Grrl Power #1467 – Seismic handshake
You know, for an unlimited class tournament, this is all pretty low-key so far. Max’s previous round started off with quite a bit more action, but maybe it’ll escalate. Probably not to One Punch levels of chopping 1/20th of the Earth off, or nuclear explosion punches so much. As much as I enjoy that level of absurdity, the Grrl -verse is at a slightly lower power level. Admittedly, the apocalypse level attacks do register harder when you can draw a high fidelity long shot of a city buckling under the shock waves, and I can’t really do that. I mean, maybe if I had 40 hours to work on a single panel, but I think around hour 32 I’d just stab myself in the temple with the stylus.
But who knows what will go down during the finals?
Sexy bodymod news lady Gail has a special one-on-one interview with Tournament Quarter finalist Saraviah Nightwing! And if you subscribe to Gail’s Space Patreon, (which, due to the vagaries of Earth and Gal-Net’s DNS servers, happens to be the same as the Grrl Power Patreon, go figure) you can see that same interview in the nude! Well, eventually. The nude part of the interview, as well as the version that includes shading will be coming soon. Of course, you can view the interview in the nude now if you take your own clothes off. You know. Technically. Just put a towel on your chair first.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
Max energy powers seem way more versatile than it originally seemed.
Yeesh I could’ve definitely typed this sentence better.
So it would seem.
Yeah, way more versatile…if you don’t mind massive property damage.
Which explains why this is the first time seeing that versatility!
I think Max doesn’t do this on Earth because she has to live on the planet afterwards.
Yeah, being on someone else’s planet when they’re expecting large-scale property damage from the tournament is quite different than trying that in downtown LA.
Yes, I think this level of damage (outside an arena where it’s expected as part of the spectacle) goes beyond “This is a super fight. Stuff is going to get broke.”
Brings back why Arcswat had their great debut out in the middle of a desert, far away from anyone else.
It reminds me Sydney’s “training” – about aiming your attacks in the direction of the ground.
We’ve seen her do a delayed nuke and a pencil thick beam. We’ve even seen her shift from whatever blast to that beam in real time.
ba ba booom!
Energy into the ground, going to be a mess shortly.
I bet Sydney told her to try this. “So there’s this guy Frieza…”
This looks like an eruption is about to happen, she’s super-heating the ground, melting it and flash vaporizing the moisture. That entire area is going to go boom very quickly. Think underground nuke.
How did Richard put in that song? (Tune, “Part of your world” from The Little Mermaid.
“Nowhere to hide, nowhere to run, your village will burn like the heart of the sun, with infinite glee, it’s going to me me, that slaughters your world!”
Good times.
LOL, yep, I had almost forgotten that. But I am a grand-dad of teen G-kids so…
Don’t go around casting baby shit like Frostbite and Level 2 Poison when spells like THE TEN HELLS! and <b.Power Word: SCRUNCH are in play.
I’d say this isn’t a Wizard Battle, but I think this guy says it is…
*Knowing nod…*
Power Word: Scrunchie is for when your hair is being *really* obstinate.
Or when Maxi doesn’t have access to rebar laying around :P
Last time they unloaded magic into the ground they summoned Tothogoth.
This is pretty certainty not magic, but Maxima’s finger blast.
This is absolutely something she planned to do against Darude.
Given her demonstrated power level, we might say it’s a “Little Pinky Blast.” Remember when she nuked the tank while the reporters were in Sydney’s Bubble…I don’t think her opponents want to use one of her main fingers, or God forbid, her entire hand.
Looks like Maxima has power tricks other than “blast them harder”.
Since she has superspeed, she should inscribe a pentagram on the ground and say “Abracadabra” as she’s shooting off her energy blasts.
Confusion to the enemy!
Where’s multi-wiz boy’s onomatopoeia sound effects?
You know, sudden wet flow noises and unplanned lower abdominal explosive evacuation!
You don’t need a Spidey sense to know something bad is gonna happen locally. The audience might disagree.
If Max meets another Man Mountain sized Kaiju she could repurpose this same attack into “Super Penetration Internal Prostrate Destruction!”
If the translation is fast enough most males might quit right then and there.
Max sees Kaiju calls out attack.
Announcer “Do Man Mountain even have a prostrate?”
Other Announcer “From the panicked face that living mountain is making. I think it might have several.”
Announcer “This attack doesn’t seem as limited as the name suggests. So many other orifices could suffer a similar fate.”
Announcer 2 “Sub-Continental Anti Constipation Fusion Plasma Attack?”
Announcer 1 “Let’s put that question to our audience.”
Prostate: A walnut-sized gland in the male reproductive system that produces seminal fluid. It sits just below the bladder.
Prostrate: An adjective meaning to lie flat on the ground—often face down—or a verb meaning to be physically overwhelmed or exhausted.
More like don’t cast a mirror/duplicate spell on a fight with a person with AOE attacks.
Worse: don’t stand too close to a person with AOE attacks
Especially when that person with the AOE attacks seems to be unconcerned about being in the AOE.
Isn’t sending massive amounts of energy into the ground the way you summon Thothogoth?
Massive amounts of Vistric energy, and we don’t know if it summoned him or just made it easier for him to find Dabbler.
Aaaannnnddd… Thought balloon in today’s panel #3 answers ALL of the comment questions about last Thursday’s comic.
Thank you Dave B.
(If you don’t know what will happen during the finals, nobody does!)
I am reminded of Galadriel Higgins’ (from A Deadly Education) supervolcano spell. Highly recommended trilogy
Max must have a NYC enclave power sharer. that explains her ability to output so much energy!
For Galadriel, summoning fifteen erupting supervolcanoes would take less mana than boiling a kettle.
…she’d probably need to spend that much mana again just on reinforcing the kettle.
Not that you need my validation, but logically that IS how such a tournament would go. First round is people trying to peacock and psyche each other out and massage the betting numbers, so people would either seem massively impressive or insanely lucky to get through, then the pace of fighting slows down, then reaches an apex again at the end when everyone is heavy hitters among the heavy hitters. Since going all out in round two-(Last-1) rounds doesn’t do anything but exhaust any surprises you might have held out on unless you’re already in a desperate situation.
It was confirmed that the first round with Maxima had her randomly pitted against two former champions. Or rather two champion constructs (one AI and one biological) created by entrant organizations who presumably have improved their design since their prior win. Plus Max, so three champion level combatants. Plus the fairy who took out one former champion and almost took out Max. So that one round was somewhat epic. It makes sense that this round may be a little “less”.
Ah, he brought feet-only movement to a ground AoE fight.
Now I wonder if Max ever spars with all of the Harems at once. I’ll bet Math has.
That would be entertaining, especially if Harem copies Jabberwokky’s “secret” weapon against Math.
swordman used double team
maxima decided this is not pokemon and used earthquake!
I imagine the super-flashy stuff actually goes *down* a little as the brackets narrow. Nobody wants to tip their hand, or use up expendable resources, before anyone else commits.
Super powerful stuff, sure. Just not the flashy and one-off stuff. Instead experienced fighters holding back in order to *have* something that little bit extra to give where it matters, that feels right to me.
Meanwhile in the qualifiers, inexperienced fighters are blasting everything they got and many just trying to guarantee a spot are going 100% from the start to deal with the chaos.
To be fair the lack of nuclear powered punches and other absurdly powerful attacks that you’d see in anime is the simple explanation that durability is much harder to achieve than destructive firepower, much like in real life. The supers and their nigh-invulnerability seems to be very irregular in the grrl-verse so far. Achilles level of durability in particular seems pretty non-existent. So, it stands to reason that even in the unlimited-class the participants are limited to weapons that they themselves can not only survive, but won’t be crippled permanently by and can use effectively.
Haven’t read the manga, but one shot from the One Punch Man anime that really stuck with me was when he threw a punch, and just before it connected it cut to a weather satellite view showing all the clouds in a triangular region (with one apex presumably at the location of the fight) just disappearing,
That would be the Serious Punch that ended the fight with Boros, who had crossed half the universe trying to find an equal to fight… and he wasn’t even close to winning.
The mage forgot about conservation of ninjutsu
Anybody else notice, in background of first panel, the guy in robotech cyclone armor running fo his life?
is that a squig chasing him? the extra mouth holders make me say no, but the body is pretty close.
Yautja squig
Yup, noticed as well :)
or Max isnt going for explosive, she’s going for shake. Only the real opponent moved, his mirror images didnt
Good eye!
Not that good (unless you are Mr Magoo), check the two on the right, they have moved as well
Quote: As much as I enjoy that level of absurdity, the Grrl -verse is at a slightly lower power level.
Do I read something about… a modicum of restraint here? Kudos.
I still say Ixah’s design would be borderline perfect if she just had toes.
I stumbled across “RangerJay” on deviant art. Some fantastic renditions of Max!
Hmmm.
On the assumption that this world had a breathable atmosphere, it probably has moisture in the soil. That moisture would be about to transform more-or-less instantly into pressurized steam, at the same time a good large fraction of the ground around it melts into lava.
The results are predictable, but only to people who have seen some of Max’s higher-power energy blasts. I would bet that she thought of this power stunt while doing the AAR’s for one of her fights with Darude – probably the one where Syd deprived him of sand by glassing a chunk of desert.
This takes advantage of her energy blast but preserves Ixah’s anonymity by directing it into the ground and hiding it from the spectators. And it’s versatile because she can control the width of her beams. Pencil-thin beam – spreads out deep down, under an intact ‘cap’ of solid rock, and gives a big kaboom, and flings large chunks of the surrounding landscape to considerable distances. Wide-area beam – spreads out directly underfoot. It would convert a relatively large amount of the ground into lava, But without the intact ‘pressure cap’, it wouldn’t be nearly as explosive. It would still get some chunks of ground airborne, but not as many, not as large, and wouldn’t fling them as far.
Either way, she’d need to file an environmental impact report before demonstrating it on Earth.
Honestly I can’t think of the right adjective for that.
I wonder what the sword does with all the magic it eats. It’s been a long time in the vault. Honestly as much as the poor thing has been starved they’re lucky it isn’t dead by now. And now, finally, it’s getting a substantial meal.
So, maybe it gets enough power to escape from the clutches of people who try to starve it to death? Or maybe it’s grateful to Max for the first real sustenance it’s had in sixty years and wants to stay with her like a stray cat that’s finally found someone who feeds it? Or maybe it’s still starving but now has enough power to reach out and take magic directly from mages (or more generally from living things) instead of passively waiting?
Or, who knows? Maybe it just finally has enough energy to reproduce.
Or… it’s just a sword that absorbs mana, like a sponge with liquids
You may’ve noticed, sponges die when they dry out. It’s asphyxiation rather than starvation, but they die just the same. They might have strong opinions about death, but they’re no smarter than grass so they probably don’t.
Wasn’t talking about a living sponge, Bob
You may’ve noticed, dead sponges don’t last sixty years.
Wasn’t talking about a creature either, living nor dead
maxima is about to stop his music
BURST RONDO!!!! (Iykyk and that means you are my people)
Another benefit of going AIE underground eruption (Cue Van Halen Guitar Solo) is anyone hiding underground waiting in ambush or just hiding and biding time for fight to tire and eliminate others, is gonna find things a might uncomfortable down there.
Lets get ready to Rumble!!!
No one said it,so I had too!
Max needs to hire a super that can create auditory illusions, their job would be to follow her around and create a choir singing her name when she does something awesome, like the 80’s He-Man cartoon.