Grrl Power #89 – Badgers. Apparently terrifying.
Those of you in the anti-Arianna camp will probably enjoy this page as Sydney is picking on her a bit for no real reason. Unfortunately only got to address one of the orbs on this page and didn’t really touch much on the rules an limitations of the telepresence orb (or comm-ball as Sydney calls it.) It will be addressed more thoroughly in following pages though. In case it’s not clear, the comm-ball has to send out the smaller, inner orb, and the holo-Sydney projects from that point, so it’s a little like Rimmer from Red Drawf once they introduced the “light bee.”
The orbs are a little like any rule or power system introduced in a comic. You get the rules laid out pretty plainly up front, and then specific situations cause the main character to come up with very interesting use cases within those constraints. Death Note is a great example of this, although they kept introducing new rules througout the series, they explored a bunch of clever twists and exploits with each new rule.
The next page should wrap up what all the orbs can do though so it still averages out to more than one/page.
May’s vote incentive is up in case you didn’t notice. Go poke it.
And welcome to anyone visiting from Girls with Slingshots! Have a look around, feel free to rummage through our stuff. Anyone here who doesn’t read GWS probably should, and I’ll start you off with my guest strip, drawn while heavily referencing Danielle’s style, which I like to do to whatever degree I can when I get the chance to do them.
SuperheroThey're super, thanks for asking!
Meatspace ComicSeriously these are awesome. Check 'em out!
Not UpdatingNo longer updating or only updates sporadically, but definitely worth reading.
SeriouslySeriously you guys. If you like Grrl Power the check these out.
"Mature"Mature subject matter and occasionally something explicit but usually safe. Can't guarantee the ads are safe though.
Dongs Ahoy!Full frontal and backal. Lots of skin, sex on some or all pages, explicit or otherwise.
I just noticed something strange. On the front page (https://www.grrlpowercomic.com) the Who’s who is missing, but if I go to the last page in the archive (https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/494) it’s there.
Yeah that happens when there’s a blog post that doesn’t have tags in it. The who’s who on the front page shows the tags for the most recent post. I’ll fix it.
just came from gws and absorbed the archive. wonderful stuff. subscribed.
what are the choker logos made of? ink? magic? vinyl?
I was thinking they were purely for design, but people keep asking if they have transponders in them or anything, and I can’t settle on where the guys on the team would be wearing their insignias. Someone else very correctly pointed out that Max wouldn’t be cool with the women having it different from the men, so I’m starting to lean towards the chokers actually being tactical throat mics – albeit very expensive ones that don’t look like you have a pair of swimming goggles strapped to your throat with a belt. The guys’ might look a little more butch, but it solves several issues at once.
Probably the best available resolution. Tiny throat mike in front, tiny speakers on the sides, tiny IFF in the back, all powered by button batteries. Individual ID paintjobs. Woven in antenna wires. It makes at least as much sense as Dick Tracy’s two way wrist TVs.
I was wondering if that wrist device we see Sydney wearing on her left wrist is a communicator/tag/GPS just before we went back in time to see how she became part of a super hero team?
Or it could just be her watch.
Short range tactical sets are no good at any distance, and are probably linked to squad specific frequencies and scramblers. That’s why ARCSWAT people are issued cell phones. That wrist thing is big enough for GPS, phone, and several other functions the wearer isn’t allowed to discuss.
With a cyborg (Dabbler) on the team, the capabilities of the tactical set may have been drastically expanded. Also, the choker may be the tactical equivalent of a secured blue-tooth, feeding its signal to a higher performance transmitter elsewhere on the person.
Tranceiver on belt. Best if you use a small wire to conect between the two. They can make wires very tiny nowadays. Less chance ov background interfierence upseting the feed that way. KISS
Maybe something like a GDO?
Yes.
No probs with that. Guys would be more comfortable calling it a torque tho. Like what all the Erogenians wear in The Challenges of Zona.Old page, but shows both genders. https://www.soulgeek.com/comics/zona/2011/10/05/page-511/
*Hey Luke Cage what’s up with the tiara.
(Luke Cage): Its not a tiara its a headband.
*Yeeeaahhh…we had a vote, it’s a tiara.
HA! HA! HA!
Made me laugh just like that.
“Red Drawf”?
It occurs to me that Sydney might not have gotten all the orbs on that trip.
Are you trying to say she’s a few orbs shy of a set?
i just came from GWS and i did archive dive and all caought up and i have to say you comic has earned a place on my bookmarked tab in earnt i love the story so far please do not change Sydney at all thru the comic i lobe how she acts!!
gah typo demons!! i really need to feed them once in a while so they can stop, making me look like i am a 13 year old with a speech or typing impediment for typing.
Thanks a lot! Glad you enjoyed the GWS strip and of course this one.
I’m on the lookout for a plugin that lets commenters edit their posts for a short while after they post, but most of the ones I’ve found are massive suites of comment admin tool for which I have no use.
GWS?
What site is that? Which ever, Sydney’s got some more fans, and #2 on TWC, YEAH!
Scot the GWS is refereed to as Girls With slingshots,recently the artist of this strip did a guest strip and it blew some people away with his skills of drawing on GWS, so i came over to read since i loved how he drew everyone on the other strip and now is loving this comic.
Well…… If GWS is good enough to display DaveB’s stuff, I’ll have to check out GWS as an addition to my evening entertainment, thanks!
He did another one a few months back that was hilarious. Hell of a lot funnier than the regular artists stuff.
She is pretty good though, don’t get me wrong, but DaveB is just funnier.
Off topic, but love the GWS strip you did! It was hilarious!
Thanks! I think it will be a while until she asks for guest strips again, she got 108 of them, so I’m honored that mine got featured.
Ask some of the artist to do guest strips for you, and then post one a day, until you run out.
Be pretty cool to see what some of the other artists would do with your world.
Just say it’s not cannon.
That could also help you build up a buffer.
Thinking of ways to *abuse* the powers, for the hologram I can think of her hiding it inside another person in order to spy without being seen, or layering it over herself to make her movements harder to predict, (going off of her being able to stick her arm through Arianna’s head) and she can always pull a roadrunner and send the illusion through a fake door or something while it’s being chased.
BTW, depending on the max distance, I could totally see Sydney popping an illusion up to the space station or something just to screw with people.
From what we’ve seen so far, the layering wouldn’t give any benefit (at least in predictability): the image is copying her movements. Unless she can get it to do something else, all that would do is use a hand, really. (You might be able to pull the ‘I detect that’s an illusion, but it’s really not’ trick though.)
Out of the 22 webcomics that I read, this one is by far my favorite. Keep up the goog work!
For years Girl Genius has been my #1.
Till now….. none have compared to how I like the story and drawing.
I feel fortunate I saw the initial advert for GP and started when Page one, was all there was here… and page one was good enough to hook me.
How I desperately wish I could post M,W,F like Girl Genius. :P
So do we, but you have a life outside of this comic, so I think it’s a fair trade.
I plan to, thanks!
Hmm… She can’t touch, but she can talk… So she can’t physicly interact with things, except her vocal cords? :P
(Just saying to be a bit annoying, love this comic!)
That’s Sydneys greatest ability. To ANNOY you so much you loose all your cool.
Maybe the audio’s being relayed through the mini-sphere.
If that’s the case then Syd actually could “touch” things. Not with any part of her illusionary body but with the mini-sphere hidden inside it. What a tactical surprize that would make. Picture this: Syd sends her illusionary body off to face a badguy. He sees it pass through some objects so he clues in that it IS her illusionary body and doesn’t take any defensive actions when it charges him because he figures it will just pass harmlessly through him too – and it does, but as it does he gets hit by the mini-sphere.
This is a good point. Since the mini-sphere moves to where-ever she projects to, she could use it to touch something. Might take a lot of practice though, and it may have very little force.
But a touch-sensitive button, for example, like many elevator buttons, only requires an extremely gentile touch, or sometimes just something interrupting a flow of light across the surface of an inert “button.” I was at a hotel with buttons like that on the elevators, and it was kind of creepy… a couple millimeters BEFORE your finger touched the surface of the button, it would light up.
Which raises another interesting point: Since her projection is visible, it blocks and reflects light. Therefore it could be used to trip security sensors and create a distraction (only useful if she can project at some distance, of course.) Automatic doors would open for the image as well.
The sound doesn’t bother me. Just means that the mini-orb can vibrate like a speaker.
well that is something that could be left fielded, on security feed back you’d see the image of sydney, if there is a guard they could react. But the chance does exist it wouldn’t trip off a sensor.
Most places use one of two types of sensors for alarm systems, a heat sensor or a motion sensor. Now the heat sensor detects temperatures of a human body warmth, very hard to fool (Myth busters even tried cranking up the room temperature, but if the moment the body was in front of something that stayed cooler than 98.6 than it was set off (very hard to make any space uniform).
the other can be fooled, the motion sensor. it sends out sound waves and detects the play back. Funny thing is they arn’t designed to be alerted if there is no feed back *which is understandible if the sound waves travel far into a building or hit sound absorbing surfaces*, but are designed for irregular feed back, the kind that comes up from a large moving object in the sensor range like a person. However as stated if you absorb the soundwaves the sensor wont go off.
Myth busters was able to for a short distance fool it by moving really slow while holding up a large blanket (absorbs sound). (this sound absorbing is usually how I explain things like ghosts and inhumans can get away with being seen to move *large shadow* and not set off the sensor (if they look like shadows because they are absorbing light then they may also absorb sound waves, so they could do a jig in front of a sensor and never set if off).
Which brings us to the holo-Sydney, if it isn’t emitting a human heat signature (like is room temperature) it wouldn’t set off a heat sensor. We know it plays back sound and can relay it. But with out mass presence, are the sound waves only being absorbed by the small internal ball to play back to Sydney (if no sound waves bounce off the shell then it wont set off the sensor) even the sound penetrates and only hits the ball we are looking at something the size of a small bird minus the wing span, so might not set it off unless she moves around wildly, even then might not (most calibrate those sensors so a loose bird or large bug wont set them off). It won’t make foot steps as it has no human weight, so unless she talks through it chances are no amount of motion would set off the motion sensors.
Basically as far as common security is concerned the holo-sydney might as well have (Tech-stealth).
Good point raised – the range of the telepresence power.
Plus, what happens if this range is exceeded? Does the image simply switch off, or is it ‘tethered’ to a maximum distance (if Sydney moves or is moved beyond a certain distance, the image moves with her). The latter would seem to fit with what we’ve seen of the orbs, but ya never know.
Cant remember from the read-through if You already settled this question. Knowing that they are sufficiently advanced tech and from what Dabbler soon says about their glow… I suggest the telepresence is not wave emissions for light and sound, but a direct reality overlay in the observers mind. That would make any direct interactions (and weapons) through it impossible. Not sure if the Orb would mess with dumb sensors like cameras. Could even be one of upgrades to turn that on-off selectively.
Telepresence— NOT a power you want to give to a Telemarketer… paired with the ability to “charm” or “hypnotize” remotely via his TP form- it’s a recipe for mass chaos… Actually this might make for a perfect starter villain for Sydney to abuse into surrendering…
Given Syd’s geek pedigree I wonder if “Badgers!” is a reference to the 1980s independent comic superhero The Badger. Probably not but it would be nice. He was cool.
Larry? Is that you?
I just wanted her to be saying something surprising. In the original draft, she was yelling “Frankenberries” but I couldn’t fit it on the reaper’s sign and still make it legible.
And of course “BOO!” has been done to death.
Actually, badgers are pretty scary; you don’t mess with badgers, trust me. Especially the Honey Badger, an African beast which has been seen eating enormously venomous snakes… head first. While they were still alive. After stealing their meal from them, literally out of their jaws. And then it SURVIVED the bites. Just slept off the poison… I mean seriously, that is one tough little moffo. It’s kind of awesome. And terrifying.
Actually, I wouldn’t say that Arianna’s being targed for no reason. She’s been the most vocally assertive and abrasive of the people interviewing Sydney, and was the one who said that the argument could be made that Sydney could be legally compelled to reveal the contents of the tube. The nearly flat way she commented that the interviewing body was “both appreciative of, and surprised by, your restraint” when Sydney declined to demonstrate the PPO may have seemed too snarky, since it strongly implied that Arianna thought Sydney didn’t have the common sense not to go blasting around in a building without cause.
What if one of the unknown orbs is the tether? From what we’ve seen, the tub of orbs containing ALL of the is what’s tethered to Sydney. However, if only one is tethered, being in the tube would make it seem like they all are.
And I like the idea that the other unknow orb is a stealth or “mundane” orb. With no real way to test it, it would explain why it’s unknown.
Dude did you know you’re on Wikipedia’s Shocker (hand gesture) page??
I give https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shocker_%28hand_gesture%29 link to prove it!
Well it can be updated by anybody, so there are a lot of people out there with free time on their hands.
Some of them happen to read this webcomic.
Cool to be mentioned, isn’t it?
I tried to find this comic mentioned in Wikipedia, couldn’t.
Maby someone who likes to update Wikipedia and reads this comic could make a page? Hint Hint….
Late reply here, but badgers? Totally terrifying. Seriously, they’re all kinds of savage. You do NOT want to get a badger stuck in your garage or shed.
And yet, they look freakin’ adorable. In pictures, when you’re at no risk of being de-ankled.
Still surprised she disn’t say ‘Wolverines!’ (seeing how he is going to be Mr James Scoville one day, and wolverines are badgers on steroids and having a seriously bad hair day)
I was curious, so I did a Google search. Nope, no Rule 34 of Sydney. I guess she doesn’t exist.
My guess on that one being Light was actually surprisingly close, though in a broad, complicated way…
Only just noticed (can’t remember if anyone else commented on it previously) Angel Ari in panel 7 (intially thought it was was part of the illusion)
Where it all began…
SPOILERS!
And now, after all this time, she CAN teleport.
To DaveB, ” Badgers. Apparently terrifying.” you must not be a furry! :)
that last panel. lol.