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Before you go scrambling to google, "obstroculous" is a word Mrs. Slocombe of "Are You Being Served" made up. Based on context, it means "obstructive" or "being difficult" as in a person, not like a math problem. There is a word, "Obstropulous" meaning "noisy or rough, especially in resisting restraint or control," and arguably, Mrs. Slocombe might have been saying that, but to me it's funnier that she's trying to sound fancy, but is doing it with a made-up word. Yes, yes. All words are made up. Like "matmass," apparently. What we know for sure is that HenchWench watched "Are You Being Served" and is convinced Mrs. Slocombe said "obstroculous."

The speed of sound in water is 3316 MPH or 5336 km/hr so it is almost 4.5 times faster than in air. The source I found that states this doesn't take water pressure into account, and the speed of sound varies depending on altitude/barometric pressure, so I imagine the above figure is for a single additional atmosphere of pressure, which I think is like 37-ish feet. So yeah, Max is unhappy at the moment. It's actually a little silly she's going that fast underwater, and I debated changing this, but I ultimately decided to leave it in so you guys would have something extra to talk about. I suspect moving this quickly through water would have some additional effects, like vaporizing a massive amount of it in your wake or something. I'm not sure anyone knows what really would happen, as it would be insanely difficult to test it. Probably the only thing that has moved that quickly underwater is a meteor.

I came up with this page, imagining that the Hudson or East River or the Upper Bay, or wherever HenchWench portaled them to, are like 300 feet deep. Something that would be actually be pretty disorienting. Of course, getting zapped into any depth of water under about 15 feet at night would be pretty disorienting. Anyway, most of the rivers around New York are like 30-60 feet deep, which is really surprising to me. Parts of it are as deep as 160 feet, but really, a river is only as deep as its shallowest point if you're trying to sail it.

I think that's the Brooklyn Bridge Max is popping out by. The interwebs say the water around there is between 24' and 108.' So I guess HenchWench has done some underwater scouting for a good emergency bail spot?

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Comments

Anonymous

I think one of the side effects of the underwater sonic boom would be the shredding of Max's gap wear! This I think could really piss her off and give HW a reason to lay low for awhile.

Ghostpony

The look on the navy man’s fave is great!

Alenil

Shouldn't there be more water in her apartment? Since Max was able to "extract" her from portal, it looks like it's open whole time. So as soon as she opened it in water to her apartment, there should be stream of water going in ?

Michael Obert

Poor HW kitty is scairt, lol

FeyOne

Honestly, what surprises me most about this is that Max let go. Given her background, (Very active military combatant who has fought multiple supers, etc...), I don't think she would have let go. Additionally, being out of sight of the crowds and again knowing her background, I wouldn't have put it past her to simply kill HenchWench at that point. After all, HenchWench has shown herself to be belligerent, dangerous, and potentially a mega-powered threat. The most pragmatic, forward thinking thing for Max to have done would have been to keep holding on until she realized where she was, then killed HenchWench, (quick crush of the neck and small localized blast to incinerate the remains), then take off. I'd even bet her superiors would approve of all actions once she filed the report. I'm really, really, surprised that Max let her go, (even if somehow disoriented).

Alex H

The Russians actually have torpedos that supercavitate so that navy man would probably think he just heard a Russian sub fire at something...

Ray

HW registered her LLC. Let's hope she was smart enough to not use her apartment address on the incorporation documents. But I bet Arianna has already tracked down her apartment address. So, expect company.

Thisguy

As stupid as it it to portal to your apartment underwater, Even stupider to portal directly to your apartment from a fight. You could lead them straight to you. If you have unlimited portals, you should put at least 2 jumps between you before heading home. And after the first jump, check yourself for tracking devices.

Andrew

So this was the boom at the end of the Down Periscope whale scene!

Justaguy

She winds up getting caught because her downstairs neighbours lodge a complaint about water damage and ArcDark puts 2 and 2 together?

Justaguy

I assumed the word was based on " https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/obstreperous " I am somewhat surprised that someone of Max's experience forgot the "don't release your grip on the captive/target" lesson. I'd also argue that if she had time to make the unhappy face and register the face on Henchwench. She had time to reach out and grab a handful of hair at least. Even if she only ripped a chunk out I'm sure there's some "genetic tracing" tech somewhere between the assorted magic/arc/alien factions. :)

Kenneth Winkelman

Should've snapped the wench's scrawny neck when you had the chance Max. :/

Nematrec

There's the pistol shrimp. Snaps it's claw so quick the water forms a cavity which then collapses causing a shockwave to stun the shrimp prey. Apparently the collapse of the cavity can cause tempuratures in the thousands of degrees

James C

Agreed - as soon as that portal appeared and started moving upwards around them, Max should have been able to just fly up. (Also, Maxima was going easy on her: a proper Blood Choke should have already had Hench Wench unconscious — barring counteractive powers — and her ability to talk negates it being an air choke. She's literally just holding her, with no attempt to neutralise the dangerous Super)

Raphael

Poor cat !!

Anonymous

Apparently 9/11 didn't happen in the Grrlverse, cause those are the twin towers in the background of panel 8. Would have said they look a lot like them, but I was able to actually find the original picture.

Belgrath

That was lame.. Max should have put HenchWench in a bear hug and started flying at top speed, then do some high G turns till she blacks out.. But I found people don't like thinking about things!!! Sorry I'm bitter, as my Father just died

Aclys

That probably would not have gone over well in the after action reports. Henchie was at that point no longer an ongoing super threat, plus she hasnt killed anyone or made any indication that she wished to do so. Breaking her neck just because maxima, the supposed strongest super on the planet, could not keep her from leaving would likely play poorly with most of the people above maxi, not to mention the public to some extent. I mean sure, if the cops aim at someone doing armed robbery and order the perp to freeze.. and they don't, whether its okay to start shooting depends on if the robber proceeds to try and take hostages or attack someone... or if they're just trying to run away. (and yes I know how this works in real life is a whole other can of worms, but this is a superhero comic anyway.)

Aclys

In a world where Maxima herself, divination magic and other superpowers exists? Yeah no kidding 9/11 didnt happen, probably along with a number of the more heinous, large casualty count type events... which would help make this world a somewhat more optimistic and hopeful setting I figure. Also a fine excuse to not have such events or other rl politics brought into the comic.

Anonymous

*tap* ... *tap* ... *tap* ... *blink* Is it broke? *notices the date under the comic, looks at today's date* ... Fuck I caught up

Anonymous

Um question. Are we in month three/five yet?

Marc Vun Kannon

This makes no sense. If she opened a portal to a deep-water location, the water pressure should have come shooting out of the portal like a hose, pushing her up into the sky. Max might still lose her grip, and HW can still escape by opening a portal into air. Or Max could keep her grip and HW would be broken in two.

Anonymous

It took me about 45 minutes short of 6 days to catch up (corse I did other stuff)

Jared

A lot of supers universes have portals that are non-permeable to environmental effects. They require intention to pass through, either on the part of the portal maker or the traveler. This prevents every portal creating super from being a nuclear threat, by portaling to some sufficiently accessible chunk of the sun and letting that stuff pour forth. #notallportalusers have the range of course, but there are other lesser sources of pain that it is best to not have to write plots around.

Daniel Schinhofen

Ah you should have just had a muscle spasm when holding her neck. Problem solved.

Thomas Dorner

The disorientation of a sudden pressure of about let's say 10 or more meters (30') of water usual comes with ripping out your eardrums (and the cold water filling your middle ear / cooling your inner ear. Maxima probably has super resistant eardrums that could handle this, but Henchwench?

Town Crier

Something that I learned from a friend, who was in the Coast Guard, sonic booms under water are deadly-deadly. Due to the density of the water, versus air, much more energy is released in the compression waves. Math geeks, please take it from here.

Stephen Gilberg

Heh, just last night, I was reading about cavitation bubbles in the context of mantis shrimp.

SteveKeiler

Speed of sound is generally related to density, and one little atmosphere of pressure won't do much to change the density of water. On the other hand, the thermocline - a layer of sudden temperature change - has a huge effect on it. Enough that sonar tends to bounce off. But I couldn't tell you where that layer is in the Hudson, and it's not at all important to the story.

William Elliott

Shkval super cavitating rocket torpedoes. They reduce the drag enough to go really really fast underwater by having a "bubble generator" on the nose to surround the torpedo in a low pressure/density cavity while literal rocket motors force it through the water at 375 kph [about 233 mph]. As far as I know, thats about the fastest man made underwater object. No where near supersonic even in air, but FAST for an underwater object...and noisy as hell.

Marc Vun Kannon

Is that Jonesie from The Hunt for Red October?

SteveKeiler

Decided to do some math. If Max got teleported under 10 meters of water and broke the sound barrier going up, she was pushing just shy of 11,000 Gs of acceleration, which is about as fast as some artillery. Course, artillery only pushes against air, so she could probably do a whole lot more than that. And hopefully she extended her protective shield in a hydrodynamic spike, because otherwise that exit turned a bunch of water into plasma.

Eric Loken

Of course... that's how depth charges and the Mark 48 torpedo work. A friend who used to be in the USN calls the Mark 48 torpedo a really evil weapon. It is designed to detonate *under* the hull of the target. This creates a pressure wave, followed by a vacuum. You can see the effect in the SINKEX events where they fire their weapons live on decommissioned ships. The ship surges up out of the water, bending at the point of explosion - preferably the middle - and then sinks down into the water, bending the other direction. This typically breaks the back of most targets, and they can break in half.

Anonymous

heh, nice Danny DeVito painting in the background in the last frame.

Foradain

She should have done scouting for intermediate bail spots for use between the emergency bail spot and her apartment. Someplace that she won't mind getting wet. ^_^

Josh Nakamoto

Does that lower left panel happen to be a reference to the 1996 movie Down Periscope ?

RanmaChaos

I have a serious question. What is Max's energy limit? Creating this underwater sonic boom couldn't have be cheap energy cost-wise. And this is after she escaped from a stasis field by using super(hyper?) speed over the course of several seconds, if not a minute or two. That had to have cost a huge chunk of her energy reserves. Does Max just have infinite energy, or is there at least a general upper limit to her power. Does she use "Dragon Ball" rules or does she use "Hunter X Hunter" rules?

Erin Palette

I just assumed that obstroculous was a portmanteu of ridiculous and obstructive.

Jacob Barboza

That poor sonar tech on the Dallas wondering "what the heck did I just hear?"

StLOrca

Is that Seaman Jones from "The Hunt for Red October"?

Nicholas Grey

Hm. Interesting to have another intelligent enemy. One who actually apparently shares some of Sydney's ability to come up with power stunts. Possibly because she plans what powers to gain ahead of time?

akrasia

If it isn't, it should be. Obstructively ridiculous deserves its own word :)

akrasia

About "disoriented". Does this make canon that in the Grrlverse even ridonkulously fast people can't THINK as fast as they can act? How long was Max going "Wahuh?" during the time it took HW's portal to move from her waist to her neck AND flip a salute? Sounds like eternity for someone that can catch bullets, but I guess there has to be some limiting quirk for plot purposes.

akrasia

I hope HW gets caught because she didn't realize that Max wasn't JUST holding her neck, she was embedding a tracker.

Tim

Haven’t seen anybody else mention this, but if HW made a portal straight to her apartment, shouldn’t there have been light shining out from underneath her?

Richard Penner

Water is nearly incompressible, so I think the range of the speed of sound in seawater depends on salinity, a little on temperature and less on depth/pressure. http://resource.npl.co.uk/acoustics/techguides/soundseawater/content.html

Richard Penner

roughly +4 m/s/℃ +1.2 m/s/(ppt salinity) + 1.63 m/s/(100 m depth) for seawater near 4℃, 35 ppt salinity and 0 m depth.

James C

If you look at this and the previous page, the portal seems to open into a lightning-filled grey void, and not into the target location. Whether that's just what you can see through it, or whether the void is a real place and a second portal then opens to disgorge you, we don't know

Robin

given that it is a portal there should also be a huge amount of suction, due to pressure difference, unless it is like selective in pass trough, but then you should read the excellent jumper novels for some power-stunts you can pull if that is not the case :D

Bharda Sullivan

His name is Jones, and I legit have it in my head now that he is a canon Grrlverse character with Super Hearing in some form.

Bharda Sullivan

“Intelligent” is both relative, and subjective to the topic. Being able to quickly process, recall, and relate information in one field doesn’t mean one is automatically able to do so in another.

Donald Randolph

Little disappointed that Max let go instead of tightening her grip when startled. But plot requirements :(

Anonymous

Is that what the movie Jumper was originated from? If so is it close to the source material?

Phil Boswell

Definite points for the "Are you Being Served?" reference, takes me back to my youth when we had only three channels to argue over…