davebarrack
patreon
Grrl Power #880 - Patreon 2x
🕑 Added 2020-10-01 10:01:04 +0000 UTCThanks so much for your support!
To view the full-size version, left-click the image once, then right-click and open in a new tab/view. At least that seems to work for some people.
By "Variable," Cora of course means "That depends on what I'm shooting and where I hit them." I suppose that applies to most non-AOE weapons, really.
My first draft had some Predator looking scrawl in panel 5 there, but I thought that wasn't particularly helpful, so it's been translated for your convenience.
So, the "stasis" gun doesn't stop time, because if you reference your technobabble lookup table, it's too power inefficient to do so. It's like accelerating mass to light speed without cheating with spacial compression or just straight up warp nonsense. Basically, slowing time to 10% takes 100 energoid-hours, slowing it to 9% takes 200 energoid-hours, slowing it t0 8% takes 400 e/h, 5% takes 3,200 e/h, etc.
At least, that's how the gun works. The stasis pod is more efficient because it's maintaining a time slow field inside layers of other fields, and those usually have much larger power cells than a rifle. They can put 10 fields that each slow time by 15%, which is far more power efficient.
Basically what's happening here is the gun is trying to keep Maxima at something like 2 or 3% speed, but as she realized something is wrong, and is using super speed to compensate, the gun is like "I don't know what's happening here, so I'm going to double fist your power cell to attempt to keep things stable. Please be alarmed if your gun starts getting really hot."
"Torchy" is probably a racial slur, but a fairly mild one. Whatever Torchy is, her race definitely has some demon or devil in their ancestry, neither one is usually ever described as a snowflake. If you call a Marileth a six-armed snake-butt, their first instinct isn't to go cry about it on Space Twitter. Succubi have certainly heard their share of slurs. On top of all the usual female derogations, they get stuff like "Horned Hussy" or "Homewrecker on hooves." At least the ones that actually have horns and hooves, that is. Even without their glamors, succubi have morphologically and chromatically enjoyed the spice of life. No, not Melange. Variety. Most have horns. Some have hooves, some do not. Some have that little tail with the spade thing on the end. That has to get caught on stuff. Walking through the woods with a spade tail is probably like pulling a DVI cable out of a big tangle of wires. You know, the ones with the big screw things on the side that get caught on everything? Man, I'm glad we're moving past stupid cable connectors. USB C fo lyfe!
Oh shoot, I forgot to draw Torchy's wrist forcefield thingy.
Comments
Kevin Wright
I just want to note that I love the derail about demon tails in the commentary.
Sam Turner
Yep, I think you are right.
John Chidester
My guess is that this turn is Max noticing that something's wrong in dilated time and turning to see if it's a threat she needs to "Max out" for or not.
Michael Altarriba
She's at 60% power, starting from a full charge, after what was probably a couple of minutes at most... and yeah, the other heavy hitters haven't even entered the fray yet. "Dibs on the corpse", indeed...
Sean Patrick Fannon
I just want to reiterate that I -really- appreciate your extraordinary knowledge of sci-fi science and your efforts to maintain internal consistency with it. I am always impressed with your descriptions of how the tech works!
Jack Ponder
They probably wanna thank Cora and Dabbler for preventing Maxima from being taken onto their ship where, in the depths of space, she’d probably just kill and/or maim all of them before hijacking their ride to get back home. Really a kindness when you think of it like that.
Dave Barrack
Probably? I just thought it looked cool, but I haven't figured out what it is or does. Though I think it'd be funny if someone blindfolded on of them and had to figure out how to put a blindfold over an etheral flame as well.
Erin Palette
So the flame thing on her head... is it just a stylistic choice that it mirrors her eye size and pupil direction? Or is it literally a third mystical eye that she can see with?
Jared Juetten
"Oh shoot, I forgot to draw..." That's my favorite part about you, Dave. I almost never notice these small details. But for others it's like a free "spot the difference!" game in every comic. :D Cheers man!
Jared Juetten
Asking the real questions here. :D
StLOrca
What’s funny is Maxima seems more annoyed than pissed off right now. (Of course, a pissed-off Maxima would be the *last* thing you would ever see, anyway; it would be like a small nuke going off every time she hit you.)
Greg Morrow
Max is fast. Not quite pre-Crisis Barry Allen fast, but a time-dilation field just isn't slow enough to stop her. Nice bit.
Bowoodstock
Now my question; If Maxima wanted to really bust out of that field, how difficult would it be? We know that she's able to focus her power into almost immeasurable levels, at the expense of others. Is she keeping some in reserve, or is this "slow turn" her maxing out speed?
FeyOne
And it is at that precise moment that the head mercenary realized that they were in way, WAY, over their head.
Noise
The fun part is when they find out that the Archon people they're currently fighting aren't the only heavy hitters at that particular location...
Taros05
It was at this point that she knew: They fucked up.
Aclys
the question is... what does the world look like to maxima as she super speed-turns like that? Is there a time-doppler effect going on or does her innate superspeed power help compensate for the wierdness as time-flows get extra-relative around her person?
Stan
Perhaps no Torchy survives first contact! I love the slow turn and am curious as what Max's reaction is going to be and how painful for others.
Justaguy
Dabbler: "The Spice of Life must flow!" *Looks at Achilles* "Hmm speaking of flowing..."
Michael Obert
Torchy's pants peed? Achieved.
CyberSkull
I love Maxima look in he corner of her eye.
CyberSkull
Stasis fields don't work very well on people who can move at super speeds.
