It occurs to me that half the gags in this comic seem to come from the fact that I get bored drawing talking head panels, so I throw the dialog to captions and draw whatever nonsense I like. Seems to work out ok, but sometimes those panels wind up being smaller than I’d like cause I’ve already drawn the rest of the page. In case you can’t read it, the three in the background of the last panel have Wrath, Lust and Gluttony written on them.

I have no idea if ooblek normally has much if any tensile strength when you smack it like Claire is having to do in panel 5, so I don’t know if that particular setup would work, except to say of course it would since that deathtrap uses the kind of ooblek that does have incredible tensile which makes it perfect for that sort of 2 person deathtrap.

Predictably, Claire is the competent explorer, and her bumbling friend was the one who touched the idol that gave her the somewhat unreliable powers of Distress Damsel. I tell you, if Empowered wasn’t already a thing, I could totally do a Distress Damsel comic. You know, along with Grrl Power, Demon High and Grrl Power After Dark of course. (And two others I have ideas for that are super smutty.) If I could have any power from my comic, it would definitely be Harem’s.

Oobtek is brought to us by Machina Industries predictably. It almost sounds ridiculous to have armor made out of goo, but I didn’t make this up. This exists in the real world, at least in prototype form. Apply it over kevlar and it’s practically impossible to get a shiv through it. Its ability to dissuade even armor piecing bullets is significantly improved as well. Google “oobleck armor” for a bunch of info about it.

The Oobtek inserts were my idea, so I don’t know how realistic that is, but we can assume Machina Industries has razor edge tech which at the very least prevents the Oobtek from just pooling in the bottom of each pouch. The inserts more than double the weight of the AFDs, but enormously distribute the energy of any sort of blow. By the way in the third panel, Ashley isn’t saying armor piercing pistol rounds are no sweat for the AFD’s, he’s letting her know where the definite cutoff is. The take home message for these outfits is, as with any armor; “don’t get shot, but if you do, you have a better chance of not dying, assuming you don’t get hit in the neck or head. It will still probably hurt.”

The major disadvantage to this sort of material is that I imagine it probably doesn’t breathe well. The Kevlar/ooblek stuff I found online looks like waterproof canvas, so probably hot and generally not that comfortable. We’ll assume the Q-vex/Oobtek version overcomes this to some degree, as well as lining the inside with a wicking fabric that channels sweat to the seams. They’re still working on variations for extreme environments, but as a domestic force they don’t have to be worried about being deployed in a 120 F desert unless some supervillain decides to build his base in Death Valley. You’d think that would happen more often just for the name and the ambiance, but finding henchmen willing to make that commute is tough.

Here’s the link to the new comments highlighter for chrome, and the GitHub link which you can use to install on FireFox via Greasemonkey.