Grrl Power #1505 – Let’s meet more contestants
Okay, first thing’s first – Max did not pose hands-on-hips-chest-thrust-out no-looking the explosion behind her. Don’t get me wrong, she’s definitely no-looked plenty of explosions, but she doesn’t really do the Superman pose. So the image they’re showing is probably a “for illustrative purposes only” generated image.
Also I think Max’s Ixah holo-disguise is making her boobs look bigger. It’s definitely not because I’ve accidentally been afflicting her with cup-creep over the last few dozen pages.
If you recall, Thothogoth is “Dominus Secund” of The World Takers. Yes, I know on that linked page, he calls himself “The World Taker” not “of The World Takers,” but he’s being aspirational there, not to mention trying to sound tough to the flying gold woman. The thing is, demon society is rather hierarchical, and there’s eleven other “Secunds,” besides Thom, who each have 12 subordinates below them, who each have below them 12 subordinates, etc. Yeah, it’s a weirdly rigid structure for beings that claim to be all about chaos. Well, speaking of chaos, were something permanent to happen to Dominus Prime during the tournament, (or even just while he’s commuting to work or whatever) there’d probably be a heck of a power struggle to claim that top spot.
Green Strider is the longest-in-the-queue waiting Patreon cameo I had. I think he’s been waiting since about a week after I set up my Patreon actually. I just never quite figured out how to fit a… oh, heck. I just realized it’s “sentai,” not “zentai.” Yeah, I know zentai is the skintight onesie, and sentai is the genre of people wearing skintight onesies and fighting goofy rubber monsters. I’m not gonna change it. It makes “the mysterious zentainium force” even funnier to me. Anyway, I never figured out how to fit a sentai character into the comic, but now here we finally are. I think the reference picture I have is from a City of Heroes character creator maybe? But it’s just the one shot and it’s kind of covered in glowy… bits, and it’s just a single angle, so I have to simplify the suit design a bit and make up some of the rest, but hopefully he will be amusing in his role as a UCBA finalist.
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.
For anyone that used to play and somehow hasn’t heard about it yet, City of Heroes is actually still around and there is even a licensed private server – Homecoming.
Is that the same as “Champions Online”?
Better
Best thing is that they’ve actually gone as far as creating new custom content to the game, both new powersets, some new cosmetics, and even a new zone that they’ve populated with custom storylines.
I love that my Mastemind can re-costume his minions using his own costume slots. Having to use the same thugs every time way back in the day was one of my peeves.
(I have no pet peeves, all my peeves are free, wild Peeves.
Wild Peeves tend to wander off, sometimes annoying other people, while Pet Peeves stick close, especially around meal times.
Agreed. Love playing CoH HC :)
Never played CoH, just CO, but that was years ago (also played Star Trek Online, from the same company)
If you like superheroes, it’s worth the price of admission. And I mean that as in, if they were still charging for admission.
IMHO, it is one of the best games out there
Again, played CO, which is about superheroes (also ‘playing’ DCUO since it started), just wanted to know how it differed from CoH
Back when last played CO (about ten? years ago) it was free
ROFL…
I used to have a tiger themed scrapper named “Tigger”, and I bound ++up so he was always auto-jumping/bouncing and I replaced all my keybindings with compound commands that executed the key AND popped up a bubble with one of his sayings (like “a Tigger’s a wonderful thing, and I am the only one! Hoo Hoo Hoo Hoo”).
Once people stopped laughing they HATED it… it obstructed the field of view during indoor missions like nothing you’ve seen…
So much fun.
Kind of like a Kinder. It seems like a fun idea at first but pretty soon everyone in the party wants to kill them except that they have plot armor.
Hoping to see my Kobold then soon :D
Fingers crossed! I’m assuming it’s a dude because otherwise a certain goblin girl on the staff would’ve been in ideal spot for them to take. I hope he’ll make jokes about how tall Sydney, Krona and Paula Panther are.
What version kobold? Furry Dog or Scaly Lizard?
So either Maxima’s being lewded on Galnet, or Gail wants to get into her glo-bod. Super.
I’d bet on a “both and” rather than an “either or”, here.
As to the world takers having a rigid power structure: even in a chaotic society, the guy on top of the heap wants to stay that way, which means he needs some semblance of structure in his inner circle, at least. And demons respond well (or at least better) to forceful administration.
Does the promotional picture feature Ixah with a different number of abs on the left than the right side?
And goddamn, yep her boobs have been upsized to the size of her head in that promo.
I hope that is a deliberate dig at ‘AI’ “art”, rather than a sign that Dave has started using it exclusively…
Did… you read the Authurb? Maybe read the Authurb
I did, but I thought he only mentioned the growing ‘plots of land’…
Ah well, my mistake.
First paragraph :)
What do you mean exclusively? I would hope he doesn’t use it at all.
As if humans are incapable of making errors in their art, or didn’t have a history of doing so. There are plenty of problems with using LLMs to create images, but this always strikes me as a disingenuous argument.
Sounds like Gail wants to be ‘harvested’ by Ixah ;)
Reading the Authurb, sounds like that “World Takers” thing is just a demonic pyramid scheme
Despite Xuriel’s protestations, that wouldn’t be the universe’s greatest shocker.
While all pyramid schemes are hierarchical organizations, not all hierarchical organizations are pyramid schemes
The Kardashev scale is a measure for the advancement of civilizations. A Kardashev-1 species has harnessed all of the energy output of their planet. Kaedashev-2 has harnessed all of the energy of their star. Kardashev-3, all of their galaxy.
That’s… a big leap from Star to Galaxy
It’s explicitly an exponential scale of measurement, yeah. Planet –> Star/Solar System* —> Galaxy —-> universe???
*Ive never actually thought to wonder how the Kardashev scale applies to a binary star system in the sci-fi exclusive scenario of both stars being close enough to meaningfully affect a planet, if they need to Dysonize both stars or just one to be eligible for K-2.
It’s also a big leap from planet to star, to be fair. Actually, since a star is both much larger AND with a much higher energy-per-mass potential, the original Kardashev scale had roughly the same jump (x10 billion) between Type I and II, and between Type II and Type III civilisations.
Not as big as you might think.
A planet receives less than a billionth of the energy from the sun it orbits.
A galaxy contains 10 to 500 billilon stars.
So it both is a 1 : 1000000000 scale increase (with an error of 10 to 100)
(and yes, the hypothetical Kardeshev IV is also a factor billion up from III)
The Sagan scale makes a more fine-grained increment.
And other scales have been proposed that attempt to measure fine control, integration, computational power, and many other units. Each scale has its pros and cons, and none by themselves is sufficient to describe ‘global’, ‘solar’, ‘galaxy’ and ‘universal’ societies.
It has been under a lot of criticism. Since it was designed, the development has advanced a lot more by energy efficiency than by energy harvesting. So, a general scale for advancment it is no more. A higher advanced technology can use a lot less energy.
I’ve seen a recent Kurzgezagt video about an alternative for the Kardashev scale that’s not about energy consumption but rather about the scale at which a civilization can manipulate matter smaller than itself. it’s a pretty cool idea, because it’s about what the civilization is capable of rather than what they need.
There have been a couple of alternatives proposed. One that I found interesting is, how a civilization interacts with the environment. It was something like that:
– The environment defines them
– They change their environment (beavers to humans)
– They change themselves to match the environment better (humans started to do that)
– (Something I have forgotten)
– They become indistinguishable from the environment.
I am sure I forgot at least one step in there and I have lost the original source. Still, I find it interesting. If there is a civilization on the final step, we would have absolutely no chance to find them until they want us to know they are there.
Who remembers Weird Al’s coining of the “Kardash” as a unit of time equal to 72 days … also equal to the length of Kim Kardashian’s marriage to Kris Humphries?
I have no problem with Thothogoth calling himself “The World Taker” when he’s just *a* World Taker. After all, Tyler The Creator is not making any claim with his name to be the only creator. (See also Bob The Builder.)
Or William the Conqueror, or Rollo the Walker, or Charles the bald, or Charles the fat
As someone who actually is cursed with boobs that size in real life… my back hurts so much just looking at that pose. I wish I had super strength and a magical built-in forcefield! LOL.
I hope Egg-Bot’s main weapon is a cane that he uses like sword to go along with that top hat and cape!
Egg-Bot’s greatest power is being easier to draw than the other competitors :)
Though who knows what secret gadgetry lurks beneath the shell of this Warrior Tamagotchi? All things are possible, after all, when you have a top hat and a cape.
And he can tap dance like a pro.
And just for the Hell of it, let’s hope that Egg-Bot also has an unnecessary Monocle that he breaks out for emergencies that he wears on the side of his eye!
Kinda ironic that the “AI” for the UCBA’s marketing department put Ixah in a superhero pose. Maybe it knows?
Things to notice:
“only other woman on the team” is something Bluce felt he could mention as a fun fact. Judging from previous commentary it’s probably because of displayed personal sexual preferences, which in turn are shaped by viewer statistics(in that a sports commentator’s commentary should be relatable to the viewers). From this we can with reasonable certainty infer a majority viewership with a humanoid binary gender-scale with according sexual preferences, at least for this particular duo, as opposed to enjoyers of genderless, nonhumanoid, mysterious third, fourth, fifth, or n-th options.
Additionally we can see that humanoid body plans dominate the tournament. The worm thing was the only exception, and it was a battleship. Even supernatural, magical, or constructed contestants adhered to humanoid forms, perhaps with some added wings. A fascinating trend.
Dabbler did previously go on a spiel about how the humanoid body plan is “optimal”
Also, it’s not like Egg-Bot has a gender
we can’t be 100% certain, perhaps Egg-Bot has a secret, third gender, and “it” is merely as close as the English language can get.
But yeah probably. Still, that’s only one contestant
I think the contestant to watch out for here is eggbot, who may pull some fuckery with Max’s disguise.
I don’t think there is really much of a power contest otherwise.
Eggbot and Zoaroth have an additional potential tie-in: Deus is here, with a box that he set up in advance. Thom calls out Zoaroth is his boss – I could very easily see Deus having somehow had connections up the chain. And Eggbot as another ‘previously unknown’ contestant could be Deus’ own entry into the contest – effectively aiming to do the exact same thing Cora and Maxima are doing by winning a TON of galactic money, and possibly also using it to stake Earth Tech’s claim in galactic society – one that would immediately change the conversation around “tech milestone” questions. And also possibly make Deus the real face of Earth’s powerhouses, but I’m sure that’d be just a tertiary benefit… or lower, he’d have a whole list of why this plan benefits him win or lose.
For all of Deus’ rapid technological alien advancement, I don’t think he can compete yet. He’s after all tied to the aliens in his back yard and copying off of them, in contrast to Maxima who is just that strong TM. Another super in disguise, maybe, but we would have heard of one that powerful
Well , in case you missed it, someone was MISSING from Deus’ entourage. Someone we KNOW can take on Sciona and subdue her with VERY little issues.
she was in the VIP box just a few pages ago, so it would be someone else:
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-1500-high-gravitas-low-sustain/
I’ll even give you another hint. Deus made said missing entity cry she she? Killed someone she was told not to, by being forced to watch a “This was his life” movie.
I really want to see how a cliché righteous comeback works against a good person like Maxima, so I’m rooting for “Not Green Lantern” to be a real challenge. Something tells me though that Maxima has had a lot of practice against inventive opponents, thanks to her sparring with Dabbler sometimes.
I wonder if righteous comebacks only work against evil people who love to monologue.
If that cameo is almost as old as the Patreon then I guess nobody could’ve known at that point that fitting Power Ranger type heroes into a hero comic that makes fun of all the tropes would pose a challenge at all.
GO EGGBOT!
Which came first, the Eat Chicken or the Egg Bot?
Yeah, we know the answer already, sorry, sorry!
Is there a zentaitherapy cure for serious cases of cupcreep? Perhaps animeassage or zordplancking?
I wonder if Maxima is watching this? Probably not now, but I hope we get her reaction later.
It’s good to see Parfait comforting Thom, she’s such a good girl.
And you guys out there hoping for “Gail X Ixah” need to chill. It’s just announcer banter when she tells Bluce to get in line. Too bad, I know, sorry to have to break it to you.
I do wonder if they will cover the odds going into the final? It would be a good link to the main story line.
Should be “felled” in the last panel. Felled is the past tense of the verb “to fell” which means “to make something fall”. It’s often used to refer to what lumberjacks do to trees.
Why I’m focusing on that instead of Ixah’s boobs I don’t know…
Yes, but ‘felled’ sounds weird
Not to me – I was going to comment too. There seems to be room to edit it in fairly easily.
Words cannot properly describe how ready and excited I am to see Egg-Bot in action.
Green Strider is giving me major Jago vibes…now I wanna play Killer Instinct again
(looks up from plow, tired of seeing oxen arse all month) yeah sure, evaluate how well I doth plow and sow mine fields.
Egg Bot? No; that’s Castle Heterodyne!
EggBot will defeat all minions of The Other!
He does have a nice hat.
And it took effort to not say that in Jaeger-speak.
I read it in Jaeger speak anyway
You just may be a Jaeger {if}
You always notice the hat first
Your first response is about a hat
Your Grin is bigger than a Cheshire’s
Are we sure it’s the castle and the train? Though the castle does enjoy its remote-controlled death machines.
It doesn’t have the smokestack, so probably not the choo choo.
Guys I know Ixah’s secret identity. She’s really Power Girl.
Also Thom at this point just keep betting against your boss what’s the worst that could happen?
That his boss wins (which is not Ixah’s plan at all, she only wants to win enough Space Credits, not unwanted attention… well, more than what she is already getting: if she loses now then it will just be luck of an unknown rookie who ‘vanished’ because she pissed off her sponsors, winning and then disappearing would raise too many questions) and he loses everything :P
As time goes on, I feel less and less sympathetic about how Thot got thrown by Max during his first in-person appearance.
The dude and his boss are known first and foremost for violent conquering, not diplomacy. That’s maybe, sometimes necessary, but unless they’re doing purposeful scare PR for intimidation, they’re doing it all the time.
*starts a chant*
More cup creep! More cup creep!
(just for the giggles)
Cup creep from an artist’s standpoint is one thing, but maybe in-universe it’s just Cora dialing up the measurements on Max’s disguise every so often to see when she finally notices.
Isn’t the whole need for a near-skintight holo-disguise to keep ‘Ixah’ inside Max’s also-skintight superpower range? Seems like that would risk the whole thing if someone punched harmlessly through her ‘skin’ only to hit an invincible barrier underneath.
It looks like there might have been a bit of booty creep as well.
Just like what happened with Power Girl: the artists kept increasing her size to see how long both the publishers and readers would notice :P
As somebody who lives kind of close to the Canadian Horseshoe Falls, I see a major problem. There is nothing to kneel on near the base of the Falls. It is water all the way down to the bottom of the river, which is 30 m below the surface. She should bestanding there, at a little larger size.
You know, deliberately altering the cupsize as part of a disguise would be a really amusing way to throw off people like Deus. I feel like that’s the sort of trick that would slip under even his genius radar because the other brain is doing the thinking.
Cup Creep is probably Dabbler’s doing
Eggbot! I love it! Good luck little guy!
Eggbot sure looks both british and very well balanced; some might even go so fare as to say perfectly balanced.
That LCD screen makes me wonder if he evolved from a tamagochi.
I’m calling it now, it’s going to come down to “Ixah” and Roseryan. (The only two women in the fight, so obviously….)
Uh-oh, Dabbler’s husband’s boss being in the tournament will surely cause problems. I wonder if she’s going to want Max to make sure she doesn’t kill that guy. Then again, maybe she’s confident that Thothogoth will come out on top of the ensuing power struggle.
No husband, Master
How much are you willing to bet Maxima losses her disguise dring the match?
Now I’m wondering if Zoaroth is much more powerful than Tom, because if not, Ixah is going to make ridiculously short work of him, given how quickly she beat Tom.
So either 1) Zoaroth will go down in 3 seconds against Ixah, if he’s not THAT much more powerful than Tom (like how Megatron is somewhat more powerful than Shockwave – although significantly powerful than Starscream); or
2) Zoaroth will be an actual challenge if his power levels are the same as how Thragg is much, much, much more powerful than his second in command (whether that’s Kregg or Anissa or Conquest or whoever).
Somehow I think the biggest challenge will be that Aetheon woman, or possibly the eggbot (for the lulz). Although after how quickly she took out Eat Chicken, I’m guessing not.
Don’t forget what Lurch posted to the comments on the preceding page: a link to page 1395, where in the last panel a large figure looms over the crowd. It appears to be a dead ringer for the Aetholith Orthvye, introduced on page 1504.
The scene was Maxima in her Stygian disguise, sparring with other Stygians on Fracture Station while the others were shopping. It was like a street performance, and an interested crowd had gathered. Has Orthvye seen Maxima fight before?
It could have been another Aetholith, piloting a similar body. But if it was Orthvye…
First of all the stature. Its’ body is easily as tall as Thothogoth was when he was introduced. Probably built especially for the UCBA tournament, it could be very ruggedly constructed, although we can’t tell yet. It has wings.
Aetholiths are basically magical computer-program-people living in manufactured bodies. Lapha was able to attack Halo and enter her mind in an attempt to take control. Orthvye has that capability too. But Ixah has the Manavore…
The story implications are perhaps more interesting. Having seen Maxima spar as a Stygian, how observant is Orthvye? I presume his memory would be something like a digital videorecording, so, accurate and able to recall detailed events in slow motion. We don’t know how sharp Orthvye is, but the longer he is able to observe Ixah, the greater his chances are of suspecting some link to that Stygian warrior. Perhaps they trained in the same Dojo? But the Stygian seemed to be flying at ground level, and Stygians can’t fly? If he figures out that he’s looking at a glowbod, has he seen one before?
Well, whatever Dave B. does with the story, I think Orthvye will be consumed by the Manavore. Perhaps then it will become a talking sword?
Okay, here are my predictions:
– Eggobot or Orthyve gets fodderized almost instantly after showing some of what they can do
– Angel lady and Dominus ending up clashing first and end up background noise, or near the end as an explosive development
– Maxima/Ixah or Green Strider wins at the end after they end up working together to take down Angel or Dominus, with one of them making the heroic sacrifice
I know Maxima demonstrated she could take down the other Dominus easily, but trusting that the boss has some crazier tricks but that could get countered by angel lady.
Maxima losing and ending up in 2nd place would be a classic tournament arc twist because the main character just winning it all is often boring, especially when all she’s here for is exercise of “cutting loose” and money. New ally in Green Strider could lead to a future ally, plus 2nd might still win her friends a decent chunk of money since she’s a no-name competitor while most bets are on the galactically famous ones.
Big Reveal: The Egg-Bot is the Eat Chicken’s FATHER! (Dant, dant, daaaaaan!)
Don’t y’all forget, the last 2 finalists should be revealed Thursday!
Don’t be a Thothogoth, check out all of the horses before placing your bets!
Also I think Max’s Ixah holo-disguise is making her boobs look bigger. It’s definitely not because I’ve accidentally been afflicting her with cup-creep over the last few dozen pages.
It would be funny if using a lot of her power had the side effect of temporarily making her boobs larger. She would be so annoyed at that.
Between Zentai (tights) and Sentai (team) is Henshin which is solo-sentai. Probably more appropriate for the character, but I like that he’s powered by underwear.