Grrl Power #1434 – The crushing bioweapon
I really tried to make this page and the next a double, but I ran out of time. It was, admittedly, a little bit my fault.
So, Tamer 11 came out, at least it did if you supported the Kickstarter. If you didn’t, you can buy it off MSE’s site in a few months I think. Now, I didn’t read it during the day while I should have been working, but I did maybe accidentally stay up till 4 am reading it one night, and let me tell you, one of the best ways to supercharge ADHD is to throw a little sleep deprivation in. I was not super productive the next day. Fortunately I finished the book the next night, and before 3 am too, so… all good, right?
Okay, hear me out. The day after Tamer 11 came out, the next book in The Vixen War Bride series dropped. I didn’t even know the series was continuing after the first story wrapped. VWB is one of my favorite xenoanthropology sci-fi books, by which I mean it changes PoV between human and “alien” characters and both sides have their little thoughts about how odd the other is. By the start of this book, the story is past the “nobody speaks the others’ language and hilarious misunderstandings ensue,” trope, and kind of oddly, this story is more of a murder mystery.
So naturally I also had to read that as soon as I finished Tamer. I didn’t stay up till 4 am again. It might not have been physically possible for me at that point, but still I finished that book in 3 days.
Then there was Good Intentions Book 5, A.K.A. Devil In the Details, then The Doctor from Nowhere, Book 2, which is a Russian translated Isekai about a modern Russian surgeon getting blowed up in… uh, Afghanistan, or somewhere, doesn’t matter, and waking up in the body of a recently deceased (or so they thought) Russian soldier in, a slightly alternate history 1914 or thereabouts? It’s pretty well written and translated. The MC does kind of win at everything super hard, and there’s a little bit of Russian jingoism in there, which I suppose I can’t fault the author for. There’s just a few “Russia’s not quite the shitshow everyone seems to think” rants. It’s not pervasive. Then after that was Taroniah & Kyron Unite (Ithria Book 15). Ithria is a bit of an odd series, because the books alternate between Taroniah the sorceress and Kyron the swordsman, and I’ve skipped all the Kyron books cause… I don’t know, the stuff about the sorceress sounded more interesting.
So I had a bit of a reading dry spell for a few months it seemed, then 5 series I’ve been reading hit all at once. Especially Tamer and VWB. You guys know I enjoy Tamer. And I’m bad at pacing myself. So, sorry the page isn’t a little more… you know, “Grrl Power-y 9 panels when there should have only been 5.” (TM) Just trying to work the average back in the other direction? Yeah, I didn’t buy that either.
Here is Gaxgy’s painting Maxima promised him. Weird how he draws almost exactly like me.
I did try and do an oil painting version of this, by actually re-painting over the whole thing with brush-strokey brushes, but what I figured out is that most brushy oil paintings are kind of low detail. Sure, a skilled painter like Bob Ross or whoever can dab a brush down a canvas and make a great looking tree or a shed with shingles, but in trying to preserve the detail of my picture (eyelashes, reflections, etc) was that I had to keep making the brush smaller and smaller, and the end result was that honestly, it didn’t really look all that oil-painted. I’ll post that version over at Patreon, just for fun, but I kind of quit on it after getting mostly done with re-painting Max.
Patreon has a no-dragon-bikini version of of the picture as well, naturally.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
Go, Maxima!
I wonder if Umbrage can molt and shed injuries. Maybe become resistant to what damaged it kinda like Doomsday?
Kuroitsu-san, is that you?
Sheboygan?
ROFL!
A lesser known page from the All Might playbook.
Better than shoryuken!
Max must be from Wisconsin.
So.. just dumping all the heavy lifting on your readers to cover the HUGE fight that they JUST missed? LAWL
Two fold thing: Action scenes, and *especially* fight scenes take a LOT of panels, and therefore pages to draw. At two pages a week, *just what was described* could take easily a month and a half, if not A LOT longer. And second, these are heavy hitters, sure, but this is also the first round of the *elimination rounds* – why spend more time here than we need, when the *good stuff* comes once we get into the tournament itself?
Keep in mind that *leaving Earth*, at the latest was the 14th of August last year, and it took Dave doing a time skip on the 12th of January this year to get to the *start of this fight*, with it taking another two pages for the first attack to be made.
On Russian Isekai: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCI6es9G0oo
Hah! That’s nuts. I had no idea Russian propaganda delved so hard into pop-culture over there.
For what it’s worth, I don’t think The Doctor from Nowhere qualifies as one of these books. In it, the Germans are more advanced in medicine and even military tactics and equipment. Of course, the hero needs a powerful enemy to defeat, but that’s less propaganda-ish than it is just sensible writing. The pro-Russia asides that occur (I think I remember 2 or maybe 3 across both novels) read to me more like a guy proud of his country who wished Russia hadn’t gotten beaten up so bad so many times throughout history, and admittedly, some of those rants felt a tiny bit misinformed, but that could very well be a result of skewed history because that’s just what was taught in schools. I suspect the author doesn’t currently live in Russia, since the book doesn’t read like anything described in the above video, but I have no idea.
Bottom line is I enjoy the series so far and haven’t felt any urges to move to Russia, hah hah.
I wasn’t too happy with some of the prejudices coming through in the first book so I skipped the second. Been enjoying The Hunter’s Code, though, by Oleg Sapphire and Yuri Vinokuroff.
I’m wondering if the “Sheboygan” sound effect is in refference to the 1979 board game “The Creature That Ate Sheboygan”.
Clearly.
I was thinking the same thing but you beat me to it. The first Kaiju game and it came out before we were using the word Kaiju
I sure can’t think of anything else that would explain “Sheboygan” as a kaiju-hurling sound effect.
That was one of the best of SPI’s small series of microgames, although those really weren’t their strong suit as a company the way they were with Metagaming and Task Force Games. The best-made range in that format was the DwarfStar line from Heritage, but they also came with that hefty price tag if $5 instead of about $3. Different times.
why would they scream the name of a town in Wisconsin?
Why wouldn’t they?
I honestly thought Sheboygan was in Michigan rather than being ‘on the shore of Lake Michigan’.
Don’t let anyone think reading GrrlPower isn’t educational.
The Michigan town is spelled “Cheboygan,” but is pronounced the same. It is on the shore of Lake Huron, but close to the Straits of Mackinac. Ixah performing a double sheboygan maneuver where the 2nd one uses the other spelling would be cool.
Sheboygan?!?!?
How about the sound effects made up by Mad/Cracked magazine artist Don Martin?
Bloogagopowlumph
It’s a funny sounding town name. Like Walla Walla, Cucuamanga, or Alberquerque.
My personal interpretation of what this page is conveying; Max’s strength is impressive. but on the galactic stage, only her energy projection makers her a true threat. Because sufficiently large kaiju can just take THAT much of a pummeling.
Her beams, on the other hand, can slice through battle ships and probably would have killed the robot & dino she’s fighting right now in only 1-2 hits.
Her beams were at full power and her current strength is not.
Worse, showing her full power would negatively affect the betting or even cause higher powers to step in.
Her beam was at the maximum power she considered safe enough to use in the vicinity of non-super allies. She never claimed it was full power, or looked especially winded afterwards. But Cora’s crew still declared it able to wear down the strongest known shields.
Keep in mind she broke U.M.B.Rage’s foot while pushing it off of her. And the hosts are impressed.
Accurate depiction of applying extreme force in a single pinpoint area.
Little ol Max was a no-gal
As anyone could see
Lookit her now she’s a go-gal
One girl catastrophe
Sheboygan Sheboygan
That girl can really hit
Sheboygan Sheboygan
She’ll win the tournament
I was just thinking about the Family Guy Shipoopi song this morning.
Maxi should have thrown Not-Barney so they landed in a very embarrassing 69 on Tinman :P
This is not that kind of tournament.
If you’re into that kind of tournament, I recommend the manga “Rosen Garten Saga.” Just nothing but nudity and fighting.
Why not?
It is that kind of webic…
And never said that would do anything, just end up in that position
I like that the page, has both show and tell. i feel it conway’s more with limited panels.
Thanks for the info about VWB, I had also assumed the story was over and wouldn’t have gone looking for a new installment.
I saw a Substack post last week about the decline of reading and it referenced a survey of “books read per year” where the top end of the range was “ten or more.” Checked my Kindle statistics for last year and it was a bit over a hundred. Kindle Unlimited really makes it easy to go through an author’s whole catalog like popcorn when you find someone good….
The problem with surveys is the sample group. I would be willing to bet much of the audience of this comic reads more than ten books a year. If you are looking at a thirty something person with a job and kids at home, maybe not so much. For me personally it also depends on how you define reading a book. About half of my personal library is reference books and manuals. It’s reading but seldom do you sit down to read the entirety of “History of British Aviation”. I can binge read some “Bob’s Saucer Repair” or “Laundry Files” though.
There was a bit of a controversy on “BookTok” recently where people were saying it was impossible for an adult to read 100 books in a year and that anyone who said they did was either unemployed or lying.
It was both funny and sad.
heh. If Kindle kept track of rereading books somehow (hey a new X came out, better reread X-1 to recall everything), I’d be quite well over 100 instead of just over a 100 per year, since they started tracking that (and FT employed, yay I guess).
It really should be by ‘pages’ anyway, because book is just start to finish and doesn’t take into account whether the book was 200 pages or 1000 pages (which would make it a lot easier to account for rereading previously read books anyway).
They might be used to ‘online books’ which can be literally thousands of pages long. ‘Black Dragon’ was my first exposure to Chinese online books and it is ONE story literally thousands of pages long.
The stories I write on royal road average a million words, the equivalent of writing a simple paperback every month, and its all one long story.
So, yeah, reading my whole Royal Road catalogue is the equivalent of reading 6o to 70 paper novels, and would be 6 and working on a 7th stories. Doing that a hundred times? You’d have to do nothing but read ALL the time…
The thing is not the number of books or pages that is important.
The thing that makes it impossible for you as a reader to ever read everything is the number of authors.
I watched the math on a youtube video a few years ago.
Which went something like that.
Based on your reading speed and time spent reading you are capable of reading X Number of Books.
Based on writing ability and speed it requires Y Number of Authors to produce X Number of Books in the same time.
The calculated tipping point for average values was about 200 Authors for a Lifetime of Reading.
My wife, the college math professor, took a similar public survey where the question “How many books do you own?” had an upper limit of 50+. She checked the box and commented that they needed more boxes, this was short by two orders of magnitude. Someone mansplained to my wife, the college math professor, that two orders of magnitude past 50 is not 150, but 5,000 and we really didn’t have 5K books, did we? We sent him a photo of our upstairs hallway. It runs the length of the house and has floor to ceiling bookcases the entire way. His response: O!M!G!
All I can think about when I see “Sheboygan” is that Gus Polinski and the Kenosha Kickers are very big there.
Sheboygan reminded me of “Cheboygan is situated on Lake Huron at the mouth of the Cheboygan River. It is the third-largest American city on Lake Huron after Port Huron and Alpena.” They’re pronounced the same way. There’s also a Cheboygan, WI.
Really? “Sustain” is also describing Max. I doubt she’s tired yet, and having the time of her life. Max took out 2 of the largest combatants already, no matter how tough these others are, it won’t do them any good. It’s a pity she can’t use her beam, but it’s her final weapon anyway. And a dead give-away.
– indeed, but the commentators don’t know that.
Honestly, I *wanted* Vixen War Bride to be over after the last book, because I’ve seen too many stories ruined by “gotta keep going-itis” where the story is over but the company or the author wants to keep selling books/seasons so they come up with dumber and dumber scenarios and distort the characters beyond recognition(coughSAOcough). But that didn’t happen here, Rite of Vengeance actually found new things to say and didn’t get stupid about any of it. The human and alien cultures are still an awkward fit, but the characters are still good people trying to make it work. I cannot recommend this series enough.
What was impressive about SAO was that they managed to do all that WITHIN the first season. That story was over after episode 12, but it kept going another 13 episodes and God knows how many new series/seasons.
I’m hoping that Maxima meets her match soon.
That’s NOT because I dislike her (I actually like her a lot), but because I want her to be challenged by a legitimate rival. It’s the same issue that Superman runs into. When you’re writing a Superman story, you can focus on a moral dilemma, or on a human schemer taking a swing at the alien they know won’t respond with equal intent… but if you really want to showcase his full power, you need to throw in a Doomsday, or a Darkseid.
Maxima needs an enemy worthy of her. Darude wasn’t really capable of hurting her, just nigh impossible to put down. Vehemence didn’t actually want to hurt anyone; he just wants to feed and enjoy himself. Deus would rather be her lover and is clearly unhappy with the inevitability of their eventual confrontation. She has to face someone who can put her in the position of fearing for her own life, yet needing to stay in the fight like a proper hero.
So we’ve seen a few, but each were short-lived precisely because she was working with a team.
Vehemence/Kevin beat her…but was taken down by her team.
Darude fought her to a draw initially, and in the rematch she won because her team stepped in.
Suckhole/Super Massive was able to at least keep her at bay – and potentially win over time – with control of her movement and deflection of her energy beam…so her team stepped in.
Decent chance that Death Toll would have been able to beat her, at least until her team stepped in to overwhelm him (though with Maxima maybe being a combination of powers, it’s possible that he’d only be able to counter one aspect of her abilities at once).
And as we saw on Alar (Sciona’s planet) she can be straight-up outgunned and sent running by big enough foes.
She’s extremely powerful, but she’s far from perfect – she just hasn’t had many repeating villains on-screen yet, so we haven’t gotten that “rival” effect.
That said, this tourney is actually the perfect setup for “Maxima in Trouble.” We see in this first-round match that she’s able to wipe the floor pretty easily with basic strength-and-toughness enemies like UMB Rage, but they’re kitting her out with some of Dabbler’s anti-magic stuff for a reason (though she doesn’t seem to have any on her at the moment?). Let her get through a couple rounds of basic brutes and into the nasty sort of “stop time, turn you into a rabbit, light you on fire, start time” archmages and we’re likely to see her struggling – all the more so if she has to avoid using her beam attacks to hide her identity, and all the more so since she can’t have any backup.
For that matter, there’s a whole range of scenarios in which a powerful-enough enemy just manages to draw some blood, and that leads to a future where some powerful alien/company/empire is making a Maxima army from the blood drops.
Just saying, don’t despair. She was set up initially as possibly the most powerful super on Earth, we had it established that supers are crazy-powerful relative to the rest of the galaxy, making her a serious galactic-level threat: She NEEDS to be hard to defeat, especially when surrounded by all her powerful allies. Take away those allies, give powerful enemies a chance to study, test, prepare…the tables may turn, in which case Earth itself will be open and vulnerable for the plundering.
The reason Maxi was ‘sent running’ on Alari Primal was because Dabbles and discombobulated Daphne were there as well: her priority was to get them back safe
Oh, also because the fracking portal was closing: they had no idea where they were or how to get back if the portal closed (they didn’t know when they were until after they got back)
In a comedy, it’s perfectly acceptable for someone to be just completely unbeatable, with no hope of being challenged. It’s all in how you build up the “threat” and then show them getting abruptly trounced.
There’s a reason One-Punch Man got so popular.
And yet it is still the basis of Saitamas Emotional Arc …
Reading the Fight I was also thinking of Kevin having a field trip for the next tournament.
Yeah, she looks like a really cute, hottie, but you go kissu with Gail then those heart shaped antennae slap onto your temples and suck your mind right out of your head.
Back to the fight, Max is almost making this too easy. If she plans to participate in future bouts and having a good betting margin she should take a few more falls and appear to squeak by for the win.
Tell not show! LAME! I know it’d take like 5 extra pages to do all that but… Come on! LAME! SHOW! This is a super hero comic! We came for the dynamic comic spreads!
You must be knew, welcome, hope you enjoy what happens between the action
Excerpt from the “About” page:
To me, the most memorable moments in comics and shows are the scenes with amusing character interaction, you know the issue the X-men spend playing baseball, or the moments where you see the ice queen warming up to the underdog nerd character, or the scene that establishes that two tertiary characters have a buddy cop thing going. I find that’s the stuff I remember and enjoy the most, not what villain they fought that episode. If Wolverine fights Sabertooth for the 47th time, who really cares? But if the artist draws him drinking a Strawberry Yoohoo afterwards, that’s the sort of thing that people remember.
I wanted a comic that focuses mostly on those interstitial scenes I enjoy so much. So the comic is largely “day in the life”
SHEBOYGEN! She knocked him clear to Wisconsin.
Weird sound effects will always remind me of a scene from the webcomic Zebra Girl, where the author told us that he had no idea what a demon slicing apart robot monsters would sound like, and thus introduced the lovely sound effects of “SHLOINK!” “FARKLEMPT!” and “SCOOBY-DOOBY-FLOOBY!!”
As a charter member of the “I’ll just read 1 chapter… hey, why is it now 3am???” club, I hear you. Do your thing; we’re enjoying the hell out of this comic for free, and if an update isn’t up to what *you* were planning, well, we don’t know what you were planning and won’t notice.
I dunno about anyone else, but I imagine that Max is really feeling Superman’s “World of Cardboard” speech right now.
“I feel like I live in a world made of cardboard, always taking constant care not to break something, to break someone; never allowing myself to lose control, even for a moment, or someone could die. But you can take it, can’t you, big guy? What we have here is a rare opportunity for me to cut loose and show you just how powerful I really am.”
Based on the first shot of the competitors in the arena, I was thoroughly convinced that U.M.B.Rage was significantly larger than Kill Seven. Everything since then, however, has implied that they are of similar size.
Thought Sheboygan was in New Jersey.
One author described one of his characters as kind of a Conan adventuring with a party of girls. So of course I bought entire novel trilogy of it. Then I find out first novel alone numbers over 900 Kindle pages all by itself. And I’m not as avid reader as Dave seems to be.
Dungeon Champions
Dresden Files. 12 Months. Get it. It’s a wonderful snarky read.
Read it. Liked it. However, it’s the first Dresden book where I really feel that the author is falling into the Power Creep Trap.
The Creature That Ate Sheboygan inspired my first superhero TTRPG game, and to this day, the name will ALWAYS mean that to me! Fun reference!
Never give 110% on your first day at work, otherwise you’ll be expected to match it every day and there’s no room for improvement. Plus, you want the bookies to underestimate how good you are just to keep the payout high.
Also, if you show off too much power too soon the other combatants will see you as the largest threat and team up to take you down first.
Just a silly question for the author. It seems to me that there is a lot of rubble, small rocks, that sort of thing. How hard can Max throw a rock? Based on her speed and strength, just about anything not nailed down has the potential of being a ranged kinetic energy weapon in her hands. Just saying.
The rock has to be sturdy enough to take the acceleration (and impact) without disintegrating.
Most rocks can’t handle the g-force of being fired from a black-powder gun, which is around 10,000 Gs. Modern guns go from 12K (pistols and shotguns) to 20K+.
So unless the rock can take well over 20,000 Gs, it’s not going to be more powerful than a light cannon, and I doubt a light cannon would even tickle these guys.
Now, give her some osmium ball bearings or something, that’s another matter. But since she has super speed, she doesn’t really need a ranged attack.
SHEBOY-GANNN!
>>shatter shatter<>shatter shatter!<<
Love and hope and sex and dreams are still surviving on the streets
And look at me, I'm in tatters
I’ve just gotta say that “SHEBOYGAN” is one of my favourite onomatopeia, up there with “Break! Bleed! Ow My B@lls!” from the Batman and Harley Quinn animated movie.
Shoot, I knew I forgot something. I should’ve dropped you a line to let you know it was coming. Sorry.
“She’s using one opponent as a bludgeon against another, this may look like absolute domination but she might throw out her shoulder at any moment.”
Sheboygan is a quality sound effect.
I have a copy of “The Creature That Ate Sheboygan” around here someplace. Simple little wargame. One side is the US military, the other some sort of Giant Creature going downtown for brunch.