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Grrl Power

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Grrl Power (Webcomic)
Back row: Sydney, Maxima, Anvil.
In the front: Harem, Dabbler.
"A comic about superheroines. Well there are guys too but mostly it's about the girls. Doing the things that super powered girls do. Fighting crime, saving the world, dating, dieting, shopping, etc. There'll be explosions, cheesecake, beefcake, heroes and villains, angels and demons, cyborgs, ninjas, probably pirates."
— The about page

Grrl Power is a webcomic by Dave Barrack about a superheroine who works in a comic shop.

Sydney Scoville Jr. lives in a world where superhumans have finally revealed themselves to the public. There was no public accident or major incident; one day all the evidence added up and it was impossible to deny it any longer. People aren't quite used to the idea of superheroes yet, but they're getting there, and the fact that all superhumans are ridiculously photogenic likely won't hurt.

At least, most supers are ridiculously photogenic. In a world where the average superhero is over six foot, has zero percent body fat, and the ladies have D-cup chests, Sydney is short, flat-chested, and angry about it. She's also sarcastic, caustic, a huge nerd, and is bonded to seven floating orbs that give her superpowers. After foiling a bank robbery (or being nearby when the strongest super in the world foils a bank robbery), Sydney is invited to reveal her powers and join ARCHON, the new American super-response team.

Sydney quickly becomes a unique asset to the team, her encyclopedic knowledge of superhero tropes making her surprisingly adept at navigating this new world she finds herself in. While working with a very quirky group that includes a demonic succubus who wishes Sydney would stop being such a prude, a single-minded harem of beautiful woman (yes, singular), and the gold-skinned superheroine who must manage them all without going insane from their hijinks, Sydney discovers ways to balance her new life, her old life, and her hobbies, all while saving the world.

Currently updates Mondays and Thursdays.

Not to be confused with the Supergirl storyline Girl Power.

Grrl Power provides examples of:

    open/close all folders 

    Tropes A – E 
  • Absence of Evidence:
    • Inverted with Heatwave, and also combined with Comically Missing the Point and Delayed Reaction. After a bank robbery, Harem pulled a prank on Maxima that made everyone think she played kissy face with Heatwave's boyfriend Mr. Amorphous. Later Heatwave mentions that since Maxima's lips are naturally red, she doesn't wear lipstick so she couldn't have left kiss marks on anybody.
      Harem: SERIOUSLY?
      Heatwave: Yeah, I think there's something else going on here.
    • The thing that keyed everyone in that Sydney is a super is the carrying tube for her orbs, which is "A little too empty, if that makes any sense."
      Zeph: Does that tell you anything?
      Gwen: A distinct lack of anything is usually an indication of something?
  • Accent Interest: During the press conference making ARCHON's existence public, a reporter who's feeling the effects of Dabbler's presence describes her accent as lovely and asks where she's from. She vaguely replies that she's from lots of different places, some he can't even imagine.
  • Accidental Truth: To get an annoying customer to stop lusting after Max, Sydney (unbeknownst to anyone in ARCHON, much less Maxima or Hiro themselves) tells him that Hiro represents Maxima's minimum physical standard, dating-wise. This eventually leads to a public rumor developing that the two supers are in a Secret Relationship. They're not — by military regulations, Maxima would not be allowed to date a subordinate officer under her direct command — but later events show that there's some attraction. In fact, even without the constant heavy-handed matchmaking attempts by Anvil, Max and Hiro have so many examples of flirting while alone, and more than just the basic friend/comrade level of care and concern for one another, that it's almost sad that they can't get together.note  Maxima pretty much outright says that she's 100% onboard with hooking up if they are ever the same rank.
  • Actually Pretty Funny:
  • A-Cup Angst:
  • Agony of the Feet:
  • The Air Not There:
    • An aversion — Sydney's shield does not permit air to permeate, causing her to become dizzy after a few minutes of continuous use as the carbon dioxide she exhales begins to replace oxygen. Sound (which involves the transfer of vibrations, rather than of physical air molecules) seems to get through just fine.
    • Later when dealing (poorly) with PTSD resulting from being trapped for 2 months alone on a planet forced to constantly fight with literal building sized Lovecraftian horrors, Sydney literally duct tapes the shield and environment orbs to each of her hands so that she can attempt to sleep with the shield active to feel "safe", and with the environment ball active to not suffocate in her shielded sleep.
  • Alien Abduction: Due to centuries of aliens abducting small numbers of pre-industrial humans, there are a few million humans living among the wider galactic community. Cora mentions that most of the abductions were probably voluntary, though of course she can't be sure.
    Cora: How many people in just this crowd would like to live and work on my ship for a year, then return to Earth to write the best-selling book of all time?
    [most hands go up]
    Cora: That's what I thought.
  • Alien Blood: While not actually an alien (so far as we know), Maxima apparently bleeds blue.
  • Alien Non-Interference Clause:
    • Played With. Casual interplanetary travel is restricted solely to planets that have developed FTL, but though measures are taken to keep pre-FTL and immature civilizations unaware of the greater intergalactic community, there is no law against visiting less advanced planets — proper disguises are recommended, but the Veil existing on Earth means such disguises are absolutely essential. What the universe at large is really worried about is preventing technological paradigm shifts: "Don't give a caveman a space gun." Oddly enough, Sydney's orbs are one such Outside-Context Problem — enough so that when she's stranded off-world, not only can she not use the Portal Network to get back, she actually is in danger of being snapped up like she originally feared.
    • Cora mentions that one of Earth's biggest defenses is that they produce a lot of entertainment. Conquering them would give any advanced race basically nothing, and would disrupt their entertainment industry, so no one will really bother.
    • Cora also mentions the impracticality of high-tech cultures invading less technologically advanced planets for resources.
  • All There in the Manual: The cast page has a great deal more information about the Arc-SWAT team members, their powers, and their roles in the team than has yet been revealed in the comic.
  • Always Chaotic Evil: The Fel race. As soon as they're sighted, Cora says that they're "a collective corrupted by Stygian energy" that forcibly recruit everyone they can and kill anyone they can't, and that they cannot get their hands on the artifact she has in her ship's cargo hold. As Dabbler describes it, they are irredeemable slavering fanatics.
  • Ambiguously Human:
    • There are a few hints that Vehemence may not be human, especially after we find out that the only other users of vehemic energy that Dabbler knows about are demonic.
    • Vance claims to be a Hive Mind of intelligent, superpowered spiders in a Mobile-Suit Human "skin", though he may just be a Troll and hazing Sydney.
  • Amusing Injuries:
    • Usually averted. Most injuries in the comic, even relatively minor ones, are treated as serious and potentially devastating. Heatwave gets taken out of the fight when a dagger cuts into her foot (cutting off one of her toes in the process) and nearly passes out from the pain and blood loss, while Jiggawatt continues fighting after being deafened by a sonic attack that ruptures her eardrums, and nearly kills everyone when she can't hear an order to stand down. The super-powered doctor on their staff who treated them afterward is able to heal most of Jiggawatt's injury, but it's expected she will still have some permanent upper-range hearing loss, and Heatwave's toe couldn't be saved because it had already started to necrotize before it could be reattached.
    • The only time it's remotely played straight is with Achilles, who is shown to be beyond Nigh-Invulnerability to the point that his hair can't be cut and he's even The Ageless. He even once ate a vial of Super Ebola with no ill effects.
    • Even when injuries are played for laughs, they are still handled in a mostly realistic manner. One example is when Cora's crewmates comedically put their heads next to Sydney when looking at the Aetherium Causeway capabilities of the navigation/transport orb, Sydney's ear is punctured by the horns on Altus' temples. This could have easily just been a single panel throw away joke. However, on the next page you can actually see blood on the lapel of her shirt, and the page after (though primarily serving to set up her relationship with Frix more) is entirely her visiting the med bay to have the wound dealt with.
  • Angels, Devils and Squid: Demons (and possibly angels) are more-or-less humanoid beings with comprehensible if dangerous motivations who may just be Sufficiently Advanced Aliens. But then, our heroes encounter a distinctly squid-like being who doesn't seem interested in communication and may be connected to a recent planetary-scale genocide. Worryingly, it also acts like it knows something about Halo's enigmatic items of power.
  • Animesque: There's some visible manga influence here.
  • Anvil on Head: Done with Anvil the person rather than an actual anvil, by Sydney.
    • Sydney even makes the Roadrunner sound and does the tongue flip as a direct reference to the joke.
    • The scene is later referenced by Harem after a similar situation occurs, prompting her to want to call the maneuver the Acme Special. The comic even shows Harem having a flashback to finally "get the joke" of Sydney doing the Roadrunner reference when it was originally done.
  • Apologetic Attacker: Harem apologizes to Sydney, now possessed by Lapha, before doing "something that everyone who's ever met you has wanted to do at one time or another." Then two of Harem's doubles teleport in to restrain Sydney, and the first Harem tazes her.
  • Arbitrary Skepticism: Averted when Maxima asks Sydney why she isn't surprised that not only do aliens exist but Dabbler is one. Sydney replies that Maxima is a giant golden superheroine.
  • An Arm and a Leg:
    • When Maxima is attempting to overload Vehemence's "Vehemic energy"-based resilience, she goes for a high-powered limb shot.
    • The Super Husk loses a limb at one point, but it turns out that it can regenerate.
    • Sciona has a leg shot off by Dabbler in their initial fight.
  • Armor-Piercing Question: Maxima chews out Cora for gibbing a bad guy unnecessarily, but Cora insists that since Sydney's life was in danger, she had no choice. Maxima seems to relent, then asks if Cora "squeegeed enough of him up into a ziplock bag for us to question". Cora gets halfway through explaining that even her technology can't do that before realizing that this was exactly Maxima's point.
  • Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking:
    • The Secret Entrance sign here is meant to discourage anybody who finds it by accident.
      Sign: WARNING / CERTAIN DEATH / RABID BEES / CAT DANDER / NO WIFI
    • Deus has an impressive list of accomplishments. He made a fortune during the financial crash, owns a country which he's lifted out of poverty, has plans to give away $500 million in charity (just to see what happens), and his hair is... just astonishing.
      Deus: See?
      St. Croix: Um, yes it's quite lustrous.
    • The sign next to Sydney where she's signing autographs at her new store warns against touching the balls in her halo thusly:
      Sign: DO NOT TOUCH THE ORBS! Seriously, I have no idea what might happen, up to and including immolation, disintegration, impotence, sterility, or a sudden desire to binge watch Jersey Shore.
  • Art Evolution: Compare Joel's first appearance to his second one the next day (actually five years later). Similarly, Brad, the obnoxious customer, in his first appearance versus his appearance the next day (also nearly five years later).
  • Artistic License – Gun Safety:
    • Averted; gun-using ARCHON members are given extensive training in gun use and safety, and until they prove that they understand the safety rules and can strip, clean and reassemble their weapons, they aren't allowed to handle ammunition. Maxima's regulations are a bit more relaxed (which is lampshaded in the script), but that's mainly because she can catch a bullet she accidentally fires before it hits anyone. She is, in any case, a serving regular with combat experience who presumably already has full training and plenty of experience.
    • Played with by Peggy, who (in her capacity as Range Master) allows Sydney to attempt to fire a BFG minigun (with bayonets!) knowing that Sydney isn't even able to lift it, much less fire it.
    • Sydney hilariously inverts this on one page. She's running through a gun course and takes the time to switch on the safety and holster it between every target. The end result is a very frustrated Peggy, and Sydney taking more than ten minutes to run through a course that she needs to clear in less than four minutes. (Sydney isn't told about the time limit until after the first run-through. Peggy wanted to see if she could complete it at all, which isn't guaranteed with Sydney.)
  • Artistic License – Military: ARCHON has an interesting command structure, as lampshaded by the author.
    • A large portion of ARCHON's roster (Maxima, Hiro, Peggy, Anvil, the vast majority of new recruits, eventually Sydney, etc.) are enlisted military personnel. However, they also employ a wide assortment of non-commissioned civilian specialists (Dabbler, Arianna, Leon, Pixel, etc.) for combat/field work and general logistics.
    • ARCHON also has no issues adding captured former enemies to its combat/field roster and support staff (Jabberwokky, Detla, Vehemence eventually, etc.).
  • Aside Glance: Played with during Max's dinner with Deus. As he's trying to calm down Lorlara, Max looks from him to her in consecutive panels. However, in said panels the view is on Max's face, and said change of looks means she's now also looking at the reader, with her look of barely suppressed amusement working both in and out of universe.
  • At Arm's Length: Dabbler keeps Sydney at bay with a hand on her face after stealing her glasses and fooling around with them. Besides Sydney being short, Dabbler is advantaged by having four arms.
  • Atomic F-Bomb: Uttered by Sydney when she becomes stranded on Sciona's homeworld. She even goes through a $10,000 exhibition with the swear jar at her welcome back party due to the massive amount of cursing during her months spent stranded on the above-mentioned world fighting Lovecraftian horrors.
  • Author Appeal:
    • The author admits that "the majority of this comic is just me transcribing my daydreams."
    • The same goes for the Unsound Effect, as he's very fond of "nonomatopoeia".
    • And a third time when discussing No Man Wants an Amazon — he's quite fond of the build, and admits to regularly posting "Insane Lady-Abs" on his Twitter account.
  • Awesome McCoolname: Sydney is quite upset to find out that Aurelius Shrapnel is only a financial adviser without any superpowers.
  • Back from the Dead:
    • When Krona's Save Scumming brings Sydney back after she gets shanked in the stomach, she's a bit shaken for a few seconds before gleefully invoking this, though Krona clarifies that it might not have been the case in the next page.
    • Wyrmil uses an artifact to perform a Fusion Dance with Cooter, reviving the exploded redneck, to survive Sciona's betrayal.
    • Pretty much a constant theme with Sciona since her spirit can simply possess a new body when her current one is destroyed.
  • Background Magic Field: One gets established as a physical law of the universe that fuels all magic. Deus elaborates it in a physics model of overlapping quantum fields that for magic is specifically called Thaumion.
  • Barbie Doll Anatomy: Used for the visual of Sydney describing to Maxima how it felt to fire the PPO.
  • The Baroness: The comic's female villains tend to be this due to the author finding it difficult to imagine a supervillainess who isn't sexually aggressive.
  • Battle Strip:
    • Vehemence throws off his jacket and shirt, exposing his ripped physique, just as he joins the superhero battle royale. Sydney immediately lampshades this.
      Sydney: What are you, an old Italian man?
    • Strip #1124 – "Battle (un)dress" sees new villain Super Massive discard his furred cape and top in one move as he's ready to fight Maxima. Maxima is absolutely flabbergasted to realize he was wearing a breakaway business suit just for such an occasion, and immediately categorizes him as a big douchebag.
    • Another character with breakaway clothing is Ray Cosmos, the sleazy alien tour guide. However, in his case it's more justified, in that him preparing for a fight involves Hulking Out, so his shirt wouldn't survive anyway.
  • Beat Panel: Many.
  • Beauty Is Never Tarnished:
    • Despite being seemingly burned all over by Heatwave's attacks, Glowbug's skin merely looks blotchy. However, Heatwave's attack may have been based on heat exhaustion rather than outright combustion.
    • Averted after Maxima digs herself out of being buried from a bomb blast.
  • Belligerent Sexual Tension: Between Maxima and Deus. At the point that Sydney says they should just get a room. Exaggerated with this page, given the Alt Text.
    Alt Text: This is the supervillain equivalent of pulling a superheroine's pigtails.
  • Bigger Is Better in Bed:
  • Bilingual Dialogue: There is an example of a trilingual conversation here (involving one African and two extraterrestrial languages). Apparently, this alliance has involved a lot of efficient linguistic exchange in its short existence.
  • Bland-Name Product: When Sydney is exhausted after running laps, her training officer gives her a bottle of "Joule Juice". (Not PowerAde, nope, totally different.)
  • Blasé Boast: Sydney manages to pull this off when talking to Maxima, who's the strongest (known) Super in the world. At one point, Maxima, Sydney, and several other ARCHON members end up traveling through a portal to an alien planet. When a Kaiju appears, Maxima decides that travelling back through the portal is the best option; however, it closes before Sydney can make it through, leaving just her behind. Sydney eventually manages to make it back to Earth. While setting up a swear jar, Sydney provides some commentary while tossing money in. One particular segment:
    Sydney: Then when the nightmare shadow Kaiju thing attacked me...
    Maxima: You engaged it?
    Sydney: When I did my victory dance on its flaming corpse, called it a bunch of names.
    Maxima: You killed it?! How?
  • Blatant Lies: Strip poker is banned at ARC-SWAT's HQ, because Max knows Dabbler, so when Max is away and Sydney walks in on a game, everyone assures her that it's not strip poker, they're doing the laundry. Of course, being the Cloudcuckoolander, Sydney initially buys this but then challenges the story because this isn't a laundry room.
  • Blazing Inferno Hellfire Sauce:
    • Sydney's love of spicy foods turns her breath into something resembling tear gas. It turns out that her love of spicy food is partially because of her vegetarianism.
    • Exaggerated at Ms. B's diner, one of Sydney's favorites. Featuring such brands as "Masochism" (I'll make you cry), "Ring of Fire" (invokedGuaranteed to make you feel like the prettiest boy in prison), and "Volcano Blood" (You literally might die. Consult your physician).
    • And now added to the list is... The Unmaker. It's rated at roughly 3 million Scoville, twice that of the Carolina Reaper (the hottest pepper known to man as of 2015), and 1 million higher than law enforcement-grade pepper spray. Before you're allowed to eat it, you have to sign a legal waiver. The bowl has warning stripes on it, indicating it is hazardous to approach, and no-one will handle The Unmaker or the finished product without metal tongs. It's kept inside a specially made box that is, itself, locked in a box lined with asbestos. Said larger box contains Hydrogen Bitters, Old Panther, and Cobra Fang Juice. And the cook has to wear a hazmat suit in order to work with it while treating it as a living, wrathful being. Even Sydney admits that it's really, really hot... before asking for some "pure capsaicin" to spice it up. It does end up hurting her though, when a spiced noodle flicks up into her eye.
    • And when on an alien planet, Sydney partakes of Grakz, an ultra-spicy delicacy that has others gathered around to watch a human eat it. When she later dismisses Cora's surprise by remarking how it wasn't that spicy, Cora reveals that it's not going down that's the problem.
      Cora: The big deal is it's ten times as hot on the way out. Anyway, here's your quarters. There's a private bathroom. Try and get some rest. I suspect you'll be needing both in six to eight hours.
      [Sydney's stomach gurgles ominously]
      Sydney: I'm scared.
    • The following page reveals that a visual side effect of the... exit is one's backside radiating light, with additional 'embers' of light filling the environment.
  • Blood Magic:
    • The Mage Killer mannequins are powered by a piece of a blood-drinking sword. When the shards absorb blood, they return to the lead one and enhance it with extra parts from the fallen ones. There could be up to twenty more.
    • Sciona is actually unusual in how she uses her talents; most use it for Vampiric Draining to heal themselves and restore their reserves.
  • Blowing a Raspberry: Halo sticks her tongue out at Harem after the latter says that the prospect she'd want to be an officer is "a horrifying thought". During a press conference. Sydney forgot they were there.
  • Body Surf: Sciona can apparently do this as after her death on the Alari homeworld, her spirit takes over the recently killed body of another woman. While this may just be due to her abilities as a blood magician, she had a large container full of Alari souls stashed away to be reborn/reincarnated, and two of her former lieutenants were similarly resurrected in the bodies of the men who killed the woman whose body she now inhabits. It isn't really clear whether this is an ability only she possesses (thanks to being a powerful blood sorceress/necromancer), or something that other Alari can do naturally or voluntarily when they die. She's also done it literal decades before the events of the comic since the first time she appears, we see her in a patchwork form consisting of the top of her own original head (from the top of her mouth up) stitched to the very male body of an unknown orc-like being (from the lower jaw down).
  • Boobs-and-Butt Pose: This page with Pixel's were-jaguar form comes complete with "Dabbler Approved T&A Pose".
  • Bookends: The comic's first book starts and ends with a discussion about lasers being blocked by transparent shields.
  • Boring, but Practical:
    • Deus's method of bypassing a security system that only allows living things through, but kills them in the process, is to use a potted plant with a long trunk. This is in comparison to Sciona, who sacrifices a minion to do so.
      Deus: It's funny how even large groups can become so paradigm locked on a solution that they fail to consider simple workarounds.
    • Concretia can remotely animate bodies for herself out of concrete. It is later revealed that she can animate bodies out of a wide variety of substances, such as marble or quartz, but softer substances lead to less durable bodies, and harder substances are more difficult to animate. Concrete is near the "sweet spot", and you can find it pretty much anywhere.
    • Grappling is noted as being this. Hiro and Vehemence grappling gets so boring that Dabbler gets bored watching them grapple shirtless for a few minutes.
    • The Author notes in The Rant under one strip that a good maintenance employee is worth twenty guards. If the doors don't lock and the cameras don't work, the guards may as well be patrolling a shack. The strip in question shows that an evil organization still has completely normal maintenance personnel when the first person to stumble across the heroes is a handyman.
  • Boxed Crook:
    • The official stance of the government is that a superpowered vigilante is still a vigilante, so ARCHON has been tasked to track them all down and give them the option of joining ARCHON or facing charges for vigilantism. That said, it's the vigilantism that's the crime, not being superhuman. Using superpowers to aid in a career doing something legal is legal, and people who do so are not required to join ARCHON.
    • This eventually happens to Jazza Ng/Jabberwokky. The Rant on one of her appearances says she's essentially under house arrest at ARCHON until she's finished training, and 90% of her at-least-five-digit paycheck is being garnished to pay bills associated with her former crimes — mostly medical bills and a few cop cars.
    • Vehemence is also given work release privileges to spar with the ARCHON crew and recruits for training purposes and to sustain his requirement for vehement/violent energies.
  • Brain Bleach: Almost a running gag for Sydney.
    • After Vehemence's lack of Magic Pants results in him flashing the team after growing huge, Sydney wishes that one of her orbs would allow her to un-see things.
    • Invoked by name when Sydney first sees Cooter in the Vault.
      Sydney: Oh God! Naked gore-covered hillbilly! I need mind bleach!
      Crimson: I'd say there's no such thing, but someone already invented twelve shots of tequila.
    • After Cora ignores Maxima's advice regarding using non-lethal ammo and reduces the leader of the people who kidnapped Sydney to chunky body salsa, Sydney, now thoroughly covered in said salsa, reaches out for the syringe containing a memory-erasing drug said bad guy planned to use on her, despite the possibility of it reacting badly with her ADHD and turning her into a vegetable, so she can wipe her mind of the whole scene. Good thing she can't reach it. Still, the experience causes her to puke until her ribs hurt.
  • Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs: Also an Alliterative List, when Sydney is low on sleep: "Deficit? Debt, debficit?"
  • Breaking the Fourth Wall: Sydney tries to do this, but looks in the wrong direction.
  • Brick Joke:
  • Bridge Bunnies: Gender-inverted. Cora, Dabbler's alien friend, is the female captain of a ship staffed with sexy male aliens.
  • Brown Note: One of the sightseeing aliens says, in a garbled way, that looking at its true form will cause the beholder to throw up, which another alien confirms. This gets a practical demonstration when that alien reveals its form to eat Lapha.
  • Buffy Speak: While trying to describe the entities that could have created the source of supers, Deus gets distracted mentally chasing rabbits, gives up, and resorts to such a description.
    Deus It's impossible to say without confronting the architects of this phenomenon, and they are as elusive as... a very elusive thing.
  • Call-Back: Sydney shows that she can combine this with Genre Savvy in one "Super ADHD Brain" activation, bringing a bunch of different elements she'd learned in one day together to formulate an effective strategy.
  • Can't Un-Hear It: invoked"One explanation later", on a green, tiki-styled background. The author defies you to read that in your head without using a pseudo-Cousteau voice.
  • Caps Lock, Num Lock, Missiles Lock: Deus, trying to open the hidden weapons cache in his office, accidentally presses the button to drop the meeting table into a pit. Musing that he should probably label his buttons, he ends up activating an erotic art display and a collection of BDSM toys before finding the button he's looking for. The News Post implies that the art, at least, may not have been as accidental as Deus is acting.
  • Captain Obvious: Sydney's wristband gives her a lot of helpful information.
    WARNING YOU ARE BEING PUNCHED
  • Car Fu: Deconstructed here, as are other tropes. If you can lift it, it's safe to guess that you can hit harder.
  • Casanova Wannabe: Ray Cosmos, an alien sleazeball so skeevy that Dabbler and Cora both completely cover up when he starts checking them out. That said, both of them end up begrudgingly getting it on with him anyway. The implication being they did so simultaneously.
  • Catching Some Z's: From #529 – She is not getting her security deposit back: The first panel has Halo sleeping, with conjoined Z-s rising up.
  • Celebrity Cameo: After her stint in outer space, during an autograph session the Mighty Halo gets to meet Neil deGrasse Tyson.
  • Censor Box: Dabbler's apron is screen-printed "____ THE COOK", where the blank is a box of digitized noise. In the commentary, Dave B. notes that Dabbler did that on purpose to let people's minds wander.
  • Censored for Comedy: Aside from Sydney's Cluster Bleep-Bomb on-air, the intern reporter, Suzie Wen, introduces herself as "Suzie News", prompting the manager to ask if they could bleep that.
    News Tech: And make people think she said "Suzie Shitwhiskers"? Sure.
  • Chainmail Bikini: Dabbler dislikes how covering the sentient suit of platemail is, so she uses her illusion powers to make it look like a revealing bikini with no loss of protective value... much to said armor's displeasure.
    Dabbler: Plate mail is so not a succubi's style. Don't worry, you're still all there. I just wrapped my glamor around you. Normally it only affects me, but you're soooo snug.
    Icon: Don't make this weird.
  • Chain of Corrections: Stalwart and Mr. Amorphous have some confusion over Labyrinth and Pan's Labyrinth.
  • Character Level: Everyone knew Sydney would learn to improve her power. They probably didn't think it would be through a literal leveling system, however. Anvil even lampshades it. Bonus points for its similarities to the Sphere Grid.
  • Chekhov's Gun:
    • A two-fer during the super-brawl, where Sydney takes information gained in two conversations at the restaurant and applies them to the fight, ending it shortly afterward.
    • Deus mentioned an item Wyrmil was looking for in the vault. He uses it to fuse with Coot, saving both their lives.
  • Chirping Crickets: Sydney tries (and fails) to invoke one as a Look Behind You during the press conference, but enforces it later.
  • Classified Information: ARCHON inevitably has its share of secrets and security concerns, and the subject is sometimes Played for Laughs, as when Harem (presumably jokingly) notes that questions of which restaurant to use for a team dinner are "all shadowy at that level".
  • Cleavage Window: After Maxima suffers some Clothing Damage, she has to borrow Harem's jacket... which cannot fully zip up on her, resulting in this.
  • *Click* Hello: Lampshaded; the energy weapons brandished by Cora, Frix and Slyvyrnus have no reason to make any sound, but when pointed at Garamm all three still go "CHAK".
    Caption: ... is the noise they would make if waving a well-made gun around made noise.
  • Clothing Damage: Occurs on several occasions.
    • Achilles is Nigh-Invulnerable minus the nigh, but his powers have no effect on his clothes.
    • When the Super Husk explodes, Hiro is rendered naked and Maxima has what remains of her clothes in such tatters she might as well be.
    • Maxima tends to be the primary victim of this trope in the comic.
  • Color Failure: When Varia (the super whose power varies depending on whom she's in contact with) accidentally touches Scarlett (a vampire) and turns into a demonic-looking form, Olivia (a normal) becomes entirely white in shock, with hair going straight up, eyes widened and round as well as jaw hanging. Then she orders six rounds of alcoholic shots.
  • Combat Pragmatist: Basically the sign of a dangerously smart character in this comic.
    • Maxima and Peggy show off how a mortal sniper and a high-level super can work together to defeat a powerful enemy.
    • Other examples come from fighters such as Vehemence.
    • Sydney is no slouch either, as demonstrated when she tricks a villain by pretending to be blind without her glasses, and follows up with a Groin Attack with her orbs.
    • During a staged fight against Vehemence, several members of the team fail to take him down through raw strength or technical moves. Maxima takes him down with what's essentially a super-powered Pressure Point strike.
  • Comical Coffee Cup: Blink and you'll miss it, but Sciona has a "World's Greatest Blood Mage" cup in her lair. Probably leans into Overly Narrow Superlative too.
  • Comically Missing the Point: Deus invokes this trope deliberately.
  • Comic-Book Fantasy Casting: Instead of using a generic-looking male face for the senator, the artist based him on Michael Peña.
  • Confusion Fu: According to Maxima, this is legitimately the best way to defeat someone with Super-Speed, as they can't counter what they can't predict.
  • Conservation of Ninjutsu: Implicitly invoked by Vehemence, and then lampshaded (in slightly distorted form, as "Inverse Ninja") by Sydney.
    Vehemence: Heed your Genre Savvy protégé, Colonel, the main event is indeed about to start.
  • Contemplative Boss: Deus, who loves his villain tropes, naturally indulges. Probably often, too, given that even a recent hire calls it his "staring imperiously out of the window" time. Of course, Lorlara comes from a Deadly Decadent Court, so she's not mocking him; she genuinely thinks any leader should allot some "staring imperiously out of the window" time.
  • Continuity Nod:
    • During her interview with Suzie Wen, Sydney says "So I says to Mabel, I says..." before being cut off by Maxima. Nearly 700 strips later, Maxima cuts off Dabbler while she's in the middle of saying the same phrase at a press conference.
    • In Grrl Power #74, Maxima flies Sydney to ARCHON. Sydney enjoys the trip so much she says "Let's go again!" and tries to jump into Maxima's arms; Maxima declines to catch her, so she falls to the ground, landing on a rock. In Grrl Power #940, Sydney gets a similar ride from the top of a building, this time with Anvil, with the same result.
      Sydney: I think I landed on that same rock.
  • Covered in Kisses: Harem uses this against Maxima as payback for unintended effects resulting from Maxima lifting an ambulance with Harem inside. As far as the public was concerned, Maxima was alone with two bank robbers who were strapped in gurneys. Harem's presence was clandestine to help obtain and wipe a video recording.
  • Covert Distress Code: The hero team is organized enough to arrange these.
  • Cringe Comedy: Tends to crop up whenever Sydney's involved. But her barging in on a meeting to tell off Maxima for interfering with her day-job takes the cake.
    President Barack Obama: New comic day is the most important day of the week for any comic store.
    Sydney: You're darned tootin' it... [processing voice] ... [finally turns around]
  • Crossover: The characters from the webcomic appear in a crossover story in the "Team-Ups and Crossovers" novel of the Wearing the Cape series. It's lampshaded of course, especially since the Wearing the Cape characters are fictional there and Astra looks just like the actor portraying her character.
  • Cross-Popping Veins: Maxima sports a set when her attempts to keep Sydney benched until she can undergo training get immediately undercut.
  • Crystal Weapon: Dabbler uses a sword made of "Auracite. Crystallized Aether taken from an Aetheon throne," which is very good at letting her channel magic during fights.
  • Curb-Stomp Battle: The Fel Collective's incursion. They probably believed a backwater planet like Earth would have no defense... except when they attack Cora's ship, it is parked right next to superhero central. The ground troops don't last long against them, especially once Dabbler finds out how to disable their shields. Then Maxima pulls the big gun on the capital ship. (And Halo isn't even there; if she had, it could very well have been shorter.)
  • Cuteness Proximity:
  • Cut Lex Luthor a Check:
    • Dave B. goes into a detailed rant about this trope in Strip #368, which mentions a geokinetic who used his powers to isolate gold out from the planet's mantle, selling off limited amounts to maintain his comfortable lifestyle without disrupting the economy.
      He could try to threaten cities on fault lines and ransom them for millions with his geokinesis, but he's not living in a Silver Age comic book, so why would he? It is something that bothers me about a lot of supervillains. So many of them have powers, or their whole shtick is predicated on a gadget they made, that with the tiniest application of intelligence, could make them millionaires in the private sector. The Trapster made incredibly strong yet easily sprayable adhesive. The Green Goblin made something the size of an opened pizza box that not only can fly, it can carry the weight of at least two humans plus equipment, and based on some of the fights he's had with Spider-Man, it's not exactly short range either. Yes, the usual excuse is that most bad guys are a little bit crazy, but then consider this. The first time Spidey beats the Goblin, there's this flying thing just sitting there. It's not like the crazy bad guy filed a patent for it. Okay, maybe the first version before he went crazy, but Goblin's been around for a while, and he’s probably upgraded the flyer, and post-crazy, he's probably not keeping up with the patent process. Somebody would take that thing apart, file their own patents, and boom. Delivery drones, extreme sports gliders, hoverboards, military hovering sniper platforms, whatever. Someone would do something constructive with it. That's why I'm careful not to throw a lot of gadgeteers into the world, because it would cause an irreversible tech spiral, and the comic world would diverge dramatically from our own.
    • One man has the ability to refill any liquid, including his own blood, which he mainly uses to get the attention of vampire ladies. Sydney lampshades this by bringing up how oil companies would pay him a lot for that power, but he apparently can't fill that kind of volume, and she points out that there's probably some rare liquid someone would pay him well for, but he cares more about the vampire ladies than money.
  • Cutting the Knot: Deus uses bamboo to knock artifacts out of a field that only allows living matter to pass through, but kills what does.
  • D-Cup Distress: A minor case, but Maxima dislikes her bust size for reasons both personal (she's a feminist who doesn't like being objectified) and practical (it interferes when she draws or holsters her pistol).
    Maxima: Stupid boobs.
  • Deadly Dodging:
  • Death Is Cheap: Parodied to hell and back when Sydney accidentally triggers a "checkpoint".
    Sydney: The death of Sydney Scoville! That's my own misleading cover shot! Dead and back again in the same issue!
  • Deconstructor Fleet: The comic has hit quite a few tropes and mainstays of superhero comics; as Sydney herself put it:
    Sydney: I'm starting to feel comic books lack realism.
    • The idea of a mutant gene causing not only powers but Heroic Build and/or Most Common Superpower. Though it is lampshaded that there are other possibilities still around like alien interference or human guinea pigs for science or magic.
    • Maxima and Sydney discuss Hero Insurance and how ARCSWAT doesn't have it. No hero has it, so each hero has to work every day to prevent his or her powers from causing millions (if not billions) of dollars in structural damage, medical bills from civilian casualties, and other forms of collateral damage. It's further discussed in #202, where Maxima admits that if a super-fight starts somewhere like in a steakhouse, they will at the very least write off the room it started in as acceptable damage, since it's a super-fight and things will get broken. Minimizing damage is a must, but avoiding it altogether is an impossibility.
    • The traditional superhero costumes are banned from the ground up at ARCHON. Thus far the team wears military clothes with personalized chokers, due to practical and traditional concerns (the latter due to ARCHON being a branch of the U.S. military).
    • While it's not only a comic trope, Blind Without 'Em also gets deconstructed, as Sydney notes that a person who needs glasses does not instantly become unable to see just because the glasses are knocked off. Especially when the target is less than four feet away.
    • While not an exact trope, many comics have superheroes goofing around or horse-playing with their powers in public spaces. Peggy makes it clear that members of ARCSWAT cannot do this in uniform while in public, just like anyone else in the military. They are heavily discouraged from doing anything of the sort out of uniform too, because they are famous celebrities and any incident caused by them will inevitably cause issues for ARCHON.
    • Forensic science means masked vigilantes have a very hard time staying anonymous since they can't risk leaving a hair or any other potential samples. The Marble Maiden is one of the few exceptions, since she transforms into a petrakinetic golem and doesn't leave DNA behind. However, since she catalogs her own exploits on Instagram, it's pretty easy to start closing a net around her.
    • Math being a Lovable Sex Maniac gets him in trouble because it distracts him in a fight. Seeing Jabberwokky's rack froze him up so much that she takes him out easily. Max calls him on it during the full debriefing.
    • There's no such thing as a "power inhibitor", so more creative methods must be undertaken to jail criminals. Vehemence must be kept in isolation but also from acting violently himself, so he is kept high as balls and given unlimited video games to occupy him. Opal, the dangerous portal maker, is kept in a pressurized cell where making a portal will cause explosive decompression that will kill her. There is also no easily escapable super prisons at play due to the aforementioned methods, but designing said prison cells to be escape proof takes up time and resources.
    • Given that the big fight with Vehemence was essentially just a brawl with superpowers, the non-ringleaders are immediately released from ARCHON custody unless they have outstanding warrants, with some put on probation, pending the trial. Vehemence's "violence aura" power is also complicating the prosecution process immensely, since they can argue that they were forced by a superpower to attack law enforcement.
    • Dabbler and other succubi are incredibly attractive, lustful, have all sorts of powers based around sex, and are overall just sex on legs. Unlike most works that have succubi as Cute Monster Girls, this comic points out how improbable such a race naturally evolving into its present state is and reveals that all succubi are the result of thousands of years of trying to build perfect sex slaves from the ground up by wizards, only for them being weaponized by their masters giving an opening to take their independence.
    • The Elaborate Underground Base of one group of villains is noted to actually be poorly guarded in The Rant because the large amounts of guards, cameras, and physical fortifications required to make it properly secure would draw attention to it. The base accordingly relies more on its inconspicuous location to protect itself, and swiftly falls to a coordinated super assault.
    • Hellish Pupils gets a deconstruction when Sydney's eyes change back to normal after Lapha leaves her body. Many works tend to overlook the fact that it would be very painful for eyes to undergo radical physical changes. It is also shown to have altered her eyeglass prescription.
      Sydney: That really hurt. I have all the headaches. Oh my god, ow. There's no way that didn't mess up my eyeglass prescription, right?
      Dabbler: I'll bring aspirin!
  • Defeat by Modesty:
  • Delayed Reaction: After the portal to the Alari world closes, leaving Sydney stranded, Maxima is so deathly worried for the recruit that it's only after a rant at Dabbler (and a Beat Panel) that she realizes a little detail... that a good chunk of the mountain where Sciona's lair was hidden just got entirely blown up.
  • Description Cut: Math is convinced that the women are having sexy-times in the shower. He's right about the shampoo fight, but so, so wrong elsewise.
    Harem: Son of a! I just farted and the shower wind blew it straight up my nose! God, it smells like a ferret's butt hole threw up a Brussel sprout!
  • Destructive Savior: Maxima points out to Sydney that the artwork of most superhero comics has the heroes completely ignoring the possibility of collateral damage.
  • Didn't Think This Through:
    • Glowbug tries to cool off from Heatwave's attack with a stream of water, only to realize that the completely white outfit she's wearing turns see-through when wet. She blames Heatwave for it and shoots lightning at her... while still standing in water. She lampshades this immediately afterward.
    • Sciona's Evil Is Petty attitude leads her to storm off in a huff and forget something in the Vault, and then leads her to start a fight with Vale.
    • Hench Wench portals herself and Maxima underwater so she can escape Maxima's grasp, but then she floods her apartment because she jumped home directly, which she admits was something that she really shouldn't have done in hindsight.
  • Differently Powered Individual: Usually called "Supers" here.
  • Disapproving Look: Sydney gives one to Detla upon hearing her suggestion for Ren's superhero name ("He Who Punch His Foes"). Detla admits that it doesn't sound good in English.
  • Disaster Dominoes: Setup: One character that has one mind spread between five bodies. Anything that happens to one, the rest will feel. Pitch: A super-strong teammate gives one an atomic wedgie. Homerun: This causes the other four bodies, wherever they are, to jerk around and stumble, each one accidentally taking another Amusing Injury from the previous one's reflex.
    Maxima: Wow, that was way more effective than I'd planned.
  • Distracted by the Sexy:
  • Distracting Disambiguation: Happens very shortly, because Maxima is too professional to get easily distracted (unlike Sydney), especially when it Takes Ten to Hold Vehemence.
    Sydney: Riddle for you, how do you beat a guy who's got all the yang locked up? Oh right, your throat is still crushed. OK, I'll answer for you.
    Turns out you've got the same weakness as every guy! A fabulous pair of yings!
    Dabbler: Booya!
    Sydney: OK, cool it Jiggles, you don't have to flaunt them all the time.
    Maxima: Yins.
    Sydney: What?
    Maxima: It's yin yang, not ying yang.
    Sydney: Are you sure?
    Maxima: Sydney, tell me you have a plan or else I'm ashing his brain.
    Sydney: Oh, right.
  • Doctor's Orders: The EMT tries to argue with Maxima — though it's about another patient.
  • Does Not Know Her Own Strength: Maxima sometimes forgets things have weight. The text at the bottom of the comic also mentions that she "forgets things can be hot, sharp or fast" as well.
  • Don't Sneak Up on Me Like That!: Sydney reacts badly to the resident teleporter. Later on, she's gently encouraged to respond to surprises by putting her shield up rather than by socking people in the face. Later reacts badly in a more humorous manner.
  • Dope Slap:
  • Doppelmerger: Harem has the ability to split herself into up to five duplicates. By merging together, she increases her strength and durability to superhuman levels, but she dislikes doing this because her brain is set to process sensory input from multiple sources so she feels like she's half-blind if she doesn't have at least two of her active at once.
  • Double Standard: Rape, Divine on Mortal:
    • Zig-zagged when Parfait loses control of her lust aura and jumps Sydney. Sydney manages to fight Parfait off and tell her that succubus or not, no means no. However, this is more of a matter of Sydney being able to fight off the effect better than Parfait. Luckily Maxima and Dabbler came in before things could continue.
    • It turns out that Parfait's aura was so strong that it spread to all of ARCHON. While Maxima thought this was going to be a HR disaster since everyone was either by themselves or with someone they liked, she was surprised that no one was upset about what happened. It turns out that Dabbler is using a much, much more dialed down version to ensure that the punishment Parfait gets will be milder with no one being angry... and no, Maxima doesn't know.
  • Double Standard Rape: Female on Male: Deconstructed after Parfait's lust aura spreads through ARCHON. While Double Standard: Rape, Divine on Mortal is played straight, unfortunately Heatwave was away at the time, so Mr. Amorphous ends up sleeping with Jiggawatt. This causes him to ask for the lust aura to be used on her when she came back. He then nervously explains to a furious Maxima that he cheated on his girlfriend and experiencing the aura is the only way she would be able to understand why. Even then, Maxima only agrees to let it happen if Dabbler makes an unbreakable vow that she would go through a month of abstinence if she uses anything remotely approaching mind control to convince Heatwave.
  • Dramatic Gun Cock: After Maxima's initial Freudian Threat, she cocks her firearm at Brüt's banana-hammock.
  • Duck Season, Rabbit Season: Lampshaded by the author after Maxima cajoles Sydney into revealing what's in the tube.
  • Dude, Not Funny!: Sydney makes a Planet of the Apes reference while watching Sciona react to the apparent destruction of her homeworld. Maxima invokes this trope, and even Sydney concedes the point.
  • Dungeon-Based Economy: Dungeon cores produce a "low-pressure" mana field, or, something, that raises a planet's general mana level but summons or produces monsters in the immediate area. Said monsters do have alchemically useful parts though, so ARCHON starts making plans to seed a dungeon for Healing Potion ingredients, and Maxima has to be talked out of seeding a high-level dungeon someplace where she might not be able to contain it.
  • Dyson Sphere: The Fracture appears to be one built around a neutron star, which it uses to power a massive array of stargates.
  • Early-Bird Cameo: Ren and Vance are first seen during the "Hot beefcake injection", but aren't properly introduced until just over 200 strips later.
  • Ear Worm: After Sydney activates her "Super ADHD Brain", she comments that Batman singing "I'm the Bat-Man! Ski bi di bi di do bap do..." is totally stuck in her head now.
  • Eating the Eye Candy: Beefcake and cheesecake alike abound in this comic, and more than a few people enjoy the feast. That said, the men have to be careful with their ogling, as doing it wrong could bring the wrath of an angry golden-skinned feminist down upon their heads. The only one who isn't shy is Math.
  • Eldritch Abomination:
  • Embarrassing Nickname:
    • Justified by Sydney when For Whom the Death Tolls gets mad about people making fun of his sobriquet.
      Sydney: We have a PR department and you don't, so if we want to call you the Periwinkle Butt Sniffer then that's how the public will know you.
    • Also justified by Maxima when she finally confronts Super Massive, using the same "we have the PR team" logic Sydney previously used. Shortly thereafter, she dials it up by changing his name from "Gravity Goombah" to "Suck Hole" when he reveals his breakaway suit.
  • Emotion Bomb: Vehemence's aggression aura can range from low-powered manipulation to making everyone angry enough to lose reason and attack even their own teammates.
  • Energy Absorption:
    • Anvil's power allows her to absorb kinetic energy from attacks, before releasing it all at once.
    • Heatwave can absorb heat in addition to emitting it, but doesn't like the feeling it gives her.
  • Entertainingly Wrong: During his fight with Maxima, Vehemence concludes that electricity must be her weak spot after pinning her, since the constant shocks he's sending seem to be weakening her. The truth is a bit more complicated: Maxima's power is to "maximize" some of her attributes (Flight, Super-Strength, Hand Blast, etc.) at the cost of weakening other powers, and by constantly electrocuting the heroine he's forcing her to put everything in shielding, leaving her with not enough strength to break the hold. Of course, Maxima's exact powers are a well-kept military secret, so it's not surprising people would get it wrong. It does get a call-back in a different fight; Sciona starts using electric attacks in an attempt to stop Maxima from chasing her, and is confused when it doesn't seem to work. (One difference in this fight is both are flying and avoiding grapples for most of it.)
  • Epic Battle Boredom:
  • Equal-Opportunity Fanservice: Whatever grants humans superpowers also gives them a Heroic Build, so there's plenty of big buff men and stacked women in the comic. Made blatant in a couple strips that show the women's changing room at ARCHON followed by the ladies ogling multiple shirtless men in the lobby.
  • Even Evil Has Standards:
    • Vehemence enjoys fighting (and starting fights), especially since he's "powered" by aggression, getting stronger and presumably getting a 'high' the more he participates in a battle (or when one happens around him). However, while starting a fan riot at a Brazilian soccer game would be fine, a war wouldn't: people die; not only is that considered a bad thing, they wouldn't be available for later fights, depriving himself of a future source of power.
    • Deus made plans to take over a country as The Man Behind the Man to have a base of operations for an as-yet unknown future plan. Picking one out of the way, where most countries wouldn't immediately rush to its defense, and improving their living standards to make happy productive workers can be explained as Pragmatic Villainy. However, one unambiguously evil action was taken because of his standards: having the king assassinated. As he pointed out, it would have happened eventually, even if Deus' offer was accepted- the king, and the government in general, were too wasteful and greedy. "A palace is not public infrastructure."
  • Every Car Is a Pinto: Lampshaded, Justified, and thus somewhat Parodied in this strip and the attached sketch. Shawn is a former Navy SEAL, now employed as an armorer by Arc-SWAT. Thus:
    Harem: I don't understand why your car exploded.
    Shawn: I might have had some... grenades in the trunk.
  • Explaining Your Power to the Enemy:
    • Invoked. Sydney quickly gets fed up with the confusion of the first fight, and declares "Silver Age rules": every villain needs to state their name and powers, or else the ARCHON PR department will give them stupid names like "Stick Chick".
    • Vehemence indulges too, and Sydney lampshades it, but he's doing this after a thorough fight that has supercharged him in vehemic energy, so he's convinced it's way too late for ARCHON to do much of anything with the information.
  • Eye Scream:

    Tropes F – J 

    Tropes K – O 
  • Kamehame Hadoken: Invoked by Sydney when testing out her orange orb for the press.
  • Karaoke Box: The combined Sydney/Maxima/Glen birthday party has a karaoke setup, which reveals that Harem not only is a really good singer, she can take advantage of her power to sing multi-part harmonies.
  • "Kiss the Cook" Apron: The succubus Dabbler doesn't settle for merely kissing the cook. Her apron reads [blurred] the cook.
  • Kryptonite Factor:
    • Semi-jokingly invoked by Sydney when she states "mittens are my kryptonite" when explaining that she has to hold the orbs to use them.
    • Later exploited by ARCHON when the Lapha-possessed Sydney is incarcerated: not only are her hands secured to the chair she's bound to, they're in mitten-like gloves.
  • Lame Comeback: "For Whom the Death Tolls" explains his name as a "phrasic portmanteau!"
    Atomic Bombshell: Yeah well you're a phrasic... dumb face.
    FWtDT: Wow, I'm going to need some aloe for that burn.
  • Laser Blade:
    • Pixel's power as a super is laser claws, which she can only use in her were-jaguar hybrid or animal forms.
    • The Super Brawl features Heavenly Sword (no, not that one), who can form energy barriers around wielded weaponry, including whips.
  • Late to the Punchline: That Visual Pun of Sydney dropping Anvil on Vehemence's head? Harem finally got it two nights later.
    Harem: Hey Anvil, when you jump out of a plane like that, we should call it the Acme Special. [thought bubble of Sydney making the same joke] VORP Jesus. Christ. Sydney.
    Sydney: Huh?
    Harem: Because you dropped an anvil on his head!
    Sydney: What? Oh. God, Harem, take your damn time.
  • Late to the Realization: Sydney's too excited about finally using her powers openly to register what Maxima says.
    Sydney: I'm all squatted and fielded. Now what?
    Maxima: Just survive.
    Sydney: OK. Wait WHAT?
  • Lawyer-Friendly Cameo:
  • Leg Cling: The trope is referenced for comedy purposes when Sydney's lawyer mother reminds her artist father about some work that she landed for him.
    Laura: I got you the job doing the movie poster for "Krognar, Champion of Intercourse, PA."
    Syd Sr.: Oh, right, yeah! The one with all the ladies clutching onto the hero's leg.
  • Let Us Never Speak of This Again: After an M/F/M threesome with Blue-Skinned Space Babe Cora (heavily implied in the strip, confirmed by the author's comments), Math and Hiro mutually agree to never speak of this again... to Dabbler's frustration, since she'd like to know every little detail.
    Math: We must never speak of this again.
    Hiro: You're breaking the rule!
    Dabbler: [putting arms on their shoulders] Tell. Me. EVERYTHING.
    [they both leave without a word]
    Dabbler: But... but I tell you guys everything! No matter how much you beg me to stop!
  • Living Whirlwind: Part of the team, while on a visit in Africa, end up dealing with a Super that can turn himself into a tornado made of sand. Eventually Sydney stops him by turning the desert underneath him into glass. And while they don't know his name, a suggested alias is "Darude", presumably because of the song "Sandstorm".
  • Logical Weakness: Because Succubi glamour is designed to be sexy for a variety of reasons, Succubi tend to be very bad at disguising themselves as anything other than absolute bombshells. This actually made finding one out easy because women like that stick out like a sore thumb.
  • Ludicrous Gibs:
  • Lust Makes You Dumb: Sciona goes to a bar looking for a one-night stand and directly propositions a random guy. Given that she does it in Spock Speak and comes off as Obviously Evil, his friend chastises him for even considering it.
    Random Guy: Well, seems like it might be a wild ride... AHH!!
    Friend: They will never find your body!
  • The Magazine Rule:
    • Dabbler is seen reading the Pornews Journal at several points.
    • There is apparently an A-Cup Aficionado Quarterly publication, which voted Sydney "Sexiest Superheroine". Though given that she's the only non-Badass Normal heroine in the series who doesn't have the Most Common Superpower, that sort of makes winning an Overly Narrow Superlative for the magazine's demographic.
  • Mage Killer: The supernatural meeting is attacked by magic mannequins designed to kill mages and other supernatural beings like weres.
  • Magic Is Evil: Kat asks if magic has a bias towards evil. Dabbler is at first offended but can't offer a rebuttal when Kat asks why there is no such thing as "good" dungeons (ones that produce harmless and peaceful plants and animals instead of hostile monsters).
  • Making a Splash: Sydney was hoping that one of the unknown orbs would have this power.
  • Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex: Discussed after Parfait's lust aura spreads through ARCHON. Seneca needs a Healing Potion after she, Ren and Peggy slept together, and when it wears off, she states that she would be walking crooked for the next few days. Not that she is complaining.
  • Marshmallow Hell: Sydney accidentally puts herself in one when hugging Anvil.
    Sydney: ...Our height differential is making this hug extremely awkward.
    Anvil: Now you know why I like dating tall guys.
    Dabbler: But sleeping with a short guy...
  • Martial Arts and Crafts: Jabberwokky claims that she utilizes her breast as a fulcrum when performing flips and kicks in response to Sydney's question on how she uses Waif-Fu without giving in to D-Cup Distress — a method she calls Boob-Fu. Jabberwokky is a little miffed that Halo thinks she is telling the truth.
  • Masochist's Meal: Sydney intentionally offends the waitress of a restaurant specializing in spicy food, and then signs a legal waiver, just to make sure she gets sufficiently spicy food.
  • Masquerade:
    • Averted; ARCHON holds a press conference both to confirm that yes, supers exist and have existed for so long they may have inspired some myths and folklore, and also to announce the new government "super police" Arc-SWAT, who are not permitted to use false identities.
    • Played straight later when Sydney discovers a couple of non-humans in disguise at Club OONTZ. Dabbler explains that Earth actually has a decent-sized alien population. Coupled with her earlier comments about humanity's xenophobic tendencies, it seems that there's probably nothing sinister involved, just immigrants/tourists who really know how to blend in.
    • Having supers be public knowledge actually helps by allowing supernatural events to be attributed to supers.
  • Mayincatec: The trope itself is used here, when Sydney cracks a joke about wishing Varia had four older siblings, so she could be "Cinco de Mayan." Varia quickly points out that she's Aztec — Sydney realizes she'd already been told that, but was so excited at the chance at the pun that she forgot.
  • Meaningful Name: In the usual way of superhero comics, pretty much all the members of Arc-SWAT — along with many of their opponents — have meaningful code-names. For example:
    • Maxima: Most powerful member of the group. She also has the ability to "max out" one attribute (strength, defense, flight, speed, and blasting power) at the expense of the others.
    • Halo: Her orbs' default position is that of a halo. Also, her actual last name Scoville: Sydney loves spicy food.
    • Dabbler: Has a wide selection of abilities (basically a high-level Jack of All Trades).
    • Anvil: One of her main powers is the ability to absorb tremendous amounts of force.
    • Harem: Able to make one of herself through self-cloning (up to five bodies total).
    • Heatwave: Playing with Fire.
    • Math: Master of precision striking.
    • Mr. Amorphous: Stretching powers.
    • Achilles: Invulnerability (though this excludes the heel).
    • Super Hiro: The cast page lists him as "Superman-lite".
    • Stalwart: Can increase his own mass (and concomitantly, his strength). At one point, he pins down an opponent by stepping on his foot while weighing "as much as the space shuttle."note 
    • Jiggawatt: Electricity-based powers. That's not a misspelling, "That's how Doc Brown said it."
    • Notably subverted (and lampshaded with extreme prejudice) with Aurelius Shrapnell, who is a financial advisor with no superpowers. Also his son who is named Mervyn and not "M.I.R.V.". Later we have Dr. Frost, who is, as far as we know, just a psychiatrist.
    • The two vampire ladies Sydney talks to have names very appropriate for vampires, Scarlet and Crimson.
  • Mêlée à Trois: The "situation" in Manhattan starts with alien bounty hunters trying to capture Maxima and tangling with the rest of her team, but it soon gets complicated by the meddling of local supervillains that are after the alien tech, and also inside intel on ARCHON.
  • The Merch: In-Universe, Arianna has multiple spreadsheets predicting merchandising sales, and was especially happy when Sydney signed on, as her seven orbs spell out the three most wonderful words in marketing.
    Arianna: Collect. Them. All.
  • Metaphorically True: Sydney insists that she didn't lie when she stated that she found the orbs "around the Florida Keys". Well, on a planetary scale, the Yucatan peninsula might be indeed close to the Florida Keys. She later calls it a "G.P.S. rounding error".
  • Mildly Military: Played with. Arc-SWAT is a military organization, and members are given ranks and expected to act appropriately befitting those ranks. They're even given basic training including firearms, despite the fact that most of them are more lethal than the average tank. That being said, supers are incredibly rare, so the team is forced to take what they can get. It seems like ninety percent of them spend half their time in remedial PR courses. On the plus side, dress code is relaxed.
    Varia: [regarding a feather in her hair] If anyone asks, it's for religious reasons.
    Sydney: Maxima has gold skin and Harem is wearing purple lipstick. I think you're okay.
  • Military Superhero: Maxima, Anvil, Peggy and several other members of Arc-SWAT have military backgrounds, and retain their rank.
  • Missed Him by That Much: Sydney and Deus (along with Vale) do this a few times when on an alien space station.
  • Mistaken for Gay:
    • Sydney admits to Peggy that she mistook Peggy for a lesbian due to her short pink hair and lack of makeup, and was surprised when Peggy happily watched some of the men going shirtless. Peggy isn't offended, and in fact replies that she can find things to (dis)like about both genders. It's hinted that Peggy is firmly Bi as she has on multiple occasions demonstrated a keen interest in the shirtless boys as well as an implied hookup with Cora during their off-world travels.
    • In regard to minor and probably accidental villain the Barberian, who not only has a slightly camp two-tone Mohawk hairstyle, but does rather provoke a mistaken guess in other ways.
      Harem: So! Uh... You're a barber, right?
      The Barberian: I prefer the term coiffure artiste.
      Harem: ...And yet you had sex with Dabbler. Who is a woman.
      Dabbler: Don't worry, he's straight. I checked. A lot.
  • Moment Killer: A non-sexual one when Sydney sucks the wind out of Maxima's sails.
  • Mood Whiplash: Sydney has a brief Heroic BSoD after realizing she might have died prior to Krona's reset, hugging Maxima for comfort. Maxima, being Maxima, is at a loss for words, eventually reassuring Sydney they have on-base counselors to help her... and getting cut short when the bladder snooze alarm goes off and Sydney races away with a shouted "I have to pee!"
  • Moral Guardians: Invoked by Arianna when attempting to get Sydney to temper her behavior around the media. It even includes a Shout-Out to the current page image.
  • Most Common Superpower:
    • Subverted, played straight and discussed. Sydney is a short, average-looking young woman with mild A-Cup Angst. Most supers, however, are either curvy females with not a B-Cup among them or perfectly muscled Adonis-class men. It's discussed in-comic that it can't be mere coincidence that all supers with innate powers look like ideal human beings. Later, Sydney deconstructs the idea of this being a result of supers' divergent evolution.
    • Invoked by Sciona. Upon regaining her original form, she takes the opportunity to add "+2 (at least)" to her chest.
  • Move in the Frozen Time: When a mercenary tries to trap Maxima in a stasis field, Max manages to move using her super-speed, draining the device's power source in a matter of seconds.
    Garamm: What the... how... how fucking fast is she moving?!
  • Mundane Solution: Discussed with regards to aliens. Why invade a planet armed with nuclear technology instead of mining ice from undefended low-gravity comets?
  • Mundane Utility:
  • Murderous Mannequin: The mage-slayer mannequins, equipped in SWAT-style gear with equipment to deal with mages, aliens and supernatural entities. Their fake bodies are also utilized with several features to make them difficult to dispose of permanently; their fake and reinforced bodies are fairly durable and can reconstruct themselves if the limbs aren't completely destroyed. Furthermore, attempting to fight them with magic results in a Mana Drain counterattack which consequently fuels them for a potential Action Bomb right there.
  • My Eyes Are Up Here:
  • My Hovercraft Is Full of Eels: While their English is nowhere near that bad, an alien's "GlibGlorb to English Translator" name-drops the trope.
  • My Significance Sense Is Tingling:
    • Dabbler has the ability to sense sexy-times by virtue of being a succubus. Sydney dubs it "Porno Sense" before blurting out that it must be the best sense when it tingles.
    • Played for laughs when Elsbeth questions whether Sydney would get a reference Max makes.
      Sydney: [shushing Frix] Nerd-cred sense tingles!
  • Naked Apron: To take her mind off Sydney being stranded on Sciona's world, Dabbler makes cookies... at 3:00AM... in nothing but an apron and lacy panties. Maxima notices that she's drawn a crowd.
    Maxima: And what are you all doing?
    Achilles: I'm going to assume that's a rhetorical question.
    Math: Watching Dabbler cook is a spectator sport.
    Anvil: I'm just here for the cookies.
  • Naughty Tentacles:
    • The Wyrmil/Cooter fusion summons some to cover their escape. Though they're only naughty because that's what they're usually summoned to be. Actually, they're quite affable, and apologize when they realize the situation.
    • Played straight regarding The "Tentacle Closet" Dabbler had installed on Cora's ship.
  • Navel-Deep Neckline: Referenced in the second-to-last panel of "Grrl Power #770 – Reactions are... mixed", with a magazine cover showing a woman with a neckline that goes all the way to her belt, and the only other thing covering that area are two thin straps that presumably are to hold the left and right sides of her suit to her body. The caption is:
    Decolletage: Full-V or high and tight
  • Neck Lift: When Hench Wench tries to say "Sayonara!" to Maxima by revealing she has still a portal power, she ends up caught in a neck lift before she can finish jumping through it. Reminder: Maxima has Super-Speed, so it's a bad idea to telegraph your intentions with her.
  • Negated Moment of Awesome: Lampshaded by Deus after delivering a genuinely badass line, and then mentioning that he almost botched it because he'd thought of a Last-Second Word Swap that sounded better, but the first one almost came out instead.
  • Nerd Action Hero: Sydney, the comic-book store owner with a nerd's physique and outlook on life, who becomes one of Maxima's team of supers.
  • Never Heard That One Before: After they learn that she's a vegetarian, this is Sydney's reaction to Harem's joke.
    Daphne: I think becoming a vegetarian is a mistake.
    Sydney: Well it's none of your...
    Daphne: A missed... steak?
    Sydney: Yes I get it, also I've never heard that before, no I'm totally serious.
  • Next Stall Shenanigans: During Sydney's introduction to ARCHON's higher-ups, she makes a couple of comments while talking to one Harem that crack up another Harem who's currently using the restroom and "overhears" the conversation. Unfortunately for Sandy, Arianna's assistant in the next stall, Harem's first laughing outburst startles her enough that she drops her phone in the toilet.
  • Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: During a chat with Dabbler over her nature, Sydney imagines a Bee-Vampire-Fish-Succubus.
  • No Biochemical Barriers: Invoked and examined; alien eating establishments have a on-the-spot genetic scanner capable of determining exactly what a customer can and can not consume. Though Sydney proceeds to freak the hell out of dozens of alien species by stuffing her face with something spicy enough to dissolve silverware (although they might be more concerned with her ability to withstand it when it comes out of her).
  • No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Sydney was once arrested for aggravated assault, which was dismissed as self-defense due to the fact that the person was trying to mug her. The only thing on the police report was "Oh the humanity!"
    Sydney: REPENT!
    Mugger: I swear to god I'll reform!
  • Noodle Implements: In the aftermath of an encounter with alien Blazing Inferno Hellfire Sauce, Sydney requests a bathtub of ice cream to sit in; when that turns out to be unavailable, she asks for the services of a poet, a medic, and a priest.
  • Noodle Incident:
  • Non Sequitur, *Thud*:
    • A villainous Super Speedster, after being sedated by Harem, falls down and mumbles, "... but I'm not fast in bed, baby..."
    • After being shocked by a villain with electrical powers, and saved from the fall by a teammate, Heatwave mumbles "This little piggy went to pain town." (She had just had a lightning blast channeled through a knife stuck in one of her toes, so not a complete non sequitur.)
  • No Self-Buffs: One rant reveals that Succubi cannot produce tantric energy through self-stimulation.
    The Rant: Succubi don't get any tantric energy from self inflicted pleasure, but they still get the self inflicted pleasure, so... they still do occasionally partake.
  • No-Sell:
  • Nosebleed: Sydney gets a massive one when Harem pranks her. Even Maxima is freaked out by it.
  • Not Helping Your Case: As Maxima gives Thothogoth a Facepalm Of Doom in response to him calling Dabbler a "slave", Dabbler tries to calm Max down by confirming she actually is his slave. Maxima starts crushing Thothogoth's head instead.
  • Not-So-Omniscient Council of Bickering: The Twilight Council tends to act like this when not putting on airs for visitors.
  • Not What It Looks Like: During the incident at ARCHON where a young succubus' lust aura go haywire, after Maxima and Dabbler barge into Sydney's room to find the half-naked recruit covered in kiss marks with a naked Parfait atop of her, Sydney tries to invoke the trope with, "This isn't what it looks like?" The interrogation mark makes it clear she doesn't sound that convinced herself.
    Alt Text: It's a lipstick sales demonstration, honestly!
  • The Nudifier: Dabbler knows a "declothesifying spell", natch.
  • Odd Reaction Out: "What else would you do with two invisible arms?" has mental reactions to a hot woman revealing that Harem is attracted to females, while the other two women in the room aren't.
  • Offhand Backhand:
    • The setup of the strip doesn't make it obvious at first, but you can deduce from her final position that Maxima is knocking out a hulking brute without even watching at the beginning of the superhero free-for-all (and the strip's title, "Backhands and Commands", spells it out). She's also doing that while giving orders, making it a case of Excuse Me While I Multitask.
    • Shortly after, Math throws a knife at Heavenly Sword (who barely deflects it with her shinai) without looking and while talking to Maxima on the coms.
  • Oh, Crap!:
    • For Vehemence, after he punches Maxima at full strength... and only manages to make her take one step back and break her nose, but she won't let him know that.
      Vehemence: Hah hah, what the fuck.
    • Before that, Vehemence goes to punch who he assumed was Maxima, only to realize too late that he just hit Anvil, who absorbs kinetic energy to get stronger.
      Vehemence: OW! That hurt! Was that you Maxima? I'm going to clean your...
      Anvil: Check your target!
      Vehemence: Whoops!
    • If Anvil, Queen of the No-Sell, warns you off of getting hit by someone, you know it's bad.
    • Later, when Dabbler realizes that Vehemence gains power from violence... after he's been fighting the team for a couple intense minutes.
    • A group of construction workers are talking about the female team members while they're taking over in helping get the overpass back on track, doing the stereotypical conversation construction workers do when they see an attractive lady. Sydney, who saw one of them make the "boob heft" hands (in addition to her ability to read lips a bit), asks them how they know none of the Arc ladies have enough super hearing to hear them. Cue horrified realization.
    • Sydney gloats after defeating a giant alien single-handedly... until she becomes aware of more approaching.
  • Only Known by Their Nickname:
    • To various degrees. Dabbler, Harem, Anvil, Math, Mr. Amorphous, Achilles, Jiggawatt, and Varia all primarily use their superhero identities in common conversation, but Brook (Heatwave), Adrian, and Vance all use their civilian names more. Maxima and Hiro's superhero names are taken from their real names (Maximilia-> Maxima, Hiro-> Super Hiro). And of course, none of them have secret identities. Sydney falls somewhere in the middle, with the press generally referring to her as "Ms. Scoville," her coworkers referring to her as Sydney, and her fans using Halo.
    • Maxima usually refers to Anvil by her actual name (Kenya) in casual and private conversations outside of the field.
  • Only the Knowledgable May Pass: Sydney will test you if you claim to be a nerd.
  • Open Mouth, Insert Foot: A more literal example than most, as she keeps sticking it in her mouth in the presence of a teammate that lost her leg at the calf.
  • Our Goblins Are Different: Prinrin is an attractive goblin, working for in the Arc-SPARQ tech division. Presumably, her small (she only comes up to the average human's waist in height) but curvaceous physique (her bust-waist-hip ratios would be impressive even on a super-human woman) and very human-like face is typical of goblins In-Universe.
  • Our Werebeasts Are Different: For starters, it's possible to end up a different type of were than the one that sired you.
  • Ow, My Body Part!: Parodied after Sydney punches Dabbler in the lower back for an earlier (sexual) prank.
    Dabbler: Aaah! Right in the ol' gazorpazovum!

    Tropes P – T 
  • Paper-Bag Popping: A flashback panel shows that a younger Maxima discovered her power to shoot blasts of energy with her hand when her brother woke her up by popping a paper bag as a joke, resulting in a large, burning hole in the wall of their house, missing said brother by inches, if that.
  • Pass the Popcorn:
  • Perma-Shave: Those with natural super powers, in addition to being physically perfect, are also incapable of growing body hair below the neck. Sydney is a little disappointed to find that this includes the men.
  • Phallic Weapon: Played With. One magic user at a summit of supernaturals has a Book Safe of Holding with built-in indexing; Mana Potions and Magic Antidotes are stored in cut-outs accessed by looking up the relevant word. When she looks up "assault rifle", the book flips to a rifle butt sticking out of a hole shaped like a penis and testicles — but it turns out the "testicles" are just the silhouette of the Beta C-Mag.
  • Phlebotinum Killed the Dinosaurs: The possibility is discussed after it's revealed that Halo's orbs were found in the Chicxulub crater, but ARCHON concludes there's insufficient evidence and they don't want to contemplate the possibility of Halo having that kind of power.
  • Phoneaholic Teenager: When Tamatha disappears, it's immediately obvious to Sydney she's been kidnapped, because:
    Sydney: A teenage girl has been separated from her phone? Foul play is the only explanation!
  • Phrase Catcher: Dabbler's mere presence has a tendency to make all straight women repeat "Not a lesbian!" in their heads like a mantra.
  • Pillar of Light: Some sort of alien probe sends a red beam into the sky after scanning Sydney's orbs. It seems to be a kind of beacon, since not long after that a gigantic spaceship appears right over the beam.
  • Poke in the Third Eye: Raised as a possibility; Dabbler explains how she detected the invisible X, and describes what she could in principle do about him.
  • Pooled Funds: Sydney wants to do this with dice, and is super disappointed that the geokinetic who mined a swimming pool-sized cache of gold keeps it as gold bars rather than in "Scrooge McDuck form," to be dived into.
  • Post-Modern Magik:
    • Deus rigged a magical Dimensional Cutter to a motorized, circular track to create a stargate for quick and easy interstellar travel.
    • Some magic users treat spells like programming language for magic. Dabbler at one point calls over Leon and Krona for their experience in coding to make adjustments to the glamour charms on a gift to Maxima. She goes on to describe enchanting systems with names comparable to typical programming language that simplify the process of enchanting an object.
  • P.O.V. Cam: Dabbler notes that she's using her cybernetic eye to record Maxima fighting Vehemence, with the last panel showing the perspective as she sees it, including a very generous bit of decolletage.
    Sydney: It's going to be a very popular video.
    Dabbler: Especially if you go rummaging around in my cleavage for a popcorn kernel I dropped.
    Sydney: I will not be doing that, no.
  • Power Copying:
    • Sciona can use blood from supers to replicate powers.
    • Hench Wench can copy the powers of supervillains hiring her.
  • Power Levels: Shown from a 1-9 scale on the cast page. Maxima is the most powerful (9), then Dabbler, Hiro and Math (7), then Sydney, Jiggawatt, Stalwart and Mr. Amorphous (6), and then everyone else is a 5 except Peggy who rates a 3.
  • The Power of Hate: Vehemence gains strength from vehemic energy; good old-fashioned violence. He mentions the LA Race Riots as being particularly strengthening for him.
  • The Power of Love: A variant. Dabbler, as a succubus, gains strength from tantric energy; that is to say sex, lust, and lovemaking.
  • Power Perversion Potential: A topic which the writer clearly finds amusing.
  • Pretentious Latin Motto: ARCHON's motto (notably seen on Maxima's shirt at the beginning of the parking lot fight, and also in the background during press conferences or graduations) is "Cum Amplus Potentia Venit Amplus Onus" — "With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility". note 
  • Product Placement: It's partially obstructed, but Maxima apparently drinks Guinness Black. Also, Monster.
  • Prosthetic Limb Reveal: Sydney is taking a tour of the Arc-SWAT superhero facility, given mostly by Peggy the sniper. They are already friends at that point, and Sydney has reached the stage of being fitted for her uniform by the time she spots a couple spares of Peggy's prosthetic leg in a corner of the workroom. It isn't treated as a big deal in the story, although Sydney winds up having a panic attack because she can't stop accidentally making one-leg jokes.
    Peggy: Oh, that. Lost it in Afghanistan. [raps on leg]
  • Punch-Clock Villain: One of the bad guys at the restaurant fight offers to surrender after watching Dabbler and Jiggawatt take out Glowbug, saying he only came because some of his friends came and he's just a hairdresser. Considering Vehemence's violence aura... He's later used as Dabbler's "take-home meal".
  • Punched Across the Room:
    • Vehemence delivers one such punch to Maxima through a concrete pillar.
    • Maxima later gives one to Sciona that's labeled a "Motherfucking punch!"
  • Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: Multiple examples.
  • Puppy-Dog Eyes: Anvil, of all people, is able to pull it off on Maxima, though the latter is a little perturbed by her ability to do so.
  • Putting on the Reich: Literally, in the case of Luftwaffles Restaurant.
  • Quizzical Tilt: Sydney sports one when trying to figure out Death Toll's ability, complete with lampshade hanging.
  • Rank Scales with Asskicking: Higher-powered characters often have higher ranks. Maxima is a Lt. Colonel, Hiro is a Major, and Anvil is a 1st Lieutenant. However, Peggy is also a 1st Lieutenant despite not having superpowers, being rather an expert marksman, skilled pilot, and professional soldier.
  • Reaction Shot: The entirety of page #739 is dedicated to Sydney flipping money into her swear jar II for all the swearing she did in deep space, as Maxima slowly realizes the implications of what she's saying.
  • Rebus Bubble:
  • Reed Richards Is Useless: Deliberately so.
    • Dabbler has set up her tech so that most of her equipment cannot be separated from her for more than a few seconds without teleporting away to a secure facility, so that nobody can reverse-engineer it and release the technology out into the world. The intergalactic community has some Prime Directive-like rules, and Earth hasn't advanced technologically or socially to the point where humanity can be trusted with Dabbler's tech.
    • Digit (a member of the support staff after a Noodle Incident involving some of her "quirkier" inventions in the field) is a more traditional variant. She creates amazing technology, but any applicability outside of whatever esoteric corner she's painted herself into with previous inventions (and their side-effects) is purely coincidental. Example: she's shown considering inventing a frequency-hopping directional ultrasonic scanner... because she forgot where she left her random ultrasonic whistle generator... which she only remembered she'd invented because she noticed someone who seemed to be listening to a sound Digit couldn't hear.
    • On a meta-level, this is to avoid a tech spiral that would leave the world nearly unrecognizable, so Gadgeteer Genius supers are rare in the Grrl-verse.
  • Refugee from TV Land: The crossover with Wearing the Cape has Astra be this from the Grrl-verse's perspective, since the characters there are part of a fictional TV show, with Astra being pretty much identical to her character's actor.
  • Required Secondary Powers: Discussed briefly by Deus.
    Deus: Physical super powers usually come as package deals. Pyro Genesis comes with heat resistance. Super-Strength comes with a tough body so you don't kill yourself when you inhale too deeply.
  • Revealing Cover-Up: Why the supernatural races never wrote in supers; they were afraid it might draw more attention to them. (Of course, now that supers are public, there's some Plausible Deniability for anything that leaks through; "Oh that? Umm... would you believe I'm a superhero?")
  • Rewriting Reality: Krona, a magic user (not a proper mage or super), can do this to a degree, though it's easier to alter existing objects, like defusing grenades or changing her hair color, than doing things like creating fireballs, and it's a lot like programming apparently. Her abilities are also apparently entirely unique. She later demonstrates predictive text that literally predicts the future by a few seconds, and hacks Sydney's bladder so she can wait on going to the bathroom. She can use Save Scumming in real life. This leads Maxima to bring her into ARCHON so they can make sure that she can't cause a Reality-Breaking Paradox by accident. Viewing Sydney's orb skill tree, Krona discovers that she could potentially change what gravity is rather than what it does, had she full access to Sydney's orbs.
  • Rhetorical Question Blunder: Leon threatens to make Maxima's and Harem's bank accounts disappear if they don't knock off the rivalry in his office.
    Leon: That's right! Who's really the most powerful member of this team?
    Maxima: [raises a Fascinating Eyebrow]
    Leon: I mean obviously it's you. Here's a new phone.
  • Rock–Paper–Scissors: Maxima and Peggy quickly (and wordlessly) play the game in one panel (Maxima wins) to determine which of them will demonstrate to Sydney why superheroes with Hand Blast powers should still carry firearms.
  • Rubber Orifice: Sydney, a fairly petite human, is dating Frix, who is basically the alien equivalent of a Lycan and is implied by Sydney to be equipped to a degree that would make it very painful at best and injurious at worst for them to try to get busy. Dabbler gives her a dose of a potion that will allow her body to accommodate him, noting that she had it ready to go as soon as she found out they were a couple.
  • Running Gag: There's been several of varying lengths.
  • Russian Reversal: Sydney is discussing vampiric thirst with a vampire she insists on miscategorizing as Russian, thanks to his accent. It turns out that if a vampire does not feed his thirst gradually overwhelms his rational mind until (as as Sydney says), "in mother Russia hunger eat you!".
  • Sarcastic Confession: After offering multiple implausible reasons why she's carrying a poster tube everywhere, Sydney tries this:
    Sydney: It's full of... ancient artifacts that give me superpowers?
    Joel: Fine, don't tell me.
  • Save Scumming: Krona can do this with her powers.
  • Scenery Censor: Pixel pulls off her clothes before changing from her hybrid form to animal form. Her team is treated to a full view, but our gaze is blocked by the angle or by various body parts, including her tail.
  • Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale: Pointedly averted here, when Sydney tries flying to an alien moon — she gets out of the planet's atmosphere pretty quickly, but the moon doesn't seem to get closer despite her going Mach 4.
  • Self-Deprecation:
    • The author is fond of self-directed snark in the page titles and footer remarks.note 
    • #125, which features a discussion of the Standard Police/Superhero/Celebrity Contract, is titled "Action packed document review".
  • Sensual Spandex: Dabbler goes to ARCHON's pool wearing a wetsuit that leaves nothing to the imagination, and her groin is covered — front and back — with speech bubbles reading "This thing is really tight" and "Seriously you guys". Note that this isn't a case of Superheroes Wear Tights because they're about to spend a fair amount of time underwater, and it's not their usual clothing.
    Dabbler: Mine's made of an unearthly material that's extraordinarily form-fitting.
    Sydney: Does it blow up like a balloon if you fart in it?
  • Servant Race: The entire succubus species. They initially started out as little more than Flesh Golems created by bored/lonely mages to be ambulatory sex dolls. After generations of improving and one-upmanship between the various arch-mages, their creation was refined to their more physically appealing level, and they were instilled with actual consciousness to fulfill normal servant duties (in addition to satisfying their master's sexual desires). However, despite obtaining their "freedom" and magically evolving themselves into a viably reproductive species, the nature of their origins and the "fail-safes" their creators built into them thousands and thousands of years ago require all succubae to have a master to literally not die. Consequently, every adult succubus (full or hybrid) is a slave to some master, even if only technically. Fortunately, the majority of "masters" don't abuse this aspect of their bonded succubae, either due to their own code of ethics/morality, or as result of the very real threat of horrifically violent consequences it would trigger from the Succubus Matriarch Council. Demand for one is high, to the point that Thothogoth gaining a second has pissed some people off.
  • Sex for Services: By Deus towards Sciona, who needs a MacGuffin but can't afford to buy it with money.note  It is framed as both getting something out of the deal as Sciona is being said to "not have been a woman in a long time" and Deus gets to add some kind of Drow-Expy to his list of conquests.
  • Sexy Soaked Shirt: This strip focuses on when the supervillain Glowbug finds out her white costume becomes see-though when wet. She notes that's something she should have tested before going into battle.
  • Shapeshifter Baggage: The various "Were" creatures are (mostly) significantly bigger in 'Were' form than human form. But the prize has to go to Pixel who is fairly tiny and around the same height as Sydney in human form (5 foot), but is described as 'gigantic' (7 foot tall) in 'Were' form.
  • Shipper on Deck: Anvil ships Hiro and Max, and rather forcefully at that.
    Alt Text: Anvil is the matchmaking equivalent of a bull in a china shop.
  • Ship Tease: A couple have been hinted at.
  • Show, Don't Tell: Invoked when Maxima demonstrates why ARC-SWAT carries firearms rather than just relying on their powers.
  • Side Bet: Surprisingly common given ARC-Swat's Mildly Military structure.
  • Signs of Disrepair: Halo accidentally hitting a billboard sporting a jewelry ad turns the slogan from "TREAT YOUR GIRL RIGHT" to "EAT YOUR GIRL RIGHT".
  • Sleazy Photoshoot: Invoked twice:
    • Right after ARCSWAT are announced to the world, they are assigned to do photoshoots to generate good PR. Maxima, being an Amazonian Beauty and a feminist who dislikes the attention her figure gets her, says that if her photoshoot turns out to be like this, they'll never find the photographer's body.
    • When Maxima's photoshoot finally happens, she's assigned a female photographer who notes that there are sleazy guys in the business. She does offer to take racy photos once the official shots are done, but in a well-defined manner with clear boundaries, and mentions a few celebrities she's done such work for, including Hiro. Max seems to consider it, especially when the photographer mentions Hiro, but decides to politely decline due to the risks of having such materials just lying around for someone with superpowers to steal (with an Imagine Spot of that happening).
  • Slippery Swimsuit: Sydney makes Harem lose her bikini top in the pool after pranking her with the recently discovered air-generating orb.
  • Smug Super:
    • Maxima takes her sweet time stopping a bank robbery despite having enough speed to catch bullets. When one of the civilians she rescued protests her behavior Maxima brushes him off ("You were never in any danger"), finally cracking her knuckles to scare him away. Sure, the hostages were safe especially since the "bank robbers" were agents of ARC carrying out a publicity stunt on PR manager Arianna's orders, but they must have also been stressed and terrified, seeing as how they were at the mercy of men with guns for several minutes.
    • This works against her when facing the Super Husk. As the commentary explains, Maxima can stop 95% of her foes in battle easily when it comes to physical force, but when an enemy has other tricks, like Hypnotic Eyes....
  • Snark Ball: All the senior officers. No audience surrogates or characters with an excessive sense of humor are in the scene, so as The Rant explains, the normally serious people are the ones carrying the jokes. It works because, in the absence of their subordinates, they don't have to maintain the appearance of being consummately professional.
  • Sophisticated as Hell: Ray Cosmos, upon meeting Maxima, drops a very eloquent line about the sights he's seen (complete with "Tears in Rain" reference)...
    Ray: All of that beauty is but the tremulous flickering of a candle flame in the infinite darkness compared to the incandescent perfection of — that — ass.
  • Space Travel Veto: Discussed as why the galactic community will not help Earth reach the stars.
    Cora: If you can't sort out the basics like learning to take care of your planet or resisting the urge to exterminate yourselves with war... Well then, to be blunt, we don't want you hanging out with us.
  • Space "X": When Sydney and Cora get mugged off-world, The Rant alludes to this trope, saying that alley was where Space Batman's space parents were space killed.
  • Specific Situation Books: Sydney is seen reading a booklet titled Superpowers, Physics, and You. Or, How Not to Knock Over a Building Unless You Really Need To. ARCHON being a superhero agency, this might be required reading for all members.
  • Speech-Bubble Censoring: Anvil sports a very detailed one when discussing her assets — pay close attention to the exact shape of her speech bubble.
  • Spit Take:
  • Spy Speak: Spoofed with the mini-comic below the main one.
  • Squick:
  • Stating the Simple Solution: When discussing how to track Cooter, Sydney says that it's too bad that, since they were sure that the other end was booby-trapped, they couldn't go through themselves, and that it sucked that Dabbler couldn't have put a tracking spell on a rock and sent that through. Cue awkward silence.
  • Statuesque Stunner:
    • Maxima and most of the other female supers. Not Sydney, which is openly lampshaded. Maxima's looks are apparently part of the reason for her feminism. Getting checked out so much makes her feel like many men only see her as an "exotic blow up doll", according to Word of God on the cast page.
    • Literally, in the case of Concretia, one of the baddies in the restaurant brawl, seeing as she's made of stone. Math even mentions it.
      Math: I like my women statuesque, but this is ridiculous.
  • STD Immunity: Dabbler confirms that as a succubus, she is immune to pretty much all disease. Presumably Decolette, Tamatha and Parfait are similarly uber-immune to disease.
  • Stealth Pun: Sydney grabs her teammate Anvil out of the sky and flings her down onto a super-tough thug. She just dropped an anvil on him. She imitates the Road Runner right after.
  • Steven Ulysses Perhero: Aside from Hiro himself, Varia takes a shot at the convention in a bonus panel.
    Varia: No, that's dumb, how could they? That'd be like someone with spider powers named Ara K'Nid, or a teleporter named Telford Porter.
  • Stimulant Speedtalk: Played with. The villains inject a captured Halo with a truth serum to get inside information on ARCHON, except it backfires spectacularly. As it happens, using a truth serum on a Motor Mouth Cloudcuckoolander with ADHD only results in an absolutely non-stop blabbering, stream-of-consciousness run-on sentence devoid of any useful intel (except maybe for the dating status of some members)... which threatens Sydney with passing out from lack of oxygen, and possibly worse judging by her independently dilating pupils.
  • Stock Scream:
  • Stop Hitting Yourself: A minor villain claims, "my skin is impenetrable and my claws can cut through anything." Halo cannot resist the temptation to check Unstoppable Force Meets Immovable Object, and slaps his Wolverine Claws into his own shoulder with her lighthook, piercing the skin.
    Sydney: What? Clearly one of those statements was false.
  • Strip Poker: Maxima banned this game at ARC-SWAT's HQ because of an unspecified incident involving Dabbler (who else?). So, when Max is away and Sydney walks in on a game, everyone assures her that it's not strip poker, they're doing the laundry.
  • Stupid Sexy Flanders: Dabbler shows here that she loves seducing and confusing the new recruits◊.
  • Success as Revenge: Referenced. Deus is quite possibly the richest man in the world (he is personally one of the strongest economies in the world), handsome, charismatic, and has an impressive dating history. When Sydney mentions his impressive accomplishments, he claims that he is "getting revenge on many, many people" (by living really, really well).
  • Sufficiently Advanced Aliens: Discussed by Dabbler as an explanation for artifacts like Sydney's spheres, believed to be so elusive that they're considered myths. Deus has reason to believe the same or similar beings constructed an artificial law of physics overlaid on the universe that the human genome structure can tap into for superpowers. The question is whether or not it was intended for humans to have that capacity.
  • Sunken Face: When the villain Hench Wench punches Mister Amorphous (a hero with stretching abilities) in the back of the head, he gets a face sunk outwards. This grosses out everyone around, not the least of which is his girlfriend.
    Mr. Amorphous: Wow, that felt weird. Kind of like when your eyelid gets flipped over, but for my whole head... What?
    Heatwave: Oooooh, baby. I'm gonna need some time to process that.
  • Superheroes Wear Capes: While none of them wear them as day wear, ARCHON's mess dress includes a very awesome cloak.
  • Superheroes Wear Tights: Partially averted. The members of ARCHON wear military uniforms, since it's a military organization. (Civilian contractors Math and Dabbler don't; Math wears street clothing, and Dabbler... well, dresses about like a succubus would be expected to.) Vigilante/unaffiliated superheroes and supervillains sometimes do. The subject simply never comes up, despite the trope being common in the in-universe comics.
  • Superhuman Trafficking: Deconstructed when aliens try to kidnap Maxima. She is uber-tier powerful and would be worth so much to so many people, but their attempt to capture her using a small team and specialized technology fails because she is so powerful.How powerful? By the end, several of them have been arrested and one has nearly died.
  • Super Registration Act: Played with. As noted in the press conference where ARCHON is officially announced, this isn't in effect — empowered individuals in the private sector aren't required to register with the government at all, and are protected by Second Amendment rights. On the other hand, they don't get any special protection, either. ARCHON is there to provide accountability and training to those who want to put those powers to use in crime-fighting or otherwise helping people, but "superheroes" who attack villains without sanction are vigilantes, and thus may be treated as criminals.
  • Super-Speed: One of the known powers, exhibited by both Maxima and the supervillain Silent Shadow (and indirectly by Sydney using the Flight Orb). However, it's fairly rare, because the writer considers it to be, logically, a very powerful ability.
  • Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Half the point of the comic is to examine some of the realistic consequences of superpowered beings coming into existence.
    • Jiggawat's positron generation (used to counter another Shock and Awe super, Glowbug) makes a lot of gamma radiation when they and the electrons annihilate each other. Dabbler has to stop her battle so she can make sure no-one dies from radiation poisoning!
    • On the firing range, Sydney begs to try out the minigun, which Peggy allows over Maxima's objections. It's soon revealed why Peggy was so confident.
      Maxima: OK, sometimes I forget stuff has weight.
    • Given modern forensic science, the idea of a secret identity is nearly laughable.
    • Why would aliens invade planets for water, especially ones with nuclear civilizations that would put up a fight, when undefended comets are a dime a dozen?
    • Sydney's flight orb can only reach about Mach 4, which is not fast enough to get into space from Earth or a similarly sized planet. Also, the moon is really far away. Kinda subverted when she updates it to going really fast, possibly even faster than Maxima, but the Moon is still a bit far. Hyperspace is an option, though.
    • Turns out that being stranded on an apocalyptic hellscape still in the process of being destroyed is likely to give someone PTSD. After returning to Earth, Sydney requires therapy to deal with her nightmares.
    • The Truth Serum scene, unlike many uses of this trope in fiction. Although blamed on Sydney's ADHD, the result is what you should expect from a lot of so-called "truth serums" in real life: it gets the subject talkative, but in a fully incoherent way, with the signal-to-noise ratio preventing any hope of getting useful information.
    • Telegraphing your intention to Villain: Exit, Stage Left isn't the smartest thing to do when facing a foe with Super-Speed, Hench Wench.
    • In a sparring match against Vehemence, Max wants Ren to "tag in", but he reasonably points out that Vehemence is already powered up, while Ren will need an adrenaline spike to activate his abilities. So what does Max do? Kick him over the side of a cliff.
      Maxima: How's your adrenaline now?
      Ren: REALLY SPIKING, THANKS!
  • The Swear Jar: Sydney uses one, and it apparently got full enough that she put a down payment on a car with it. After her trip to space, she started up Swear Jar II, and drops ten grand in it to compensate for everything she said while in space. Swear Jar II was started within about two weeks (personal time) of starting her job with ARCHON, so she may not have made the adjustment yet from "$5 per tirade" (being cheaper for Sydney than "$1 per word"; she had still sometimes ran low on money per month). Again, Swear Jar II is inaugurated... with $10,000.
  • Sweat Drop:
    • Rather common for Sydney, along with other exaggerated anime effects.
    • A notable case for "Budget Halo", who acquires one, then three on the on the back of her head, when she realizes that her "Buster Buddies™" beams are doing absolutely nothing to Maxima, except drawing her attention.
    • Another triple when Brüt finds himself threatened with a high-caliber Groin Attack from Maxima.
  • Sweeping Laser Explosion: Sydney demonstrates a move she calls "The Robotech" by slicing a huge fleet of alien fighter ships with a laser, which then explode in unison the next panel.
  • Sympathy for the Devil: Even Maxima's expression softens a bit for Sciona when they see the remains of her civilization's city.
  • Tailor-Made Prison:
    • Since there's no such thing as a universal superpower dampener, every supervillain needs to be kept in a cell designed to neutralize or counteract their specific powers. Two examples are shown: a portal-based teleporter being kept in a pressurized cell, such that creating a portal and stepping through would give the bends, and a super (or possibly a demon) who derives power from violence being pacified with marijuana-laced air in his cell, and a steady supply of Doritos and Kirby cartoons.
    • It's later shown that there's one for Sydney, though it's actually used because she's possessed and not entirely in control of her body. The obvious implication is that there's one for every super in ARCHON.
  • Takes Ten to Hold: This is the conclusion of the fight against Vehemence, thanks to Sydney's planning. Since the villain gains power from violence, they instead pile up on him and maintain his head under water so he'd waste energy on staying alive rather than fighting. But with his level of power, it takes all the superheroes, some with extreme Super-Strength or density control, along with energy absorption to deal with his electric shocks, to actually keep him down.
  • Take That!:
  • Taking the Fight Outside: Sciona and Vale start shoving each other. Deus shoos them outside before they can scuff up his detailed marble.
  • Talking Is a Free Action:
  • Tastes Like Purple: According to Parfait, the potion that binds up tantric energy "tasted like abstinence." Needless to say, this is extremely unpleasant for a succubus.
  • Technology Levels: The basic division is between pre- and post-FTL civilizations, but there's a third category that's extremely advanced but mostly keep to themselves. Sydney's orbs might be the first real evidence of a fourth, even more advanced, "Nth" tier civilization.
  • Teeth Flying:
    • Stalwart getting the first punch on Vehemence results in a tooth flying. Vehemence is far from being at full power yet, though, and he later regenerates the tooth.
    • Hench Wench trying to grab Maxima from behind results in a reverse headbutt that costs her a tooth from both her upper and lower jaws.
  • Tempting Fate: Deliberately invoked for a positive result.
  • There Are No Therapists: Averted, as Sydney's experiences off-world wind up giving her nightmares, and Peggy immediately offers (and Sydney accepts) the services of a counselor to help her through it.
  • This Explains So Much: When Ingsol asks if Sydney has a "stupidity aura" or something, Maxima briefly bursts out laughing before regaining composure and saying no, but it would explain a lot.
  • This Is Reality: Sydney points out that a mutation of a single gene, while a good explanation for a comic, can't really account for everything with superpowers.
  • Three-Point Landing: In a superheroes comic? What are the chances?
  • Through the Ceiling, Stealthily: In "Path Finding", Sydney sneaks her hologram form inside an underground room by moving its ball-of-light form through a grate on its ceiling.
  • Time-Travel Tense Trouble: Sydney and Krona have a bit of trouble after the latter's "checkpoint" has activated.
    Krona: But first you need to tell us what you experienced. As the person who triggered the checkpoint, you're the only one who remembers what happened.
    Or... will have happened?
    Sydney: Would have happened.
    Krona: Will would happen.
    Sydney: Might happen?
  • Toilet Humor:
  • Tongue Trauma: Narrowly averted when Sydney grabs a robber by the tongue and slams him to the ground. It's averted because the "robber" is another super-powered being in disguise. His power just happens to be extreme stretchiness.
  • Too Much Information: Name-dropped by Sydney when Dabbler's openly discussing her "activities" last night. Harem, on the other hand, thinks there's not enough information.
  • Too Spicy for Yog-Sothoth: Sydney creates a literal example when possessed by Lapha. She orders a dish so spicy she's one of the very few people who likes it, and while she can tolerate the heat, Lapha can't, and is so overwhelmed by the burn that she vacates Sydney's body rather than try to build a tolerance or keep Sydney from eating any more of it.
  • The Tooth Hurts: Math kicks a knife into a bad guy's mouth, where it gets lodged between his teeth and draws blood. The guys freaks out for a couple of seconds until Math knocks him out and yanks the knife out.
  • Tractor Beam: On the Alari Homeworld, one of the kaijus Sydney is fighting emits a beam from its unique eye that drag her into their midst despite her flight and shield orbs being active. Naturally, Sydney calls the trope by name.
    Sydney: A tractor beam! You dirty cheaters!
  • Tradesnark™: Hex's "Buster Buddies" are always appended to a "™" inside her speech bubbles, and also in her summary outside the comic.
  • Training the Gift of Magic: The concepts behind this trope are strongly implied. Zeph, a highly experienced scholar/adventurer, knows a lot about the occult, but apparently has to leave actual spell-casting to Gwen, who freely admits to being a bit of a novice — even when it's a matter of life and death. Evidently, she has a gift that he lacks. She's described as basically self-taught, but she had to acquire the right reference books to accomplish this.
  • Tricked into Escaping: Maxima purposefully lets Cooter escape so they can track him via a spell of Dabbler's and find his boss.
  • Troll:
    • Dabbler, Harem, and Math all have their moments, but the king is whoever put this sign up. (Link may be considered mildly NSFW.)
    • Deus also indulges for his own amusement, notably with Maxima, purposefully acting as if she was asking about one item he had when he knew she meant another.
    • A few of the ARCHON ladies, knowing Math is eavesdropping outside their locked training session, deliberately say things to get him agitated while they watch via camera.
  • [Trope Name]: Sydney and Dabbler play with a variant of this here where they anticipate each other's next remarks, but in the form of "Something" followed by a general description. It goes South when they do it to Max (and the page title is "Something About Interrupting a Colonel").
  • Twin Threesome Fantasy:

    Tropes U – Z 

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