– Clay Industries Scan tech gives distances in miles? My first thought was meters, but that would put the sniper at a distance just over 35 feet, hardly something you would need a scanner to see…
– Also, since Moonshadow isn’t plastered to the floor, I guess its safe to assume that Argosian flight and strength don’t come from genetics evolved in a high gravity well, and must come from some other source, one that takes conscious thought… (and since Ron wasn’t ‘set’ I guess that would explain how Moonshadow could ‘trip’ Ron with his puny human strength.
If I’m reading correctly, he’s scanning through a wall (the white circle against the black background with the pentagonal detailing), which would require a scan for someone without natural x-ray vision.
I’d go with metres personally. The figure is obviously walking and there’s no way you’d take a moving shot from miles (not using tech than included firing something that didn’t do its own aiming en route anyway). More likely there’s something else obscuring them that isn’t shown on the scan, or showing it as a scan is better story telling than having him ‘merely look out of the window’ definitely there’s nothing suggesting that he couldn’t also see the incoming threat…
Maybe – depends. If he’s cloaked somehow to visual wavelengths, he might evade detection at short range without some kind of scanner. The window might be programmed to obscure his approach too. We’ll likely find out in a page or two…
Those measurements are in meters, not miles. The cloaked Argosian with the energy weapon that Moonshadow just detected is hovering outside the window to Ron and Moonshadow’s room. The abbreviation for miles is “mi”, the abbreviation for meters is “m”. Being a forward thinking tech nerd, Herschel has clearly adopted the metric system, to the rest of the PS238 staff’s dismay. (It must have been worse when Herschel, aka Mantium, was a member of the Union of Justice. 🙂 )
Interesting there appear to be a power on icon set for the back pack and boots. Perhaps it stands for non offensive tech, where as the caution icon might stand for threat detected.
Assisted flight?
I’ve never been sure what the boots are supposed to do. If the soldier has royal blood then he can fly on his own; if he’s a [SPOILER] then why is he being assigned such an important task by Dax-Ra?
Maybe they’re flight boosters, designed to allow an Argosian Royal to get brief boosts of speed? I’m not really sure.
The exclamation point icon is there to indicate high probability of being a weapon.
It’s an unusual place that hires royals to be assassins.
To be fair, I also read another comic strip that does this, but still being fair, it’s because until recently, their royal equivalents were the only ones that were *able* to be that kind of assassin, and even at the current point in the comic’s time, people power sets that are particularly well suited for assassination work are quite rare.
Generally, the reason you assign a commoner the task of offing the bastard child of the king is because somehow it lets you distance yourself from it. “Me? Actually *talk* to a commoner? Do you not understand that I’ve carefully orchestrated my personality in your presence so that you’d think I hate them so much I could not bring myself to even talk to somebody who would talk with them, so therefore I could not possibly have met with Brian, I mean this one, in secret to give him this task. Very well, I’ll now convey my hatred for them once more, by ordering the execution of him and anyone and everyone that he may have revealed his secret mission to, so that you know it was definitely him acting alone and not the fact that I promised him payment enough to get any commoner with as little genre savvy as he had to do this.”
Alternatively, when you’re a FISS “royal” you hire commoners to do this sort of dirty work because you can get away with killing all the witnesses. If they were your uncle’s family, that doesn’t work so well.
If you’re referring to deductive reasoning and common sense, I believe those genes skipped a generation on both sides of the Marlocke family tree. 🙂
Argosians to be standard FISS, and Tyler isn’t having serious trouble moving/standing… So I’m thinking that it’s an approximately normal G world.
And if I remember right, one of the conversations on the ship (can’t remember who, though) implies that the Argosians engineered their powers into themselves. Of course, that could be propaganda… or just plain wrong!
Forak referred to “feral talents” being allowed on Earth, and Dax-Ra called the kids from PS238 (except Julie) “genetic aberrations”. They seem to imply that Argosians acquired their superpowers through genetic engineering (though it may have been aided by whatever mysterious force caused superpowers to keep appearing on Earth in the first place.) On the other hand, there are the [SPOILER] who live on Argos. They have [SPOILER].
Hmmm… for some reason, the first line of my previous post is missing a word; it should start with: Argosians appear to be standard FISS…
And if the assassin IS only 35 feet away and using a targeting laser (the dot in the shadow in panel 3 which tips Tyler off), it certainly explains WHY they are not winning their conflict against the Emeralds.
An assassin using ANY target-assist from that range, let alone a visible light laser, is an incompetent idiot…
On the other hand, an assassination from 11.24 miles away presents its own problems (not the least of which is the fact that the line of sight through a window of a presumably tall building puts the assassin fairly high in the sky).
Royal Argosians have the standard F.I.S.S. package that Julie (and 83 other metas from Earth) have. They don’t have Superman’s super-senses. Without careful observation and scanning gear, a cloaked Argosian soldier is undetectable. The Emerald Ones probably have a way to counter Argosian cloaking systems, but they probably need to be active not passive. And as I mentioned in a previous post, the Clay Industries ScanTek uses the Metric system (like all of Herschel’s inventions, no doubt).
Ron, You are visiting in alien planet where your dad is the king, and everyone there has powers like you. Everything around you is designed not to break when you get mad, Weren’t you just complaining about that a few issues back? This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and you’re worried about schoolwork? Time to transfer. Again.
Ron seems to have been contaminated by the selfish plague, which puts him behind even Bernard. While I was originally upset about his transfer, rereading them a page at a time has highlighted the problem. I’m not sure the Headmaster could or would break him out of this spiral, but maybe it’s functioning like a quarantine until someone wakes up the nice guy he used to be.
Either that or he may become one of the evil supermen, like in Dr. Horrible.
You are both missing the most important point: the Headmaster punishes failure harshly. He has ways to keep the students in line and will not hesitate to use them. Since I know the Headmaster’s secret identity (and I suspect Partigal does as well) I know that he has ways to acquire Argonite, and probably kept a small sample on school grounds, properly shielded. He probably never needed to have it used on Ron, but he would have no qualms about ordering the Prefect to expose Ron to near fatal doses of Argonite for screwing up this assignment. The only student at Praetorian Academy who is not completely terrified of the Headmaster and the staff is Lady Alexandra von Fogg.
Also Ron didn’t so much as transfer to the Academy as be kidnapped into the Academy – I doubt he has any real ability to transfer out again. I haven’t been terribly impressed with the Larsons as parents, but it’s clear neither would willingly enroll Ron in such a place.
Actually, Ron’s parents are pretty decent. Ron’s mom only agreed to enroll him in praetorian academy because she was being mind controlled. And his dad is one of the greatest superheroes of that world. We get to see just how great a guy he is later on. Most of the parents in this comic are okay Parents, Though I’ll admit, a little odd. Tyler’s parents are, however, inexcusable. You will hate them even more after issue 51.
🙂 I know Ron’s mom was being mind controlled. His dad too is thrown off balance enough by the divorce to just not fight her on it. Especially since Ron initiated the whole thing, he doesn’t want to alienate the situation further. (As a side note, it’s interesting that the Praetorians made their move on Ron after the divorce. I wonder how many of the meta children of nonmeta parents have been essentially stolen like this because their parents lack the ability to protect them.)
I think Ron’s parents are actually quite a realistic drawing of modern parents. It’s just that the brutally hard part of parenting is responding to the person your child is, not who you want him to be. Neither of them have shown any special aptitude for that, and the more their marriage disintegrated, the more each parent seems to have projected their idea of who Ron ought to be on him. But I think there are hints that this sort of parental tug of war has even going on for Ron for a long, long time. Long before their marriage actually turned rocky. I feel really badly for everyone involved, even though they’re fictional.
The Marlocke’s, on the other hand, are terrible parents to the point of caricature and I already loathe them. You’re telling me I will even more after 51?? Ouch.
Most of the parents of the children at PS238 are good parents. Alejandro’s mom and dad are perfectly normal and loving — and she used to be a supervillain! (She only reformed because she fell for Alejandro’s dad, a loveable lug with spider-themed powers.)
Julie’s dad may not get along with the rest of the Finster family (aka The Nuclear Family) but he’s never been shown to have had any doubts about enrolling Julie in PS238.
Mr. and Mrs. Holmes are worried about how paranoid Cecil is.
Bernard’s parents love him, but are concerned about his lack of intellectual development.
Malphast’s mom and dad are a demon lord and an archangel who love each other (and Malphast) despite the never-ending war between order and chaos they are involved in.
“Murphy” has no parents, but he has siblings. For example his older sister, seems to be a cross between a cute goth and a manic-pixie-dream girl. Isn’t that just adorable?
The real problem parents at PS238 are the Marlockes, Prospero’s parents, Ul-Ron Peterson and Lisa Larson, Zodon’s parents and the good Doctors Von Fogg.
The Von Foggs are card carrying supervillains, so its no surprise that Victor and AlexLady Alexandra Von Fogg turned out the way they did.
Ul-Ron and Lisa’s marriage wasn’t really a good match. They definitely loved each other, and they loved Ron, but between the public spotlight, Lisa putting her career on hold so Ron could go to PS238 and the incident with Charles… the marriage wasn’t working out. These things happen, that doesn’t turn parents into monsters. Ul-Ron realized belatedly just how unhappy Lisa was, so he decided not to contest the divorce or custody of Ron. At that point, with Atlas busy fighting the Septos and rebuilding (the-soon-to-be-renamed) Wonderberg, the Headmaster manipulated Ron and mind-controlled Lisa. That’s not bad parenting, that’s being taken advantage of at a moment of vulnerability.
Prospero’s parents sent him (or at least approved sending him) to Earth to fight the Septos, and destroy Earth if necessary to keep the Septos from ever becoming a threat again. That’s pretty nasty.
Zodon’s parents are [SPOILER]. And the Marlockes deserve to lose custody of Tyler and Toby. They [SPOILER] while Moonshadow was on Argos. It makes them look more reprehensible than ever.
As far as Prospero’s parents – just because your offspring might have to destroy a planet doesn’t make you a bad parent. What exactly is bad parenting about this? We have little reference material on the maturation process of Prospero’s people, the assignment may well be within the
range of Prospero’s physical and psychological abilities.
While we might think destroying earth is a bit harsh, hard to say without knowing the magnitude of the threat posed by the aliens.
– Clay Industries Scan tech gives distances in miles? My first thought was meters, but that would put the sniper at a distance just over 35 feet, hardly something you would need a scanner to see…
– Also, since Moonshadow isn’t plastered to the floor, I guess its safe to assume that Argosian flight and strength don’t come from genetics evolved in a high gravity well, and must come from some other source, one that takes conscious thought… (and since Ron wasn’t ‘set’ I guess that would explain how Moonshadow could ‘trip’ Ron with his puny human strength.
If I’m reading correctly, he’s scanning through a wall (the white circle against the black background with the pentagonal detailing), which would require a scan for someone without natural x-ray vision.
I’d go with metres personally. The figure is obviously walking and there’s no way you’d take a moving shot from miles (not using tech than included firing something that didn’t do its own aiming en route anyway). More likely there’s something else obscuring them that isn’t shown on the scan, or showing it as a scan is better story telling than having him ‘merely look out of the window’ definitely there’s nothing suggesting that he couldn’t also see the incoming threat…
Maybe – depends. If he’s cloaked somehow to visual wavelengths, he might evade detection at short range without some kind of scanner. The window might be programmed to obscure his approach too. We’ll likely find out in a page or two…
Those measurements are in meters, not miles. The cloaked Argosian with the energy weapon that Moonshadow just detected is hovering outside the window to Ron and Moonshadow’s room. The abbreviation for miles is “mi”, the abbreviation for meters is “m”. Being a forward thinking tech nerd, Herschel has clearly adopted the metric system, to the rest of the PS238 staff’s dismay. (It must have been worse when Herschel, aka Mantium, was a member of the Union of Justice. 🙂 )
Interesting there appear to be a power on icon set for the back pack and boots. Perhaps it stands for non offensive tech, where as the caution icon might stand for threat detected.
Assisted flight?
I’ve never been sure what the boots are supposed to do. If the soldier has royal blood then he can fly on his own; if he’s a [SPOILER] then why is he being assigned such an important task by Dax-Ra?
Maybe they’re flight boosters, designed to allow an Argosian Royal to get brief boosts of speed? I’m not really sure.
The exclamation point icon is there to indicate high probability of being a weapon.
Maybe they’re magnetic, or otherwise ‘sticky’ for firing stability?
It’s an unusual place that hires royals to be assassins.
To be fair, I also read another comic strip that does this, but still being fair, it’s because until recently, their royal equivalents were the only ones that were *able* to be that kind of assassin, and even at the current point in the comic’s time, people power sets that are particularly well suited for assassination work are quite rare.
Generally, the reason you assign a commoner the task of offing the bastard child of the king is because somehow it lets you distance yourself from it. “Me? Actually *talk* to a commoner? Do you not understand that I’ve carefully orchestrated my personality in your presence so that you’d think I hate them so much I could not bring myself to even talk to somebody who would talk with them, so therefore I could not possibly have met with Brian, I mean this one, in secret to give him this task. Very well, I’ll now convey my hatred for them once more, by ordering the execution of him and anyone and everyone that he may have revealed his secret mission to, so that you know it was definitely him acting alone and not the fact that I promised him payment enough to get any commoner with as little genre savvy as he had to do this.”
Alternatively, when you’re a FISS “royal” you hire commoners to do this sort of dirty work because you can get away with killing all the witnesses. If they were your uncle’s family, that doesn’t work so well.
You know, Tyler inherited the IMPORTANT genes from his parents.
If you’re referring to deductive reasoning and common sense, I believe those genes skipped a generation on both sides of the Marlocke family tree. 🙂
Common sense is so rare, it IS a super power.
I think Moe means the heroic danger sense.
Argosians to be standard FISS, and Tyler isn’t having serious trouble moving/standing… So I’m thinking that it’s an approximately normal G world.
And if I remember right, one of the conversations on the ship (can’t remember who, though) implies that the Argosians engineered their powers into themselves. Of course, that could be propaganda… or just plain wrong!
Forak referred to “feral talents” being allowed on Earth, and Dax-Ra called the kids from PS238 (except Julie) “genetic aberrations”. They seem to imply that Argosians acquired their superpowers through genetic engineering (though it may have been aided by whatever mysterious force caused superpowers to keep appearing on Earth in the first place.) On the other hand, there are the [SPOILER] who live on Argos. They have [SPOILER].
Hmmm… for some reason, the first line of my previous post is missing a word; it should start with: Argosians appear to be standard FISS…
And if the assassin IS only 35 feet away and using a targeting laser (the dot in the shadow in panel 3 which tips Tyler off), it certainly explains WHY they are not winning their conflict against the Emeralds.
An assassin using ANY target-assist from that range, let alone a visible light laser, is an incompetent idiot…
On the other hand, an assassination from 11.24 miles away presents its own problems (not the least of which is the fact that the line of sight through a window of a presumably tall building puts the assassin fairly high in the sky).
Royal Argosians have the standard F.I.S.S. package that Julie (and 83 other metas from Earth) have. They don’t have Superman’s super-senses. Without careful observation and scanning gear, a cloaked Argosian soldier is undetectable. The Emerald Ones probably have a way to counter Argosian cloaking systems, but they probably need to be active not passive. And as I mentioned in a previous post, the Clay Industries ScanTek uses the Metric system (like all of Herschel’s inventions, no doubt).
You owe Moonshadow now, Ron!
I doubt that Ron will feel the same way. Something about being the son of the “king” and all.
/obligatory witty typo comment on
And apparently Herschel was as liberal with spelling as forward-thinking about the metric system. “anomAly”
/obligatory witty typo comment off
Ron, You are visiting in alien planet where your dad is the king, and everyone there has powers like you. Everything around you is designed not to break when you get mad, Weren’t you just complaining about that a few issues back? This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and you’re worried about schoolwork? Time to transfer. Again.
Ron seems to have been contaminated by the selfish plague, which puts him behind even Bernard. While I was originally upset about his transfer, rereading them a page at a time has highlighted the problem. I’m not sure the Headmaster could or would break him out of this spiral, but maybe it’s functioning like a quarantine until someone wakes up the nice guy he used to be.
Either that or he may become one of the evil supermen, like in Dr. Horrible.
You are both missing the most important point: the Headmaster punishes failure harshly. He has ways to keep the students in line and will not hesitate to use them. Since I know the Headmaster’s secret identity (and I suspect Partigal does as well) I know that he has ways to acquire Argonite, and probably kept a small sample on school grounds, properly shielded. He probably never needed to have it used on Ron, but he would have no qualms about ordering the Prefect to expose Ron to near fatal doses of Argonite for screwing up this assignment. The only student at Praetorian Academy who is not completely terrified of the Headmaster and the staff is Lady Alexandra von Fogg.
Also Ron didn’t so much as transfer to the Academy as be kidnapped into the Academy – I doubt he has any real ability to transfer out again. I haven’t been terribly impressed with the Larsons as parents, but it’s clear neither would willingly enroll Ron in such a place.
Frankly, most of the parents we’ve seen in the comic suck. I mean, Cecil’s folks basically dumped him on a guy he allegedly met on-line.
Actually, Ron’s parents are pretty decent. Ron’s mom only agreed to enroll him in praetorian academy because she was being mind controlled. And his dad is one of the greatest superheroes of that world. We get to see just how great a guy he is later on. Most of the parents in this comic are okay Parents, Though I’ll admit, a little odd. Tyler’s parents are, however, inexcusable. You will hate them even more after issue 51.
🙂 I know Ron’s mom was being mind controlled. His dad too is thrown off balance enough by the divorce to just not fight her on it. Especially since Ron initiated the whole thing, he doesn’t want to alienate the situation further. (As a side note, it’s interesting that the Praetorians made their move on Ron after the divorce. I wonder how many of the meta children of nonmeta parents have been essentially stolen like this because their parents lack the ability to protect them.)
I think Ron’s parents are actually quite a realistic drawing of modern parents. It’s just that the brutally hard part of parenting is responding to the person your child is, not who you want him to be. Neither of them have shown any special aptitude for that, and the more their marriage disintegrated, the more each parent seems to have projected their idea of who Ron ought to be on him. But I think there are hints that this sort of parental tug of war has even going on for Ron for a long, long time. Long before their marriage actually turned rocky. I feel really badly for everyone involved, even though they’re fictional.
The Marlocke’s, on the other hand, are terrible parents to the point of caricature and I already loathe them. You’re telling me I will even more after 51?? Ouch.
Most of the parents of the children at PS238 are good parents. Alejandro’s mom and dad are perfectly normal and loving — and she used to be a supervillain! (She only reformed because she fell for Alejandro’s dad, a loveable lug with spider-themed powers.)
Julie’s dad may not get along with the rest of the Finster family (aka The Nuclear Family) but he’s never been shown to have had any doubts about enrolling Julie in PS238.
Mr. and Mrs. Holmes are worried about how paranoid Cecil is.
Bernard’s parents love him, but are concerned about his lack of intellectual development.
Malphast’s mom and dad are a demon lord and an archangel who love each other (and Malphast) despite the never-ending war between order and chaos they are involved in.
“Murphy” has no parents, but he has siblings. For example his older sister, seems to be a cross between a cute goth and a manic-pixie-dream girl. Isn’t that just adorable?
The real problem parents at PS238 are the Marlockes, Prospero’s parents, Ul-Ron Peterson and Lisa Larson, Zodon’s parents and the good Doctors Von Fogg.
The Von Foggs are card carrying supervillains, so its no surprise that Victor and
AlexLady Alexandra Von Fogg turned out the way they did.Ul-Ron and Lisa’s marriage wasn’t really a good match. They definitely loved each other, and they loved Ron, but between the public spotlight, Lisa putting her career on hold so Ron could go to PS238 and the incident with Charles… the marriage wasn’t working out. These things happen, that doesn’t turn parents into monsters. Ul-Ron realized belatedly just how unhappy Lisa was, so he decided not to contest the divorce or custody of Ron. At that point, with Atlas busy fighting the Septos and rebuilding (the-soon-to-be-renamed) Wonderberg, the Headmaster manipulated Ron and mind-controlled Lisa. That’s not bad parenting, that’s being taken advantage of at a moment of vulnerability.
Prospero’s parents sent him (or at least approved sending him) to Earth to fight the Septos, and destroy Earth if necessary to keep the Septos from ever becoming a threat again. That’s pretty nasty.
Zodon’s parents are [SPOILER]. And the Marlockes deserve to lose custody of Tyler and Toby. They [SPOILER] while Moonshadow was on Argos. It makes them look more reprehensible than ever.
The Marlockes losing custody of the boys would be an interesting storyline. Would like to see that.
As far as Prospero’s parents – just because your offspring might have to destroy a planet doesn’t make you a bad parent. What exactly is bad parenting about this? We have little reference material on the maturation process of Prospero’s people, the assignment may well be within the
range of Prospero’s physical and psychological abilities.
While we might think destroying earth is a bit harsh, hard to say without knowing the magnitude of the threat posed by the aliens.
Prospero is a child soldier. It’s all there in the PS238 RPG.