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Grrl Power #1128 - Get the heck out of dodging
🕑 Added 2023-02-16 11:00:04 +0000 UTCThank you for the support! You guys are awesome!
I thought about attributing Super Massive/Suck Hole's speed to actual gravitational time dilation, but he'd need to be putting out a lot of gravity to for it to register as super speed. Like, if you're standing or sitting, relativity is at work, but the difference in the height of your head would be like 1/1x10^36 of a second. Someone who somehow lived on the peak of Mt. Everest would, over their lifetime, accrue a few nanoseconds over their twin brother who was born at the exact same second due to some weird dual C-Section incident and who lived on the bank of the Dead Sea all their lives. GPS satellites have to correct for relativity due to their speed, but also due to the fact that they orbit at an altitude of 20K kilometers, so they're far less affected by Earth's gravity than the average GPS receiver usually is. Still, it's only 7 microseconds per day.
So in order for Super Hole to achieve noticeable super speed? Well, I did some googling and have no idea if this is right, so feel free to offer corrections, but one source says that you'd need 520 million gravities to halve the passage of time. Double speed definitely qualifies as super speed, but as Maxima says, her default is "many times faster than human," so if Suck Massive is faster than her, then the amount of gravity he'd be able to produce could basically kill anything and everyone.
Also, gravity falls off at inverse square, so the amount of gravity and time dilation those around him would experience would change massively if they moved even a few feet closer or further away. That's the real reason things like black holes are dangerous, because you can get close enough to them that the gravity leaps up to an unmanageable level. Yes, also the whole event horizon thing, but I'm just talking about gravity here. For instance, if you were standing on the surface of the sun (which is just a maelstrom of exploding plasma, I realize the sun doesn't have a solid surface - at least, not on the "surface") and it suddenly became a black hole, the amount of gravity pulling on you wouldn't change. In fact none of the orbits of anything in the solar system would change.
Okay, yes, there'd probable be some violent event as the sun somehow "became" a black hole. I mean if a Q came along and did a flashy snap solar swap out. The difference would be that now you could get much closer to the source of that gravity. Instead of being stuck at 695,ooo kilometers from the center of the sun, you could get within 1.25 km of that gravity source. Now think about that inverse square law and you'll see why black holes are scary as fuck.
All of this is to say, Super Massive has impressive gravity powers, and moderate super speed, not Class-5,000 gravity powers (in Marvel RPG terms). Or to put it in JRPG terms, S++++++++++++++ class.
Now, about that final panel. One, yes, I just got through saying that his gravity powers, while impressive, are not a star-system-level threat, and yet he's bending energy beams around him. I don't know what to tell you, it's a power stunt. Two, he himself should be distorted and look like a ripple in a pond because how is he bending the energy beam around him but not the light in the room? Well, Maxima isn't shooting a laser, she fires particle beams of some sort. I don't know what sort, maybe it's mesons, top quarks, W bosons, maybe it's even a stream of protons. The point is, they have a lot more mass than photons, which have literally none, so they're easier for him to affect.
Comments
eddi_TBH
Her current distribution makes her nearly invulnerable to strikes but she can't hit back fast or hard enough. A redistribution would definitely leave Max open and there's no telling if her speed would help long enough.
Eric Loken
This reminds me of the mini black holes the bad guy aliens used to both propel and defend their fighters in that really awful Star Wars EU thing from years back. Pretty sure they wouldn't have worked as they were depicted in the books either. Particle beams are affected by the Earths gravity, but no like that. That is a rather massive curve in a very small area, which - if gravity - would be getting back to being super massive, plus it wouldn't curve back after going around him, it would curve away and keep going in that direction. So yes, this would have to be a completely separate power. And as someone else pointed out, a bad guy with this level of gravity powers is dangerous to the planet, and would be absolutely impossible to contain. They will have no choice but to kill him, unless Sydney shows up to portal him to a far away planet - which as it won't have food would be a death sentence anyway.
