Grrl Power #1489 – Target audience
Ahhhh! Done with the fight scenes for a few pages at least, and back to the characters being goobers. The meat and potatoes of this comic. Feels good. Also not having to draw a bunch of speed lines feels good too. I mean, obviously I have some huge speed line templates that I cut and paste, because there’s usually no point to doing a unique radial burst for each panel, but still. There’s more to good speedlining that just laying lines over or under some action, as I’m realizing, but hey, that’s the job. Still, I wouldn’t say no to 3 or 4 Japanese interns who put in 16 hour days doing mind-numbing background work. Man if I could get that for a single page… well, that page would probably just be an establishing shot of a massive city, because that shit is tedious. That or a lot of rubble.
There was some debate on the previous page about whether Max qualifies as a “Mary Sue,” which in its current common usage, is a term I generally don’t like. Because the original Mary Sue was specifically a female character who is great at everything, but most importantly, also an author self-insert. Unfortunately, the current common usage seems to have become “any competent female character.” Without the author self-insert part, it almost always feels like the person complaining about a female character being good at stuff is really zeroing in on the female part of the equation, and that becomes extremely evident when you ask them, “Is Batman a Mary-Sue?” Because Batman is a billionaire playboy who is better at literally every single physical activity than Olympic equivalents, is also the world’s greatest detective, can outfight like 20 ninjas at a time (dudes who have spent their entire lives training only to be deadly fighters and don’t waste any time on that detective stuff or solving riddles) has all the gadgets, up to and including his own fighter jet armed with a variety of missiles, which is probably illegal for a private citizen in a much bigger way than vigilante justicing some thugs in an alley, has his own space station with orbital strike capabilities, which, again, probably illegal in a way that the entire U.N. might care about, etc, etc. The Mary Sue-accusers usually say, “No, because Batman loses fights all the time.” Right, he loses fights, (usually so he can get thrown in a deathtrap only to quickly escape) but never the war. If a female billionaire playgirl gadgeteer, etc got her back fucking broken rather famously, then recovered and was basically completely fine afterward and proceeded to beat up Bane, I feel like they would get “Mary Sue” lobbed at them. What about James Bond? What about Iron Man? Riddick? John Wick? Mary Sue or just the main character of a franchise who necessarily has to win in the end so the franchise can continue?
But here’s a serious question. If Maxima is a Mary Sue (the non-author insert kind, obviously) because she’s powerful and wins fights… is Saitama? (From One Punch Man if you didn’t know his name.) Saitama is probably exempt because his strength and battle record are almost entirely played for laughs. Also he’s male. I guess the real question is if Maxima was Maximus, would anyone even think of accusing him of being a non-author-insert Mary Sue? Cause I’ve never seen anyone accuse Batman of being a Mary Sue out of the blue, it only ever happens when someone asks the guy who’s accused a female character of being one if Batman is also one, and accuser guy suddenly feels defensive about getting called out for being sexist.
If you think seeing Maxima win a bunch of high-level fights with relative ease is a little boring, that’s fine. That’s a totally valid criticism – even taking into account that she entered specifically because she analyzed previous tournaments and was fairly certain she could probably win with relative ease. That’s still a valid criticism, because it’s on me to relay an entertaining version of those events.
Oh, look who it is in the vote incentive. And a not-quite-yet-but-it’s-coming NSFW version over at Patreon.
Vote incentive and Patreon updated with some shading. Not finished yet, but progress.
I think she would get in trouble for doing this. She’d mess up the… floor of the waterfall? Is that what it’s called? The receiving pool? No, probably not that. Anyway, she’d churn things up and cause a ton of weird erosion.
Since you might be wondering, Niagara Falls is about 165 feet high, so Babezilla obviously doesn’t have to be full sized. I’d say she’s about 175-180 feet tall here?
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
Bringing gender into your Mary Sue argument isn’t going to help when we know that Harry Stu exists.
I was gonna guess that gameshow hostess was actually Dabbler. She looks like a potential Dabbler disguise and if you told me Dabbler has the capability to either travel instantaneously across space or project or control a hologram or illusion from that far away I would believe it. But this is almost as funny as that would’ve been.
There are no male “Mary Sue’s” because they are called “Gary Stu”. Also, I find that characters are only ever truly a MS when they achieve things without what I as a reader feel is effort. If Maxima could effortlessly out-duel that assassin thanks to only her raw power, then it would kind of apply. As it is we know she trained specifically for this and needed a super powerful sword to pull it off. Batman also definitely isn’t a MS(or GS) in his normal comics, but in some of the animated stuff like Brave and the Bold he’s definitely a Gary Stu, but those are made for a much younger audience.
I think the male version is Gary Stu.
I believe winning all fights is no problem as long as the character is somewhat resourceful about it. If Max could automatically win every time by using her super-speed and clobbering her opponents on the head (or bisecting them with the indestructible über-sword), it would get very tedious watching her do just that over and over for 20 pages. Here, the tension is created not by the audience wondering whether she’ll survive the fight but how she’ll win this time when the tried and true methods are unavailable to her.
I think the male term is “Marty Stu”? And, yeah, Batman approaches being that. One of my complaints about regular comics, and why I gave up on them, was the lack of irreversible plot progression. The characters keep getting reset instead of aging out and passing the baton to the next generation.
Anyway, Maxima is not a Mary Sue because, among other things, she has a largely defined power set and doesn’t pull impossible competencies out of a hat. She even occasionally gets a bloody nose, or needs somebody else to pull her fat out of the fire.
Rather, she’s just a demonstration that, setting aside rock-paper-scissors, somebody just has to be the best *fighter* around. A Mary Sue is the best at *everything*.
Yeah, I kind of miss the days of Earth 1 and 2 and S…. (and they probably wouldn’t’ve gotten up to 52 yet….)
For a while it looked as if Marvel was going to do something along those lines (when _The Ultimates_ came out) — but it looks as if the MCU has taken up that mantle, and the aging out of characters is being forced by the aging of actors and actresses.
Sydney has lost a few times and does not do great on her own.
Against the elder god like kaiju she was scrambling to survive while seeking a solution.
Or when Concretia (I think that is the right name) isolated her orbs. Sydney needed rescuing and came close to death.
Also she is not always right.
That was some next-level trolling.
Who wants to bet 5 qatloos that Xuriel was the one who installed that feature?
Folks have already chimed in with the gendered name, so there’s no need for me to add. Personally, I use “Mary Sue” for either gender, but I do admit the term has lost the self-insert aspect.
Batman, as originally conceived, was not a Mary Sue, but recent depictions of the character certainly qualify for the title.
TBH, if I was going to apply the term to anyone in this comic, I’d choose Sydney. Change my mind.
> Change my mind
No I don’t think I will
The arguments for Saitama not being a Gary Stu, are that 1: He doesn’t constantly invent new powers to overcome every situation, he’s just always crazy strong in the same way. And 2: His powers don’t even help overcome his challenges, which aren’t about winning fights (which he couldn’t care less about) but about wanting to become a hero.
And his path to heroism is constantly foiled by his lack of social competence and epically bad luck. If anything, his physical power is a detriment, because nobody believes that he could actually be that strong and thinks he must be cheating somehow, which just makes it harder for him to achieve his goals.
I wonder whether that epically bad luck might be down to the ‘god’ of the setting.
Less than it being about her being a Mary Sue, I think a bigger issue is that this whole sequence seems kinda… pointless. The characters barely want to be here, it’s all just exercise for Maxima and literally “gain some money” scheme for the rest, and she can just take a second and pop to earth to fix whatever issue the team can’t handle, since apparently she’s the only reliable heavy hitter. And what’s worse is it seems like YOU barely want to write this sequence, since your own commentary seems to kinda lean towards “I *could* make this a whole thing bigger and do a cool battle tournament like a manga but it’s a lot of effort and time so I won’t”, at which point I wonder why we’re here when there’s so many balls in the air for the story already. It feels like you started the battle tournament with the primary intention of doing as little as possible with it
Except for the “Have I gone insane?” concern, it would be nice if the TV would say “This next story will be of particular interest to {Name}.”
I think people claiming Max is a Mary Sue or more likely that she’s won the fights to easily haven’t been paying attention. For one I think a major flaw Max has had upon entering this brawl has been overconfidence. She has been pitched and is sort of treating this like a vacation but I think the stakes are a little higher than that at least if she loses which she’s already come closer to than probably comfortable.
She got significantly injured in the very first round. That’s before being nearly trapped in another dimension which would’ve been very bad. Then upon realizing magic weakness was a big hole in her skill set, she went and obtained a super magic cheat sword. A sword without which I doubt she would’ve as easily beaten Kaboomoid (RIP) or even Eat Chicken and she definitely would’ve lost if not died to Ryzyl’s super obvious mega magic kill anything back stab.
To me the most Mary Sue thing she did was go back to Earth mid fight to solve Earth problems in under 30 seconds and I liked that she did that. Just my personal opinion here but risking yourself and the safety of the people you protect to compete and win a space cock fight for big space bucks isn’t very heroic which is a trait I value in Max. So like if she wasn’t still prioritizing her job and friends I wouldn’t like her very much here. Especially since this hasn’t been the cake walk that was pitched. But maybe round 3 will be easier. I bet it will be easier!
Yeah, I noticed that Mary Sue thing too
That rant about Mary Sue characters implies that there must’ve been a huge debate about it that I don’t want to bother reading through. :-) So here’s just my 2 cents:
A Mary Sue character in my opinion is like the original one you mentioned from Star Trek who is just perfect at everything and everybody else just praises and adores her. I don’t view Maxima or Batman as Mary Sue / Gary Stu because both have weaknesses and faults and thus room for character growth. Maxima lost to Vehemence (because she gave him chances to surrender) and had to be saved by bouncing hypnotic boobs. Also her feminist views do get in the way of letting her enjoy herself, but looking at the rest of the cast she has plenty of reasons to have them, so her inner conflicts are understandable.
Saitama lives an impoverished lifestyle and gets barely any recognition despite his overwhelming strength and one of the reasons is that King accidentally gets credit for all his wins. Not a Gary Stu in my opinion either.
I only find characters problematic if they have terrible personalities in combination with being flawless or alternatively their flaws are everybody else’s fault and they’re just misunderstood in every way. That is something that has been happening more and more often recently, specifically with female characters. Take for example Mandy from the “I am not Starfire” comic. If you look at the author of that comic, she looks almost exactly like Mandy.
So, I only hate it when middle-aged women trauma-dump into established franchises and then blame the audience for not liking their dump. Maxima is fine. Sorry if you’re catching some flak from the counter-movement that is currently on the rise because of people like Asmongold. Independent artists who create their own franchises should be able to do whatever they want with their own characters. The counter-movement is meant to just fight against invaders who want to change established franchises to fit their own narratives and politics for “the modern audience”, like LoTR, D&D, WoW, Mulan, Arielle, The Odyssey, Cleopatra and others.
“Lacks meaningful flaws” is the line I draw on Mary Sues (and Gary Stus, or whichever of the male derivatives you choose)
Flaws can be mental or emotional. I like Batman best when he fails to understand people care about him as a person. I like Maxima best when she face palms because Sidney outwitted her.
I dabble in writing and recently have been working on how to make the next character “not” a Mary Sue. There are of course pieces of me in every character I write. (Anyone who says “self insert” has never seriously written anything on their own.) But a character who sweeps into an existing story and overcomes every obstacle (physical, mental, and emotional) then “fixes” the plot so that no one else is ever in physical, emotional, or mental difficulty again with only a hand wave of “because they are special,” that is a Mary Sue. Maxima is not, because of her mental growth and maturity, as well as the ability levels of surrounding characters (supporting and opponents). Batman is a lot closer, but mental flaws, and the superhuman nature of his own opponents can keep him relatable. Superman the same problem. Badly written Batman and Superman become Gary Stus so easily.
It is a dance. You do it well.
Batman is a Marty Stu when he is the main character. Maxima is a supporting character.
On Mary Sues that are not author self-inserts, TVtropes brought up that a common feature is that the world itself warps around the character to ensure that they are always right or awesome in some way, or that they de-protagonist-ize other character in order to show how awesome that character is.
So in Maxima’s case you might argue that the thing that might bring her close to Mary Suedom is less about how powerful she is and more about the cases where everything just happens to work out for her because the plot demands that it do rather than because it comes from her previously established powers.
The closest thing we’ve seen so far I think is the portal the fairy sent her through – where the portal just happened to be made in such a way that it opened back up when the power source got destroyed instead of staying very shut because portals don’t often intuitively open when they lose power. That’s an instance where Maxima got incredibly lucky (the world warped around her to make her succeed) rather than succeeded on mostly her own merits. A single such instance is usually fine, but if it happens regularly people might start looking at her funny.
In this same veneer, I would indeed say that Batman is indeed a far stronger example of a non-author Marty Sue, because he survives almost exclusively on the world bending to make him seem awesome and of course keep him alive when he really shouldn’t have if the world didn’t go out of its way to ensure his survival and badassery in spite of his poorly considered low-safety-margin crimefighting habits.
I think whether Batman counts varies heavily by author, like, yeah, there’s definitely some instances like when he dodged Darkseid’s canonically undodgable omega beams that even Superman and Flash couldn’t dodge by backflipping real good. But some other storylines also treat him almost like a buttmonkey, which is about the opposite of a mary sue, and by and large a lot of the time he *does* win in ways that make sense within the rules of the universe. Plus he has some fairly consistent flaws that do cause him significant trouble in a lot of storylines.
Remember, the “world warping around them” thing isn’t just about winning, it’s also about being abnormally well liked in-universe. Batman is usually portrayed as one of the least-liked members of the Justice League, including by fellow league members, and pretty regularly has fairly significant interpersonal issues with various members of his various teams, including the BatFamily. He is incredibly controling, has severe trust issues, and as such does a bad job at effective communication when collaborating with anyone not already incredibly familiar with him, and these traits are fairly regularly used to make his life harder.
So, in short, Batman may or may not be a mary sue depending on the writer, and given how long the character has been around and how many different writers he’s had, it’s a little silly to try and assign a trope that is inherently critical of the writing of the character to the character as a while rather than to particular depictions or storylines.
Frix went along with the “mess with Sydney”!
Absolutely absurd to call Maxima a Mary Sue. Clearly Dabbler is the Mary Sue in this comic. Anyone could see that. Nah, I actually agree with your assessment on Mary Sues in general.
But in all seriousness, I think you’re absolutely right, Maxima diligently prepared for this tournament, she checked to make sure it was something she could be confident in winning and now she is winning confidently. That seems satisfyingly cause-and-effect to me. Me, I’m always thrilled when this comic does action. You do great action scenes in my opinion.
I was sorry to read you were having second thoughts about committing to the tournament arc but I’m glad you’re going through with it and hope it’s a mostly painless experience for you. I’ve been loving seeing all the absurd ultra-powered space gladiators you come up with.