So Max is fast. Not Flash Silver Age light speed fast. That creates severe writing problems as far as I’m concerned, even if you ignore all the shockwaves, and explosive friction and X-ray blasts. Even still, Max’s speed is the first thing any opponent of hers needs to be able to counter. Thanks to Sydney’s heads up and her speed, Max gets a +17 to initiative. (Or a -9 or a +5 or +2d6 depending on whatever system you prefer)

I’m pretty pleased with this page, I wasn’t sure if blurring the backgrounds instead of Max would give the effect I wanted but I think it turned out good. The only real failing, art wise, is that Kat doesn’t seem to have any reaction to someone blowing up the door to the chamber. My thought when I started penciling was that she hadn’t had time to react yet, but I don’t think it reads that way. I guess I could go the other way and say her Lycanthrope reflexes allowed her to track what was happening and saw that Max was neutralizing the threat… but – while Lycans are definitely stronger than humans and a bit faster, but not “sit calmly while someone defuses a live grenade mid flight” fast. So, you know, live and learn. I’ll get it next time.

BTW the grenade contained silver buckshot, iron, and I’m not sure what the 3rd one is. Lots of fairy tail creatures have real specific weaknesses, so it could be anything. Wood pellets of assorted types, or salt? I think either of those would get vaporized by the shaped charge behind them. Though I guess they could be little hollow sabot rounds with all sorts of stuff in them, like wood, salt, I don’t know, seashells, baby teeth. Of course that may be over thinking it. A wood nymph might react just as badly to white phosphorous as a human would.

I have a surprise for you guys. Eee! I’m so excited! So Wearing the Cape is one of my favorite superhero novel series. I’ve mentioned it before, usually when a new volume comes out, and guess what?

<—— Hmm. One of those gals looks familiar.

A while ago, Marion G. Harmon, the author of WtC (and as it turns out, reader of Grrl Power) contacted me and asked if I’d be interested in co-writing a cross over story with him. Naturally I said yes, even though I’ve never really written much in the way of prose before. The basic premise of the book is, as the “Team-Ups & Crossovers” subtitle suggests, Astra (the WtC protagonist) goes tumbling across dimensions and bumps into various other realities including a few people you might recognize if you’re a voracious consumer of all things superhero. Now keep in mind, the chapter in the Grrl-verse is just one section of the book, but this is a canon story for Sydney and co. It takes place just a bit in the future of the comic. Sydney is a private, but there’s nothing that spoils anything between then and now. Here’s a like to the kindle version. The paperback will be available in the coming weeks.

I mostly wrote Sydney’s sections and Marion mostly wrote Astra’s, but there was a lot of back and forth and editing and I think it came out really good. (Though you can safely assume any dip in the quality of the prose is one of my sections. :)

The November vote incentive is updated. It’s sort of a teaser from the crossover. It doesn’t give anything away really, it’s like a comic book cover that has elements of the story inside but doesn’t actually spoil anything. “Ah, I see in this issue of X-men, Wolverine fights Sabertooth in a forest. Again. Apparently, the thing that Wolverine is best at is maintaining muti-decade grudges.”

Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. (As soon as I get up. $1 and up, but feel free to contribute as much as you like :)

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.