Grrl Power #1425 – Time jump well spent
So this may seem like a bit of a jump, because it is. Basically I realized this quick little jaunt to the tournament had already taken about 4 times as long as I’d intended, because as long as I’ve been doing this, I’m still terrible at self-editing. So I decided to jump past Cora and probably Sydney meeting with Cora’s guy who places proxy bets for her, which would lead to Sydney getting distracted by the guy’s bodyguard lady and some side story or something, so instead Sydney zoned out on space-fiction.
This a dangerous environment for Sydney. She suddenly has access to ten quarillion hours of new media. Granted, a lot of it wouldn’t be interest to her, like if some race largely only creates content on par with Noh plays or something. Not exactly Sydney’s cup of tea. But I hear the Alari version of Ugly Betty is… well, kind of dire, honestly. But the Woof version of Ghosts is pretty good and the Mentellan version of iZombie is great, only it’s not Zombies, its iCoreWardHiveDrone. (Someone has been licensing Terran media to the galaxy for over a decade now. Gee, I wonder who it could be.)
This scene happens about a day and a half after the night of size-mismatched partners brought together by alchemy. Cora and crew finalized Maxima’s disguise, dropped her off, placed bets, all that good stuff.
Here’s one of Gaxgy’s in progress shots of the painting Maxima promised him. Weird how he draws almost exactly like me.
Made some good progress with the picture this weekend. I need to finish up the platinum bikini and the background and do the mini-comic, but I should actually have this one done in time to start working on the one for next month maybe! Woo!
Patreon doesn’t have a nude version yet, but I’ll try and update this each week until it’s done.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
I am placing my bets as Maxima is the left-bottom robot with the five red eyes.
Or top-right whatever-that-is. They’re both about the right size from the wide-angle shot and not looking like they’re going to be relying on magic.
Though it would be funny if Max is the pixie.
Gotta be size matched based on the info so far. I was leaning toward toward the pixie. It has wings so she can fly, is female, and probably isn’t nearly as tiny as she appears in the icon. But if she’s that tiny speck on the rock between Headband and Gold Halfplate, then she’d be too small. If all the other fighters are overly large I pick that one, otherwise I’m also leaning toward 5-eyes. Flight could be through rockets or something.
Side question: Is the headband a fashion statement, is it hiding something, or does that race of ginormous purple dinosaurs have problems with forehead sweat obscuring their vision?
Oops, I just realized it’s probably the hooded figure… we know Max likes the boat cloak
That was going to be my guess too, The Eyes also make negative space that looks like an “M”
Second guess is the dude on the top right, based on vibes only…
Faery
Max is blindfold/bandana Barney the Dinosaur with dinosaur attitude and a club.
I dunno, she might be pulling a fast one and be the gold Calculon type.
So, it suddenly struck me that Zeus might be betting on this tournament, and could take a real bath because he doesn’t realize Maxima is a ringer.
Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.
Since Harem is a quintuple agent sleeping with Deus, fan consensus is that he’s well aware of Max’s involvement in the fight. This has not been confirmed by the author.
Deus would no doubt know, possibly even predicted this as one of highly likely possibles.
Being Deus, he would most likely use this opportunity to make a decent profit, but most likely *not* by betting on whoever he thinks Max is.
Betting on who he is sure she isn’t to *lose* is quite another matter.. And far less obvious and “secure”.
I’m still so weirded out whenever the space-folk talk about cultural stuff with the word “race”. Cora is RIGHT THERE. She has no cultural connection to Earth (as far as we can tell) and it seems like the place she grew up in was very eclectic.
“Race” isn’t really a well-defined thing among humans. Its “official” definition has changed from it’s origin as a group of people sharing a common ancestry, to a purely scientific term separating all humans into three to five groups based on physiological features and geographic origin, to the modern usage as more of a social construct since few, if any, humans are purely of one race.
So in the comic: Frix didn’t say “race”. He said some Woofian word that the translator converted to “race” so Sydney (and the people reading the comic strip) could understand the concept.
*its
I really wish we could edit these comments in the case of grammatical typos.
This isn’t amongst humans though. My understanding, and what I based my reaction upon, is that they use the word in the Tolkienesque meaning. (Which also doesn’t make sense in a setting where evolution is a thing and most people clearly don’t belong to the homo genus. In the Middle Earth men, hobbits, dwarves and elves are all extremely similar biologically and have nothing to do with evolution.)
Anyway, it really seems like they imply species and culture are conjoined. If it was just an odd word choice I would too just accept it as a weird translation but it really does seem to run deeper than that.
I presume the last panel is what’s actually being shown rather than through Sydney’s POV since the names are untranslated.
Pandillero Barney gonna mess somebody up.
I’m placing my bets on Deus having also bet on Maxima
If he knew Maxi was there (and what disguise she was using), then Daphne is getting air-locked
Given Deus’ power (which he revealed to Maxima recently if I recall correctly), that seems like an overreaction against Harem.
He called it super intellect. It could also/alternately be meta-awareness.
Does Cora like to do the maid? She is the captain, so the only reason I can think for her to pose as a maid is because she likes to.
Contrary to the commentary, she is absolutely wearing a French maid outfit. Because Cora would enjoy the irony of wearing a garment that is designed specifically to evoke a sexual response from members of a prudish culture while simultaneously pretending not to have that exact intent.
Will they heading back to Earth soon or is there more of this story to tell?!?
This will be a very harsh critique. So brace yourself.
I very much appreciate the Time Skip. Its been my one and only gripe with this comic, that the simple act of walking 100 feet can sometimes take a literal year worth of time (a big exaggeration). While stuff is happening, a lot of the time I ask myself ‘why is this the thing the comic is going on about? We got XXXXXX thing going on, so why this?’
In 15 years we have seen, honestly, very little. We dont know anything about Max, we know very little about the spheres, we know a some things about Dabbler, we’ve been introduced to a hundred of characters that took up one months of comics then never seen again, we still know almost nothing about what Deus is doing, and the list of ?????????? continues.
Give us something to work with that wont require us to read another 15 years of comics. You’ve clearly developed some stuff, as there is something of an overarching plot going on, but taking years of our lives to read a sub-plot that results in a one-liner as the punchline? I was 25 when I first started reading this, I’m now 40.
Give us something.
See, I am at the opposite end. I like to have tons of minor things happening, which aren’t really important. There are so damn much superhero comics where it’s just a constant fight, action, fight, personal drama, some more fight, END OF WORLD DOOOOOM, personal drama, end. You throw a stone in a comic book store and hit at least ten different ones which follow this exact theme.
I far more enjoy the “stupid shit happens in a life of superheroes” with some action here and there.
I get that, but this is 15 years of fetch quests, escort missions and getting lost (in game terms). There doesnt have to be fighting for the plot to move, and I’ll point to another long time comic, Questionable Content. No action of any sort, but the plot moves forward. Things happen and things change.
Whats here? We had all of 2 (yes, two) plots that got started and finished. Vehemence (or whatever his name is/spelled) and the brief arc with Sionia (Siona? Syonia? Another name I can never remember the spelling on). Everything else has been a side gag, a plot that went nowhere, a cliffhanger without a resolution. This isnt fun, this is (as Dave said himself) a lack of being able to edit his own work.
The week? Dedicated to funny faces as someone was getting porked. Ok, fine. Before that? Two weeks on a ‘starforge’. Before that? “Ooops Sidney is pretending to be royalty, shenanagans.”
If it were just “hero slice of life” and no attempt at all to make a plot, no overarching plot that is being told, that would be one thing. But its not that. Thats why its a problem.
As has been said many times: “It’s the journey, not the destination!”
This strip that the rest of us all enjoy is all about the sometimes mundane daily activities of the protagonists and Dave’s brilliant inventiveness in creating (sometimes silly), situations to interact in.
I’m just hoping that he manages to get all the way up to the opening scene (where Syd’s a corporal and has a D&D group) before he drops dead of old age. The speed it’s going, it’s looking more and more like he’ll end up doing a GRR Martin and only making it halfway.
I have to join the “moar side stuff” chorus. I like this comic because of Sydney’s zaniness and idiosyncrasies. Her colliding with the complex environment of the galaxy is interesting and entertaining. So I am kinda sad about the time jump, tbh
It’s totally a fair criticism. I often wish I was better at writing nefarious plots and evil people being evil, and then I could have more intrigue and compress some of these character moments to a funny thing on a T-Shirt or a knowing look at a section of a character’s bookshelf, but then I’d be putting out the same sort of stuff as 95% of other media. Which isn’t necessarily good or bad, it’s all about execution.
There’s also the factor that big fight scenes don’t often leave a lot for you guys to comment on. Okay, I drew a reasonably competent looking punch and someone got plowed into the side of a hill. There’s usually not too much to expand on there. So maybe I’ll try and get more big villainous plots going but still strike the balance of humor and the “extraordinary person living a (mostly) ordinary life” stuff.
Monies on the little pixie ending up winning (and it not being Maxi, she’s in the next match) :)
I think the pixie could be the most dangerous too, especially since the one thing Max has shown to be consistently vulnerable to has been magic and magic based abilities.
Is that Ramzilla (Rambo Godzilla)?
See I was thinking it was some sort of giant space mole, and it was here to whack away.
That Pixie is going to a menace, isn’t she.
A buff gray, a mean pixie, and a kaiju sized Barney walk into the ring.
What? I’m waiting for the punchline too.
In this case, it’ll probably be a literal punch line ;p
I don’t see the grey (bottom right portrait) in the ring of fighters. Everyone else can be matched in a counter-clockwise order, following the portraits on the left (top to bottom) then the right (top to bottom).
He was shirtless in his profile pic, but is wearing a gold chestplate (or similar) in the fight. He’s lower-right corner, and I believe the pixie is the tiny speck on the rock above and to the left of gold chestplate.
Wow the pixie is ACTUALLY on the page, not just as a header, but as a TEEEEEENSY dot above the small rock behind and slightly above Cora’s head.
Wait, so the pixie is inside the circle of fighters (in between bruiser barney and the winged helm fighter), and the dot in the distance is the grey?
Icons and name appear to correspond with physical location in the POV. Dark gray muscles is lower right, Pixie is the innermost dot on the rock, Light Gray floppy ears is standing on the arch of rock. Dot in the far distance is black mask (upper right).
Am I the only one noticing that he cart Cora is pushing has only one wheel? Dave slipping a little gotcha in there.
Could be as simple as a gyroscopic stabiliser, or as complex as whatever they use for artificial gravity in the ship…
The space races *are* quite technological advanced, and a single one-wheeled serving tray should be child’s play…
No argument that it is not super tech. Just a comment on Dave slipping one in.
It’s half of a Segway
I’m seeing a fairy and a godzilla with a club. Max might not be as big of a ringer as they think.
Ok… that brings to mind a question….is there any OTHER kind of ‘sexy maid’ outfit other then ‘French’? I decided to try looking it up and all i get are various versions of what you would expect
dirndl
Cora, how in the heck can she walk with those heel… o right, hard light
Is the big contestant Suziezilla?
“(Someone has been licensing Terran media to the galaxy for over a decade now. Gee, I wonder who it could be.)”
If the answer is Deus, does that mean he really *is* a “handsy movie producer”? ;-p
Side question, why is the green orb not yet titled the atmo-sphere?
Because we’ve learned enough about its abilities by now to know that name is selling it short. It can generate a wider variety of substances than just breathable air.
*ahem* Comm ball.
Glad to hear that Lumpy Space Princess from Adventure Time got her own series
I had to do a double take when I saw Cora, in a sexy maid uniform, pushing a dolly filled with confectionary.
If you’re not taking the opportunity to dress up like a maid for the crew you hand-picked, what even is the point of owning a space ship?
Once Maxima is exposed as a ringer, they could probably enter Kevin as a contestant.
Alternatively, Deus might jailbreak Kevin and enter him as a contestant.
And in case anyone doesn’t know who Kevin is, look to comic # 363.
More Angry Barney needs a set of buckteeth. So he can be more angry, and bonk others, when they point it out.
Also, lisp would make for hilarious interviews. Which gets him angry. (Reaches for Bonker5000)
Extra points if they manage to take out a cam as collateral.
…Being reminded of Battle Bots and how style points can be gotten for being suitably destructive enough to take out pieces of the arena including the drones.
(as translated from alien language)
I love you,
You love me,
We’re a happy family!
With a great big *BONK*
And a kiss from me to you
Won’t you say you love me too?
….why is it not working? And why is she not attacking??
Maxima: That song really stunned my brain, OUCH
I’m surprised no mention of Robot Jox.
There was a moment in that film that showed exactly why having grandstands/seating near to Giant Robot Fights was a monumentally bad idea. The word *squish* came to mind.
How hard was it to convince Cora to wear the Space Maid outfit?
The “Divide and Conquer” arc of “Space Amoeba Princess Gorbzlox” is especially riveting.
If Sydney wanted her orbs out of the way she could put them in her tube and hang the tube on Frix. That way they’d be bound together. At least until Frix caught on to what was happening.
Forty quatloos on the newcomer!
I always thought a space maid would look more like a Roomba.
Okay….Enquiring Minds Want To (*DEMAND* To) Know…. exactly *WHO* is Cora dressing as a French- …erm…*SPACE* Maid *FOR*?
I dunno man, if that was Zen, Intergalactic ninja in the lower right hand corner, Maxima may be about to eat some humble pie REALLY quickly.
cuz, Plot armor of web comic < plot armor of comic book protags, especialy when he has "ninja" in his name. unless this guy is the Jodo Kast of Zen, Intergalactic Ninja.
Bet. Top right. Most detailed drawing. Not for a win, but a possible recurring character.
So here’s a question… How much *FUN* is Cora having dressing up and pretending to be a space maid? Presumably a lot of it and she’s enjoying the heck out of it; but I want to know if that presumption is accurate.