Grrl Power

So instead of being The Berserker, as we thought, he's an Emotion Eater.

If "violence" counts as an "emotion", yes. Though I get the impression he feeds more off the act itself than off the associated emotions. Plus, he's not so much "feeding on" as "drawing power from".

edited 6th Nov '14 5:59:49 AM by Spindriver

Well, do we have a trope for someone who powers up from abstract concepts?

Abstract Eater covers feeding on such things, but drawing power from them is a bit loose to be an actual trope. Various sorts of symbolic magic work on that basis, and a lot of deities seem to run that way, especially in modern fantasy stories.

Oh, hey, that's a trope.

Edited: And I added this as an entry.

edited 6th Nov '14 6:34:25 AM by God_of_Awesome

I edited the entry, since it's a major spoiler.

Also, it's obvious that he was using this to power up, but it wasn't just to fight the team. If he was merely out to beat up supers, he wouldn't have made his "Sydney's a good kid, hope she doesn't die" remark. So the question now is: what is Vehemence really planning to do with this level of power?

edited 6th Nov '14 8:11:13 AM by TotemicHero

Enjoy it, judging by today's strip.

Also, Dabbler squicks Halo in the margins.

I really don't think he needed to give the explanation of "how they didn't know about Vehemence" in The Rant, since it's already obvious that Arc-whatever had about as much ability to keep track of super-powered individuals as a stone boat has to float.

Heh. That's one option.

I like how he parallels with Death Tolls. DT was a nemesis; he had a perfect counter for every attack, meaning he needed them to attack him first. Vehemence initially seems similar, but he's a much more dangerous entity that really has nothing to do with DT other than "Get a big group of supers together."

New strip. Vehemence is happy to monologue for his own amusement, but doesn't have any ego on it; Sydney can't get a rise out of him by being a smart-arse.

How long ago were the LA Race Riots?

Edit: 1992, man, Vehemence is old.

edited 13th Nov '14 5:32:10 AM by God_of_Awesome

He's got a natural talent for using mystical energy in large quantities. Reduced ageing effects are probably just a small bonus effect.

Anyway, today's strip is up. Vehemence isn't doing anything fancy, but why should he?

And another new strip. Now Vehemence is doing something fancy, if a bit late.

Not sure what Shawn's reaction is meant to imply, if anything.

"KaPants!"

I'm guessing he's part demon thus slow aging

edited 23rd Nov '14 3:40:22 PM by tricksterson

Made you flinch

Definite confirmation of power-up. Vehemence does the Superman Returns trick of stopping a bullet with his eye again, this time with no damage other than a slight flinch. Unfortunately, I think Sydney is right that Maxima is going to just keep feeding him with more violence.

His tattoos were yellow in the last strip, but now they're back to being green. So, it looks like the violence has to be sustained in order to maintain his current level of power. Which means Vehemence's weakness is not having anyone to fight or who is fighting (which he kind of hinted at before).

Of course, this being Maxima, what are the odds that her plans don't involve violence in some form?

Y'know, it's funny, I keep thinking back to that post you made some time ago about how this team's biggest weakness was how it was structured purely for as much brute force as possible, if only because every strip since seems to be highlighting it more and more. It's only becoming more obvious why it was done as such with Maxima's increasingly-showing Blood Knight tendencies.

Hell, I'm not even entirely sure if she's actually trying to buy time for a better plan or if she actually thinks she can punch Vehemence hard enough to stop him. Or if she's just too damn pissed to care.

So I recently finished an Archive Binge. I enjoy this comic. It's fun.

My suggestion for how to deal with Vehemence: Throw him into space. Seriously, Maxima should just grab his leg, fly as high as she can go, and throw him the rest of the way. All that strength won't count for much when he has no ground. And no air.

Alternative solution: Lots of minor attacks designed more to trip him up than anything. Things that aren't particularly violent, but which keep him from doing anything violent, himself.

Third solution: Dabbler's orgy suggestion.

Well, from what I can tell, there's two factors at work here.

First, while both I and the comic have mentioned it briefly, the knowledge of what super powered people are out there is painfully limited. Think about the timeline so far. The news conference was in the afternoon, and their dinner that evening. So, to put it in perspective, Vehemence's group of 30+ supers that he brought out to fight? That was what he managed to throw together in a few hours.

There are clearly thousands, if not millions, of super powered people out there in the world of the comic, and what the government knows about is a very tiny tip of a very big iceberg. This already means that there's going to be a "luck of the draw" element in terms of what supers the government both knows about and trusts to put onto a task force of any sort.

Then, we take that limited pool, and apply Maxima's biases to it. She's going to go for brute force first, utility powers second. So she gets all the brawlers and blasters...and due to the "luck of the draw", most of them don't have alternate ways they can use their powers. It's just blow enemies up or beat them down.

Thus we have the very flawed team that is getting Vehemically trolled, and not in a good way.

edited 24th Nov '14 8:41:58 PM by TotemicHero

I've been guessing that Max's plan is to throw Vehemence far away, possibly into space, myself. (It's what people always say Superman should have done to Doomsday...) The snag is, Vehemence seems to be able to use vehemic energy for an unknown range of ad hoc effects, when he's got enough of it — conjuring a pair of outsize trousers out of thin air, just to maintain his polite facade, was really showing off — so he may just give himself whatever countermeasure he finds amusing.

Oh look, someone was right.

Ok, can we add Dangerously Genre-Savvy to Vehemence already?

He's already listed as "Genre Savvy: Possible dangerously so".

Well, at least Maxima tried it. So, Plan B, distraction approach. Nothing violent enough to add to his power, but stuff that keeps him busy.