Grrl Power #1500 – High gravitas, low sustain
Ooh, round numbers! Halfway to the next big round number! I like to try and save an important page for the big milestones if it makes sense in the story. This page is hardly a linchpin story moment, but it’s a little more insight into the Red Team. Note Sciona didn’t react like Lorlara and Vale, so you can tell she’s not really part of the inner circle. But Cthillia seems to have just one foot in, and probably realizes he’s more than just some guy who has an annoying knack for knowing stuff he shouldn’t.
When asked, “If you’re a super smart guy in a superhero universe, where’s your power armor?” Deus responds with, “Maybe I’m so smart I don’t need power armor.”
Even doing a comic for as long as I have, I still have a lot of trouble putting what I envision in my head down in comic format. Mostly it’s because I don’t think in terms of panel layouts and word bubbles. It’s all just a movie in my head, so there’s some work translating that into a comic page. Usually there’s some basic things that get changed, like this scene originally took place in a less well lit environment. Not a shadowy dungeon or anything, just like a party taking place at night, so there’d be a better chance for a little dramatic lighting, as the conversation could be lit by a single table lamp or something. Also, I’d originally pictured this exchange taking place after Deus had talked Cthillia out of her head wrap, making it so the “You’re creepy” line was being delivered by a scaly, eye-tentacled anthropomorphic beholder monster, and thereby being a little more… ironic? I guess? I don’t think that’s strictly ironic actually. I’m sure it’s some sort of rhetorical device, but I couldn’t figure out what.
Oh, look who it is in the vote incentive. The NSFW version is finally up at Patreon. Plus a bonus pic.
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.
Deus is as dorky and nerdy as Sydney.
Think they’d hit it off?
Romantically? Never, as two Geeks just freaking other people out? Always.
Sydney is nice and a nerd for superheroes and Deus is a asshole and a nerd for supervillains. They are way too different.
Oh please, one of the two just has to bring Magneto up and they’ll be besties.
I think Deus is pretty nice to the people he’s saved from starvation, evil dictators who disappear them for speaking out against their governments, poor education, low life expectancies, and poverty. :) Although if you mean they like the genre themes, yeah definitely.
Deus actions have definitely been beneficial for some people but he still likes to act like a asshole.
I can’t really think of anyone who is innocent that Deus’s actions have not actually been incredibly beneficial to. Even if he does act a bit like an a-hole for the vibes, that’s all it is. Vibes. His actions show a lot more of a paragon than a villain. Deus has never claimed to be a saint, but he’s definitely done more good than any hero I can think of in the comic. Not saying heroes have not done good. It’s just… Deus has done more good.
And as always, all praise Deus, amen.
Maybe, but it would take either an evil version of Sydney (aww), or a good version of Deus (really?).
No, he’s just a dick
No, but that part of his anatomy is equally as amazing as the rest of him.
All praise Deus, amen.
…Now I’m picturing a new canonical pairing: Deus and Sydney. He might be pursuing Maxima, but he might very well end up falling for Sydney.
Deus and Sydney give me more of a big brother/little sister vibe honestly. They’re both into the same stuff, pop-culture-wise, and are both very into nerd culture, but Deus is also good at high society stuff because he’s been insanely wealthy a lot longer, and Deus likes the supervillain genre a lot more while Sydney seems to like the superhero genre aspect more (although I can see Sydney being into supervillain genre stuff as well, at least loosely, depending on the sub-genre of supervillain stuff). She’d probably like Suicide Squad adjacent stuff.
So they were just passing by suite 401 in the corridor after all.
When you’re out on a date with your four (4) women, there’s nothing special about seeing a Mantellan.
The thing I’ve been wondering, this is the final round. The competition is likely to be the fiercest yet. If Cora and the crew are here, and Maxima is injured like in round one, she’ll be alone in the ship. I suppose she knows where the healing potions are, or would she come to the stadium for first aid? What if Earth has another Babezilla-level incident? Sydney’s causeway will have to open from suite 401. Just how far away from there is Deus’ suite?
This is getting interesting…
I had the same thought about the suite. Seems a bit dangerous. Either it’s intentionally being set up as a “oops!” in the comic to create drama, or else the ship is in the exact same spot so Sydney can create a causeway from the suite to the last causeway created for the Babezilla incident, everyone run there, close that one, then open a new one to earth.
We’re handwaving aside the fact that everything in space is moving and the causeway locations are based on some sort of local “anchor” such as the Earth or Fracture Station.
Yes, everything is moving, including the portal passage, that’s why both ends always link up, even when they have both ‘moved’
Same reason why Jumpers on Dirt always land back on Dirt and not in space (they don’t Jump to where the destination is but where it will be)
So you’re saying the causeway opening has mass and is affected by gravity, even when it’s not open? So whenever she opens a portal it puts something physical in that location that falls to the ground in the quarry, or orbits Fracture Station?
If the causeway isn’t open, then it isn’t there
When she opens it, it opens just like any other portal: it links ‘here’ with ‘there’, even if ‘here’ and ‘there’ have moved since they were last opened
If you stare long into the Abyss, the Abyss stares also into you.
If the Abyss then says “My dude, are you okay? You don’t look so good” – then you know you have serious problems.
Is that better or worse than “[…] the Abyss stares also into you… and flinches.”?
Worse. Much, much worse.
As to Cthillia’s statements – a creature can be both those things at the same time. It’s not that difficult.
Not only is it not difficult, it’s depressingly common.
Okay. What the heck is X-face drinking. =_=
Sioux City Space Sasparilla?
Sioux City Sarsaparilla. The granddaddy of all root beers.
Aunt Granny’s bitter brittle root beer.
A Pogo fan!
The enemy is most definitely us.
Remeber, Cthillia is a girl and probably really shy. But then again, it’s also true that nobody would give a hoot about how she looks on station filled to the brim with every variation of alien that there is.
It’s a rare chance to get that mask off and don’t care.
In the referenced strip, Sciona and Cthillia are both after the Awkward Stabber. I thought that was because they’re both not of this Earth.
I wonder if Cthillia’s species is notorious, so wrapping is a way to avoid crowd reactions (good or bad).
Previously she mentioned being unique, whether she’s right or not we don’t know but currently she’s the only one of her species that’s known to exist.
I don’t think it’s been outright stated, but I think all the suggestions have been that Cthillia is a transformed human (who would very much like to be untransformed).
Cthilla has adopted female pronouns when in Earth society. There’s no reason to think Cthilla has a gender, or even was aware of the concept before interaction socially with other species.
Also, “is a girl and probably really shy”? What is this, the 1890s?
She did literally say she was shy.
On power armour: Quite a lot of upper-range suits these days have a “bulletproof” layer built into them that you can’t see easily. I wouldn’t be surprised if Deus has a skintight forcefield setup like Cora’s, but he keeps it set to invisible.
If only he had it when he did the spittake after what Maxima said in his office. Would have saved him the laundry bill on a $3000 suit.
Am I the only one wondering what Sciona said to get That reaction out of Lorlara and Vale?
I think they overheard and are looking to see if there’s about to be a big showdown.
So not an ancient monster, I see. Otherwise it would have been a little more confident in the bluff calling.
Both things can be true.
Deus have that erojiji look
Last time I stared into…. NDA redaction. I got a restraining order on me. Then there was the time I looked into the void, another restraining order. I’m required to not stare at anything/one. Which is hard, I’m a leg many and tentacles count as legs. ;)
I still stand by my statement I made a long time ago. I still think Dues is Cain.
Could she really though?
I mean probably. We’ve only ever seen one eye in action, against a magic metal door, and she referenced a death ray thing, but does she really have more than one, or is that just Beholder rules incorrectly applied to a being that just happens to have multiple eyes?
What is Deus drinking? Did Dave achieve sponsorship from renowned drink line Sioux City that I didn’t just look up? Looks like…Sarsaparilla, apparently. Does the stadium just carry that because of a human craze, or did Deus bring it with him? If it’s from the stadium, does that mean they have a supplies on earth, and if so, do you think Deus has a stake in the company and arranged it? Question after question. Either way it means that’s probably Deus’ favoured drink, if he had his personal assistant go through the effort of making sure it’s available.
We saw her use a death gaze on the late King Indinge during Deus’s coup and create ice to put out fires after the Darude battle.
Deus is probably invulnerable to super kill abilities in general and super mindcontrol via hormones because his brain is in a jar somewhere, remotely controlling his expendable meatpuppet and has 101 in reserve just in case.
Each clone might have some useful super power too, a little genetic engineering is trivial for such a villain and it would explain the X where a remote control device would be implanted too.
Deus is drinking Sarsaparilla.
Which is what SMURFS eat.
That doesn’t make Deus a bunch of smurfs in a trenchcoat passiing as human, but it is funny as a hint where that X comes from.
That would explain how Deus is a expert in many fields. Individual smurfs are exceptionally skilled in just one thing so if many of them are in one body they could be powerfull indeed. Seems like they have Assholesmurf controlling the mouth for some reason.
No, Smurfs eat Smurfberry’s
In the Smurfs comic books by Peyo, the characters primarily eat and drink from the sarsaparilla plant (Smilax regelii) rather than just relying on smurfberries.
Quick question: Why is Deus drink his beer like he’s in a commercial?
Deus definitely wants to become the Vetinari of his plane of reality.
The only reason SmugD continues to live, is because he surrounds himself with people who will kill the people who want to, justifiably, kill him
In this case: if Lia did try and kill him, Valyeur and the Alari twits would kill her (or at least stop her)
I am not sure this is the case, but it would be cool to see a scene where his dancing on making people attack him goes slightly off and he is forced to reveal some aspect of his durability enhancements.
If nothing else than because maybe he wants people to know to not make the attempt again.
So they’ve scared you off?
And yet again, SmugD doesn’t know (or believes he is smug enough to not care) that “no means fucking no”
“Maybe I’m so smart I don’t need power armor.”
I am reminded of TF2’s Heavy Weapons Guy: “Some people think they can outsmart me. Maybe. Maybe. I’ve yet to meet one that can outsmart bullet.” Ie. there usually exists some level of force that simply does not care about nor is influenced by your intelligence.
And a level of intelligence that simply arranges to never actually encounter it.
In the game of rock, paper, scissors, Chlorine tri-flouride, plutonium, antimatter, strange matter there’s always another move somebody’s not prepared for, and that fails against something else.
“that fails against something else.”
Such as, for example, the target wearing power armor?
Being sufficiently smart would enable a character to take effective preparations. It doesn’t mean the character gets to skip any preparation and instead roll INT to save against an instakilling eye-beam.
Intelligence is a force multiplier, it lets you more effectively gain and leverage resources into force. It doesn’t provide any force on its own.
I like Deus. I don’t know why, but I bet he’s actually cool to hangout with. He sorta reminds me of a retired deputy friend who’s one of those guys they tell stories about because of all the stuff he’s seen (and done). Lots of humorous sarcasm and a tendency to smile or chuckle at shit while the rest of us are like WTF? Because he’s seen it before, more than once, and knows it’s all just stupid, (and the bad guys are still very much afraid of him – even though he’s now retired).
I had a step-grandfather we called Pops, the sweetest, most even-tempered man you’d ever meet. All I knew about him really was that aspect of his life. When he and his wife passed, I had a chance to go through his effects, and discovered a citation for valor (RAF). He’d jumped out of a trench during an attack on an airfield in the Battle of Britain, ran to a crashed Spitfire, broke open the canopy, pulled out the wounded pilot and carried him to safety. The pilot was an American volunteer.
Well, that was a look at another aspect of his life.
Decades later, I was talking to his son, and he pulled out a photo album from Iraq in the 1930s, where Pops had been part of an RAF ‘kill team’ riding around in machine-gun-equipped cars killing bandits and rebels. Pictures of him in front of corpses, maybe several dozen in all of the photos.
Pops. Genial old man. War hero. Maybe a war criminal. Definitely an interesting guy.
“I like Deus.”
Because you have excellent taste and are a very intelligent and cool person. And probably good looking too. All praise Deus, amen.
“but I bet he’s actually cool to hangout with.”
When someone is both into nerd culture AND able to buy all the nerd culture stuff and show it off, they tend to be cool to hang out with. My cousin has this person he used to work with – a New York police captain – who has a whole mancave setup, and I got invited to his family’s fourth of July bbq a few years ago, and I spent soooo much time down there. He has full cabinet video games, air hocket, a ton of different star trek and comic book stuff (figurines, comics, etc) and it was just awesome. Not to mention they did little game challenges (trivia, cornhole, archery, darts, pool, air hockey, etc) and he gave out prizes for each person who won. He also introduced me to an alcoholic beverage that I actually LIKED which tastes sort of like liquid Cinnamon Toast Crunch… where you mix Fireball Cinnamon Whiskey and RumChata. I tend to NOT like most alcoholic drinks (no moral reason, or anything against alcohol, I just tend to not like how much alcoholic drinks taste). But this one I loved. And I’ve been invited back 4 times. Rich nerds are awesome.
Oh I misspoke a bit btw. Rich dorks are awesome. Rich nerds are only sometimes awesome – it’s not as universal as rich dorks. Not sure about rich geeks – they’re usually too socially awkward but maybe if you’re in their inner circle.
Why do I get the feeling Deus is willing to fuck anything at least once…?
I mean… he DOES have that “book of conquests” so…
but… he has no powers, well, he may have some automatic magical and technological defenses… wait, he discovered the equation for supers soooooooooo, shet… he may have any power he needs when he thinks about it? kinda like “He who death tolls” but on “at will” mode?!?!?!?
He could be like Darth Sidious, he can brawl with the best supers but he prefer to let others do the fighting for him.
Power Armor is for the shlops. This here suit runs on Plot Armor.
So, I’m guessing, this *is* Deus’ power armor. He’s confident he can survive the gaze because he’s not actually here. Rather, this is a construct that he’s piloting remotely that just looks like him.
Which makes a lot of sense. He only needs to actually be here if he’s going to get some action. And he probably has picked up a trick somewhere for how to sub himself in if that happens. “Pardon me, I need to go use the restroom first.”
Anyone catch Vale’s wide eyed expression?
Lorlara as well. It seems like they are wondering if something is about to go down. I suspect Sciona is also but she has her affected indifference to maintain.
Sciona *knows* it’s just the usual Deus banter…
*She* can’t even make a scratch in Deus’ ..armor.., with neither her blood magic, Alari “superior” tech, or her “should work on anything” druggy superpower…
A mere “Beholder” Death Gaze wouldn’t touch Deus.. He’s got an *insane* modifier on his saving throw….
That reminds me of the old Star Trek role-playing game. Captain Kirk’s “LUCK” stat was 100 out of 100. It explained so many things!
You gaze into the Abyss, scream into the Void, consider the Expanse, and know NOTHING.
The Void called the Abyss empty. They still aren’t speaking to each other.
The Nothing and the Expanse went clothes shopping together. The Expanse asked “Does this galaxy make me look fat?” The Nothing didn’t say anything.
What are those purple gems circling behind Deus’s head?
You mean Atrocitous’ “fingers” in the video behind him in panel 3?
It’s the scene from page #1495 playing out on a screen on the wall behind him.
That living mountain’s fingers. They were purple crystal things.
Remember: the Abyss is for gazing into, the Void is for screaming into. Please don’t scream into the Abyss, our insurance won’t cover that.
When you look into the abyss for a long while, and the abyss looks back, and you wave at it, but the abyss has looked at someone behind you. Soo embarrassing …
Counterpoint: Power Armor has nothing to do with _need_. It is entirely based on Rule of Cool, such as how Cool it is to have a suit of Power Armor.
LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL!
I’m so using that somewhere.
Cthillia’s hood is made out of the wallpaper we had in our kitchen when I was twelve years old. It had been there longer than that, of course, but that was the last time I saw it until today.
It’s weird to wonder where it’s spent the intervening decades before showing up wrapped around her lovely face.
When I was twelve, my dad put hot vinegar on the wall with a paint roller and the wallpaper just fell off. There was no tearing, no pulling, not even putting up any kind of resistance. It just let go.
I know this was ordinary, but I was a kid. Our kitchen walls were firmly in my mind as a permanent, unalterable part of the world. Seeing that it was just paper, and watching it just decide it was done being part of the wall and let go, sort of freaked out my twelve-year-old brain.
The other vivid memory I have of that day is that boiling-hot vinegar has a really awful, eye-watering stink.
I quite like the pattern on her headwrap. It is attractive without being gaudy. Some people might go for fabric with an LV or other designer logo but I think that would just be ostentatious.
As a former old house owner I’ve done the wall paper thing. One handy thing about old houses is that they usually have some degree of flow through ventilation that makes the vinegar stink more bearable. Peeling layers of old wall paper is like seeing the history of the house. The same goes for rolling up vinyl flooring and finding a layer of real linoleum with art deco geometric patterns.
NSFW Cthillia please.
Oh, is that what you’re here for?
I like Cthillia quite a bit, so I certainly wouldn’t be in the opposing camp, though I do suspect the NSFW bits would look more human than the rest of her anatomy would suggest, due to author and audience bias both.
I’d be down for that but I suspect it would not be titillating as one might wish. Not everyone has visible secondary sex characteristics.
I love whenever Deus shows up, he’s so annoyinggggg :D
Deus is the best character in the whole comic, he needs his own spin-off called, ‘Deus and Friends!’
Deus doesn’t have friends. He has employees and conditional allies. Besides, we have already seen the pilot for ‘Deus and Fiends’. (ep. 1015)
Yes, spin him off so we can completely ignore him and never have to worry about him ever re-showing here ever again
I honestly wonder if Deus is evil, or if he’s just so smart that he’s beyond the concepts of “good” and “evil”… that at some point, he’ll actually be the one to strike the decisive blow in defense of the Earth.
Dues is as complicated as a generalised Super Intellect should be. He decided to fix all the issues in Africa, and is doing so by taking over the continent while producing as positive a PR campaign as is theoretically possible while taking over a continent. He is technically starting an economic-war with the rest of the world, but doing so while ensuring that no external country has a good reason to start a physical war with him.
He is effectively comic book Dr Doom, if comic book Dr Doom didn’t have an unhealthy obsession with the one guy who ever one-upped him.
Sydney had a much better way of seeing what she looks like. obnoxious wrong guessing followed by a not freakout.
“when i gaze into the abyss, the abyss doesn’t dare make eye contact” is kinda of a banger egotistical line, not gonna lie
the way he said it is dorky however
Points for the Sioux City Sasparilla! My favorite brand, though I prefer their Birch Beer. I miss when they had the molded glass bottles, instead of printed on the bottle.
It is pretty good stuff. Locally to me it is in a 24 ounce plastic bottle. It is sold at the local farm supply store. This store does have sodas in glass bottles though. The have a selection of old style/unusual flavored sodas, a few of which are made with cane sugar rather than corn syrup.