Lightstorm is one of those things that I set up early in the fight and it kept getting pushed further and further until I finally found a place for it. In its original form, it was Harem finding a cluster of tough villains and dumping a dozen flashbangs on them all at once, then the team dogpiles them while they’re still staggered. I wound up having Max supply the flash and the bang when she knocked Hex from the sky, but this use of the tactic is still valid. Sydney took Math’s lesson to heart and was thinking several moves ahead here. She’s trying to verify what she suspects Death Toll’s powers are, and while a lot of you have figured it out already, she doesn’t want to commit her teammates to anything before she’s at least tested her theory. She didn’t think for a second the flashbangs would do anything, but it made a good cover for sticking the googly eyes on him. It’s weird, he mostly looks like a guy with googly eyes on his mask, but then if you look at him just right, he does look like a scary muppet.

I wanted Sydney to say something funny as her operation activation phrase, so my first thought was “go” in German. Google translate spit out a bunch of options, one of which was “Aufgebraucht werden” A more thorough examination of the phrase seems to indicate that it more closely means “to be depleted” or “to go and deplete.” I’m sure there’s at least one reader who can clarify the phrase, but the non-sequiterness actually makes it more perfect for Sydney. Other than knowing how to curse and a few phrases from video games (meine lieben!) she doesn’t know German, but she probably thinks she knows a few words based on some cursory googling. Plus, I just like the idea of Sydney randomly screaming semi-sensical German.

#MakeComics: Thirteen panels on a page. How not to draw a comic right here folks. Scott McCloud would be rolling in his… well, he’s not dead, so I’ll say Segway. In a normal comic that would be 2 pages of content at least, but I have this need to make each page its own semi-self contained scene. It’s a better read if you’re keeping up with the comic as it’s posted, though I am a bit worried it will make the book rather dense feeling. More bang for your buck I suppose. Probably should have made this a double pager but too late now.

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