“Striking Sparks” — Page Fifty-Nine
Hoo-ahh! When our Countdown Commando decides to blow out a ballistic window, he really throws himself into the task! And he’s not just making a point of egress, he’s delivering the means as well. Human Launchable Anchor, coming right up — and look out below!
Yeah, in all likelihood, our hero assumed there was a fair chance that what would be sailing toward the parking structure would be a slab of pelvis with some attached meat and a couple of trailing ropes. But with every weighty object in the building being used to protect the trapped victims and nothing large enough, heavy enough, and teleportable in the lab — hey, if it had to be one life for twenty-two it was still a chance worth taking. But damned if his devoted ghostly guardian didn’t throw up a little last-moment spiritual protection, at least for the necessary second or two!
(Max-the-Artist did a great job on this page, so if you’d like to see it in larger format, click here.)
And give us some tweakage on TWC, if you’d be so kind!
More below!
Bobservations
Fun With Acetylene
One of the things that we’d been kinda dancing around in this story was that acetylene, when mixed in the proper ratio with oxygen, doesn’t just explode (deflagrate) — it detonates. It’s not a “low explosive” like black powder, it’s a “high explosive” like dynamite. A brief flash, an ear-splitting boom, and no smoke at all. It generates a supersonic shock wave that would probably have taken out the entire eighteenth floor and killed everybody in the place. Guys who have been filling trash bags with oxyacetylene for the lulz and the boom have been killed when a static spark set it off by accident.
But all this is true only if the gasses are mixed in the correct stoichiometric ratios. We didn’t want that. So we’d showed the tanks being used earlier in the story as a cutting torch, and the “But…” in Virgil’s dialogue a couple of pages back was supposed to set us up for the information that the oxy tank was low. However, astute readers informed us of the unique internal construction of acetylene tanks, which meant that the instant mix of oxy and acetylene we’d been dreading was not, in fact, going to happen. Instead, we were going to get a much more manageable, fuel-rich “dirty burn” deflagration — still a blast, but exactly what we wanted without having to fudge. So thanks, Balthazar and others!
And under those “dirty burn” circumstances, acetylene looks awesome. The main blast on this page is actually an acetylene explosion. Several of them, in fact. I used calcium carbide mixed with water to generate enough acetylene gas to fill a balloon, and inflated it just a bit more with plain air. Hung the result from the “Squirrel Cable.”
So that when ignited, it went KA-WHOOM like this:
Did this a couple of times (because yeah, lulz) and various frames were used for the effects on this page. (Although I can’t take all the credit; take a good look at those flames in Panel Two.)
But I tossed in some titanium fragments to give some sparks in one of the shots. (hey, there’s got to be some titanium in that building somewhere.)
Along with a hero sailing toward the emergency crews trailing some much-needed line!
— Bob out
ouch.
So, adding titanium makes sparks, but what do you add you the explosive mixture to make creepy skulls? 😉
As a more serious question – are the skulls just for mood, or are you saying there’s some sort of supernatural evil component to the conflagration? As far as we know, it’s just a mundane fire from an ordinary helicopter crashing into a building, right?
Or maybe its the gate effect that “leaks” supernatural evil when it’s used?
Added just a pinch of brimstone to bring forth the hellfire. 😉
Lotta people died in that building earlier, and Max’s Deadvision (which seems to get stronger the more damaged he is) is kicking in big time now.
The skulls don’t represent evil. They represent death which is after all his source of superpowers. Also he’s gotten a little casual about courting it.
As I siad before, glad to be of help. And yeah, acetylene alone makes a really cool “movie” explosion. Be careful generating your own gas though, it’s pretty easy to get a pressure buildup of over 30 psi and then BOOM! instant IED.
A thimg has been bugging me about the rope. Its climbing rope. Thestuff is a composition of nylon fibers in a weave. It isn’t in any way shape or form resistant to heat damage if it were a choice between the rope and the fire, I’d go second.
I have a continuity issue and a comic physics issue that are somewhat related. When Max ports in, he will be the center of the explosion that would totally take. Out the windows. the image shows him being blasted out the window … wasn’t he just standing in the middle? Ok, so maybe he jumped. The thing about jumping is the gap between the buildings it looks like about 70′ from this view. Then the parking garage is way below below him even if he is dead. He will still break numerous bones on impact
That ghost is the only reason he didn’t die instantly from the explosion, so yes, there’s some weird stuff going on and not all of it is physics.
Ahhh, we remember the Squirrel Cable. That was a great story.
This explains the strange setup with the rope and chairs in the previous strip. Since he wouldn’t have time to tie the rope to himself, the chairs held it waist-high so he would catch it when he did his human cannonball thing.
If the trapped victims had a clear enough view to see Max teleport back in – which the reaction of the reporter recording with her phone implied – that blast will make them wish they did not have such a clear view of that action. It’s a good thing there’s always comic book science, which is driven not by thermodynamics, but by the Rule of Cool. (And this is VERY cool!)
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RuleOfCool
my issue is that he wont be a cannonball. Explosions push out, but he is in the center of 2 fireballs, if anything he would be pushed up. I completely agree the force would push out, but our intrepid hero isn’t off center from the explosion. This isn’t space where there is a void outside the window to create a draft which would force Max out along that path. If Max were well off center or near the glass I could completely get his being pushed out. Mind I stll don’t see the force launching him far unless he has a table or door to better able to sail out on.
ghooooooosts
hmm. I’d say that he actually is off centre. If you go back two pages and look at where the canisters are in rlation to him when he ports, they are somewhat behind him. Assuming he and the gases retained their relative positions (which the position of the explosion in the previous page confirms), then I’d say it lines up.
Also, hello world!. (I think this may be my first post in the comments). loving the story direction here, and very loving the explosions and graphics!
Hello back atcha! And welcome!
Dumb ass! That should have up and killed him, a stopped heart not withstanding. I get he’s a hero, but I would expect even a hero values his own life.
I’m not even sure how he managed to pull this off. So the tanks supplied the explosion that blew a hole through the window, and also propelled him through to the roof of a neighboring building? TAKE THAT PHYSICS!
Well, I suppose he could have teleported the tanks in first, which could have caused the explosion, and then found a way to deliver the rope to the other building by some other means? Is there another way he could have delivered the rope between the two buildings?
An awesome, awesome page, as always!
Thanks Dan!
It was so close to being inaccurate to physics, but then GUARDIAN ANGEL APPEARED which makes it all work! Well, probably not a literal angel. But still, a spirit seems to be helping him.
This page looks badass.
Never mind the physics; this page (if anyone could understand that it’s a rapid-sequence view without having read the whole buildup) would make a kick-ass issue cover…
Later Sophie says to him: ‘If anyone asks back at the lab, that explosion blew out the windows then you after’.
And the fingernail polish melted from the acetone fumes released when the tanks ceased to exist and the acetylene flash boiled out of it. A slurry of packing flocked the walls.
Acetylene explodes when pressurized. To prevent that, it is stored dissolved in acetone absorbed in an inert packing material. If you draw acetylene off the cylinder too fast, the acetone contaminates the flame.
For entertainment purposes please suspend disbelief… You’ll be happier that way!