Grrl Power

Don’t forget that Varia has that thick Bostonian accent. It’s just that she’s not saying anything particularly afflicted by it on this page. I suppose I could have had her say “Can I ahr um, help you?” she doesn’t talk like JFK. It’s weird, panel 1’s POV shot seems really gratuitous, and it kind of […]

Maxima doesn’t like words like slut and whore because they’re less descriptive than they are judgmental. Also she hates there’s nothing equivalent for men. “If you ever need proof of the non-egalitarian nature of society…” she starts as everyone eyes the exit. She’s not a fan of slut shaming even if some women act in […]

English has the word “twice” and even the somewhat archaic “thrice” but there’s no words beyond that. Fource? Frice? uh… Sice? It’s odd having a sequence that caps out at three. Apparently this elite military squad’s schedule includes a 1 pm break for sunning. It’s kind of ridiculous I know, but given their public relations […]

So we jump from the curiously gloomy comic shop (one day when I magically have all the time, I may brighten up that page a bit) to the thankfully better lit Archon lounge, featuring Dabbler’s latest Sexual Detritus. Which would be a good name for a band I guess. So… I guess I didn’t quite […]

Sydney probably shouldn’t be telling anyone outside of the team about the visit with The Council, but the only information she’s given the two of them was that the team was doing something a few nights ago, (and everyone already knew they were having dinner at some place in New York) and a female bad […]

You know, I think Doctor Chuckles may be misrepresenting their purpose there to Coot. Also, for as paranoid a person as Coot most likely is, his paranoidar seems to be a little on the fritz here. I was trying to come up with the least offensive offensive term for Coot in panel 4. I didn’t […]

I wanted to quickly establish that Cooter is fundamentally dislikable, and the easiest way to do that is to hit up those stereotypes, but I have to admit, he’s kind of fun to write. Maybe I should write more jerks. Grrl Power tends to lack a lot of interpersonal antagonism among the main characters certainly. […]

Cthillia’s position is sound (yes, this same Cthillia. Like it’s such a common name.) but given the company she keeps, who knows? Probably 10% of the council is immortal, and another 20-30% has a considerably longer lifespan than humans. This is a bit of an odd page for this comic, only 4 panels and no wall […]

I don’t think immortality would make someone immune to boredom or impatience. You’s still have to sit through the same amount of intervening time, and regardless of what percentage of your lifespan that interval takes, assuming your brain functions at the same clock speed as a mortal, the fact that you might outlive your enemies doesn’t […]

“On death, eject control cortex; leave behind sleeping cat-like floppy body” I’m not sure what the Super Husk’s directives were exactly. Probably something like “buy me time to escape.” But after that, who knows what its programming defaulted to. It does seem to have some self preservation instincts though. It’s been a while since I’ve […]

Careful Sydney, some of those terms might be racist? Anyway, clearly she’s a drow. Or… maybe a dark elf… Actually what’s the difference? I think dark elf is maybe a non D&D version of a drow? Actually, hopefully she’s not a drow because most of them are buttholes. The main characters of most books about […]

It would be more accurate to describe Sydney as just Manic as opposed to Manic Depressive, but she does have moments of… self awareness? They never last though. One of the advantages of a short attention span. Maxima is not a good agony arm. It’s not that she doesn’t empathize with people have been through […]

It only took 2 days for Harem to get Sydney’s Loony Tunes reference. Luckily Sydney seems to have locked up for a moment, so maybe they’ll reach parity at some point. For Heatwave, absorbing heat is fine, as long as it’s (her words) “hot.” But getting things below room temperature is where it starts getting difficult […]

Sydney, don’t forget that Super women are like 8-12 inches taller than you on average. Of course, she’s not entirely sure how professional porn starlets… you know, work with the equipment they do. Accommodation wise. It’s the same way you get to Broadway, Sydney. Practice. I’m not really sure how it works for vampires that […]

I guess this is flirting, but it’s hard to tell if they’re actually being a little insecure or just circuitous since it can’t happen while she’s his CO. In any case, good job Anvil? Amaranthine means unfading, ceaseless, or everlasting, but can also mean purpleish, so I’ve decided that Dabbler will henceforth refer to purple […]

I haven’t shown nearly as much of this as I’d have liked in the comic, but Anvil and Max are pretty good friends, and Anvil is concerned that Max hasn’t been on a date in a while. ( Or under a date in a while.) Not that dating her subordinate is really an option, but […]

Hee hee, we do have fun here, don’t we? Yes, as long time readers know, Max’s invulnerability does extend over her clothes in the form of a near skintight force field. Obviously it doesn’t convey nearly the same protection as her intra-cellular field, which means her clothes can get damaged without getting grievously injured herself, […]

Maxima, as you might imagine, is quite strong willed, so even if the eyepiece wasn’t cracked, it’s anyone’s guess as to whether the Super Husk could have stunned her into sitting still for a withdrawal. There is at least one vampire who learned the hard way that unsuccessfully trying to mesmerize Max is such a bad […]

Maxima can be a little arrogant, but this stems from living in a world where 95% of the time she can stomp anyone who fronts. Or… fronts her? Fronts to her? I don’t think that term has been relevant for about 20 years. She can beat up jerks. This is true with supers and it’s […]

Super Hiro’s handsomeness is constrained entirely by my ability to draw handsome guys, so just pretend he’s super handsome if I didn’t quite hit the mark. Also I’m not sure how Japanese he looks, though he is supposed to lean rugged, which isn’t something you usually associate with Asian faces so much. Not that there […]

Anvil executing her Super/Ultra/S-Rank/Q move. Get someone strong to use her as a punching bag till she’s brimming with energy, then dump it all into on hit. Extra flair points for incorporating that into a sweet wrestling move. Guaranteed to hit harder than a sidewinder. I really wanted to make this page and the prior […]

I was going to call this page “Let’s get ready to rubble” but I already used that one. Still, feels appropriate here with the suplex and all. Anvil hasn’t gotten nearly the screen time I had envisioned when I started the comic, so I haven’t shown her really doing a whole lot of cool stuff […]

When you have a team full of people that can do what they did to that poor tank, equipping the Osprey with rockets was probably a difficult line item expense to justify, but Max is all about diversity. Still, it doesn’t cost the team $400K when Max levels a secret evil layer or Heatwave melts […]

The April vote incentive is posted. It’s obviously a work in progress. It was going to be the Valentines Day picture, with the dirty version showing select ladies in between bar choices, but as I was draw it, it didn’t make sense that they’d be posting like that without bras on. Not that many of […]

Well, she is definitely holding its attention. Sydney could have probably flown away before he flipped the side of the building on her, but she has supreme confidence in her shield, and as we know, Sydney is easily distracted by spectacle. Like buildings collapsing on her or someone jangling their keys. That shape the Super […]

Well shoot, I wrote this post then somehow refreshed the page before I uploaded it. :P Well, here is the slightly less coherent 3am version. Edit: It turns out CTRL+R reloads a page in Chrome (at least). I guess I hit that instead of SHIFT+R when I went to type the page title. This Super Husk […]

Sydney hasn’t forgotten about Pixel, but I can only fit so much dialog on one page and it was getting a little crowded already. Harem’s checking on her in case you’re wondering. I’m not sure how blood helps when making golems or other miscellaneous automata. I know in a lot of stories the blood is […]

When Sydney gets that branch of the skilltree totally filled out, the PPO’s selective fire switch is going to have a lot of settings. Rapid fire, Cutting Beam, probably a stun Phaser, maybe a land mine or proximity bomb? Some sort of targeting laser slash gravity beam that pulls asteroids down on your victim? I’m […]

The title to this page is a joke, but how bizarre would it be if Sydney started shooting cupcakes out of the PPO? It might tell her something about the origin of the orbs though. She’d be popular with bachelorette parties. And at… well, lots of places. I mean, who doesn’t like cupcakes? Ooh, especially if […]

Action pages don’t usually give me a whole lot to comment on. It’s mostly a lot of Swoosh, Wham… and whoops I forgot the sound effects on the first two panels. It’s just… Swoosh and Wham. I’d love to draw crazy action scenes like Onepunch Man, or Black God (even if it relies a little […]

So a few things to cover right off. Pixel’s claws actually project a cutting laser blade (or several, as you can see) and aren’t limited to however long her claws actually are, which look to be like, I dunno, 3/4 of an inch? The laser blade doesn’t go out too far. Like a foot. She […]

Obviously this turn of events further calls into question Krona’s whole checkpoint system. Did Sciona remember what happened, was she not even included in the loop? Did Harem’s presence throw the whole thing into disarray? Is the only thing keeping Krona from being absurdly powerful shoddy programming chops? Maybe she wanted to be a wedding […]

Krona may have root access, but it seems someone else has machine level access. So yeah, Krona may have some… well, not insight, really, but she might help unlock a piece of the orbs’ puzzle. As intricate as that big panel is, it’s about 1/10th of what I had pictured when I started it. I […]

So this page took a bit longer than usual to draw as you might guess. In fact it’s the reason I wasn’t able to get a piece finished for the Valentine’s Day Sex Drive thing – the yearly nudie pinup I do. Don’t worry I’ll still try and get that done at some point this […]

Krona’s problem is that she can’t google “time loop” and see how other reality hackers have approached it. There’s no GitHub for what she does. Amusingly, there are a lot of stories of early games back in the day turning out how they did because the programmers just didn’t know what how to do what […]

This page doesn’t actually explain a whole lot. It was supposed to initially, but Sydney kind of got away from me here. She’s a menace to both sides of the 4th wall. I’m not sure Sydney has considered what’s involved in actually implementing her checkpoint ‘sploit. It would involve either dying a lot or at least […]

I had this page totally written and was laying out the panels before I started thinking about how the checkpoint would affect Harem and realized I needed to rewrite a bunch of stuff suddenly since… well, you’ll see. So this page became two, which wasn’t too bad because I think the original version of this page […]

I telegraphed the checkpoint a little bit, so some of you saw this coming. I had considered obfuscating what Krona was doing a bit more, but decided against trying to be intentionally misleading. So for anyone who guessed it, collect your no-prizes on the table in the corner next to the nacho cheese fountain. I […]

I asked around online for some fan art to celebrate page 500, and here’s what I got so far! Hopefully more will be coming. If so I’ll add them here. Anvil by Dan Butcher of the superhero webcomic Vanguard. Dabbler by Shane Rivett of Heroes of the World and Beyond And this one was something I […]

Sydney’s rather collected attitude here surprised even me. When I sat down to write this page, I’d intended for her to be a lot more scared. Even though she knows less about Sciona than you guys do at this point, she just saw her cuddly jaguar buddy hanging ten in the corner, so she she should […]

This is the power Sydney bought the first time the skill grid came up. Yes, sometimes I plan stuff waaaaaay in advance. Sometimes I’m like “heh heh, that’s a funny joke, I should totally edit this page I’ve already started drawing.” Mostly there’s more planning. Mostly. This is definitely an inopportune time for Sydney to […]

Obviously trying to attract the attention of your teammate might also attract the attention of anything else that can hear, but as Holo-Halo, Sydney is… well, I would say especially brash, but that’s a minor distinction in her case. Less risk averse I guess. The funny thing is, projected Sydney can’t touch anything, but Sydney […]

For someone who has superpowers, and relatively new powers at that, Sydney doesn’t use them a whole lot. Sure she’s gone flying a few times and sometimes hovers awkwardly in the air with the flight orb, but it seems like she’d be using them all the time. Especially the Lightbee function of the comm-ball. She’s sort […]

I fully expect the majority of the comments to be about how a Bishōnen playing deck should be filled out. I intentionally didn’t show Sydney holding the Ace or Kind of Hearts, and I prefer to leave those high level decisions to experts more qualified than I. As it is, I think “L” might be […]

Pixel is extremely unusual in having disparate power sets. Not necessarily unique, but it’s hard to get scientists who can study her without being read in on the whole lycanthopy thing. Of course there are some who know the whole shebang, but even so it a complicated field even more complicated. There’s so many variables […]

Krona’s in that weird category where she has quite a bit of power, but it has to be applied. It’s not raw power like Maxima, and for Krona to do anything more than hit snooze on a bladder, she has learn its properties and how to edit them. This implies, at least for her, that the […]

Guys. The hoops I had to jump through so Sydney could drop some hot Arnold quotes… It’s literally the only reason they’re at a Mars chocolate warehouse. Pretty sure I deserve an Eisner or the key to a city or something. By the way, Hot Arnold sounds like a disgusting sex move, probably involving Icy […]

I did way too much research to try and figure out how to write Sydney’s squee word bubble. Ok, not “too much” but given how little I know about how to write music, it took longer than it should have. As it is I doubt I put enough of those horizontal bar things to make […]

When I first wrote this page, I lowballed Harem’s age at 27, which is closer to her age plus just her first dupe. I was surprised when I added them all up, so I went back and changed her original “a few months” to “a few years.” This might be a slight reversal to thoughts I had […]

Dabbler is setting up her hotbar if you couldn’t tell. Her life is like one of those games where you wind up with waaaay too much inventory and you have to keep going back to your stash to swap your “Carpet Bomb” rocket launcher for the Lightning Orb wand with 15% chance to stun, cause […]