Grrl Power #1437 – Sus party
I wish I was the kind of artist that could draw a room with like, 60 people in it*, because these 7 to 12 person watch parties over the last few pages are a little sad looking. (*It helps that guy does 2 tone shading, but it would still take me 2 weeks just to pencil that page.)
Yes, it is, indeed a terrible disguise, especially when put in front of Super Genius or even just regular genius intellects who are very familiar with Maxima. Of course, the people who suspect what’s going on over the last few pages don’t know. They have the advantage of a limited data set, but also realize that there’s literally a trillion lifeforms out there, and a lot of them are humanoid and roughly half of those are female. So the number of them that could just happen to closely match Maxima’s dimensions could be enough to populate a planet. The number of them who have her dimensions and also fight quite a bit like her is a slice of that cohort, but the ones that match those attributes and can also hang with the UCBA competitors is a pretty small fraction of that original subset. That number could still be triple digit, but… it’s probably double or single digit. Maxima’s power makes her quite the outlier.
But they’ve all seen Maxima fight. Not just witnessed, but studied. Deus probably isn’t planning to scrap with her, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t going to review slow motion footage of her throwing a punch. For observational and scientific reasons, of course.
Realistically, there’s no way the UCBA would have as much attention as something like the world cup if the current fight that’s been going on for, let’s say ten minutes, is as much as has been broadcast. The world cup has (quickly googles cause I don’t know anything about sports) 104 matches, which is up from 64 in 2022. It takes time to build the excitement. The UCBA would have to have a bunch of preliminary rounds before it gets to the Battle Royale matches in order to cause anything approaching a “fever.” Personally, I felt it was a little convenient for Cora to mention the UCBA with juuuust enough time to get permission, make a few stops and arrive just in time for it to start. It’s like how people in movies turn on the news at exactly the right time to see “A Utahraptor has climbed out of the LeBrea tar pits and is thought to be at large in the Beverly Hills area.” instead of them having to sit through 3 and a half minutes of a soap opera and two commercials before the plot relevant news comes on. I personally didn’t want her to bring up the UCBA and then have to wait for seven weeks for it to actually start, because that would be another 8 years for us suffering here in non-comic time.
So instead, we can say Cora only brought it up because she new it just happened to be about to start. And as far as Maxima missing what must be an exhaustive series of preliminary rounds that exist to bring ratings and viewer fervor to a head, let’s say the UCBA allows entrants to test out of the class, as it were. Beat up a squad of doomsday robots, kick a volcano so hard it stops erupting, rip a shipping container sized block of reflexium in half, that sort of thing. They allow it, because having someone like Frieza or Boros or The Gunbuster compete in prelim rounds makes for some dreadfully boring and short prelim rounds.
Also, the challengers who fight their way up through the prelims usually make for a better story and garner a lot of fan support. Some ultra strong competitors moderate their abilities to barely eek through each round, because everyone likes an underdog. Also, if they juuuust squeak by each time, the bookies are far more likely to put worse odds on them than the guy who stomps everyone hard, and that can be a valid strategy to maximize one’s own winnings.
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.
“dude, is that your ex?” XD
I wouldn’t be surprised if surprised if you could just sign a waiver to enter Unlimited Class because it makes for good TV if the unknown rookie gets comically flattened, and even better TV if the unknown rookie comes out of nowhere to pull an upset victory against a couple of known heavyweights. I expect the lower classes of bouts serve well enough to build a fan base, with Unlimited Class as the Superbowl event. It’s been going on long enough that people recognize the main players. But I also suspect that there are a couple of officials who are willing to let some minor details (like a holographic disguise) slide if given the right “incentive,” and they know the boss won’t mind because it makes for good TV.
SEVEN person watch party? I count nine people there. Don’t sell yourself short, DaveB.
Sorry Max, but far too many people have admired that figure both close-up and from a distance. As you have complained about often. In both friendly and in opposition. If you ever do this again, I strongly suggest a less form-fitting outfit, (not that anyone minds) and maybe a more harder to recognize general body form? Deus will just make bets, but Scoina might rat you out in spite.
Then again,
Max never (almost, there was that beach episode once) wears anything form fitting.
Nothing even remotely close to skin tight like she is wearing now.
There is no real reason why Tom or Deus would recognise Max from what is effectively her nude body as they have never seen that.
BTW, pocket squares are stupid.* Someone should tell Deus.
*so are neckties, FWIW
Deus may be super-smart, but he seems to be not as good at hiding his reactions. Unless he *wants* Sciona to see his reaction, which seems a bit “Xanatos gambit”-like to me.
I don’t mind compression for plot’s sake. Whedon’s “Serenity moves at the speed of plot” is perfectly valid as a way to move the story along.
I don’t want to watch 12 episodes of that crew having dinner while they go from one planet to another with a load of cattle in the hold. One dinner maybe. Then you’ve probably used up all the funny bits you can usefully cram into a dinner scene without a different scene in between.
Plot compression: 100% agree, and this wasn’t a “just in time broadcast” type trope. There was one documented unknown-length time skip (mentioned as Sydney binging alien sit-coms or something). This covered the last part of travel to the contest, and also any registration requirements, getting there a little early to scout, preliminary prove-you-won’t-die-if-Rambo Barney-sneezes physical tests, etc. There easily could have been a few more time skips. At the start, for example, Military approval up the chain, followed by planning and packing, could have taken a lot of off-screen time.
I, as a regular reader, am greatly appreciative of not having to wade through weeks/months of filler-panels going through all that detail.
I still think that sending Max out to clobber aliens at a live sporting event “for fun and profit” was a horrible idea.
She would have needed to learn a completely different combat style for this disguise to be anywhere near effective – and even then, her powerset and physique work against her.
Even if Tom and Machina Industries don’t start crap, now that cow Sciona knows Max is off-planet. And she is more likely to try and capitalize on that absence.
Earth is a backward planet whose Galactic Membership is creeping through the Xevoricracy Bureaucracy.
It needs SpaceBucks to buy/rent environment rehabilitation. (Microplastic removal as an example.)
Supers and Supernaturals are the only advantages Earth has.
No one is saying it’s a good idea, just the best of the bad ideas.
BTW I love Lorlara’s energy in panel 1. She’s wonderful, but in small doses.
Deus knew that I knew he would recognize “Ixah” as Maxima. Deus also knows that Tom will also have recognized her. Deus knows what Dave B. will have for breakfast 2 years, 3 months, and 12 days from now, he is just that good.
I love the smug look on his face in panel 2. If Deus is surprised by anything it’s probably that Archon has dared to try this gambit so soon.
have you tried drawing quickly? let it be ugly and go as fast as possible, and even faster. if it’s in your heart to do this, your dreams will flow onto the page in dynamic living form. and after a long while of this practice, it will even look damn good sometimes
So now the betting scene Iteslf should be interesting. Especially for the level of enforcement/security present to keep things sane and the collective currencies in one spot.
So what was even the point of the disguise at this point? Every major player weve been introduced to now seems to be sussing out Maxs real identity.
The charade hasnt even lasted the length of the fight.
My surprise that Deus recognizes those… flanks is minimal.