Grrl Power #134 – Sobriquet Quest
OMG So many word bubbles!
Again, my inexperience with writing/presenting something in a sequential fashion is showing here. I thought I would get through all this first day content long before I built an appreciable audience, so I didn’t think to make this a “reveal” of sorts. It would have been fun to have everyone join in with suggestions in the comments, but oh well, lesson learned.
I had the idea of orbs that grant powers floating around someone, but the rest of the character never really coalesced, partially because the name never did. A lot of the stupid names on this page are things I had thought of over the years. Not seriously considered obviously, though I do kind of like Nucleus. Sometimes I build a character around a cool sounding name or power set, sometimes their look or personality comes first. In Sydney’s case, despite her, let’s say… personality concentrate, the power set came first. I have a oooold drawing or two of someone who had the orbs, (which I’ll probably save for a vote incentive or bonus material for the eventual book) but she was older and Indian. Also she was named Nike, after the goddess of victory, not the shoe company obviously. I never really liked that since the name is ubiquitously tied to shoes now. I bet most of you didn’t even know there was a goddess named Nike. In the very early days of this comic, I was planning on using that character in Sydney’s place, but I dropped the idea because when it comes down to it, I don’t really know enough about India to do a character justice, certainly not a main character.
I’ve broken my own rule here by adding characters to the Who’s Who before they were properly introduced in the comic, but I also have Hiro and Stalwart hold an extended conversation on this page so best to add them. I’ll have to give them an actual intro soon.
Thanks to everyone who voted in the ComicMix tournament, we made it to the sweet 16 but couldn’t keep up with the deluge of votes from Ava’s Demon. Not bad for the comic’s first showing. Next year we’ll have to strive to get to the quarterfinals at least.
Firefox just told me Grrlpower is an attack site…may want to check the ad banners just to be safe.
Told me the same thing.
Firefox warned me of malware as well.
Same here
I’ve cleaned the bad code, I have to wait for Google to clear it now. :P I’m going to spend the evening changing passwords and doing some other stuff to help lock down the site.
TWC zeroed you out, can’t vote for you.
Scott
All sorted now.
I want to say, that if this is found to be an attack by someone trying to mess with the votes, just give me there address. It wont happen again.
Just by sitting down with them and having a nice conversation, I am sure they would come back and tell everyone how sorry they are for doing it.
Would said conversation happen to involve a large and intimidating mallet?
I would prefer a battleaxe hopefully double-bladed with dings, scars and bloodstains on it
I do keep a nice two handed axe inside the front door. Strictly for wood chopping and the odd wolf mind.
Or maybe Exalibolg?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SE7AzfX6nQ8
mallet of doom here https://www.the-whiteboard.com/autowb004.html
If you look at Math he is smirking and a smart cookie and while being a womanizer and a jerk he does appear to have the classic bad boy heart of gold. Plus he is standing behind Sydney right now and seeing what she actually looks like with the Halo effect running.
So I wasn’t the only one with the report from SafeBrowsing. Dave, check out this link for more information.
https://safebrowsing.clients.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?client=Firefox&hl=en-US&site=https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/846
The vote page thing doesn’t work for the TWC says the comic is unknown.
That’s probably because of the malware notice. I didn’t get a chance to updated it anyway. :P
In the Air Force, your call sign is usually assigned by your squadron-mates, usually based on how they first see you fly. Pray they do not want to call you Crash or Wipeout.
BTW, it looks like one of the side effects of the attack this morning was Grrl Power getting removed from TWC. With only a week left to go for the month!
Now imagine the callsign ‘Barbie’ like in the AF-Blues webcomicX)
In all fairness, with a name like “Kenneth Dahl,” that callsign was pretty much inevitable
I do like the story they attached to it, though ^ . ^
heh, I’d love to have even half your exposure Dave.
Granted, my fanfiction used to garner lots of attention around 1997 to 2006, but my original fiction is almost unknown.
been trying to sell my original fiction, couldn’t get a proper editor or paper publisher, went with Leanpub *follow link in name*, for now. I hate Markdown, so hard to format the way I want, never got the full hang of it.
My fanfiction online using some of the same characters, in none-canon apperances, gets views, but I’d like to progress with the canon story in books. (as I could never find an artist to draw any of it).
I loved “Genma’s Journal.” :)
Names, I have tons of characters, most are oneshot ideas with simple names. But superhero names always ellude me.
I had one character a kind of supergirl meets Dr. Strange seriously overpowered yet complicated in how the powers worked female character. Meant to be a classic superhero from a classic comicbook world.
In short: all the power of a Galaxy at her disposal, but limited through a mortal sized frame and requiring “upgrade” times to boost to a higher strength and durability level.
Anywho: Original name was “Galacta”
then Marvel used that name for the daughter of Galactus,
so I went back and changed it to “Galaxy Girl”, Lauren Faust has “Galaxy Girls”
so on the fence of keeping Galaxy Girl, Galacta Girl, Galaxy Gal, Galacta Gal, Galactic Maiden, Galaxy Maiden, (can you tell I want to emphasize the galaxy part as she will have a spiral galaxy as her emblem). Of course Gal Alex sounds like a lazy transvestite.
I am never good at short and memorable names with a superhero feel. Crimson Viven, Celestial Sorceress, or its something generic sounding like Devastatia. I thought that one was more unique for a particle destroyer, but it seems DC used it for a brawler.
[Oh, hi Thrythlind!]
Dave, your discussion on names hit a chord with me, since I write a lot of superheroes these days. I’ve usually designed powers around a codename or else designed the character quirks around the codename (especially for auxiliary characters), since the other way around is *hard* (especially if you want to avoid all the Marvel and DC trademarks).
The director’s commentary for The Incredibles is great and it goes into stuff like this. The reason the heroes in the movie have names like Syndrome and Stratogal and Frozone is because every other name has been used. Both DC and Marvel have a major character named Heatwave for example. After a certian point, if they’re using a word that was already a word like “Maxima” I’m not sure how much they get to say what other people do with it, unless your Maxima is “confusingly similar” to theirs, and my Maxima is really nothing like DC’s except they’re both women.
maybe Heatwave should be renamed as Hot Stuff. :)
Actually, I thought “FroZone” was very clever on many levels. It still gives me a chuckle.
Had the same problem with finding hero names for the heroes in my first novel.
Prior to that, it was a serious problem how to define my heroes, since Marvel and DC licenced ‘superhero’ in all its forms; hence I used ‘Meta-Hero’.
Also, since they practically have everything and all chances pwned for start-up writers I had to had a lawyer check it for copyright-infringement propabilities.
Still, I could go for Global-Defenders and the lead-hero being a babe named Shining Star.
Since I was listening to Hazel Fernandez’ famous song ‘Number One’ it kind of also became her in-novel theme.
Managed to publish it over lulu.com, sadly it’s only in German for now, since I lack the dough for a proper translation into New-Yorkese.
‘Seven Star Crown: Number One’ if anybody would be interestedXD
Umm, isn’t “Meta-human” what DC calls ‘mutants’?
Fortunately copyright does not extend so similar words. Unless they are so close that they can be taken as a deliberate intent to cause confusion with the original. Meta-Hero and Meta-Human are distinct enough that no court should take a suit seriously unless it was part of a pattern that clearly copied the whole product and just changed the names.
The Balls of Sydney?
Sydney Opera Orbs
GeekOrbs
NerdSphere
Oh, I give up!
Actually, I think “NerdSphere” would be appropriate and fit the previously mentioned military tradition of such monikers being coined by comrades after one manages to spectacularly embarrass oneself (see panel 2).
those would work for names for the orbs in general,, but not for the name of the hero weilding them
The orbs can form a sphere that orbit the nerd. Yes, they normally form a halo pattern, but then Halo still refers to the orbs. Also, when challenging Math after declaring herself invincible Sydney did have them arranged in a fairly spherical pattern.
Halo is definitely a cool name and I’m wondering exactly how it gets coined, but I’m still liking NerdSphere and will never forget that term.
My suggestion: Chaotic Orbit
Erratic Orbit would be truer to the actual term, but there’s no way PR would sign off on it.
I suspect that Mathias will pick the name Halo. My reasoning is as follows.
He can see how they are tracking by default, and the name will hit his sense of irony after pronouncing her 7th Dan in swearing.
I agree 100%
Actually, I’m thinking Math will leeringly suggest Angel, and explain it as “because she’s got a halo already”, and that will lead to Halo
I suspect they’ll pick the name Halo, because it’s been her name in the banner of the website here for a few months now. ;P Not much of a reveal, haha.
I have to admit, Maxima’s geek knowledge always surprises me.
Actually the armed forces always put up a strong presence at the annual Gencon UK conventions, back when they were still running. There were a lot of keen roleplayers in the services. And I understand it is similar in the US.
I remember once Gencon was held just after major European exercises, it seemed every person I spoke to that year had taken part in them!
It seems like they might have a harder time finding people who could pass the physical at a gaming convention.
…Is what I’d say if I was being cheeky.
I passed it in my youth it was rough for me but thats because I’m slower then mud when running distance. But it is true lot of geeks something about the fact we all like to play with odd toys.
I do not know about that. I have (on rare occasion) seen a geek who was in good shape.
Heck, when I went to Basic (when I was 21). I could only do 7 push-ups (52 needed), 26 situps (65 needed), and 2 mile-run in over 32min (16:30 needed, heck a person who was on a ‘walking’ profile passed me). Technically, I should not have been able to join with those numbers, but the Army was desperate at the time, so the recruiter got “creative” with the paperwork. My Drill Sargent was sure I would fail the first time but, by Almighty God’s power, I actually passed Basic the first time.
So I suspect there are more recruits then you might think at a convention.
Geeze, 52 pushups, like all at once or do you have 5 minutes to do them or something like that? I’ve been going to the gym for years and before my shoulder surgery could bench 300, (now it’s mostly the time I put into the comic that’s kept me from getting back to that condition) but now I can do 30 pushups in a row on a good day. :/ I might be able to knock out 52 in 5 minutes. If it’s 2 minutes there’s no chance.
2 min for push up, 2 min for sit up. and the run was scored by age. I am ex US Army.
Wow that’s depressing. I’ve been going to the gym for almost a decade and I couldn’t do any of those. I guess it’s a problem I’ve always done high weight low rep stuff, 3×8 or 5×5’s so my muscles just aren’t geared to press 160 lbs 50 times in a row.
To hear the owner at my friendly local game store tell it, the three biggest professions in gaming are teachers, cops, and soldiers, not necessarily in that order.
The second panel hits home with me, since my Marvel Superheroes group are all very genre savvy and we actively try to avoid certain tropes and cliches if it’ll harm us. It’s interesting to see Maxima using her one way to reach Halo and get her to understand things, she learned very quick.
I hereby declare that due to her knowledge of superhero cliché’s Sydney shall be known as Trope-O-Sphere! (it helps if you say it with conviction)
If I did not actively avoid TVTropes, I would applaud that name.
Ball Tickler stood out the most for me let’s go with that!
…you screen writing bastards you killed my ballzack
my first thought would be ioun :3
I think it should be Heatwave who comes up with “Halo” because it would be funnier that the smart name comes from the one person they think is dumb.
true
Well, if you think of the orbs as being planets, then Sydney represents the body that they orbit around. I.e. the sun. Perhaps she should be called Helios, after the Greek personification of the sun? Or, as Helios is a guy, perhaps just take the distinctive sign used by artists when depicting him, his halo?
I think we are getting somewhere with this line of reasoning. Her call-sign will obviously have to be:
Girl with balls
The problem with that idea is the planets orbit the sun at different distances each, not all in one orbit. OTOH, Syd’s orbs orbit as a “Klemperer rosette.”
Mmm, sorry, does not sound catchy.
The, Sunny… would work well….and she’s a Tom Boy, Sonny would be just fine.
Rather than Helios, Éōs,Goddess of the dawn. While Helios was an aspect of Apollo (Helius was actually one of Apollo’s epithets), Éōs was a separate entity. Although, technically, Syd would need rose-red fingers to look the part.
Damn, one week you beat out order of the stick in votes, Next week your shiat is haxxored
Just wondering, on the Who’s Who panel, why aren’t Achilles and Mr. Amorphous’s names all caps as the others are? I can’t seem to find any common ground that isn’t excluded by another all caps name.
Cause I have the dumb sometimes and I need to fix that.
BTW: Rooster Teeth has “Black” up; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImKCt7BD4U4
Very off-topic, but thank you very much. I’ll go check it out.
Love when Maxima delves back into geekdom in order to deal with Sydney :p
She knows her tropes!
I don’t get why her name has to be relevant to her power. She could be Rowan, or Labyrinth, or Harro. Absolutely anything. It’d give enemies less of a hint to her powers when she dramatically announces herself to them!
As a related name: User.
Better: Username Here
Because she is just about to have a press conference telling the world about her, and her more obvious powers, so names that give hints as to her power are not relevant in her particular case. Although I do agree with you in general principle. Any good code name should not have any bearing on the real subject, if secrecy can help.
However, there is also the Arianna factor. They are after publicity. If the public are not given a memorable name, they will refer to heroes by some vague description. You know, like that flying guy with the camera. In Sydney’s case, her appearance will always have a highly distinctive halo of multicoloured balls surrounding her.
Thus she could only be called Rainbow Aurora.
To quote Barbara and Karl Kesel’s classic run on Hawk and Dove, “If I had the power to walk through walls, I’d call myself Concrete-Man.”
I find myself really impressed with the design on Anvil’s shirt. It is very intricate. I kinda forget every now and then that you draw all this. I just have to say it sure is impressive. The expressions on people’s faces as well. Your comic is probably one of the best drawn comics I read.
Thanks, but that’s actually a texture I reuse each time. I didn’t even draw it, it’s just a stock design I found after some googling. I’m pretty sure it’s one of those “ok to use non-commercially” pieces, and it’s not like I’m going to sell shirts with that design on it.
Even so, everything is still very impressive to me. You do a great job.
“…pretty sure it’s one of those…”
You should talk to a lawyer, before the copyright owner finds you. If you’re getting any money from the ads on your site, I’d bet it’s commercial use. I’ve seen 5-figure damages for using one image on a web site.
If they want to split my profits they’ll get a bill for the hosting.
If only. The thing is, that kind of suit isn’t about making money. It’s about making an example of whatever poor schmuck happened to use copyrighted property without permission. Or, to quote TVTropes, “companies sue in order to protect their own assets, not to acquire someone else’s.”
Except suing costs money. So as they would stand to recoup nothing from this action, it is unlikely that they would choose that route, in my opinion.
Plus what message would they be sending? “This artwork was licensed for use as “not for profit” and so we have chosen to sue somebody who is not making a profit from it. Tremble in fear everyone who is reasonable!’
I suspect any sensible judge would just want to slap whoever decided on an action like that. Although, I guess, it depends on the jurisdiction. But in the U.K. the plaintiff should look out for a charge of wasting court time.
Point.
Lol at where her glasses ended up
Orb whisperer, Spiceballs, Orbitz (after the drink) and the Dragonballer cause, well, 7.
Spiderwoman (don’t remember the real name of this one, the one that got her own cartoon)
anywho, name: Spiderwoman
powers: Superstrength, flight, shooting energy bolts from her hands.
screw logic.
Jessica Drew (Marvel)
Current TWC ranking is at 0. That’s even better than 1st place…right?
“The comic voting page you tried to visit was for a comic that was inactive or unknown. If you are the comic owner, please check your settings or contact support.”
It is working now. Go, click, vote. Make up for lost votes!
You are the first person I’ve read/heard/known that also knows about Nike… I don’t know how you pronounce it in English, but in my case it’s not the same way as the brand, so when I speak her name to others it doesn’t sound like I’m talking about a new shoe I bought.
Nike is a great name, it would have been a good idea to use it. That way the people that never heard of her would also get to know about it (and maybe get the image of a shoe out of their heads…)
Just for the record, Niké is/was a Greek deity, dedicated to every kind of noble ‘success’ victory : she was pictured hovering over a very successful man in war, olympics or any other business.
She is usually depicted as a winged woman. A good example would be the Samothrace Victory :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winged_Victory_of_Samothrace
how about orbit, or orbinox… just an idea. orbit would work like halo bit also play off the orb part.
Any one else not see round 5 in the “Mix March Madness Webcomics Tournament!”?
I kept refreshing round 4 waiting for it to have a link to round 5 and no link showed up. So today I decided to go to the home page to see what the hold up was. i then saw a link at the top to round 6. I was like ok that does not seem like the right number. I clicked on it thinking maybe the numbers were off or some thing. How ever it only had 4 choices. So I then new I had missed at least one round. Just to be sure though I went back to round 4 and counted and it shows 16 it is even called sweet 16. So I clicked on the Link that says “Posted In: Mix March Madness Webcomics Tournament” and saw it goes from sweet 16 round 4 to round 6. At that point I was really confused. I then looked through all the news and found round 5 and to my surprise it had votes and comments. Any way I wonder how my vote would have changed things. Specially this time I was planning on buying some votes. It is very possible if things were done correctly that the votes would have been different. I know I am not the only one who missed round 5 because of it being in the wrong section and no link to it from round 4.
Well we didn’t make it past round 4, so I didn’t link to it again since the page was such a bear to load each time.
No worries. I over reacted a bit.
Just a small tid bit about Nike. She was the goddess of victory, but the reason the shoe company chose her was because she was also the goddess off speed. As in the literal term. She was the victory goddess, and the goddess of speed. So Nike is pretty much saying that their shoes are the best by using her name.
The more you know.
17 years without being able to come up with a name. I bet you were quite proud when you finally came up with Halo.
Actually a friend came up with it. :/
Knowing Murphy’s Law, the friend probably just rattled off the name easy peasy, like it wasn’t a big deal. ;-)
Yeah pretty much.
In that case I’m guessing you were pretty miffed that you didn’t think of it first… after 17 years. lol
I mean, it seems pretty logical. A ring is constantly floating over her head. Unless you haven’t always had them floating over her head, but still, pretty darn logical name.
It was more like exhausted acceptance at that point.
Halo is definitely a nice and simple name. I’d have gone with something like Nuclear Force, to go with the atom theme, and then people would have started calling her Nuke.
nothing wrong with being a Nuke (Navy)
Clearly I have a poor imagination, I’d have just called her “Six”
Bleh I mean “Seven”
*Shudders*
7 of 9? I saw the actress recently on Iron Chef (rerun from a few years ago) as it was the chef from her restaurant that was competing.
The name should be… 8-Ball !
Yes, I know there’s not eight of them, but that will confuse the bad guys!
Like that one joke Bart Simpson played if I remember right?
3 Pigs running wild in school, numbered 1,2 and 4.
Everybody ended up searching for Pig #3.
With seven balls circling aroud her, you could definitly say that Sidney is the 8-ball.
Or Oddball
How about “Spazoid the Power Nerd”? Descriptive and fair warning all in one. Or “Censor Me”. “5 second delay?”
Fusion’s Xplitive vs. Sydney. Xplitive is powered by his swearing. After getting schooled by Sydney, he would become a match for Maxima.
Hey, Dave? I don’t know if this has been touched on yet, but naming you electric super “Jiggawatt” might be a really really bad idea. You see, the character looks to be African-American, and the name sounds an awful lot like “Jiggaboo” which is a pretty racist term for African-Americans. It’s not used much in common parlance today, but it has been knocking around since the 1700’s, so it’s “due” for a resurgence. And you really don’t want to be the trigger for that resurgence, I hope.
https://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=jigaboo
THAT’S what was bothering me about that name! It was in the back of my mind and I couldn’t place it — I kept associating it with “juggalo” instead. >.<
Yeah, I have to agree it's on the edge of unpleasantness.
Similar, yes, but not so close that it makes me feel uncomfortable, personally. Although perceptions may vary across the Atlantic.
I guess it’s possible someone might have a problem with that, but there’s a few hoops to go through to arrive there. I acutally just made her black cause I thought demographically it made more sense, assuming a roughly equal distribution of Supers, and also really I just thought she’d look good with dark skin and white dreds.
+1 for Skee-Ball Girl
What’s happened at topwebcomics?
Grrlpower is just gone.
Vote goes to unknown
Points at avatar. I’m a Bryn Mawr alumna. I’d better know who Nike (pronounced “Ni-KAY” as opposed to the shoe company’s “NIE-kee”) is.
(The avatar in question is a needlepoint of the school seal that I did many years ago.)
So her name is pronounced similar to a Japanese stock market?
Close enough, anyway. Well, I couldn’t say for sure that’s correct, but that’s how we pronounced at Bryn Mawr.