Okay, website seems to be humming along now, but I lost some time dealing with it, so the final versions of the vote incentive will probably go up next Monday.

One of the big problems with doing a huge arena battle in a comic like this is… well, there’s a lot less humorous antics going on, which is largely the meat and potatoes of the comic. The other problem is that if this were a Shonen manga, none of these competitors would really go down this easily. They’d each all be big fights that lasted dozens of pages, if not spanning multiple volumes, in which the protagonist has to learn some new ability or apply an existing one in a suspiciously flexible way. Or just flexed his power slightly harder. It would probably involve a flashback. For instance, Zerathax (the obsidian golem) would definitely be able to use his fire side to create thrust, Iron Man style, and fly around setting the battlefield on fire. Being broken in half really does very little to threaten his life, it robs him of his ice powers, but is mostly an inconvenience. And he can melt sand down to make new obsidian to reform his body, which may or may not be quite how it works, but is close enough for a 13 year-old Shonen manga main character to deliver an expository speech about while watching Zerathax convert sand and add it to his body, and most readers just go, “Eh, I don’t feel like searching for a refresher course on igneous rock right now. Besides, the person the MC is explaining this to is a stick-with-boobs who is inexplicably wearing a bikini top in this battle arena scene.” But I really don’t want to make each and every fight some hyper extended battle where the protagonist barely scrapes by but learns and grows along the way. Lore-wise, it’s because Max isn’t 14 and didn’t just get her powers. She’s a 20 year vet with them at this point, and all her fights have been against other supers. (And sometimes against foreign military hardware) It’s why she thought whatever she did to Eat-Chicken might have a chance of working the way it did. Non-lore-wise… uh, real world-wise, it’s because this UCBA storyline would take me 8 years to draw if every fight was done shonen jump style. Maybe if I could put out 5 pages a week, I’d extend the fight scenes a little, but instead I guess I’m going for something in between a typical Shonen and the one-punch fights of One Punch Man. It feels like half-measures either way, so I’m considering how to work the final round so that it doesn’t take 6 months to get through, but still have some cool moments.

Oh, look who it is in the vote incentive. And a not-quite-yet-but-it’s-coming NSFW version over at Patreon.

Vote incentive and Patreon updated with some shading. Not finished yet, but progress.

I think she would get in trouble for doing this. She’d mess up the… floor of the waterfall? Is that what it’s called? The receiving pool? No, probably not that. Anyway, she’d churn things up and cause a ton of weird erosion.

Since you might be wondering, Niagara Falls is about 165 feet high, so Babezilla obviously doesn’t have to be full sized. I’d say she’s about 175-180 feet tall here?

Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.

I think the site is… fixed? Seems to be working. I may have some behind the scenes updates to do, but nothing that should affect you guys. Yes, I’ve already changed passwords and deleted a disused admin account. Hopefully it’ll be another 15 years before the next hack.

<Narrated in a Sam Elliot voice>
People say that one time, Eat-Chicken ate an explosion, and he crapped out sticks of dynamite.
A time ago, Eat-Chicken ate a cloud, then became the rain. That rain caused record crops, then those crops ate everyone attending the Harvest Festival, and turned back into Eat-Chicken.
Long ago, Eat-Chicken at the number that came after nine. It wasn’t ten. I was another number. Countdowns used to have eleven numbers in them, but they still started at ten. It was very confusing.
There’s a tale that once upon a time, Eat-Chicken ate a chicken. Nothing much came from that. It’s not a very good tale.
Its been said that Eat-Chicken can eat the nightmares of children. Well, he eats the children, so I suppose that’s technically true.
Eat-Chicken can run so fast because it eats up the distance between two points. It’s a bit like a gross, slobbery wormhole with tooth marks.
The only thing that Eat-Chicken can’t eat… is hunger itself. Or his own teeth. Well, I suppose if one of them broke off, he could eat that. But he couldn’t eat them while they were still attached. That’s just common sense.
</Elliot>

Oh, look who it is in the vote incentive. And a not-quite-yet-but-it’s-coming NSFW version over at Patreon.

Vote incentive and Patreon updated with some shading. Not finished yet, but progress.

I think she would get in trouble for doing this. She’d mess up the… floor of the waterfall? Is that what it’s called? The receiving pool? No, probably not that. Anyway, she’d churn things up and cause a ton of weird erosion.

Since you might be wondering, Niagara Falls is about 165 feet high, so Babezilla obviously doesn’t have to be full sized. I’d say she’s about 175-180 feet tall here?

Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.

(Posting this to get caught up after the hack)

Maxima wasn’t really sure how to deal with Kaboomoid. He/it is a largely intangible explosion, and Max’s powers don’t exactly work well to directly make less explosions. She was considering burying him under a few hundred tons of sand to see if that would snuff him out, or creating large explosions near him to create vacuum and see if the amount of oxygen around him was a factor. It’s more likely that Kaboomoid somehow supplies his own fuel, oxidizing agent, ignition and both the confinement needed to concentrate force and the release of that force in an impossibly perpetual explosion. If that’s the case, then depriving him of oxygen wouldn’t have any effect on him. Nor would “blowing him up” as that would probably feed his power or heal him, and that assumes he could even be damaged in the traditional sense.

Oh, look who it is in the vote incentive. And a not-quite-yet-but-it’s-coming NSFW version over at Patreon.

Vote incentive and Patreon updated with some shading. Not finished yet, but progress.

I think she would get in trouble for doing this. She’d mess up the… floor of the waterfall? Is that what it’s called? The receiving pool? No, probably not that. Anyway, she’d churn things up and cause a ton of weird erosion.

Since you might be wondering, Niagara Falls is about 165 feet high, so Babezilla obviously doesn’t have to be full sized. I’d say she’s about 175-180 feet tall here?

Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.

For now you can view new pages at Patreon whether you’re a supporter there or not.

It says a lot about the UCBA that they have a rule specifically addressing what portion of your body has to still exist in order for you to be considered a valid competitor. The 50% rule is strictly about being in bounds though. Some competitors can destroy or abandon their bodies entirely and possess other competitors. For instance, an aetholith (like Lapha) could start the fight piloting a giant mecha, then leap to a kaiju when its nucleon manifold interferometer extractor is destroyed. (That’s a science thing that’s in space mecha. You don’t have to look it up.) Or if you can turn into a swarm of insects or replicators or something, then your “original body” doesn’t have to be present at the end of the match.

Basically on the tournament registration form, you have to specify what qualifies as “you.” If you are the pilot of a mech, then you have to survive the round. And be in bounds. And not be possessed by another competitor. It doesn’t count if the cockpit gets destroyed and the mech’s AI takes over and wins the fight. Unless the AI is registered as the actual competitor.

The point of the UCBA is that it’s kind of supposed to be a no holds bar battle, but when you get down to the nitty gritty, there are actually quite a few specific case rules.

Oh, look who it is in the vote incentive. And a not-quite-yet-but-it’s-coming NSFW version over at Patreon.

Vote incentive and Patreon updated with some shading. Not finished yet, but progress.

I think she would get in trouble for doing this. She’d mess up the… floor of the waterfall? Is that what it’s called? The receiving pool? No, probably not that. Anyway, she’d churn things up and cause a ton of weird erosion.

Since you might be wondering, Niagara Falls is about 165 feet high, so Babezilla obviously doesn’t have to be full sized. I’d say she’s about 175-180 feet tall here?

Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.

When you have a (functionally) indestructible sword, it kind of becomes a bit of an omni-tool. Granted, it’d be unwieldy to use a 2 meter long sword to trim your toenails, but you could do it. After which you could chop open a vault door, then slice a tomato. In this case it’s mostly a lever. Or an axle, I guess? I actually don’t know if there’s a tool that’s specifically designed to do this. I’m sure there is. A twisty wedge? Maybe an auger? Nah, that’s just a giant corkscrew.

You know, just because the “sword” is indestructible, it doesn’t necessarily mean the cross guard is. In practical terms, the sword part of a sword is really the blade and the tang. Like, if the pommel could crack off, or the wrap on the handle could get scuffed, but the blade was still immaculate and retained a perfect edge, I think most people would still regard the sword as being indestructible. The cross guard is more… part of a sword than a pommel is, I think, but it’s a good thing the cross guard on Manavore seems to be extremely tough, if perhaps not actually, functionally indestructible. Cause any sword in her hands is probably going to get stress tested in ways the blacksmith/enchanter never imagined.

Oh, look who it is in the vote incentive. And a not-quite-yet-but-it’s-coming NSFW version over at Patreon.

Vote incentive and Patreon updated with some shading. Not finished yet, but progress.

I think she would get in trouble for doing this. She’d mess up the… floor of the waterfall? Is that what it’s called? The receiving pool? No, probably not that. Anyway, she’d churn things up and cause a ton of weird erosion.

Since you might be wondering, Niagara Falls is about 165 feet high, so Babezilla obviously doesn’t have to be full sized. I’d say she’s about 175-180 feet tall here?

Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.

Not one of those space stations where the atmosphere is mostly sulfur dioxide and aerosolized mercury.

That sword is going to make Max lazy. Almost all of her opponents this round are magical in nature, except for the guy who got eaten early on, and also the specifically-not-iron-giant, who got blowed up. But if she wants to keep her identity a secret for an extended amount of time, she can’t really ever use it outside of the tournament. If she started brandishing that against an army of self-repairing golden golems with exposed gears instead of abs, just to pull an example from the æther, the aliens might be able to put two and two together.

Bluce says the sword is “functionally-indestructible” because while the sword is for all practical purposes actually indestructible, there’s really no such thing. If you stick it between two neutron stars just as they collide, it’s probably going to get messed up, no matter what it’s made of. People who make magic swords, up to and including gods aren’t usually accounting for truly obscene cosmic forces, unless the sword is specifically designed to cut a star in half or whatever. And even when something like that exists, it’s usually metaphorically cutting stars in half. Like the mythos explaining a binary star system. It doesn’t help that there’s little to no mana in space (outside of the rare but sadly predictable phenomenon which appears once a season on Mana Trek: TNG).

Oh, and to clarify something about Manavore, it doesn’t just suck up magic and store it for later, it eats magic, i.e. it digests and annihilates it. It might slowly poop heat or some other byproduct, I dunno.

Oh, look who it is in the vote incentive. And a not-quite-yet-but-it’s-coming NSFW version over at Patreon.

Vote incentive and Patreon updated with some shading. Not finished yet, but progress.

I think she would get in trouble for doing this. She’d mess up the… floor of the waterfall? Is that what it’s called? The receiving pool? No, probably not that. Anyway, she’d churn things up and cause a ton of weird erosion.

Since you might be wondering, Niagara Falls is about 165 feet high, so Babezilla obviously doesn’t have to be full sized. I’d say she’s about 175-180 feet tall here?

Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.

I calculated Max could cover 10 kilometers at Mach 10 in three seconds. And we all know how reliable my math is. Still, Max can move pretty fast.

More than one person pointed out that modern security cameras are actually pretty good. Not alien tech good, obviously, but all of my knowledge of security cameras comes from… well, TV. You know, famously accurate TV. And also a cheap security webcam I got like 10 years ago, not the kind that comes with a closed circuit monitor, one of the kinds you need local wi-fi and a smartphone for. It wasn’t terribly good resolution, and got blown out by daylight easily. Honestly, I don’t know why TV shows bother with all the “Enhance… enhance…” stuff since security cameras are so amazing these days. No, of course I know why security cameras on TV suck, to draw out the investigation and so that main characters can show their new technique for “Enhance… enhance…”

Oh, look who it is in the vote incentive. And a not-quite-yet-but-it’s-coming NSFW version over at Patreon.

Vote incentive and Patreon updated with some shading. Not finished yet, but progress.

I think she would get in trouble for doing this. She’d mess up the… floor of the waterfall? Is that what it’s called? The receiving pool? No, probably not that. Anyway, she’d churn things up and cause a ton of weird erosion.

Since you might be wondering, Niagara Falls is about 165 feet high, so Babezilla obviously doesn’t have to be full sized. I’d say she’s about 175-180 feet tall here?

Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.

Maxima can obviously move really fast, and inertia has minimal effect on her organs, at least when she’s providing the acceleration and vector changes via her own power, but there’s a limit to how tightly she can corner relative to her velocity. She has to drop it to right around mach 1 to pull the 3 dimensional S turn coming out of the hanger there, especially because she’s not planting her foot against something then kicking off, like you might do if you were trying to tightly maneuver in a swimming pool or something.

Max better hope that guy on the docks isn’t one of those proactive paranoids. Unlike your normal conspiracy theorist who just gets their marching orders from… I don’t know, Facebook I assume, the proactive ones might do something like check the dock security cameras. Now, on Earth, 95% of security cameras are just good enough to capture the broad strokes, you know, a truck pulled up to the loading bay, 3 guys got out, and maybe they were black or maybe they were wearing ski masks, but it’s too low res to really tell… actually I’m sure you could get “Caucasian” balaclavas if you went looking for them… anyway, the point is that very few systems record at 8K and 120 FPS. An alien tech security system most likely will still use the cheapest cameras available, but their Fischer Price camera might be something that captures video 64K resolution and 800K frames per second, because their computational, compression and storage tech is a thousand years ahead of ours.

Oh, look who it is in the vote incentive. And a not-quite-yet-but-it’s-coming NSFW version over at Patreon.

Vote incentive and Patreon updated with some shading. Not finished yet, but progress.

I think she would get in trouble for doing this. She’d mess up the… floor of the waterfall? Is that what it’s called? The receiving pool? No, probably not that. Anyway, she’d churn things up and cause a ton of weird erosion.

Since you might be wondering, Niagara Falls is about 165 feet high, so Babezilla obviously doesn’t have to be full sized. I’d say she’s about 175-180 feet tall here?

Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.

Super Hiro is about 80% as strong as Maxima, but his flight speed is just shy of supersonic. Anvil can theoretically out-strength anyone on the team by absorbing enough kinetic energy (being punched all-out by Hiro doesn’t make her as strong as Hiro, there’s conversion entropy, and a lot of the energy goes to reinforcing her body) and no one is sure what her upper limit is and if she would instantly explode if she exceeds it or develop a full-body hernia or what.

Basically, no one else was quite right to take Babezilla down quickly and nonlethally. Dabbler did some back of the cyber-abacus math and gave Max an idea of how hard and fast Max would need to hit her without exploding her head. I’ve posted about it before, but I’m positive super fights would wind up being extremely lethal. If some guy is robbing a bank wearing, let’s say a tank themed costume, you really have no idea how much punishment he can take. So you give him a tap that would lay out a normal human, or try to, because if your regular punch is measured in megatons, scaling it back down to a 300 lb boxer punch might not be a level of control that’s easy to achieve. Maybe to you, exhaling differently during the punch means the difference between 300 lbs and 3,000. Maybe you lay the guy out, maybe he doesn’t realize he’s being punched, maybe you break his neck. So if he’s still upright and giving you flack about how his grandmother hits harder, you go back in and punch again a little harder, trying to work your way up till you’re hitting him as his level, or just slightly above, but somewhere between 30,000 lbs and 180,000, his skull pulps. And that’s a hero trying to control his strength. A supervillain with eye lasers could walk into a stadium and kill 5,000 people before a hero shows up and decides there’s no time to work his way up to just the right amount of takedown force.

There was a start of a good discussion on the previous page about whether or not Babezilla’s phone would still work when enlarged. I think it comes down to how she grows. If she just summons more molecules to fill in the spaces, then I think the battery would still work, but I don’t know the antenna. I also don’t know if the CPU or the screen would still work, because suddenly regular sized electrons are flying around circuits that are 55x wider and thicker, and data transmitted to the screen (like the LEDs themselves) is traveling through wires that used to be hair-thick but are now finger-thick. I think there’d be some lag at any rate.

If she grows by making her molecules larger, well, then how does she breathe? The phone itself should still work perfectly, but again, not sure about the antenna. I think that would fail, unless the EM waves returned to regular size once they leave her super-domain, then yeah, I guess it’d work.

And if it’s some sort of weird reverse-TARDIS-she’s-bigger-on-the-outside nonsense, then of course it’d work, because she’s just closer than you think she is.

Oh, look who it is in the vote incentive. And a not-quite-yet-but-it’s-coming NSFW version over at Patreon.

Vote incentive and Patreon updated with some shading. Not finished yet, but progress.

I think she would get in trouble for doing this. She’d mess up the… floor of the waterfall? Is that what it’s called? The receiving pool? No, probably not that. Anyway, she’d churn things up and cause a ton of weird erosion.

Since you might be wondering, Niagara Falls is about 165 feet high, so Babezilla obviously doesn’t have to be full sized. I’d say she’s about 175-180 feet tall here?

Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.