Grrl Power

One of Sydney’s unofficial powers is the ability to turn on a dime, emotionally speaking. She has big reactions and big swings. One might almost describe her as manic. Not manic depressive. Just manic. Not sure if that’s a thing, but it’s Syndey’s thing. I read something like 230 novels last year, (during my morning […]

I thought it would be fun doing a reverse harem setup on Cora’s ship. I mean, why not? Being friends with Dabbler has obviously rubbed off on her. I tried to come up with some varied body and face types for her crew, but one guy is a bit more muscular than the others, and […]

Fracture Station limits what cargo someone can load onto their ship, based on the ship’s home world technology and flight plan, but obviously that doesn’t stop people from flying wherever they like once they take off. The station’s policy is to maintain the technological hierarchical status quo, but ultimately, they don’t really care what you […]

I hadn’t quite planned on Cora’s hard light projector being able to extend that far, because on top of giving her fairly broad disguise and shapeshifting powers, (on top of being a bit of a combat monster already), having an 18′ range on hard light constructs kind of turns her into a mini color accurate […]

So when I thought of Cora, like, I don’t know, 20 years ago, she had cybernetic limbs. She had them up until a few months before I put her in the comic, when I came up with the idea to replace her cybernetics with the hard light stuff. It seemed cool and more futuristic (and […]

Okay, so obviously the site is broken at the moment. I tried to update the page to be HTTPS compliant and for some reason that jacked up the CSS, sooooo, yeah. I’m working on it. Part of trying to fix it involved rolling back the database a bit which might have nixed a few hours […]

See, the Hack Buddy incident started off as Cora actually wanting to be able dance better, but due to a series of humorous misunderstandings, the controller wound up in the wrong hands, and there was a big long line to dance with Cora, and everyone had to take a number like in a deli. No […]

See, the Hack Buddy incident started off as Cora actually wanting to be able dance better, but due to a series of humorous misunderstandings, the controller wound up in the wrong hands, and there was a big long line to dance with Cora, and everyone had to take a number like in a deli. No … Continue reading Grrl Power #697 – Space high

So presumably what happened during the fight was Sydney quickly put up her shield, but before she could figure out her next move, Cora shot one of the muggers with her Flay Thrower. Yeah, you read that right. Then Sydney spent the next thirty seconds trying to figure out if her bubble had a windshield […]

So presumably what happened during the fight was Sydney quickly put up her shield, but before she could figure out her next move, Cora shot one of the muggers with her Flay Thrower. Yeah, you read that right. Then Sydney spent the next thirty seconds trying to figure out if her bubble had a windshield … Continue reading Grrl Power #696 – She’s specular, modular, interactive-odular

Merry Christmas Eve to those of you celebrating the holiday. Merry “you probably have at least part of the week off anyway” to those of you who don’t. And Merry double overtime to those of you in category 3. I think the idea that the guy is sent to mine something insubstantial is funnier than […]

Merry Christmas Eve to those of you celebrating the holiday. Merry “you probably have at least part of the week off anyway” to those of you who don’t. And Merry double overtime to those of you in category 3. I think the idea that the guy is sent to mine something insubstantial is funnier than … Continue reading Grrl Power #695 – Ordnance, schmordnance

Sydney’s comment at the beginning of this page is mostly just me recognizing that this conversation has taken place across a number of backgrounds, and it sort of looks like they’ve walked halfway across a city by now. I haven’t decided if Cora is running an errand on the way back to her ship or […]

Sydney’s comment at the beginning of this page is mostly just me recognizing that this conversation has taken place across a number of backgrounds, and it sort of looks like they’ve walked halfway across a city by now. I haven’t decided if Cora is running an errand on the way back to her ship or … Continue reading Grrl Power #694 – Threat underwhelming

Sydney is one of those heroes who will probably wind up saving the world on the reg, but there is a price to be paid among the inhabitants. In the form of general collateral damage and surviving groan inducing puns. Do starships have horns? Like, if they’re in the atmosphere, do they have some kind […]

Sydney is one of those heroes who will probably wind up saving the world on the reg, but there is a price to be paid among the inhabitants. In the form of general collateral damage and surviving groan inducing puns. Do starships have horns? Like, if they’re in the atmosphere, do they have some kind … Continue reading Grrl Power #693 – Someone forgot to file a flight plan

I wanted that final panel to look like a soft-R-rated… basically an orgy, but work safe, cause it’s not that kind of a comic. As usual, my imagination far exceeded the time needed to draw such a thing, so I started adding confetti and balloons in the background to make it look a little crazier. […]

I wanted that final panel to look like a soft-R-rated… basically an orgy, but work safe, cause it’s not that kind of a comic. As usual, my imagination far exceeded the time needed to draw such a thing, so I started adding confetti and balloons in the background to make it look a little crazier. … Continue reading Grrl Power #692 – Common ground

Well that’s gratitude for ya. But it’s also… kind of unsurprising really. Also, if you’re at a giant space airport, you gotta pick up some souvenirs, right? It would be embarrassing to return home from your lost in space journey without knickknacks for the team. Sydney does make a good point about not really needing […]

Well that’s gratitude for ya. But it’s also… kind of unsurprising really. Also, if you’re at a giant space airport, you gotta pick up some souvenirs, right? It would be embarrassing to return home from your lost in space journey without knickknacks for the team. Sydney does make a good point about not really needing … Continue reading Grrl Power #691 – The full Sydney

I hope that top panel is legible. I didn’t want to try and typeset all that text so I hand wrote it. While my handwriting is kind of neat… not like, 18th century calligrapher neat, granted, but usually it’s pretty legible – though some of the lettering size is a little inconsistent. I’ll make the […]

I hope that top panel is legible. I didn’t want to try and typeset all that text so I hand wrote it. While my handwriting is kind of neat… not like, 18th century calligrapher neat, granted, but usually it’s pretty legible – though some of the lettering size is a little inconsistent. I’ll make the … Continue reading Grrl Power #690 – Götterdämmermcguffins

Sydney obviously already knew that her orbs were high level loot, but now it’s confirmed she has a matched set of God-Tier artifacts. Or maybe they’re… Ragnarok Tier? But as seen on this page, that can cause some problems for her in the right environments. Let’s be honest, it’s a “my suitcase full of money […]

Obviously I skipped over Sydney’s immediate reaction, which could have gone down any number of ways. She didn’t flail and knock an alien in the nose with her elbow or anything. She probably just did the slow turn, then Cora gave her the short version of who she is… and then Sydney sheepishly mentioned that […]

My favorite thing about this page is that we break into this conversation midstream, so you need to realize it took Sydney that much longer to realize the other girl was speaking English. I don’t know what she is. Demoness? Tiefling-adjacent? Whatever. Obviously Gray-gal there suggested Sydney have some more of that supposedly dangerous-to-human spicy […]

“Nursing Sacks” is probably the least flattering thing to call breasts, but they would be pretty weird to an alien species that came from a planet where nothing evolved mammary glands or fed its offspring from its own body. Happy Thanksgiving to those of you who are into that sort of thing. For everyone else, […]

If Sydney interpreted the symbol and chef correctly, “dangerously spicy” could mean most humans fall off the stool and start licking the ground to get the burning to stop, or it could actually mean they almost immediately need medical attention after ingestion. It’s probably not fatal, or it would have the downward red triangle next […]

Actually, Sydney’s wrong. The next stall over is an aromatherapy booth that sells scented candles for races with similar miasmic preferences to races like Neo-Otyugh. Scents include “Stinking Cloud,” “Boiled Durain,” “August Whale Corpse,” “Pickled Skunk Anus,” “Twelve Year Old Boy That Hasn’t Figured Out Deodorant is an Absolute Necessity – Times 1,000,” “Corpse in […]

This is sort of an odd page admittedly, as Sydney sort of “Raiders” it, as in she has no impact on what’s happening. Just wanders by and observes. I wanted to have at least one reverse shot from Sydney’s POV showing Alari soldiers directing people or showing something slightly structured going on, but I wrote […]

Not a ton to say about this page, other than it’s a little weird that it looks like Sydney could just be walking through an alley in New York and not on a pulsar Dyson warpgate station. I mean, you can’t see the sky all the time. Admittedly I’m a little disappointed with my alien […]

This is one of my favorite pages in a while, as if features Sydney at peak Sydney. You have to forgive her for forgetting to lead with English, but she got excited about breaking out her vast repertoire of fictional alien greetings. As a first contact protocol, shotgunning a bunch of different languages probably isn’t […]

Not a whole lot to talk about on this page. Mostly it’s to show Deus and Vale missing Sydney by less than a block. Contrary to popular theories, Deus actually has no idea she’s there. So I spent most of the page throwing in some cameos and practicing backgrounds. I know they don’t look like […]

I’ve been trying to figure out what someone from a relatively low tech civilization could offer as currency to a higher tech one. I’m sure whole papers (or at least blog posts) have been written about this topic, but there’s only a few things I can think of, and some are dependent on the tech […]

This thing looks a lot more like a Stargate than I’d intended. I mean, it’s a circle with some crap attached to it, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Still, I hadn’t finalized the dialog for this page until after I had all the pencils done, so I thought I would preempt the comparisons […]

Sydney has a long road to travel before she starts acting like a wealthy person. Not that any amount of paper money from a world without an intergalactic trade agreement would be worth anything there, but with what Archon pays her, she should probably keep at least a grand on her in cash. I imagine […]

I’ve had the idea of this station in my head for a long time. Now that I’ve drawn it I realize it looks more than a little bit like Apokolips, but the portals on Fracture Station aren’t… well, I’m not sure what the big fire pits are for on Apokolips, but on Fracture Station, they’re […]

When I started to draw the screen with the planet and the diagram of the orbiting probes, I was trying to decide the minimal number of probes that would let you get a clean scan. A tetrahedron (a D4) might work, but you’d need the probes to be really far away from the planet in […]

Psyche! I bet you thought that would be Sydney coming outta that wormhole, didn’t you? Ag. So many double sized pages. Hand. Clawlike… So this is Cora, a character I haven’t drawn for a very long time, probably since before I started the comic. She wasn’t a blue alien the last time. Actually a fair […]

I’m not sure Sydney would be quite thoughtful enough to notice that the first icon in the travel log is glitchy and weird. Well, she’d notice, but ascribing potential life and death significance to the press of a button is probably a step further than her mind might take her on a regular day. That’s […]

On the plus side, Sydney does have her phone on her and it probably has a graphing calculator app. Not a 4 Dimensional Space Calculus one though. If I was Sydney, I would have put that second point into either the shield and topped that out, or immediately put a second point into the warp […]

Hopefully that blue shit from the downed orbital defense platforms isn’t wildly radioactive cause it’s scattered all over that… mountainous plain? I don’t know what I drew there. Someone mentioned it in the comments, but the orbs won’t go into upgrade mode if they’re in use, so she doesn’t have to worry about them flipping […]

Sydney’s speed upgrade was significant. She didn’t go from mach 4 to 5. I’ll leave the actual number for a fun reveal later when she challenges Maxima to a race or something. Okay, it’s mach 16. I didn’t want to wait to tell you. She went from 4 to 16. It’s really fucking fast. Honestly […]

That was a terrible pun, but Sydney would feel worse if she left a potential one-liner hanging. At some point, Sydney’s going to realize how narrowly she’s escaped death and have a real freak out. Right now she’s at peak adrenaline. Not quite ‘I almost just got shot in a bank’ adrenaline, but ‘I narrowly […]

Weirdly, Sydney’s flight orb doesn’t have nearly as much torque as you’d expect considering how fast she can go. That isn’t to say it doesn’t have a ton of juice, but Cyclops’s eyebeam there is used for paralyzing massive starships and stuff like that. Cyclops actually has 5 eyes, but the one big one kind […]

Yeah, I know, it’s only a 3 panel comic, but I hadn’t planned on doing two doubles in a row. I will say page 666 was one of my favorite in a while, but that’s the sort of stuff I always wanted the comic to focus on. But you know, fights happen in superhero comics. […]

I hadn’t planned on cutting away from the battle again, but someone pointed out that page 666 was coming up, and I knew I had to do something featuring Dabbler. (Even though the actual number of the beast is 616 but someone translating something one day decided 666 was punchier and just changed it. It’s […]

Sydney hasn’t really ever stopped to think about it, but her shield probably has some sort of “remain calm and ___ on” feature, because she’s gone from a pretty typical if more aggravating than usual nerd girl who was in no way an adrenaline junkie to having stuff try and kill her a whole bunch […]

I don’t know what Sydney is hoping to accomplish with suggesting that thing is under arrest. I mean it’s obviously just a suggestion. There’s no indication the thing even understand English, and even if it decided to surrender or whatever the next step would be, her whole goal is to beat the hit dice out […]

I wasn’t sure what to have Vale watching there on the screen for a while, I went back and forth between something metal like the club scene from Blade 2 or Hellraiser, but that felt a little predictable. Of course, having her watching a cutesy cartoon is nearly as predictable as it’s a straight reversal […]

These things, whatever Sydney is fighting, apparently don’t fight a lot of enemies that can teleport. Or at least they’ve decided their shield technology is really good against everything but teleportation, and making it work against teleporters would compromise it in other ways that are unacceptable for 98% of their other conflicts. If you follow […]