So a bit of a mixed reaction to the last page. That’s ok, not everyone is going to agree with everything in the comic and I felt that the stakes needed to be upped before we hit the resolution. As always, my pacing could arguably be better, but I’ve written out to the end of the fight and the entirety Vehemence battle is actually less than two comic books worth, (American comics, not 100+ page manga) so take that Dragon Ball Z. Hopefully the bi-weekly posting schedule is what’s making it feel drawn out, but that’s really only something that can be fully judged when it’s possible to read the whole fight in one sitting.

Oh and I just want to say up here in the comments that the solution people are suggesting rather a lot, which is that Sydney put an airtight shield around him probably isn’t a viable solution, because as far as has been revealed in the comic, Sydney doesn’t know how to make the force field around someone else. She has to be in it, and by default it’s centered on her, though that can be adjusted. I only mention it here because I’ve seen it get suggested about 14 times per page for the last several comics. I’ll go ahead and spoil this: she doesn’t know how to do that, it’s not a deus ex I’m holding on to, and it would be super OP if she could anyway.

On this page we see Maxima’s weakness, if it’s fair to call it that. Force her into a high armor state and she’s only able to bring her default strength to bear. It’s not much of a weakness since she’s so strong to begin with, but in the rare case she’s up against someone hugely powerful it can become a problem. Vehemence stumbled onto it but didn’t quite guess its nature. Dabbler did figure it out on her own which is how she was able to fight Max to a standstill. Dabbler forced Max into an armor dump and left neither one of them capable of hurting the other. The real trouble happens if someone forces her into a strength dump – someone with gravity powers or enormously powerful telekenesis or something like that. It would leave her only slightly tougher than a really butch tank, which again, not that much of a weakness, but against right super powers that can still be a problem, as we saw how the tank fared in at the firing range.

Here’s the link to the new comments highlighter for chrome which I can’t live without anymore, and the GitHub link which you can use to install on FireFox via Greasemonkey.