Giant Girl shout-out!
Yeah, Doc Sharma is doing his best, but he doesn’t have a real good handle on the “being inconspicuous” part of his industrial spy side-gig.
Still, he has to deliver some goods occasionally. And in a world where the NSA is basically siphoning the entire Internet (whether they admit it or not) the best way for an industrial espionage ring to avoid having their illicit work intercepted and/or monitored on the Web — is to keep it off the internet altogether. These days, with tiny, durable flash drives approaching terabyte storage capacity, the good ol’ Sneakernet methodology of data transfer has once again become viable. You don’t have to get all Johnny Mnemonic wetware about it either. Stick some flash cards in a camera case along with a bunch of vacation photos and just have your courier travel to wherever they need to go and hand ’em over. Nobody at TSA will give ’em a second glance. It’s not the only method of secure transfer, but it is simple and reliable. You’d just need a safe-house or two at either end for drop-off and storage.
The only problem you might encounter is a noted criminal with a sudden interest in technological developments. As an underworld figure himself, an industrial espionage clearing-house wouldn’t be hard for him to find. And he might not bother negotiating. The result is a pretty ghastly sight, even for a doctor with battlefield trauma training.
Speaking of battles, if you missed your chance to see the new Vote Incentive last week because TWC was down for a bit — now’s your chance! This current cliffhanger page ends the Interludes section. No fear, the next episode is all scripted and Max is roughing the artwork, but we’re going to give him two weeks to get a jump on it. It’s always better if he’s got things fairly well laid out in advance. We’ve reached out to a couple of other webcomic artists for Guest Art, and if all goes well, we’ll continue to update with some fun imagery (probably of Marissa) during this brief hiatus.
More below!
Bobservations
Big Shout-Out!
This page was always intended to have the Doc in a trench coat and fedora; initially I had planned to make “Secret Squirrel” and/or “Agent Carter” jokes. But then I realized that one of the webcomics I’ve started reading regularly — Giant Girl — has the title character in a trench coat and fedora. So it seemed fitting for a shout-out. Especially since Sabrina Pandora, the writer, has decided that Giant Girl will be losing her trademark hat, at least for a while.
Giant Girl is a fairly new addition to my reading list; I’m still working my way through the archives. It’s a tongue-in-cheek larger-than-life (ha!) adventure comic, so it’s got a certain amount of the expected superhero spoofiness, wisecracks, and property damage, along with (as might be expected when the main character occasionally has an entire city looking up her dress) some surprisingly tasteful cheesecake.
But the thing that, for me, really sets it apart from other superhero stories is the unexpected twinges of poignancy mixed in with all the humor. I’m used to superheroes being noble. I’m used to superheroes being angry. I’m used to superheroes getting all angsty and dark and introspective.
But I’ve rarely encountered a superhero who, on occasion, is just flat-out ashamed of herself. It’s such a human thing, and it really makes you feel for her. Ronni Kane (Giant Girl) occasionally just goes too far, and she has the decency to feel bad about it afterward. Somebody pisses her off by being rude, she might get all huge and crush their car. Nobody hurt, but cars are expensive, and while the comic does indicate that most people have Giant Girl riders on their insurance these days, it was still an over-reaction on her part. It’s not like they can sue her — there’s already a line a mile long and she doesn’t have much money anyway. She just wrecked somebody’s property because they irritated her and because she could, and you know what? I bet if people actually had superpowers, that kinda thing would happen a lot more often than it does in most comic books.
I know for certain that I’d do something like that. I already have a long list of dickish things I’ve done even without superpowers, and they’re always sort of there, in the back of my mind, as part of the Ever-Growing List Of Things I Will Eventually Be Paying For In Hell. So I can empathize with Ronni. The strip may be funny, but she still puts the human in superhuman.
Giant Girl. I’m enjoying it. You might too.
— Bob out
Artist’s Notes:
I made a “process” video for this comic page, and put it on youtube, check it out! It’s 10.5 hours of work distilled down to 6 minutes, and it’s pretty cool. Enjoy! – Max
Have been enjoying GG for as long as 3MM so top one on the shout out.
Actually in regards to the “Approaching terabyte flash storage” we are all ready there. Kingston released it over a year ago (about fall 2013) now and its called the Kingston HyperX Predator. Its a 1TB USB 3.0 Flash Drive uses the exFAT (Extended File Allocation Table) which is a Microsoft file system that is optimized for flash. Its about the size of 2 index fingers next to one another.
Talk about come a long way. 3 1/2 inch floppy in 1983 held 1.44mb data, 30 years later which is about a million times bigger. Quite scary sometimes how quick we zip through tech, the biggest example is Kitty Hawk to Tranquillity Base.
Why the brackets? Is he speaking in another language? And if so, what language?
Also, why not write it out in that language? 😛
I kinda went back and forth on that a couple of times. I wanted him so startled he exclaimed in Hindi, but according to Google Translate, the phrase in Hindi (given our limited font) would be “ARE BAPPARE!” Written in the word balloon, it just was confusing, because “Are” is such a common English word. So first you think he’s speaking English with maybe a typo, or gibberish, or maybe just a nonsense rhyme, and only then do you realize it’s probably Hindi. And just having him say “My God!” in English wasn’t really what I was going for either. So I split the difference and used brackets.
I understood the reference immediately. I would imagine that the readers who know he’s a hindi corporate spy got it fairly quickly and most of the other readers eventually figure it out from the brackets.
Flash drives are perfectly adequate for most data transfers. In fact, you can just trade sticks and do the swap with a handshake. Add in the possibility of steganography and, even if found, the contents can appear innocuous to even a relative expert. If the contents not too large (up to 64GB), one can even use a microSD card which can be affixed to a business card.
Also, the reference to Carmen Sandiego as well as Giant Girl were greatly appreciated. 🙂
Nice job man, now we have to go to some other method…maybe my bosses in S.P.E.C.T.E.R. will finally go with my idea of pigeons to move the data sticks. Then I can sell that info to my contact with SMERSH who will pass it to my controller in the cartel.
Really, this crime scene is incredibly clean.
I have done plenty of crime scene cleanups, and shootings are bloody beyond belief. Imagine two (2) gallons of red-dyed whole milk splattered, splashed and poured out all over a room. That would be the results of one (1) person shot and bled out. Three people would have pretty much filled that shot with red and dripped quite a bit down into the tunnel.
Which is, I imagine, why no one ever does one of these right. It crosses the perceptual threshold from horror to “why can’t I understand what I am looking at?” The medusa’s hair effect of crawling maggots and the blood trails up the walls from them climbing up to pupate is also past that threshold where you simply cannot process what you see. I keep waiting for someone to try to capture it, but it would be a challenge. It would certainly make more sense and portray crime more accurately than the clinically-clean cartoon violence TV loves to portray, where the consequences of a shooting is little splash from a squib, and a motionless body with a tiny red hole in it.
Maybe they had a vacuum.
Thankfully I’ve only dealt with either hand to hand violence, self mutilations, or outside shootings. Generally not as gory as your experiences. Also, sometimes the bleeding is mostly internal, first one I saw was just a dark red hole in the head with powder burns around it. Darned if thinking about it didn’t bring back the memory of the smell though!
That last one sounds like a .22 or short pistol .32 round headshot. Quiet, low gas, and not enough kinetic energy to punch back out of the skull, so the round just bounces around inside and liquifies everything, which makes it a popular assassination weapon at close ranges. You basically bag and tag and wipe up the mess with a towelette.
I’ve cleaned up no end of 9mm, .45 pistol, rifle and shotgun fatalities, and those rounds walk right out the other side and through a few walls, and the greasy tissue splatter and bleed out mess is impossible to really describe or comprehend until you’ve seen one.
Gyaaah. Such fun jobs you have!
Closest I’ve experienced was when I shot a pork shoulder roast with a .357, hoping to make a meaty bullet hole that I could then dress with blood for effects purposes. What I actually made was carnitas. ALL OVER the place. Gawd what a mess.
Nope, try a .44 black powder pistol at near contact distance. Round ball soft lead didn’t have the energy to exit, the rest is as you described.
Haven’t seen many black powder gun fatalities, but I’m still surprised a full load .44 BP pistol round didn’t exit – most would.
Perhaps it was a replica Philadelphia Derringer (HDCo) like that used to assassinate Lincoln, which is a small, light, very short barrelled and relatively low velocity weapon. In Lincoln’s case the .44 round didn’t exit either and the results spoke for themselves.
Bright red coat? Yeah, real stealthy there, bub.
Not necessarily. You’ll remember the red coat and hat, but the face? Probably not. Sometimes, the best way to hide something is to put it next to something really obvious. The doc may have gotten lucky there. : )
Also, just noticed that you used a hyphen instead of a dash in the commentary. How did you type that?
WordPress seems to do it automatically. If I want a dash, I type two hyphens with blank spaces on either side, and they become a single dash. It only converts after posting though. In the editing form, it’s still all hyphens.
Thanks! I also realize I typed “hyphen” when I meant “dash,” but you know what I meant 😀
Well there goes the security deposit.
Nice touch on the bloody hand prints leading down too.
thanks!
Does anyone think 3 Minute Max could be a movie/show or would they screw it up like most things turned into a movie/show?
Well, your last name strikes a chord! Not many of us, you know — welcome!
Thank you.
I think it would be cool as a movie/show, for sure!
You would have to find someone that would have it match the style of your comic, though. Hopefully, that wouldn’t be too hard and you guys would be there to make sure they got everything right.
Well, i could be around to storyboard it, i guess!
That would be fantastic!
Both of them would be incredibly cool! Also before we continue my name is not James Forward, no matter how much I would like it to be. I was trying to ask my question before I had to get back to work and couldn\’t think of a name so I quickly combined one of my favorite names with your guys\’ awesome last name. I\’m sorry if I mislead you both in any way. (Hopefully it stays as a reply this time)
Ha! No, WP is set up so you need to be moderated and approved as a poster before you can get through unhindered. When you changed your username, that meant going through the process again. And no big deal that you’re not actually named Forward — actually, I gather that there’s only a few hundred of us in the US, so it was notable enough to mention.
Also this is if need any extra proof that it is in fact me.
Thank you.
Did somebody say my name?
3MM feels like a movie because the Forwards understand the business; this project is an organic extension of their existing work, grounded and shaped by their existing movie making skills. I see a movie as inevitable because it is what they do and have done for years.
No one is in any danger of making, say, XKCD into a feature film because the visuals suck (so a production team cannot wrap their head around it) and single strip stories don’t follow the conventions of Hollywood writing. Likewise, LICD had the issues they have had with coming to the big screen because frankly, the comic plot is all over the place on any given day and Sohmer & Desouza didn’t know the business well enough to protect their property.
This project will come to the screen sooner or later, because it was born and grew up there, and it belongs.
Joss Whedon’s project development team, get off your lazy asses and lob an easy one his way!
Of course, the 3mm writer would need to have a script outline already available for said dev team to fondle, and he IS very busy….
You make a lot of very great points.
The main problem is that there is no actual human actress hot enough to play Marissa. No, I don’t care who you’re thinking of suggesting, she’s not. No, not her either. Marissa is beyond the human biologically possible level of hotness. Maybe when they perfect indistinguishable-from-reality cgi, but they would have to use most of the movie’s effects budget to generate her.
What about She who must not be named?
Criminy, Woody in Disney’s CONDORMAN did better when he went all trenchcoaty in Istanbul. You know, the sequence in the restaurant where he ordered a Triple Istanbul Express(he’d order a double, but NOBODY orders a double!)that caused him to belch flame. For those who don’t know(y’know, those who are cursed with youth), CONDORMAN came out in 1982 and is one of my guilty pleasures from Disney of that era(another guilty pleasure from that time is THE BLACK HOLE).
Dammit, thanks to AVENGERS I keep on wanting to call him Dr. Schwarma!
Remembering that I’m so old that I can barely do Buffyspeak and watching Ren and Stimpy and the f&*king Simpsons when they first aired on actual cable, I do enjoy this webcomic.
This is Ripley… Last survivor of the Nostromo… Signing off.