Grrl Power #1441 – Snatching victory from the fairy of defeat
Don’t worry about UMBRage. He’s a remote piloted bioroid. Like a mecha, only organic and the pilot is somewhere off-table in an advanced V.R. suite.
Was there a part of me that considered ending the tournament with Maxima losing and Cora and crew winding up in a tight money spot? (Despite having their own starforge, it is shared between several adventuring crews.) It wouldn’t ruin Cora, she’s not dumb enough to risk that much, but… she might need to take a questionable job that turns out to be a double cross, forcing her and the crew to survive as soldiers of fortune, and then people with problems that no one else can help with could contact them, assuming they could find them… maybe they could hire The C-Team.
…I mean, they already survive as Soldiers of Fortune/Adventurers, so…
So, yeah, there was a part of me that considered that route. I’m not sure I want to spend the next, what, 100 pages on arena battles? I do want to get better at drawing fights scenes, and as we saw with this round, it doesn’t all have to be just the fighty bits. Plus I think I have some amusing bits planned, so we’ll have to see how it all plays out.
Man, pixie sticks… Some candy inventors were sitting around some day trying to come up with a new candy and a theme to go with it, like “Oh, I know. There’s already Mars bars, why not have, like, a Saturn bar, and it’s all a bunch of different flavors of cotton candy all compressed into a bar, and we could do a Neptune one, and that could be like those horrible Nik-L-Lips, like a liquid candy, but we’d put it in plastic tubes so it doesn’t taste like, well, like Nik-L-Lips.”
“Uh huh. You want to do planet themed candy?”
“Yup!”
“What’re you going to do for the Uranus bar?”
“Uh… Chocolate covered raisins? In bar form?”
“How about we eschew a theme and just sell flavored sugar?”
“Like in… dime bags?”
“Eh, tubes. Whatever. Doesn’t matter. It’s sugar. Kids will eat it.”
“I guess. Is it possible to buy stocks in “Dentists?””
Ah! I thought I had more time till March. I’m bad at looking at dates apparently. The new one is underway.
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.
Damn hearing there was a world where they lost here is kinda disappointing, coulda been a fun twist on the whole breaks out right before the ten count bit. Plus always a fan of the you can’t just brute force your way out of every problem you actually gotta think lesson. Oh well if them winning here means we can move past the maxima fight club arc I’m all for it.
I actually think it’s an awesome idea, if we were pivoting the focus from Sydney’s SuperTeam on Earth, it Syndney’s time on Cora’s ship as a space pirate.
But honestly the “Maxima disappears” angle only works if the ship were the PCs, not the ARC team.
Maxima is something of a Lord of the Rings nerd, I imagine that she would have taken at least some interest in learning about actual Fairies when she first met them, I was hoping to see that kind of thing come up here rather than brute force and that hope isn’t completely gone just yet. with luck the next page will or so will let us know what trick she used, i’ll be a bit disappointed if the only trick was “superspeed”
>> i’ll be a bit disappointed if the only trick was “superspeed”
But if that’s all she needs…?
Well I mean all she needs is whatever the writer says she needs, just as easily could have said nope the speeds not what she needs it’s actually another thing.
Consider when she fought Kevin or Darude, she can’t always brute force her way out of something, but if she never DOES, then the times she can’t have no impact.
Will admit, whole time I was going “ok but has anyone trapped in there before had Max’s super speed? Because Max has INSANE super speed. Girl beat a stasis field.”
I suspect there is a very annoyed Fey Lord who wants to talk to the pixie in the last panel. A very annoyed Fey Lord with large smoking holes where his Labyrinth used to be.
That’s kind of what I expected – Max to show back up with some Fey king’s neck in her hand…
She didn’t, though. That’s Saraviah Nightwing she’s holding in a full-body chokehold. :D
What happened to the Fey Lord is something that will probably be explained either in excruciating detail in several pages of exposition exploring the Feywilds or, alternatively, with a throwaway comment – if it isn’t the fan favourite, where the Fey Lord involved is by a cosmic stroke of luck Velen of the Twilight Council, who was more than happy to assist, in which case we’ll get to see some ear-fetishism.
Watch it turn out to be the Fey guy from the Twilight Council the one that whispered call me.
Or, she DID call him, three times….
And then followed up by pulling out the magical sword, and letting HIM explain what she’s capable of with it.
An annoyed Fey Lord wanting to talk to her with language that would make Sydney say “Oh my poor innocent ears…”
She would do that anyway
If she thought it would be funny (and genre appropriate)
Unless the Fey Lord bet on Ixah.
It would be funnier if he is a lovestruck fey lord, charmed by Max… I mean Ixah power and grace and want to ask her hand in marriage.
That last panel though XD
Having a way to brute force through makes for boring fights, thats why JoJo is so entertaining. Wildly applicable powers and thinking around them and how to trick your oponents and apply your quirky power.
Yeah honestly, I kinda wish Max had just lost here frankly. She came up against a power which worked perfectly against her in the situation, and it should’ve done the trick. Didn’t *properly defeat* her, but being able to ring out an opponent with it is totally fine and should have beat her in the contest
Having a protagonist who always wins can be extremely boring.
She lost against Vehemence and Super Massive. She HAD to get help from her team to defeat those guys.
The problem with Max’s powers is that she can’t go full out when there is a risk of collateral damage. It would be like using a nuke to take out the enemy headquarters in a city. The headquarters would be toast, but so would everything else for miles around. I suspect Max let go with everything she had, and it was like setting off a supernova (okay, maybe JUST a nova), and the labyrinth simply couldn’t contain it.
Ehh even that loss was with an asterisk and it wasn’t even a real loss. We haven’t really seen her get a genuine significant loss, no real kryptonite moment for her.
In short, adversity and struggles makes good stories. LOTR wouldn’t be entertaining if everything was walk in a park instead of Mordor. And we are told here they severely underestimated the situation, but if it has no consequence, it doesn’t matter. I understand Maxima joke may be the same as One Punch Man. That is the joke, she is ridiculously strong. But I am missing the downsides of it, or logical consequences. We are constantly dangled “bigger fish” situation, but they never came.
Now would have been good audience unexpected oportunity.
Yeah, that second panel doesn’t look like she exploded out of that fairy’s booty-hole. At all. Damn the internet has ruined me, but you can’t unsee that now.
Unless fairy’s have teeth in their butts…
Looks like shattered teeth flying out to me
I mean.
They might.
Kind of a variant of vagina dentata
That’s what was thinking of, a variation of VD
That sounds like a lot of fracturing bones there
Based on Sara’s eyes in that last panel, I would guess there’s some Toon physics in play. She’ll be fiiiiine though, even if she has been given the “Snap Crackle Popped” stress ball treatment.
My guess is that galactic level medtech can handle almost anything short of outright death.
It does depend on just what Fey actually are.
If they’re *also* aliens, like demons, then yeah she’ll likely need medtech.
On the other hand, if some of the wilder idea about Faerie and the Fey are actually true, then she would only be in trouble if Max managed to believably um, ‘unmake’ her. Rather like the whole Peter Pan thing where you’re supposed to clap to save Tinkerbell. Or some stories about gods where their power (or connection to the material world) is based on believers. Etc.
Only, since this is a comic full of innuendo, where you’re supposed to GET clap to save Tinkerbell?
This one seems to be a tube of sentient toothpaste with wings at the moment.
You need more faith in galactic level medtech.
We are advanced. We have resurrectomats.
As seen in the comic “Meson the Magnificent and his companion, Tarin, Doomed Mage”
If she was stressballed, I very much doubt the sound effect would be so emphatically a breaking sound with each letter displaying a fracture.
Did Max lose her disguise? She had more lights on her disguise before she went in that I’d expect to see through the dust similar to her eyes. Her hand looks fine though, so maybe Dave chose to just highlight the eyes to make it more ominous :p
No still purple.
Ah, punching your way out of separate dimensions. An underappreciated classic.
That’s my fetish.
Rest of the year is gonna be battle pages.
Now the real question… What names for the fighters is Dave gonna made up?
Bob
Aerith
maybe Second Bob
and
…
…
Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch
what does that say for those of us who don’t speak Welsh?
‘Gary’
boring answer:
“St. Mary’s Church in the hollow of the white hazel near the rapid whirlpool and the church of St. Tysilio by the red cave.” – It’s a real village on the island of Anglesey in Wales, and the name was intentionally lengthened in the 19th century as a bit of publicity flair.
If that is too boring:
“The Secret Lair of the Dragon Queen Where the Wind Swirls Backwards when Wizards Hold Their Annual Potion Brewin’ Championship.”
Eh. Foregone conclusion, really.
No way a fey trap would be able to hold ‘the goddess of ash’.
It wasn’t if it could Maxi, butt if it could hold her long enough…
Booh Lame :/
I agree with the others here. Its very unsatisfying to just have Max brute force a puzzle.
She got caught by what should have been a perfect counter.
Her losing would have made for a far better story at this point.
Instead Max just gets another +1 on the mary sue scale.
…and you all seem to have forgotten the “time” variable. You saw her bust through in 29 sec. You didn’t, yet, see how much time she spent in the other realm. Was it minutes, hours, days? How she spent that time and solved the problem is yet to be explained. All we know now is that she did solve it.
Yeah, it was definitely made clear in the last page that time is warped for the one trapped in the maze, implying that it would likely be to the benefit of the one trapped inside.
Depending on how much time warps, it could have been a situation like Omniman and the Thraxans, she could have trapped for hours, days, or months.
Plus, for getting around, Max can fly and can crank up her speed. If there is a significantly reduced number of serious threats in there, she can reallocate points she had in strength and defense to flight and speed.
And that’s assuming she didn’t just flat out cheat and either just tank straight through the walls or simply fly above the wall and make a beeline for the exit.
But imagine if the Friday comic shows she’s got a baby slung across her back…
>> She got caught by what should have been a perfect counter.
But it literally wasn’t.
A “you have to waste time doing X” effect may seem like it’s the perfect counter to a super, and to many it is, but not to one with explicit superspeed.
I don’t quite get this whole “Max should’ve lost here” vibe. Even if you want it, why would you *expect* it from a trick that she quite literally has the perfect tools to handle?
If you want Max to lose, it needs to be an exciting loss. Ringing her out is like spamming low kick.
What I think people forget is that early on Max confessed to being a former nerd. It’s kinda how she can relate to Sydney at all. Honestly, of our earth-bound heroes, I think Max would be one of the best preped to navigate the Faye Wilds (after Syd and Dabbler of course.)
My thoughts as well. Yes, the “trap” exploded when she exited, but that doesn’t mean she brute-forced everything. They said that time works differently in the Fey realm, so it’s quite possible she’s been there for weeks or even months (years?) doing everything from blasting/speedstering to completing side quests for the Fey Lord.
Dave…. You missed the obvious joke.
“Tinkle”.
Well he could always say that Saraviah Nightwing “Tinkled” herself there.
You can probably guess what “Tinkle” is child-appropriate British slang for.
Somehow I feel like Max is mildly annoyed right now. Not sure why I feel like she is. Maybe it’s the narrowed eyes? The claw hand at her side? The fairy’s bones breaking? What do you guys think?
While it makes sense (she out-sped a STASIS FIELD for crying out loud!), she has definitely marked herself as a major contender. She’s very likely to end up focused down by her opponents, and just barely managing to squeak out of the portal in time leads me to believe that if someone manages to actually hit her with one like how she got hit in New York City, there is an opportunity for them to get her to Ring Out. Heck, if Saraviah still has something left up her sleeve, then there’s still a chance for Maxima to Ring Out in THIS round, even if Saraviah herself ends up unable to continue the fight thanks to this little squeeze-crush. Heck, if the tournament operates on a “ten seconds down total per round” system rather than a “ten seconds down in a row” system, Saraviah can pull a “TAKING YOU WITH ME!” move and send both herself and Maxima into the feylands portal, managing to squeak out the win that way or even resulting in a Total Fieldwipe. Besides, nothing’s stopping us from being able to watch the tournament from the sidelines like how everyone but Maxima has currently has been doing. It’s public TV, after all.
I must disagree, specifically with a final pyrrhic attack by Sara Nightwing: In the last panel she has dropped her wand!
Interesting that DaveB. might have put Maxi out of the tournament here but chose not to, there are lots of story implications from that decision.
Overall I think we will see Sciona try something dastardly on Earth while thinking Maxima cannot return quickly. That will put MC Halo back in the forefront of the plot again. Tom lost his chance to place an advantageous bet – Dabbler will hear about that. It looks like Deus is in the same boat as far as betting – but will he rein in Sciona or let her act?
She could quit. She could says that this was a little too close for confort and is better stop here before in the next round they meet something even more dangerous.
She already won a round, which on a galactics scale is no joke, and her friends probably made a bundle with the betting. The could stop right here and it would be perfectly satisfing for everybody.
I don’t think they will, but they could.
‘They could stop right here and it would be perfectly satisfying for everybody.’
Quite so. Ixah’s powerful showing in her first round will lower her odds in succeeding rounds. Bets on the first round win will be paying off shortly. Bets on winning the tournament can’t pay off until it’s over. Anything that interrupts Maxima’s participation before the final championship round would probably disqualify her from winning the tournament…
Such as Sciona, et.al., stirring up trouble on Earth.
But ARC has probably reaped as many spacebucks as General Faulk thought they could reasonably get from this operation, making it a success already.
And if Ixah sticks around she will be relentlessly pursued by space-paparazizi. It actually makes sense for Ixah to disappear now. I think it’s safe to say that DaveB. will not be detailing the results of the entire tournament.
The count of ten is pretty obviously taken from boxing. If you’re knocked down you have ten seconds to get on your feet and ready to fight again, or it’s a knockout.
So it would likely be 10 seconds each time.
I mean, for most sports with a ring if you’re knocked out of it you’re done. But I suspect they’re treating it more like a knockdown because of the relatively large number of competitors who can stuff you into an alternate dimension etc.
Treating it like e.g. sumo wrestling, would make this tactic an “I win” button. Which is boring, and the organizers don’t want that.
It’s a 30 second count down, not 10.
I imagine that Max bypassed some of the maze, sort of like this:
I mean max just had a couple of weeks worth of subjective time with her speed up to maximum, enough time to explore the maze drop kick a very surprised fae lord and figure her way out. I kinda expect she was honestly waiting around a bit on the other side to pop out at the perfect moment.
And I think Nightside g is going to have a lot of explaining to do to a fae lord once she gets out of traction lol
Makes sense; proper superspeed is the bane of all mazes. Even just speeding up your perception gives you an unparalleled amount of time to think things through, if not brute force all possible routes.
I also would have accepted Max losing but this series is more like One Punch Man, Villain’s Code, and JJK: There is a Strongest(tm) individual and it would undercut their position in the story if they effectively lost too much due to extenuating circumstances.
Y’all forget Max has a magic eTing sword hidden upon her.
Stick that in the core of the Fey realm and you’ll have the Fey Lord’s undivided attention.
Make a polite offer to the Fey lord.
Send me back now and maybe High Tea later, or I suck up all the magic turning it and everything dependent on that mundane and mortal.
Oh, I am sure that realm just enjoyed having such an artifact even present within the realm.
Once the dust clears you’ll see that Max is wearing the crown that marks her as the new fae lord.
This is absolutely the same sound that a dog toy’s squeaker makes, not a person saying the word squeak or a similar onomatopoeia.
^_^
Depending on just how long (subjectively) Max spent inside that trap, she might no longer be quite the same person she was before she got sent in. That would cut down on the brute force feeling of the situation (ie. the victory would have actually cost her something). With that said, I’m not arguing for that particular solution – I happen to dislike the sudden timeskip for a character trope, myself.
Considering the whole comic is still technically in flashback, and we saw Max greet Cpl. Halo in the framing sequence, it can’t affect her **TOO** much.
I know a handful of folks here are complaining that Maxima cleared this, but honestly, it’d be more ridiculous if she didn’t.
We’ve got the Sydney-esque DnD-esque nerdery to help with puzzles. We’ve got the positive relations (and crushes) of at least one fae leader. We’ve got catch-a-bullet and dissassemble-a-grenade-in-flight levels of speed, including flight. We’ve got impervious-to-basically-everything levels of toughness. We’ve got lifts-basically-anything-that-can-be-lifted levels of strength. We’ve got one-shots-a-galactic-level-threat levels of firepower. Toss in an antimagic sword and any other gear Cora and Dabbler might have equipped her with, and she is, if you’ll forgive the pun, a Maxima of power.
There’s a reason that Cora was concerned that she’d be dangerous enough to SCARE the Xevoarchy. She just has too many ways to deal with threats, while remaining able to avoid, resist, or recover from any attempts to take her down. Add in the time-dilation effects of the fae realm she was transported to, and she may have had days/weeks/months/years/decades to exercise that power on anything that impedes her.
And for good measure, Bluce tells us that escape difficulty depends on the power of the fae lord ruling the realm; unless it’s the mightiest of the fae lords, there’s a good chance that Max can blow through any obstacle he can put up without even trying. Yes, I know the fae are famed for curses, illusions, debuffs, etc., but think back to the Black Reliquary, where the guardian’s weakness aura disables even the powerful council leaders…and Max shrugs it off like it was nothing.
Considering when she came out of that thing, she obviously has speed cranked up as she grabbed the fairy before the blast even finished.
I did like that bit.
“How are you protected from the weakness aura?”
*bunch of answers*
Maxima: “I’m not.”
O.o
Sarah looks like one of them squeaky-squeeze toys with the pop-out eyes (not sure if it was in a cartoon or real life) but definitely remember seeing one where someone was squeezing it (like a stress-ball) and the eyes kept going like panel SQUEAK
Also used with great comedy by Team Four Star in their DBZ abridged videos :)
… That’s possibly where saw it
Also, this page reminds me of “Merceneiress” and what TirTeen did with an annoying fairy EmCee :P
Don’t worry, TirTeen and the bug are friends now… sort of
Mmmm. Pixie sticks. Sugary goodness. Never found any wings parts in mine but I guess grind anything up enough…..
Is it too late to change my bet? >. > <. <
We already know very much so that this is in no way the C team. Most if not all of Cora’s… associates? They’re well above the double letter line. The majority of them could qualify as the DD team. Still wouldn’t be amazed if Ma… Ixah’s time in the other realm was significantly longer than the ring timer.
MAX! Please don’t murder the pixie.
Panel 4 “It was at that moment she knew she effed up.”
“YIELD.”
“…i yield”
So does her bowels :P
The bioroid bit immediately made me think of “Sonnie’s Edge” from “Love, Death & Robots” – if you haven’t seen it, it’s WELL-worth watching!
Horrifying Fact: poisoned Halloween candy comes in part because someone really did poison pixie stixs
Ah, Pixie-stix the candy that you bought when you didn’t have money for any thing else. When I was little they were still an actual penny candy. They were an early lesson in maximizing your financial resources. In 1969 you had to figure out how to make the most of the 14 cents that Mom found in the bottom of her purse. 14 cents was the equivalent of a candy bar and 4 pixie sticks. It was a bargain for Mom as I would stand at the candy display and obsess over my choices while she got her shopping done.
Around 1987 we had a corner store. Mom would call ahead to tell him I was coming to buy her cigs and I’d get to pick penny candy from the wall with the change. No pixie stix, plenty of tootsie rolls and them wax bottles with the worthless amount of juice in them.
this is at least the third time we’ve seen where someone got the top half of their head ripped off in the same location… (sciona, and Concretia) its interesting to me because most other artists seem to always show decapitations at the neck only, I dom’t know how common this kind of injury would be but it feels more realistic and looks badass every time.
There’s a reason this isn’t common… the skull is quite strong with a lot of bone to cut through, and the neck just below the skull is massively weaker regarding “ripping off”. To “rip off” half the skull you’d have to break the skull in half first. To rip off the entire head at the neck you only have to break the tension of the neck muscles and the tendons holding the spine together.
A quick way to cause me to lose immersion in a movie is for someone to easily push a blade through solid or densely packed bone. Whether the skull (half-hearted stab in a zombie movie) or the center of the body (the surprise sword in the back going through the spine then slowly out through the center of the sternum). I’ve butchered a few human-sized animals (deer, hogs), and that just isn’t happening in real life.
Anyone else hoping Max throws said pixie back through the portal as part of some fey pact?
Me personally? Not really.
She was part of the competition, same as Maxima, and she was playing it very clever.
Like all contestants present, Max underestimated her and let herself be surprised.
That’s on Maxima, not on Saraviah. She certainly does not deserve a fate worse than death for (almost) outsmarting Maxima.
That’s the whole point of Maxima being a ringer. She and Saraviah simply did not know each other’s capabilities before this battle.
It makes me ponder the relatioship between Saraviah and the Gray Anatomy. They must have fought each other before, and the G.A. was Sara’s first target. That suggests that in the Grrl-verse psionics can be a good counter to magic. And I like to think that they used to date, so there is some ex spite going on.
Anyway, Saraviah, as a repeat contestant, would work on changing up her spells between tournaments. So Maxima can’t be blamed too much for being taken by surprise, regardless. And she probably did Saraviah a favor by taking out the G.A. for her.
I’d still like to know what happened to the other 3 contestants whose fates have not been shown.
DaveB., allow me to make this plea: Give us at least one panel where Gail and Bluce wrap up the coverage of this round. As press, they would at least provide a summary of how all of the contestants fared.
Crew – “Sooooo, Max… just how long were you in there?”
Max (glaring at defeated pixie) – “Three. DOZEN. WEEKS!!!!”
.
.
.
.
.
(I don’t think Dave would have her be stuck for, say, centuries or worse; I’d imagine that would definitely have effects beyond the scope of what he’s wanting the characters to experience.)
Will she get backpay?
No, because as far as Archon is concerned, no time has passed
Sydney got backpay because she was gone for those months as far as Archon was concerned
Apparently the other opponents were done in by each other or Saraviah — or they noticed the opponent with the large hole in the middle of his chest and decided that there were better ways to make a living. Memorizing ‘would you like fries with that, Great Lord’ in 370 billion languages comes to mind.