Grrl Power #874 – Infotainment
Actually, Max, supers are kind of the one thing Earth has going for it, from a galactic POI at the moment, other than being the latest planet on the verge of dipping their toe into galactic society. That definitely gives us a “new” factor, but once the first few waves of tourists come by and sample our wines, quiches, board games, and erotic lady literature, the thing that will keep Earth front and center is the supers.
Yes, Max is a little extra shiny tonight all of a sudden. I guess she wiped her face with one of those Mr. Clean Eraser Sheets or something.
Presumably, the can of “Refreshing Hot Osmium” (sorry it’s small and hard to read) has a disposable fission generator in the bottom of the can to warm it up, but like with any mass produced stuff made in Space China, it’s cheap garbage and like 1 in 17 cans has a busted heating element.
FYI, osmium has a melting point of 3045C, or roughly 5500F, so 1) what the heck is that guy’s arm made of? And 2) Enjoy that little factoid. Commit it to memory. It might save your life one day.
I admit that part of my reason for this page was to draw good pinup type shots of Heatwave, Achilles, and Mr. Amorphous, (I’ve owed Marion G. Harmon some art for a Grrl Power sourcebook for a while. It’s a little embarrassing, honestly.) but it didn’t really work out that way. I thought about having Mr. A standing there flexing his arm while it’s stretched out into an “S” shape while aliens applaud (tepidly, I’d imagine, as there are probably alien races that are a bit stretchy) as that would make for fine Bio art, but that would be about as entertaining for you guys as it would be for the aliens, but almost immediately I was like “Orrrrrr… I could draw a bunch of alien ladies perched on his arms… for… reasons…” You can see which way I went.
Maybe I’ll have to do a nude pinup of Heatwave and use the clothed version for her Bio. I’m not personally excited about doing the same for Achilles and Amorphous, I don’t imagine most of you are clamoring to see that either. Some of you, sure. I had a vague notion of doing a pinup of Hiro for an April fools things, but eh. Maybe I’ll make it a poll over at patreon one day.
Speaking of segues, Daniel Shinhofen’s second Aether’s Revival book is out, if you enjoyed the first one, which I recommended a while back. Also, the audiobook for the first one is available as well.
I personally have become spoiled on dual narrated audiobooks. A female narrator reading female voices is so much better than listening to a dude doing falsetto, and I find listening to women try and do dude’s voices pretty distracting. That said, Andrea Parsneau does a pretty respectable job of it. She’s also prolific AF and does a lot of books in genres I dig, so I’ve been listening to her a lot while I draw recently.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like!
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Didn’t Cora say Earth had really good entertainment? And she’s a sophisticated world hopper. I’d think she’d know what she’s talking about. So that and Supers are Earth’s two big things.
Cora said that the porn was really good.
And Archer
As “stretch daddy” as opposed to step daddy
She is also biased, being originally a normal human.
But not from Earth. She stated millions of humans are out there, possibly generations later of them. She’d never been to Earth before, and if not for Dabbler and Halo would likely never have gone.
It is a bit sci-fi egotism to treat Earth as a holy grail to space faring humans removed from it for generations. Sure there could be enough that think of it as their people’s homeworld and might like to visit, but so many others would feel more attached to the world they were born and grew up on and not really give Earth any consideration.
(compare to how generations later of immigrants regard the country their ancestors came from…move it back enough generations and it gets muddied a lot for some; but the various view points may still exist…worst is those who would romanticize their “home land” only to visit it and realize they are the foreigner and these are just regular people living their lives.
all sorts can happen, but the common treatment of Earth in sci-fi in such scenarios just screams of the romanticism part. Honestly I’d love to see someone of human descent try to visit Earth having had this glorious origin of mankind image in his head, show up and go…oh….well…its okay…not like home though… .
I suspect
Thornbrier: “biased, being originally a normal human”
was a response to
McGrewer: “Didn’t Cora say Earth had really good entertainment?”
speculating (as I do) that the biological constraints, impulses & imperatives of being “mostly human” places limits on the cultural variation possible compared to the range available to ALL intelligent life and hence the variation in entertainment preferences rather than suggesting “Earth as a holy grail to space faring humans”.
Species were the male dies or is consumed after mating would likely have a very different taste in romantic comedies for instance.
I think that last sentence is from the webcomic Freefall. About Sam Starfall. :)
I would suspect few spacefaring civilizations would evolve the “male dies after mating” thing. That really only works for species that have extremely short lives, thus having no reason to mate more than once. I can’t really imagine a civ gets to FTL tech with a 1 year lifespan.
Aliens 4:
Upon discovering the facility is auto-piloting back to Earth one of the mercenaries say IIRC “Earth. Man, what a shit hole.” :-)
That’s EXACTLY what popped into my head, as soon as I read that. Ron Perlman’s character is admittedly far more than a bit of an asshole, but I can see people having that perspective.
Take settings like the book (not the movie; fuck that movie), Starship Troopers. Groundhogs on Earth just … aren’t like us. The planet is full of people who don’t think interstellarly and would mostly never leave the planet.
On average, they’ll be much more conservative and selfish than people who have actually been off-planet. Why would someone who’s been off-planet or was born on a different planet want to go associate with people like that?
Basically, descendants of emigrants have a distorted view of the “Old Country”. It’s usually based on what their parents, grandparents or ancestors left in the distant past.
Many emigrants were escaping poverty or oppression, so their memory was of downtrodden peasants, riding donkeys and living in hovels. Their descendants are often stunned to find six-lane highways and hi-tech economies, and people who earn more than the average American.
No, Cora herself has never been a ‘normal human’, her ancestors originated from Dirt, a long time ago
She’s no Peter Quill
For a moment, I thought that the strange shading in Maxima’s face meant that she has been crying. I thought there were traces of tears (and that she has rubbed her eyes and front with her arm to dry them)
How unexpected, a female Woof. Nice.
Oooh! I missed that on the first pass! TY!
Maybe Max should either threaten them with a court martial,a severe reprimand or a month’s worth of KP duty…!?
Few things:
1) Why does ‘Zuzala’ sound familiar? (and which one are they? logical guess would be the one with the crown, don’t want to guess though)
B) Why is Maxi glaring at that woman?
III) Is it the one with the tentacles on their face calling Morph ‘Stretch Daddy’?
10) Blue ‘dino-lady’ on Morph’s right shoulder is cute
Logical guess for me would be that Zuzala is the one the arrow is pointing to.
Zuzala reminded me of a vuvuzela.
I’d say Zuzala is the one with the holographic crown floating over her head.
Another vote for holo-crown lady, the one in the middle. I think the arrow and text points to and translates the banner(s) they are all wearing.
Likelihood something similar has been used by others before just because of the sound.
Heck, looking at my own notes as it sounded familiar I have a country called “Zala” in one of my better series (Dragon Life). Which also gives us the Zala Grand River, Zalabar Lake, and the Zaru Zoo in Zala.
as for the glare: I was assuming she was glaring at the crowd egging on her subordinates. The woman however does weirdly look like a shorter palette swap version of Maxima.
also between the Cyclops and the orc (or) troll, I am starting to suspect some local mythos are starting to take advantage of the alien visitor commotion to go all natural in public.
I think it is the tentacle face one saying that yes.
and yes well done Saurians always have this nice balance of cute and sexy.
Wait, what was the name of that gargoyle Farnsworth created in “Futurama”?
Pazuzu, named for the Sumerian wind demon that the Exorcist movies turned into a bad guy for some reason.
Maybe they turned him into a bad guy because the is a demon.
There are a TON of demons from mythology and the later goetica and so on they could have used.
Pazuzu was a demon, because he wasn’t a god.
He was also the enemy of Lamashtu, the demon that murdered newborns.
While Pazuzu could cause bad things like locusts and dry winds; he was also invoked and placated to protect newborns.
Actually Pazuzu is a demon god I know it is complex, but being born a son of a god tasked with punishing humans well that tends to fit the job. He was also used as a protector. But when you mix in Christianity, demon and lesser gods become more demons and you get things like this. Many of the old gods end up pulling double duty somewhere like Lucifer I mean Apollo. No really funny thing Lucifer and Apollo are the same, just one of them ended up doing his brothers job.
yeah I knew I should have been more precise instead of just saying “demon” forgetting how ambiguous a term it is, might as well say “monster”, “dragon”, or “spirit” for how encompassing a term it is and the exact reaction to it is subject to one’s personal bias.
to be fair for a lot of cultures saying “god” is also disingenuous to their culture as in many western faiths the term “god” brings up this really specific image and idea of power and abilities (one reason I rolled my eyes so often watching Star Gate and the idea the Goa’uld tried to pass themselves off as all knowing because “gods” are all knowing) when like 99% of beings considered “gods” weren’t or even claimed to be all knowing.
its like the movie Moana and calling Maui a “demi-god”, people would say oh no he is a “god”, but neither is correct from the western perspective as the translation culturally would be something like (super, super, human delux special) or something. Like we say a god, but the Aesir, Olympians, Kemetic, Mesopotamian, Jade King’s Court, the Kami, North American nature spirits and various earthly spirits, ect…are not really all that much alike each other that aside from (venerated by humans) do they fit.
to the extent that yeah, when one religion takes over the territory of another a lot of these things stick in the culture and we end up with them being regarded either as evil spirits “demons”, or else something inbetween “fae”, we get the Vila, Zana, Laume, and so many others that can be traced back to something worshipped and modern superstitions are based on that old worship *like leaving offerings for the fae to placate them*.
popular culture doesn’t help though popularizing one named entity as something wholly unlike its self, such as what the Exorcist movies did with Pazuzu. Granted that goes in more than one direction like how the translation of Coroline in some eastern European countries refers to the other mother as a “Nocnitsa” even though she is nothing like a Nocnitsa, but locally there really isn’t anything to compare her to for a translation.
Or, they think of other demi-gods, like Hercules (also played by a Rock)
And, just like how not Supers are equal all gods are (were?) equal, so dismissing, basically, all of them because they are not ‘alike each other’ is very wrong
Same with Constantine, IIRC
My original script named her Azula, then I went downstairs to see the family watching Avatar, and I was like “Oh, right, that’s where I’ve heard that name before.”
It feels like we skipped a page.
Quick question David, if Space China has “Refreshing Hot Osmium” then what does Space Australia have?
i’m banking on fizzy flavored solar plasma. slightly pressurized, then chilled to a delightful -15K.
It has a Spacey’s with a delightful Raditz menu for the kids, space coke, and is endorsed by the Frieza Force.
Spacey’s. It’s good food… in space.
Space Australia has Crunchy Vegeta Mites
They are the authority on space knives.
Reapers.
Space Australia?
It has humans. (“Earth is Space Australia” is kind of a thing.)
Wasn’t Heatwave supposed to buff up when she used her powers?
No
Actually, “Yes”. Check her canonical entry in the Cast Page.
Yes, she ‘buffs up’, not ‘hulks out’
‘Buff ‘as in increased resistance to damage.
Right. I’m pretty sure if a normal human had a knife stuck in their toe, and it got hit by a bolt of lightning, they’d lose more than the toe. So that was pretty tough, even if it wasn’t Achilles level resistance.
when someone says “buff up” it is generally taken to mean an increase in muscle mass. Which she doesn’t do when using her bodies. A resistance buff is generally not described the same way and given the above comic would be an odd thing to point out. So context and general language use I assumed they meant an increase in muscle mass.
“powers” not “bodies”
autocorrect hates me sometimes and substitutes the weirdest things which make even less sense.
I’m pretty sure autocorrect despises us all…
The first frame of this update:All I can think of is “I cant wait for the next episode of Enhancer, Or Tamer…” More cool alien women…
I know. I’m working on the next Enhancer book and part of me it tempted to turn on the character hose, but the more sensible part of me wants to limit the number of girls so I can spend time and develop each one.
Why isn’t the day 8 hours longer?
I wonder what they would use as “contains natural and artificial flavoring” and/or stuff that “preserves freshness”, heck for that matter, what kinds of additives could even survive at that temperature?
As a girl with xenophilia, I have been loving all the aliens lately. Zuzula and the yellow girl next to her are sexy!
Point of order, Zuzala is actually the girl across Amorphous’s shoulder. I know the arrow is pointing to the “spider” lady, but all the sashes are the same, and I didn’t want the arrow covering up too much of the bride to be. :)
But thanks! I enjoy drawing them.
And, of course, the Bachelorette would have pride of place draped across Morph’s shoulders ;)
As a straight man, I wouldn’t mind seeing pinups of the guys. Male fantasy is a thing, too. Give some guys some love!
I’m curious just who the girl Max is GLARING DAGGERS AT is in the last panel.
I’ll just use this evidence of poor production methods as a counter to the few people who assumed that just because Sydney’s new specs were high tech that they ‘must’ also be invulnerable.
Get it straight, people! High tech does not equal unbreakable, or even high quality. Ask anyone who has dropped their iPhone if you doubt this, and don’t assume that things change just because the tech level changes. Things scale, and cost scales with materials. An iPhone with a drop-proof screen would drive the cost through the roof. The things already cost ~$1k or so, so imagine if they cost enough more to make them unbreakable?
Damn right! Just suss the cost of those “ruggedised” lappy/tablets! They just won’t break, even at -20°C or at 100°C… And water is not an issue. But you can’t afford them!
Ist that Saurial from Taylor Varga?
So I gotta ask. What’s up with Achille’s face? If he’s aggravatingly, perfectly invincible, why does his face look all kinds of fubared?
Artist style
DaveB is trying a more ‘realistic’ style (after numerous ‘critiques’), and, surprise not, people still complain
Besides, he is ‘perfectly invincible’, not ‘perfectly handsome’
What about this is supposed to be more realistic?
Achille’s face is dirty, from being in the ground
That’s… not dirt
The lighting is very harsh and at odd angles, because Brooke is still flaring offscreen?
I assume that they just asked for what kind of poses and gestures would be customary for a photo in this area.
The green girl is really cute.
Is it mean to admit that she reminds me of Maya Rudolph?
A little, because she looks more like the Saurian next to the froggette
So why do lizards and amphibians have mammary glands?
Ummm. Maybe they are not actually lizards, but I’ll go along with “amphibian”. I can safely assume they’re not of Earth, which makes them (from our POV) exo-species.
So, why not? it has been shown — in canon as well as everywhere else — that a warm-blood bipedal laterally symmetric grasping hand air-breathing form is optimal for technological development. It can also be shown that some form of nutrient storage in easy-to-access locations is optimal for post-partum child-rearing, think “grasping hands”…
The well-tested theory of mediocrity leads us inevitably to the happy conclusion that we will never be too different to any xeno-species we find — or who will find us… This (I hope) does not crush all hope we will find an actual Naga out there.
The blue one looks like Saurial, who is a fusion of ancient demon and human teenage girl and a shape changer. Which teenage girl would go without mammary glands just to be scientifically accurate?
under the comic blurb interaction*
It’s really awesome to see the female Woof on Achille’s arm! However… were we not led to believe that the females of that race were like… 9 feet tall?
That first panel honestly really warms my heart. It looks like they’re having a really fun bachelorette party. They look really happy to be there. Love Zuzala’s holo-tiara. They’re getting cozy with Achilles, and he looks just as happy to help them pose as they look to be posing. And how many people, even if they’re super-advanced aliens whose friends are all different species from herself, can say they’ve had a bachelorette party on a planet that only recently got publicly acknowledged by aliens in general, and had a photo taken with one of the resident “aliens” there? And a “super” alien to boot! Even if it’s not “I climbed Mt. Everest” level of bragging rights for them, it’s gotta be at least “I swam with dolphins” level. So that’s gonna be a cool photo to show everyone back home. Love this. Love everything about it.
Crikey Dave, you REALLY nailed it with the vote pic!
Me: “Yes. The answer is YES!”
Dabbler/Xuriel: “But I haven’t even asked you anything yet…I could ask for your soul, you know?”
Me: “It’s still worth it.”
;-)
Panel four: “Flamin’ Mork! I krump dis oomie wif my bestest smash but he stay unkrumped! Zoggin’ impressive dat is. Gotta be blessed by Gork or sumpin. Boys! Git yore shootas and choppas, we iz gonna have us some fun here!