Grrl Power #1439 – And the odds sweeten
You know, Maxima’s boss’s bosses might also think this was a wildly irresponsible thing to do as well. It will all depend on the final result of the tournament and how much detail she puts into her after action report. “Went shopping at alien mall. Bought some alien jetpacks. Don’t worry about how we got the money.” could play differently than “Almost died 17 times on alien bloodsport hell world and revealed every classified detail about U.S. Super power capabilities to trillions of viewers. Bought alien jetpacks.” Presumably the people above General Gault might not be satisfied with “Don’t worry about how we got the money,” so either way, Max will have some ‘splainin’ to do when she gets back.
I think Bluce is developing a crush, but he may have to wait several years to act on it.
The UCBA matches do have boundaries, but it’s so huge that ring-outs almost never happen. The arena boundaries are a lot bigger than that initial valley they started in, for example. It’s like a Long Island sized area. Just not as oblong. Unusual circumstances do happen, of course. Punching someone into orbit would do it, if they don’t fly back down the arena “ceiling” quickly enough. Portaling someone to a place that is effectively off-world would also do it.
“Saraviah” (sarah-VAI-ah) is too cool of a name to use once on this character who probably won’t appear again after this arc? I had trouble naming her so I went to the Fantasy Name Generator that I’ve had bookmarked every since I first found it and started hunting around. The thing is, I almost never use a name that’s generated there, but finding the right category then refreshing the name list a few times usually gets me in the ballpark. “Hmm, take the first half of that name…” (refresh) (refresh) “Ah hah! The perfect name! Kevin!”
Ah! I thought I had more time till March. I’m bad at looking at dates apparently. The new one is underway. I should have a draft ready to go for the next Monday comic?
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.
Sounds like Ma… Ixah* would go on such a rampage in the Feywilds, that the fey lord would beg her to leave (and then break Saraviah’s wand on the off-chance she tries to bring her back in).
Or it turns out she can also break dimensional boundaries. Or this is a “don’t eat an energy field bigger then your head” situation and the portal or whatever simply can’t transport someone as dense as Max’s energy level or whatever metaphysical weight limit these fae work off of. Rampaging through faelands is a good way to break the guest rules thing. If these are like the DnD one then you’re joining the formorians who also did it.
She’d likely pull an Omni-Man to get back to the battlefield…
Not her style frankly, but provide a credible threat of total destruction maybe…
That being said, she could pull off Team Dai-Gurren:
“Even if trapped by karma’s cycle, the dreams we left behind will open the door! Even if the universe stands against us, our seething blood will determine what shall be! We’ll break through time and space and devour all who would hold us down!”
I pity the Fairy Lord, locked up with Maxima… He’s going to feel like the prisoners locked up with Rorcharch.
If he’s not stupid, he’ll quickly come to this conclusion:
“I believe letting her go is the best solution; otherwise, she’ll ravage my domain and me as well.”
Maxima was not a Dʳ Manhattan level of power , but she is a reusable Tsar Bomba destruction wise.
Sarviah will have a lot of problems … with a fey lord mainly … “Do not send character of mass destruction into my domain !”
“Rorcharch”? Did you mean Rorschach? Google couldn’t find Rorcharch, and I’m always interested in learning about stories & characters of which I’ve not yet heard.
Apparently you haven’t seen “Watchmen”. The movie, not the TV series. A viewing will answer all your questions.
Or, better yet, read the graphic novel.
Definitely the graphic novel instead of the movie, and just forget the TV series ever existed at all because it was s complete train wreck.
There was a TV Series?
There was. It was pure garbage. TERRIBLE beyond belief. Lasted one season.
Surprised it lasted one episode!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rorschach_(character)
Yes spellling error du to butterfinger on the keyboard
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_Manhattan
Basicaly 11 on the base ten power scale used
I was afraid something like this was going to happen. Showed too much prowess in combat so someone would have to take her out the sneaky way.
That little fey is a real powerhouse, with the benefit of her size granting her stealth… and she’s smart enough to realize Max is the biggest threat on the field.
‘Posing sexily’, Bluce? Seriously? She’s popping her knuckles. Unless you enjoy getting beaten up (not judging, folks), that doesn’t seem very sexy to me.
You don’t want to be judgmental about these things. With kink-shaming, what goes around comes around (p485)…
She’s popping her knuckles sexily.
In some species knuckle-popping is mating behavior?
“We are now short on time, but wsit, look over there, it looks like Ixah has gotten out of the fey realm”
“Yes, but she has been transformed, or even upgraded to a gold skin instead of purple, and she seems angrier than before!”
“Also, she seems to be holding the fey lord by his tail… Ladies snd gentlealiens, we have not seen this before!”
It looks like Max’s “fast enough to catch bullets” speed of perception and movement is lagging behind as it often does.
Maybe said bullet-catching perception superspeed should just be retconned to having never been a thing if it’s proving to be too annoying to keep including in her powerset?
This leaves her with only strength, flight, armor, and energy atttacks.
Those 4 are after all what she’s almost always using despite the absurdity that is superspeed vs non-superspeed opponents and how many situations she could have solved if she wasn’t somehow taken by surprise by things that would have been very slowly happening over the course of several minutes from her perspective.
Maybe she just didn’t put enough points in speed.
And maybe speed doesn’t matter if you’re caught completely unawares, say by a tiny pixie moving around a loud battlefield.
Or by a normal human woman vomiting on your boots.
A normal human woman vomiting HazMat on your boots.
Maxima has to distribute her available power over the five axis. A very high defense is a given, considering that at least two opponents were of the ‘rearranging geology’ inclination, and one casually tossed around the magical equivalent of a black hole.
Superstrength is also a given, considering that at least two opponents were continent sized ;)
She just used enough raw power to blow a hole through somebody who could rearrange the local topography with a thought.
She is always using power to fly.
That leaves a lot less power available for superspeed.
Also, given how her powers work, she only has superspeed if she knows she will need it.
When Sydney painted her boots, she simply could not have expected to need superspeed and thus was not (much) faster than a regular human being.
After accidentally (near fatally) taking out the grey alien she may have simply allocated most of her power for defense and strength (makes sense given the level of destruction she is confronted with) while considering her next steps and did not have enough warning to shift to superspeed.
My head-cannon is that the intentionally keeps her “super speed” power allotment to near-zero at all times. For the reasons you mentioned to start (defense should be a near-max right now in case of surprise tanker-truck-size bat impacts, etc.), but also to avoid being driven insane by having to wait on everyday things to happen. Having a conversation with a normal human, waiting for the words to come out one phoneme at a time, would be excruciating. This is why she can be ready to catch a bullet, and then a moment later be surprised enough to (a href=”https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-46-yoga-hwarf/”>get her shoes puked on because she’s talking to someone and waiting on a response.
I like this analysis.
This analysis seems to forget that she can adjust her pool as needed. She needs to have enough reaction time to do that, which is facilitated by putting some power into super speed.
I have not forgotten that Maxima can change the distribution of het base power over 5 different axis.
It simply takes a conscious decision for her to do so, which means it cannot happen faster than she thinks. Which cannot be faster than normal, even if her superspeed also affects her thinking speed. She is not in superspeed mode if she needs to think about speeding up :)
Having not even the basics of superspeed in the middle of an area like this seems a lot worse a tactical decision than Max usually makes.
It is however consistent with all the other times where Max was taken by surprise while she supposedly already had dialed up her superspeed, like when Hench Wench escaped through a portal at glacial mortal speeds after having already been caught once using super speed.
Why the insistence on being taken by surprise. She could have already been in the time dilation when the spell was being cast. It’s magic, it doesn’t have to obey logical rules. (Neither does anything else, really, but I rarely mention that because it upsets people no end.)
Nothing has to – but to resolve conflicts with magic (or superpowers) in satisfying manners the audience must understand the magic being employed.
You can of course write a narrative where nothing makes sense and stuff just happens with no rhyme or reason, but it’s not very satisfying or enjoyable as a story for people who can remember what happened last chapter.
Who says the fey portal trap is as slow as a bullet?
Sure, the announcers are commenting on it but they have to be slowing down footage for faster opponents.
We’ve also already seen that portals can often close before Maxima has a chance to react and get back through it. Like when Sydney got left behind on the Alari homeworld, or when Hench Wench used one on her (and then used a portal a second time for HW to escape).
Even then, the pages with Hench Wench were particularly absurd as she explicitly had dialed up her super speed for the explicit purpose of not allowing an escape – and while the portal may be instant, hench wench moving through it happens at the glacial speed of mortals.
Even speedsters can get caught hotfooted
In poor writing they can – in works that play their superpowers well they cannot by anything less than other superspeed enemies or events, because “getting caught hotfooted” by something moving at mortal speeds for someone with superspeed perception means spending several subjective minutes if not hours not looking around themselves at all.
Speedsters that can catch bullets are incomprehenseively (or at least difficult-for-people-to-comprehend-without-an-accurate-slow-motion-scene) overpowered against anyone moving at regular mortal speeds.
While I particularly hated Hench Wench since Arianna should have been the one to truly beat her with her legal superpowers (the additional portal powers felt like a cheat), it’s still something that did happen, so that’s why I mentioned it. :) Probably in the same vein as a speedster like the Flash havin villains like a guy who throws boomerangs and a guy with a freeze gun, despite that Flash should be able to stop both of them before they blink. :)
I think we also consider the writing for Flash to be very poor when it portrays him getting flatfooted by boomering or freeze gun man. And poor in general anytime super-perception speedsters get surprised by things that from their perspective take either minutes or hours to happen.
Weirdly, science fiction is often better about it, as their super-speed-perception (“Framejacking” by artificial intelligences that can dial up their speed of thought) is more grounded and common, and not necessarily paired with physical super-speed abilities, so they might end up trapped watching for several subjective hours as one of their bodies is unable to move fast enough to avoid an attack they can see clearly or prevent a disaster for subjective months.
Wasn’t it posed somewhat early on with Sydney puking on her boots in the very early issues, that her super speed is somewhat tied to her preparedness for an event? She’s always ‘fast’ on a general basis, but is not always catch a bullet fast (or faster) unless actively trying to be.
In any case, writing speedsters is of course, always a pain in the arse. Always have to be nerfed for plot reasons, so they are not constantly OP all the time.
I choose to believe the portal comes with instant entanglement and a sucking in effect. It’s magic. (:
Yups: she can only catch a bullet if she is prepared for it (either she is the one who fired it or had a heads-up about it: remember, in the Council Chambers, she was only able to catch the grenade because Sydney warned her)
Then the obvious winner would be a support class Transporter like Sydney dragging people out through portals for 30 seconds.
Seems like contenders would then have to have an “anchor” power or forfeit.
Flere-Imsaho , A knife-missile from The Culture would win by hyperspace displacement unless you can disrupt portals or anchor. -source The Player of Games from Ian Banks
That’s assuming said support class can force people through the portals, how big they are, and if their power is the kind that can spawn them on top of people.
It’s a powerful trick but heavily dependent on how exactly the transportation ability works mechanically.
Or you can move the portals over them.
And Max solves the maze with super speed in 3, 2, 1…
Well, Max DID beat that stasis beam gun Lapha tried on her in a few seconds. I can’t imagine some no-name servant of Mab or Titania doing much better.
Seems to me that she is less likely to solve the maze than she is to realize she is off camera and can just blast things until she finds the exit or someone lets her out. (Other posts have already said as much.) Mazes with more than two dimensions are harder to solve by sheer speed, and I suspect a fey maze would involve puzzles and/or riddles.
Then again, a fey maze might also have distorted space that redirects the occupant’s attacks back at them. So that’s always a risk. Max could test for that scenario with a lower intensity beam (if she thinks of it) before breaking out the big guns.
Maybe we’ll actually get to see the escape, or maybe Max will just recap the experience later when Sydney asks about it.
Next comic: The ‘tree’ container of the Feywild/Vista/Escher trap explodes in RWBY season 9 finale fashion. Saravina Nightwing passes out from the feedback. ‘Ixah’ just continues to pose sexily, much to Bluce’s delight.
Really, the question is, how many weeks of pages of Fey Dreamscape will DaveB end up drawing?
Lots, I hope. This could be good.
I figure two pages, so one week. Page one will be a side-by-side of Max doing things in the fey realm while the announcers count down/discuss the continuing battle. Page two will be Max flying out of the portal at the last second and absolutely PILE DRIVING the caster who put her there, who has turned away from the portal to focus on the rest of the battle.
Maybe a third splash page with her standing on top of the former caster, while the announcers gasp in shock, though that might be more suitable for later in this round or in one of the following rounds. In spite of everything, it does seem like Max is powerful enough that even in a system meant to prevent kills, she’s gonna splat someone at some point.
Guess it’s Max’s turn to get caught in some time dilation. Syndey came out fine from her experience, so Max should be golden too.
I see what you did there, and I like it.
That wasn’t time dilation, that was being sent to the future: no dilating involved
Super speed perception only works if Maxima is ready for it. Remember the bank and not being able to dodge biohazard level Sydney barf?
I’ve just noticed something, Bluce kinda looks like Maxima’s Firefighter Boyfriend.
It might only be his moustache, yet there is a resemblance there.
I hope this isn’t foreshadowing something.
100 space money says she’s out over there in like… three panels
In hindsight, considering the sheer breadth of supernatural abilities out there, this maybe shouldn’t be a regular thing. On the off chance Max gets hit by a “Go straight to Hell.” ability.
” in lighter news this evening, the Realms of Eternal Torment have been semi-ated today when a person of mass destruction was teleported there during a sporting event. The suspect has been arraigned on charges of reckless portalling, and the unquiet dead have begun rising to walk among the living. And now, the weather!”
I predict nukes. Lots of nukes. You deal with a maze by removing the maze.
If you’re not inclined to run the maze for the fun of it, high-powered energy blasts or explosives are great for creating new paths and doors in almost any wall or obstruction.
Ah yes good ol ‘Banishment’ types. Otiluke’s resilient sphere is also effective like this. Then summon a horde for after it drops off.
I count 3 combatants whose actions have not been followed at all, so the question is whether the Fey took them out already, or will before Maxima escapes from the magic trap. It’s also possible that 1 of the 3 takes out the Fey before Maxima reappears. But I’m betting the Fey will be Maxima’s final opponent in this round.
As far as “will Maxima escape in time”, I think she will as one of the comic’s 2 main grrls.
Surely they did analyses of past fights and had dossiers on the opponents to determine if there was any particular trump power against her. No sane military person would enter the fight without such.
I assume that’s what the whole “gear up with an anti magic weapon” thing was about…except she doesn’t seem to have actually brought one.
Cora’s handling her gear. She’ll have some hammerspace available.
Also, she could have stuff hiding under the hologram. Not a lot, but something.
they didnt mention at all how being trapped at the DMV would be the worst option.
So much for getting back to Earth really quickly if an emergency arises.
So far every one is commenting on Max’s superspeed and other powers getting her out of there, I put forth exibit A, her time as a D&D nerd before she got her powers.
I feel like that chart is inaccurate. There’s gotta be more overlap between the DMV and the Fey Wilds.
Kevin as an alien announcer’s name? Not bad, then you could name the other the Magnificient Troy! Eh? Eh? Any crawlers in the chat?
In the Fey Wilds time passes slower than outside. In the DMV time just passes slower inside and out.
Sounds like the mosquito (THAT WE ALL KNOW IS SECRETLY MAX!) would’ve won by default from simply abducted the strongest fighters even if they didn’t wait for those fighters to brawl it out.
Umm, what? Ixah is Max, not the bug (due for a purple-swattage any minute now)
Yeah. That’s the joke. Been insisting on the pixie being Max because of the absurdity of such.
This is why you always want to take out the casters first.
Maybe that’s what she thought she did though. Grey Anatomy warped the vortex towards her. Prior to that, with all the debris in the air from Kill Seven’s opening shot, and being distracted fighting the other tanks in the arena, Max might not have seen who actually cast the spell.
Casters and healers (doubly if they are both)
When it comes to fantasy names, I created a character named Rudi Sainoµeji once.
“Asian rules” applied, Rudi was her family name of course.
… don’t even know what that fourth last letter is
that the greek character ‘mu’
No idea how it would be pronounced in that particular sequence, though.
(not like mu, and likely not like a plain boring m either)
Stop teasing already and give us a view of the viewing party that goes from the head to the hips.
You know pornhub and deviantart exist, right?
So where on Long Island are you from? Cause yeah, only a local, or former local, would have come up with that!
DaveB is from Texas
Boo. No BFR. Booooo.
If it’s literally just a big maze, Max’s super speed will definitely be useful.
From the Doyalist perspective: there’s no way Max will be trapped for years. She probably isn’t going to lose the match either (though that at least is possible). The real question is what consequences might arise from her method of escape.
I bet eight bars of gold pressed latinum that Maxima will come back as the new queen of the fey realm.
I have to disagree with Cora. It might suddenly feel irresponsible, but it does not feel suddenly irresponsible.
…. and I posted without rereading to double-check that I hadn’t misread. This is why I shouldn’t post.
A fey lord sounds like magic. Hope Maxima doesn’t have a weakness to magic, like Superman. Then again, she should have at least one weakness, so maybe that’s it? Maybe that’show Dabbler maneged to fight her to a draw?
I have to say, I’m really impressed with Sydney’s expression in the last panel.
I would be very happy if Max actually takes an L here. It would show that there are situations that she can’t just overpower. Sure, she may be the most overwhelming powerful super on Earth, but the Universe is vast, and there are beings and situations she is just not prepared for.
But, unfortunately, Dave has probably came up with some B.S. reason why she easily beats this.
Would it be that unfortunate, though?
Sure, in a long-running, high-production series that’s meant to be epic and enduring (no offense, Dave,) inserting character development and realistic lessons make sense.
But I’m personally quite satisfied with a fun, less-heavy web comic where Maxima is simply the OP powerhouse who never really loses a fight, even against cosmic opponents. And it would just make a different statement about how the supers on Earth compare to everyone else in the galaxy (I mean, they’ve already fought alients, and one even already has Nth-level tech at her fingertips, so it’s not like it’d shift things, really.)
Super Speed. The portal closed without Max inside. But, where has she gone?
my dude, there’s no coming out of the DMV, ever
I love how the department of motor vehicles (D.M.V.) is put on an equal standing with the deamlands and the fey wilds because their bureaucracy seems to be designed by the other 2, and it Hertz just thinking about it.
I’ve managed to escape the DMV a few times by paying off a fey lord or two, so I can attest that while this is a good strategy, there are ways out. But not in 30 seconds.
On one hand we have to appreciate a moment like this, especially in this day and age where so many online are obsessed with power scaling and think a character has to kill another character to defeat them. Putting aside knocking them out, or subduing them, you don’t need (x) character to be physically capable or need to kill (Z) character to win a fight against them. Granted this is coming from someone whose own characters tend to be over powered in a fight, or end of stale mated when they can’t manage to hurt each other. But from a normal writing perspective it makes perfect sense to have characters who aren’t physically powerful still able to win using tools and tricks…for all the leway we give Batman, he’s not the only character who gets to plan and have other means to win besides blowing a hole through their opponent.
That said, instead of making another post, calling it now..thanks to the power of plot armor, the fey lord either is, or is going to have a connection to that elf man that had the hots for Maxima back in the Twilight Council.
There’s also the entire probable situation where the place she was sent to is right now going “Uh… Dabbler… Why is Maxima in my domain suddenly at the same second Ixah vanished from the UCBA match!” It’s also entirely possible she can just rip the portal back open because Dabbler’s sword planned exactly for this kind of magic event.
So I was just reading a comic called “I Hate Fairyland” about a little girl who gets trapped in an Oz knock-off for 27 years and becomes a bitter, nigh-immortal woman in a little girl’s body. She leaves a trail of carnage that would make Omni-Man say “Tone it down!”
I know Maxima isn’t the type to just slaughter everyone in sight, but…
Oh dear. Unless Max can get back very quickly, General Faulk is going to be very, VERY angry. :O
It would be really funny if the fey lord whose realm she winds up in was Valen’s. Or Trilla’s, since she hasn’t had a lot of screen-time compared to Valen.
… Can a fey lord flat-out refuse to host someone, and send them back where they came from with no questions asked/answered? Just, “Ah, hello, not again, sorry, go back to where you came from, I’ll be having a word with her about doing this later” type of deal? Or would it be more of a, “I’m watching the battle, I’ll send you back for now, but I want you back here to help get rid of {insert creature here}” in this case? Especially if they bet on Ixah because she was proving interesting.