Grrl Power #285 – Power down
So yeah, Sydney’s plan ultimately boils down to “choke him out” which isn’t tremendously imaginative, but she did have to jump through quite a few hoops to get there first.
The fight does at long last finally end on the next page. Normally that would be a spoiler, but it’s been a long time coming and a lot of people have been ready for it for a while. I would include myself among them, but I say that while wryly looking at how much stuff I cut from the fight. Some of it is dialog that I’ll probably edit and save for later, some of it’s stuff I can use in other fights, but honestly it may be a while before there’s another big action sequence.
In case it’s at all confusing, panel 4 is supposed to be Sydney checking the time while water splashes off her shield, but looking at the page fresh just before I post it, I could see someone thinking her wrist thing is bursting or she’s blocking a splash with it? Maybe I’ll move the splash lower when I go back through and start doing edits for the book.
(Sorry for the delay in posting. I moronically scheduled the post for “the next day” forgetting that I was starting to write the post after midnight, so it was already the 19th.)
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Is anyone else having issues wondering what Sydney is responding to in panel 1? I blame the “Yup!” without it it could easily be an unprompted statement, but at least for me “yup” is always an affirmative response to some form of question, spoken or not.
That’s more of a Yup, I was right kinda yup.
Yeah, I figured that out eventually, just making mention that it might be a smidge confusing.
Sydney is just, you know, having a private conversation with her own thoughts, how rude of you to be listening in :P
I call this type of “yup” a situational confirmation. When a hypothesis undergoes a test which reinforces the hypothesis, the response is exactly that sort of “Yup!”
There are few things I like more than the fact that Max has elf ears
So you are saying she is the
Golden General
https://dragonlancenexus.com/lexicon/index.php?title=Lauralanthalasa_Kanan
Force him to defend himself but feign the attack making him use a sudden power dump for no reason.
Or
KO – he can’t fight unconscious and any powers passively active will slowly drain him.
Other options are less likely.
HUG HIM.
SHARE THE LOOOVEEEEEE.
I mean.
The opposite of anger is love.
so… it counteracts, maybe? :D
Flower power rules. Or as Ghandi would have said:
* Well, he probably would have, if he had access to nukes.
So Civ Ghandi then…
ROFL. Guess what game I started in between my previous comment and this one? And which leader I chose?
Civ 4, if anybody was insightful enough to guess my system cannot handle even Civ 5. And, yes, I did go for Ghandi. And, yes, I am likely to have nukes and a habit of invading folks. But only because I won the last game without a single war, at any point, and am spoiling for something a bit more fun.
From what I’ve heard, when Ghandi is used as a non-player character in the game, he’s normally very peaceful during negotiations. but if you give him diplomacy, a glitch causes his “peace rating” to toggle over 100% & resets his “peacefulness” to 0%. That’s why Ghandi, asa non-player controlled contestant turns extremely warlike.
I don’t remember if anyone has actually made a patch or mod of some kind to fix that problem so that he doesn’t reset to 0% instead of topping off at 100%. If such a patch exists, it may be possible to find it if you search on websites that focus on mods & cheat codes. Personally, I never thought it was enough of a problem that I couldn’t deal with a war-mongering Ghandi at any rate.
;)
Ghandi Overflow is an ancient Civ factoid, only true in the first version; he was set to max peacefulness, and some governments altered AI settings when used. Democracy would cause Ghandi’s peaceful rating to overflow and go nuke-crazy (Nukes came into play close to this time period). This glitch only existed in the original Civilization game, many moons ago.
However, this was deigned to be the funniest goddamn thing, so later versions of Civilization have typically included a special AI clause that makes Ghandi go batshit insane when he discovers nukes. This is not a glitch, not these days. This is intentional, left in a joke.
If you like Civ 4 – or 3 or 2 or 1 – stay away from Civ 5. It sacrifices pretty much everything, including both playability and system performance, to pointless pretty graphics.
That’s my opinion anyway.
“Peace through superior firepower”, the SAC motto (unofficial).
More popularly known as ‘The Reagan Doctrine’.
I think that was”peace through strength” actually :) Close enough :)
i wonder if she could use her orbs to imobilise someone,, since we know they can stop even someone as strong as max from moving them(granted it was because of the threshold distance thing),,so if she realy wanted maybe she could ”order” them not to move once in a certain position,, a bit like thor sometime does with mjolnir.
or maybe send them oputside her sheild,, pin criminal to sheild then enlarge sheild to cause thether threshold lockdown of the orb’s distance from sidney
Interesting thought.
Agreed. Most previous suggestions on these lines have involved using the effect the way they automatically kick in. Which is harder to envisage working usefully. But if she can simply order them to do that… interesting indeed.
Pander and others have suggested that a ring of them could be made around any humanoids neck to lock their neck in place. We have yet to see them capable of this but there is also no evidence that I could find saying they couldn’t do it. (believe me I tried to find a WOG on this very hard but I think he must be saving it for a fun testing moment)
I think this won’t be allowed because it would quickly become Sydney’s go to maneuver that would lock down any humanoid without shifter or long range powers from doing any harm no matter how strong they were and leave her two orbs to spare. Seems overpowered.
Maybe it would be more of a once-in-a-great-while maneuver. Something that would require extremely specific circumstances to carry off successfully.
Sydney has demonstrated that she can maneuver two or three orbs at once with considerable precision (remember ‘Squeaky’? – https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/1290 ) – albeit done with surprise on her size. Maneuvering (and cooordinating) more orbs at the same time may be more difficult. At least at this stage.
Also noting, this is the kind of maneuver one would want to be VERY careful about using. We’ve already seen that the orbs can shift with considerable force behind them – suggesting that the hypothesized ‘Ring Of Orbs Around The Neck’ move would have to be done with great care. Ortherwise, big risk of something BAD happening to the intended recipient – crushed body parts, accidental decapitation, that sort of thing..
I suppose though I would have absolutely no idea how to explain that away… I think if she can do it she will be able to do it all the time.
In the fight against Math she got them all going around her in a spherical pattern like an atomic shell but had trouble being aware of exactly where they all were after getting them going. I think a simple grab move would not be a problem for her.
So far we have no evidence to suggest they have any more force behind them than if they were a normal ball in a human hand being moved forward. Just hurts more cause they are hard and the force is concentrated on a small part of the sphere when they hit you. Plenty dangerous, potentially lethal even, to those with only human defense statistics but no threat to say Maxima. Until we see something new anyway like Sydney commanding them through a concrete wall or something.
We also don’t know how much abuse they can take but I’m guessing a lot or this would probably be a short story the way Sydney flings them around.
Just thinking it will be interesting to see what V looks like in a ‘normal” (read: powered down) state. I’m guessing that he was already partially powered-up when we first saw him.
My guess is a little like Ben Kingsley
He is bald, power mad and is trying to destroy the toughest ‘super’ in the world. Sydney-Doo and the Mystery Crew are going to pull off his rubber mask and find Lex Luthor underneath.
My First thought about when he powers down?
His pants will fall off.
And Dabbler will be disappoint.
Based on everything DaveB has disclosed concerning the Orbs(NOTMUCH), I believe I know who created them. The Powers That Be.
ugh, does this mean we’re going to have to deal with a brooding, whiny vampire too?
Provided that we also get to see Willow, I would be as happy as a cat in a bed of catnip. Mind you, I should not be greedy, I have Buffy sleeping on my lap, at this very moment!
You give your fleas names?
*ducks*
:-P
Buffy is a Jack Russell Terrier. Also known as a Parson’s Terrier, on the other side of the Atlantic.
She has proven to be very capable of scaring off bloodsuckers of all varieties. Including the biggest in the world!
Hmmmm! Dog doesn’t like lawyers, huh? An old girlfriend of mine had a Jack Russel, …didn’t like lawyers, either.
If you got a dog that can scare off IRS agents, you got it made. They even top lawyers for being bloodsuckers, because lawyers don’t usually barge into your home & seize everything (including your bank accounts) at gunpoint.
I wonder when we will find out what happened to the previous owner of the orbs.
When it shows up to reclaim them. And is not a happy camper.
Assuming he/she/it wasn’t part of the reef Sydney found them on.
… Or is one of the “mystery” Orbs. The possibilities are many.
Or perhaps the orbs were put there just for her to find.
Or going with the end of Men in Black. Somewhere out there, an alien 5 year old is looking for his or her marbles.
So you think she has 7 universes to play with.
Who knows. She hasn’t reached all the upgrades yet. *grin*
assuming that she actually DID find them off the, um… the Keys?… you know those island things off the coast of…um.. Florida?
Nah, the unknown orbs are the keys for opening the Bermuda triangle….
Assuming it isn’t dead
Man those orbs are good! Convincing everybody that they are items that can be owned. Now all they have to do is instruct their pet to prepare for the arrival of the …
oops, was I saying that out loud?
No, you didn’t say that out loud, but you did type it out in an open public-access forum. This is worse because the spoken word only goes as far as people who are close enough to hear you…Here, anyone/everyone who can read English “hears” you.
You better hope those orbs don’t know this language because if they read your comment…well, let’s just say that dogs don’t get along very well with a bullseye painted on their fur…
O.O
OK. I either have 3 invisible statements (invisible to me anyway) on here or the system is eating them.
Well, that worked so I guess it must have something to do with the link or who I was replying to? Seems like I’ve used links before without problems… eh, *shrugs*
I have noticed an issue of losing comments before. It seems to be related to Gravatar/Wordpress since the sites that use them are where I get failure. I notice it here first, usually.
My first post, on returning from my break, did not seem to appear, for a very long time. I think, sometimes, the server just has a brain-fart and takes it’s time.
Other possibilities include the comments having gone to a reply other than the one you thought you were on. In the past that has happened to me, when I initially chose to respond to one post, but changed my mind. Unless it is properly cancelled, you can think you are replying to a later post, but still be linked to the earlier one.
Similarly if miss-clicking on the ‘reply to’ and having the comment appear as a new one, rather than a reply.
Once in a while, there will be a client-side problem, and my post will not actually be sent. Typically if I loose connection to the net. Using the ‘back’ arrow on my browser usually fixes that, once the connection is working again. Allowing the post to be re-sent, without having to type it all again.
Any time I am in doubt, I just open another window and search the comic page for my name. It is entirely possible for the comment to have appeared, in it’s right place, on the comic, yet not to be showing on my original window.
I didn’t get at all how the choking thing works out…or how the holding down thing works…captain?
Both the choking and drowing are to try and accomplish the same thing: To make him pass out from lack of oxygen or to make him use up his power trying to stay conscious.
Right now Vehemence is constantly using his power to not pass out while he is being choked and held underwater, slowly making him weaker.
The key trick being to restrain him, without using excessive force. The drowning is putting him unconscious, but without providing him with the extra energy that he would gain, if you did that by attempting to beat him unconscious.
Oooh, like a hug but more deadly. I think I get it now. Thx :)
In the old west, they’d hug yer neck with a rope until yer dead.
I guess we won’t have you executed this time since you said you were sorry.
I’m kind of surprised V does not/has not used some kind of personal space exploding aura thing… or just turned the aggression one back on… was his foot touching the ground key to that?
The trouble with that idea, is that he is being drowned. Head forced underwater. Ever go swimming and had someone dunk you and hold your head down? There is a moment of panic. Its instinctive, hard coded into our DNA. And panic does not mesh well with “I need to do x strategy.”
… Or in fact, any thought, plan, gambit or move other than “I Need To Breathe. NOW.”
I would assume that having your hand blown off would also be a major concern, but that did not even slow him down.
I call foul play.
Unless Sydney’s hentacle has some magic-draining properties that were never described.
Knowing that someone might blow your head off is not nearly as strong as the instinctive reaction you get from not having oxygen.
The first one is a consious thing, the second one is instinct.
I would guess he anticipated taking major damage, but like most of us, took his air supply for granted, so didn’t mentally prepare himself for that eventuality
So that’s why he was in the area. Dave probably has this set in or near his home state of Texas and the band is playing there in a few weeks. https://www.airsupplymusic.com/
And that would be fair for a few seconds of being down.
But unless the next panel we see is a huge-ass magical thing that gets him out of this mess somehow, I am definitely calling this unfair.
It may be that his aggression aura wouldn’t get a significant amount of extra violence to occur – the people holding him might just “hold him angrier.” Also, people coming off the aura are more likely to resist it if it returns, since they have reason to question that behavior even if Sydney hasn’t told them specifically what’s up with it.
It’s also possible that even if V’s able to think clearly while drowning – which is iffy – spending on two disparate skills at once carries an increased cost. Might even be multiplicative. If he had a boom that could shuck off joint locks he’d probably have used it as Anvil was coming down.
Remember also that he may be in shock from a failed regen attempt on his own throat. It’s not clear whether the noose blocked him before he was able to rebuild that fleshy surface.
Well to be fair it did slow him down. It’s only because max stood back and asked him to surrender that he had time to:
A) finish shouting “aaaaaaaahhh”
B) laugh manically
C) babble on about one more power he hadn’t told them about.
d) actually regenerate his arm (and eye and teeth)
Here it’s been throat punch to henticle noose to drowning in a matter of seconds.
Seasoned superhero veterans VS one empowered comic book nerd.
Score one for the nerds.
Teleporter + deep sea diving bell + nasty guy + mariana trench = problem solved
:-)
They will first have to find a teleporter who can a) carry more than their own weight 2) be able to carry living tissue (and have it remain in the same condition it was before teleportationing)
You mean, like the portal lady?
I actually think that – were Opal to open a portal to that location – it would be more like a weapon than anything else. Think of the water pressure that would come screaming out of that opening! More than 8 TONS per square inch: https://www.livescience.com/23387-mariana-trench.html .
Don’t trust Opal if she invites you somewhere for cake.
Most teleporters first have to know a location before they can teleport to it. Know as in, having seen it/been there
I’m a fan of one of the characters in George R. R. Martin’s Wildcards book series. PopinJay
He triggered his teleportation ability by pointing a finger at his target and making a gun configuration then pretended to pull the trigger.
Of course if he didn’t know the area well, the target could be teleported anywhere within his range. (can’t remember it off my head now, but it was more than a mile at least.)
Bad part of it is that he teleported a fast healing target who had the ability to slice through just about anything, into a police station jail cell. No mention of what happened to the police when he busted out. He showed back up for combat within an hour
I talked to 10 teleporters, and I can confirm your statement for 8 of them. One said she could teleport wherever she dang well pleased. But she was on a starship. The other told me to screw myself since apparently he was a teleporting monk and I punched him in the throat a few days ago, and he’s still sore about that, and teleported away.
PS – I’m assuming you mean most teleporters in fiction, since I don’t think anyone actually knows teleporters in order to ask them. :)
They might. But, if they did, they would probably just kill you, on principle. For getting people to think in dangerous directions.
Nah. I wear my anti-teleport belt at all times.
I hope it doesn’t also function like a chastity belt as well. That would be a frustrating denial to use the mosest-fun kind of portal of all…
LOL …. I just love how most here questioned the abilities of teleporters and not comment on where one would get a deep sea diving bell at short notice ….
Besides it would give Harem an excuse to strip down into something more comfortable … I think that on its own would get a general thumbs up from everyone …
Obviously you would get it at the deep sea diving store. Duh!
Or amazon … They have like… Everything
Mighty Max, with his hat tuned into a series of set-in-space dimensional gateways, is among my favorite outliers of the teleporter class.
Ack we dropped to 3rd place down by 3k votes pick it up peeps.
It would help if I refreshed the vote incentive. Luckily with the fight drawing down I hope to have time to do that for next month.
A simple one, would just to copy panels 6 & 7, stripping out the speech bubbles and placing them side by side. Reversing the order, so that Maxima appears to be looking at the contentedly happy Sydney.
Those two panels are getting so many favourable comments, that I think it would see us through, until you have the time. It certainly would be nice seeing those two expressions each day.
it was that voting site that actually found this webcomic for me… my HDD died 8 months ago and I lost all my bookmarks (among other things) so I picked a few webcomics from my old list, which i remembered the URLs for, since then i’ve been picking up old and new webcomics from the 2 big voting sites, and current comic’s links.. most I didn’t stay with, but I fell in love with the humor. this is one of the few things that makes me actually laugh out loud anymore, and it’ll be good to get back to that from the action.. not that there havent been funny moments in the fight, and it has been awesome in its own right, the best moments for me have been those while “at peace”.
So, is the first thing he’ll say when he’s pulled up “I can’t breath”? And will there be a protest to follow?
Shhh, bad Stormhawk! Witty, but the possibility of getting dragged into sensitive real-world issues is best avoided.
But, that said, yes, there could well be protests. But, hopefully off-panel. But if more than just implied, that they are mentioned, but not featured. However, in this instance, Arc SWAT are deploying potentially lethal force against somebody who is a clear and present danger. Corroborated by him having clearly voiced his intent to kill.
So, whilst some individuals might whine about his rights being abused, any organisation, which has experience in such matters, will know that Arc are acting within the boundaries of self-defence. As such, they will not want to waste air-time by complaining without merit, and being seen to be in the wrong themselves.
So does that mean For Whom The Death Tolls has a legitimate argument?
Dunno, if he had a manifesto, I have forgotten it already. I tend to ignore second-rate wannabes.
Eh, was the dude who had super defensive abilities. Didn’t actually attack anyone and had Arc attack him. It’s…still pretty much assault. If i’m not mistaken, they attacked him first.
He really doesn’t. Showing up at the scene of a fight, pointing to a cop, and shouting “come get some” when they say “you’re under arrest” is really not the start of a scene which you can later claim was a case of assault, primarily because it was an active combat situation and they had every reason to believe he’d attack if they did nothing.
This would be a whole different story if he’d been more-or-less compliant when Anvil said “I’m arresting you.”
I’m sure the Vehemence fanboys will say that he was trying to surrender with his hands up and ArcSwat ganged up on him. Vehemic profiling!
Sorry Yorp. :)
Just because Vehemence is mean, nasty & about as over-powered as a steroid-injected Hulk doesn’t mean I can’t like him as a villain in a fictional story…
;)
No… It’s going to be something along the lines of “aaaaaaaak” since his throat is still crushed….
DaveB said that tomorrow’s strip will be the last strip in the fight. That will be exactly 301 days since Blue Hair jumped into the dinner and kicked things off. We didn’t make it quite a year, but it’s still been plenty Jordanian / Martinsian. I’ll be interested to see what happens next. (Hopefully the paperwork will be offscreen. :> )
Aaaw!
I think the weird info you would have to fill out on super perps could be amusing.
No! I have it on good authority that the next 11 months will be about filing paperwork.
I guess it is time to threathen the bad guy with the PR department. Again.
Well, if all you got is Arianna, every villain looks like he could be called the “Periwinkle Butt Sniffer”:
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/1471
Had to show y’all this short comic strip. > https://imgur.com/gallery/mIOLd ^_^
Mmm, that is a tough pick list. Hard to choose between becoming a mathematical genius plus getting to find out what makes the other gender tick or getting rejuvenated to twenty four years old by gaining an uber magic ring!
Hmm, of those powers flying seems the best. Use them like The Knights Radiant from Brandon Sanderson Stormlight Archive series.
Offer him a job maybe? He seems to have a similar personalty to Math, he wants to fight for the sake of fighting. The other options are scare him into not fighting (probably temporary) put him in jail (he can break out) or kill him (that would be mean D: ) No one but Arc- know exactly what’s going on since the reporters seem to have been evaced so they just need to say that they stopped the villains, and not give a play by play :P I kind of hope they do that just because I love V as a character :D
Yes right, we’re all going to happily hire the guy who set up a mass brawl with a bunch of people who actively tried to kill several team members. Never mind the fact that he has actively stated his intention to kill Max repeatedly.
I’ve seen people raise this idea several times, but it still makes absolutely no sense.
Besides what Scuffles said, Vehemence is NOT like Math in the regards in which you commented: V wants violence…Period. Math wants a Challenge of Skill. Big difference.
If Math wanted a real challenge, how about focusing himself on controlling his libido? It actually degrades his own skill level!
Noting also that you assume that the authorities are just going to park him in a regular prison. I expect that various options are being set up, if not actually in place already, for incarcerating high-end supers.
In V’s case, possibly something involving a deep DEEP hole out in the desert, far away from any means of “powering up” (for which a standard prison environment would be almost ideal).
I agree that panel 4 is pretty unclear, but moving the splash effect will not explain what she’s doing. We’ve seen her armband has multiple functions; how is the audience supposed to deduce that she’s using it to check the time from this angle?
Maybe a very small thought balloon: {Hmm… 4 minutes?)
By inference from the dialogue in the following panel. “… what’s going on later?”
Also, notice the angle that Sydney’s got her wrist rotated? She’s looking at the display screen without entering any commands with her other hand.
Am I the only one who sees Maxima holding a metallic art with a butt?
It looks like a butt.
…and here Dave said he couldn’t draw butts. That’s a reasonably nice one!
And just finished rereading from page one. Such a good comic :)
Honestly, I’d leave him under unless the people holding him are REALLY tired. When you’ve got a functional attack and it’s clear it’s working (a 3-move corner-cheese in a fighting game comes to mind) you do not stop doing it until the guy’s down or somehow breaks out of it anyway. Changing grips or breaking out of the infinite combo gives the other guy a chance to do something clever.
Except as Sydney just said, when he shrinks it may Stop working, and at that point he may realise he can Win that war of attrition. as eventually the people holding him will get tired eventually, while he would be able to keep powered indefinitely. This tactic is more akin to using a Special Power combo against a blocking opponent, you want him to surrender before your special gauge runs out.
Any minute now…. there’ll be an update any minute….
…. yap….
…any minute….
…. Wait for it….
….W-A-I-T for it ……
You can breathe now. Err, I hope.
The page went wonky on the coloring and alignment
Has your cat been napping on the top of your monitor? And suffering from incontinence? If so, just give the screen a wipe, and straighten the monitor up. Then everything will look as it should.
1) I don’t own a cat (severely allergic)
2) it’s working just fine now. The initial wonkiness traveled with scrolling. It started with the lower ~20% of the 1st row panels. Everything above that was just fine, but everything below had a yellowish tone and was sfifyed to the right ~ 30 pixels.
*wags tail contentedly*
Am I the only one that things Maxima looks cute in the 6th panel?
Hmm… maybe I missed it – but why did the font of Maximas “voice” changed?
From being strangled by Vehemence. She is all husky, until the damage subsides.
If Vehemence has a twin keep something both funny and interesting in mind. In most comics twins have opposite powers, so, that would mean if Vehemence has a twin brother, said brother would be a male Succubus…..
Incubus.