It’s easy to take for granted that smart people in comics (and books, tv, etc) are smart because we see them standing in front of a big board of math – usually a clear board, which looks fancy and futuristic but would probably give you a headache trying to not focus through it. >cough< But the actual smart stuff is always off screen. We never see the process because the writers aren’t as smart as, for example, Reed Richards, who invented a time machine in, like, issue 2 of the Fantastic Four. But even if the writer wants to do a bunch of research just to even have the right equation on the big board for the 0.03% of the audience that would even notice, it’s not like an averagely intelligent character like Sydney would even be able to utilize information like that. (Okay, Sydney has exhibited above average intelligence on occasion, but not “inventing a dimension hopping portal gun” intelligence)

I mean think about it, do you really know what E=MC^2 means? Sure, you know E=Energy, M=Mass, C=The Speed of Light, but without googling it, do you know what the units are? Is E joules or newtons? M=kilograms, probably? And really, if you were on an alien space ship, and you had to program your confiscated railgun with just the right amount of power to punch through the door in front of you, but too little and it ricochets back and kills you, too much and the projectile rips through the bulkhead into space or into the reactor and kills everyone – could you do it? Using E=MC^2. You can’t fire a bunch of shots till you get it right, messing it up kills you at best or everyone at worst, can you tell me you REALLY understand E=MC^2?

Anyway, that’s why I thought this page was funny, because for the briefest flash, Sydney tried to actually mathematically work out space travel in her head. Dabbler would be all “Yo I got this.” but have you guys seen Hidden Figures? NASA had buildings full of really fucking smart people and it took them months to figure that shit out. (And a computer that could do over a thousand computations per second, watch out!) Sure, they were concerned about fuel and oxygen and angles of launch and reentry, and Sydney doesn’t have to worry about any of that. But STILL.

BTW, I know Sydney says it took the Apollo missions took three days to get to the moon, comments on the previous page mostly said four. The point is, Sydney doesn’t have access to the internet and she’s mentally breaking down already.

Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. $1 and up, but feel free to contribute as much as you like.