Chapter 2: The Great Leap Forward
xmung on Sept. 24, 2010
A cover image for the next chapter… The Great Leap Forward. Kaycee's survived her first day at Magellan Academy for super heroes… how will she go during her first month once all the action starts and the first big test of her abilities comes under the spotlight? Also, Go!Anna's on the tail, er, trail of that stolen artifact and Brian/Elvis come to terms with being the hybrid Brelvis! It all kicks off tomorrow. Thanks for reading.
xmung at 4:08PM, Sept. 25, 2010
you know, it just occurs to me there's a slight irony in this cover illustration - coming straight out of the previous page with Force Magellan telling kiddies not to jump off bridges and then cutting directly to a page where they're doing exactly that!
xmung at 4:01PM, Sept. 25, 2010
And there you have, more or less, why it's really hard to come up with a simple scale to define levels of invulnerability. Dr Chandra's a clever woman though, so I'm sure she'll iron it out eventually. Of course, it's still not possible to completely nail down an individual's specific invulnerability since you wouldn't know the value of what might actually kill someone until it does actually kill them! I guess the scale is to be considered more or less a tolerance range.
jamoecw at 3:50PM, Sept. 25, 2010
the absolute pressure (if an infinite amount of time is allowed for pressure and temperature equalization) to kill a human being (not counting toxicity of gases within the body and such, just the pressure alone) would be about 10,000 atmospheres (147,000 psi) of pressure or about 64 miles below sea level. a person would boil at about .25 of an atmosphere (3.7 psi). there are all sorts of issues with things we need before we reach these points (oxygen in air becomes toxic to us at about 10 atmospheres, and we lack enough oxygen before we even get above 5 miles above sea level. there are air cavities within us that given enough time will adjust to an increase or decrease in pressure. the amount of time varies greatly, as some have trouble equalizing as slow as 1 atmosphere a minute, and some can equalize at a second an atmosphere. practice can stretch the tubes allowing faster equalization. in sci fi the reason for blood boiling is often attributed to nitrogen bubbles, not sure what sort of data there is when going from sea level upwards, but it is recommended when diving to not ascend faster than an atmosphere a minute. in short (a little late for that i guess) it makes little sense to use an absolute pressure value, instead perhaps a rate?
xmung at 1:48PM, Sept. 25, 2010
ah yes, the [url=http://www.talkaboutcomics.com/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?p=335894]Chandra Scale[/url] - I never got a chance to develop it more beyond that beta, although in re-reading it I'm pretty happy with its overall tilt... in regards to the "Environmental Pressure" there was some commentary about pressure vs vacuum so I think it needs to be nuanced in that regard. (ps to other readers, 'Chandra' refers to a doctor who is introduced later in the story)
jamoecw at 11:35AM, Sept. 25, 2010
did you ever drop the pressure bit from the chandra scale? oh yeah, and now things are going to get really interesting, though chapter 1 is definitely one of the best prologues in a comic, perhaps the best.
God of War at 4:59AM, Sept. 25, 2010
CHAAARGE!
Lemniskate at 11:44PM, Sept. 24, 2010
Go go go!