Grrl Power #1338 - Shadowcraft
Added 2025-03-13 10:00:11 +0000 UTCThank you for the support! You guys are awesome!
Sciona's managed to get herself on Maxima's "More info needed" list. She'll pass on her suspicions to Zephan about it he'll assign someone to investigate further.
It's got to be a party foul when you're hanging out with people who can see in perfect darkness, and you light a cigar by emitting plasma from your fingertip. That's quite a bit of contrast all at once. Of course, beings that can see in pitch black may not be doing it with some sort of visible light enhancement. They're probably using infravision and, oh yeah, plasma is like 50,000 degrees. So, that would probably scar a Yautja's retinas. Geeze, a lightning storm would blind whole cities on their world. (A yautja is a Predator, BTW.)
Oh, and Max didn't exactly "shrug off" the 125mm round. Not that should couldn't do it nowadays, but the T-72 event happened earlier in her career, and for P.R. reasons, she describes it as "shrugging off." That scene may eventually be explained in the comic, but probably not as extensively as Peggy's flashback.
Comments
Edited to make the pronouns gender indeterminate.
Czarzhan
2025-03-16 07:56:18 +0000 UTCI thought that the spider person was female? Implied?
Mike
2025-03-16 06:19:00 +0000 UTCWaaaaaaay hack when. The White Box Era.
eddi_TBH
2025-03-16 03:25:10 +0000 UTCHuman blink reflexes are super fast. Even one is not otherwise super.
eddi_TBH
2025-03-16 03:21:38 +0000 UTCIn SuperHero-adjacent real world news, apparently “hard light” is a Real Thing, now. Scientists in Milan have figured out how to freeze light into a solid state, and are calling it “photonic matter.”
Bharda Sullivan
2025-03-16 00:19:03 +0000 UTCYouch, still pretty lucky all things considered. Could have very easily been much worse, But such things do happen, knew a girl in high school who's car got driven over by a semi and trailer, on the highway. She survived with only scratches and bruises. I went down and saw the car (old 70s or early 80s sedan), it was FLAT, when I say it drove over her car, I was being quite literal. But somehow through the way the truck went over her car and the way the car crumpled, she didn't get crushed herself. Of course the opposite can happen as well. Saw the aftermath of a similar collision on the highway a few years later. The back half of the car from just behind the front seats was sheered clean away and sitting on the road. The front half of the car was simply gone, just hunks of metal and plastic scattered about the road, biggest piece looked to be the engine block, although that was barely recognizable. The couple in the car were of course killed outright.
Eric Loken
2025-03-15 04:46:19 +0000 UTCWas that Dragon magazine way back when?
Person
2025-03-14 23:14:01 +0000 UTCIt occurs to me that in addition to forgetting that some things are hot or heavy, Max might also forget about bright and dark. Crimson also seems unaffected by the glare.
Person
2025-03-14 23:09:08 +0000 UTCShe bleeds blue, right? I'm guessing they'd look very similar to bruises on a normal human, but tinted green when fresh and transitioning to blue/purple when healing
Cha0sniper
2025-03-14 22:26:37 +0000 UTCUnfortunately, as a vampire, she actually not very 'hot' as she's undead, although, if she DID go out into the sunlight without the correct sunblock, she's likely to become quite "hot"... As she would burst into flames?
JasonAW3
2025-03-14 22:24:46 +0000 UTCThat reminds me of the cigar smoking dragon "Wormy" of the comic of the same name.
Thomas Dorner
2025-03-14 11:07:15 +0000 UTCWe've already seen Crimson several times. She was introduced back on page #451, and has appeared on at least a dozen other pages.
Torabi
2025-03-14 08:32:39 +0000 UTCWhen the right kind of shit goes down they're the best friends to have.
Anton Schleef
2025-03-14 03:35:13 +0000 UTCMax makes friends in low places.
eddi_TBH
2025-03-14 03:27:11 +0000 UTCEspecially with Max backing them up? I think she may be the only smoker in ARC-SWAT. Unless Dabbler has a hookah hidden somewhere. And I would not recommend a puff from it. Unless the Viagra is a total failure.
eddi_TBH
2025-03-14 03:26:27 +0000 UTCI think their voice has to handle all the expression work.
eddi_TBH
2025-03-14 03:22:23 +0000 UTCGiven the characters she has worked and fought with, rattling Max just by looking different is not happening.
eddi_TBH
2025-03-14 03:20:02 +0000 UTCThe future's so bright, I gotta wear shades.
eddi_TBH
2025-03-14 03:17:09 +0000 UTCIf they jumped out at me I might holler and jump. But if we were already talking and I got a good look, I might have a better grip on my reflexes.
eddi_TBH
2025-03-14 03:15:35 +0000 UTCMax can have that effect sometimes. She is very cool about people being different.
eddi_TBH
2025-03-14 03:13:48 +0000 UTCI was riding my 🚲 at the time. Initial contact was the back of my left calf, and I had broken bones all up my leg and torn ligaments in my knee.
Opus the Poet
2025-03-14 01:52:37 +0000 UTCWell, well. Another hot redhead. Maybe we'll see more of Crimson later on.
Tristan N Milner
2025-03-14 00:09:35 +0000 UTCI have to wonder... If Max was bruised by a 125mm tank round, what colors would the bruise be? I don't think she's exactly human anymore... (BTW, i suspect that the fluid from the geode that she broke when she was younger, was actually a transfer fluid for an alien nanotech that gradually replaced her original cellular structure. It didn't kill 'her' it simply replace the fragile structure that she was with an, (organism?) that is more durable than mere human flesh).
JasonAW3
2025-03-13 21:37:09 +0000 UTC"Oh my god, do not develop a crush on her!" I laughed. :D
Eric Loken
2025-03-13 20:46:39 +0000 UTCDirectly or you were in a car at the time? If directly, I must admit that is pretty impressive. And probably involved not a little luck... or an extended hospital stay.
Eric Loken
2025-03-13 20:45:36 +0000 UTCAre YOU going to tell the dragons that the politicians say that they're not "allowed" to smoke?
Louis Richards
2025-03-13 19:47:20 +0000 UTCYou know what, she's absolutely right, those are some sharp pedipalps. And those eyes are kinda cute...
Merle Blue
2025-03-13 19:36:19 +0000 UTCNo I was hit by a DUI driving a truck at 60MPH. That's been a while ago, and I'm not sure I could do it again.
Opus the Poet
2025-03-13 19:18:56 +0000 UTCI imagine the 'shrugging off' event going down similar to Tony getting shot down by a tank in Iron Man. She gets knocked to the ground, gets up, hits the tank with a tight beam shot, and walks away like a badass while it blows up behind her.
Alan Lewis
2025-03-13 18:42:49 +0000 UTCAs a nearsighted person I've always interpreted the haziness of their vision without the mask to similar to my own visual imperfection. One also needs to keep in mind that in their natural/preferred environment everything would be showing off as warm or even hot, blurring things together. in both situations I believe the mask helps to sharpen resolution and filter out ambient heat to focus on the active heat signatures.
Alan Lewis
2025-03-13 18:40:15 +0000 UTCOn the other hand, the superpower being holds up a finger to their unlit cigar. You should have a solid idea of what's about to happen.
Raymond Dannelly
2025-03-13 16:06:53 +0000 UTCOnce finished, almost certainly. Still under construction, grey area.
Raymond Dannelly
2025-03-13 16:05:32 +0000 UTCI don't think Max will be able to come up with even the wrist mounted model on those spinneretes... I think the best she could hope for is a wrist mounted harpoon gun. Digit really only has the one solution to that kind of problem.
Person
2025-03-13 15:03:31 +0000 UTCShe almost certainly ruined that film. Not cool Max.
Person
2025-03-13 14:57:10 +0000 UTCI don't recall a minimum on flash defense, 1 point would do it. Okay, now I gotta look it up... I stand corrected. 5 points minimum. Obvious accessible focus?
Person
2025-03-13 14:50:16 +0000 UTCInfrared is likely to be somewhat fuzzier than visible light due to the longer wavelengths involved. Also, most surfaces will emit some sort of infrared, even if only slightly. Black surfaces in visible light will probably emit more. It would be as if pretty much everything was glowing a little bit.
Mark Magagna
2025-03-13 14:13:13 +0000 UTC"She said my pedipalps were sharp" Only you, Dave, would (a) write such a line, and (b) make it freaking hilarious! Thanks for the morning chuckle in these trying times.
Michael Altarriba
2025-03-13 13:39:21 +0000 UTC5 points of Flash Defense (Vision) would easily compensate for more normal drastic light changes like lighting a cigarette in a cave or a lightning flash in the sky.
Town Crier
2025-03-13 12:58:58 +0000 UTCI haven't seen the predator movies so I don't know how "vague and crappy" it's depicted, but most of the kinds of creatures they are likely to hunt emit infrared light, and they probably emit it too, so they probably get things like depth perception from the photons they themselves emit and also their pretty literally glows in their vision, even through walls to an extent. Plus, even if their masks are able to pick up a broader spectrum, they'd still need to interface with their eyes and visual centers of their brains, which sound like they are adapted to infrared input only, which means the masks would need to interpret that broader spectrum into infrared anyway, even if it yields better detail for them than their normal vision, in much the same way night vision cameras pick up infrared and then interpret that into our visible spectrum so we can actually see what the camera picks up. You also have to remember that the ways infrared vision can be depicted to us is probably not the same way their brain visualizes the information, we are largely reliant on color gradients for things like identifying edges and depth perception, but if they don't have cones for more than infrared, then they clearly are relying on something else for those things other than color perception. Simply put, it's virtually impossible for us to imagine what their actual perception of what they see actually looks like, let alone to depict it in a way that is visually comprehensive to the human eye on a movie screen, that's the sort of "suspension of disbelief" where you have to assume the people making the product do their best to depict what's going on, but some human limitation stops them, so you just have to take their word for it that it works as well as they say it does, even if it looks like it shouldn't based on the depiction, since they can't actually depict something like that accurately.
Jacob Bissey
2025-03-13 12:49:10 +0000 UTCGetting Spinnerets would require a collab, iykyk
Matthew Lambert
2025-03-13 12:19:20 +0000 UTCYautja are weird. There's every indication that sight is their primary sense, and yet without their masks their sight is shown as vague and crappy infrared only. How does that work?
Evil Midnight Lurker
2025-03-13 12:06:20 +0000 UTCDid you hit your shin on it again? Ouch!
Brett Peirce
2025-03-13 11:24:49 +0000 UTCAnother hint Max can actually see in the dark: she wasn't surprised by their visage because she could see them before she lit the cigar.
Czarzhan
2025-03-13 11:16:33 +0000 UTCSo, Max shrugged off a 125mm round, and and I survived the kinetic energy equivalent of a 155mm round minus any explosives. We should date.😛
Opus the Poet
2025-03-13 11:10:49 +0000 UTCWell it's not as if she could say she "tanked" a tank round. That could get pedantic rather quickly, as she's learned from Sydney
Cat Tillinghast
2025-03-13 10:23:48 +0000 UTCPity we can't see his expression in the last panel. It's probably hella cute ^.^
KnightRider007
2025-03-13 10:20:12 +0000 UTCI like it when people aren't scared and tend to be nice to the 'monsters'. Sydney remains the champion in this department (hugging them for example), but still, Maxima isn't afraid of them and her egalitarian views probably apply to every sapient out there. She might make a good ambassador for the stars someday.
Playwars
2025-03-13 10:20:07 +0000 UTCYeah, honestly, if she wasn't doing it deliberately for some reason, that comes across as (if nothing else) really *rude*, especially with no warning. And *especially* when last panel mentioned several actual reasons they were keeping things dark.
KnightRider007
2025-03-13 10:19:20 +0000 UTCThank God she didn't start talking about the chelicerae.
Michael Obert
2025-03-13 10:15:46 +0000 UTCShouldn't smoking be prohibited in government-financed dungeons? ;-)
Thomas Dorner
2025-03-13 10:13:23 +0000 UTCI mean, they are sharp.
DonnieRamesJio
2025-03-13 10:12:54 +0000 UTC
