Grrl Power #1134 - Chemical victory (Patreon)

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Knocking people out in super brawls is usually handled via concussion. Concussions are wildly overused in most media, and in almost every instance, they wildly overestimate how easily people get knocked out. Sure, sometime people in TV shows or whatever get in a car wreck (especially since some stunt guys figured out how to do the T-Bone from within the car shot) and then it cuts on impact, then fades back in, representing time lost to unconsciousness. But most of the time, a goon will take a real bantam weight ding on the jaw and drop like the housing market after decades of deregulation. That's usually the fault of lazy writing, direction and/or stunt work. Not everyone's going to set up a yank line on the person getting clocked to make the hit look severe enough to ring their bell. TV production schedules sometimes just don't have the time for that kind of work when a simple stage punch is fine for 90% of the audience.

I'm sure I'm guilty of it in the comic, but at least when Jiggawatt got laid out, it was after bouncing off a cinderblock wall straight into a clothesline.

But that's why Harem gets hypo duty. Sure, sedatives have their own risks, and might not work against Supers with dense skin or hyper metabolism or their power is that their blood is pure caffeine, but it's probably still safer than cracking everyone on the head with a tube sock full of nickels. I think the reason other super teams don't do it is that it makes for shorter, less dramatic fights. I don't know that I see someone like Wonderman or Thor or Wolverine doing something like that, but I could definitely see The Beast, or... oh, man, could you imagine Iceman doing it? He'd have the hypo in his utility belt which gets encased in ice, then he pulls it out and injects someone? It'd be like getting intravenous brainfreeze.

Anyway, it's an incredibly sensible thing to do, but it assumes you have a sedative that could knock out a 225 lb guy but won't put the 125 lb Super powered female into cardiac arrest. Really, Harem probably has several different hypos that put out different doses, and one of her has to work at a carnival six weekends a year doing the weight guessing schtick for practice. Not that honing that skill on the average American would really be all that helpful when your real targets are muscular Supers who all have about 6% body fat. Maybe there's a carnival near a military base and she practices on Marines or something.