Grrl Power #1368 – Reasonably petition it up the chain
When Max shows up at Faulk’s office in her dress purps outside of “the usual times,” he knows there’s going to be an ask. And in this case, the ask is “me fight big danger, friend gets paid.” I’m sure there’s officially military rules about gambling, certainly in uniform, though I’m not sure about while on leave. I imagine it’s probably fine as long as it doesn’t ultimately bring disgrace to your branch, or missing going back on duty because the Thailand version of Fat Guido broke your knees backwards over gambling debts. Come to think of it, I don’t think I know a single Thai name off the top of my head. Except for… Sagat. Which I assume is about as typically Thai as Guile is an American name. Technically Max herself wouldn’t be gambling, though, so… it’s probably fine?
Any sensory organ is technically a scanning device. Although to me “device” implies something that is either detachable or self-contained. And yes, a tongue is technically detachable. But usually “detachable” implies “retachable.”
I had Cora call out the galaxy/universe thing, not because I think Faulk and Max would confuse them. Well, Faulk obviously doesn’t care about the distinction. It’s not relevant for his purposes – especially as Cora points out, intergalactic travel is uncommon at best. I guess I drew attention to it because, as I’ve said before, I watch a lot of MST3K, and a lot of old sci-fi movies do one of two things. One, space consists of the solar system. Attack of the Neptune Men. Mars, mars, mars, martians, Attack from Mars, Santa Clause Conquers the Martians. First Spaceship on Venus, etc. Two, space consists of the entire universe. Which, yes, is correct, but old movies treated it too casually, like “The zabvronians have invented a bomb that can blow up the universe!” or “Let’s fly to my starbase, it’s just on the other side of the universe!”
Anyway, Faulk is incorrect in saying that the universe (or even just the galaxy) has only seen that one demonstration of Max’s power. You can bet they’ve scoured Earth’s media for every single scrap of information about Max and Supers in general. So they know what the public knows, and if we’re being honest, Terran information security probably isn’t up to defeating determined alien hackers, so quite a bit of classified stuff in in their hands as well. But not everything. Early on in the information age, several nerds working with classified information about Supers realized that the breadth of powers meant that electronic systems probably had some unforeseeable vulnerabilities, and now, most of the most super-duper classified stuff was never committed to computer. And then someone saw Read or Die, and decided to transfer most of that stuff to sheets of plastic, because weirdly, no one has discovered a Superpower that directly manipulates plastic. Unless it’s being worn as clothing, and then someone like Ashly the clothing-kinetic. Or if it’s being used as armor or a weapon. There are powers that can manipulate categorized things like that. But just sheets of plastic sitting in a filing cabinet? Not saying the Power doesn’t exist, just that it’s not been discovered yet.
Oh, and I’m sure very few people noticed, but the pictures in the frames aren’t my art, so credit where credit is due: The Ship, The Horse.
The vote incentive is finally done!
The update to the TWC image is pretty minor, but the Patreon version has the bonus comic as well as nude versions. I will strive to make the next one more timely.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
I’m sure he’ll give in so we can have a story. I wanna see the group have fun at a space coliseum and I’m sure a bunch of heavy hitters being off planet will let some villains get up to some shit on Earth. Maybe this time some of the B-team can go on the trip.
It’s nice to see General Faulk again.
I’ve missed him. ^_^
He seems to be looking a little less like Peter Falk, the actor.
Because he was never modeled on Peter Falk
It’s the dude from that Aliens movie (the third one? with the cloned Ripley)
I’ll go with that. but then he also looks to me like Peter Falk. it’s the quizzical eyebrow thing. He still looks less cartoony to me.
Got the Aliens movie wrong (it was Resurrection, with the cloned Ripley, 3 was with the dead Ripley), and the actor General Faulk is modeled on is Dan Hedaya
Seems like Ariana should be in on this conversation, seeing as this recreational activity ‘for max’ will involve lots of cameras and publicity.
Maybe the reason you don’t know a single Thai name off the top of your head is because they’re insanely long due to some rule that no two families can share a surname. For example, one of my friends is named “Sinchai Rungsantrattanakul”.
Hmm, Becky Armstrong is a Thai actress, so too is Milk Pansa
But neither of those are Thai names. Armstrong is a British name (she’s of mixed ancestry). Milk Pansa’s real name is Pansa Vosbein, and Vosbein is a Dutch name (also mixed ancestry).
They are, still, names of Thai actresses
DaveB simply stated He didn’t know the name of a single Thai name, He never asked for a name in Thai (not sure if ‘Sagat’ is an authentic Thai name, or just the name of a someone from Thailand)
Eye Spy a cranky “Puff the Magic Dragon”. :)
I don’t think it is exactly Puff… there is something in the back of my mind that recognizes the dragon but not as Puff but as somedragon else.
Same here, at least it wasn’t a giant purple dino :P
I get that he’s Puff, but how is he cybernetic?
Puff the Magic Dragon?!? 0_o
General Faulk, and the Deathmatch Gambling Scene, should be glad, there are no recordings of Mightay Halo soloing three planet destroyers and treatig their death swarm as xp pinata until they turn grey.
Certainly.
Secret abilities shown, Actual demonstration of her limitations, FTL capabilities demonstrated.
That’s the kind of stuff you want to keep secret from the galaxy.
I mean the only “limitation” shown by Maxima was that if she spreads out her blast it’s less powerful.
Also she showed just one part of her power set.
Keep secret from the *universe*, cmon; The Mightay Halo is going to be one of those exceptions to “intergalactic travel is prohibitively expensive”, because Nth tech.
HALO power tree unlocks— Current: Interstellar Warp …>Inter Galactic Warp (cue Beastie Boys) …>Inter Universal Warp (cue Space Oddity)
Fun fact; while the distance between earth and the nearest star is over 8000x greater than the distance from the sun to Neptune, the distance between us and Andromeda (2.5 million lightyears) is only about 25 times the diameter of our galaxy(about 100 kilo-lightyears depending on how you measure it), and there are a *ton* of dwarf galaxies that are far, far closer. ie the Large Magellanic Cloud is about 163 kly, and there are some very close ones that our galaxy is in the process of eating/spaghettifying.
Interplanetary to interstellar is a massive jump in scale, but once you can circumnavigate the galaxy without stopping for remass, you can start reaching out to nearby galaxies.
Also… yeah, Max getting into a fighting tourney where aliums can get a lot of data to sus out her likely limits and capabilities dramatically increases the odds that aliens try to gank/bodysnatch/etc her and/or invade earth, believing they’ve found a way to deal with her. Unknowns are scary, no one wants to find things out with their face, but knowns can be planned for. There might be a lot out there thanks to earth media, but more is worse.
This will come back to bite them.
(alsoalso, really, a chunk of the winnings should go to ARC, so it has some cash for off-world activities, dealing with aliums, and for what trade they can legally conduct(and opt to engage in illegally). Including hiring Cora(or other aliums) in the future, or paying her a retainer)
It has always bugged me when people mix up interplanetary and interstellar, star systems and galaxies, and name every star system a Solar system. We live in the Sol/Solar system because our star is Sol. Other stars are not Sol just as every tissue isn’t Kleenex despite the mental ubiquity.
My understanding is that we have a moon, named Moon. Similarly, there are other solar systems, while we’re in the Sol System (from what I can find, it’s not Solar System, but Sol System), another lowercase s solar system would be called [Star Name Here] System; such as Polaris System or Vega System, or the RMC 136a1 System if we extend that convention past its logical ends.
A solar system is any system where a singular star has planets orbiting it (sometimes called an exo/planetary system), and we just named our star Sol, or literally Sun if you want to use English over the formal Latin, making our solar system’s proper name “Sol System”.
Contrasted to star system which *usually* refers to a system of 2 or more stars that are gravitationally bound.
And to confuse things even more, you can say planetary system to refer to a binary star system because the star system has planets, or basically just any non-star bodies orbiting one or both stars, and you can legitimately just call that same system just a star system.
Basically, the rules are loose and kinda vague, probably because even in the most esoteric levels of astronomy, there’s no practical need to actually staple down these terms to a solid and distinct definition. And even if it were to happen, it’ll have decades of inertia in everyday language to overcome before it’s common knowledge (see why people easily fall for a “Nutritionist”, while “Dietician” is the accredited and defended title).
I saw a video the other day.. Earth is actually Tera and the Moon is Luna.
And yet we call the Moon’s surface the Lunar surface which then means it is called Luna. Oh and Earth is called Terra hence the term Terraform, to mean “convert to Earth like”.
Also not every culture on the planet calls Earth “Earth” or the Moon, “The Moon”.
well we are stuck with the greek or latin names of stuff.. English people call the Mediterranean island Sicily, but the Italian name is Sardegna..
when we eventually get to Proxima Centauri having got a working warp drive (that does not have relativistic problems)
we will most likely find their name for our star is the language version of ‘ nearest stars’ :)
Are you sure of that? I thought that Sardegna was the Italian spelling of “Sardinia,” which is also part of Italy.
well we are stuck with the greek or latin names of stuff.. English people call the Mediterranean island Sicily, but the Italian name is Sardegna..
when we eventually get to Proxima Centauri having got a working warp drive (that does not have relativistic problems)
Um, Sicily’s italian name is Sicilia. Sardegna (called Sardinia by english speakers) is a different island.
If I were Fauk, I would agree, but try to extract the following conditions:
Someone who’s not Maxima or Sydney, but still pretty strong goes(Stalward or Kevin for example), Arc Light is allowed to hitch this ride(invaluable intelligence gathering opportunity), she’s allowed extra matches to earn some extra credits(galactic credits are very valuable especially with assistance of the mighty Halo).
Yup. Those conditions would make it more than worthwhile.
Provided everyone’s fairly confident that Maxima’s actually able to hold her own (and honestly, if she *wasn’t* a statistically-rare powerhouse, there wouldn’t be much of a security issue in the first place.)
Cora did say she’d be a ringer. Presumably, Cora has a pretty good idea of how tough the opponents are. So she’s at least confident in Maxima’s ability to win. And even she hasn’t seen all of Maxima’s abilities.
One thing I would suggest all sci-fi writers to do is to spend a few hours messing around in a scale-accurate space simulator. Like, I don’t care if you genuinely want to tell a story about a Type-4 civilization, but you should AT LEAST have, in your own mind, an idea of the scales you are trying to convey before you start writing, or you’re just going to make people who are familiar with the mind-boggling magnitude of space roll their eyes.
Even a single galaxy is way, way too big a playing field for most space operas.
Depends on what you want to do!
In this case, the galaxy seems to be intended as an unimaginably vast backdrop, with people and factions occasionally dropping by erf, or earthicans venturing out to a location or two. So long as the writer remembered that even an empire of a million star systems with a billion-quadrillion people wouldn’t be more than a regional power, it’s fine.
There is a galaxy of civilizations, and some of them have formed international bodies that try to keep order. But so far it doesn’t look like the comic will be concerning itself with them beyond background fluff and a source of exotic characters, occasional field trips, and the odd plot point.
Agreed.
The German pulp series Perry Rhodan often pulls this off well. In one battle in the Andromeda Galaxy where the good guys were loosing they were suddenly reinforced by people some even the local nations, that had thousands of years of space travel, had never heard before.
At least 50,000 years of known galactic history, several galactic-wide conflicts and they didn’t know every FTL civilization in their home galaxy.
Is that… Puff the Magic Dragon? From the old old OLD cartoon?
Damn that is a hike down memory lane.
Just what I always wanted to see; a piss-off “Puff” fighting an old, campy, Japanese super-hero that suddenly got shapely lol.
For anyone who’s young enough to have never lived life without a cellphone, this is what I’m talking about: https://vsbattles.fandom.com/wiki/Puff_The_Magic_Dragon
Heh Heh Heh, Puff the Magic Dragon fighting Shin Ultrawoman. XD I’d do PPV for that.
I grew up with Ultraman, but I was unaware of a female version.
yeah, there was a whole family of them. Different head crests on each one.
The other issue is the same type of bounty-hunters that attacked her in New York could show up at a match to try and grab her, so she’d need security/backup. Sure, not only would Max get some needed venting/fun, and building up some credits would be a huge help, but is it really worth the risks? I’m on Fauk’s side on this, it’s very risky. But I also like to see Max going all out as well. Maybe some clothing “mishaps” ;)
Halo, Cora, and Dabbler between them can probably handle security.
at the same time those are basically all your heavy hitters, all of earths (or at least the US) “Maxima” level fighters, I would leave at least Halo on earth to defend the planet, Dabbler I think would be a necesity to keep Maxima informed of everything
Hallo should only walk the galaxy in covert intelligence operations or outright warfare.
NTH tech should stay secret for as long as we can keep it that way.
Sure they can handle one Fel ship, but can they handle all of the galaxies major powers.
Also I wouldn’t send heavy hitters.
Maxima hits hard enough, you want footsoldiers who can keep a secret and intelligence officers.
I would say Peggy,Cora,the arc light wizard, the minigun action figure shaped dude, the alien mercenary with the reconfiguring sword an Achilles.
Take into account that up to around a century or so ago, galaxies were thought of as nebulae within the Milky Way galaxy, which was then the known universe.
It’s no wonder that science fiction in that era, and for many years later, would use what we now know is incorrect terminology.
Add to that the linguistic redundancy. Galaxy means quite literally Milky Way. Calling it the Milky Way Galaxy is like saying ATM Machine, which is Automated Teller Machine Machine. Of course, why not call it the Andromeda Milky Way?
Milky Way does not mean galaxy. The Milky Way refers to the band of light that cannot be distinguished as individual stars by the human eye which looks “milky” against the night. So, Milky Way Galaxy is correct and Milky Way is not a synonym for galaxy.
Etymology: It was originally written Gala-kuklos, Greek for milk circle.
Don’t forget using your PIN number to access the ATM machine.
Most average people have no clue about the relative size and distances between Earth and Moon, much less the Sun and Earth. Going beyond that is just beyond most people’s ability to comprehend. I’ve studied a few real-scale simulators multiple times, and spent quite a bit of time star gazing. At one time in my life I could look up, instantly pick out planets vs. stars, and could envision the earth’s rotation and the other planets’ orbital paths then predict where the planets would appear the next night. “Mars is there, and we’re moving away… Venus is there and is catching up to us… tomorrow they’re going to be over there and there.” And even I get lost in scale once you get past Saturn.
For somewhat realistic portrayals of space and physics, watch (or read) “The Expanse”. It’s limited to the solar system, though.
There was one major sci-fi universe where they did do a decent job of portraying the size of the galaxy, and that was Star Trek. One entire spin-off series was based entirely on the premise of a ship getting supernaturally flung to the opposite side of the galaxy and how long it was going to take them to get home using normal means.
Just to add to this, and we’re just gonna have to assume that people can grok the size of just planets in our solar system – Jupiter is HUGE, yes, but you can fit it, and every other planet including Pluto between Earth and Moon, and still have ~8000 km/~5000 miles of wiggle room.
To be honest, even I have trouble wrapping my head around Warp Travel speeds, & I’m a Trekkie.
“Light-Speed” is the distance that light can travel in 1-year. Our galaxy is somewhere between 100’000 & 200’000 light-years across (Let’s assume the lowball size for ease of comparison).
That means it would take a beam of light 100’000 years to cross the entire galaxy.
Light travels at a constant rate in a vacuum, approximately 300’000 km/second. This means that light can travel approximately 5.88 trillion miles (9.46 trillion kilometers) in one year.
So, again, using the smallest estimation of the Milky Way’s size, our galaxy is around 588’000 trillion miles wide, or about 5.88 quintillion miles (9.46 quintillion km). (this is assuming I did the math right in multiplying 5.88 trillion by 100’000).
In my current looking for the relevant information, Warp 9.975 works out to approximately 5,126 times the speed of light (5’126c), which works out to 1.86 trillion kph (1.68 trillion mph).
ASSUMING all of this math still lines up amidst all of my searches for information & previously-worked out math equations, it would take a ship travelling at that speed about 19.5 years to cross the whole galaxy, assuming it kept its speed constant.
& Voyager wasn’t even crossing the whole galaxy….it only had to travel 70’000 light years (just under 2/3rd of the total distance). Even accounting for stopping for exploration or resupplying, that’s a significantly lower travel time than the estimated 75-years Voyager claimed to be looking down the barrel of.
The Voyager was not travelling at Warp 9.5. Except in exceptional emergencies, Federation ships are prohibited from travelling faster than Warp 5 to prevent destabelising Subspace.
That was only for a brief moment in time. They fixed that problem later on in the show. Voyager could maintain warp 9.8 for up to three months at a time.
From memory alpha:
“Intrepid-class ships such the USS Voyager, on the other hand, could maintain it from three days up to two months. (VOY: “Workforce”, “Workforce, Part II”, “Friendship One”)
In 2370, the Federation imposed a maximum speed limit of Warp 5 on all vessels (except for emergencies) due to concerns over high warp factors causing damage to subspace. (TNG: “Force of Nature”, “The Pegasus”, “Eye of the Beholder”) This limit would appear to have been temporary.”
As usual, long-running sci-fi shows that spit out lots of technical numbers tend to have countless discrepancies. Going with the assumption that people can make minor mistakes with numbers when verbally speaking things (dialogue on screen) really helps to bring things into perspective. But then online resources that use spoken on-screen dialogue as references incorporate these minor mistakes, and nerds and geeks can’t seem to grasp this.
Memory Alpha has different information in different areas. On the main Voyager article it has: “… was capable of reaching a sustainable (sic) of warp factor 9.975 nonetheless it usually travelled at lower speeds of about warp factor 6.2 and was only able to sustain speeds over warp 9.95 for a couple of hours”.
Then in the Warp Factor article it references the “official unofficial unpublished” Voyager Technical Manual, supposedly used by the shows original writers as a reference.
Page 12 has:
WF 9.9: “… ship can exceed Warp 9.9 for only a few minutes.”
Then the table on page 13 has:
WF 6.0: Normal Cruising Speed. Indefinite, as long as fuel remains.
WF 9.2: Normal Maximum Speed. No mention of time Voyager can sustain this speed.
WF 9.6: No Voyager-specific sustainability notes, but mentions can cross 100k LY (entire galaxy) in 52 years.
WF 9.975: “Maximum rated speed can be maintained for 12 hrs.” This appears to be a discrepancy with WF 9.9 mentioned on Page 12. But a reasonable assumption is that “a few minutes at WF 9.9” is without damage while 12 hrs at WF 9.975 is “War Emergency Power” that will cause major damage to the engine and should only be used in situations where certain destruction will occur if you don’t go that fast.
Going farther, the VTM states that 75 years was based on continuous speed of WF 9.6 (assuming along a realistic travel path & distance, not a straight line), then mentions that was clearly not possible. A more realistic estimate based on realistic down time for maintenance and engine cooling would be 200 to 400 years (page 14).
I’ve watched all of ST:TNG, much of ST:V and a little of ST:DS9. I don’t recall them ever even going to Warp 9 for more than a few moments, and I get the distinct impression that going Warp 9.975 (which is MUCH faster, considering the Warp scale is *at least* an exponential one until it asymptotes right below Warp 10,) for any significant duration would destroy the ship.
And then let’s not forget, they actually need fuel, and IIRC there’s at least one Voyager episode where they’re desperately looking for some.
So I’m not certain, but I actually tend to believe they really did the math on this, and got it right.
Warp Speed and most fictional FTL drives don’t matter.
Most science fiction settings have the bad habit not really establishing distances and what is where.
That way a ship can arrive whenever the writer wants it to.
In Star Trek ships can stay at their mentioned maximum speed only for a limited time. I think it’s often around 12 hours, but that’s pushing it. They can stay at cruising speed as long as they have power.
The Warp 5 limit has been lifted during TNG with the introduction of some kind of damper if I recall right. It has been mentioned on the side once.
For me, one of the defining features of a “device” is that it was intentionally designed and assembled by mortal agents; organs and appendages normally occur naturally (unless they’re prosthetics, which would also make them devices). Yes, I’m including “design and assembly by a divine creator” in “natural” for the purposes of this categorization.
Re: Military rules on Gambling.
I don’t believe that there are any, beyond what local commanders impose on their people based on the local commanders’ personal opinions.
At least that’s how it works in the Navy. I know that I’ve had COs who forbid any form of gambling, even Moral, Welfare, and Rec Committees’ lotteries, and on other ships, I’ve participated in an at-sea poker tournaments with one particular run with the CO sitting at the table right across from me that ended with me accepting his personal check for $800… And after I commented that I might never cash it, rather frame it and hang it on my ‘I Love Me’ wall, he begged me to cash it as soon as possible because my wife was known to host meetings of the Wives’ Club where his dear wife might happen upon evidence of his loss.
Proof that even COs have People they report to who don’t necessarily wear uniforms.
On Joint bases/missions, I’ve played poker with Marines, Coasties, and Soldiers, but oddly never Air Force. Most of the Air Force types I ran into were kind of Bible Thumpery… Which always struck me as an odd thing to find in a military force.
I thought the rule was “don’t go into more debt than you can afford to pay off tomorrow in cash”?
And that it’s all about security risks of people being blackmailed.
It is dependent on the CO and is governed by the same rules as other risky activities; i.e., don’t get in too much trouble and you’ll be fine. When I was stationed in Hill AFB, the local area was anywhere in 6 hours and Vegas (8 hours away) because it was a lot easier to let the Airmen go to Vegas than it was to punish half the base every long weekend
The first military rule relating to gambling is NEVER bet more than you can pay. “Financial responsibility” is in the UMJC, and you can loose a stripe over it.
The second military rule relating to gambling is “no fraternization”. ST:TNG actually got this one right. The poker games were 100% rank separated.
And gambling with your CO? WAT? Maybe the Navy has different customs, but my mind boggles.
UMJC? Do you mean UCMJ? Unified Code of Military Justice?
Well, I HAVE been out for…34 years.
I know debt and financial trouble can be a problem for security clearance at certain levels.
I think a gambling addiction would fall under that.
If he says no, she should just use her vacation time. :p
She’s full time military, she can’t go on leave to any location that would leave her outside of communication/quick recall range without permission, nor to any location that is designated as not being allowable (I forget the official term).
So if you are in, say, San Diego, and the military for some reason says that Mexico was currently off limits, you are not allowed to go to Mexico while on leave.
This comic is the last place is have expected to see Puff the Magic Dragon.
When I woke up this morning I was not expecting to see a sexy Ultraman today.
Is that Puff vs Ultrawoman?
You’ve really up’ed your game on the art. Great work! The general looks really lifelike. Although you can’t see the resemblance to that actor who he is supposed to look like.
Otherwise a good comic.
I would love to see a pay per view channel that spcilizes in interstellar fighting. Just imagine what odd ways some species and cultures could come up with. Just look at our boxing, We don’t even use our feet to fight in that one. So ritualized and the cultural implications are so facinating. Really, just imagine what anthopoligest at galaxy grade collages would think of it.
If they’re deathmatches, doesn’t that risk Max, ya know, dying?
Seems not worth it. Isn’t there a non-lethal league?
Do Supers in the Grrlpowerverse have Ace and Deuce levels like in the Wild Cards universe (in Wild Cards, a “deuce” was a power that was trivial or useless, like being able to change your skin color)? Would a Super with a really weak power still be physically imposing?
Max is going to have strong objections to killing sapient beings for sport, so will insist on being in the non-deathmatch division.
Send Achilles and make bets that nobody can knock him out in 5 minutes.
Is this Faulk a general? And only a star? I’m a little surprised, that’s like the lowest general. With the amount of people and wide range of duties ARC has, I would think that he (Max’s boss) would be at least a three star general. Especially after ARC swat went public.
Considering that Arc has only a couple dozen personel, or lets say 200, having a general as a commanding officer is an expression that the army takes them very serious indeed.
Normally a unit that size would be commanded by a first lieutenant or captain…
200 people? I mean ARC as a whole. And you think the big building only has 200 working in it? Especially while being the main POC of the council and dealing with aliens, both military and diplomatically? Whoever is the head of all that better be more than a Lieutenant General one star.
I imagine a pinnacle for this sort of scenario being a no holds barred rematch between Maxima and Vehemence. This honestly seems like the perfect event for him, unless he’s forced to be a few miles away until its his turn so he cant feed off the residual energy from other fights.
It’d definitely be the perfect *escape opportunity* for him.
Once he got powered up there’s no telling what magic he’d be able to pull out of his butt.
To be fair, it’s not so much “friend gets paid” as “asset already responsible for otherwise-impossible interstellar help to the United States gets to keep doing what they do for us.”
Actually, “galaxies” used to be known as “island universes”, so the terminological difference is not so well grounded in English.
I’m not sure about the rules in the US, but given the number of game show contestants that show up in uniform, I’d say that legal gambling is alright and illegal gambling is illegal no matter what you’re wearing ;)
I like how Faulk is not only concerned about the possible ramifications for national (and planetary) security, but he’s also loathe to unnecessarily risk Colonel Maxima’s life on this. It’s nice to see commanding officers who genuinely care about the lives of their subordinates.
I like how Cora corrects him about the universe/galaxy distinction, and then he actively chooses to double down on saying ‘universe’ anyway.
My college roommate was the son of the Thai ambassador to India at the time. Chulvat Narinthrangura. The only Thai name I know, but I’ve never forgotten it.
Note that Dabbler was able to stall Maxima completely in their off-camera initial fight with superior force field technology, and trying to hit someone with an energy beam like that in a duel is basically a pipe dream. She’d have to sacrifice her speed for energy, and likely just waste the shot. A true ELITE combatant is going to be much less discomfited by energy blasts and have ways to deal with them, because Elite in a galaxy with super science and magic alike.
Dabbler explained very recently that the only reason why she was able to draw with Maxima is because she was super charged with Tantric energy from her smorgasbord with Hoss, and Dabbler since to be specially powerful galaxy wide maybe there are other entities at her level but likely its very rare
To be fair I would want to know how much clear space would be needed to ensure the alien wrestler didn’t do a chock hold that blow up a nearby city due to the impact of it.
I knew someone back in the day who had his tongue reattached. They’re totally reattachable, so long as you do it quickly enough. Ice can increase the amount of time you have to perform the operation.
That associate tended to like to claim it had come loose from some turbulence during a short flight he took, but as I understand it, the real issue was that even sports cars are usually not designed for landing particularly well, especially when the driver is showboating and sticking out his tongue at a passenger who claimed that he wouldn’t be able to get airborne over a particular small hill rather than paying attention to where exactly said car is landing and when.
To be clear, I do not know exactly what is meant by showboating in this particular instance. I am only able to give the description of behavior provided by the passenger in question, who survived with all limbs attached, because he was wearing his seat belt and bracing for impact like his life depended upon it.
RE: Military rules in this situation.
1) You know what you call an off duty Sergeant? “Sergeant”. You carry your rank 100% of the time. This is about 5x over for Maxima, who is an O-5, a commander of an elite unit, instantly identifiable, and celebrity. Vacation status has no bearing on this.
2) If she were injured, and this injury impacted her ability to do her job, she could (and should) be charged with “damaging government property” (specifically, her body). That’s if she acts without permission. If Faulk permits this, then he might well face a fitness for command review. Ariana DEFINITELY needs to be in the room here, and, after reviewing the footage, Faulk needs to talk to HIS commander because…
3) There are strong national (and, implicitly global) security issues here. Yes, some significant chunk of the galaxy has seen her one-shot that battleship, but a series of bouts would give a MUCH more detailed understanding of her capabilities. We don’t want the nasty types to have certainty–if they doubt, they are less likely to act.
I honestly have a hard time seeing the upside for the US in allowing this to happen. ARC-* is clearly dominating the scene locally–there is no need to impress Terrans. As mentioned, it is a BIG galaxy, we really don’t want to be showboating at this point.
Of course, the rule of cool absolutely applies here. I’m not going to complain if it happens. This is supposed to be entertaining science fan service/tasy, after all.
Want to hear upsides:
The potential to earn galactic credits(which are really valuable when you have access to ftl travel like the Mighty Halo)
The potential to assess the capabilities and nature of a large group of demonstratively hostile and dangerous entities(alien mercenaries)
The potential to scare the Galaxy with another asset besides Maxima and Sydney(send Kevin and/or Suckhole they would be into it, just as impressive as Maxima)
The potential for making galactic contacts.
Still I agree he should talk to his commander.
This is the kind of decision that is taken on the political level.
On net. I’m not saying that there are no potential advantages. I’m saying that the downsides swamp them.
You know that we never published the SR-71’s top speed until it retired?
You know that the USSR refused to publicize crop production numbers DECADES after the fact?
You know that the Allies did not publish the fact that they completely broke the Gemany codes during WWII for fifty years after the fact?
Serious actors take intelligence VERY seriously.
Which means there should be an equal or greater intelligence trade off.
Like getting an indication of the strength of their strongest soldiers and androids, knowledge about the general limits of Galactic tech and an access to the Galactic news.
Also we can minimize that by sending Kevin instead of Maxima.
Comparibly strong, but uncontrollable enough to not be an actual asset and different enough to be no indication of her strength.
Suckhole would work too, but would probably ask for a higher salary than Kevin.
You want the galaxy to know how strong your criminals are(this I defeated, but I can do more)
Sydney doesn’t have ‘ftl travel’, she has a pocket worm-hole
Also, if ‘we’ aren’t spilling secrets, why the doodle-poodle do you think ‘they’ will?
Yeah, as a comic book fan, I’d love to see the matches.
As a person considering world security, there’s no way in hell I’d ever consider having Max filmed in a variety of matches which might display her range of capabilities.
There’s LITERALLY nothing an alien race could pay which would be worth that security breach. And that’s because Halo and Max can each take down alien star ships to find tech if needed and Halo has the ability to go shopping and get tech which would take years to reverse engineer.
There’s just no reason to earn the currency that’s worth the risk.
And even if we HAD the currency, we still couldn’t buy all the restricted tech which is above our civilization’s tech level, as I understand the rules. We’d be resorting to criminals and smugglers to get the tech…and honestly, Halo is better at smuggling than most professionals.
the chair cora’s sitting in is missing in the last panel.
*breaks into song*
Puff the Magic Dragon, Lived by the sea.
And frolicked in the autumn mist, in a land called Honna Lee.
Seems like a job for Achilles. He can’t lose. And he can outlast anyone. Dabbler could lend him a space weapon of some sort. Maybe some space brass knuckles or a pair of space steel toed boots.
The Achilles situation is exactly why most professional boxers have managers.
Achilles can actually win by outlasting opponents. So the manager’s main job would be to arrange matches for Achilles against opponents who wear themselves down and who would also be vulnerable to Achilles’s attacks.
The only issue I see with Achilles is he’d likely be unable to land the finishing blows against the top tier creatures. That and almost every adversary who’s gone against him has quickly worked out their best bet is to simply trap him in some way so he can’t do anything.
Its difficult to tell from this talk if the arena rules would allow that, but Cora probably isn’t thinking of someone like Achilles for the “can’t be beaten” role, so there could be rules that would eliminate contestants unable to continue, or even ring knockouts.
On the other hand, there might be lower category fights he could absolutely dominate, even if for far less money.