Pandermonium.
That was an unnecessary and evil pun by you.
-12 internets!
Just testing your metal. It’s symbol on the elemental table is ‘Pun’, and with an atomic weight of 269 it is super dense.
The higher Stalwart’s mass, the higher the force gravity puts on him. Unless he can separately change his inertial and gravitational mass, he’s equally affected no matter his mass.
Not from what I’ve seen.
1) If that was really the case, then When Stalwart increases his mass, he would not be able to even move. Either his strength increases with his mass, or his ability to ignore gravity increases with his mass.
Remember how Altus described Stalwart:
“But you… it’s like you’re saturated in force fields and tractor beams…. well.. repulsor beams.”
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-769-incoming-eventually/
(panel 2)
It’s clearly not just ‘increases mass and nothing else is happening’ with Stalwart. There are side effects so that his mass increases doesn’t become a disability instead of a power.
2) In addition, whatever Super Massive/Suck Hole is doing involves exerting gravity upon an object. It’s not just how gravity normally works, where ‘massive objects exert gravity upon each other.’ Not to mention that with how gravity actually works, things should be attracted TOWARDS Stalwart, not Stalwart being affected by something less massive than him to any degree which would be readily apparent compared to how he’d be affecting the other objects around him.
ie, you don’t see things starting to come towards Stalwart when he increases his mass.
3) With how SM/SH’s powers seem to work, as opposed to how gravity normally works, the more massive the object is, the more gravity he will have to ‘exert’ to affect Stalwart, compared to a smaller amount of mass like Maxima. The larger the amount of mass, the more gravitational force is going to be required to affect it. Sort of like how a normal black hole would not be able to hold together the Milky Way galaxy… which is why astrophysicists theorized (then I believe actually identified) that there’s a supermassive black hole in the center of the Milky Way instead of a normal black hole.
“The higher Stalwart’s mass, the higher the force gravity puts on him.”
I’m pretty sure that’s not how gravity works. It’s the other way around. The higher an object’s mass is, the more gravity it exerts on other things.
“Unless he can separately change his inertial and gravitational mass,”
Based on what Altus said, this is actually likely.
“he’s equally affected no matter his mass.”
Massive objects are going to be affected by gravitational pull a LOT less than less massive objects.
> 1) If that was really the case, then When Stalwart increases his mass, he would not be able to even move. Either his strength increases with his mass, or his ability to ignore gravity increases with his mass.
Or he simply has super strength. Which we know he does.
> ie, you don’t see things starting to come towards Stalwart when he increases his mass.
We wouldn’t expect to. We’ve never seen him mass more than a space shuttle, and you don’t see thing coming towards space shuttles. You need to get moon-sized before gravity becomes appreciable. Stalwart’s gravitational pull would less than a millionth of earth’s.
> The larger the amount of mass, the more gravitational force is going to be required to affect it.
And for a given gravitational field, the larger the mass, the higher the gravitational force will be. On earth’s surface, this is what we experience as weight – a more massive object is heavier. As a result, in a given gravitational field, everything will be accelerated the same way, no matter its mass. A planet can orbit the sun just like an asteroid.
> Sort of like how a normal black hole would not be able to hold together the Milky Way galaxy…
That’s because gravity falls off with distance, and the galaxy is very big in volume.
> I’m pretty sure that’s not how gravity works. It’s the other way around. The higher an object’s mass is, the more gravity it exerts on other things.
Both are the case. If you look up the formula for gravitational force, you will find the masses of both attractor and attracted as linear factors.
“Or he simply has super strength. Which we know he does.”
True, although he was able to do this even when he was, and I quote, “The mass of the space shuttle.” He didn’t seem to be struggling even a little at that point, even though he thought that Vehemence would (although he was wrong since, by that point, Vehemence was already too strong for even that).
“We wouldn’t expect to. We’ve never seen him mass more than a space shuttle, and you don’t see thing coming towards space shuttles. You need to get moon-sized before gravity becomes appreciable. Stalwart’s gravitational pull would less than a millionth of earth’s.”
That’s basically my point. The larger an item’s mass is, the less likely it will be pulled towards something else, and more likely something else will be pulled towards it via gravitational pull. So it would be harder for SM to use gravitational pull on someone the mass of a space shuttle (or more) than it would for him to use gravitational pull on someone the mass of a person.
“And for a given gravitational field, the larger the mass, the higher the gravitational force will be.”
That’s sort of inexact. The larger the mass of an object, the more of a gravitational pull that object will have on other objects. So it would be HARDER to create a gravitational pull on a large mass object than a smaller mass object. And SM doesnt have any objects – he literally just creates gravitational pull out of nowhere. Not sure why you don’t think it would be more difficult for him to exert gravitational pull on Stalwart with the mass of a space shuttle than it would to exert gravitational pull on Maxima with the mass of a 6’1″ adult human woman.
“That’s because gravity falls off with distance, and the galaxy is very big in volume.”
And a supermassive black hole exerts a gravitational pull very big in volume as well.
My point is simply that it’s going to be harder for SM to affect Stalwart with gravity than it would be to affect Maxima because of his ability to alter his mass to very high levels.
“If you look up the formula for gravitational force, you will find the masses of both attractor and attracted as linear factors.”
Gravitational Force = (Gravitational Constant × Mass of first object × Mass of the second object) / (Distance between the center of two bodies)^2
Btw, what would the second object be when SM is using his gravitokinesis? The first would be Stalwart.
But has it even come up that her particle beam went ‘around’ rather than getting pulled in and didn’t flatten out or distort. If these are gravitational-type powers, they should pull things in, not repulse them; and yet he is obviously both pushing and pulling by creating spatial distortions that only affect the things he wants to affect, as there would be rushes of air as well involved leading to some challenges breathing and other materials moving around.
After all, he’s yanking Max around, but we haven’t seen any debris moving about in the slightest.
That’s just my two cents.
> True, although he was able to do this even when he was, and I quote, “The mass of the space shuttle.”
That simply means he has a lot of super strength. Given how we saw him kick a tank around, which is not a lot lighter than a space shuttle, he should be strong enough for this.
> The larger an item’s mass is, the less likely it will be pulled towards something else
And that’s simply not true. A toy truck and a real truck both get pulled towards earth equally, and (neglecting air resistance) will be accelerated the same if you drop them.
> The larger the mass of an object, the more of a gravitational pull that object will have on other objects.
That’s true, but irrelevant, since we’re not talking about Stalwart attracting anything with his gravity.
> Btw, what would the second object be when SM is using his gravitokinesis? The first would be Stalwart.
There is no second object. But it still can be seen that the more Stalwart masses, the more gravity will be put on him. Or just take the F=m*g formula for earth’s surface, where g is the strength of the uniform gravity field.
I suppose it’s possible that SM doesn’t create straight gravity fields but has to power the effect, and the heavier the affected mass, the more power he’d need to put in, and if he reaches his limit he has to weaken the field to compensate. But that would be more like telekinesis than gravity control.
Also, even in that case then he should have enough power to throw around Stalwart, since Maxima is stronger than Stalwart and is almost forced to her limit simply standing up against his power (two powers in purple, she’d also need two powers, strength and durability, high to spar Stalwart).
“Given how we saw him kick a tank around, which is not a lot lighter than a space shuttle, he should be strong enough for this.”
Umm…. an M1 Abrams Tank weighs a little under 55 tons.
Each of the Space Shuttles weigh over 2000 tons.
So yes, a tank is a lot lighter than the space shuttle.
“And that’s simply not true. A toy truck and a real truck both get pulled towards earth equally, and (neglecting air resistance) will be accelerated the same if you drop them.”
No. You are wrong. You are not understanding how gravity works. I did not compare a toy truck and a real truck to the Earth in terms of gravitational pull. The Earth has a lot more mass than either a toy truck OR a real truck. So the Earth has ridiculously more gravitational pull on both a toy truck and a real truck than the toy truck or real truck would ever have on the Earth (just as Stalwart would have a lot more gravitational pull than Maxima vs whatever gravitational pull Supermassive is exerting). When you said both a toy truck and a real truck get pulled towards the Earth at the same speed, you are not measuring the gravitational pull of either the toy truck OR the real truck. You are measuring the gravitational pull OF THE EARTH.
“That’s true, but irrelevant, since we’re not talking about Stalwart attracting anything with his gravity.”
Okay I don’t think you’re understanding the basics of what I’m saying. We do not know the amount of gravitational pull that Supermassive can generate, but we do know that the more mass an object has, the more an opposing gravitational pull will have to exert. I do not think that Supermassive can generate the same amount of gravitational pull as the EARTH from his massless ‘gravity generation.’
“There is no second object.”
There has to be. That’s the formula for gravitational pull. I didn’t just make the formula up off the top of my head.
“Also, even in that case then he should have enough power to throw around Stalwart,”
You’re making a lot of assumptions for some reason. What I’m talking about with Stalwart has to do with mass, not strength, although Stalwart IS the second strongest member of ARCHON, after Maxima.
Btw upon reflection it was a little rude of me to say ‘You are not understanding how gravity works.’ For all I know you are a physicist. i should have instead said ‘You are mistaken in how gravitational pull works in relation to what I am suggesting.’ Maybe I havent explained what I was saying well enough. Sorry.
> Umm…. an M1 Abrams Tank weighs a little under 55 tons.
Each of the Space Shuttles weigh over 2000 tons.
The complete setup of the space shuttle (orbiter sitting on a giant fuel tank with two more rockets strapped to the sides) weighs 2000 tons. The orbiter itself only weighs 78 tons. We got confirmation Stalwart was referring to the latter in #258, where the A/N says:
“She saw Vehemence punch a roughly 75 ton Stalwart a few inches off the ground and that gave her an idea of what he could do.”
75 tons is in the same ballpark as 55 tons.
> When you said both a toy truck and a real truck get pulled towards the Earth at the same speed, you are not measuring the gravitational pull of either the toy truck OR the real truck. You are measuring the gravitational pull OF THE EARTH.
Well yes, and in our example we’d be measuring the gravitational pull of Supermassive’s power on a normal weight human or superheavy Stalwart. And just like the toy truck and the real truck, normal person and Stalwart are equally affected.
> We do not know the amount of gravitational pull that Supermassive can generate, but we do know that the more mass an object has, the more an opposing gravitational pull will have to exert.
In the case of a gravity field, that’s not true in the way you think. A given mass creates a gravity field, but that affects any other mass equally. The earth also accelerates the sun just as much as it would accelerate a space probe near the sun. If the other object is also heavy, the end result is that both get pulled towards each other, gravity isn’t like a tug-of-war where the stronger side remains standing. But in the case of Supermassive, there is no other object, so it doesn’t matter.
> I do not think that Supermassive can generate the same amount of gravitational pull as the EARTH from his massless ‘gravity generation.’
The earth, like any object that has mass, can generate any amount gravitational force if a sufficiently massive object is near.
> There has to be. That’s the formula for gravitational pull.
In reality there (likely) has to be, because mass is needed to create gravity. However, this is a superhero comic, and creating gravity without needing mass is SM’s superpower. So only one mass (of his target) is needed for the effect.
> You’re making a lot of assumptions for some reason.
Which of the claims I stated in support of my point would you like to doubt?
pretty sure there is shenanigans going on.
he just bent a energy blast. that feels op.
unless its physical plasma. even then.
Think she should just go into as much armor needed to not take damage.
then go full energy with the rest and just go aoe blasting on him
Gravity… Bending time and light… Yes. The name Suck Hole is fitting.
I keep trying to model the Roche Effect in my head, and failing. I’m pretty sure that whatever Suck Hole is doing, it does NOT involve gravity propagating in a spherical shape outward from a given point source. he must be ‘aiming’ gravity somehow.
Depending on how small she can keep it, Maxima might want to start using her explosive attack. Something omnidirectional and with backlashing forces (bouncing off of walls etc.) would be harder to deflect.
Yeah, was thinking she needs to start targeting near him so that either his personal gravity sucking pulls them in, or forces him to start focussing on them and becoming distracted enough for Maxi to relocate his teeth into his lower colon
Gravity has a VERY minute effect on electricity, if any. We can consider a simple circuit of a flashlight, where electricity leaves one end of a battery and travels through the wire to the bulb, then through another wire back to the battery again. Even if one of these wires is uphill and the other one is downhill, the average speed through the circuit would remain the same.
Compared to their electric charge, the mass of electrons is tiny, so to have a significant effect of gravity, the field has to be super strong. Since electricity runs at speed comparable to the speed of light, the effect of gravity on electricity would be the same as that on traveling light. And since Maxima’s plasma blast might not actually be light (plasma – superheated hydrogen – having more mass than photons), it might not be a good comparison. An extremely powerful gravitational field, like that of a black hole, would slow the propagation of a signal somewhat and reduce its energy but anything as weak as the earth’s magnetic field would have no significant impact. And i dont think it would BEND electricity.
So it makes sense he would need Death Toll to protect him from Jiggawatt’s attack.
This was meant as a response to Darksporf.
The way I understand it, it’s not the strength of gravity but the potential difference that determines time dilation. I.e. the shorter the distance, the higher the gravity required for a given time dilation.
Has anyone thought of the idea of him using negative mass (or gravity fields) to create some of these effects as a power trick? Much like how Jiggawatt can create anti-electrons to negate electrons.
I dunno… if you’re projecting strong enough gravity field to bend light, IE, to create gravitic lensing, or even high energy particles moving at near light speed like Maxima’s direct blasts seem to be, you probably don’t need super speed, you can almost certainly exetert enough gravity to create time dilation effects.
Or just wave a gravitational anomaly a little and reduce everyone in half AU radius into fine paste…
Honestly, I’m prepared for Maxima to get a lesson she’s not the only major hitter on the block. Supermassive will be a lot more interesting if he’s fully at her level… and just not a murderer. Asking “can you survive in hard vacuum?” before slingshotting her somewhere past the orbit of the moon for example.
I’m enjoying the fight but there’s an opportunity for depth here that would be easy to pave over with a throwaway win. Save SM’s defeat for a team event, maybe? I really want to see him square off with Math in a null field or something similar :)
I WISH! But I don’t see it happening…
Honestly, given the gravity needed to deflect light the way he did, he could probably handwave the solar system into oblivion twice, before even breaking a sweat, but considering the name of this comic, we certainly can’t have a white male winning a fight against a woman…
White males win a fair number of fights in Grrl Power. Particularly Math, who has been shown beating several women, and we’re told has beaten most of the cast. We’ve seen him lose to Jabberwocky, and been told that he’s lost to Max and Dabbler. The male characters may not spend as much time in the spotlight, but they’re certainly not weak.
Vehemence beat the heavy hitters in Archon individually, and took a team effort to bring down. Deus may not engage in direct combat himself, but he certainly “wins” a great many of his interactions with others, to the point where some readers find him irritating.
He wouldn’t even need to slingshot here anywhere.
If he can generate a gravity anomaly at any point in his general vicinity, all he has to literally do, is focus one INSIDE her head.
Don’t know the full extent/range of his power, so its hypothetical at this point.
I feel that Super Massive probably makes fields of self contained gravity, ones that only effect certain arbitrary limits that he sets.
Kind of like how in Yu Yu Hakasho those weird psychics in the Black Tape saga could create fields of effects that they could arbitrarily control, but couldn’t effect anything outside of said field. So those balls of gravity can effect things close to them, but after a certain radius the gravity ceases.
Which sounds like his power is more gravity force fields and black holes that only exist when he puts power into them, without the power they can’t become self perpetuating…
Instead of attributing it to time dilation, you could have him basically use gravity to pull his body. Like if he wants to punch faster, pull his fist forward. If he wants to dodge faster, pull himself backwards.
Okay. So the energy beam deflects around him when really it should shear away from him as he point a gravity point close enough to it to change the path. It should look like an inverted V instead of an ohm or omega symbol. The former requires only one gravity point, the latter at least 2.
Why would it? People are getting hung up on the gravity theme, but he’s pretty clearly distorting space.
The best description of the effects we’ve seen is that he directly bends space-time. If you do it in specific ways, it is an activity we recognize as gravity. That stunt bowing the path of a beam without altering its exit vector is NOT a gravity move, but it’s still a space-time trick :)
I’m betting he got the idea from watching an old screensaver – the one with wandering lensing :P
My willing suspension of disbelief just died hard. Either Supergrav there observed and reacted to a beam of whatever-that-is before it could move 7 feet, which means he’s got some sort of hyperfast optical nerve and brain going on and give it up because nothing can reach him before he reacts, or he always fights with some sort of tightly constrained grav field powerful enough to bend those blasts at an angle before guiding them tightly around him and then … bending them at an angle again??? Grav man showing off? That grav-shield thing makes him invulnerable aside from light and particles travelling very, very near light speed.
Not uncommon for a super to keep their shield up during a fight. We have no idea yet how his shield actually works, other than “all powers are related to the superion field”, much less that it requires his active attention or much of his power. I’m guessing we’ll see the weaknesses of his powers in the next few pages.
It’s… interesting reading peoples’ comments: they are assuming they know what Suck Hole’s deal is and getting bent out of shape when what we are seeing doesn’t align with their preconceptions (it wouldn’t be the first time a character in here faked their powers, or used them in a different way to mislead)
This is true.
Or maybe, MAYBE, he IS just so fucking strong and Maxima is in for that humility lesson she is in so dire need of. But somehow I don’t see it that likely…
She’s had that lesson before a few times. With Vehemence and with Darude, both times which she needed Sydney to basically save her life. Also once with the Super Mannekiller, when Hiro saved her.
One of Maxima’s main flaws is her ego (even if her ego is well deserved given her power levels), but it’s not like she NEVER is in a situation where she’s about to be beaten up and needs one of her friends/allies/partners to save her/help her to not die.
Y’all overthinking this.
You don’t need space-bending or time-bending tricks to accelerate at high speeds with gravity powers – just create a gravity well in the direction you want to go and “fall” towards it.
“I know this is rich coming from me, but your powers are BULLSHIT” -Abridged Alucard
Thanks for sharing this. Keep it up!