Comic for Thursday, August 25th
Okay, so when Rovak put “speaks fluent Good Guy” on his resume he was fudging a bit. I mean, how hard can it be? He got there. Sort of.
The message on the monitor in the last panel reads:
“Attention! The Lab is Currently Experiencing an Intrusion.
Dear Intruder. I cannot find an appointment for your Intrusion, and find it conflict with prior arrangements. Kindly Reschedule for a more convenient time.”
…
Regarding the Q&A – it turns out I am gigantic moron, and I am very sorry. It seems the email address I listed did not, in fact, work. This is both somewhat… err… stupid, and sort of a dick move on my part 😐
I have replaced it with an older email address (alimilw@gmail.com) that I am very sure works. I have no idea why the other one stopped working, but for the time being we are going back to this one until I get that sorted out. This is the problem with being too tricky with all these mirrored email address…
In fact, if you have tried to send me an email I didn’t reply, please follow up with me again! I am very sorry for the confusion on that front 🙁
So… I’ve delayed it to Monday.
There is another vote incentive character poll! It features some new and some old ones. I’m going to try to do some more fancier arts (the digital painting ones) but no promises. You can find polls below the comments.
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The computer says “I cannot find a scheduling of your intrusion”? Seriously?
Firstly, whoever actually wrote that would be an unbelievable moron for having written that if they expected it to be taken at all, in any way seriously. (And I tolerate stupid almost as well as Miko.)
Secondly, I bloody love them for having written that. Seriously, even if the whole building gets dropped on them, I hope they lived, because that’s awesome and hilarious.
I think there is a good chance the author of that message is MYM (ie: the computer itself). We know he is currently active in the Avon computer systems from Eff-Five talking to him, and that doesn’t sound like a standard message or something that would be reasonable for a computer to display on its own.
Plus, it sort of sounds like him. Formal and impersonal. Polite. Sort of a troll. Plus, the “prior arrangement” would be Miko’s visit, which he is probably pretty unhappy about overlapping with all of this.
You have to be prepared for anything! 😉
Sometimes you never expect the easter egg to be found. Of course, computer procedural generating messages are not as clever as they think they and you get weird messages. Or sometimes slightly too clever for anyone’s good…
Well, this should thin out the crowd a bit. Perhaps it will allow Tyler and Rovak to actually chat a bit. 🙂
Or possibly Rovak and Miko. Now THERE would be an interesting conversation. ^^
Attempting to kill someone does make a good icebreaker. Though I guess you could say for Tyler is more of an icemak- okay, I won’t finish that one. 😐
And a fairy tail reference. Nice. Also got back from Comicon Palm Springs.
Nice! Never been gone to a major comiccon. I’ve considered it a few times, but never really had a chance line up well between work and stuff.
I don’t much follow comic books, but there is usually a lot of cool stuff from what I’ve heard.
Nice work on the jagged line to make the speech bubbles into radio transmissions! Simple and clear!
It’s always nice when you can fall back on sort of global standards. Or at least I think that’s a pretty common way of indicating that. 🙂
Appreciate the feedback!
I suppose the failure on the email is partially mine, as I have apparently been using your old email address all along. I can not say I even noticed you had changed it.
Is it just me, or does that last panel look a lot like Mir’s lab? I have to say I’m not quite sure what is going on yet. I sort of expected a showdown between Mir and the IDS at some point though.
Of course, there is the looming Dues Ex Miuma (Or is Mium Ex Machina? Or just Dues Ex Machina considering), and the computer message sounds sort of like him and the aforementioned sense of humor we were talking about on the last page.
yeah pretty shure that its the lab. i belive guy in chair is, um, gate? i think that was his name.
i -think- mir is having orish merc problems. unless f-5 or whatever it was decided to go hulk after getting mium radiation to its brain.
oh and <|| is what language now? reshlic?
<|| is Orish; I decided not to include the legend, as frankly it doesn't matter that much here, as long as it's different then < or no marker. The "wtf are the languages" is a question that got asked for the Q&A, so there will be a bit more of a detailed description there. Originally I just used "<" for any foreign language. When we started having a bunch of them, I started using different symbols for different languages. Orish was originally <| but many people noted that was basically the same as what I was using for Reshlic <[ so I moved to <|| for Orish. The system is basically arse, but it works well enough and the majority of the time it's not super relevant beyond guessing who can understand it.
I believe the phrase would be MYM ex Machina “The MYM in the Machine”. 🙂
Yeah, that looks like Mir’s lab (and Gate–kudos @Redplauge). My guess is that the I.D.S. troops were getting cocky about the lack of resistance until they hit Mir, herself……
I am fairly certain “Mium” is just MYM sounded out, but it does seem easier to refer to the AI entity as MYM and the prototype as Mium. Especially as they may not be entirely the same.
I am currently giving equal odds to it being Mir or Effive (possibly MYM Effive). We have no reason that I’m aware of yet to think that Mir is a mage, though it is possible her body is built for combat. I mean, she is a scientist, which are not always known for their martial prowess. Lesser odds to new character, but it is also possible.
I just like the alliteration of Mium Ex Machina. I suppose with the above theory though MYM Ex Machina would be the the same alliteration.
Well. Mir does threaten to kill and/or dissemble people for parts occasionally. I’m not sure that indicates a pacifist, at least. That said, being able to give an IDS solider trouble is sort of a whole different problem.
Do I sense a flesh golem in the future?
If for some reason Mir decides she needs one, I’m not sure I’d put it past her…
See Rovak this is what I am talking about. You have some great dialog and the whole immortality thing is cool but the sociopath thing is an elephant in the room. I am pretty sure even anti-heroes casually discuss whole scale murder. That makes you a villain, Not cool. Are you trying to sink my ship before you and Miko even have the first date? I think I will have to change your leitmotif now
I am fairly certain Rovak has been batshit insane walking pile of murder since his first appearance. He is just a CHARMING batshit insane walking pile of murder, so occasionally people forget.
I suppose he has not really crossed the moral event horizon yet though, so there is always a chance of him cross back to anti-hero. Not sure why he WOULD though, as his main interest is blowing things to very small pieces with a side of murder.
i think rovak is more closely related to anti-matter than anti-hero. and of course batshit insane.
but then, if hes immortal, how much time has he had to become said batshit? or how many times did he die and it slowly chipped away at his sainity (if he had much to begin with) im assuming an i-code, while not quite a pact with demons and/or lovcraftian things, is probly not something most mages concider. even if they have the power to do it. and batshit insane is only part of their worries.
I agree. I think Rovak isn’t really on the black-white morality spectrum so much as the blue-orange-alien-space-whale one. It’s not that he is evil, it is just he is not right in the head of enough that I’m not sure he views killing people as bad.
I also suspect it is related to the I-Code. While I think the current consensus is that it is probably cybernetic in nature, it could be actually be something more supernatural.
At the end of the About page there is “In short, this comic contains” included in that list is “demons” and “ancient cults”. What we’ve seen so far may not be the end of all magic. I mean, we know almost nothing about the other worlds yet.
I’m fairly certain we will see something called demons at least, considering THIS page. The IDS Soldier certainly makes it sound like demons are something that exist (just noticed this piece of context reading through this last chapter again).
I feel like there is so much left to see. This really could be a novel series and I would read it. It might even be better (no offense to the art, just you could do a lot more).
The problem with making a novel/book is the bar of quality is a good bit higher. While I’d like to think we’ve come a long way here at making webcomics, we could go that distance again and still have a lot of room to improve before calling it professional or marketable, and writing books isn’t necessarily easier then drawing webcomics, its just different hard.
I’ve given some consideration to releasing bonus stories as ‘light novel’ format. ie: several pages of words per picture, as it’s certainly quicker/cheaper, but I don’t currently think that more content is good, more that I need to work on better content still – both with what’s being made and what already exists in redrawing old pages etc. Right now it’s a very intimidating slog for people trying to read the archive.
@Amaranth: There’s a page (click THIS LINK, see last panel) where two people are talking about Ila and one says, “I doubt she’s full human–a warmage?” That lends credence to the concept that warmages are cyborgs to some degree.
Being functionally immortal tends to alter one’s perspective on death.
Not to mention however he has become immortal, be it cyborg or supernatural, it likely messed with his head.
We also can’t forget DNA manipulation or healing faster or just as fast as being wounded, which means while your head is being cut off with a sword the only place that is cut during said process is the sword. It also means that the cells regenerate at an alarming rate. There would be side effects with today’s technology, but in this world it might be very possible.
I realize my comment was confusing. The part where “is cut during this process is the sword,” meant to have around the sword and just behind. The comment about “todays technology” meant for DNA manipulation. I am sorry for any confusion.
I think it was clear enough 😉 No confusion here.
We’ve seen Rovak heal in two similiar ways. Small wounds just go away after a few seconds, and major ones the I-code kicks in and he seems fine a moment later.
There are various loopholes or weaknesses though, and the delay is notable – while he can heal from a lot of things, it is not literally instant, which is fairly relevant. It also doesn’t defy the rules of magic – the bigger the change, the more power it takes. Healing a cut is almost trivial, but regrowing lost pieces would be far more challenging.
The big difference between the I-Code and simply “healing” is that the biggest weakness is removed; the I-Code seems to activate even if he falls unconscious or would otherwise be able to cast the magic he needs to recover. There are limitations to it though, which will be come clear in time.
Healing magic in and of itself is very tricky though, since human ‘Eidos Forms’ are very complicated, and its almost impossible to work with someone else’s, especially if they are conscious.