Grrl Power #1260 – Whatever the opposite of Sophie’s Choice is
There’s a variant of the Shelby GT500, made or tweaked or… I’m not sure how all that works… Anyway the tweak is by a company called Hennessey, who I guess does car… stuff? But their version has between 1,000 and 1,200 HP, depending on what google source you believe. So I’ve decided that’s what Max has, not because she’s especially into cars or really cares about the difference between the stock GT500’s 760 HP and the Hennessey custom, but because Maxima herself figured that as the most powerful and well known superhero in the world, would she drive the stock model? Or would it be cooler if she had a souped up car, and was all dismissive about it, like, “I think it has 11, 12 hundred horsepower? Seems like enough.” It’s not an ego thing with her, it’s more like… in a rare moment of caring about branding, she decided to develop her mystique, or milieu, or what have you.
Of course, it didn’t pan out that way, because she’s never appeared in public driving the thing. She’s still faster than the car if she’s carrying the car, so she personally has put about sixty miles on the thing.
Firetrucks have between 260 and 600 horsepower, generally. It’s weird the things you google when writing a superhero comic. Obviously comparing a barely street legal road rocket to a firetruck is apples and orangutans, but it still sounds cool to say “My girlfriend’s car has three times the horsepower of a firetruck.” Especially if you don’t know a lot about large trucks or firetrucks specifically. I think the average person would guess that they’d have a shitload of HP, because… I don’t know, they’re long and maybe the engine of the truck powers the pumps for the hoses? But then if you think about it, even though fire hoses have a lot of pressure, it probably doesn’t take a ton of power to achieve that. But if you only kind of think about it, then “car have more unf than big red truck.” is a cool sounding brag.
Not too much else to say about this page, but it’s hard to beat a good facepalm.
The new vote incentive is up!
Every so often I get the urge to try and draw Maxima all properly shiny, and this… isn’t my favorite attempt if I’m honest. I’ve been sitting on this for a little while doing little tweaks, and decided to finally publish it cause I’m already behind on these. The next one will (almost definitely) resume the trend of including a little mini comic to extend the scene a bit.
As usual, Patreon has some outfit variations as well as sans flagrante.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
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Is anyone at the table going to ask what movies Harper has worked on?
Will Dave name actual movies or made up movies inspired by actual movies?
Maybe she’ll name some straight-to-streaming mockbusters. {The Big Bus II, Tarnation Road…}
“I was a ripoff Klingon in one. You can’t recognise me.”
You never claim straight to stream or cable movies when folks are on duty 24 hours. They mostly binge bad movies.
She could claim to be a villainess in the new Batgirl movie. No one would know.
She’s not an actress, she’s a stuntwoman
What eldestdawn says below
She was the stunt driver for the movies (that’s the cover). They are the people that are actually behind the wheel when you see the car moving from overhead or angle shots when doing cool moves or driving through buildings. Once the car stops, the camera stops rolling, they switch drivers and the actor steps out (after a heavy amount of movie makeup to make it look like they were the ones doing that stuff). So, you won’t actually see her on camera or, if they do the bloopers or behind the scenes, they usually have a helmet on even while driving because safety first even in the midst of doing dangerous stunts. Even normal racecar drivers wear helmets because at those speeds, if a rock kicks up from the track, it’s going right through that windshield and possibly through the skull of the driver if they don’t wear the helmet, the glass plate on the helmet at that point is to protect their face from the shattering of the windshield.
I saw a video where the front windscreen of a race car got obliterated by this rock. And the driver didn’t even flinch as he was showered with a hail of glass. Just carried on driving like this was totally normal.
Well, yeah. If you flinch you die, possibly taking others out with you.
“Sorry NDAs the kinds of stunt work I do are very Niche so if I tell you what they are you’d probably correctly guess not the woman who got famous for staff spining and light Saber tricks but sort of equally spesific”
To be fair, I’m pretty sure Max would also be thinking about the car as well. She didn’t buy some stock A to B car after all.
No she didn’t. She got someone else to buy it for her, and then some of her coworkers got carried away suping it up, until it was illegal enough that you may get a fine for even thinking about her car, unless you have a government job.
…or in you, with the Shelby.
In case no one has already said that.
I absolutely appreciate everyone with infinitely more knowledge about horsepower and aerodynamics and engines posting for my education, I really do. But *someone* has to point out that the date in the image’s filename is incorrect: “2024-05-24-GP1260.jpg” yet today is May 23rd.
We are reading a comic from the Future!!
(Channeling my inner Sydney for a second there.)
didn’t Daveb take a trip to England recently?
On Patreon, he said he accidentally set the page to publish on Friday, and then fixed it.
And now we come the point where he chooses between duty and desire…
Choose wisely, she might appreciate a man of dedication who finishes what he said he’d do even more ;)
Nono, remember it’s a _reverse_ Sophie’s Choice. It’s a choice between off-duty (Max, who is) and off-desire (those reheated lumps, which would put anyone off).
Ok couple of minor nitpicks. If he’s on duty he’s not even allowed to be more than 50 meters from his assign truck unless on scene here. This became an issue after 2011 with a multi Alarm fire.second three man crew…ok either that’s Galveston county which if I remember correctly actually does have three man crews currently for it’s cross country capable rig, or that’s a three engine vfd station (each drivers here is full time.) Granted other places in Texas may have three man teams elsewhere, and now that I think about it the water haulers rigs are two man. As for food…kind of odd given our fire departments here have cookoffs dang near year round.
How far he can go depends on your department (but if it’s a department that staffs stations, it’s unlikely he can just… leave). However, if the engine has a minimum staffing of 3 but assigned staffing of 4 (pretty common), he can probably develop a case of the 4-hour-flu (it’d be up to his officer on if he gets called on it).
Our water-haulers only get one guy driving (but there are engine drivers at the supply and fire ends that are responsible for 100% of the work and making sure the guy driving the tanker doesn’t actually get out of the cab).
County payes vfds for full time drivers for the engine apparently since 83, apparently it’s a running joke that tanker drivers are trying to install recliners in there tanker, the local city department has a both a regular engine, lader unit a foam suppression truck and a dedicated EMT unit.
True the volunteer fire station I was in was small, we only had 12 guys and no captain. I hear the joke and a few other’s in my head to this day, “Learn to drive, rookie” was one of the nicer ones usually when some a-hole cut the truck off!
We had to rotate out who stayed over-night at the station, most times it was a couple of rookie’s and one rather grumpy lead. I know my wife complained, but she understood. If a call in, the lead took the call while the rest fired up the trucks and broke out the gear we would need. Usually by time we were ready the rest would show up and away we went. About three quarters of the calls were minor house or car fires. The scariest one was that grain elevator! The sheet metal of the elevator and 2 of the silo’s were already melting by time WE got there, and we still had to wait on the ladder company to show up. Took over 12 hours to put it out, and even then there had to be a truck on site for another day to be sure. I dreaded the holidays, people were still using live tree’s back then and few watered the trees they had. Then add in the 4th of July, they was always the busiest times… Then deep frying turkeys became a thing and that added another busy holiday. NEVER fight an oil fire with water people! Jeesh…
I think we can agree that Verner did not get his job as a firefighter due to his massive intellect.
Cloud someone explain the hand poke test?
The hand-poke test- The issue in question is whether she’s real, and whether she’s Canadian or not. If you think something might not be real you touch or poke it to see if you can feel it. So he poked her hand, but since its already obvious now that she’s real he decided to joke and pretend the poke test somehow confirmed her nationaility instead.
he proved it was a palm, not a maple.
That’s a good point, I always mistake what we’re supposedly testing for. “What my glasses are made of super flexible titanium alloys? Guess I don’t have to worry about bending them out of shape accidentally!” And then the sales guy looks at me like I’m the dumb kid in class, before explaining to the customer next to me that the flexible materials make the glasses more lightweight, so they don’t tire your face out over long wear times.
Yes I can testify that titanium frames do bend and may not come back all the way.
Fell asleep on the couch; unfortunately my glasses had fallen off in the process and I managed to roll them under me.
Arboriculture joke greatly appreciated.
*groan…*Now I get it. And I don’t want it. Take it back!
nope, sorry, can’t edit or return previously posted posts, if I could, I wood.
Thanks, it was my magnum, Opus
He has the super power to tell if someone is Canadian by touching them. It’s not the best super power but he still gets the superhero body with it.
What till he finds out how many more times the horsepower of a fire truck his girlfriend has.
He won’t find *that* out unless she decides to let him rev her up and take her for a ride.
He’s been on that ride.
Well, that would answer the questions about Max’s self-control and the possibility of “death by Snu-Snu”.
Unless he’s a super, too. He does seem to have the physique for it.
He appears to have a pretty normal build – if I recall correctly, he specifically became a firefighter to stay in shape.
She could put all of her “points” into defense. I don’t know how much stronger or faster she would be than average then. She would be impossible to damage, hopefully that wouldn’t lessen her tactile senses.
Pretty sure she bailed on the date when she noticed the remaining flaws in her disguise.
Not disagreeing with the statement (other than that wasn’t a “date”, it was a bar hook-up), but the statement doesn’t mean sex hasn’t occurred. Even if nothing happened that night, they at least got intimate enough that Verner commented on her silky-slippery skin. That’s the type of comment that would occur during cuddle time afterwards, not during the removal-of-clothes stage.
But mainly most people don’t use descriptors like “girlfriend” after a single bar pick-up, whether consummation occurred or not. There are a lot of unknowns here, but it’s highly likely there have been at least a few dates since then, with the glamour perfected. We don’t know how much time passed between the initial hookup and the cut to Sydney summoning Parfait, nor how much time has passed between the end of that multi-day arc and Max walking toward the fire house. Past arc transitions have skipped months of time.
Considering that the point of her going out that night was, according to her while talking to Rowan, because her friends felt she needed to ‘get laid,’ I am leaning towards the likelihood that sex HAS occured.
What about Arc Tech, Arc Light and Arc Dark mods?
Or if Cora, Dabbler, or Gizmo had some time with the vehicle alone.
The ejection seat might be relabled ejaculation instead. And plenty of betting on when she notices.
Car can change styles due to holoarmor. Suddenly being an ice cream truck during an evasion might not be a bad idea.
She can claim gizmos are testing stuff studio got from recently released Gaitlin or Alien tech if it comes up. For Supersport movie or something. Not in public cause $$ and the movie will be public exposure for tech.
Speaking of secondary effects… is there a Gaitlin version of QVC on every cable lineup now? You know Deus is gonna also corner market on ES&ASPN (extreme super and alien sports network.) Megaball Bosche should be a major ratings grabber. Sahara Dessert extreme Bikini volleyball might ekk them out though.
I’m so happy Rowan is staying in the comic for now. I was totally shipping that and when he showed back in this run of comics. I was kinda giddy about it.
Not really related to the comic but to Dave. The Pumps on fore engines are indeed run off of the engine by a PTO (power take-off) shaft run from the transmission with a clutch. Your typical engine needs to be able to supply pressures upwards of 100+ psi (depends on sizes of hoses, types of nozzles used, method of attack, etc.) and also maintain that pressure at high flow rates. Electric pumps to meet these flow requirements would be too big and require too much power to practically equip on an engine. Not complaining but it seemed like Dave had done a lot of research and thought he might like some additional info. I can feel Rowan’s sarcasm and I totally vibe with that energy. And props to Maxima for seeing his sarcasm and raising him with a bit of her own.
yes to PTO driven centrifugal pumps. The pumper trucks back when I was paying attention usually had a thousand to 1500 gallons of water on board and that was about a minute and a half of pumping at full pumping capacity. The tank was used primarily to provide priming material for the pump unless you were running something like inch and a half.
Along those lines, much more than 100 psi needs 2 people on a nozzle otherwise the water pressure will make the end do dancy/swinging things with a 15-20 lb weight on the end. Of course just pressurizing 6″ will make it jump which is rather dangerous since 100′ weighs 800 lbs. And its trying to straighten as much as possible.
Our dept was volunteer so people living near the station would get the trucks running and people closer to the scene would respond directly. Everyone kept their gear in pov rather than at the station.
I was actually just reading up on this a couple of weeks ago, but in New York state at least being a fireman is required to drive a fire truck. The job includes the endorsement required to drive the fire truck and there’s no way to get the endorsement without also being a fireman. By vehicle weight you would need a CDL(vehicles over 26,000 lbs.), but because of the above rule, firemen don’t need the CDL.
I’m reading this page & picturing my decision…
… I’m getting down on one knee with a melodramatic level of exaggerated effort, complete with old-geezer type grunts-&-groans…
… I’m taking her hand…
…all the while showing not even the slightest trace of a smile…
…I press the back of her knuckles against my forehead as I say, with a bullfrog ‘s bass-register attempt at a falsetto…
…”YES, MISTRESS! AS YOU COMMAND MISTRESS! THANK YOU MISTRESS! I AM NOT WORTY, MISTRESS!”
If this fails to get at least a snort or a giggle from her, I’ll get up, kiss the back of her hand, & ask,
“Not even a little smile? Should I try for cornier? I can do cornier…?”
one of the other guys tosses a bag a Fritos on the table. ‘this will help with the corny. ‘
Still no tags on the earlier Rowan pages.
DaveB hasn’t had the time to keep up with monthly vote incentives. The comment system backend is barely holding together. Page 1258 is still numbered 1256. Various characters are misspelled at times in the tags, and any page prior to 714 only has Who’s Who tags, not character tags. I’m guessing even minor website maintenance is a pretty low priority, relative to getting pages posted on time.
There’s horsepower and then there’s torque… They’re related, but they aren’t the same thing. Think of horsepower as how fast the engine can spin the shaft, and torque as how much force it can impart. A lot of the big trucks (including fire trucks) don’t have that much horsepower compared to the average sportscar, but they do have vastly more torque.
X2! A lot of tractors have less horsepower than the average midsize car, but could drag a dozen of them backwards. Torque, gearing, and traction.
And weight. Traction is dependent on friction after all.
Horsepower is Torque times RPM divided by 5252. An easy way to tell if the numbers have been fudged on a HP graph is seeing where the HP and Torque curves intersect – it should be at just over 5200 rpm.
CAT G series has “only” about 800 hp but nearly 3000 ft-lb of torquie
Heck, a Cat 3406B “only” makes around 500 HP, but something like 2000+ ft lbs of torque.
Now a C18, it can be shoehorned into a Pete 379, can reliably turned up to a thousand HP, and 3000 ft lbs.. bolt that to an Eaton fuller 18 speed and you have one helluva heavy haul setup.
Hehehehe, I like Rowan. :3
I appreciate that I have a GUESS what the lumps are but don’t KNOW what the lumps are.
I’ll say deep fried Tofu and probably be half right
Remember on, like, page 5, in 2010, when this comic had good line work?
Bad comparison. All artists go through changes in style over their careers, and page 5 was 14 years ago. I personally prefer the look of the current style. If you prefer the earlier style that’s fine too, but don’t diss the current style.
Plus page 5 was originally intended to be Page 1 (before the RP intro hook was written… Sydney *still* isn’t a corporal after 14 years????) and therefore Dave probably spent countless hours tweaking it. The grind of regular publishing is clear in the significant drop in quality during weeks after page 5.
References:
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/gp0005-2/
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-12-the-passion-of-the-nerd/
@dave
I just thought of this. It might be better if Harper is a stunt coordinator rather than a stunt woman. A stunt woman or man is going to be on camera at some point but a stunt coordinator is a behind the scenes person. Thus wouldn’t appear on camera.
Technically she could be both. If the production is done correctly you can’t tell a stunt person is on screen at all. You can tell in some scenes, but not with good production. And with modern CGI/AI it’s virtually impossible to tell whether it’s a stunt person or the original actor.
I take offence at the idea that Spaceballs wasn’t done correctly.
Given her build (even cloaked) one could assume that there isn’t many people she could double on camera for, so it would make sense she’d be likely doing stunts where you either don’t see the person performing the stunt (vehicle work, full costume) or like Einneseanaire said, there is enough post-processing to hide her.
I think the real problem is that, even though stunt actors aren’t well known by the public, it would be simple to pull up IMDB and find no results for Harper Lux. She could say that it’s her employer that gets credited, but I think people might find that a bit suspicious.
So really what she needs to do is become an actual stunt actor under the name of Harper Lux, or have people that know her as her secret identity assume she’s covering for an actual job as like an assassin or something.
Seeing as Leon’s computer skills are the equivalent of Math’s combat skills (so close to superpowered there’s no real difference) I’d be surprised if Harper Lux doesn’t have an IMDB & Wikipedia bio (complete with a revision history that says the page was first created 10-15 years ago, he’s that good).
DaveB mentioned that her identity is “CIA grade” and that it “comes with tax and employment records“. Presumably they’ve gotten her inserted into some film credits and listed on the appropriate IMDB pages.
Like trucks, it’s surprising how little horsepower military vehicles often have. Like the classic jeep had just 75 HP, the Ferret armored scout car had 90 when introduced and was upgraded to a whopping 130 when they added a turret, and even the Humvee has just 190 HP. Meanwhile, your typical minivan has 250 HP or more, and even micro-compacts like the Chevy Spark and Smart car have 90-100.
Yeah, a lot of it comes down to gearing. Most genuine military vehicles will never see the high side of 60 mph. They are geared for creeping across the country side on unimproved surfaces. The internet says that a Humvee will top out around 70. For civilian vehicles a lot of it comes down to acceleration. About the only time a soccer mom van will use most of its horsepower is getting that brick up to freeway speed coming up an on ramp.
Horsepower mostly useful for speed. Off road at high speed requires a very rugged vehicle with a great suspension, and reasonably flat terrain, or you’re upside down in short order.
Slopes and mud would seem to call for torque instead.
The archives for Rowan dont show his firet appearance (maybe the name was set linked?)
So normally I’m not”that guy” but firetrucks don’t have a lotof horsepower because to move that big red truck you need torque. Horsepower determins how fast you hit the wall torque determines how much of the wall you drag with you
It will be loads of fun if Rowan has to get involved in an emergency during their date, and Maxima has to reveal she’s Maxima to handle it.
At an auto accident and she “Jaws Of Life”‘s the door?
I just realized: superheroes with secret identity will never work in Emergency Services – they have to be on call for super crimes.
That’d make for a great prank for revealing her secret ID to her boyfriend.
Drive up in the car while he’s outside.
Pull the old “help my car has become weightless” gag with him grabbing her arm and trying to hold her and her car from floating away upside down.
About the time it looks like his strength is about to give out, Max returns her skin color to normal and reduces the pull away from the ground.
He looks up at her, golden, floating upside down in her car. She says, “Surprise!”
Panel 3+4 indicates he has the power to detect where someone is from.
Which in this setting, could be a super power.
On the other hand, the facepalm, and the preceding comic, indicate … he’s just that dense, and makes one wonder how he managed the Firefighter position.
Or, being dumb, he could have mistaken ‘very real’ and ‘not Canadian’ – since he was able to touch her with the poke, that means she’s real.
Btw, he must be really tall, since even sitting down he is at her neck’s height, and Maxima is 6’1″ standing up. The average difference between sitting down and standing up in an average chair is usually about 14.5 inches.
The average height between a person’s neck and the top of a person’s hand is between 9.12 inches
I can’t believe I bothered to find that out. :) Or why. It’s a slow day for me.
I am disturbed by the lack of puns.
He is as tall as a tree, a Rowan.
That’s not Rowan
I just realized that it could just be that the chairs are pretty high, since we know that Maxima is about the same height as Maxima from the bar comics, and Rowan and Verner seem to be about the same height sitting down unless Verner is leaning back.
I’m not sure what the perfect song is for Max, but I know that the vocalist on it has to be Sophia Urista. https://youtu.be/0JrlKcoD1Qw?si=KRoBbKHu361csq49&t=60
Maybe Hennessy just gives you enough cognac that you think your going faster?
2 thoughts: How did the early Callaway Corvette stack up to the Shelby? If Maxima goes “just about 0” into durability, is she near-human in bed? (I’m asuming her initial just-morphed hardness was “even steven” buff-wise. Pre-control, as it were.)
She hit Vehemence with all her pool assigned to strength and didn’t destroy her hand/arm so I’d think that her base strength and durability are still well into super levels
The big thing about Stun doubles, they are supposed to be unrecognised and for very very long time never even got any mention in the credits. So, her saying that he wouldn’t recognise her is moot.
And usually only hear or read about them when they die or have an accident that makes the billion-dollar cry-baby actor look back
Personally feel Maxi (or Luxi, ain’t no way gonna call her a ‘Harpie’) picked the wrong sibling…
DaveB, the pumper truck we had ran about that range, but the torque was half again that! They are diesels, not race cars. Yes, we could get up to great speeds on the highway, but in local traffic, even on a call, it was rare we got it over 60mph. Horsepower made speed, but torque got you TO speed faster.
And people on the road don’t get it: MOVE OUT OF THE WAY! Anytime someone holds up a truck, for any reason, you actually might be killing someone or letting them be hurt badly…
Ask any firetruck or EMT, they’ll tell you the same thing.
Does Max’s car need horsepower? Or would it be faster for her to just push the reenforced steering wheel forward with flight powers?
Nah, it has a hole in the floor and Maxi Flintstone’s it :)
Is no one going to bring up the weird calendar in the background?
Even on patreon I can’t quite tell what is going on there