Grrl Power

So if I recall, the passage I misread which inspired the idea for Elsbeth was something like the character opens her spellbook and pulls something out of it. It turned out to be something you could reasonable expect to keep in a book though, like a bookmark or a warrant or something, but my mind […]

Well normally comics posted on major holidays have a slow start, but you guys seem to like Clover. She’ll be in a few more pages during this arc, but since I have that disease where I can’t help but introduce characters like a crazy person (can you spot the two new ones on this page?) […]

Fun story, when I designed Clover (as in Clover honey… honey badger, clover honey badger, hah hah I’m clever you guys.) I made her haircut look like badger stripes, coming down over her eyes. Only, that’s the way a regular badger looks (one might say, a vanilla badger), not a honey badger. Womp waa. I […]

Don’t fret too much about Kat, the Mannekillers are severely outnumbered at this point. Actually I don’t know what Dabbler is doing right now, I guess she’s sparring with the big one with the helmet, just behind what we can see in the last panel there, cause that’s easier to draw. Trust me though, it’s […]

I’m not sure that digitigrade legs would be especially effective for kicking. Well, maybe they’d be better at thrusting kicks like in the first panel, but I think you’d lose some power with axe kicks and roundhouses. Anything that involved leading with the heel, since it’s further up the leg, you’d lose some angular momentum. […]

It makes sense that if you’re going to send someone or something into a room of largely magic creatures and get all hostile, you’re going to have some protection against magic. Then again it’s probably fair to assume that a bunch of automata might just be disposable. I haven’t really talked about the rules of […]

I have been dissatisfied with my kind of boring panel layouts, so I decided to experiment a little. Hopefully this page isn’t confusing at all. As with the reddish skin tints, i.e. the red noses, (which you’ll notice I totally forgot to do on this page :P) I may over do it before I correct […]

Icon is a suit of sentient armor “cursed to wander the Earth, forever in search of a hero” Or something like that. It’s not literally a curse, he just outlives his “pilots,” or at least outlasts his partners’ useful adventuring career. Though he (I say he for simplicity even though Icon is obviously genderless) can […]

If martians busted in and started ray blasting everyone, they might not wait for Irradon to give permission to retaliate, but sapient animates, i.e. the intelligent swords, the chatty mirrors, even the castle full of servants who got changed into boudoirs and clocks and candlesticks, haven’t always been treated as well as they could have. […]

Eee! I’m so excited! So Wearing the Cape is one of my favorite superhero novel series. I’ve mentioned it before, usually when a new volume comes out, and guess what? <—— Hmm. One of those gals looks familiar. A while ago, Marion G. Harmon, the author of WtC (and as it turns out, reader of Grrl Power) […]

So Max is fast. Not Flash Silver Age light speed fast. That creates severe writing problems as far as I’m concerned, even if you ignore all the shockwaves, and explosive friction and X-ray blasts. Even still, Max’s speed is the first thing any opponent of hers needs to be able to counter. Thanks to Sydney’s heads […]

The problem with action pages is that I usually feel like there’s less for me to comment on down here, at least in comparison to a more typically neurotically exposition laden pages with a dozen panels. So… yup. The door blew up. Someone obviously has an issue with The Council. That or the Girl Scouts […]

Maybe Sydney is misreading the situation and those guys are the SWAT themed strippers The Council ordered. That attic mostly contains the cantrip equivalent of artifacts. Frames for paintings that never get dusty, a rain cloak that never gets wet (because water passes straight through it.) A necklace that glows when detect magic is cast […]

Maxima probably didn’t know about Ingsol’s attic or else she would have had Pixel or someone keep Sydney company (i.e. supervise) out there. Still, it’s unlocked and poorly concealed, so one would hope there’s not a Hand of Vecna laying around up there. The average human amasses quite a bunch of stuff over their lifetime. Some are […]

Wait! Argus could be the Epimeliad’s apple tree! And another intelligence person could be this Disney princess type who can talk to birds and squirrels. But she always sings everything and pulls everyone into her songs and everyone hates her, but she’s so sweet she gives everyone diabetes. And the QM is a… dwarf? Gnome. […]

This is Sydney’s last interruption, promise! In that first panel Maxima’s totally giving Sydney the “We are here as representatives of blah blah” and “I will turn this car around.” and probably something about a million extra laps. It obviously doesn’t stick, which may be the biggest challenge with training Sydney. Some stuff she takes to […]

I implore you to read Sydney’s last bubble in the most Smirnoffy accent you can. I won’t say this joke was a prime motivation for the entire Sigil story arc… but it was definitely one of the first gags I wrote down when I started putting ideas for it together… and this was like, well […]

Ingsol asserting the member races are monsters on the inside isn’t really supported by their behavior so far. Even Grumpy Gus Azilus was making a fair point. I’m not entirely sure if it will come up in the comic, at least in this scene, (I haven’t written this far ahead) but there are really strict […]

Whoops, I just noticed Sydney’s choker is missing in panel 4. I’ll get that fixed when I get up. Finally we get to the point of the meeting. That does seem pretty serious, given their daily existence depends on the veil. Well, they could exist without it, but a lot of them would have to […]

Azilus is being slightly melodramatic. Their presence doesn’t endanger the Council, but their coming and going could. If they constantly broadcast a publicly available GPS signal, then their presence would be problematic. Still, there’s a huge difference between working with clandestine agents, and someone who is the fame equivalent of the AAA actors who play […]

Dabbler’s involvement with Arc-SWAT is curious considering the existence of The Council, but Dabbler didn’t immigrate through normal channels. Actually it’s more of a migration. Well, it depends on how long she’s planning on staying. The sequence of events leading her to join the team would be fun to tell if I was a 5 […]

I like the idea that Supers have an inexplicable compulsion to dress in capes and skin tight outfits, as suggested in the top flashback panel – only of course they don’t actually wear that stuff in my world. At least not the “official” ones. There are a few vigilantes out there. The expression “You can’t […]

Actually they’re both wrong, the 4th wall is usually behind and over the shoulder of the last person who spoke, so the camera can catch the reaction glance. Of course the 4th wall is just the camera (at least in TV/movies, not plays obviously) and the camera could be positioned anywhere. Heck, you could have […]

To head off the comments about “but the government has known about supers for a long time,” yes that’s true, but I can only fit so much on one page. :) But think about a world in which there is no Superhero archetype, but there is other super-y stuff. Figuring out that these wildly disparate […]

This is kind of a weird page, in that Sydney asks a question and it doesn’t quite get answered on this page, but some of you can probably see what Ingsol is winding up to. I found the aside with the spells as programs too enticing to edit out. In a post computer world, it’s […]

Basically Ingsol is saying that if you’re planning on enslaving humanity or something else dramatic that will blow the show for everyone else, like trying to wipe out another Council race in a loud and bloody war, either get it done before the Council finds out or, well, die. Possibly you’ll go to supernatural Sing […]

Now we’re starting to get to some of that plot stuff I keep hearing about. Really the explanation Ingsol is about to drop should be fairly self evident, given what all you guys know about the things Sydney has seen, like at the club (and even some of the things she’s missed, but I don’t […]

Sydney might not be quite so haranguey if Maxima wasn’t standing there. Yes, she’s essentially firing spitballs from over Superman’s shoulder, but hey, they’re all friends, right? Friends can tease each other about fatal weaknesses and allergies, right? Harangue in a good word. It’s one of those words where if the first time you encounter […]

Assault is named badly in the legal world. It’s the threat of violence, not actual violence. I mean, if you’re in the military, and you’re planning an assault on an enemy base camp, it doesn’t mean you’re going to call them up and say “We’re gonna kill you so bad with bullets and grenades, and you’re […]

Today’s page features a Patreon “executive supporter” cameo from Tom H. C. in the form of a Council historian (and also bloodbag.) He’s not in the Who’s Who cause no one says his name, but that’s remedied on the next page. I’m not 100% sure how assault actually works. Obviously there’s such a thing as […]

Sydney’s a real social butterfly isn’t she? As I mentioned earlier she’s not going to meet with everyone in the room before we get on with it. In fact these are the last two before we segue into something resembling a plot. :) Vamp “level” depends more on the frequency and quality of feeding than […]

So… yeah, I’m trying something new with Sydney’s hair for a few pages at least. Sydney’s bangs are distinctive as Decollete says, but they create certain art problems, like when I draw Sydney in profile, they mysteriously just out from her face more than they should just so they don’t overlap her eyes. Her bangs […]

The short version of this story is that some strays came around and like dummies me and the wife started feeding them, and they eventually had some kittens. The strays are gone now, but of course we’ve been taking care of the kittens. They were living in an enclosed porch we have attached to the […]

When two succubi get together, the usual outcome is either a vicious fight (not the sexy kind) or… a vicious fight. Either way they’re establishing dominance. All succubi are fantastic at all things carnal, but most of them are schooled in social graces and all the other things Decollete mentioned. A sort of Succubus finishing […]

Yes, I’m aware I used the sound effect “KA-BUN” on the previous page and not “KA-HARE.” Basically just because KA-BUN was funnier sounding. And Sydney glossed right over it so we should too… The species drift thing with the lycans seems like something that could make for some interesting drama… if this was a comic […]

One thing Sydney has going for her is that she recovers quickly. Which possibly is evidence that her reactions are dramatized in the first place, but if that’s the case, it’s her bit and good luck dissuading her from it. A lycan turning into their hybrid or animal form is a little more involved that […]

People think wolves howl at the moon, but a quick googling should be enough to dissuade them from the idea. From there it’s a small leap to disassociate werewolves from the moon as well. I’m surely not the first person to consider that… even typing out that sentence sounds like a douchey humblebrag, but I can’t […]