Grrl Power #1407 – A plethora of powered
See, he’s not stepping across 3,700 light years, he’s simply walking from where one Harem is to where another Harem is, and as you can see, they’re all standing right next to each other. Relatively speaking. Look, it’s very simple, and not at all silly.
While Archon HQ is one of the places of relatively high Super density, they really don’t have all that many Supers there. Harem accounts for nearly 1/3 of the actual “bodies that have Super powers.” Achilles technically isn’t a capital S-Super, and neither is Dabbler. Heatwave is a weird case that I haven’t gotten into. She’s… more like Pixel, in a way, who, if you recall, is a Super, but only in her hybrid and feral forms. (Man, I really need to find time to go back and repost those pages in the 750 pixel-wide format instead of the old 643 px format I had before I redesigned the page slightly.)
In case you’re wondering about panel 4, starting at the top-left and going clockwise, the Supers shown are Sleeping Harem, Redline, Anvil, Varia, Showering Harem (spending a lot of time in that shampoo pose it seems), Super Hiro, Heatwave, Jiggawatt, Stalwart, Jogging Harem, Mr. Amorphous, Po-Boy Harem, Jabberwokky, and down in the bottom-left is Omar, who I think we’ve seen maybe twice. He’s Jiggawatt’s half-brother and works for Arc-SPARQ. Going by the “Super-Aura-Vision” Nthaniel has going on, it looks like they both have the same power, but they don’t. Not quite. It’ll probably come up in a future page, but there’s a reason Omar is in R&D instead of the field.
Before you ask, 1) Yes, he has electricity powers of some sort, and I did name him Omar so Sydney could try and work an “Ohm-ar” pun in at some point, and 2) No, I don’t know what “SPARQ” stands for. I called it that because it rhymed with Arc-DARK, which is a dumb reason considering Arc-Dark is an agency within Archon that no one below the rank of Major is supposed to even know about.
But it is what it is. Let’s say it stands for Super Power Assisted Research… uh… Quarry. Cause they’re in the basement. And they strip-mine knowledge from the fertile forest glens of… uh… ignorance? Maybe Query makes more sense Quandary? Don’t question the Quetzalcoatl posters pinned up here and there, either.
Oh, hah! I was looking through the archive a bit, which can be quite a bit of a time sink at this point, and look at the stinger on this page. Didn’t even remember I did that. I mean… IT WAS ALL PLANNED! Well, the major milestones are planned, but it’s nice when the gags along the way line up.
Kobold Sydney vote incentive! Is finally done!
So here’s my Blender griping story for you guys. I know there’s a potentially nude Kobold Sydney there, depending on which version you’re looking at (cough Patreon cough) so I hope people won’t pay too much attention to the blanket, especially now that I’ve pointed it out. Well, I don’t think the blanket looks very good. I was trying to take a texture and use the liquefy tool to put some wrinkles and folds on it, but it doesn’t really work well for that. So I looked up a cloth tutorial for Blender, and it seemed pretty straight forward. Make a plane, slap a texture on it, do a bunch of subdivisions, and that’s basically it. Run your timeline forward and it will flop over whatever other geometry is there, so long as everything is set with collisions.
I will skip over the part where it took me over an hour to apply my texture, because the texture wouldn’t render, and instead came out pink. Everything I looked up said that it was because the texture was missing and to go to File > Something > Something Else to re-link it. Only, that’s for if you load your blender files on a flash drive or email them somewhere and your textures wind up in a different folder relative to the blender file on the new computer. But I had JUST LINKED IT.
EVENTUALLY, I think I figured out that the tartan texture I found online might have had some non-standard unicode characters in the file name, like an “e” only it wasn’t an “e” it was an upside down Lithuanian “schwa” or something, and Windows recognized it, and Firefox recognized it, but Blender was totally thrown by it. Of course, I couldn’t find another post on the entire internet where someone had a similar problem. But after I renamed the file on my hard drive and re-linked it, it suddenly started working.
So as I said, I’ll skip over telling you all about that part. But it’s always something when I try and use Blender. But let me get to the really good part. After all of that, I learned that there’s no physics mode while you’re editing. Which means, you can tell blender that an object is supposed to flop around when you run the timeline, but you can’t go into edit mode and grab a corner of your floppy object and drag it around and have the rest of the object follow along and fold up and pile over itself. In other words, you can tell Blender that an object is a blanket, but you can’t make it act like a blanket.
I think what people do is make a blanket or sheet or a shirt or drapes or whatever, run the timeline to let it flop, then freeze the timeline and go in and very tediously edit vertices to pose their cloth.
Yes, I’m sure there are plugins that make that all possible. But guys, it took me an hour to texture a plane. I’m not ready for plugins. I am whatever comes before Beginner. More like “Unskilled Boob that Needs a YouTube Tutorial To Remember How to Scale an Object” – is about my level of skill, unfortunately.
So don’t look at the blanket.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
Well. I’d assumed for years that the supers were the Nth setting up some kind of game we mere mortals would not really be able to comprehend, but apparently it’s a surprise to the Nth. That’s worrisome.
Either it’s only a surprise to this specific member of the Nth or they’re not the Nth at all and there’s a superior race.
It’s turtles all the way down.
Mecha-shrooms in this case though
Perhaps mr Nth here is a evolved form of that fungus alien girl from way back.
Mm, though there’s also the fact that we’re thinking of the Nth as a single species, instead of the way they were explained to us – as more of a tier of advancement. So there could be multiple species at the Nth level, not to mention all the usual competing motivations and interests found in most societies.
ARC-SPARQ versus ARC-DARK is actually a good thing to aid ARC-DARK’s cover, since someone overhearing a mention of ARC-DARK who isn’t cleared to know about it will probably think they actually heard someone saying ARC-SPARQ.
So to translate for Nthaniel, he’s found something really interesting, he’s going to learn more about it, then go gossip about it with his coworkers.
From the moment he noticed Sydney to now has been, what? 20 minutes? Less? I imagine he’ll finish his investigation and inform the collective in the next 30 minutes. For something that doesn’t require the Matrioshka Brain, that puts this event pretty high up on the “interesting” scale for him.
Yeah, judging by Nthaniel’s reaction to Sydney, the collective as a whole will actually be thrilled by the shenanigans of Earth-style superheroes, and start watching them for fun, making best-of video compilations etc, while the more serious ones put in a bunch of safeguards to keep them from conquering the galaxy or accidentally delete the universe through a bad superpower combo.
On the other hand, if they were the type of bored immortals who spectate the mortals, they’d have been watching the galaxy all along, and would already have noticed Earth making a big splash.
Seems all the Harems show up in the 2nd last panel except for the one thats curled up in a sort of feotal position.
I figure the options are:
1. Harem copy still forming
2. Harem copy de-vorped to prevent it aging
3. Harem copy with life-threatening injury
4. Harem copy dead
5. Harem copy secreted away elsewhere.
6. Harem’s original self, unable to teleport or be de-vorped.
Well Harem has explicitly stated that none of her copies has ever died, so #4 is out.
Yes, because Harem has totally never lied and always tells the truth about everything, ever, especially when it comes to the disposition of the sixth body that none of her friends or co-workers have been told of yet.
The lap-sitting Harem is also not in the 2nd-to-last panel.
We can expect that with distances on the galactic/interstellar scale, Harem will again develop a sixth body. The last time she travelled that far, to the Alari homeworld, she did discover her sixth body and told the rest of the team.
Or the 6th one is a Harem from the mirror dimension and she is curled up because she has a beard and is crying.
OK, what’s going on with Stalwart? I get that Nth vision sees a representation of powers, but it looks like he has a robot head in his chest and a metal skeleton.
Stalwart, a man barely alive. Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology. We can make the world’s first bionic man. Stalwart will be that man. Better than he was before. Better… stronger… heavier.
He could just be a comparably low-level super with a powerful “core” that can distribute powers across the body if needed, using some form of metaphysical/metaphorical conduit system. Such super-mechanics could be quite common, but the others just have too strong of an aura that it washes out theirs.
Considering his core is just flight, strength, and personal but only skin level invulnerability the only question is if he has an additional power we haven’t seen yet. Perhaps… he has a machine head? Better than the rest? I mean it is a green body with a red skull… oh crap..
You are thinking of Hiro. Stalwart has strength, related durability and the ability to change his weigth at will.
So this dude is basically saying “This is some crazy shit. I’m gonna take a pic and post it on Nth-Chat.”
Super Power Assisted Research Quorum!
Quorum, noun;
the minimum number of members of an assembly or society that must be present at any of its meetings to make the proceedings of that meeting valid.
SPARQ: We’re not understaffed, we’re just living up to our name.
Re: Blender:
* You can pin one or more vertices to an Empty or something and then move it around in Object mode.
* Amongst Blender’s sculpting tools, there are a bunch of cloth ones. They make whatever surface you are sculpting with them magically behave like cloth.
Pretty sure Jigga noted that her brother, Omar, had more computer friendly, or electronic device control type powers than her more direct electrical powers. But in all honesty I didn’t know it had been noted that Omar was her brother. I think we just knew she had one and figured he was elsewhere.
Its interesting that Dave notes Achilles isn’t a super with a Capital S. I’m not sure if that means his immortality powers aren’t part of the regular super source others enjoy or if its just achnowledgement he’s more of a regular guy who doesn’t need to worry about death or injury.
At least we now understand that the N’yah was less about Maxima having her power than it was about a 3rd unpredicted event was within the same vicinity. Considering even just Sydney and Harem together was considered concerning to NthAniel, I can understand why its Alarmed after visiting Arc HQ. Deus believed the “Superion” field was artificially created by, maybe, these Nth creatures, so I imagine if they work out it is being “hacked” by humanity, they’re gonna do something about it.
It was on one of the patreon exclusive pics a while back, but apparently Achilles was hit with a Gypsy Time Curse or whatever if I remember right.
Is Achilles actually immortal, or ‘just’ unkillable? Does he age?
He is unaging and invunerable since the eigties if memory serves me correct.
Yes, how in the world does Achilles not “technically” count as a capital-S Super?
Does the invulnerability come from something other than the superion field?
Reminds me of the last story arc of Schlock Mercenary, only these galactic absentees have better surveillance of the galaxy.
After “Square Root Access” I am wondering what would happen if Nthaniel walked into a room that Krona was in?
Ah, there is a tall human with some form of mental powers and a shorter human sitting in his lap. Does she have … AARG! I’m blinded!
Krona: Oh, shit! Invader. [ Slaps alarm button ]
Leon: What?! Where?
Ah crap baskets. Collective? They are the Borg aren’t they? -_-
Wait, Achilles isn’t a real super and Heatwave is only kind of a super? EXPLAIN.
We’re definitely long overdue for a major update and expansion to the grrlpower cast page.
Also anyone can update the GrrlPower Wiki, but no one is.
Wiki link https://grrlpowercomic.fandom.com/wiki/Grrlpowercomic_Wiki
Easiest explanation of SPARQ – it was named in honor of girl genius universe. Q is there just to look cool.
This. But the Q a nod to Q of the James Bond franchise…
The density of Nerdominium is pretty high in Arc as an organisation anyway, and the acronym would have been unanimously applauded by the people in the department.
Super Powered Assisted Research Quartermasters (department). So SPARQ becomes the SPARQ’D
Uh oh, he’s gonna snitch.
Super Power Assisted Research & Queries
Super Power Assisted Renovation & Queries
Super Power Assisted Reduction & Quantification
Super Powered Analysis of Research Quandaries
Super Powered Analysis of Ridiculous Questions
Super Powered Analysis of Regular Questions
Super Power Assistance for Research Queries.
Well, considering that ARC – SPARQ likely supplies the majority of specialized gear for ARC-SWAT, then the following would be perfectly reasonable:
Super Power Assisted Research & Quartermaster.
(For a bit of side reference, in the James Bond movies and books, Q Branch stands for “Quartermaster Branch”, and does both R&D on weapons and other gadgets, but also supplies said devices to agents… similar to the Quartermaster departments in various military branches handling materials storage, transportation, and supply.)
If Omar has powers that are similar but different than Jiggawat, then it might make a lot of sense for him to be in ARC-SPARQ if his electrical abilities are based on the ability to see and measure the flow of electricity through devices, along with Technopathy… the ability to directly interface with electrical devices. This could be from acting as a human TV remote, to being able to mentally communicate with anything that has computer chips or even being able to read magnetic drives by the electrical impulses of the magnetic polarity just by touching it.
This would make him functionally as powerful as Jiggawat, just not nearly as well suited for field work. (At least, not until he finishes his pet project of making the equivalent of an Iron Man Mk 97 suit that doesn’t need a Jarvis or Friday AI to help control because his brain just interfaces directly with the systems and controls it at the speed of his own thoughts.)
Hey, c’mon, nobody whines about lifeguards ordering people out of the water when sharks are sighted. That’s not snitching, that’s doing your job.
Wait, Achilles isn’t a Super? I thought MATH wasn’t a Super. I’d totally capitalize Achilles’ Super. It’s not always terribly useful, but it’s definitely a Superion-derived power.
The description of Achilles indicates that he appears to be in his late twenties and un-aging. Most of, if not all, of the capital S supers came into their powers sometime in adolescence. Achilles’ apparent age would imply that his power was somehow acquired at a later age rather than being innate. If you go with this line of thought Maxima would also be a lower case s super since her powers were acquired after exposure to the geode. Of course we can’t have that.
Super Powered And Resolving Questions
I’m just trying to figure out what those different effects infer about their abilities. None of them are solid grey like Sydney and buff alien pilot dude whose name I forgot. Which I assume is the indicator they’re just normal chumps. So what does it mean. Like let’s just focus on Anvil, we know she has mass manipulation or kinetic energy absorption but what is really going on there? Does she even know. Does her body operate like a personal black hole or something? I’m just guessing mind you. It could mean anything.
Thanks for clarifying the people in panel 4. I must have missed something though, because I don’t recall anyone by the name of ‘Redline’…
Mr. Amorphous appears to be similar power category as mystery orb. Harem is wormhole orb colored. I think it might be a clue. Maddie’s me think mystery orb is cargo via size/mass manipulation.
*blink* Wait, so Omar is Jiggawatt’s half-brother? So, he’s in the same boat as Mr. Amorphous, and cheated on his partner with Prinrin during the lust aura incident Parfait started? Which is technically worse than Mr. Amorphous, as the former isn’t married (he and Brook are a steady couple), but Omar apparently is, and is also apparently okay with cheating on his spouse? Or, is this a last-moment ADHD-born impulsive “hey let’s have Omar fill the half-brother slot!” ret-con, and @DaveB forgot in the moment that Jiggawatt was called in from her half-bro’s wedding reception during the fight with Vehemence? And also that Omar has more middle-eastern features and cultural attitude (the burka comment), and they don’t really resemble at all (yes, I am very aware that siblings can look very different, especially half-siblings, don’t @ me about that; compared to the rest, it’s a minor point anyway).Unless Jiggawatt suddenly has two half-brothers, but has only ever mentioned one in comic?
Don’t get me wrong, I’m okay with them being half-siblings, but between the aura incident at the half-bro’s wedding reception bits, it just seems to be an ill-fitting re-con, is all.
Kobold Sydney is very cute. Hopefully that will get Dave some more scalie readers.
Yes, I used AI to figure out what SPARQ could be. muahaha!! And then I copy-pasted the best ones only.
Supernatural Phenomena Assessment and Response Quarters: Headquarters for assessing supernatural events and crafting rapid response technologies, equipping heroes with tools to handle otherworldly threats.
(the query said super heroes, not just heroes, what is that ghostbusters??)
Superhuman Power Amplification Research Quest: An initiative focused on quests to amplify and refine superhuman powers through experimental R&D, aiming to unlock new levels of heroic capabilities.
(sounds like doing 9 to 5 science, even if it’s R&D, is not their thing since it must be a quest. Bad AI, lol. Also “superhuman power” instead of “super power” is gauche)
Strategic Powers and Abilities Research Quadrilateral: A collaborative network researching strategic uses of powers and abilities, forming a quadrilateral alliance of scientists and superheroes for innovation.
(and 2 other groups AI forgot to mention)
Super Powered Artifact Recovery and Query: A team tasked with recovering powerful artifacts and querying their origins through R&D, to harness them for superhero enhancements.
(close enough. The “Q” is hard. Your AI free trial has ended without suggesting the purpose of that team could be handling Q continuum level threats, which would sound VERY USEFUL soon)
What a quadrennial quandary. We need to be quasi quaquaversally querent to find a proper word but all we find is being quaintly querulousness about it. We better quicquidlibet quicksticks before quiritation instead.
P.S.: the word you need is probably “quickly”, “quarantine” or even “queue” because even world-ending disasters need triage. Come to think of it, “super power & abilities (aka, useful non-supers) research & quarantine. Because they have some prison cells ready, nicknamed “mr. contagious” for him and his… cell… of tiny criminals… and another for his viruses who can only survive long enough for research in a cell?? Also for the life of me I can’t figure out what the “arc-” part stands for. Aside for a setup for an ark-bark type joke you’d have to be a woof not to see it coming!!
It’s interesting seeing how Nthaniel sees all the supers based on their powers. I am really curious what someone like Achilles will look like to him. (what’s the nth dimensional version of a pause button?)
I’m glad you explained the 4th panel. I was assuming Stalwart was the guy carrying the bank vault and Mr. Amorphous was the guy cutting bank alarms and Nthaniel was following up on whatever Harem was saying.