Grrl Power #1380 – Grand theft carbo
“Hey I have some pool water with food coloring in it, what should we do with it?”
“Let’s package it in wax and sell it to children. Because evil.”
“Wow, you had an answer for that right away.”
“Eeeevil.”
“Is… the wax edible?”
“It’s not not edible.”
If I had been doing my job properly this whole time, Harem should have been in about 50% more of the comics. Not necessarily for potentially comedic reasons, but for practical, in-world reasons. There’s five of her, and she allows for uninterruptible communications. Not only that, if someone does smack her behind the ear with a sap or hit her with a knockout dart, the hers that are still conscious will know about it. More accurately, she will know about it, because there’s only one consciousness/sapience between the lot of them. So Max would make a habit of distributing her around the base and tagging her to go on any missions. The only reason she hasn’t been on a lot more pages is that each person I draw takes time, and sometime the space on a panel is a little precious, so cramming a Harem in the back if she’s not contributing to a conversation would make sense for the worldbuilding, but she often gets cut for practical reasons.
Harem has worn that shirt (or a variant of it) before. It says “STOP STARING” in braille, which I think is really funny.
Sydney has been having a lot of dreams about being a space mercenary/pirate/paramour of large lizardmen/general thug/delivery girl of questionable packages/street urchin since the Lapha incident, but only about 50% of it is her brain processing Lapha’s memories, and the rest of it is her brain filling in random detail like brains do while dreaming. As far as spontaneous larceny goes, Lapha and Sydney’s personalities are pretty far apart, and so far there hasn’t been a whole lot of cross contamination. Whether or not that remains the case while Sydney is in alien town is another matter.
There is a new one coming soon, I promise!
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.
So who else is coming with them? I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess Stalwart, artificial gravity environments seem like the kind of place where being able to control your own mass could come in useful, especially if somebody tries arresting/kidnapping/otherwise detaining the group by ramping up the artificial gravity to immobilise them.
Yes Stalwart should get some more screen time. I like to imagine him as a educated and well dressed man who enjoys the finer things in life.
Math would be good for this trip–his training would let him observe contestants and give Maxima a tactical run-down.
At some point, um… Gestalt Chick?–needs to go to space for some testing. Step one, have her touch various aliens to see what effects pop up. Step two, have her specifically touch multiple aliens of the same species to see if her powers are thematically linked or even identical across a given alien race. Other possibilities–totally random, no effect (ie, she can only trigger on human DNA).
They could already test Varia with everyone on Coras ship and every species in the council.
Given the superion field seems involved, it seems likely it only works with terrans. But it would be nice to have a science corner to confirm that.
can’t read Baby Ruth without thinking about Sloth XD
Sloth love Chunk *nods*
Gee, mister. You’re even hungrier than I am.
That is Captain Chunk!
I love the image of a team member setting out on a mission, patting down their pockets.
Phone, keys, wallet… Fuck I forgot my Dabbler.
Nice catch.
Got to say have not seen a real team ready room , where you have a locker to put ALL your personal stuff.
And then an Ops gear box for the stuff you put on for the mission.
When DaveB brought up the mention of detecting stuff in sanitation, I was waiting for the “Andromeda Strain” protocols where they remove your hair, dead skin, and make you flush your gut.
Do not know about police forces or any paramilitary-type organizations, but when I was in the military, we kept all of our field gear in our quarters. Weapons were, of course, kept in the arms room. We would be told when we are deploying, and that morning, we had better show up with our gear ready to go. Unit armor would issue our weapons from the arms room, then it’s off to our vehicles. We did not really have a briefing room either. There was a meeting room that the officers used when planning things.
Pretty much exactly this from my experience as well. The only times we got issued weapons and ammunition was for range time (and believe me, they kept a count of the ammo issued and used, and only issued it at the range itself) and when we were deployed.
When deployed, they didn’t bother with securing the weapons and ammunition, or ammo counts – but if you were ever with your weapon not in arms reach, expect a right royal reaming from anyone who noticed you being that stupid. Not a survival trait that one.
Dave would definitely need to do a gear up montage page. but none of these guys would ever say ‘Lock and load”
A stress test of how durable Achilles really is? Can he tank a corrosive whip laced with pixie dust and nano-bots wielding nano-lightsabers?
Dabbler could come up with most of those weapons and they would have a healing super handy.
I doubt they pick anyone with powers, those are better kept on earth as contingency in case Maxima does get stuck.
I believe (at least I think) that Achilles is a fixed point in time.
i wonder if anyone has ever targeted his heel?
No Harem, i will not.
Would that shirt sell as merch?
That was my immediate thought. Most Webentrepreneurs (google says it’s a word) usually sell merch to make money on the side.
Not that you need to spend more time on art that isn’t the comic, but art that brings money in to support the comic is OK. :-)
You could do a line of Baby doll shirts that you’ve been dressing your characters in, and honestly, even if they’ve never read the comic, the “Stop Staring” one is funny / broad enough that a non-nerd would wear it.
Be careful of who you sign up to run this for you, some places place “copyright” on stuff you sell even if you designed it, some place it on stuff they design for you (Which is ok, since they designed it), and some do neither.
Only if the dots were raised / tactile.
That is the whole point of braille.
There might sometimes be an additional dot on each side that messes up the braille. So the reader needs a second read.
If you use the cheap type of “draw a picture on a tshirt” then it will be very readable under fingers.
And yes, that needs to be a real tshirt.
If Daphne and Maxima aren’t wearing their chokers, then why is Sydney yearing one? Is this going to be one of those brick jokes or Chekov’s Gun situations?
She hasn’t taken it off yet. I expect that choker to be placed in her quarters on base and left behind on her long-distance jaunt.
So Harem powers question here. If she learns the spaceship layout well enough to teleport to it and then the spaceship travels across the galaxy could Harem then teleport across the galaxy as long as it was to the ship? What if she learns the geography of entire planets? What are the upper limits on her powers? This trip could buff her immensely.
That is a very good question indeed.
I think it has been implied that she has some kind of distance limit. Except, then that makes me wonder if she would then just ‘uncreate’ one of her bodies and then ‘recreate’ it out in space. And if either method is the case then wouldn’t she just leave one of herself out in space forever? It would be insanely valuable for her own personal growth mission of just trying everything she can, and for Earth if she did so officially. Either way, its hard to see how she doesn’t leave a copy out there.
I thought her distance was limited by vision and familiarity? I think she said she could teleport home from basically anywhere, but the further away the more familiar she needs to be. But Harem has shown she can essentially blind jump when they were infiltrating that villain base. She just needed to see the destination.
It might work in comic-verse, but not based on logic. Up until now all of her teleporting has been within a single reference coordinate system (the earth). That system is constantly moving, but all the points she’s going to are all “fixed” when looking at that frame of reference.
Once she leaves earth she has to factor in the fact that the earth is both moving and rotating, and whatever she is standing on/in is also moving/rotating in a different direction and a different rate.
The one time she was off-planet she was disoriented to the point she couldn’t stand up. I assumed it was because her eyes told her she was standing still, but the planet was moving her relative to the other “hers”. I think there was an in-comic explanation, but I can’t remember where that explanation was. In this case, leaving earth on a space ship should give her a chance to adjust to the sensation.
She wasn’t disoriented because of motion, she was disoriented because they had shifted in time and there were too many instances of her due to temporal overlap of a body.
Please. If you want serious evil sweets packaging, you go with candy cigarettes. I’m old enough to remember my parents buying them for me as a kid.
Did I mention Dad died of lung cancer?
They still exist. I don’t remember where I was, but I saw them for sale on the shelf.
I would not be surprised if they had been on that shelf since 1970
what I never understood was the packaging. Popeye? I don’t recall him ever actually smoking
They still exist down here, they just… rebranded them and removed the red ‘tip’
Not sure what candy has to do with lung cancer though
“So Max would make a habit of distributing her around the base and tagging her to go on any missions.”
Maybe. An indispensable asset that you rely on all the time is actually a liability long term because you eventually lose it and don’t have a replacement. It’s one of the reasons things like armies work – they train and have replacements for basically everyone. Corporations generally learn this lesson also. I am not military, but I think Maxima would know that lesson also.
One more? I can’t think of anyone off the top of my head. Vehemence would love it, but they can’t put him near the battles for just that reason. Not to mention violent felon. Anyone got a good guess?
that’s an unavoidable aspect of superhero stories where only one person has a given plot-relevant ability.
If it were me, I would only utilize Daph in that capacity for certain ‘high risk’ missions as a backup to their normal comms, where there is also a high likelihood that regular communications might be disrupted by the enemy. Utilize an asset like Daph too much for more mundane missions and such, and she might get tired of it; in addition, there’s a higher chance someone might take notice and wonder why one specific officer is always there.
We already have essentially real-time communications anywhere on earth. So I agree that particular one of Daphne’s unique skills wouldn’t be worth the risk in relying on her vs just normal comms.
But having most of the team’s heavy hitters (Max, Sidney, and I’m assuming Dabbler?) travel off planet somewhere that the fastest comms (even FTL) could take days changes the situation.
I hope it’s written in puff paint.
Yeah, that was my thought on her shirt, as well. Or something that stands out to give some dimension to it.
That make me wonder how would Harem react to a memetic attack. Something like ‘The parrot’ from the short story ‘BLIT!’, or the Pyton’s ‘World Funniest Joke’. Would it affect only one of her, or all of her?
She’s only got one mind across her bodies, and her brains are quantum-entangled, so I imagine that a cognitohazard like those would affect all of her.
Now I’m wondering how hypnosis would work with her.
Are we going to get a payoff on the ‘infinite Harems’ plot point of the trip to allow Sydney to farm XP by killing giant Space Whatsits on the planet of the blood witch whose name I can’t recall and am too lazy to look up?
As I recall, she was a bit discombobulated while on that planet, and not an effective Comms source.
The discombobulation was not due to distance but due to time shenanigans.
It was due to the fact she suddenly found herself as an extra (she left with just five bodies, suddenly there were six)
Those and wax lips…. I had a jew that could chew nails…
Though grammatically correct, I don’t think that came out as intended. That aside, I actually kind of liked wax bottle and the wax lips. Of course, I was kind of a weird kid and would save up the wax to make things or just melt it down.
She does realize that telling her about the free candy was a mistake right? Besides the sugar content problem, we all know she’ll end up with terrible sleeping and eating habits only to constantly end up just reaching for the candy as a filler.
“Harem in the back if she’s not contributing to a conversation would make sense for the worldbuilding, but she often gets cut for practical reasons.”
If she isn’t speaking anyway, can’t you just say she’s out of frame?
Especially since she can teleport, so you don’t need to worry about spatial continuity that much. Even if two successive panels show the entire room, she could just have vorped around randomly, staying behind the camera.
And if you do need her to have a speaking part, just draw her in and leave it open whether she was always there or has just vorped in.
I could see Math coming along to scout possible opponents and brief Maxima on their fighting styles. He would be absurdly good at that
Is that the Holy Handgrenade of Antioch?
“Those are free Sydney.”
That’s not the point. The point is she didn’t know they were free when she took one, she BELIEVED it would be stealing and she still did it.
Believe Maxi was reassuring her that, while she believed she ‘stole’ the candy, they were, in fact, there for everyone to just take (assumebly just one at a time and not take a handful for later)
So, yes, that is the point
Sidney: Ah, Manny, Manny, Manny. You know you shouldn’t be trying to cheat us like that. You remember what happened when you tried to cheat us on the Devastatinator 3000 battle, right?
Manny: … Lapha?
Sidney: Um… Sorta?
Braille shirt.
Same joke as when I saw the Braille menu at a McDonalds quite some years back.
It was behind plexiglass.
In the Drive-through.
I shit you not, I actually saw this thing.
I believe you, they kept giving us the Braille menu when they found out that my friend was deaf. She was deaf, not blind, what is wrong with these people?
Just out of curiosity, when are we going to find out what Sydney’s last orb does, and when is she going to get that promotion to corporal?
If this is all a setup to get Achilles’ heel cut off…..
and why do I keep getting these ‘403 Forbidden nginx) errors when I try to post lately and it takes all day to get in and someone else says the same thing I wanted to in the meantime ? :(
It’s an old glitch that seems to have returned (was happening to me for the last month or so, did manage to leave a message stating it was happening a couple times)
*decoding the braille on Harem’s shirt*
*running to the comment section excitedly*
Hey guys! Harem’s shirt says … wait. There is probably someone else who already said that.
*ctrl+f+”stop staring”*
Aw beans.
… Isn’t this the Harem with the ahegao arm sleeve?
The shirt would be funnier if it said “Keep Staring” given that it implies the blind person is groping her.
Yes Dave, her shirt is very funny :)
To be fair, the shirt would be impossible (or really difficult to read by touch, even if it was raised type. Braille must be a quite specific size (a symbol should fit under a finger), so its target audience is mostly seeing people who work with Braille, and nerds who know Braille just-because.
“paramour of large lizardmen”
“delivery girl of questionable packages”
….I snickered a little at that combo
I’m surprised that nobody guessed Vehemence yet. I bet he would excel at arena fighting.
That’s… kinda the problem
Plus, he has been ‘loaned out’ to Big Tom (on the condition neither ever come back to Dirt)
I am absolutely adoring Maxima’s faces in the last few pages. They’ve just been really dynamic.
Always happy to see the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch make an appearance.
May its targets, who are naughty in His sight, snuff it.
GORRAM IT… I want a non-parallax view of Harem’s shirt!
Nevermind… smarter people already translated it (*kicks* dirt clods as she wanders away sadly)
Say, did they do any testing with Coras crew or other aliens?
Like, what powers does Varia get from aliens?
Does Cora have anything that can hurt Achilles? (assuming she has something Dabbler didn’t try?)
Scanning the orbs with Coras latest scanners? (assuming they might be betterr then Dabblers spells).
they have to be building a Scrooge Mc Duck type vault in their new dungeon right?
Testing
I’m getting 403s.
Sydney’s disguise has got to be a Fursuit…. Surgically applied.
Love when Dave draws more comic funny expressions on Max, it’s such a rarity.
At least she took thebbest candy bar.