Grrl Power #618 – Bridge building
In some ways, Maxima is doing Sydney a disservice by humoring her antics. Sydney’s going to be in for a big fucking shock if she ever gets seconded to a JSOC unit for an operation, and she tries to razz the JSOC Commander about his dating habits.
The poor discipline of Arc-SWAT in general also probably means Maxima winds up wearing the silly hat at the DoD X-Mas party and everyone razzes her about being a big ‘ol softie. As long as she gets results from her people, she doesn’t care.
One thing I think I’ve been a little negligent about with the comic is spending so much time with the female characters that any male potential romantic interests haven’t gotten enough screen time for us to really see why they’d even be in the running. Honestly, I think the male with the most development in the comic at this point is Deus. So this page started off as a longer bit with Hiro doing something properly heroic during this bridge kerfuffle, while Maxima looks on thinking “Alright, alright, definitely a contender. Gonna have to figure out how to get him promoted.” But I didn’t want to get sidetracked for the, I don’t know, 4 to 6 pages that would have taken to properly play out, so I just compressed it into this quick field flirt.
Honestly, not wanting to derail the story is what happens to all these asides I have planned for the guys, so the next story arc may straight up include a few guy’s day arcs or something.
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Apologies if this has been asked and answered, but what happened to the cast page? I would have asked in the forum but it seems to be dead, or at least on minimal life support. Did it get moved?
It got lost in a software update and may not be fixed for a while. But all the information is still at Wiki
Ah, I honestly had no idea there was a wiki! Thanks!
Looks like the wiki needs a couple of updates. Gwen, for example, is almost certainly a witch, but the cast page doesn’t say anything about that.
It is all still as originally created. So, yes, way way out of date. Most notably with the ranks.
If there is anyone with time to spare, and who fancies tinkering with the wiki, it would be great to look up the pages (very early on, maybe around about the throwing up on Maxima’s shoes scene) where DaveB discusses the ranks with informed readers, and comes to the conclusions about how they will all be retconed. Most notably changing Maxima from a full colonel to just a lieutenant colonel.
We should keep the cast list as is mind, given that is how it was published. But just add the corrected ranks, as information. This is important as Dave paid attention to adjusting the insignia after that date. So they consistently use the correct ones later. But because he never got the time to go back we still have Maxima pointing at her birdy insignia and saying “I am a colonel” to Sydney.
Hmm, would that still be technically correct? Is a lieutenant colonel still a colonel? Or what?
If specifically stating her rank Maxima should say, “I am a lieutenant colonel” as colonel is a full rank above her. However conversationally, others may address her, or refer to her, as “colonel”, for eases sake. Obviously though only in situations where that may not cause a confusion as to her actual rank.
So if discussing who has priority in an emergency, team members should refer to Maxima by her full rank. Just in case there is a colonel from another branch, who may wish to pull rank.
Depending on the circumstances (for instance if there is no super villain apparent) that other officer may indeed have the right do that.
Was actually specifically referring to that instance, not all instances in general (specially if there is a General around :P)
Yup. Even though Sydney is a civilian Maxima must not misrepresent herself.
Especially if it gets compounded by her talking to the press. Maxima would be honour bound to admit, if challenged, that she had claimed an incorrect rank. Probably not a hanging offence, but it would not look good.
Technically, I don’t think that Sydney is a civilian after having signed that contract. At least from what Arianna said to her when she was thinking on whether or not to sign.
Except, when Maxi said that, Sydney was still under the ecnalubma
*finishes reading dictionary*
Yup, just so.
The scene in question was just after Maxima attempted to unsuccessfully throw Tubey, and was having a hissy fit. Well before flying Sydney to Archon for the first time.
My own experience is basically everyone refers to Lt Colonels as “Colonel” but that may be more of a US Air force thing (they have to be reminded to clarify it in Depositions)
There is a lot of early episode weirdness left over, for example
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/268 clearly shes wearing a Gold Eagle, not Silver Also that is full Col rank insignia.
a more correct version of her rank insignia is here
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/2764
Clarifying, the first time I ran into this was a General referring to the officer in question in Depositions (inadvertently) as a “Col” not a Lt Col.
Further clarifying my other comment, Dave originally intended her to be a full Col, which was pushing it for her rank and Job Description at that time.
he also did not get why Military insignia have the unusual color Progression (Technicaly its Brass-Silver Silver Brass then the rest Silver. the only exception was Pershing’s 4 Gold star as General of the Armys and this
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_of_the_Armies#/media/File:U.S._Army_O-12_shoulderboard,_rotated_(1981%E2%80%932015).png
Proposed for Omar Bradley.
Well, that’s why they are referred to as “The Top Brass”
Pertinent to Maxima’s rank and a consistency issue, the author has provided a logical solution in #184 /archive #1178. Up to that comic her rank can be full colonel, but afterward (well, the big fight introduces some delay, so I can’t specify a particular comic) she can be bumped down to lieutenant colonel. There is a glitch in this notion, of course, since in #150 /archive #989 Maxima introduces herself as a lieutenant colonel. But if “lieutenant” was removed from that comic, and her shoulder insignia changed, not much else need be done until sometime after #184.
Officially the retcon is back to the beginning of the comic, with Maxima having always been a lieutenant colonel. It is just a matter of Dave being too busy creating the ongoing content to go back and alter it.
Is it me or does it feel like a couple pages are missing
Read the commentary. Dave had an idea for some other content, but it would have taken 4-6 pages to play out, so he compressed it down to a couple of lines.
On the bridge a various stuff has clearly happened, which could have been elaborated upon. But there is no real need as the key things have already been shown and we can infer the other parts easily enough.
Granted, because Dave does tend to show most scenes strictly sequentially it can be disconcerting for folks expecting him to carry on doing so. However the more he does skip unnecessary scenes, the more we will become used to that. After all he is just bringing his storytelling style more in line with film and TV narrative practices.
While I am perfectly fine with consensual adults having consensual sexual consensually, I really really don’t want this to turn into a superhero soap opera, though the gleaming gal could stand to get it on.
I agree. I hate soaps myself. Avoiding them like the plague, simply because I know it would be all to easy to get sucked in, if I did not. Being a soppy romantic. However it is not the kind of entertainment I want, so know it would not satisfy me.
The UK hospital drama, Casualty, was an incredibly interesting series, focusing on the medical side of things initially. Then at some point it shifted to concentrating on the interpersonal relationships, to the extent that the core story was badly impacted. And I rapidly went off it.
Later I found out that this was a deliberate policy decision. Because the BBC’s flagship soap, set in a Spanish holiday resort, had flopped. And they decided to turn Casualty into a soap, to replace it.
However Dave is only talking about one or two arcs exploring these matters. So, from my personal perspective, I would love this. It would allow my romantic side to get its fix. But would allow the comic to return to its normal balance afterwards. Just with us having a deeper understanding about the personal lives of the people involved.
Which is very much in keeping with the comic’s stated intent to focus on things other than just the combat and traditional super hero stuff.
One hopes, one hopes. Watching Maxima try to date would be pretty adorable. For all her hard nose attitude, she’s as much a geek as Sydney is in her own way.
Fact: Sciona, in creating the Mannekillers, demonstrated the ability to create what amounts to a supernatural high explosive.
Fact: Sciona, in USING them, both as we’ve seen and been told, demonstrated the willingness to use said high explosives to cause massive property damage and deaths.
Demonstrated by #475 and later: If one of those things blows up, the destruction is enough to collapse a tunnel. Damage to a bridge would also be tremendous, as indicated with the description of what happened to the Fairies that defended another part of the Veil.
Fact: As demonstrated in #479, the powers the Mannekillers had was not in them, but was confined to a small piece of sword.
(Also: Sciona has demonstrated the power to use her wings to break stone structures to bits)
Fact: Sciona *changed course* towards a bridge which she has two ways shown of destroying.
As a small piece of sword can be easily held on one’s person, it is thus that Sciona can easily have the power to destroy a bridge, changed course to said bridge, and had demonstrated a severe lack of concern for casualties.
As there is plenty of other places for Sciona to try and lose Maxima, there are only three plausible scenarios: Sciona blows up the bridge, Maxima blasts Sciona, or Maxima melee’s Sciona.
As Maxima has been rational in all other things, as Sciona was far closer to the bridge than to Maxima (and both were supersonic), it’s well within reason to conclude that Maxima *could not* get to Sciona in time and instead used a blast, calibrated to stun Sciona.
For the Maxima should have fixed the bridge argument: none of her powers allows more than a patch job, which she did while calling for her team, who DO have the power to set things right, to take care of that problem.
So, if Maxima, knowing all the facts above, (either she or her team saw it, and there were presumably debriefings) had NOT tried to stop Sciona, thus allowing Sciona to destroy the bridge despite Maxima’s ability to stop her, would the damages have been a lot worse than if she had not, and would Maxima have been liable there? Given, we can see a Mannekiller explosion is far greater than the power Maxima put into that blast.
Finally, during the first real fight ever, the restaurant ambush, the restaurant was called out as “a write-off” because things get broken. This also extended to directing attacks towards the ground, possibly damaging municipal water supplies. Thus, ARCHON and rules regarding such probably already account for similar damage to public/government property – meaning that, though things get broke, there are already systems in place for taking care of those damages. And she did set her team to take care of all OTHER problems (preventing harm to persons, company-owned trucks, and privately-owned cars).
The hypothetical of Maxima not doing anything and allowing Sciona to just go to the bridge is a cornerstone of this, and it is entirely based on demonstrated abilities. Public Necessity defense due to Sciona being as much of a threat/menace as she is, if ARCHON’s taking care of (unavoidable, due to how superpowers and superpowered fights happen) damages
*clarification re: bridge damage: the fairies were wiped out, and assuming similar size of their defense point to the twilight council meeting place, the radius would be more than enough to take out a sizeable portion of the bridge
They still don’t have any actual evidence that Sciona was behind the Mankiller Golems.
Further your reasoning for the Alari suspected of being Sciona’s actions, completely falls apart now that it’s known that Alari suspected of being Sciona can teleport.
With that knowledge the most likely scenario becomes that the Alari suspected of being Sciona wanted to land somewhere lit to verbally confront the being or beings following her.
They raided some of her bases, and the chain of events is painting a giant “most likely suspect” sign over Sciona. Actually, only suspect.
“Further your reasoning for the Alari suspected of being Sciona’s actions, completely falls apart now that it’s known that Alari suspected of being Sciona can teleport.”
I’m not 100% on what that means, but I’m GUESSING you’re asking why Sciona wouldn’t teleport away instead of fighting? We’ve seen it takes some time (though not much), but also don’t know how expensive said teleportations can be.
And it’s confirmed to be Sciona; see Deus’s testimony. And the visual certain persons got when the team Pixel and Sydney and Krona were on raided one of her bases.
For the verbal confrontation: possible, but not plausible. Note that the attack was demonstrably not powerful enough to kill Sciona. And that Sciona turned to the bridge, rather than landing in the … island? not 100% sure what that was. She flew over some land out over *more water* so no landing there.
*we also don’t know
re: teleport and how much it takes out of her. Only other teleporter we’ve seen can only teleport to other locations.
BAH, hit . and submit too fast. *other locations they’ve been to, and are very familiar with or can see. While Sciona isn’t bound by that last bit, we don’t know enough of her teleporting powers to know if that could happen. And when she did teleport, it mostly worked due to a timely distraction (re: simultaneous *melee* counterattack)
They raided her formerly known bases and the only one they found anything in had a Frankenstein monster and completely different kind of Golem none of which is evidence that she was responsible for the Mankiller Golem attack on the Council.
Doesn’t matter, all that matters is that it’s known she can disengage at any time under her own power in a way that nobody can follow.
Dues’s testimony on page 603 was that “she never formally introduced herself”. So no it wasn’t confirmed to be Sciona, Maxima just ignored Dues’s statement and assumed it was. On top of which Sydney has never seen the current Sciona, all she saw was a Frankenstein troll.
Further that attack was hot enough to flash melt reinforced structural steel, meaning it was a lethal attack that, had she not blocked it, would have been enough to vaporize her.
And it was late at night, the closest place that was lit was the bridge.
Incorrect. They found mannekillers in other bases, too. See the teams reporting in.
It’s still confirmed Sciona, despite Deus not saying her name – Harem also confirmed and they still had the data from the team Sydney was on – direct confrontation of Sciona (though relegated to data and not memories other than Sydney’s).
Sciona isn’t human. We the readers don’t know her resilience. We don’t know if it actually would have vaporized her, but it DEMONSTRABLY was 1) not enough to stop her, and 2) not nearly full power.
And it was still a close effort for fighting a teleporter.
Also, since Sciona can teleport BUT doing so takes a small bit of time, which is ALSO known, then chasing her immediately is possibly the best shot at capturing her.
Emphasis on ‘small’, we have no idea why she didn’t just *WINK* back to where she wanted to go, it’s possible she’s simply enjoying the ability to ‘wing-it’ after decades of ‘orking her leg muscles >.>
Oh, and just remembered: they are literally tracking her by her being supersonic *from a place where she sliced Cooter/Wyrmil into four.* As in, prime murder suspect on the run, there. So the “talk” option is very far-fetched.
Does it really matter? We all know Maxima isn’t going to be accused of either civil or criminal charges. At worst, General Faulk and/or Ariana is probably going to want her to explain what she was thinking.
Since no nasty results occured its going to be a relatively nice conversation at the after-action….especially since Ariana should not properly be there. After-actions are for a frank discussion between the quallified personel for spotlighting of errors/improvemnts of procedures etc. Since as far as I know Faulk is currently the only military person over Max he and the other members of the active team/teams should be the only ones there. Not that there wouldn’t be another meeting afterward for Ariana to scream at. Just Faulk would have his questions answered before that meeting. Now if the bridge had somehow collapsed….THEN you would have some pointed questions as it is…..Faulk will probably defer to the commander in the field (though he might point out she should NOT have left the bridge….its water under it at this point.)
Those are all circumstantial and speculations, do not get poor Pander started again!!
Don’t worry about Pander, he obviously love this topic. Let him have his fun.
She, and considering how much grief she had the previous two pages, she deserves a break
I stand corrected.
*nods*
And I feel guilty for my part in such.
Equally though it is fair for others to speak up about the issues they see. Everyone has their right to voice their opinion.
Thanks Guesticus :)
Also I’m sort of busy again with some pretrial discovery so I don’t have time for a third page of repeating the same thing over and over again :)
That being said I’ll mention this one thing quick in response to Aura:
“For the Maxima should have fixed the bridge argument: none of her powers allows more than a patch job, which she did while calling for her team, who DO have the power to set things right, to take care of that problem.”
With her speed she could have removed every civilian from the bridge within faster than the eye could see, or held the entire bridge up while everyone got off of the bridge with her zero-point TK-based strength (first choice is probably the better one for the civilians).
Okay, that’s all from me for a while! Work that pays money calls instead! :)
We have already seen her use her super strength to move vehicles, after the bank robbery. If she did that, she’d be risking breaking peoples’ necks or otherwise badly injuring them. Harem was roughed up a little by just a couple movements, and she’d have to move a lot faster to save everyone – and thus risk heavy whiplash at best in the people being saved. Her zero-point TK power only enhances the vehicle, and doesn’t nullify inertia of the inhabitants.
Ooh. Really interesting points. I don’t think anyone has raised those before! And, on first glance, they seem solid ones.*
You may be right. Dave does give very close thought to small details at time, so that could well be the way he envisages the power working too.
Grabbing falling victims, just before they splat on the pavement, fine. Pick up an (empty) oil tanker to throw it as a weapon, fine.
But if an airliner is falling rapidly towards the ground, Maxima would need to intercept it early enough to gradually pull out of the crash. Ensuring that she did not pull so many G’s that folks died (going unconscious no problem, turning to squishy jelly on the floor, bit more of a problem).
* Although it may well be that Maxima did the shaking on purpose, and stopped her power from interfering. Harem certainly thought so.
Plus, continuing to think it through, there is no reason why the structural reinforcement did not apply to everyone. Only Harem’s dignity was hurt, by falling over. Maxima’s power does not grant immunity to falling over. Just to taking damage from being manhandled.
Possibly. Although I took it to mean that Maxima’s zero-point TK would have protected people from since it is also protecting large objects from collapsing on its own mass and preventing gravity from working properly. Generally when something is messing with how gravity works, it also messes with how inertia works
I also don’t think that it ‘enhances’ the vehicle – it just extends around it to keep it together against gravity and gravity-related things (which I took to also mean inertia) – I was mainly comparing it to other established comic book variants, like Superboy’s TTK, Flash’s speed force, or Superman and Supergirl’s biomatrix, which does USUALLY prevent people from getting hurt when they move people around at fast speeds.
Although to be fair, Supergirl did once dislocate a man’s shoulders when she saved him from a collapsing building by grabbing his arms and flying him out of there, so you probably have an arguable point – or it could just be that comic book artists don’t always pay attention to what the standard rules are for the characters they’re writing about. Dunno.
It might protect them from the G-Forces, butt they might still get bumps and bruises from being knocked around (like Daphne did falling on Les and Morph’s faces :P)
Regarding Supergirl dislocating the guys’ shoulder: the protection might be in place once moving, butt not protect them while in the process of moving at high speeds
Pander, have quite enjoyed reading through the discussions of the probable legality and consequences of superhero actions in real life; having a lawyer active in the forums has actually added a lot of interesting points for me. Looking at the realistic outcomes as well as the fallout of superpowered action is exactly the sort of stuff that makes this comic interesting. Though of course the action itself is really fun.
…and apparently, superhero-level legal issues are rare and exciting enough to get a lawyer all fired up, so we understand if you get passionate about it. :)
Thanks. It’s actually mostly fun to discuss too.
One of the things I love about this comic is DaveB seems to get a lot of mileage from the tropeplay – especially with what happens when they come up against ‘real life.’ :) It makes it much easier for ‘suspension of disbelief’ when he puts so much effort into making things work within real life constraints like the law and marketing concerns :).
My only two speculations were that Maxima could not physically get there in time and that Sciona’s very recent history and change of course to the bridge indicated a probable grave threat that would be irresponsible to ignore. The rest are conclusions of what’s possible or not, not speculation..
Quick nit-pick: the restaurant was a “write-off” because it was already broken by short-straw’s entrance. The amount of damage already inflicted by that point would require extensive repairs, if not outright rebuilding it, and dealing more damage to it doesn’t really change anything.
A good point, but the rest of the chat there – and that the returned soon after to fix things up, and that their internal protocols say to shoot such that at worst municipal stuff gets wrecked – indicated that public structures/local infrastructure are considered acceptable damage in a fight with this kind of power being thrown around.
Yup. A key balance though being the risk to life issue. So the tactics they choose in an encounter should lessen the risk to property, for the reasons you stated, if it increases the chances that they do not die themselves (likewise as regards protecting the lives of others).
Here though there were people on the bridge. So Maxima needed to be mindful of their lives too. Which she did do, by virtue of firing at Sciona well before she closed to the bridge. The fact that Sciona had a power that could divert the attack to the bridge was unknown to her, (or anybody else) so does not affect the soundness of her judgement.
Irrespective of what crazy US legislation may say on the matter.
Well argued.
By the way, Kudos to Halo.
“30 seconds” is not a lot of time to navigate by unfamiliar flight to a location on a GPS map, get all of the non-flyers dropped somewhere close enough to the bridge to not be in immediate danger but not so far away they can’t help, and not simply panic at the sight of a collapsing bridge with civilians still on it.
Unlike Sydney, all the other members of the Repair Team are professionals (yes, that does include Dabbles :P) so little chance of them ‘panicking’
The point though was about Sydney not panicking though,* which is well made. If she stopped in midair, with the shield raised, faffing around trying to decide where to put down, then it makes little difference how calm the others are. Barring them being able to help her maintain her composure, and/or point out the best spot.
With or without help though, Sydney evidently did a superb job. So deserves another gold star on her utility belt!
* Why do we add a “k” to that conjugation? The base word is pronounced with a “k” too. So why have just the one with the extra letter, and not the other. English is weird sometimes.
‘c’ is basically a dead letter. In most cases it’s pretending to be an ‘s’ or a ‘k’ and thus shouldn’t be used there because that’s dumb. In the rest of them, it’s ‘ch’, which should just be how ‘c’ is pronounced in the first place, now that we’ve made it stop pretending to be other letters.
Good points.
Most of the non-flyers that have seen active duty so far aren’t people that would care about being dropped out of the air anyway. Achilles wouldn’t matter as long as you don’t drop him on a car or in the river, Amorphous probably the same (and would probably spidey on over to the bridge anyway), Harem is immune to falling, Dabbler has a (personal) featherfall spell, and Anvil would probably be better off if you dropped her so that she could store some energy to help with the bridge.
Astutely observed.
Excellent point. I had to go back and check who was in the bubble, looks like they would all be fine.
…though rapid unscheduled deployment at altitude isn’t a great way to start out an emergency response.
Heh, I loved the subtitler channelling Elon Musk, at one point.
Although Sydney could have done a more impressive job.
Do note what DaveB said below the comic though. There’s more people than are shown in there, so that might include someone who wouldn’t fare well being dropped, like Math (though he’d probably just ninja his way out of it or something, and likely wouldn’t be someone they’d decide to put on the Alpha team considering the powers and physique of their target)
Well, if Sydney did an oopsie, and dropped them in the water, it would explain why they are not visible in the current page.
;-)
Someone has read his Mark Twain…
Mark Twain had super squads being dropped without parachutes to rescue people on collapsing bridges?
Dang, if I had known that is what I was missing out on, I would have gotten into his work years ago!
… my comment was replying to the earlier gimmethegepgun post about ‘c’ being in a weird place. No idea why it ended up here instead.
Ahh. :-D
Sydney is showing a surprising lack of self-awareness in panel 3, with her posterior pointed toward Dabbler and yelling about “space goo”…
I marvel at the way Sydney manages to simultaneously be a prude and a bit of a perv. Xuriel meanwhile manages to be a perv while also being a perv. Pervert2 you might say
+1
‘Pervert squared’ you mean? : P
Yes, but the superscript tag didn’t work. :-(
I just use the HTML numbers from here:
https://www.ascii.cl/htmlcodes.htm
Now let’s see if it works for me
Yorp²
Yup!
Damn, it worked in Disqus!
Can we upgrade to a ‘edit’ function? Please!
I had exactly the same problem the other day. I decided that it stemmed from me not being zoomed in close enough so that the page filled the screen. I had failed to highlight the final “;”, which is part of the code.
Add that and you get: Yorp²
He’s the “Long arm of the law”
Super Hiro, tripod of the law.
Except Jan was talking about Morph :P
Oops!
:-D
Butt, your point about Hiro being the tripod of the law still stands (pun intended), going back to the ‘turning concrete to dust’ scene :wink:
Oh my god yes! Maxiro! I am on this ship ready to sail!
:)
Maxima deserves to find happiness. They would be good together, I am sure.
That is probably better than the other combination of Hiroxima. It may not read well in Japan.
I googled that, and see what you meant. Especially inappropriate, given Maxima’s over-the-top demonstration, to the press corps, at the artillery range.
The moment Maxima realized Sidney is basically a non-succubus (read less likely to commit sexual assault) version of Dabbler LoL.
I would say that Sidney have rather normal thoughts on this subject. It’s just that she, unlike us average pervs almost always say what’s on her mind that makes her sound like a weirdo.
Heh. It does remind me of the scene in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, where Buffy develops telepathy. The running gag being that guys were mostly thinking about sex or (for those that learnt about her new power) ways to avoid thinking about sex. The funniest scene though being where she hears the thoughts of her team mates. Where everybody has a different inner monologue to the things they say. Carefully weighing their words, to avoid giving offence, or just being discrete.
Whereas Cordelia had absolutely no difference. She had a complete honesty with zero hypocracy. Everything she thought was exactly what she said. Previously she had sounded just rude. After that it was clear that it came from a brutal honesty.
______________________________________________________________________
For info Cordelia and Willow are currently sitting on my lap, fast asleep.
I hasten to add I am talking pussies here, not the people from the Buffy documentaries. Likewise Feral Cat is there. Which is a real problem, as she is very territorial and is getting more and more aggressive towards her kittens, when they are on her claimed territory (my lap)!
Fortunately I have them protected by a duvet, which both placates her and protects them. I just have to make sure they do not approach her when we get up.
No, that was because “BtVS” Cordelia was a shallow idiot, she didn’t really ‘grow’ as a character until “Angel”
Oh I disagree. She did develop during the various Buffy series. In fact Joss Whedon specifically stated that it was because she had done so, and lost her antagonistic characteristics, that influenced her being chosen as one of the characters to go to Angel. And also required them to find someone else in the Buffy cast to replace that role. It being useful to have someone who would speak the truth, regardless of the consequences.
Most of the time that turned out to be Spike. Other times they had to have other characters pick up the slack, if they were in a tetchy mood.
Dogs have laps?
Yes. That we do. It can just be harder to spot.
Hmm, last panel, Hiro is actually looking at Maxi, what is he thinking? That he agrees with the perv-trolls behind them? Or he now sympathizes with what Maxi has to put up with? :D
“Boy she is hot.
We must be more discreet.
Wow, Max looks sexy, even when she is angry.
Must not say anything now which might provoke her.
She gets scary when real angry. Sexy mind, but scary.
I wonder if if I can get a promotion, so we can date?”
Nooooo! The comic is called Grrl Power. We want to see the girl dating arcs! Just like we get the odd bit of beefcake, to balance the more normal cheesecake, it is OK to restrict the guy prominence to the occasional scene. After all most entertainment, even today, tends to have male leads.
So there is no need to keep a strict gender balance. If things were generally equal, in society, sure. But not in a comic specifically focusing on the female side of the equation. That is what a lot of us came here for.
Besides which if it is heterosexual dating there will be guys involved on the other half of the dating, some of whom might be members of the team. So if exploring the known relationship, namely Mr Amorphous and Heatwave, I would far rather see the day from Heatwave’s point of view, than his.
Especially as it would allow us to see that she is not dumb, just slow to catch on. Which is distinctly different if she can unpick complex problems and social situations, given time.
I for one welcome all the side story antics, but I agree that the plot definitely needs to keep moving as well. There are several great webcomics I’ve given up on because in spite of great early storylines establishing the characters and working through acts I and II, there is no longer any discernible direction and no actual plot has happened in years. (Or ever, though in rare occasions it turns out that’s not always a bad thing.)
And yes, a couple days following Heatwave around (or most any secondary character really) would be a ton of fun. She’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but she is persistent and effective when she puts her mind to it.
And, from what we learnt surrounding the Deus scene, Heatwave was not overreacting in warning Harem off! It was not over-protective jealousy at work, but well-judged reasoning combined with justified wrath.
I am pretty sure that this branch of the military would be pretty relaxed when it came to codes of conduct. Even though they do enter theaters of combat regularly, the unit operates best when they play to their individual strengths AND work as a team. The CoC must realize they need them to be thinking much more freely than the average infantry soldier. Not to say they wouldn’t get into major trouble if they disobeyed a commanding officer, but chat and other behavior would be policed loosely at best.
Correct.
Plus we must remember that all Archon personnel are ‘on call’ 24 hours a day, and can get called upon regularly for policing matters, on one paw, but have the additional burden of also having deal with states of emergency anywhere in the country as well as being the elite unit which has to bear the brunt of any super war that might unfold.
So, with those time commitments and the heavy responsibilities that come with those, they have a far greater burden intruding into their personal life than any other unit in history. As such they need to be given more leeway too.
All good points and I bet the fraternization policy for that branch is very lax. That said Max is still the head of the team, that’s more than just out-ranking him. I’m not saying it’s insurmountable but it is a big extra hurdle.
Dabbles sure wants to mount both of them, on a table, at the same time :D
*nods*
Britain’s only captain of a naval warship lost her command for a relationship which compromised the command of her ship. Note though that relationships which do not do that are actually permissible, in the Royal Navy. So it depends on the rule books for a particular branch (and any policies standardised across all branches in a nation). Archon get to set their own, in the former regard.
I presume you’re referring to this story? ‘Alleged relationship’ etc etc, but pretty apparent that was the likely reason.
From the same news article:
This is a US military branch, but I imagine the rules are similar.
Sounds to me, that that ‘relationship’ was simply used as an excuse by the old farts to remove the only female captain of a warship, and basically ensure that will never happen again
As Sydney says, “I don’t military” (can’t find the comic link darn it) so I can’t comment on the accuracy of a military good ol’ boys club vs modern feminism vs Hidden Figures or whatever else from the inside.
However, there are multiple examples, going back decades, of women that have been accepted for and excelled in high-ranking military positions (including one of my personal heroes, a US Navy Admiral in the 60s). There are several sites I found dedicated to female firsts in significant military positions, most of them dating to WWII.
Granted women are not in equal numbers in military leadership, and gender certainly may have played a role in this event, but the assumption that this was purely a sexist exclusion and cover-up seems unfounded.
You are likely right.
However I would be willing to bet a bowl-full of Yorpie snax that many male officer’s affairs are hushed up, without any formal investigation or disciplinary action. There are rumours, amongst the ranks, which would point to that. Not stipulating male officers, in that article mind. However most naval officers are male, so the math corroborates my statement.
Although the article does point out that male officers have faced discipline, in such matters. So she is not unique.
We all have failings mind. And, as a soppy romantic, I realise that the heart cannot always be controlled. But it is a crying shame when a role model falls from grace.
Often times whether a high ranking officer’s romantic misadventures bite them in the ass depends on which way the political winds are blowing, especially when you get to flag rank (generals and admirals). If the officer in question is in favor of the political elite, all sorts of indescretions may be overlooked. But if that same officer falls out of favor, those same indescretions will be used as the reason to give them the boot.
how did hero get hurt
That is explained by his dialogue, in panel 1. Bearing in mind that this happened either whilst we were watching Maxima pursue Sciona (however long that might have taken)* or in the time that it took her to return.
* Clearly not an insignificant amount of time mind, given that the A-team are not super speeders, yet a lot has been done since Maxima left. We can take it that they got here within the 30 seconds allotted though (or that Maxima just said that to ensure that Sydney pushed herself to her limits). So they have worked fast and well.
Correction: Panel 2, not panel 1. I did not scroll up far enough, when checking.
*Someone puts Maxima in a silly hat*
*Someone discovers that the terrorists have a dirty nuke that will detonate in one second*
*Maxima promptly saves the day*
Maxima, much like air force…likely gets a lot of crud…until you have 500 terrorists in a building that is festooned with traps, and need to turn it into, as has been called…Allah’s Waiting Room. As the Air Force can just bring down the building.
If you put her in a sombrero, does she then become “Mexima?”
does dabblers space goo react to peoples emotions?
would it harden faster if someone felt sexy near it?
psychoreactive space goo?
Clearly Sydney needs to play ‘lifting me higher and higher’, on her [insert name of trendy new portable music playing device].
Dabbler has not flirted with anyone for a whole scene, so doubtless you are right on the second point. She was trying to avoid setting it before it was …
… oh and there it is rock solid!
*turns to look accusingly at Max and Hiro*
Hm, do you need specialty sexy high vis vests for this kind of work or is being sexy high vis enough?
Regular vest are good enough. We know that supers’ clothes get dirty way too fast already though, so some reflective kevlar ones wouldn’t be uncalled for.
People have lost arms playing tug of war, so I appreciate that you address the dangers of playing tug of war with tensioned bridge supports.
I had heard of serious injuries (almost always from an undersized rope snapping), but was going to call BS on losing an arm… but you’re totally right. Turns out several people have actually died. :(
Yep. In that case a major contributing factor was probably that they used nylon rope, which is plenty elastic. Elasticity is just one of those seemingly innocuous things that is actually trying to kill you at all times.
Other factor was… shear stupidity! Looping the rope (usually fairly thin rope) around your limbs is against the rules
That was a separate incident. I’m honestly flabbergasted the rope even had to break before that severed extremities.
Yea, the article stipulated that reporting which indicated that they had the rope wrapped around their arms were in error.
But there was a photograph of a funny tug-of-war incident with two nude female beach volleyball teams!.
Click-bait of the worst kind!! NO NUDE VOLLYBALL PLAYERS!!!!!!!!!!
Result!
There is an appropriate response to Sydney’s remark “Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball”. That would probably get the point across that is expressed by Max and Hiro’s faces in the last panel.
Ref.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gzDC-2ZO8I&t=8s
Unrelated: I just saw A Wrinkle in Time this week and Reece Witherspoon’s character in her flight form looked a lot like Dabbler without horns.
Don,t make this a Carter-O’Neill copy.
Split up into 2 squads, enough people for that. Promote Hiro to command of squad 2 as a Lt Col.
Then give Max and Hiro an unclaimed tropical island, some silk sheets and a no fly zone.
Why ban them from flying? That really restricts a fun option that they would otherwise have.
Oh… you mean no-fly for everyone else. Privacy. Right.
Carry on, as you were.
Not only that, but if they try aero-nookie, it would be dangerous for air traffick
Yep. The grit that Maxima uses to stop being so shiny would get rubbed off, in lots of places.
Glare would be dangerous for any pilots looking her way!
and it would protect against zoom lenses.
Honestly, I ship Maxima/offscreen-normal-guy-that-she-keeps-secret-because-no-gwen-stacy.
So, objectively, the list of kinks dabbler doesn’t have is probably shorter than the list of kinks she does have, right?
Perhaps, but having a kink in every direction is the same as having no kinks at all.
Not only that, but if they try aero-nookie, it would be dangerous for air traffick
Just check out Dabbler’s legs. Very kinky.
I’m pretty sure Halo and Dabbler are besties now, but I could be wrong. Their interactions clearly indicate they have a much more personal connection than with anyone else.
They certainly are very good friends. BFF though? Mmm.
Things that do draw them together:
• We recently learnt that Dabbler has only been with Archon for a few weeks. As evidenced by X being assigned as her handler. Whereas some team members have known each other for years (Peggy and Maxima, plus Achilles, Mr Amorphous and Heatwave).
• Both have settled in fast and established a rapport with the commander. Both are top tier supers who could beat their commander, under the right circumstances, likewise with most of their teammates. Which can serve to distance them from others.* Both are considered weird (for different reasons). These dynamics put them in similar social circumstances.
• Both are extremely open minded, so are receptive to their respective quirks and find each other interesting.
• Both are very clever (note Dabbler, somewhat tongues-in-cheek, proclaiming Sydney to be the units ‘true super genius’). Coupled with them both having a drive to learn, and both having mysterious stuff in their backgrounds, their curiosity helps bring them together.
Things which drive them apart:
• Dabbler being overly fixated on sexual matters clashing with Sydney being very shy and relatively inexperienced (despite being brash and confident when the focus is not on her, or impacting on her self image). This is a biggie for Sydney. But Dabbler sees it as more of a challenge (to get Sydney less repressed).
• Sydney is an odd mix of introvert and extrovert. She does not want to go out partying (unlike Dabbler), hunting sexual conquests (ditto), being in front of the press or in any situation where she might draw attention to her physique (diametrically opposed to Dabbler again). Her preferred evening is chilling out playing WoW.
Yet she can purposely draw everybody’s attention with her antics, at other times (challenging Math, placing odds on Varia’s dad being an Aztec god, and so on).
Either of these aspects could get in the way of deepening their friendship. Although so far they have bonded far more than not (such as in the bathroom at the steak house, on the roof of the club and chatting in the common room).
Personally I would root for Sydney to become deeper friends with Peggy. I think Sydney would benefit more from her stabilising influence. And she would not feel constantly outshone by, or having to compete with, Dabbler’s own antics and extroverted behaviour.
Not that I am suggesting that they would become best friends mind. Clearly Peggy and Max’s relationship would not be superseded by Sydney.
* Note Peggy’s indifference to Sydney’s boasting about her powers. Plus people will have relished Sydney being put in her place by Math. Fortunately the comic has not focused much on this, but we know that there will be some elements of jealousy at such powers. Likewise resentment that someone so oddball ended up with them. Plus a certain amount of wariness about her oddball behaviour.
Pretty much all of which can also be said about Dabbler too. Barring the fact that she can beat Math, if allowed to use magic.
We have though seen some elements of friction in the team. With Sydney having a fracas with Achilles in the canteen. Likewise when she got freaked out at Harem’s sexual teasing, and had a breakdown. Plus we routinely witness Dabbler antagonising Maxima, Sydney and others, even including General Faulk!
So even though they do wind each other up (Sydney hitting Dabbler with a chair and orbs, whilst Dabbler casting her spell that inappropriately affected Sydney’s intimate parts) the fact that they do not hold grudges against each other (is Dabbler in the list?) and readily move on, does let them get past their own differences. Their commonalities being stronger between them, than the difference from their other peers.
Honestly, dating wise, the general rule is 2 ranks up or down(UNLESS THE RELATIONSHIP PRECEDES THE RANKS, so if I dated someone as an enlisted and they became an officer, or if i rose through the ranks faster), so rank-wise these two would be fine. Where they run into trouble is where Max is his commanding officer. It brings in questions of favoritism and preferential treatment.
here’s a good article.
https://www.thebalancecareers.com/navy-fraternization-policies-3354650
…Get a room you two, really, Sydney? When your lighthook tentacle is wrapped around Dabbler’s leg??
*…casts slowfall spell on Dabbler as she’s flung down toward the water in Sydney’s comical overreaction*
I can see Hiro getting promoted to Lt. Colonel and probably being given command of one the secondary bases in New York or L.A. just before Max is given the full bird…