Grrl Power #1443 – Have costochondral separation, will travel
Yeah, so fighting super monsters and ultra bots is not without risks. Ya’doy!
I rewrote this page a few times. The original version just had a word bubble… or a narrator bubble… I should probably know what that’s called. Anyway, it summed up Maxima weaving through tunnels and sneaking invisibly onto the ship while dodging like a zillion drones from news agencies, governments, criminal organizations, and everyone in between. Scary powerful contestants that no one knows anything about cause interest to skyrocket, after all.
But I occasionally go back to find a reference in the comic (usually someone’s eye color) and wind up reading a hundred pages or so. Takes longer than one might guess. But doing rereads makes me realize that the pacing of the comic is… consistent, in kind of a bad way. Like there are very very few establishing shots, no splash pages to set up a scene or anything. Not that every comic needs a wide city shot, then 5 pages of various panels of store fronts, telephone poles, bicycles parked in front of a school, etc, etc. Yeah, I know, you’re all conjuring images of the last manga you read.
So basically I thought it’d be okay to spend a few panels on Maxima doing instead of me telling. I’ll probably only get the urge every once in a while.
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.
I don’t know, DaveB. I -like- the consistency of your comic’s pacing honestly. It’s refreshingly different.
Also I see that Maxima is not ‘completely’unstoppable after all. I’m wondering who in particular did manage to hurt her – whether it was UMBRage, the pixie’s black holes, the initial blast from that robot or maybe it’s lasers afterwards, something that happened offscreen during her fight against the grey anatomy, or something that happened during those 29 seconds in the faerie’s realm with the gate guardian.
My guess would be the black(ish) hole. Maybe her force field doesn’t do anything against tidal forces?
Though the Unbrage stomp might be it. Might just be that being stomped into solid rock, while it couldn’t break her skin, still subjected her innards to a bit more force than they’re comfortable with.
My guess would be it was all of it dealing cumulative damage as it drained her ‘battery’, and Max being forced to steadily put more energy into offense than defense as the fight wore on.
She’s busy gasping, grasping her left side in pain? Could be something lung or rib related. Expecially if going so hard on offensive needed her to drop her defensive.
The title refers to “costochondral separation” (i.e. a rib getting disconnected from the cartilage binding the rib to the breastbone).
Had a rib webbing separate once, not a fun time
Experiencing costochondral separation was the single most painful experience of my life *which has been filled with pain from a large variety of sources).
I’m nearly 40 years past the time it happened and it’s still never fully healed.
I have about three recurrences per year when my rib or ribs pop back out of place (usually my lowest rib moving out and up to overlap the one just above it). Then I spend the next month moving very gingerly because any kind of bending or twisting causes waves of (lingering) pain. Eventually if I baby it along, it’ll slide back into place on its own.
I never had luck with doctors trying to fix it.
I don’t think anyone understands how painful it is without actually going through it themselves. Including doctors.
I’m skeptical that an Earth medical doctor could do anything for someone unless the doctor has super-healing powers.
Good news: Doc Chewy has super-healing powers :)
Bad news: she’s not real :P
My guess is Max had to shift more power from defense to offense as the fight wore on to deal with her opponents in a decisive manner, and the damage that made it through adds up. The problem with a properly challenging fight is that the other guy can also hit – and hurt – you, and Max tends to prefer to blitz her opponents, even in situations where turtling might have been a better option – even if only briefly.
Contrast this with Sydney’s fight with the Calamarians; where Max does shock and awe, Sydney used hit and run, making full use of mobility and defense.
The one time we saw Maxima turtling was against Vehemence, and that broke her nose.
There was that other time against Brut where she was so busy putting all her power into speed that she didnt put a lot into armor, so she got punchd by Brut across Times Square.
My guess is the spatial distortion that accidentally cored out the grey anatomy also hit her in the same area, which is why she’s holding her similar region to where he got a new orifice.
“Maybe her force field doesn’t do anything against tidal forces?”
It normally works against gravity, so I think that’s unlikely. She wasn’t hurt by Supermassive after all, even though she wasn’t winning.
I’m betting on fae mischief. It would be a pretty damning weakness if her defense field didn’t extend to the inside of her body, she’d be dead the first time someone decides to try and telefrag her (which would presumably elicit a response of “I didn’t think that would work” from the would-be heroine slayer)
I’d also bet Fae mischief. Especially if she had to put a lot into speed and attack to get the job done in time to make it back.
During the big fight at the steak house Maxima said Atomic Bombshell’s attack popped her back. https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-240-shock-and-aw-come-on/
And that was not Bombshell’s most powerful attack.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-239-nom-de-boom/
Kevin also broke her nose.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-258-unstoppable-force-meet-maximas-face/
Sorry I should have elaborated. Not completely stoppable against non-supers. We’ve seen several supers manage to at least hurt her or make her feel damage, like Darude, Vehemence, Atomic Bombshell, Brut (when most of her power was being put into speed), and Hench Wench (when she bit Maxima’s ear), etc.
er, not completely UNstoppable
First contact with potential Orb Makers during the travel? That would be interesting.
Props to Max for not saying anything about Sydney’s bigger chest (if she still has it), but that’s Max for you. Always business first. If she still has it when she swings by Earth though some of the others might not hold their tongue as much.
Modesty and prudishness almost always takes a back seat to internal bleeding and pain. Ask any EMT. At least, it does for the people actually in pain. Family members of the person in pain can still cause problems regarding modesty of the victim.
Probably she’s thinking something along the lines of “I would ask what the hell Sydney but right now I’m dealing with some internal bleeding and bruised ribs so I’m going to put that on the back burner. ow.”
IIRC Sydney’s boobs are generated by the local environment systems. They would go back to normal as soon as she leaves. This could be a set up for a variety of gags.
Maybe she ran into the same issue as Sydney and expended so much power that her power now needs to spend some time recharging?
I don’t quite remember if anything came of that last time when her orbs seemed low. Did they ever figure out what was going on there or did her orbs just recharge in the background without anyone mentioning it?
When Max stopped Sydney taking some of the ARC women on a shopping trip to Fracture, it was mentioned Dabbler thought they were slowly recharging, but it would take months.
Also, separately… after nearly being lost in another dimension for potential years, Maxima is now apparently badly injured. Requiring a round trip to Earth to withdraw another major asset (in which Shenanigans will undoubtely occur), since she doesn’t seem willing to give Frix a chance.
At what point does the Bad Idea level become critical?
I await Dr. Chevy’s opinion on that, expressed with her more emphatic than empathetic bedside manner.
I expect the other reason for calling in the Earth Doc, is someone who probably knows Max’s anatomy and condition, and what normal ‘for her’ looks like. Frix may be good, but there would still be a lot of unknowns for him to deal with in regard to Max vs her regular doctor.
And also that Max’s powers and physiology are on a need-to-know basis, and Frix doesn’t need to know
I expect the other reason for calling the Earth Doc, is she is an actual super with healing powers, and Frix, for all his technique and equipment, is not.
Her force field is pretty dang tough even when she’s not distributing extra power into it. We don’t know whether Frix can overcome it enough to do whatever it is she needs. Also we don’t know whether his equipment is even capable of reading her body enough to do diagnosis. Dr. Chevy’s healing power is likely to bypass both obstacles.
And if it doesn’t, the attempt still needs to be made as a test so that the team knows whether or not it’s an option in the future.
“I dunno Max, don’t want to let those orbs run too low. Remember what you were saying about space jaunts if not completely necessary, and opening atherium causeways near an UCBA event might attract attention to Earth. Cora tracked me to Fracture, after all..”
So head to Fracture, then to Earth. Pick up Doc Chevy, return to Fracture and then Cora’s ship. Anybody tracking sees her go to a highly congested hub.
Wasn’t Fracture Station traffic control getting annoyed / suspicious about Sydney’s wormholes? I don’t recall if that information made it back to the team, though.
Maxima had to step out of that Pentagon meeting to tell Sydney to stop teleporting to Fracture.
So, make a stop at Alari Prime instead of going direct to Earth. Anyone who notices the causeway opening up and traces it sees it going to Alari Prime and probably can’t trace the next one between Alari Prime and Earth.
Meanwhile we could find out how the Calamari Monsters are faring. Did they get better? Did another batch of them arrive after Syd tussled with the vanguard? Did their corpses mysteriously disappear?
We still don’t know how the Galaxy responded to the Calamari Monsters and the end of Alari Prime. In fact, I don’t think there’s even any evidence that anyone else aside from the surviving Alari even knows the place was attacked, or has any notion that the Calamari Monsters exist, let alone any knowledge of what they are. So if an intrepid member of the paparazzi is chasing Ixah and somehow follows the transition to Alari Prime, they may have real news to report.
It won’t be Ixah who would be traveling to Alari Prime (or anywhere)
And who says Sydney has AP as a waypoint? She got there via Sci-fright’s portal
A medical emergency is ‘not completely necessary’?
Well now, that’s interesting. Maxima discovered there is an upper limit to what she can power through. This might have some consequences for A.R.C.H.O.N.’s strategies for the future.
We knew she had an upper limit when she was pinned and about to be killed by Kevin/Vehemence. And he wasn’t even at full power at that point, if he even has a “full power” upper limit. Since this is an 8V8 format where he could hide and absorb energy while the other 7 fight, Kevin may have been the better option to partake in this tournament. I was expecting to see Ixah have to face off with him in either the finals or semi-finals, but he would have to have been entered by Tom or maybe Deus.
But no one else has gotten that close, and Kevin has superpowers.
U.M.B.Rage and the Killbot are the products of arms factories in space. After the Fel invasion got flattened, I think everyone assumed the aliens were beatable – easily, even.
Now … Not so much.
I like it.
Sheesh, Bluce. Sex positivity aside, this isn’t the naked news network… Slow your roll a bit, buddy.
I can’t believe someone else remembers the Naked News Network!
For a while, there were a lot of advertisements for the NNN. The concept kind of stuck in my memory.
You know Max is really hurting when she doesn’t comment on all the toplessness and near-toplessness going on.
Or Sydney wearing holographic falsies.
Narrator bubble? Wouldn’t that be a “caption”?
It seems to me that Harem is a better gofer here given that she can teleport Antony she can carry and she doesn’t have to open tethering causeways to do it.
Harem has a weight limit that is less than a human, also it was established she can’t teleport other people (only exception being Varia, and the only reason she is an exception is due to how her power combos with Harem’s).
It was explained, I forget if it was the comment or Dave’s little blog section under it that she is able to teleport with what she can carry, and that if one of her unteleports one of them into storage, that one’s strength is distributed through the others. She can momentarily unteleport 2 of them. That would give the remaining 3 a 1.67x strength bonus which should just about cover Doc Chevy’s weight.
Then she can grab Doc Chevy with one of the 2 that are on Earth, teleport Doc Chevy to the ship using the point of reference from the one on the ship, then teleport back to Earth using the point of reference of the one on Earth just to make sure
Still doesn’t overcome her inability to teleport other people (except Varia).
You’re mistaking being able to teleport Varia without needing to be able to carry her with being unable to teleport a human that’s being princess carried. Those are two different claims.
The strength required to princess carry an adult is likely higher than any one body of hers possesses when she has average strength with all 5 bodies out. Though there’s that one recent page hinting at a possible 6th, secret body.
No, it was stated that Daphne can’t carry living things (not even a houseplant), and there were comments by readers about how that works with internal bacteria or external parasites (or even her hair, seeing how that is, technically, dead cells)
First, the strength bonus from de-porting one of her bodies does not necessarily mean the same increase in teleporting capacity. But I think this is unproven, so maybe you’re right.
Second, Harem cannot teleport anything living, if memory serves.
Even a house plant is off limits.
A person? Never going to happen (except Varia – who can only come along because *Varia’s* power enables it, not because Harem’s power has an exception).
I don’t recall “nothing living”, only weight limitations. And the whole spreading of her strength between bodies is the reason she isn’t as strong as other supers. Like “super strength” is such a generic and universal power in this universe that it goes along with being photogenic and having big boobs if you’re female.
It was mentioned several times, including in-comic by Daphne herself
And ‘super strength’ is not part of the whole ‘super package’ like being the epitome of ‘most attractive’ for ones culture (not all supers are going to have ‘super strength’, which is not the same thing as ‘enhanced endurance’ which is part of the package, even for a Super Librarian… or SmugD)
The “nothing living” limitation is mentioned in the blog for page 60. Varia also mentions that Harem normally can’t take anyone with her on page 324.
Thanks for the research.
I tried hurriedly to find those references matching my memory, but fell short.
Hrmmm. Perhaps entering a no limits death battle on short notice, with no real information or preparation, wasn’t a smart idea. I’m sure Max still got this though. It would be interesting to see if Max ends up a little injured and on the mend for a bit after all this. Would be cool to see how the team operates without one of their heavy hitters on the field and also maybe Max deserves a break after all this.
Maxima left her disguise on so as not to show Sydney how F-ed up she is.
Or is it holding her guts in?
Probably both. But it’s interesting that Max is wanting
Panacea’sDoc Chevy’s healing powers instead of Frix’s medbay…Security concerns might be one thing, but Max having a severe case of OLD seems likely.
“A severe case of OLD”?
I think ‘severe case of old’ involves peopel who like 85+ years old, and Max is 34-35. So I think she might instead have a severe case of skyscraper sized dinosaur-mech stomped on me.’
This is what Im betting.
However badly she’s injured, you just know the REAL reason is “so Dave doesn’t have to draw the holoprojector suit”.
Also, stripping it off right now would probably hurt like hell even if the process didn’t aggravate her injuries (which it might).
I’m actually glad to see Maxima suffering physical pain and/or exhaustion. On account of the “Superman dilemna.” How there’s only two real conflicts one can bring to a Superman story.
1: A moral/mental dilemma (i.e. Superman is placed in a position where his powers are useless to solve the problem, and he must find a solution that relies on his intellect, morality, or both).
2: A physical obstacle of such magnitude that even Superman is sorely pressed to overcome it (i.e. Darkseid or a similar overwhelmingly powerful villain who responds to claims that Superman is invulnerable with “cute. Let’s test that theory.”)
So far we’ve seen some great examples of the first conflict, where Maxima is presented with obstacles she can’t simply punch/energy blast away. Now we might see some examples of the latter. Maxima, bleeding, damaged, but defiant and refusing to give up. Teeth bared, fists clenched, and reminding everyone that it’s not just the powers that got her promoted to Lieutenant Colonel.
“Superman and the suicide jumper” is possibly one of the best superman stories I’ve ever read. It’s the one that made me go “ok, superman might not be a pointless read”
I liked that one! With the girli who was wanting to jump and instead of just saving her (since it wouldnt fix that she wanted to kill herself and she’d just try again), he talked to her and convinced her not to jump.
Btw, one of Batman’s contingency plans that was warped by Vandal Savage in the animated ‘Justice League: War’ employed that ‘weakness’ of Superman – his empathy for a suicide jumper (who was actually Metallo in disguise) (combined with a kryptonite bullet).
Yeap. And when she asked him to get the police to turn the lights off he just heat-visioned the power cable for it without leaving her.
That scene and the new Superman movie have really warmed me up to the character.
I LOVED the new movie! They finally GOT the character, in a way that the previous films of this century have not. Focusing on how genuinely kind he is.
I also love the work they did with the supporting characters. The way they answered the issue of “how is Lois fooled by the glasses?” To say nothing of how they brought Mister Terrific to the big screen at last!
That movie has me actually interested in where they go with DC movies next. The demonstration of “no, THIS is what a good man with power looks like” was just warm and fuzzy in a way movies haven’t been for far too long.
The expression of pure frustration throughout the kaiju fight, saving the squirrel… I could gush for hours about this movie.
“That is where you’ve always been wrong about me, Lex. I am as human as anyone. I love, I-I get scared. I wake up every morning, and despite not knowing what to do, I put one foot in front of the other, and I try to make the best choices that I can. I screw up all the time, but that is being human, and that’s my greatest strength. And someday, I hope, for the sake of the world, you understand that it’s yours too.”
Best line in the entire movie.
They did an amazing job of Mr Terrific. Okay job of Guy Gardner but I always give extra points for anything with Nathan Fiillion because he’s Nathan Fillion. Still a LITTLE annoyed that he had blonde hair instead of red hair, but at least they got the bowl cut, which I was told Nathan Fillion INSISTED on. Another reason why Nathan Fillion is so great. And Nathan Fillion also got Guy Gardner’s attitude down PAT.
It’s a shame that from the trailers I’ve been seeing, the Lanterns movie looks pretty bad. :( Hoping the trailers are not indicative of the movie.
I’m not going to speculate as to how badly Maxima is hurt, since I have a more pressing question! Just took a look at the vote initiative and noticed that there is something yellow or gold colour dangling from the blunt end of the axe. It’s really small and even magnifying the page doesn’t really make it much easier to see, but would I be right to guess that it’s a tiny upside-down yellow duck?
It’s not that small (unless on a dumbphone), butt yes, that is a yellow duck
The responsible thing to do would obviously be to call the whole thing off and return to Earth ASAP. Of course, this being a webcomic and that being the boring option, I fully expect Maxima to continue along in the tournament against doctor’s orders.
If it was just her she probably would. But Cora and her friends/business associates have bet considerable sums on her winning the tournament so her heading home after the very first round would cause them all problems.
Where was it stated that they bet on Maxi to win the entire thing?
I think it was implied with how Maxima referred to herself as a ‘ringer.’
Yes, but believe it was stated (possibly to Faulke to get his approval) that she wouldn’t stay for the entire tournament
Not a surprise. This random assignment elimination battle featured two former champions (KILL-7 and UMBRAGE*), and she’s been beaten before by Kevin/Vehemence. Granted with V it was because she was still in “cop” mode, holding back from lethal force for way too long, not knowing it was allowing him to power up enough to beat her. She could have easily beaten him had she gone lethal earlier. But the point is we already know she isn’t invincible.
Note*: Considering how easily it was taken out by magic, and especially if it has been upgraded since the win, I am surprised that a pure melee contestant like Rambo-Barney was able to completely win this tournament in the past. I’m thinking the 8V8 format must inject more than a little luck into whoever is the ultimate winner. Say, all the magic wielders were taken out by other contestants in the tournament it won.
I’m really curious what Dr. Chevy can do that Cora’s doctor can’t do. I can understand why they didn’t bring another doc on board though because someone’s gotta take care of the supers on earth. I thought about hoping that nothing too bad is wrong with Max, but I think it’s safe to assume that she’s in super critical condition right now or else Cora’s crew could handle it.
Btw. I like your pacing. It’s fine to overthink things because that’s what passionate artists do but I don’t think most readers notice that stuff (consciously anyway).
Dr. Chevy has “healing super powers”. Since this is a web comic centered around super powers, we can assume that super powers are better than even alien technology. Plus Dr. Chevy has been working with Max for years, and we can presume they proactively did every test they could to figure out ways to “fix” her in the case she was injured. Frix wouldn’t have access to that information, and I assume nothing he has would be able to penetrate Max’s skin to fix anything inside her body.
This is what I am thinking. Also, I would not label Max’s condition as ‘super critical’, after all, she was still able to return to the ship under her own power and make the request for her personal doctor to have a look at her, and apparently has enough time to wait for Halo to get back with said doctor. As quick as a trip as that might be, it will still take a little bit of time.
I would reserve something like ‘super critical’ for a situation where she has collapsed on the battlefield and needs to be extracted and carried to medical and worked on right away without any delay.
I expect that Frix will also be working on Max, if only because Dr. Chevy would have no idea how to use most of the ship’s sickbay equipment.
Doc doesn’t need their equipment, her Super power is Healing
True, but she still does conventional medical examination. Presumably she’d want to examine Max (to the extent possible given the whole gold-plating thing, and galactic-tech equipment might be able to do better than earth tech).
From what I recall, Dr. Chevy’s powers allow the body to heal itself much, much, much faster. Which is probably extremely useful for someone for whom most normal methods of surgery and traditional medicine would be nearly impossible even when at the lower levels of armor. Also probably why, during the Vehemence fight, Maxima decided to straighten her nose because otherwise she’d have to have it broken again in order to set it. Much easier to do if it’s already straight before Doc Chevy speeds up her healing ability of her body.
Doc Chevy specifically told Sydney and (another instance of) Harem to stop making Harem laugh while she was trying to get her broken wrist to heal.
It’s probably not a matter of what but how fast, Dr. Chevy is a super that can accelerate healing, combine that with the future medical technology and Max will be fully healed in almost no time
I wonder if it’s less about Maxima being injured, and the ability for Maxima to order Doc Chevy. What if to get out of the Fae realm she made a trade with an injured Fae Lord or something? Perhaps she beat the snot out of some local leadership, but still couldn’t get them to open the portal or something. So she extracted promises and exchanged for medical assior a dozor, or a dozen other scenarios like this.
I think we’re missing the obvious: Max has super-tough, nigh-impenetrable flesh, with even the flashback of her starting to develop it showing it to be impenetrable to scanning equipment. So this can just be the classic Superman problem: How are you supposed to scan, suture, etc. a patient whose flesh is too tough for anything short of the mightiest villains?
Simple answer: You bring in the magic healer. Or in this case, the superpowered one – though Dabbler’s got healing potions, and likely Cora and co. do too…
As a side note, I didn’t notice until someone else pointed it out in a different comment thread, but from the mouse-over text, and from Max’s behavior/posture, it looks like she’s got a rib torn away from her sternum. Not life-threatening, but she’s definitely gonna want to skip the couple months of recovery time.
I agree with Aean’s answer to why not frix or someone with cora.
I think Dr. Chevy has a “Heal Trauma” superpower, which could stop internal bleeding without surgery. Cora’s crew could probably stop internal bleeding with alien tech surgery better than anyone on earth, but maxima’s skin would make the surgery difficult.
I forgot about the healing potions, they might also get around max’s super toughness.
Wasn’t one of the reasons she entered the tournament was so she could cut loose in the first place? And though it’s bad she seems injured it’s honestly a good thing that she found her limits.
(Sydney departs) “So, how bad are you, Max?”
Max: “I must be worse than I thought. I think I might be hallucinating. Before she left, Sydney looked like she had a rack.”
LOL
Literally the same.
Best comment so far.
I think Czarzhan has earned one of my highest honors for that funny – one ‘get out of ninja attack free’ card.
Thank you! That always comes in handy!
Actually tired Max. Interesting. Don’t see that very often.
Yikes, so even Maxima has her limits on her own powers and abilities.
Urges like this, are good ones, keep them up :)
I seem to recall she has issues related to needing to breathe. The attacker who floods the air with chlorine trifluoride might have damaged her lungs.
… When did that attack happen?
Perhaps in the Fae Realms. Several combatants did not even earn their own picture showing them being destroyed.
So, you are just making up an ability when there was no indicator for it, just to justify something we don’t even know has happened?
I suspect UMBRage’s 80 kiloton stomp might have been a big source of any pain, because even Anvil was surprised she was able to lift that much and asked if the planet they were on was 1G. Or the Gray Anatomy thing since she was doing something that did a ‘crack’ on herself after that encounter (although that might have been her cracking her knuckles for all I know).
Also what chlroine trifluoride?
There were eight contestants. Three of them seemed to vanish without a trace, not a reference to combat, or I missed it. One of them could have had a chlorine trifluoride attack.
There is another answer. What is more powerful than Maxima? Maxima. When she threw one of the contestants over her shoulder into the ground, she could have pulled something.
Oh boy you’re in for a treat. ClF3 – https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/sand-won-t-save-you-time
What’s fun about the 80 kiloton stomp is that if she didn’t insist on lifting the damn thing, she would likely have been fine and instead of bearing all the weight herself she would just have been pushed into the ground like a nail, which to her has the resilience of wet cardboard unless it’s some kind of superalloy rather than dirt.
Which means the ground takes most of the stomp, just as it does when the stomp misses whatever it was stomping.
Another fun alternative might be if she instead allowed herself to be pushed into the stomping foot like a nail – also likely to be a lot safer than trying to life the damn thing.
But ol’ Max does love to showboat.
So, Max, why have Syd go and bring the Doc back (and then have to return her to Earth)? That’s 3 trips. Having Sydney take you back to be healed and then bring you back (2 trips).
Unless the healing will take awhile and/or you also want to stay here as you may get ordered to stay if you go back?
Has Sydney learned how to set a bookmark for the causeway so she can return to this location? Previously she only used existing bookmarks, and Earth wasn’t one of them. Cora had to rescue her from Fracture Station and take her home.
At first, she couldn’t go back to Earth because she was temporally displaced. That was resolved when she was returned to Earth by Cora and crew. She’s shown to be able to go places she’s been before and return to where she just left (as when she took Vehemence to Fracture Station and back to the training ground)
Sydney has taken several trips to fracture station and back by now, so presumably she either learned how to edit the bookmarks, or it simply recorded them automatically.
Is this where we learn that the last orb has healing abilities?
It would make sense. No good spaceship is complete without a medical ward.
The other really important ™ question that remains to be answered is:
Will Sydney remember to put on her top, or will she appear out of her earth endpoint (which may still be behind her comic shop for all we know) dressed as she is now?
Normally there would be no way she would forget, but … seeing Maxima actually injured might induce a panic-causeway.
Or dressed less than she is now, if the large-cup bra she’s wearing is also being provided by the hard light projectors on the ship…
That would be priceless!
When you’re doing two pages, colored and shaded, with a punchline on almost every page, every week, there’s no reason to waste time on establishing shots or unnecessary actions that can be inferred by a reasonable reader. Sure, these things might be a normal aspect of pacing in other media, but they aren’t *necessary.*
Max: and what happened to your chest!!!!
I’m no doctor, but I HAVE injured myself like Max is acting. Judging by where she is holding her ribs, she’s most likely got cracked/broken ribs, maybe a bruised lung and/or pancreas. The wheezing says ribs and lung. In my case I was trying to jump my bike down a hill, between 2 trees, I wasn’t successful… And since I was a cocky kid, I didn’t tell anyone. I have a peak where my ribs should be curved. BTDT situation my dear Goddess of Ash lol.
Now that she has asked the critical request of getting a healer, I’m looking forward to Maxima’s comment on Sydney’s suddenly huge boobs.
I also wonder if her holo-boobs have sensation or not. They are just a holo projection after all, and connecting to her sensory input would be a huge thing. But this is super advanced alien tech and Cora can feel through hers. (Though hers are more special)
Hmm. Tons of speculation about Maxima’s injury. The only thing I can say is that we should be told what got hurt and how when Maxima’s doctor asks her about it. So wait for it.
When was Doc Chevy last mentioned in the story? It’s been long enough for me to forget the character altogether.
And regardless of pacing, I am simply impressed that DaveB. has consistently turned out 2 pages per week for so many years. Kudoes!
I think the injury is a good story decision, but I’m worried about Maxi wheezing like that. Isn’t that odd?
It was the Noodle Incident.
She showed up a bit later {p. 421-423) to give Sidney a physical and treat Harem’s injury from the steakhouse battle.
The page title is probably a hint.
She survived the 80 kiloton stomp unprepared so she probably strained herself there. It means unprepared she can tank a nuke… Also I don’t think they put an air filter on the disguise so it’s possible she’s having breathing issues entirely due to the fey drug pollen. Her one weakness… still needing air.
Am I the only one who can imagine that Max may be hurting, but she knows of someone else in the tournament who is hurt far worse? Bringing in Chevy to heal someone else hurt in the tournament. Someone who might be important to the cause? Someone Max would like to save because they have powers that can help the good guys?
in true military fashion, take two moltren and drink water will cure anything
Umm, what?
its military humor. motrin / ibuprofen and water will cure most things in the military. i also misspelled Motrin in my first post.
I can’t wait to see how Max reacts to Sydney’s Huge Heaving Holo Hooters
Why not use healing potions? Surely Cora has a few for emergencies.
Calling it now, it turns out Max’s powers rely on her staying on Earth. Being away from Earth has caused her powers to drain over time. The reason she was so powerful is that she was constantly being charged by Earth. That’s my hypothesis anyway.
If that’s the case, wonder if that works for Big Kev as well: he thinks he has ‘charged up’ enough before a big invasion (on behalf of Tom Thumb), only to find it didn’t work as well as he thought and he gets splattered (or even just severely injured)
Why does the maglev tunnels have water in them, seems like an odd thing. Cooling?
Those are the sewers below the maglev tunnels (that’s how she lost them, by going further down)