SFP

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  • Darkoneko Hellsing

    Aah, so he’s moving to France. That’s why he can’t join her project. Unless remotely, anyway.

  • 3-I

    Alison, this is important: You cannot dance on Hector’s head.

    • finger-dance

    • Kid Chaos

      She can do a victory dance and shake her ass in his face, though. 😜

    • Boojum

      She can fly. She can certainly dance on his head as safely as he did on hers. And it would be just as adorable!

  • Markus

    Not to make a crappy Ant Man joke, but does this mean Hector’s going subatomic?

    • possibly. They could also be studying how his powers affect the atoms of his body to try to see if it works in a way worth trying to replicate for fusion purposes

  • RobNiner

    Hector and Azra sitting in a tree.

  • KatherineMW

    Awesome! So they were both inspired by each others’ ideas – Allison to work with a group instead of trying to fix everything alone, and Pintsize to look at bigger problems than fighting the usual bad guys (and to put his skills to use for science)!

    Certain Green Parties wouldn’t be pleased, but I’m all I’m favour of using and improving nuclear power (in non-earthquake-vulnerable areas). It’s never made sense to me for a person or organization to say, “Global warming has apocalyptic consequences,” and then turn around and rule out non-GHG producing ideas. And fusion would be better than fission due to the lack of nuclear waste. So finding a way to make cold fusion work is a great project for Pintsize.

    Just noticed Pintsize’s shirt is a helium atom, not a hydrogen atom (two electrons, so presumably two protons as I don’t think negatively-charged hydrogen is common), and therefore probably a symbol of the project. (Nuclear fusion is production of energy by combining two hydrogen atoms into a helium atom – it’s what the sun does. Also, more destructively, what the H-bomb does.)

    Looks like Allison’s ready to do some gloating of her own. And this seems like a great project to get s certain mechanical genius involved in…

    • I don’t think robotics skills would help her there. Though i do wonder how she made the levitating robots

      • Kid Chaos

        Magnetic repulsion? 🚀

        • doesn’t that require magnets under all the floors? and how do that they have that much arial agility?

  • Loranna

    Alison, you twerp; you just upstaged your friend, in front of the -very- comely woman who was telling him that his new life (working with her, to boot!) was waiting for him to board the plane!

    Not only that, but you cut Azra off in the middle of her pleasantries to you! Did they not teach Super Hero Etiquette back in your day? Madness!

    And this is why the other Guardians (especially Moonshadow) don’t want to hang out with you anymore.

    Ah well; Hector, please give Alison some Heck for usurping your phone message like that. She could have waited to network (or just ask what HALO does) -after- you were done talking!

    I do hope this doesn’t end up re-burning the bridge Alison just spent several pages rebuilding . . .

    Loranna

    • Dean

      This is just Alison figuratively dancing on Hector’s head.

    • Tylikcat

      But it’s so much the obnoxious sibling thing to do. Oh ho! Who is the cute girl who has my brother all sticking his chest out! Must insert myself into this conversation in most intrusive way possible!

  • Dartangn

    Ooo. Massive burn by proxy, Allison.
    Solving global energy needs vs neighbourhood watch facebook.

  • Clint Swindle

    yay he’s doing something usefull/ what Alison suggested. Does that mean she gets to do the dance on head song now?

  • Catnik

    Yay, Pintsize! You go science it up! (Looks like Alison may have had a point about punching not solving real problems…)

  • GreatWyrmGold

    Ah, the perils of voice control.

  • Randor

    Fucking lol. Alison being a proactive hero means she starts a network of local women’s shelters. Pintsize being proactive means he joins an effort to provide free clean energy to everyone in the world. Incoming collapse of Alison’s self-esteem.

    • 1) I think she’s grown beyond that.

      2) It’s not local, its nationwide or possibly global (at least in the 1st world)

  • spriteless

    Haha cool. Pintsize doesn’t excel at science himself, so he’ll work with other people who do. Excelsior!

  • Serendipity

    Hm… does the mere presence of THE Alison Green cause people’s jewelry to disappear? It seems the good doctor’s hoops got dropped from the bottom right panel.

  • Psile

    So does Allison get to dance on Hector’s head now?

  • Science people were right. But Alison was rude here

    Do you think it will be dangerous for him to be nano-size around radioactivity? Like, could an expelled neutron punch through him?

    • Kid Chaos

      Way to photobomb the video chat, Alison. 😜

    • mehc012

      Meh, I almost think it’s ruder to sit there and listen to the entire conversation with one party unaware of your presence…that’s practically eavesdropping.

      I’d hope Hector could scale to the ideal size for the task…maybe small enough to manipulate atoms/particles but large enough that he didn’t get lost in the spaces between nuclei and he could shrug off some impacts. If he’s that small, they aren’t going to be mutating his infintesimally small DNA, so there’s a plus!

  • Duke Araja

    That’s quite the layover. In Dublin, I guess? Or Moscow?

  • Kris Dunlap

    The global energy crisis!? Nah that’s not a big deal. Y’know what’s really important? Using your shrinking powers to invent microchips that improve smartphone technology! That’s what the world wants. This does worry me though. Potentially solving the energy probably could also put you on the hit list for that mystery organization that was killing supers that could do stuff like that. Watch your back Pintsize.

    • she should tell him about that. Although how she’ll do that without telling about her … “friendship” (quotation marks because it may no longer exist) with Patrick will be kinda hard.

  • MisterTeatime

    Holy shit, Hector, that’s awesome. Congratulations and all the luck.
    I can totally understand why you didn’t want to tell Alison, though. Her rendition of the Dance On Your Head Song would have to be registered as a lethal weapon. 😛

  • Pol Subanajouy

    Solving the global energy crisis AND giving Hector a possible romantic subplot?

    I ship those two plot elements. I ship it HARD.

    • Kid Chaos

      Ship it! Ship it good! 😍

  • Liz

    Hector’s moving on from superheroism to help scientific endeavors with his ability. This is the best possible outcome of this meeting.

    I’m so happy right now. I don’t even care what happens for the rest of the day.

  • Zinc

    Fantastic strip. I just hope Alison doesn’t start dancing on Hector’s head, he might not survive that. Then again, he might die from embarrassment even before that.

    Also, it sounds like HALO might be a prime target for The Conspiracy. I hope Hector isn’t putting himself in danger…

  • Some guy

    Manners, Alison!

  • Svalbardcaretaker

    Soo these are the next victims of the mysterious “worldproblem solving people killer”… Which will bring allison on their track. Sweet.

    • Loranna

      . . . Oh. Oh Crap.

      *Hopes Pintsize is harder to take down than he looks . . .*

      Loranna

  • Richard Griffith

    Well that explains the reduction in the crush on Allison. But more steps towards biodynamic people making changes to the world order rather than just increasing the number of construction contracts.

  • CityFace

    Oh no! I’m caught up! I started from the beginning last week, and now I’m caught up! No more SFP till next Tuesday! How do you people live like this?

    • Jason

      Painfully. Tediously.

    • Martin Cohen

      I am in exactly the same place – I just started earlier.

    • Soqoma

      With collective enthusiasm and giddy anticipation 🙂

    • pescadoentured

      Sameee. I finished reading and was like, where is the other arrow?, wait a minute I got to the end. now I need to wait…..

    • MrSokar

      Usually I just force myself to forget about the comic for half a week or more, especially since I check it at work and live in a diffrent time zone, so usually I don’t see Friday’s page until Monday.

    • Silverwizard

      I recommend rereading – it holds up to rereads really well – and there’s likely a lot of nuance you missed that comes clear in hindsight

  • MrSing

    We play video games the rest of the time though. It kinda comes with the name.

  • Matthew Dowd

    Didn’t she tell Pintsize to see if he can do science with his tinyness?

    • and he took it to heart.

      • MrSokar

        Should have pursued cardiology, then he could really taken it to heart.

  • Glokmah

    Where did her earrings go in the last panel?
    Is that her superpower?

  • Insanenoodlyguy

    Is he going into science after all? Can Allison dance a little finger person on his head while singing?

  • AJ

    So Allison started a super team, and Hector found an alternate way to use his powers. That’s just too adorable. Does Allison get to dance on his head now?

  • Kellie Merie

    well alrighty then! all the way to France huh?
    Alison: what Energy wasn’t invented in the States yet? lol

  • chaosvii

    Of course he fucking named the digital assistant Alfred. Too bad the A.I. on that thing is worse than silver-age era Lois Lane 😛

  • danny in canada

    and exploring how Hector’s shrinking powers actually work could be hugely useful in understanding fusion, yes. Good thinking!

  • Mystery girl

    Sweet!
    (Someone has a cruuush, someone has a cruuush!)

  • Jeremy

    Those two remind me of siblings that love each other, while also giving each other a hard time and having the occasional blow up.

    • you mean all siblings? and it’s not always occasional

      • Tylikcat

        *contemplates my own family*

        I kind of hate to say this, but …not all siblings.

        (I have both the sibling who is super supportive and with whom blow ups are kind of a distant memory – I mean, I’m not saying it couldn’t happen, just, we’re super close and it’s been, like, well over a decade, maybe a decade and a half? – and the siblings who haven’t spoken to me in twenty-seven years.)

        • I don’t speak for all sibling relationships obviously. I just like poking fun at only children who think that brotherly love means something perfect and awesome. It’s great that you get along with one of your siblings like that and you have my sympathy that you’ve lost touch with the others.

          Also, siblings definitely start getting along better once they grow up unless one or both of them are abnormally mean or petty. My brother’s still a teenager and I’m just leaving that stage of my life at the moment, so we’re still in the bickering siblings phase. It sounds like you’ve been out of that stage for a while and interact with your sib as mature adults.

  • riking

    I smell some foil 🙂

  • masterofbones

    Anything you can do, I can do better, I can do anything better than you!

  • JeffH

    Good think Alison can fly, because I think she’s about to dance on Hector’s head…

  • Meghan

    YES PINTSIZE FIGHTING THE GOOD FIGHT!

    Seems like we’re both acknowledging the merits to each other’s ways of doing things.

  • Oren Leifer

    So, it’s essentially “Sorry I can’t help you solve the social end of social issues, I’m helping to solve the technological end of social issues.”

    • Sweet! I never thought of it that way. So the Guardians are still working together to save the world (minus Moonshadow debatably). Allison is working to deal with non-super social problems, Pintsize is working to solve the energy crisis and Sonar is working on “dynamorphic” social problems. I needed this. I’ve been reading so many sad essays and seeing so many sad shows in the past week or so. It’s nice to have some positivity.

  • Sebastián Rodoni Figueras

    Alison! Interrupting people is so ruuuude!
    Anyway, I’m calling it. She is or will be, Hector’s beau.

  • ampg

    What’s that, Hector? Science is really hard and boring, you say? Looks like Alison has a victory dance of her own coming up.

    • Tylikcat

      Hopefully not on Hector’s head.

      • she might use her flight to dance above his head

  • ampg

    Also, not to be a nitpicky jerk, but the flight times don’t work out here. Unless Hector’s connecting in Heathrow or something, in which case, geez HALO – spring for the direct flight already.

    • Nathanaël François

      And even then, that should last more 13 hours 30 minutes… Unless he has something like a 3 hour-wait in Heathrow which is stupid, there are Heathrow-CDG flights much more frequently than that. At this point he’d be better off just going to St Pancras and taking a Eurostar.

  • Hawthorne

    Step 1: Build space station the size of a shoebox.
    Step 2: Pintsize shrinks entire planet.
    Step 3: Store planet in gravitational floaty cupboard inside Shoebox-1.
    Step 4: Run planet off 9-volt battery until Solar Calculator Array is ready.

    • is he powerful enough to do that?

      • Hawthorne

        Sure! They just need to make it canon that Pintsize is naturally Galactus-sized, but has spent his whole life in a part-shrunken state, pretending to be five-foot-nothing so he could relate to Alison.

        • so now he’s the SFP universe equivalent to the Legion’s Giant Boy?

  • Iarei

    So wait, you’re someone who’s going to apply Hector’s SUPER POWERS. . . *ahem* in such a way that they might actually ‘save the world’? Shades of page 19.

    I wonder if Azra is one of those bog standard geniuses of if she’s a super genius. She has the power to make hoop earrings appear and disappear, which is pretty convenient.

    • I’m thinking they might bring the conspiracy back into the story too. but then again, its not fully unlimited energy, so they might let them off while they see if there is a way to accept it without killing the status quo

      • Just cut them in on the profits and they probably won’t kill you! Capitalism at its finest!

        • pretty much. not saying it’s right, but it might be pragmatic of them. people will get suspicious if no change at all happens

          • Francisco

            A technological solution can be commericalised and doesn’t break the system (because it’s formed within the system). A biodynamic solution bypasses the system (i.e. isn’t patentable, harder to commercialise,etc) and gives people the idea that the system doesn’t matter. Even what Feral is doing is not a threat because she’s operating within existing systems.

    • Spongegirl Circleskirt

      Oops!

    • Hawthorne

      Azra is probably just one of Moonshadow’s illusions!

    • Jewthulu

      I didn’t even notice that. Matter manipulation can be pretty powerful. Now I want it, if only for jewelry.

    • MrSokar

      They probably just didn’t want to clog the page up with three panels of her awkwardly taking them off as Hector and Al stand in silence waiting.

  • Shino

    You mean like, “the exact kind of stuff that got bunch of biodynamic kids violently murdered by a shadowy conspiracy?”

    • Walter

      It does seem like Hector might be murdered pretty soon here. Using superpowers to save women from battering is one thing, but using them to solve the energy crisis seems like the sort of thing that Patrick’s hypothetical conspiracy will act against.

      • Mechwarrior

        That depends on how successful this venture is (exactly what is Hector’s role here- is he going to be shoving individual atoms of plutonium around or something?) and whether or not they think they can control it.

        I still maintain my personal hypothesis that The Conspiracy actually killed those kids because of the potential chance that they could destroy the world rather than because of their potential to save it.

      • deebles

        I’d guess that depends on whether:
        A) said conspiracy is real
        B) it’s as Patrick believes
        C) Patrick accurately described the way he believes it to be.

        • Jeremy

          I hope the conspiracy doesn’t become a central element of the story. I find conspiracy stories impersonal and uninteresting. I think the stories about Moonshadow, Patrick, Allison and the others figuring out their roles in the world (for good and bad) are much more compelling than some shadowy conspiracy would be.

      • Balthazar

        But Patrick himself is working on a time machine and there seems to be no action taken against him, so unless the “Future Patrick is the secret group that killed all the superheroes after he timetraveled back to the past” theory is correct (meaning Patrick could not kill himself save risk a paradox, Hector should be fine until they actually make a breakthrough or something.

        Even then, I have to wonder seeing his power is not directly giving the infinite power, will he be killed? It’s one thing to kill heroes you feel would disrupt human social order and development, it’s another to actually try to stop the scientific development of humans (granted, even with a tiny little help of hector (pun intended)).

        • On the subject of Patrick, he doesn’t have powers that would help him achieve it. They have no evidence that he actually has the ability to create a time machine, so they don’t feel like wasting the resources needed to kill someone in his position

        • fairportfan

          The Teatime Anarchist.

        • Walter

          Conspiracy may believe that the time machine is basically a perpetual motion esque waste of resources.

      • StClair

        There’s one possible escape clause I can see, and that’s that fusion has been “ten years away” my entire life. If the Conspiracy can just keep stretching that out indefinitely with the occasional bit of sabotage, there don’t have to be any murders. :/

        (Of course, we STILL don’t get working fusion, but that wasn’t/isn’t gonna happen anyway until the Conspiracy is outed and/or gone.)

    • You know the whole “Let’s not tell anyone about this evil conspiracy” thing that Alison and Patrick had going? That might need to be changed.

  • Ray Arani

    I have the same shirt Azra is wearing. it’s amazing and the best. But the real issue here is is her super power just to make hoop earrings appear and disappear, or does it work on all hoops…or all earrings…or perhaps just anything that touches her ears. SupEAR power!

  • Stevonnie

    WHYAUSIUJTIOENJLRIENJKCXKJSDT<vkl g;cbm/sc.l;x I LOVE THIS< OMG I SHIP IT ANNDSJNFNSJK (don't mind me, just fangirling *screams into pillow*

  • character development 🙂

  • Uhoh. Looks like hector’s crush is crushing on allison.

  • Kid Chaos
  • Steele

    “Alfred”, huh? Can’t even be original, can ya, Pinty?

  • Philip Bourque

    I’d say it’s a front and excuse for an evil organization bent on world domination using nuclear powered weapons, but this doesn’t seem to be that kind of comic.

    • Mechwarrior

      Yeah, they’re probably using bioweapons.

  • Zmm

    Did.. she lose an earrings in the last panel? in 2 and 5 it looks like she has a big hooops (doesn’t seem like hair due to the perfect curve and direction of shape) but then nada in the last one

    BOOYA that is ag ood use for him. character wise.
    good good~

  • Wizardblizzard

    On a side issue: it’s so sweet that Hector named his computer Alfred.

  • Guest

    :/ I can’t find where you’re quoting from, so I’m going to raise a concern to your comment based on the assumption that it’s all Azra Cumali.

    As a Middle Eastern person, I find that using faux-Mid. Eastern names (Ra’s Al Ghul) or Middle Eastern-esque features is a typical way villains are portrayed. They need not actually be Middle Eastern. Mother Gothel in Tangled was just meant to look like an opposite of Rapunzel, and she ended up looking like many Iranian women do (not helped by the red dress, which vaguely recalls some of the fashions most popular in Iran; there are a fair number of fair-skinned Iranians, but not that many lighter haired Iranians). Of male villains, this could be swarthy complexions, bushy brows, greying in streaks from the temples instead of salt-and-peppering, large noses of various large nose shapes, etc; specific mannerisms or forms of dress. In women– women of the Middle East having had formed a strong association with the erotic from the 1700s to the early 1900s, and the image of the exotic femme fatale– it is usually something like large almond eyes with heavy lids and long eyebrows, a feminine and exotic name, a curvaceous figure and ambiguously exotic clothes, etc. And the woman might have an abusive spouse she clings to while having a one-off with the hero and ultimately tricking him, or she dies in a last-minute change of heart, etc. etc.

    You could write a whole TV Tropes on this. But, my point is, a name like Azra Cumali might seem villainous to people who’ve been subtly cultured to see a certain form of villain. Whereas to me, an American Iranian, Azra is a common name meaning “virgin”, and Azra Cumali is an innocuous Turkish name. It would be as benign as a Judith MacIntyre, or a Katrina Winthrop.

  • Guest

    By way of example, here’s an image of Bahareh Hedayat, an Iranian women’s rights activist whose husband has been trying in vain to free her from prison for years now:
    http://i0.wp.com/persian2english.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/0baha.jpg?resize=693%2C559

    Here’s an image of Mother Gothel:
    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/fc/Gothel.png

    🙂

    • Kid Chaos

      Like, wow, man; awesome. 😎

  • Jordan Hiller

    Wow! She’s gorgeous! Congrats Hector! (I hope you both aren’t horribly murdered by that shadowy conspiracy)

  • Mujaki

    “…but what exactly do you do at HALO?”
    “I usually play sniper. Nothing like getting a frag from across the entire map!”

  • Francisco

    Why do you think it sounds super-villany?

    Once we thought that any German sounding name was villainous. Then any Russian sounding names but, even before the Wall collapsed, we realised that there was a difference between the leaders of a country and its citizens. These days a villain is more likelly to have an evil nickname rather than a bad given name. Just because a name sounds foreign, it doesn’t mean it’s bad.

    There are some perfectly ordinary names that bring a chill to my heart but a name being foreign doesn’t.

    A name such as Nick Griffin sounds more like a villain to me than any foreign name. Whereever you go in the world there are good people and bad people.

    << tries very hard not to bring more real world politics into this

    • ∫Clémens×ds

      Pure jest. “Bringing an era of pure free energy through nuclear fusion” is the plot of at least twelve James Bond villains, I’d say.