Grrl Power #1453 – Sword master speed run
The sword I designed for Max isn’t the one she chose when she visited Cora’s Starforge. That one can accept channeled power to increase its cutting ability. This one is the more defensive mana eater that had been discussed briefly. It’s a bearing sword, which is a ridiculously sized ceremonial sword that usually looks like a 7-foot long greatsword or claymore. I’m not sure I have the proportions quite right, and they traditionally have a much larger cross guard as well. I am attempting to build it in Blender, so I can place it with a consistent design in the comic, but I’m sure at least some of you are aware of my failed attempts to learn the program previously. Still… it’s a sword, not the rifling on the inside of a barrel or something relatively complex, so maybe I’ll be able to figure it out?
Maxima is a surprisingly competent marital artist. Nowhere near Math’s level, but early on, she became determined to not only rely on always being faster and stronger than her opponents, and learned a bunch of martial arts fundamentals, joint locks, jujitsu holds and redirect-your-opponent’s-strength/momentum stuff like Aikido. What she really needs is someone to teach her how a martial art that is designed for someone with super strength/speed/armor.
I think most of the Marvel movies are pretty good, especially up through Avengers: Endgame – actually, I think most of them are amazing and a lot of people have gotten spoiled/jaded on what a good superhero movie is, which is a little weird, because most of the time Marvel was doing their thing, Zack Snyder was making sure people didn’t forget what bad superhero movies looked like.
Anyway, my point is that as much as I enjoy those movies, there’s still a lot that can be nitpick. For instance, in Endgame when Thanos was standing over Thor, pressing Stormbreaker down into his chest, well, Thor can toss tanks around. Thanos doesn’t weigh that much, and doesn’t have any sort of rooting or gravity powers, and in fact, neither of them weigh an extraordinary amount. Maybe more than a similarly sized human, but still, like, maybe 1,000 pounds? (Okay, 985 according to a quick search) So an actual super fight between the two of them would obviously look very different. With strength like that, punching someone simply isn’t your best move. I think I’ve talked about this before, but high strength doesn’t necessarily convey high damage with a punch. A punch is about the mass of the fist hitting you, and the speed at which it hits. Yes, the strength behind the fist is important, but only in that it will mitigate the speed from dipping when the mass of the fist (and arm) intersects your skull. Obviously given the choice between getting punched by a powerlifter or a pro boxer or a Karate champ, I’d rather not get hit by either one, but you can start to see my point. Strength doesn’t scale infinitely into punch damage. That graph levels off fairly quickly I think.
Think of it this way. A guy puts a boxing glove on the end of a broomstick and jousts at you from on top of a moped. The average punch clocks in at about 25 mph, so yeah, that’s going to sting when it hits. Now consider the same setup, except the boxing glove jouster thingy is mounted on the front of a car, which, again, comes at you at 25 mph. That will probably hurt more, not because there’s more kinetic energy in the hit, but there’s more inertia behind it. Now imagine you’re standing on a pier, and the boxing glove thing is attached (at face level) to the front of a battleship, which hits you at 25 mph. No one would expect your head to explode because there’s “so much strength” behind the punch. I don’t think there’d really be any difference between that hit and the one from the car.
The calculus changes completely if you have someone pinned against a building or a mountain, then the hits go from kinetic transfer to crushing damage. But, if you have them pinned against the ground, the 300 pound guy who can bench a tank punching down at someone without somehow bracing himself is going to launch himself into the air like he’s doing a Hulk super leap.
So a martial art that really takes super powers into account would have to be extremely flexible and situationally aware. A fight between the Hulk and Superman or Maxima, realistically… well, realistically, why would either one of them engage him in a melee fight? Supes and Max both have ranged options. But they also have near Hulk level super strength (at least until the Hulk gets especially angry) and super speed, which means the Hulk’s punches, if he ever could connect, would realistically just knock either one back a dozen feet until their flight overcame it, while they could both deliver tungsten-rod-from-orbit levels of hits.
All of this is to say, Maxima does have some of the fundamentals of footwork and spacing down, so when learning to fight with a sword she’s not starting from absolute scratch. But… not all that far off, either.
Finally, here we go! I took the suggestion that I just use an existing panel for a starting point, thinking it would save time… I guess it technically did, but a 5 character vote incentive just isn’t the way to go.
Patreon, of course, has actual topless version.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
Does the sword have to be positioned properly to “parry” magic? (If not, I’m confused why she has to learn anything. Strap the thing to her back and let her fight normally.) But if so, she only has to learn parries, not attacks, which makes things a little easier. Still, three months of training really isn’t that much. It’s barely enough to usefully learn the basics. Against someone with more experience fighting magic swords, she could be in trouble.
She still needs to how to use against non-magic attacks
Remember, her force-field is strong, but not Les-strong (she can still take injuries)
Someone once made the statement that the most experienced swordsman fears the least experienced swordsman because he has no idea what that fool is going to do next.
I’m fairly certain there’s a line to that effect in one of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books. Probably in one of the Sam Vimes books.
The first book in the Guardians of the Flame book the bad guy made that point when Karl Cullinane was doing an arena fight against the slaver Ohlman, who was the far superior swordsman. So Karl took that advice and threw his sword at Ohlman who batted it aside contemptuously. But while Ohlman was busy with the flying sword, Karl rushed him, picked him up and tossed him out of bounds.
So Ohlman was disqualified for not staying inside the ring.
It was a stupid thing which wouldn’t have worked in a real fight using anything other than the arena’s dull wooden practice swords.
I will note that ‘heavyfoot’ or ‘immovability’ is almost a default unseen power for the super-strong, anchoring them to the ground so that they can lift things without leverage, defy being lifted or moved by blows, and can punch things without going flying back from the rebound and plowing gouges in the ground.
Supers who have flying powers have this built in for three dimensions.
8-10 hours of training a day for x25 speed is 200-250 hours for an already skilled and intelligent martial artist, and she’s doing it with active combat practice. Combined with her already fast reflexes, I think she’ll be just fine. Three months of intense training to skill, NOT just to physical ability, is quite a bit of training, and the rep counts side of thing she can power through at x100 or faster, turning hours of smiting pelts into minutes at most.
Yeah, she’s going to come out of this remarkably skilled. Think of all the xp she earned that she gets to apply!
Invincible, in both the comic and the Amazon TV series, made the point that the hero could use his flight ability to anchor himself in place to provide whatever leverage he might need in a fight (and avoid tossing himself around whenever he tried to use his superstrength).
Real punches start by pushing of on the back foot and involve an ab-twist to convert the vector, so there’s an element of being braced by the ground involved.
Yeah, and what heavyfoot does is anchor you to a LOT of the ground, instead of just the area under your soles, which is so based on friction and weight and whatnot.
Taking hits like this is the difference between indestructibility and invulnerability. An indestructible guy takes the hit and goes flying, but is unharmed. An invulnerable person can just tank the hit and neutralize the energy.
The difference between Strong Guy and Juggernaut (shame his heart wasn’t as strong :( )
Yeah, Achilles isn’t invulnerable here, he’s indestructible. Any good hit sends him flying easily unless he’s braced for it. He seems to have enough strength/invulnerability to deal with human strength blows and maybe bullets, but anything stronger has been seen to send him flying, albeit not as far as a normal human because so much of the force ricochets off him (Dabbler shooting him with a rail gun comes to mind).
3 months in 3 days… The clashing of swords would sound like a mini-gun. Except for when she has her shin nailed again.
Perhaps a cup that you squeeze a trigger to open, and that requires super strength to do so? A bit of Sydney-proofing.
Okay, Office of the Department of Redundancy Bureau Notification Alert Message:
“greatsword of claymore”
“Claymore” is claíomh mór or—ready for it?—”big sword.” So you’ve got the “greatsword of Big Sword.”
Just sayin’ (at least twice)
Those are two very different things as far as sword goes. That’s like saying a katana or a saber – technically you’re saying ‘long curved sword’ which is the same thing, but they are different things in practice.
Greatswords are very different swords than claymores are.
a grape is a fruit, but a grapefruit isn’t anything like a grape. a greatsword is a great sword. bastard swords can be used by children of married parents.
tbf weapon classifications are often done after their era; back in the day they were just making what they thought would work, or what they liked; afterwards historians put everything in boxes, and then wrung their hands at how often things didn’t fit in the boxes
I strongly suspect that “of” was intended to be “or”.
I automatically read it as “or” and didn’t even know there was a typo until I read this thread.
What about Maxima being a ‘marital artist’, though?
DaveB’s used that joke before. I don’t think he meant to use it now.
from the culture that brought you river river and hill hill hill hill
Zweihänder (german) , Espadon (french) or Montante ( Castilian (castellano) ) is a 16th century weapon , Claymore tend to date from the 15th to 17th centuries , and are smaller it’s a 120–140 cm (47–55 in) weapon typically, more like a long longsword ( also ussed with two hands)…
Due to their length and weight, which was typically between 1.4 m (55 in) to 1.7 m( 67 ) and around 2 kg (4.4 lb) to 3 kg (6.6 lbs), Zweihänders required two hands, as the name implies; as such they require at least 25 cm (9.8 in) for the hilt.
Historical of functional zweihänder of 1.82 m (72 in) and 2.7 kg ( 6 pounds) exists , and du to length and style it was primarily a chopping blade.
The most known style of zweihänder figthing is montante , a spanish style.
No, it was supposed to be “or.” I’ve fixed it.
Thanks, bro. Made me … itchy.
I think there’s a hill somewhere in England where each new owner put the name in a different language.
So it’s basically called “hill hill hill hill”.
Torpenhow Hill, in England.
Personally, my pet peeve in the MCU movies is that when Vision hand Mjolnir to Thor, he says it’s perfectly balanced.
In the mythology, the whole point to Mjolnir is that it is absolutely unbalanced! A Warhammer of that size should be a two handed weapon, with a long handle. In the myths, Loki was meddling with the dwarves who forged it, and it was left with a too short haft. Thor had to use a magical, strength-enhancing girdle to wield it one handed.
Vision perceiving it as balanced is presumably a consequence of the enchantment that makes it so that it can only be lifted by the worthy, and the line was probably intended to draw a comparison to Thanos and his obsession with balance.
I mean, in mythology, Thor is a redhead, so I go into Marvel movies fully knowing that any Norse myths are strictly Kenobi-ed aka “from a certain point of view”
Can a hammer be balanced? It had a shoebox block of stone connected to a 16″ long 1-inch thick handle. About 95% of its mass is all at one end. That’s about as unbalanced as it’s possible to be.
Warhammers are actually quite well balanced and it was important for them to be so. It’s only in fantasy that warhammers were massive unbalanced things. Warhammers have smaller, lighter heads than sledgehammers, and even most hammers in your average tool box, at least as compared to their haft. They also very frequently had steel shafts to shift the point of balance closer to the hand so they could be used more nimbly.
There have been some good YouTube videos done by HEMA sorts on the subject. Scholagladitoria is a good one.
Oh, yes. And a warhammer (one or two-handed) is *much* lighter than a sledgehammer.
The targets of a sledge don’t dodge. Unless you set them up wrong, but that’s on you.
And you just don’t need that much mass to cause damage to someone in any armor that a human can move at all in. You use velocity and a somewhat pointy striking part to allow it to “bite” instead of sliding off.
Mjolnir as usually portrayed is not a very good weapon, from the extra-large head and short haft to the flat striking face. But from what little we know Odin was probably more a warrior patron type than Thor; the corresponding weapons (spear versus hammer) seem to fit.
Depends on what Vision meant by ‘balanced’ (and yes, there is more than one meaning)
Having too much power while training for martial arts is a bad thing, I was over-muscled when I switched to it, I was too slow and ran out of stamina too easily. I had to stop the weights for a few weeks and then work on my stamina with lower weight and more reps just to get into a proper build for it. Max still has a neck and doesn’t need over-sized clothes to get around like I did so it’s easier for her, but martial arts requires speed and precise movements. Not raw power.
Good thing Maxi has both speed and precise movements
you say raw speed, and say that’s different from Power :)
Over-muscled is raw STRENGTH, not power. Power is strength AND speed. Martial arts need a LOT of power, not so much strength. Big, slow blows lose to snapping, fast blows.
Strength is, to put an artificial divider there, made up of strength, which is total lifting ability and capacity, and power, the ability to USE that strength rapidly.
A weightlifter has a lot of MIGHT, but generally a lot less power. He’s building for bulk and/or show, not power.
Martial artists tend to get a lot leaner so they aren’t moving as much weight, sacrificing brute strength for striking power and speed.
Generally speaking, bulky fighters do better in grapples where strength AND weight are very important. If you’re flailing stuff around, be it weapons or fists, they are better leaner and faster.
When you say ‘weightlifter’, you then go on to describe a ‘body builder’
Weightlifter’s have the power, bodybuilders have the show
Also, technically speaking, anyone who fights, regardless of with what, is a ‘martial artist’, just most think ‘martial arts’ to be unarmed fighter aka kung-fu or judo or etc
I was focused on mass and strength, which was ok but when all someone had to do was out maneuver me I realized my mistake. I haven’t done any of that in decades, so forgive me if I’m not up on the terms. I was strong enough to lift a person over my head, regardless of their size. But all that power and strength, I lost my stamina and mobility. It took longer to undo it than to build up. I went from 135 to 175 in under a year and a simple flex would tear out the sleeves on the t-shirt I was wearing. Yes you need strength in martial arts, but not to the degree I had reached. Kung-fu is the name the writers and producers gave it, not the proper name. I won’t use that name, it’s an insult to the true artists. Carridine was using a combination of judo and karate there was never any “kung-fu” on that show. I was trained in both “tiger” and “serpent” styles. As well as the mediation process, that really helped my focus.
No, not you, Red :)
Nope, I included weightlifters. Weightlifters have great strength. While there are certain applications that require some power, lifting six hundred pounds does not require great power. If you do it in one second or three seconds, it is still lifted. That’s strength. It’s more impressive if you can do it fast, sure, but it’s not REQUIRED.
Now, if you’re talking world’s strongest man competitions, a lot of those are not about pure strength. Rolling huge tires, throwing massive weights, etc definitely involve power, esp. if you are going for distance hurled. But a lot of them are pure strength: how much you can pull and how far, not how fast; how much can you lift and how far you can walk with it, not how fast; how long can you hold onto an ever-increasing weight/force, etc.
Strength competitions, not power.
Body-building is about increasing muscle mass for looks. It’s about neither strength nor power, but defaults to strength since that much muscle interferes with power due to increased weight/lack of flexibility.
I thought Maxima couldn’t actually ‘think’ that fast? Can she really memorize new information, new thought patterns, and new muscle memories that much faster than a normal human?
Doing rote repetitive block, cut, thrust, parry, and riposte drills might be doable, as long as the maneuver in question never CHANGES while she’s repeating it 1,000x times for every 1x a normal human could do, but that’s just muscle memory and muscle tone at best… she still has to LEARN what it MEANS when she does that, and when she should or shouldn’t do that, and what she’s supposed to do next after doing that…
She’s using an AI, so her rep counts will be precisely on point or they will be pointed out as wrong.
The point of using rep counts is to build muscle memory, so that when you see a certain move, your body responds before you are thinking about it.
Yes, she thinks that fast. When she goes superspeed, she has time to see the bullet leave the barrel, consider which fingers or her palm she is going to grab it with, get into position, and put herself between the shooter and the next shots without stressing it.
She makes a great commanding officer because she can do the paperwork REALLY fast.
muscle memory response is so much quicker than choosing to move. practiced improvisation can land anywhere in between Does anyone else wanna see Max in a Huntrix costume with her hair braided like Rumi
She must be able to think that fast, or she wouldn’t be able to do things like zoom off to Archon and return with new clothes. She’d fall over or smack into a building. Memorized muscle movements wouldn’t help if she were in some place she hadn’t been before.
Yes she can still be surprised, e.g. if she’s looking the wrong direction. But it’s rare. Also I don’t think it helps if she doesn’t have the points into speed before the surprise happens.
And having the points into speed all the time would be *really* boring. Imagine trying to wait for people to finish their sentence while you’ve already processed it, for every conversation.
Being able to think at superspeed leads me to assume that the first thing Maxima should do in any sort of situation where things are going wrong or even MIGHT go wrong… is to go full superspeed, look around, evaluate all the possible threats and decide how to respec her abilities if needed, all in a small fraction of a second.
The only question I have is… how long does it take her to change her skill set, and does that time depend on how fast she is at the time?
But didn’t Maxima tell Sydney that Max couldn’t respond fast enough to dodge utterly surprising actions by Sydney?
definitely going to tax the air handlers as she breathes 90 times more, and her friction of moving through the air heats it, and the kinetic energy of the impacts is converted to thermal energy. it’s gonna be hot in there.
I assume she doesn’t breathe that much heavier when she’s fast, anymore that when she’s lifting something heavy.
Her powers cannot be biology-based (there just isn’t enough energy extractable from food in the usual way), so there’s no reason not to e.g. breathe really shallowly and “slowly” except habit. I think there was a past comic where OGH explained that she does need to breathe, but not nearly as much.
Though I think that was mostly to explain why e.g. she isn’t being used by NASA for satellite repair.
Nothing says she’s breathing or aging ninety times as fast, which is what you are implying. She’s not manipulating time. She’s using her powers to move really, really fast. The same energy that powers her energy bolts is powering her speed. She’s not accelerating her metabolism, just her reaction time and speed of motion.
Eh, the Musashi school of swordfighting is better. HIT ‘EM WITH AN OAR!
His last duel took place on April 13, 1612 against Sasaki Kojirō, whom he defeated on the island of Funa, probably thanks to a long bokken, which was said to have been carved from an oar of the boat that had brought him there.
Not exactly an oar. And like Pierre Terrail, seigneur de Bayard aka Chevalier de Bayard , Miyamoto Musashi is a legend fuelled by exageration.
They are two characters emblematic to their trade one samurai, one knigth.
The duel of Bayard against Sotomayor is iconic as the duel with Sasaki Kojiro.
The Battle of Gariglianoin 1503 was also a display of badasness by Bayard
Miyamoto Musashi (宮本 武蔵) was exceptional duelist , but Fiore dei Liberi also …
And the use of a rapier and a left hand dagger is superior to a katana an wakisashi in a duel… 1 word reach …
Musashi was a real person? Thought it was just the name of energy products (and sponsor of Ninja Warrior)
Guess that explains the connection…
He is the author of “The book of Five Rings” . It is a book on swordsmanship/martial arts that is often referenced as a guide for business practices. It got big in the 1980’s and has been on bookstore shelves ever since. The real life person was considered to be one of the great Japanese swordsmen but as homep notes after several hundred years it is difficult to separate fact from fiction.
As a Frenchman , I have taken a swordsman of similar repute but from my country , as close as possible both chronologically and from a social status point of view.
Pierre Terrail, seigneur de Bayard was a French knight and military leader at the transition between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, generally known as the Chevalier de Bayard.
Unlike Mushashi, Pierre Terrail was easygoing and a devout Christian. Mushashi, on the other hand, participated in the siege of Hara Castle in 1638 against the Christian revolt led by Shirō Amakusa, and had a bad temper.
Is there supposed to be a sword in Max’s hand for the 2nd and 3rd panel?
The other hand
“but only in that it will mitigate the speed from dipping when the mass of the fist (and arm) intersects your skull.”
Nope. That happens too fast for strength to make a difference. Strength is useful for either attaining more speed or moving more mass. Generally one wants to increase speed until some limit is hit, and then increase mass until it starts to affect speed, all while keeping within stamina limits.
Also, swords don’t want to have a lot of their mass near the balance points as most fantasy swords seem to have. Put the mass out there at the end of the lever arm where the impact happens if you can (see: axes or polearms).
Very, very, very few swords had more mass at the ends than near the balance point. Swords are not axes and polearms and very few swords were used at such.
It was far, far, far more common for swords to taper to the tip, or be similar width for most of the length before coming to a point.
Nimbleness, handling and sometimes thrusting were the primary design goals. Even sabers and cutting swords were rarely balanced towards the tip. Swords were intended to cut out thrust, rarely to chop.
“All of this is to say, Maxima does have some of the fundamentals of footwork and spacing down, so when learning to fight with a sword she’s not starting from absolute scratch.”
I can teach the fundamentals (footwork, strikes, parries, dodges etc.) in a day, to a fast learner. The hard part of sword fighting is the chess part. When is your opponent striking versus feinting? which parry-riposte are they expecting? And that is just for essentially identical humans, add in the complexity of the breadth of lifeforms seen here? Different muscle configurations make different swings possible, different bone length ratios change angles of attacks, probably thousands more things I can’t think of.
“Think of it this way. A guy puts a boxing glove on the end of a broomstick and jousts at you from on top of a moped. …”
Think of it this way. Speed is relative. Take all those scenarios, but in the reference frame of the the thing with the boxing glove. So, in each, you are running into a static object (of varying mass) at 25 mph. Clearly there will be a slight yielding of the moped massed collision, but mostly it will be like hitting a wall at that speed.
This assumes, of course, that the impact is momentary. Getting RUN OVER by those things will be very different.
“Ho! Hah Hah! Guard, Turn, Parry, Dodge, Spin…Hah…Thrust!
One of the best Cora lines ever.
And…just like Indiana Jones!
Yes! I have always thought the same about Thor vs. Thanos and it always bugged me. Thor is easily strong enough to just lift him off the ground, he shouldn’t be struggling against Thanos slowly pushing the axe down. Also, Odin’s “Whosever holds this hammer.” speech should totally have played while the hammer was lifted and thrown.
Without some form of super-speed, there is an upper limit on contractile speed, regardless of how much strength you have. That’s why the fastest runners need such long legs, as the leverage converts the same speed contraction into a higher speed at your feet. So, yeah, supers who only have enhanced strength will not be able to move one whit faster than a normal person experiencing zero resistance.
“Maxima is a surprisingly competent MARITAL artist.”
Maybe you could show us on the Patreon page? Not with Deus, though. He’s a jerk.
`competent marital artist`
Marital artist? MarITal???