Grrl Power #1446 – Tropical storm Leander
Working out is hard when you can lift the entire gym.
The bottom-left panel is supposed to be a hypothetical Everglades post-maximum Maxima event. I assumed Willy Crocman would make that obvious-ish, but the background could also be interpreted as Monument Valley after being pounded to sand. There’s not a whole lot of crocodiles in Utah, though, generally speaking.
Maxima’s outfit has to basically be printed onto her skin, and while makeup and grease paint don’t stick to her, it’s not like nothing at all does. A wacky wall walker would probably stick to her well enough. Probably one of those rubber stickers that are used on windows. Those might use the same technology, come to think of it. Cora and Galen found some material that basically won’t come off her skin if she’s exerting even the smallest amount of “personal force field” to envelop the stuff, and embedded thousands of micro holo projectors in it. The projection overlaps, so she’ll still have coverage if she loses small patches during the fight, and if large enough bare patches cause her disguise to start to fail, the stuff will slither around and attempt to close the gaps, but that’s dangerous during a fight because it can’t migrate anywhere while her force field is holding it in place. The plan at that point is for her to shift “Armor” into “Speed,” and keep out of danger for the 10-15 seconds it would take her smart cat suit to rearrange itself.
It is conceivable then, that if enough of the outfit was damaged all at once, she could find herself on Space-TV in front of a trillion viewers wearing nothing but pasties. But that’s a risk any superhero or heroine takes when they get into high-powered fights in front of a bank, and they are tougher than their own clothes.
Ah! I thought I had more time till March. I’m bad at looking at dates apparently.
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 know they have shared showers and everything and but that first panel of Max assumedly flashing Syd as she changes is kinda wild. They’ve all just gotten super comfortable with each other. Is that the Dabbler effect?
I think it’s just the context… Max wouldn’t have any problem in this situation (as long as Dabbler isn’t around), since as a soldier, she’s going to be used to not always having privacy. She’d have a lot more problem if, say, Hiro was in the room.
No, this feels very out of character for Maxima to actually hold a conversation while undressed rather than just get changed as quickly and privately as possible. She may not expect full privacy due to being a soldier but I wouldn’t expect her to act exhibitionist like this either.
If that wasn’t the case I don’t see why Maxima would’ve taken such objection to Dabbler in the first place.
Maxima doesn’t have any objection to nudity, what she objects to from Dabbler is the constant sexual banter in the workplace, which she sees as unprofessional. She’s not a prude, she’s a professional. Changing in front of a same-sex colleague is fine.
It’s all about context.
DB’s comment about the stuff slithering around to close the gaps reminds me of the comic Empowered. The heroine always ends up with more gaps and skin showing than suit remaining! :) Doing the opposite on purpose.
https://www.empoweredcomic.com/comic/volume-1-page-1
Also Ironman’s nanotech “suit” in Avengers: Infinity War during the battle with Thanos on Titan.
Sydney is more than used to being “flashed” by this point considering she’s been shown (along with literally every other member of the team) using the communal showers at Arc HQ repeatedly. The only time it was even remotely awkward was the first time, and that was all body insecurity from Sydney’s end related to the discovery that super powers apparently also grant peak physique when she first joined the team in the early days. Something she has long since gotten over.
And Max has also literally gone down to the women’s communal showers when it was full of the female members of Arc Swat at least once with zero problem. In fact she literally told Kenya she’d normally just shower with the rest of the crew if the quarters she was assigned due to her rank didn’t already have a private shower in the building design (which she did NOT request btw – Strip 590). Zero drama or awkwardness until Max noticed Dabbler was there and stated in no uncertain terms that she wasn’t going to shower until she confirmed that Dabbler was on the other side of the building. Depends entirely on who she’s hanging with/talking to.
Kenya, Sydney, Peggy, 99.999% of the other ladies on the team? No problem.
Any of the guys?, she’d probably make them leave or wait until she was out of the suit and into her normal clothes before continuing the conversation.
Dabbler would get the same treatment as the guys because she’s proven time and time again that she can’t be professional and not get unwantedly handsy around Maxima even when she’s fully clothed if given the opportunity. Notice it’s just her and Sydney without Dabbler (or Cora for that matter).
The context of the situation matters.
I assume it takes several minutes, maybe even tens of minutes, to put-on or take-off that outfit. Having a conversation in that context makes a lot of sense.
This isnt exhibitionism. They’re just comfortable with each other at this point, both personally and from being in the same “squad”. It doesnt even register anymore.
it’s very different to undress in front of someone who wants to have sex with you than to undress in front of someone who doesn’t. Hiro would struggle heroicly not to peek and dabbler would set up studio lighting and need to be removed by force. Also, Max has no control over the speed at which the indestructible costume is unwoven from her; since she’s already increasingly uncovered during the process and can’t go anywhere until it’s done, there’s no practical reason to hurry to cover up at super speed the moment that she can when the only witness is Syd who will neither leer, nor avert her eyes in embarrasment. Also the endorphin rush of going all out and being instantly healed from the repercussions from doing so make one somewhat lassitudinal.
at least the comment says she’s wearing pasties, so it’s officially decent (except for the superball)
This is definitely a problem supers (heroic or otherwise) would face during fights, as Dave B. points out. Since someone already mentioned Empowered already, I have an excuse to mention Whateley Academy:
1. Sara’s Little Purple Book, a guide for the superhuman to all things involving sex (including potential pitfalls) mentions in the section on wardrobe that attacks on an opponent’s modesty are common. Aside from the obvious approaches of cutting or burning off clothes, number of devious Gadgeteers, Devisors, and Shimmelhorn Scientists (three flavors of super-inventors) have concocted a variety of ways to leave an opponent undressed, including chemicals which dissolve clothes without affecting flesh and small centipede-like robots which crawl into any openings or seams to force the target to remove their costumes to get them off of them, and so forth. Really nasty Mages may have spells for the same purpose.
2. Mrs. Ryan, the little old lady who teaches the Costume Shop classes, is very particular that students choose suitably durable clothes, regardless of whether it is meant for combat, disguise, or just ordinary life. She’s specifically mentioned the same issues discussed in SLPB. More knowledgeable students who have figured out her past as a supervillainess in the 1950s have noted that she’d used exactly those tactics herself on occasion.
3. One of the main POV characters, Tennyo, has survived things which would have given Wolverine or even Superman a hard time, but her powers don’t protect her costume, which has left her naked more than once. Eventually, her wealthy teammate, Phase, spent a small fortune getting a chainmail bikini made from Adamantium (which in this world is a super-hard ceramic, explicitly named after the equivalent in Marvel comics) and Titan Wire for her to wear under her clothes. She’ll probably wreck that too eventually, but it is better than nothing.
Think of it as a changing room at the pool. That’s basically what she’s doing there, and that’s a context where people are generally OK with (semi-)public nudity.
Maxima doesn’t strike me as the type to hold conversations while undressed the changing rooms.
Maxi is not a prude, she just has a problem with boundaries, more importantly, when people either push them or simply ignore them entirely (that’s why she has a problem with Dabbles)
People are prudes if they *don’t* hold conversations while undressed in changing rooms now?
Literally *no one* holds conversations like that where I live.
While I wouldn’t hold a conversation with a *stranger* while undressed in a changing room, I’ve definitely had conversations with my besties while one or both of us was in various stages of undress (including fully) in changing rooms…or were changing in a room at one or the other’s home, and this includes a bestie who I would have described as prudish when it comes to anything sexual (up until maybe 15 years ago, when she finally started to ease up around that topic).
Granted, I also wouldn’t call someone a prude for not being comfortable doing that. I’m just saying that it’s not that wild of a thing to do when you’re comfortable with the person you’re talking to, and there’s no sexual implications involved. Bodies are bodies. Everyone’s got them. *shrugs*
That is not near any commonly accepted definition of prude, no ;)
First of all we have to keep in mind that the ‘Max is a prude’ label comes from Dabbler. Who is neither unbiased nor objective on the subject.
Second, in my opinion Maxima has not shown in the story that she is prudish. Certainly not beyond the norm of the USA. She is sensitive to being objectified. We can argue if she is oversensitive on the subject or not.
Third, Maxima is the commanding officer of a paramilitary unit. She has to keep distance, and there are some expectations to senior officers keeping up appearances.
Fourth, Maxima has at times used the common showers of the unit, so she is neither unfamiliar nor adverse to casual nudity in the dressing room at least. And we have been shown that the team, and Max when she was present, was involved in smalltalk. Much like she is doing here.
Fifth, it may be that this is not done where you live, but my experience is that it is really common in the women’s dressing rooms. I would not be able to say if it is the same for men ;) Of course my experience with shared dressing rooms and showers primarily comes from sports teams. But it was also quite common in the dressing rooms in high school, college and e.g. the swimming pool.
That does not invalidate your experience, but I would argue that it is not that out of character for Max swap out of her combat paint and into something more comfortable while others are present. I rather think she would object to Cora’s maliens being in the same room though. Co-ed showers are a much harder boundary for most humans. (and, yes, I have some experience there too, and the reality is far far less interesting than the imagination may suggest).
The “Max is a Prude” is also coming from a lot of the readers, whether because they think it’s funny to say it, or they truly believe she is
“Max is a prude” and “Max isn’t a prude” are both valid but incomplete statements, because “prudish” is both subjective and relative. Someone could more accurately and objectively say “Max is more prudish than me” or “Max is less prudish than me”, and there would be far less room to argue, because those statements could actually be coherently evaluated.
Zack Tilly: they are statements of opinion from the poster, not statements of fact about Maxi
Think “your gym locker room.” Women talk to each other in the locker room at the gym, especially if they work out together or at the same time on the same days. Guys talk in locker rooms if they’re on a team, at a gym, at the pool… anywhere. Plus, Max and Syd don’t have a normal relationship like besties or military. They’ve been through life and death situations, extreme stress situations. After all they’ve been through, Max feels comfortable with Syd in any situation. Sydney is still body conscious though, even with the virtual hooters.
Why not? She’s literally held conversations while cleaning up in the communal ladies shower at Arc HQ.
You are right of course.
But I object to the use of the word ladies in this context. The women of ARC are many things but ladies is not on the list.
(with a few exceptions of course)
Max still probably has the pasties on?
Pasties seems more like what Dabbler would consider acceptably decent than what Maxima would consider acceptably decent though. I could see Maxima reprimanding Dabbler for showing up in pasties when asked to get dressed than I could see Maxima considering it fine to just wear pasties.
They are not articles of clothing per say, but what she was wearing under her outfit so protect her modesty (they just haven’t been removed yet)
It’s a we have showers with the whole female team. Kind of thing.
Honestly it seems like Max NEEDS the “not exactly a super” conversation more.
Footloose?
FOOTLOOSE? Really???
*groan*
:)
OG Footloose
Maxi does enjoy dancing (and abandoned factories)
Isn’t she the reason why it’s abandoned in the first place?
That… is classified :P
Wasn’t the phrase from the comic: “That happened only once” ?
Different location… still classified :P
Should that be “keep the full extent of my powers a secret”?
Being tougher than your own clothes is a problem, physics should be rewritten to make my clothes last longer for financial reasons.
Hmmm, random thought. Has Max ever tried “shrinking” her power pool? Or putting points into a “reserve” that doesn’t do anything but store the power? Might let her power down a some to challenge herself.
I think she does that all the time. I don’t know if her powers work in a way that lets her hold reserves but I assume most interactions she’s operating at her lowest levels of power possible so a random punch doesn’t cause her enemy’s head to explode or so she can open a door or shake a hand without crushing it. I don’t think it’s about challenging herself as much as rarely reaching that upper limit to begin with. Unless she’s fight heavy hitters like Vehemence or Darude she just doesn’t get to experience that too often. Maybe with all their new resources they can magic science together like a training dimension or something eventually.
In addition to strength, her speed would have to be at the bare minimum at all times she was interacting with other people. Especially while holding a conversation. Waiting on the other person to croak out one phoneme at a time would eventually drive a true speedster insane.
Tossing a wall walker at Maxima would probably be insubordination.
Nobody tell Dabbler.
BUT THEY’RE SELF-ADHERING!
Now I’m imagining those pasties as being those octopus wall-walkers that came in boxes of Froot Loops long ago.
Kami’s Hyperbolic Time Chamber :)
Maxi would enjoy the reference
Not really, the mental icons we saw earlier was about balancing what she had. Nothing there about stores, reserves, or a power sink. Most of the time she just keeps everything at even levels which is still meant time greater than the average human. What I’m thinking is more about getting everything to human levels except for whatever is in the reserve. She may even be able to get her human skin back for social and low-key situations.
Yes, and it’s her standard mode of operations:
“So now she keeps a blue on armor and a green on speed and holds the rest of her power pool in reserve.”
(https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-1123-thats-one-way-to-support-the-troops/)
One of my RPG characters had that problem — but in her case, it wasn’t that she was tougher than her cloths, she was tougher than her *skin*.
So her idea of “nudity” was being stripped down to her nigh-indestructable cyborg chassis, looking something out of a Terminator movie. And since wearing clothes wasn’t really practical until she’d replaced the organic layers, she ended up attending a formal event wearing nothing more than rank insignia stencilled on her metal frame.
Wouldn’t the old nuclear testing range in the nevada desert be a safe spot for Max to practice?
You’d get all the fringe groups yelling that she’s destroying the planet by stirring up THINGS that will kill us all.
The human race has had extensive experience with radiation at this point, and because of those fringe groups the US is STILL pretending there’s some magical level of zero radiation and zero chemicals that will get rid of cancer forever. Experience doesn’t show that, but the paradigm went into law nearly seventy years ago IIRC, and it’s still there.
And we’re still doing it! All these panicky “news” bits about micro plastics, but none of them ever get around to mentioning there’s natural generation of tiny plastics by bacteria, somehow nobody wants to get samples from mummies and such to establish a baseline of nano plastics pre industry, it’s just numbers. Numbers without baselines are just counting stuff. And not very well, per some of the actual papers out there. Science does baselines, science gives accurate counts or gives you a +- XXX or a standard deviation/sigma – some level to the uncertainty above or below a baseline. Did some heavy searching of journals and abstracts last year, didn’t find much of that at all.
And, BTW, if you’re into that kind of thing, you have to keep track of the unreliable “journals” that have poor or no peer review and the retracted papers. Thank GAWD for places that keep track of those lists.
Ok OK, “went into federal regulations”.
That’s really just semantics, but people LOVE to play semantic games.
Natural generation of microplastics by bacteria, with no fossil fuel involvement, is an assertion I have not seen before. My attempts to learn more through various searches have turned up nothing. Even Wikipedia makes no mention of this idea. Do you have a source?
You do know there was fossil fuel before they ‘invented’ oil in Texas, right?
Ever hear of this thing called “cellulose”? That’s a plastic… Incidentally… also all proteïns…. And ..oh…. Also D/RNA…
The entirety of Mother Nature makes “plastics”, it’s just that most of Mother Nature *also* has figured out how to break them down for parts. Usually..
Which is the point of cellulose, or for that matter the plethora of very fancy polymers in bacterial cell walls…
Most organisms *can’t* break those down, which makes it a good structural component to protect the yummy squishy inside…
Or in case of plants, get up above and beyond the rest of the nutrient-stealing bastards around it.
The only groups of critters that are able to break down cellulose directly are funghi, and several sets of bacteria who have opted for the cohabitation lifestyle in other critter’s guts.
Hence ruminants, but most of them live in beetles and termites.
Regarding biodegradability and fossil fuels, it should be noted that the reason those exist at all is that during the Carboniferous period nothing had evolved which could digest cellulose, which led to the vast coal forests to get filled up with wet biomass that simply wouldn’t decay. By the time such organisms did evolve, that carbon-bearing material was buried well below where the could reach them, meaning that with time, pressure, and heat, they turned into coal seams, and in some places where the right conditions existed into pockets of petroleum and natural gas (the latter being a byproduct of the process creating the former).
Some coal would continue to form whenever peat bogs accumulated biomass faster than it could decay (a process still happening today), but that is exceedingly rare in later epochs. Over 99.9% of carbonaceous fossil material is from before the Permian began, and something like 85% before the first amphibians walked on land.
While the American Crocodile does live in the Everglades, most people associate Florida with alligators since they live all over the state, including the Everglades. Crocs only live in the very Southern tip of the state, and most people don’t even know that North America has crocodiles.
A gator man might be better than a croc man for clarity, is all I’m saying. Though I thought it was pretty clear regardless.
Considering that here in Houston, and all along the Gulf coast, we have alligators, I agree that ‘crocodile’ is confusing. It’s like putting a white guy in local clothing in a photo taken in Ghana or Monrovia. It sort of stands out, even if they ARE there.
[Reading Dave’s post] Do you mean “Willy Gatorman”?
The American Crocodile lives in the Southern tip of Florida, including the Everglades. I actually posted a comment about this right before yours appeared, saying most people associate Florida with gators and don’t even know that there are crocs in North America.
The gator is supposed to be packed up for a move, but as I was typing the post, I thought he kind of looked more like a traveling salesman, so I referenced the only salesman character I could think of, Willy Loman.
https://c.tenor.com/N_8p8kIvWxAAAAAC/tenor.gif
Short for Sydney’s last line there?
“BTDT”.
Ah, “World of Cardboard” references. Nicely done.
Sydney’s taken off her new knockers?
They were never going to be permanent
I thought her orbs were going to decide to be orbs so that she could use four at once.
Well she seemed to really enjoy them.
As a post-op giant knockers haver myself, I would encourage anyone who feels inadequate to consider taking action to address any lingering feelings of body dysphoria. It really can improve your quality of life if having them is a thing you actively desire.
As far as her reported back pain, that can be immediately solved for with weekly core exercises and wearing properly fitted bra, which I would imagine the hologram wasn’t actually helping with at the time. My guess is the holo system only added the weight but without the support of her bra offsetting it, so it was likely as if she wasn’t wearing a bra at all, which of course that would hurt.
I walk around all day long with a M cup that is bigger then every single girl on Sydney’s team and I’m not even remotely sore ever. Simply because my bra actually fits me correctly and distributes that 10lb of weight across my entire torso instead of entirely on the front.
Hmm! And where did you acquire this wonderfully supportive bra? :)
For an M? That would be a specialty shop. Not a common retail. Not even a self-proclaimed high end one.
And retail shops generally horribly botch a proper fitting. As do the major brands. Any shop that pretends they can measure over your outerwear are hacks and you should not buy anything there. Any shop that measures you while you wear a bra is likely the same but you can give them the benefit of considerable doubt if you really like their collection. A proper fit involves measuring in three different positions (usually): standing straight, lying on your back and bent at a 90 degree at the hip. You probaby also want the size of your shoulders where the straps will rest to the fullest part of your breast. Depending on the style you additionally may need to know extend past your rib cage to the side (though given that most of us go for strong compression and a suggestion of cleavage that is less important. However, if you aim at maximum comfort, or minimum discomfort, that is a relevant point of information. And while you can try to do this measuring thing alone, it will both be faster and much more accurate when you get some help.
Then … this all gets thrown into some college level math to arrive at the two numbers that bra makers insist to label their products with. Be prepared to try many sister sizes because what’s on the label rarely has much to do with what’s the product. And forget about the quaint idea that if the label says the sizes are the same between brands, they are in fact the same. Brands each have their own sewing patterns, often many (many) decades old and they hang on to them for dear life.
So guys, you now more about fitting than you probably want to, or should ;) And in case you ever were wondering why women try on clothes for fit endlessly, this is an example of why.
Yep! In fact there is only one single shop in my entire city that sells anything at all which fits me actually. I can’t shop anywhere else ever unless I’m just trying to buy pants or a skirt. Trying to order them from online requires that I actually order 6-7 different slight variations at once for physical testing in my home, all just to identify the actually correct one I need and send the rest back, then write down size listed on the tag, next to the style of the brand and any comments as reminders for future me about minor fit issues. All of that data goes on a spreadsheet I keep around, the information on which is only useful to myself and sharing it wouldn’t be helpful to anyone else, even if they shared my same bra measurement, because there’s so many individualized factors specific to our bodies not represented by that single number and letter like height or weight or distance between them or shape of the breasts themselves, that we cant even compare useful data with other girls to make a shared database or anything. The only thing my spreadsheet is useful for, is as a record what I need to get if I ever want something that fits me identically in the future again, assuming the company doesn’t discontinue that specific brand line, which of course they frequently do.
This is why over time you’ll see women who own completely different sized bras according to the tags, that are actually each close to identical to one other when worn. The problem is that each manufacturer is wildly inconsistent against their competitors, even at the best of times for a multitude of reasons. By tape measurement alone in each of those 3 positions I should be in a 36m. However, I own a 38p in one underwire brand which I have on now, that same size is a 36o in different brand, and a 38m in a different one from those two for example, along with several other various sports bras I own with even more vague tags like 2xl written on them. They all fit me pretty much equally however, even with those very different listed measurements.
The sad reality is the that numbering system used when shopping for bras is only a rough starting point that you have to physically test multiple variations on for every shift in manufacturer (and often sometimes even with the same manufacturer against their particular style line because some companies have that as a problem, especially when swapping bra types themselves like full coverage vs demi vs plunge and so on. All of that testing is how we find which actual size is correct for our specific body, for that particular company, for that particular style, for that particular brand line. Its the expected industry standard for manufacturers that we already know to expect they to make women go through all of that with them, rather then even attempt to coordinate together or work off some shared agreement collaboratively. It’s basically manual testing and effort from us every single time, or alternatively just throwing up your hands in frustration and just blindly assuming the band and number will be accurate or even “good enough”… after which the resulting spillage, lack of support from loose band, or partially empty cups, or pinching, or a host of other problems, all originates from improper fit when we trust the tags are consistent enough to just assume its correct for you, and that whatever shop-keep selling it you wasn’t incentivized to just try and gaslight you into whatever bra they are having difficulty selling on their to make a commission off you if you get it out of their inventory. A lot of bad bra fittings are the result of whoever is checking for you trying to convince you its working please buy it so it stops being my problem. it tends to be where most complaints of back pain originate from, because a number of people just don’t realize that’s how you solve for that problem, or they just don’t have the mental energy to spare anymore so they instead get used to the pain and normalize it. Which tends to result in a lot of bigger girls going and getting really expensive reductions someday, because of that back pain to make it stop, all because they didn’t know how to solve for it to begin with.
The idea of sister sizing (which is the relationship between going up or down a band with the same manufacturer, and the changes to the relational cup size you should adjust to based on going up or down in band size) only gets more and more further from the actual truth once you you start going past the letter G. Sister sizing is basically a joke once your at my level, and I completely ignore it as a tool, because its actually often less helpful then just following my intuition and expectations instead.
So Maxima is going commando then?
Maxima was effectively a body-painting model during that battle, only one with scary superpowers.
Cora explained this micron layer of body paint was the only ‘clothing’ Maxima could wear that would not get shredded in an explosion and leave her gold skin exposed (and recognisable).
We already knew that Maxima’s protection extended to her clothes only up to a point. In the fight against the self-aware blood golem it blew up trapped between Maxima and Hiro. Both lost most of their clothes, but were otherwise unharmed. This proves sufficiently that against sufficiently powerful attacks Maxima’s defenses are forced well closer than even thin clothes.
Not trying to derail this fun arc, but while going all-out wouldn’t be possible on the Earth without revealing her power levels, she’s had the ability to travel to the moon for a while. She would need a life-support system for the trip, but it’s been stated that she can take that off for a short period while she cuts loose on the dark side.
And with Cora, she now has access to any number of uninhabited planets with a breathable atmosphere where life hasn’t evolved yet. Or even without the breathable atmosphere if she’s wearing that mask.
It’s very unlikely that a lifeless planet will have a human-friendly atmosphere. Earth only has gaseous oxygen because it is constantly being regenerated by plants – without that, it would eventually all react away and get locked in rust & rocks.
True.
To play devil’s advocate, a world where nothing beyond oceanic phytoplankton has evolved yet is close enough for a lay description of a world where “life hasn’t evolved yet”.
Oxygen can be created by other means, chemical reactions, microbe growth from comets, carbon-based life requires oxygen. Super heating plain water breaks down it to the base elements, ask any fireman what happens. Or the first-time turkey fryer. Throwing water on an oil fire does 2 things, it spreads the oil and flashed the water releasing the hydrogen and oxygen making a fireball that spreads. That and 4th of July were the worst times to be a fireman. Oh and Christmas… Pine trees that are dried out just go whoosh! Not to mention the gifts are wrapped in paper. As part of training, we got to go in and watch just how fast a tree fire spreads, in less than 5 minutes the entire room is ablaze.
Yes, but you need a constant, planetary-scale supply of oxygen for it to stick around in any quantity in an atmosphere, let alone at human-breathable levels.
[And that’s just the O2. You also need to consider toxic gases (including CO2). Or atmospheres being stripped away, like Mars; or turning into runaway greenhouses like Venus (with bonus Sulphuric Acid vapour in that case).]
No oil fires do not turn water into component atoms.
What it does is float the oil, and if surface is hot enough, flash to steam. Increasing in volume rapidly. Which further spreads oil atomically in very hot micro dots allowing it to flash with resident O2 in either a deflagration or slow boom.
Water is still there, only in vapor/steam vs liquid.
Now a Class D fire (burning metals). That will breakdown water and produce steam on contact. Those have to be handled chemically.
Sigh… when you FLASH water to steam, some of it breaks down, and the heat from that causes more to flash. A house fire reaches 2000f, where water boils at just 11% of that. I didn’t sit in class for a year to have someone else that didn’t go through the training to tell me otherwise. Boil water you get steam, flash water far beyond the boiling temp and you get all kinds of fun things to happen. Put on 60 lbs of gear and walk into hell for a stranger sometime and then talk about it. Or try to calm down a young mother clutching her baby while having burns on her left side. Or watching a grain silo melt from the heat while waiting on a boom truck to show up.
Couple things about the Moon. 1: As Sydney noticed on her little solo adventure, the distance to the Moon is *really frickin far*. Granted, Max’s top speed is higher than Sydney’s, but even so. iirc it took Max an hour at top speed to get from Galytn back to HQ? If that memory holds up, it would take Max *more than 24 hours* sustained top speed to get to the Moon (can she even do that? I guess after she escapes Earth’s gravity she can just point herself and nap while she coasts). And similarly more than 24 hours back.
2: People do pay attention to the Moon. They point telescopes at it and stuff. So at minimum she’d need to go around the other side and stay pretty conscious of where she is and how wide-ranging the damage gets. And even then, potentially it would at least be noticed that she went there.
3: While she disclaims the ability to break a planet, could Max going all-out shift the orbit of the Moon? Cuz that’d be real bad.
4: Is cutting loose in low-gravity really gonna be satisfying anyway?
Now Cora’s ship and Sydney’s aetherium causways do open up more possibilities. Even just going for a run on an ultra-high-gravity world could be fun for Max. Or, alternatively, since artificial gravity is a thing, Dabbler and Cora could help build Max a personal gym on-base where she can crank the gravity up as high as she likes, which would be much more convenient and not making anyone be Max’s personal taxi. Probably wouldn’t even run afoul of Dabbler’s “no giving Earth tech they aren’t ready for” rule if she puts some measures in place to keep people from peeking under the figurative hood.
Dabbler and Cora *can’t* give Max a gym on-base. While the basics of the tech import limits are due to regulations, Dabbler has expressed ethical “I don’t want you all destroying yourselves, you’re too fun” reasons to also not hand out tech.
Max could take advantage of Cora’s on-ship gym when she visits, though.
That Gator looks like he could get a job at a Circus…or as a Truck Driver.
So you’re saying Maxima DID perform Footloose once in her life. Looking forward to that backstory page. :D
Superman: “That man won’t quit as long as he can still draw a breath—none of my teammates will. Me, I’ve got a different problem. I feel like I live in a world made of cardboard, always taking constant care not to break something, to break someone; never allowing myself to lose control, even for a moment, or someone could die. But you can take it, can’t you, big man? What we have here is a rare opportunity for me to cut loose and show you just how powerful I really am.”
A fellow man of culture, I see…
Only slightly undercut by him getting a few hits in, then Darkseid getting up and shutting him down hard. (Yes, with a gizmo, but Darkseid was still in a condition to get up and use it). Before Lex Luthor saves the day, yet.
You’d think it’d have been a lead in to something closer to Flash taking out Lexiac at maximum speed earlier in the show, the way people talk about it.
The “world of cardboard” speech is great, but the fight is a problem: Superman unloads a few huge shots, Darkseid goes down, and then gets right back up and shuts him down with a gadget. It’s framed like Clark is finally cutting loose, but the choreography doesn’t match the hype.
The in-universe problem is Superman fights like someone who’s never had to worry about being hit back. It’s all wide haymakers, planted feet, no setups, no defense – what we’d expect from a guy who’s never needed timing or technique. The Kryptonian martial arts he “knows” mostly look like styles built for opponents who can’t dodge.
If he ever added even basic wrestling or MMA – clinch entries, takedowns, rear chokes – he’d be terrifying. He’s fast enough to take almost anyone’s back before they finish blinking, and grappling doesn’t care how tough your skin is. A Superman who can grapple doesn’t throw Darkseid through a building and hope it sticks; he ends the fight in seconds.
And minimizes collateral damage, but that’s separate issue.
The only thing that would be hard to account for, and really would likely just need a new set of martial arts designed for it, is flight being available. Esp if the flight isn’t specific to one spot/direction (aka, thrust coming out of feet), but instead is any direction and/or any direction from any spot. That would screw up so many movements designed around footwork, balance, leverage, etc.
But yeah, Superman knowing how to actually fight would be OP, which is why writers never let that happen, even if they occasionally claim otherwise.
The most egregious “Superman doesn’t really know how to *fight*” example was his death to Doomsday. Okay, I’m not sure the could achieve escape velocity at the time (post-Crisis reboot, he was depowered a bunch compared to Silver Age); but Doomsday couldn’t fly. He died because he was matching Doomsday punch-for-punch up to the middle of Metropolis like he was the Hulk, when he could have juggled him in mid-air until they reached a desert or something, and there wouldn’t have been much Doomsday could do about it.
Doomsday couldn’t fly, true, but he did have superspeed and super reactions. He could and did hit the Flash, and could easily keep track of SUperman moving at speed, flying or not.
Supers would have kept running into spiked fists, and Doomsday would have used the recoil to head for the ground faster, or at another target.
So, no, juggling him would not have worked. You are correct in that the very best thing to do would have been to get him into the air and blast him off the planet, however.
In a way, flight would make grappling easier: most ways to break out of a hold is leverage, and if you are in the air, there isn’t really much you can use as leverage, same thing when people ‘roughhouse’ in water (or when drowning victims panic when someone tries to save them: they both die)
If there are two fighters with flight powers like that, it ends up being grappling because nothing else will really work.
You probably can’t throw the other guy and expect him to hit anything and be hurt by it.
If only one guy has flight, it’s a reverse Anteus situation. He gets the other guy in the air and keeps him there. It’s also likely a grappling situation, but the guy without flight is in serious trouble.
Comparing panel 1/2 and panel 5, that was a super tight hair bun!!
She can fight Vehemence…Actually, he can become stronger than her.
Yes, but she risks revealing just how strong she is, and damaging the planet in the process
We can actually register atomic detonations with all those civilian Seismometers. The seismic shockwaves of the Tsar Bomba travelled around the earth.
3 times.
“It is conceivable then, that if enough of the outfit was damaged all at once, she could find herself on Space-TV in front of a trillion viewers wearing nothing but pasties.”
With the words of Charisma Epoch from Magellan Academy: “I hate being strip-singed.”
Kick off your Sunday Shoes.
I can’t help thinking that the crocodile would be more convincing as an everglades resident if it was dark green instead of brown. A quick search indicates that they come in both green and brown color schemes, but having a green croc would demonstrate more clearly that it does not consider the brown landscape behind it as a favorable environment.
DB’s comment about the stuff slithering around to close the gaps reminds me of the comic Empowered. The heroine always ends up with more gaps and skin showing than suit remaining! :) Doing the opposite on purpose.
https://www.empoweredcomic.com/comic/volume-1-page-1
Now I want to know how Maxima would do against Viltrumites, and how fast she would squash Homelander.
Against Viltrumites, probably not very well. She’d be considered a top-tier threat, Viltrumites aim to kill when they strike, and they’re not above striking before the other person even knows they’re being attacked. If she knew they were coming, she’d probably do better, since she’s not a naive shonen protagonist; if she knows the threat is big enough, she’ll aim to kill, too, and she has a far bigger and more powerful toolbox than Viltrumites do.
Viltrumites can likely tank her energy projection and can lift more than 60k tons, plus fly MUCH faster than she can. I think she’d get owned, because they are at full power all the time, and she’s likely inferior in almost every regard to them physically even if she puts everything into one stat. She can’t max them in one stat, so matching them in armor, speed, flight, AND strength at one time is likely impossible.
Homelander she’d own like a bitch. They are not on the same power level.
Viltrumites have S class strength, S+ speed, and with the exception of post Earth generation they were all hundreds if not thousands of years old with experience fighting a variety of super powered, high tech, and even supernatural opponents.
However they do have one thing that Maxima could exploit their durability is A class, a high A backed by strong heat resistance and surviving in the vacuum of space. But prolonged intense heat, loud noise, and repeated damage can take them down. Even Omniman nearly died to the original Guardians of the Globe from their attacks and not one of them was likely above an A class at best. We have seen others bruised, cut, and severely harmed by much weaker opponents, of course high pain tolerance and rapid healing over a relatively short time frame (not fast enough to qualify as full regeneration but close to it as they can grow back organs and teeth) have to take out the major organs or totally bleed them out in physical combat.
Also of note they are the only warrior race/super expy whose strength outclasses their own durability to they point that they can very violently take each other apart or even hurt themselves badly with a strong punch to something harder than they are. Granted this due to the comic being big on gore while most comics aren’t so have to have characters like this have an equally high or higher durability. But yeah you don’t often see Saiyan’s or Kryptonians of the same strength level as each other snapping arms off or caving in each other’s heads with their bare hands, they are too durable to each other, the same cannot be said of viltrumites.
So the question is how durable can Max make herself and if she can beat their level on that will she still be strong enough to do something with it.
Well, it’s a good thing that nobody watching knows it’s Maxima and can therefore get the full assessment of her power scope, like an archdemon or a megalomaniac.
Panel 4 is my spirit animal.
I feel like that first panel should have a lot more boob sticking out past her arm.
Just gonna say, if Max ever frees her hair in front of her Firefighter beau, they’ll be able to use him on the next fire, cause he’ll be a puddle.
I seem to recall that Maxima went fairly far out against the Fel Target Hulk (the Fel called it something else).
Rather than a desert, I think cutting loose in the Everglades would turn it into a strait.
We cannot see Maxima’s front.
For all we know, the clothing robots covered her chest area with a cloth equivalent just as fast as they removed the armor.
Ya know, thinking about it, if you’re never able to go all out because you reach a point in your power that you realize you are causing mass destruction and natural disasters, and unlike various characters across fiction (not just my own) you don’t have a pocket dimension, sub space field, able to go to another planet (so no hyperbolic time chamber or King Kai planet or Beerus planet for a mainstream example) then chances are you might not know what your actual upper limit is or how strong or powerful you could get it as you can’t train past those limits (unless you can pull a Superman or Invincible and get some magically super heavy device to train with, but even then that is just strength not speed or other powers. Like Human Torch for example, hard to find out how hot you can get when before you reach that you’ve hit the ignition temperature of Earth’s atmosphere.
Maybe my eyes, but it looks like in panels 3 and 5 that Max got younger. Did the fight energize her?
Dave’s bad at keeping Max looking the same when he wants her to look sexy.
Mayne she hit Crocman so hard that he flew from the Everglades to monument valley.
oh forgot to add this link showing the difference in Max’s look. https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-38-about-time-they-noticed-her/
Every character has had differences in looks, it’s called “art progression” (or ‘artist forgetfulness’ :P )
Maxima look gorgeous in the last panel
So, if panel one is the cat suit dethreading itself, does that mean Max is momentarily Winnie-the-Poohing it in front of Syd?
I just want to note that Maxima looks glorious when she’s relaxed and happy. Normally she’s frowning and glaring, either because she has to play the stern Commanding Officer, or because she’s on guard against sudden bouts of sexism. Here it’s just her and a good friend, she’s in a safe space, she relaxes and her happiness makes her look more beautiful.
(yes, this is why guys tell women “you should smile more.” Yes men should ALSO be told to smile more. They don’t get told that because men aren’t SUPPOSED to smile, they’re supposed to work and be miserable. “Toxic masculinity” means “it hurts men.” It’s not venomous masculinity)
Ironically, telling a woman “you should smile more” instantly means that the environment is one in which she will not feel comfortable enough to display that “natural, relaxed happy beauty” that they’re after.
“That man won’t quit as long as he can still draw a breath—none of my teammates will. Me, I’ve got a different problem. I feel like I live in a world made of cardboard, always taking constant care not to break something, to break someone; never allowing myself to lose control, even for a moment, or someone could die. But you can take it, can’t you, big man? What we have here is a rare opportunity for me to cut loose and show you just how powerful I really am.” – Superman, to Darkseid.
DaveB, you missed an opportunity in that last paragraph to link to this: https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-890-on-brand/
If Maxima is trying to keep the extent of her full level of power Secret, then attending an event galactically televised is a bad way to go about maintaining that secrecy considering that at least one country on the planet has Galactic pay-per-view. That country also having at least one of the people who shouldn’t know her magnatude. Including Thom and a host of other entities like him who might also have a scubbus on hand to verify proportions.
That’s why she is in disguise and using a fake identity. So no one knows it’s her.