Comic for Monday, December 28th, 2020
This is up a little late, oops. Took a bit longer to draw than I thought. I think both because panel creeps upward in these sorts of pages, and I have to do more… storyboarding the usual. My outline isn’t much help for fight scenes. In this case, it read something like “[Violence Ensues]” which, while accurate, means that the Outline->Drawing steps takes some translations; as I have to consider how the fight would actually work; I usually have some idea, but they tend to be more ad-hoc in their details as I consider what the character’s powers are.
The booster Naomi fights here is actually fairly strong, as he’s a family mage, he just has the disadvantage that Naomi has skipped straight to swinging at “time to start breaking things” level; typically Naomi holds back a fair bit, even when she probably shouldn’t, as she doesn’t want to snap bits off people. We’ve seen that be a problem when she starts to let loose, she typically always is holding back a little when fighting humans. That this guy could take a few hits of that puts him up with some of the warmages we’ve seen in durability.
The green haired woman calls Naomi a mutt – she’s assuming the purple eyes + black hair makes her a mismatched family mage (like Marc). Even she does know who Naomi is (which she may or may not from the amount of context so far), she’d be more likely to assume Naomi dyed her hair purple to pretend to having matching colors than she’d dye her hair black, as that’d make no sense to her.
If you missed the Santa Hat Day image, you can see here!
Loading ...
I have to say I love the idea that her hair dye job has been on long enough that her roots are showing. But they weren’t showing in the previous page. Does that mean her powering up makes her hair grow?
They’ve been showing for a while, been pretty subtle mostly.
Yup. Look closely at panels 2 & 7 of the last comic.
They’ve been showing for a couple weeks real world time at least.
Here’s September.
http://pastutopia.com/comic/comic-for-monday-september-21st-2020/
My post went missing. I linked back to late September where purple roots were showing. I’ll avoid linking it again on the assumption that I’ve been filtered and links are a filter risk.
Alternatively it is possible that my political opinions are wrong, and Big Tech is filtering me again. And by Big Tech, I mean Mium.
It occasionally takes up to a day for a comment to appear, as you can see by both your posts. being visible now.
If there’s a pattern as to when it will happen, I haven’t found it.
Woohoo! Post AND link are back!
Sept 7th, no purple roots. Sept 14th, there is implied passage of time and purple roots. I believe this definitely proves that
1. This was not a wash out hair color. Maybe I’m the only one who thought it was.
2. Naomi is not in a huge hurry to dye it purple. I’m sure this has a number of implications, but the new comic may be posted at any moment. I’m unlikely to trigger a discussion now. 🙁
Would this be a “no trigger” warning?
No, no. I feel people should be able to get triggered whenever they like. I mean I love my trigger time, why should I deny a similar pleasure to others?
Concern about the taste of attack magic directed against her is just the kind of outside the box thinking that makes Naomi such a valuable member of Peter’s team.
I’m trying to decide if she’s saying that to be playful or intimidating.
Great page! Thank you for another amazing year of comic pages.
Lol, every time I read someone saying the “who the hell are you” line, I read it like from the first scene with alucard in hellsing ultimate.
The voice, it just fits, every time…
I’m guessing the green construct tastes like those sour apple jolly ranchers. Not the little ones, I mean the big ones that always make you feel like you are going to break your teeth on them…
-meoi lass
Chaining Naomi to rock/concrete seems like a bad idea.
It just gives her something to hit you with.
True that!
Happy New Year!
I love how much of a badass that Naomi is!
I’m referencing this 4, almost 5 year old page:
http://pastutopia.com/comic/comic-for-wednesday-february-24th/
“Peter’s hint will make sense in not too long…”
That was in reference to Peter’s comment regarding the Bridgepoint data having been corrupted, more specifically to the how and who.
I know we subsequently learned how important it is to Central. Did we ever really make sense of Peter’s hint though? We know Kor’s World wants it out of people’s hands. We know there was a teleporter in play for the? Renegade families?
Peter’s hint: The “redundant cameras” were the only ones the intruder had to tamper with.
My take: That makes sense, because, as has since been implied, the intruder was a teleporter.
Yeah, I considered Peter’s hint to be pointing at the first point we saw the innate teleporter (Acalia, I think) using her skills. Which I think was the failed assassination attempt on Miko (in which she mentioned Peter’s theory about a teleporter and irritation that he’d been proved right).
I think this is where we learn why Peter keeps her around…
P.S. MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!
Is this the first booster vs booster we’ve seen?
And Naomi’s advantage is … she’s not holding back? I mean, I think I get what you mean, but … you make it sound like that family mage is holding back. In which case, how foolish of him. 😉
I’m pretty sure it’s the first natural booster versus natural booster.
I think what Past meant was, if this person had turned it up to 100% right away, it would’ve been more to draw, and we probably wouldn’t have gotten to see any bit of Naomi versus Miss Heir to a Major House until some time in 2021.
Past didn’t say anything about the family mage booster holding back. I think it’s precisely as Sidhekin suggests, the other booster is fighting normally but has the disadvantage of having to fight an unusually upset Naomi.
Yeah, that makes more sense. It didn’t take Naomi long to beat him because normally she plays first, and sometimes even beats them before she’s stopped playing, and this time she skipped that part.
I like how she punched the guy so hard when he blocked the button ripped off his sleeve. Nice touch that.
Has Naomi been watching One Punch Man?
Not close enough apparently. Maybe I misread but it looked like she put at least 6 punches into that first booster mage before he decided to fall down?
Was referring more to the sword chomp 😛
This is where I confess to knowing a little about One Punch Man, because my son has some of the manga. However I don’t know enough to recognize the sword biting.
Saitama vs Sonic, second encounter. Link in my name
Sweet, thanks! And you’re right, that’s exactly spot on.
Oh dear, Naomi stopped smiling… that is scarier than any dragon or demon…
One of her closest friends noted that she is either smiling or punching… and she is most certainly not smiling now.
Kally might know how to land properly, but she needs to hurry if she is going to get a chance to join in the fun.
There is an airship with a “lady” we’ve seen before on it. That is what the heavy artillery (I mean, Kally) is for.
Someone apparently is stuck on being aristocracy and not keeping up on random super kids. Really should keep track of exceptions to the rules of the world. Prevents you from getting your face caved in.
I think Past explained this in the author comment section. Basically, the aristocrat would have recognized Naomi, but her prejudices cause her to completely disregard the possibility that someone would possibly want to not appear to maybe be an aristocrat.
It would likely seem very natural to her that a booster mutt with purple eyes might be a fan of Naomi Attrah. I’d consider it at least plausible that she’d expect Naomi to have the sort of distaste for her merchandising that she apparently has, but not plausible that recent house explosions would have rendered her to such dire straits as to need to wear that crap anyway.
when Naomi CHOMPS a sword made out of Magical Energy in 2, it’s time to wave a White Flag and Surrender.. PRONTO!!!!
I’d think miss Heir to a Major House is probably going to make the mistake of assuming that Naomi actually did that with her teeth, rather than realizing that Naomi has discounted her as a threat to such an extreme extent that she’s switched from being super violent to being slightly playful, and has opted to appear to take a bite out of the chains and boost to rip them from their physical anchors rather than simply poofing them all out of existence with a shrug of her push harder.
Or she has just altered her teeth to the point that they CAN take out even red forms with a bite. I don’t think I have seen Naomi actually neutralize anything – just use it for leverage to punch or pull harder.
I’m not sure that she can even use magic that isn’t some sort of stat boost. Besides, poofing stuff out of existence is a Mium thing.
This would just be a one link response with no text, but I don’t particularly want to tell the comment engine that I’m a spammer who’s advertising stuff by linking to archive entries made by the author of the site.
Mium (and sort of Miko) may be the only one we’ve seen poof matter out of existence, but there’s an entire named discipline that is known to be able to poof magic out of existence. True, null casters are rare, but they’re definitely a thing. What some few can just do naturally can be learned by others. (For example Jayce Myer demonstrated boosting via an autocaster. Also, the Situation Containment armor and Kors World armor include boost engines as standard features.)
I assumed in her match against Kally that she boosted the BALL so it would become a shield-breaker – she wasn’t allowed to activate magic on Kally’s side of the court, and knowing Naomi she wouldn’t break a rule of the game outright.
Well, most people, in an actual fight, stop thinking.
And stop being rational.
They run on pure instinct and preprogrammed prejudices.
Only after the battle, and after they have calmed down (and after they survived)
do SOME of these people reflect, and think, that would have been a good time to surrender.
Only the survivors get that luxury, eh? 😉
Uh-oh, we have a code purple. Naomi is not smiling. I repeat, Naomi is not smiling.
It’s fine. She’s not looking at us.
Also, she’s either not figured out how to make the leap to tactical, or she’s holding that back to not hurt the hostage.
Popcorn?
Or it takes her time to build her power up to insane levels. During the fight with the Kor’s world soldier for example, she was increasing her power continuously up until the point even they were going “ok, this is a bit much”
Isn’t her genetically engineered mutant superpower (and don’t tell me that’s not what designer children have) literally ‘fighting spirit’ like you’d see in some light novels/anime? Or possibly like a video game rage mode?
I mean both types of character can recover by sleeping a lot and then having their injuries spontaneously go away so… it’s either based on how much she wants to fight (fighting spirit, low power because of boring opponents) or ramping up over time (rage mode, needs time to charge up) and only the author can tell us which.
I think that’s partially both. Naomi is a lot more idealistic than the rest of the cast is rarely trying to kill or seriously harm people. Even when she ripped off Acalia’s arm, it was by mistake.
She is almost always holding back, but stops and starts to go berserk when she starts losing or gets really angry to the point where it becomes unclear how strong she can really get. I think she’s about 3/4 of the way there as she seems to have lost her temper instantly when seeing the kid is all bloodied up… which is fair enough, they deserve this beating.
One might almost claim Acalia ripped her own arm off by inept use of her booster.
She’s smiling. Kinda. Its that wacky half-smile of a predator who has good prey in their sights. Which is an apt description of what is about to go down. Kally might need to intervene to Naomi from going to far.
Still, code purple seems a good call.
When Kally joins in, I think that it may go to “code brown”. https://youtu.be/wo9_7ovqxvg
I read that a little more Deadpool-ish and went back to the last page to verify none of them were aware enough to wear their brown pants.