Grrl Power #1396 – Inevitable escalation
Basically, the fight proceeded to a best of five against scion-boy, which is to say, three rounds. At that point, some pedestrians had started watching. Then Glaive-lass asked for a fight, to which Max suggested they come at her two on one. That’s when the betting pools started. Now it’s up to 4 on 1, and there’s a lot of quatloos about to change hands, one way or another. Yes, Sydney wagered on Max. But only after she bought the equivalent of a boba tea, so she only had 5 `loos left. I imagine the dollar-sign symbol for quatloo is a Q with a line running top to bottom, ending in the tail. Or if you’re fancy, a double line with double tails. Hmm. Maybe the double line version would have the tails facing different directions, which… might make it look like a capital Omega. Lower-case omega looks like a butt.
ω
It’s a good thing upper-case omega looks cool. You don’t see a lot of superheroes going around with a lower-case omega symbol on their chests. Except Power Girl, am I right?
So… anyway. Yeah, Maxima’s pants have the same “force field” effect that her gloves do. Is any above-the-elbow glove an opera glove? Or an evening glove I guess? Well, not the rubber kind you put on before you give a horse a rectal exam, obviously. And not to totally switch topics here, but suddenly I have the image of a horse’s rectal thermometer being the size of a yard-long summer sausage. I mean, there’s no reason a normal-sized one wouldn’t work. I suppose you might have to hold it in place. I just mean the physics of the expanding mercury. But still, my mind went straight to an image of a thermometer the size of a grown man’s arm.
Right, gloves. Well, a quick googling seems to confirm that the majority of above-the-elbow gloves are just called evening or opera gloves. I suppose if they’re made of leather or are fingerless or have a bunch of unnecessary zippers or studs sewn into them, then someone might have cause to give it a different name, but I guess there’s not enough styles like that to formalize a word for it.
Oh, by the way, the background guy in the gasmask isn’t a pop-culture cameo, so don’t strain yourself trying to place him. Maybe it’s not fair to mix and match like that, but sometimes I just need a wide guy in a cloak to take up space.
Ooh, look! A new vote incentive! And it’s updated with color!
Well, in progress, obviously. I have another one that’s actually a bit further along, but everyone was all, “Sydney Kobold vote incentive!” So I switched to this one. Plus the other one was a multi-character picture so it will actually take me longer to finish. I hope to have an update for this one each week, so stay tuned. There is a slightly higher res version on Patreon.
By the way, this gunmetal blue-ish background and teal pencils are how I draw the comic. I set it up this way so I don’t have to spend all day staring into a bright white blank page.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
Last panel: wouldn’t it have been funnier if the ‘sound’-effects were ‘Hop – Skip – Jump’? just a suggestion.
Great page by the way, as per usual.
Skipping is forward, skooting is sideways.
Guess he was describing the movement.
Maybe “Hop” “Skip” “Jump” “Hah” ?
Gasmsk Guy may not be a reference, but Robot Gorilla sure is!
Zygon in the background
Shout out to Ed Wood!
If you’re referring to the diving helmet-headed gorilla, that’s from Robot Monster, which was directed by Phil Tucker, not Ed Wood. It was on MST3K, though.
Yeah, recognized Robilla, not sure from where, but still recognized them
Although, though it was more of a space-helmet-head (don’t recall ever getting a good look inside the helmet…)
Lower case O-mega is O-micron.
Omega and omicron are different letters, both with upper and lower case forms. (Omicron looks just like our letter O.)
That sound above you is the joke passing you by :P
Quick, give it a wave
You do know you can post Greek letters like Omicron (Ο ο) or Omega (Ω ω)?
And others like Æ or ᚠ.
Also, there are a LOT of ranks between O-mega and O-micron. O-kilo, O-deka, O, O-centi, O-milli…
What is the tecknical term for a full arm gauntlet?
There is probably one in Japanese. I saw something like that in a few cartoons and other manga. Never a real life set of something like that though. Wonder if it’s practical?
What you are referring to is called Oda Gote (or Kaga Gote) in Japanese which means armoured sleeve.
In Europe the plate armour covering the arm is called a Cannon (with upper and lower sections), which considering the slang for muscular biceps and Max’s power seems very appropriate.
Manica, roman-era arm armour. Most known from gladiator kit, but was used elsewhere as well.
thank you dave… i never knew, nor did i ever think i NEEDED to know that there are lower and uppercase greek lettering.
You say “rounds”, but this is a street fight with no impartial referee. How does it end beyond one side being literally unable to continue? (knocked out, injured, exhausted, dead, or forced submission)
A round could end when either party scores a major hit or temporarily incapacitates their opponent. Like, in the previous comic when Max knocks sword-boy on his butt, that was round 1. In a martial society such as theirs, there are probably a pretty good set of rules, either official like a code duello, or unofficial. Like how you have to “check” in a half-court 2 on 2 game of basketball. For example, any blow to the head or body that is not blocked or deflected is a hit and ends the round.
Since this was not a fight in anger or wartime combat, the involved parties may simply agreed off screen as to what comprises a round. As Marquar notes, the Stygans are a martial society. There would be rules. Unless they breed like rabbits and need a high attrition rate, they wouldn’t want their up and coming fighters killing each other off. I have read that that was occasionally a problem in renaissance Europe.
First of all, this isn’t even a duel, this is a collection of extreme-sports enthusiasts having a pick-up game. Nobody’s out to actually kill anybody. At least not yet. That may change if someone feels that they’ve been insulted, or finds out Max is cheating. Which kinda amounts to the same thing.
Second, consider historical “Codes Duello” from human history as an example of what martial cultures get up to, and you obviously must have some kind of rules framework that, most of the time anyway, prevents people from actually getting killed. Otherwise the martial culture is impracticable, because you’d simply run out of fighters and then your culture wouldn’t be martial any more.
For example the Code Duello generally observed in the era when duelling was considered an acceptable way for Americans to settle disputes, in the 1760s or so up to sometime around 1850.
First, no rifling was allowed in duelling pistols, so their accuracy at forty paces (or even twenty) was shit.
Second, the structure was fairly rigid – each combatant got three shots with their pistol, combat halted between rounds, and both had an opportunity to yield (losing without dying) or call it off (resulting in a draw without a death). If someone yielded, their opponent would get their way in whatever dispute they had even if both survived.
Third, yielding after getting a non-fatal bullet wound was considered no loss of honor. Nor was granting your opponent a call after non-fatally wounding him.
Fourth, and not discussed much, a lot of the combatants didn’t actually want to kill each other. They had a dispute, sure, but an actual duel was a way to have a dispute, and possibly resolve it, without broader accusations of cowardice. Their culture sanctioned cowardice heavily, and if you had a dispute, leaving it unresolved could attract the accusation.
There were a lot of exceptions to the third rule – some men didn’t yield even when wounded, or offered their opponent a call after wounding him instead of requiring him to ask for one. There were a lot of exceptions to the fourth as well. Some people genuinely didn’t want to live in a world where the other was still alive and challenged them to a duel only as a somewhat-legal alternative to outright murdering them. The only real exception to both of those was a man named Cassius Marcellus Clay, but I’ll talk more about him later.
Cowardice was a serious accusation in the American South. It could result in your family disinheriting you, in people refusing to invest in your business or become business partners with you, in banks refusing to give you loans, in loss of revenue because people didn’t want to buy anything from you, and to top it all off it gave your wife one of the only two acceptable-at-the-time causes to initiate and actually be granted a legal divorce from you. The culture sanctioned cowardice heavily, and duelling was a way to negate the accusation.
The only real to both of the third and fourth death-minimizing rules was a man named Cassius Marcellus Clay. He toured the American South giving firey anti-slavery speeches, frequently got death threats (often written in blood), got challenged to a lot of duels, challenged anyone who sent him one of those death threats to a duel, challenged any slave owner in particular who slandered him (and MOST OF THEM DID when he was in their area) to duels, and Never. Ever. Lost.
Clay was a good shot even with crappy duelling pistols, he was absolutely out to kill people, the people he challenged were almost all slaveowners, and when he faced a slaveowner he never ever yielded, called, or accepted a call, even after taking two bullets. He had several “draws” when the duels ended because of the three-shot rule, but he never “lost.” He planted over thirty of those bastards in the ground over his long career, but his combination of skill and sheer commitment to each duel resulting in his opponent’s death regardless of whether it resulted in his own, were complete outliers.
I admire him for never getting distracted by thugs, goons, soldiers, lawyers, legislators, apologists, administrators, or any other proxies. The men he was after were the slaveowners themselves, he considered them to be the root of the whole corrupt system, and duelling meant to him only that he had a quasi-legal way to get at them ignoring all their lackeys.
Is that a Drazi next to gas mask guy?
If only it had just been a jump to the left and them a step to the right.
NO!! Sydney (and Daphne) have had enough Time Warps to last all six of them multiple lifetimes!!
All your Ro-Man are belong to us!
“At what point on the betting form do ‘must’ and ‘cannot’ meet?”
Just white trash mobs to a player like MAx
….And Max draws too much attention to herself. I suspect this will come around to bite them later.
Max is definitely enjoying herself.
Good for her!
Next: Some shady agent asking her if she ever considered a career in professional fighting…
I’m really loving Stygan Maxima. The way she’s drawn looks so fluid and stylish.
I’m not sure if it’s been mentioned before, but what happens if Maxima gets tired or uses up all her super energy. Is it just a quick nap? Do her abilities fall to the level of a regular human? How does she recharge?
I think Max’s first fight with the guy who could turn into sand (the other draw), it was said to have lasted hours(?).
So I don’t think she has to worry about running out against opponents who are portrayed as being more or less human-level.
I don’t think it’s ever been implied that Max’s powers run down the way Sydney’s do. Max’s powers work more like a Power Framework from Hero system, where she has a set of powers and a pool of points that she can allocate to them. Sydney’s powers are more like a complicated Multipower. There’s a term for the energy limitation as well, but my rulebooks are up on the third floor.
Hey, why is the Ro-Man Extension Unit XJ2 watching this fight? Aren’t there worlds he needs to be conquering?
From the smile it looks like Max is having fun. But the only non-controversial way to end this is to allow one hit, preferably from one of the guards. If from the “love interest” it would severely affect “young lord’s” standing, even if the hit occurred during 3-on-1 fighting.
Get distracted by another opponent, allow the hit, nod/bow to the guard in respect, thank them for the fun, leave.
That said, it looks like “love interest” may be the one about to land the blow. We’ll see Monday.
Is… that an elderly Hammerhead in front of Altus?
The guy in the gas mask and cloak is obviously a Plague Marine from WH 40k.
Now we need a cameo from that obscure 1950s color cartoon alien, Colonel Bleep!
Redeye from Oblivion (the 90s movie with George Takei and Julie Newmar)? Wow. That’s an obscure cameo. Bravo. I hope you watched it riffed.
I get the feeling that if word gets out about this, the odds on Max are going to tank when it comes to the actual event – that’s assuming it doesn’t turn out she’s creamed all the opponents in this extra-mural series of scuffles.
Swapping to a different disguise before she shows up to the event would resolve that problem. In a comedic turn of events you could have her going through several disguises and she ends up scheduled to fight herself.
Swapping to a different disguise was the plan from the beginning.
It looks like Maxima is having a good time I bet she can´t let loose that often
Hmm, I forgot that Max has super speed. It’s not so much that she’s skilled and strong, but to her perception, her opponents must seem like they’re moving in slow motion.
Uh-oh. Maxima is smiling. While in a fight against vastly inferior opponents. Who have a fetishistic adoration of superior fighters.
She failed to keep Sydney’s genre-savvy “not too memorable” admonition and now shit is gonna go sideways.
Some kind of blood feud may be declared. Alternatively footage of this is going to get out and go viral among Stygians who will promptly swear their undying allegiance and create a factional threat to their entire government. Or someone will analyze the video and notice evidence of flight powers or something else completely impossible and call out a fraud. Or all three at once. Or something.
Intending to not even make a ripple on wider consciousness, Maxima is doing a cannonball splash right into the middle of the Stygian’s cultural values.
This Will Have Consequences. Consequences far out of proportion to the original intent.
The guy in the Gasmask and cloak reminds me of Doctor Disaster (He’s a youtuber).
Should’ve been one of those weird trundling cyborg guys from Fifth Element. Head kind of looks like that anyways. But I guess they have all kinds of plates over their upper arms and dials on their chests that would take a bunch of time to draw.