Grrl Power #1361 – Home offense
I’m sure Sydney had many, many follow up questions and theories, but conforming to proper Grrl Power orthodoxy, that whole scene was a bit long in the tooth already, IMO, so let’s move on.
Sciona is not great at hiding her… well, normally I’d call it corruption, but American politicians can basically just accept unlimited money from any source and also legally do insider trading, so… yeah. She’s not even a senator. She’s a senator’s chief of staff, and she lives in a mansion and drives an Aston Martin. (If you’re a car guy, please ignore that it’s a 2024 model and the comic is taking place at some point during the Obama administration. I just thought it looked cooler than the ~2012-15 models. The model is an Aston Martin Valor, which apparently costs about $2M.) I guess living completely underground prior to her attempt to offer up Earth as a colonization smash and grab target made her appreciate being able to live in a place with a pool and whatever else rich people have in their houses. I assume a wine cellar and a walk-in humidor. And probably a secret blood dungeon. That’d be something Sciona added as an aftermarket feature. Not saying rich people have those. I’m not saying they don’t have them, just that they’re not standard on mansion-y floorplans.
Granted, her pool is just a pool, not an infinity pool that’s fed by waterfalls that flow out from under a rooftop helipad. She’s not going to be intentionally ostentatious. Staff. That’s what makes people seem rich to me. It would be so weird to have live-in staff. Like a butler and a chef and assorted maids or whatever? People just standing around waiting for you to need something, or answers my door for me? That would be weird.
Oh look! The vote incentive has another update!
Okay, its getting closer. The dragon slam page gave me a bit of time to work on it, and the clothed version is done… well, there’s no background, but instead of spending like an hour trying to render a nice looking couch for them to sit on, I put some work into the bonus comic that will accompany this incentive. I’m seriously hoping to have it all finished by the beginning of next month and I can move on to new ones that won’t take 3 months to finish.
The Patreon version is updated as well.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
re: a somewhat dark commentary on live in staff. if gene hackman and his wife were still pulling enough royalties. they’d have had a live in someone who could have gotten help in time.
Gene Hackman’s estimated net worth at the time of his death was $80 million.
Yup. They made/had more than enough to have caretakers in place for decades, they clearly just didn’t want to have any. Unfortunately all it took was a cascade of bad events to end the way that it did.
Oh! The blood absorbing not a robot robot is taking its revenge on its creator!
That’s also my bet on who the attacker is.
This will be very interesting.
Third vote for Not-A-Robot….
One vote for not Not-A-Robot, unless he learnt how to be in two places at once and create shadows (Sci spotted it because there shoulda been a light there shining on the tree)
Given its permanent-power-copying ability, him developing the ability to detach and remote-control part of his tentacles that he hid in the pool seems far from outlandish. Shadow may easily be where his main body is.
If we are going down that path, why not Mr Tentacles (forgot his name) who was hanging around ArcHQ a while back?
“Shadow creation” could be done by breaking the light that’s supposed to be on the tree and then just being a black body standing in darkness.
“Two places” could be done by reaching through the underground sprinklers.
It’s unclear if he can copy powers forever, he might just be able to do it as long as the blood holds out.
While there have been quite a few tentacle bearing folks in this comic, I can only think of about three that would be here. Given “not a robot” is certainly a possibility, there’s also the combination Cooter, who is due for a return as well, and then there’s Deus bodyguard, Vale. Not sure if she can tentacle or not.
Vale —> Eldritch Horror. Can tentacle like the Legend of the Overfiend if she wants to.
You forgot the actual tentacle-being who was hanging around ArcHQ for a while
But you did stumble on the most likely scenario: whoever this is, it will have SmugD’s slimy scent all over it (as in, they were sent by SmugD… but in a way he can deny, like he always does, any involvement)
Trentacles had eyes and mouths all over his tentacles. This looks more like the Not-A-Robot guy, especially since he’s apparently sampling her blood like NAR was wont to do.
What sampling? You mean because it stabbed her, causing blood to come out? That’s what happens when you stab someone who is made up of flesh and blood!!
The plot thickens.
My guess: the brain/sentient core that got away after the golem fight. And it looks like it’s NOT happy with how she treated it. And/or wants to assimilate some bloodmage and drug powers.
(it’s a question if it recognized her in her current form, or it’s just random mugging. But it would feel too random to be just a chance encounter).
It looked pretty intelligent and on the ball when it was extorting those crime syndicate creeps, so this prooobably isn’t a random attack.
… and only NOW I realize the probable connection to the hagfish syndicate extortionist. Thanks. I feel dumb, but better late than never.
(comic 1267-1269 for a refresher)
Thanks for the page numbers, cos I also did not get that connection
I think the attacker knows exactly who it is dealing with. It was prepared for a defence against its frontal attack by preparing a back-up from the rear. If it were going up a random politician or a generic super, then loading the pool would not have been necessary.
I’d say the frontal attack was a distraction. An attack from the rear always has a greater chance of success than an attack from the front. Most predators won’t attack if the target can see them; they wait till they can attack unseen.
The überbloodgolem has returned.
And it’s not willing to play second banana to Sciona any longer.
So, given that she knows more about it than anyone else… she’s a loose end in need of tying off.
Never settle for a little gladiator shield if you can conjure up a bubble shield, Sciona. You of all people should be aware of the possibility of getting backstabbed.
Depends on what you’re defending against and what it costs you.
– how penetrating is the attack?
– how many attacks does it get?
– can you make a bubble shield able to defend against that attack all around?|
Tanks have thicker armor on the front than on the underside because they’re defending against tank shells from the front, and tank shells can’t attack from underneath. Armoring the whole tank to a level that would work makes the tank unable to move.
Yes, you could remove a tank shell and emplace it as a mine, but it still wouldn’t provide nearly the same penetration.
All I know is, if I have poor visibility, spot an attack coming from the front or side and my back is wide open, I’d opt for an all-around bubble spell with equal coverage on all sides. At least as an opener.
She also was surprised and reacting. She barely noticed the shadow before it attacked, due to her focus being on her frustration. So her first instinct was to defend from the obvious attack.
She needs to get over her arrogance and re-train hersrlf if she wants to survive the consequences of her actions.
You’re oddly fixated on Sciona being arrogant or whatever. She’s not that different from most other villains in the series.
And this isn’t really a scene of a tactical failing; even Dabbler usually makes directional shields.
There could be many IC reasons as to why they do that, but it’s far from a failing that seems unique to her.
That assumes she can make a bubble shield
True. But if she doesn’t, she should develop one – provided she survives this.
(Which she doesn’t deserve to.)
Could it be the arm of Sciona’s Golem that got cut off and before it could reattach it sydney whacked away into the forest?
If so, that’s a bit of an oversight by those that clean up the battlegrounds of Supers.
Ah… The lovely consequences of trying to keep a secret super villain identity without having obtained the standard super hero/villain protection and paranoia.
Because lets be honest… It wasn’t a question of if she would be attacked… But when she would be attacked.
Blood golem, people who recognized her from before and had a grudge, the super vigilant group that is doing whatever extortion they can on criminals… The list has grown as more people are stepping into the spot light.
That’s the baaaaad kind of tentacleing. Geeze, who’d’ve thought I’d be rooting for Sciona?
I’m not. Go-go blood robot! Put her down!
Sciona can’t have a plan that doesn’t involve mass murder and/or genocide whether it needs to be there or not. The robot seems fine with letting humanity live.
I’d rate the potential long-term threat to humanity of E-Sciona and the golem at roughly the same level. Current version of Sciona seems to have grasped how to take over the world by infiltrating and subverting existing power structure w/o excessive bloodshed. The golem had no problems killing OC goons to make a point.
I wonder if it know’s she’s Sciona. Certainly appeared to be highly intelligent and seemed to even know some spells, so likely had a way to track her down.
Not sure how this will go for it. In one sense, her super powers won’t do any thing to it and it likely just gained her power. On the other hand, she’s a blood mage and it just made her bleed.
Chances are he just gained her superpower AND blood magic, IF the power copying works through tentacles that likely are detached from the main body and remote-controlled atm. OTOH, he might well be much less savvy than her at using them on the spot. In any case, her drugs likely wouldn’t do a thing to him anyway.
“Sneak attack bitch.” – Haley Starshine
I was thinking it was Val, just reminding Sciona not to mess with Deus.
But other suggested it is Drug Golem, which honestly also makes a lot of sense.
But I wonder if it knows who is piloting that drug dealer mecha?
Unless Golem has found a friend (or made one), that ain’t him (she was attacked from the shadow-where-there-shouldn’t be one and the pool)
Also, he wouldn’t attack Mommy
He could have easily mastered the ability to remote control detached parts of his body.
Given the ruthlessly pragmatic mindset he showed in his extortion drive of OC cartels, there are various reason he might be attacking Mommy. Perhaps he wants to gain her powers in full, or maybe he deems her a potential threat to his plans. After all, she created him, so she would be the best qualified to devise a way to neutralize him. Or maybe he was here to negotiate with her, but he assumed he had to capture or incapacitate her first.
What seems least likely but entirely possible is him making the effort of tracking her down and attacking her out of a grudge.
If not for the wings on the hood, I would have thought she was driving some late model Mustang or Camero. Is that what 2 million dollars gets you? A slightly better version of an American sports car? But, only better in a way that can be seen on a test track and nowhere else. Man! rich people really do see other rich people coming.
Maybe once again American designers stole concepts from earlier pricier cars to get people to buy from Detroit.
got to wonder how ostentation evolves. Presidential Candidate Congressmen Barry Goldwater drove a tuned 1968 fiery red Mustang in DC when it was a symbol
From 1987 to 2007 Ford Motor Co owned A-M and still holds a large stake. So it’s not surprising that there might be some cross pollinization of design. It really gets obvious with Jaguar sedans during the period that Ford had an active role in the company. The car design community is also really pretty small. A lot of those folks share the same mentors.
What do you get for your money? Exclusivity. Brand recognition. Real leather instead of plastic. Mostly I think it is just knowing that only other rich people have one.
Another aspect of high end cars is being able to afford the maintenance. You can still service your Mustang or Corvette at the local dealership. Once you move into Ferrari or Lamborghini territory then you start needing specialized services. You have to pull the back half off the car just to change the water pump on some of them. So there is a difference between a rarely driven garage queen and “My daily driver is an Aston.” levels of car ownership.
Dave? Girl Power is set in an alternate past?
I thought that it was a perpetual ‘now’, like the Archie comics.
I’m sure that there’s a comic term for that.
Floating timeline.
However, in the very early pages, it’s established that everything since has been kind of a flashback, as Syndey held a rank that was higher to that which she “currently” holds.
If you wanted a fancy, and good looking, Aston Martin, shoulda gone for a James Bond Aston Martin :)
Just assume the Aston Martin is a…I dunno what you’d call it, but let’s just say a live beta. You know, a product that is just enough together to send to people before full production to check for remaining wrinkles and such? Although Sciona is going to fight wrinkles all she can and then some… Now I’m imagining a super whose power is to give their enemy wrinkles.
Enjoy.
Dave’s Alternative Reality is way cooler than ours so of course the car looks better…
Payback is a bitch isn’t it? All your plans, Sciona, are always based on you’re thinking you are smarter and stronger than the universe, and time and time again, just like a bad DC comic villain, come crashing down. Maybe he’ll just extort money from you like he did the mob bosses, but I doubt it.
I once spent a few minutes chatting with an actual rich person, a woman was returning to her vacation home in the Caribbean. Had her staff waiting for her to arrive. She’d been staying at her other vacation home in Park City, which of course also has staff. I was genuinely curious how rich people see the rest of us, so we were just talking. Her cognitive disconnect was pretty intense, is the main thing I noticed. The 0.1% have no idea. Quite literally.
Which makes Sciona a regular person, like the rest of us, and a hell of a lot more relatable than rich people. But also I suspect it makes Deus extremely unrealistic as a rich person. He’s clearly something else.
How does one define “rich”? Following Helge, the 0.1% with private jets and chauffeured cars and personal assistants are pretty obvious. But where is the threshold these days? Two of my old friends from high school are comfortably into the millionaire range, one through careful long term investments and the other through a successful business. I wouldn’t call either of them rich. When I was a kid being a millionaire was bottom tier rich. I don’t think it qualifies any more.
“Rich” is when you are no longer compelled to trade labor for subsistence. When you have the freedom to do, or not do, without fear of losing your home, food, heat, light, water, etc.
Paradoxically, however, a person can only become “rich” if there is _also_ a sufficiently impoverished underclass to be exploited. People who are compelled to trade their labor (and consequently their literal lives) for _just enough_ to keep eating, stay sheltered, etc, _if_ they continue do so. Never enough to escape the exploited, laboring underclass. Because without anyone to exploit, there is no way to avoid _having_ to labor.
And that’s the real crux of the “rich” mindset. That famous disconnect. When we think of “rich people” in the Anglo sphere, what we’re really thinking of isn’t wealth per se, but the way these people are so oblivious to the lived experiences of the workers they are completely dependent upon. We become background noise to them, completely taken for granted. Air, water, sunshine, rain…and we, The Masses.
In your mind, the ‘Rich’ don’t (or, more likely to your thinking, won’t) labour?
Nah, that’s just Lazy (and you even find that amongst ‘The Masses’, the ones who feel they shouldn’t because they believe those who do are simply helping ‘The Rich’)
I once worked with a physician who was by that standard rich. She was like “I think I’ll fly to Tahiti for the weekend rich”. She was (relatively speaking) old money. She and her husband were both retired physicians. They got bored and he went to work with Doctors Without borders in Africa and she worked as a locum tenens at the psychiatric hospital where I was her administrative supervisor. She was the one who shared the observation that if you don’t raise your children to shepherd the money, they will piss it all off within three generations. The disconnect showed up in a couple of ways. One was her constant surprise that someone as plebian as I could have an interest in the arts. The big one was the trip to Tahiti. She just didn’t show up one Monday. No message, no note, no e-mail. Nobody at home at her apartment. She came dragging in on Thursday and was surprised to find that she didn’t have a job. A locum tenens is a “rent-a-doc and as such is an at-will employee. I know at least one co-worker kept up with her and I don’t think she ever acknowledged that she had made a mistake.
In the 70’s, having a million dollars in cash-viable assets earning money for you meant you were rich, as you could make $50+ a year doing no work, which was the equivalent of ~$300k income, which is top 5% of income earners today, comfortably rich.
Naturally, you’d need at least six million dollars today to earn the same amount of money, and more if you want to reinvest some of it so it grows with inflation.
Just having millions of dollars in assets, like land, that don’t intrinsically earn you much money, isn’t the same as being rich. Farmers are asset-rich and cash-poor, for instance. They can own millions of dollars on paper and make less than a $100k a year.
The huge disconnect is likely because the woman came from money. At the very least she didn’t have to deal with different circumstances growing up. I.e. her father became rich before she was born, or inherited a lot.
I’m getting the impression that Deus was not born rich, however long ago that was. He seems to me to have that first-generation edge, and also the first-generation urge to impress others with how rich he is.
Unlike say Tony Stark, who inherited a lot of money from Howard, and is portrayed in the movies as having that disconnect. I’m not sure if Howard Stark had lots of money or not; it probably varies by author.
Tony’s disconnect doesn’t come from money, it comes from not liking people (specially those who want to exploit him)
If he could remain isolated, tinkering with his gadgets, he would be extremely happy
He goes to an awful lot of parties and is in a lot of crowds for someone who doesn’t like people. He does a lot of his own publicity, and is famously a playboy.
I’m not sure how he finds the time; I assume he has an invention that removes the requirement for sleep or something.
There are extremely rich people you’ve never heard of, because they *don’t* spend their time going out to restaurants, partying, announcing new gadgets and initiatives, etc.
In later films he has changed a bit, but his character is still “billionaire playboy”.
It is true that he meets a lot of people, though those people are almost always other rich and/or powerful people, at least the ones he remembers facts about.
Hence the disconnect. Even if he talks to the bartender, the bartender isn’t going to tell Tony Stark about being behind on his car payments.
Have you seen how he is at those parties? He is as rude and as arrogant as he can be (just short of being blatantly offensive) so they will leave him alone
Of course he does his own publicity, so that he can control how people view him: as distant and (hopefully) as unapproachable as possible
If he doesn’t announce his new gadgets, how is he going to sell them and make his money? And he only sells a few, relatively minor, ones
You saying the bartenders is behind on his car payments? Why would he tell Stark that? Unless he was hoping Stark would just toss him a stack of thousand dollar bills at him (emphasizing why Stark doesn’t like people)
Or you saying Stark is behind on his car payments? If he was (why would he? he can just build his own car in his basement), why would he tell a bartender?
Okay…so I do remember being kind of concerned for/intrigued by the golem thing once we learned it was sentient. The question here is does it want to re-ally with Sciona, try to overpower her (in which case, will it win, lose, or draw), or is it just trying to snag some neat new abilities and move on for whatever unknown purpose (which she probably won’t allow anyhow)?
Time for a new body, Sciona!
Hardly, if that stays the only serious wound she is going to get. She easily healed wounds just as serious to her upper chest with her blood magic just after reincarnation.
Eleventacles!
And that’s why handheld shields are the poor (wo)man’s defense in comparison to super durability or skintight/bubble force fields.
It seems golem ‘son’ is back with a score to settle with Mommy.
What I want to know is when did having staff go out vogue? It really does seem common enough in literature of the periods they made us read in High School. It’s taken as granted in the Three Musketeers that all of them had a man servant. Most of the American era stuff has the staff as Minorities, either slaves or extreme lower class. But much like all men wearing hats (which I’m assured by many was caused by JFK) at some point we just stopped having house-keepers or gardeners, or what not. And it seems both odd to me, and a potential source of so much unemployment and homelessness.
MY guess is because modern design and fashion require much less upkeep and effort than the previous rich standard, and because so many other tasks have gotten progressively easier starting around the 80’s with technology. Just look at a rich person arranging a vacation in the old days where they, or an assistant, would have to actually talk to a travel agent to get all the options and have everything booked. Today that’s something you can do while sitting in stop and go traffic on your smartphone.
In olden days live in staff was a much easier thing. They cared less about legal minimum wages, maximum work hours, or holidays.
Today in western states it has become really complicated and expensive. In other not so progressive countries live in maids are still more comon.
The other thing is, we have washing machines, dish washers, do not need to carry coals from the cellar to every room, cooking appliances have become better, cars need less care than horses, electric gardening tools reduce the time effort for garden care, buying daily necessities needs less time,… Overall the need for home personal has drastically gone down.
There are exceptions, like luxury yachts. Or when you own multiple large homes, that somebody has to care for in your absence.
But as the rich are rich, because they know how to handle money, an often used solution for multiple homes are private luxury resort villas, where the staff is managed and shared by the hotel resort. In cases where you are realy rich you might even own multiple 5 star hotels completely. That is much more practical than owning multiple private villas that give the same service.
Increases in automation and outsourcing has made long term employment of “servants” less necessary.
Whether or not you regard this as a good thing or not is largely going to depend on how badly you need stable employment and whether or not you are fortunate enough to have skills other than menial.
“Staff” has many meanings.
When the ones with money were aristocracy living most of the year on their remote estates, with the locals who more or less exclusively farmed, then hiring staff was easy. You get them mostly from the locals, though some (such as the butler) might be someone from the city as they would be more up on the correct way to do things. Among other things, you could trust the locals more as you knew where they came from.
You needed staff because your house wasn’t just your own house. There were a lot of large parties, where a lot of business social and financial got done. This involved lots of guests staying at least the night (remote estate), so you needed a large house to house them all and staff to take care of the house. Which also meant you wanted staff who knew what they were doing or could be trained.
Servants became more expensive as jobs other than farmer, farmer’s wife, service, or the military become possible. The new industries plus the enclosures removed large numbers of locals from the estates.
The world wars changed a lot of things, including even more people moving to the cities and factories, or the military (and then the city afterwards).
The huge increases in taxation during and after the wars also meant a lot of estates changed hands and the new owners used those estates differently.
But we still have “staff”, we just don’t call them that. There’s an awful lot of house cleaning services, dry cleaners, and restaurants. These are all things that would have been considered “staff”. Though you rent them for short periods instead of giving them a job for life.
Wait, what? Men stopped wearing hats because of JFK? Which drunken frat party did you learn that ‘fact’ at?
Sciona’s thought in the last panel: “Not this again. I have told the staff to release the Kraken during the day, but to have it back in its cage by sunset!”
2024 Aston Martin is the result of time travel magic, maybe?
A more modern time machine than a Delorean.
I wanna wager it’s… something… related to that fantasy dimension (not the man-horse of necessity) attacking her because her current body is a super.
As it is likely not a golem/hag fish man, I want to just reiterate the theory there is a connection between them and the aliens that decimated Alari Prime, and how the Alari or just Sciona abducting and mind controlling this one with cybernetic implants may be what triggered their species to attack Alari Prime.
Hadn’t thought of that possibility. I would love to see those aliens reappear. They probably have quite a bone to pick with Sydney.
I should add as I worded it odd that since the Alari have “battle thralls” he might not have been the only one, maybe a lower tech colony or a youth colony (something immortal beings sometimes do to give the young a chance to make their own way of life), or just an uplifted similar looking species etc… but the Alari found them, enslaved them, and turned them into Battle Thralls, their fellow whatevers back home found the colony or protected species had been enslaved and decided to not only rescue them but “remove the threat”.
(aside from a colony there are all sorts of options, like a small family group, research scientists, etc…abducted by the war like Alari and someone gets out a distress signal and their species has an overkill policy to remove anything that threatens or attacks their people)
I appreciate the explanation but the amount of people that would know what model of Aston Martin you’ve selected and notice that it doesn’t line up with the era you’re working in are almost non-existent…
Also, you could have given her a Vantage or a classic late 70s/early 80s V8 Vantage (famous in The Living Daylights James Bond film in the Volante convertible config) but either way I can appreciate an alien blood witch who buys a sports car in British Racing Green lol.
Could be as simple variation explanation as someone with superpowers, directly or indirectly allowed a designer to come up with that model of car a few years earlier.
Every one is so certain it is Nota Robot that they are ignoring the obvious: the one behind this attack is SmugD, either directly (he sent Mr Ten Tackles) or Mr Ten Tackles has taking it upon themselves to do it (after SmugD whined about Sci being back)
If he knew about it, he could swoop in and ‘save the day’ (and try and force Sci back into his bed) or he can simply deny knowing about it and claim that Mr Ten Tackles is simply a no-longer-employed contractor (like he claimed last time one of his employees did something that failed)
Sciona, being a blood mage, must have a huge dry cleaning bill. Or clothing bills. Or gang-related dry cleaning.
Or she’s able to absorb blood even after it’s dried on clothing. Though there’s still a lot of holes…