Comic for Monday July 22nd, 2024
Comic.
Just slightly late. My schedule will still be a bit and there’s some other stuff, but I think we’ll be at least nominally on schedule. I think in the future I may up to truncate comics in a similar situation, but I didn’t think I’d miss two weeks in a row. Art might be a little rough this time as even as late as it was I was rushing a bit, but doesn’t look too egregious.
I opted to use ‘stage directions’ of sort on the whispering this time, both because I know some people don’t like it when I use tiny or faded text… usually when I do that the text isn’t really part of the main exchange, but in this case it’s the dialogue of the panel. Plus, this way I could make the note that Miko wasn’t trying very hard to whisper clear, since Miko has very little problem talking shit about people in front of said people.
Kally is probably the only one that’d take offense to Miko’s comments though, being that nature of human vs. human weapon is far more of a sore spot for her than Naomi. Kally also has a vague notion that she should try to guide Miko to better behavior, but as we tend to see when they interact, it does not work at all, both because Miko is more or less impervious to being lectured by anyone besides Peter, and Kally herself is neither a paragon of behavior nor particularly verbal/socially adept. Kally is certainly capable of having a more forceful personality, as we’ve seen, but she tends to be off-balance socially confronting problems that don’t need to be solved by dragons.
Kally stumbling slightly over calling her a Designer Child to her face is largely an unnecessary correction. While it may have started as a somewhat derisive term, its typically what the designer children (particularly ones like Naomi) tend to refer themselves as. But the IDS probably attempts to discourage its employees from using the term, but it would be mostly futile.
Truthfully, Miko probably does know more about how and where Naomi came from. Miko just doesn’t really care about it or agree with her presence, so just views it as a chance to to talk more shit rather than provide anything resembling an answer. Only by end is Miko really starting to rant though. You can tell the degree with Miko is ranting by how much alliteration crops up in her dialogue.
Anyway, next comic should be 8/5. I think it’ll be normal, but if I’ll see if I can shorten it instead of skip it if comes to that, as I still have some heavy crunching to do on another subject, and am currently a little limited on my working time on the comic.
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I love how matter-of-fact Naomi is about Peter disappearing. “Seriously, the two of you act like this is the first time he’s been blown up. It’s not even the first time this week.” 8-D
The interesting thing about Naomi is yes, she’s an innate booster, but unlike other boosters (is she the only innate booster we’ve seen?) she doesn’t seem to have an “off” switch. She’s always boosted to some minimum default level, without even trying to boost, which is why her strength and speed and hearing are high enough that she’s a champion athlete.
But when she wants or needs to, she can turn up the boost — boost the boost? — to make herself even faster/stronger/whatever. And as far as I can tell, she either doesn’t have any upper limit, or it’s so phenomenally high that she simply hasn’t reached it yet. You would think she’d be limited by the amount of mana she can produce or absorb, but she doesn’t seem to be. Maybe she hasn’t reached her limit on that yet.
We haven’t yet seen Naomi’s maximum as she just keeps getting stronger after seemingly fatal wounds. I remember when she was fighting a Kor’s world tank or armored soldier when she survived a pile of rubble being dropped on her. … At least I think that was Naomi.
In other news …
Strange dream… Woke up with Purple Princess Camilla on one shoulder, the green haired Avon secretary Saria on the other shoulder and Naomi who had pounced on me and yelled “WHAT do you think you are doing?!!!”
The (whispering) and (not really whispering) stage directions seem to be better than faded or tiny text to me. It is better for my old eyes and it is also clearer who is speaking
This dirty old man has noticed that Naughty Naomi appears to have lost her underwear!
No straps are visible in this comic. LOL
@ Westley. Yes, yes Control would have blown up the carrier just to spite the “native wildlife” or “vastly inferior organic” that dared strike them.
That assumes Control would *survive* getting punched by Naomi…
Timeline-wise Naomi dropped out of Levenworth 2 years ago, I believe. We know she dropped out before Tyler started there, and that Tyler has been there for at least one school year prior to the story (it’s at least Tyler’s 2nd year).
I don’t know if we ever got a direct confirmation how long ago Peter went Rogue. I would guess less than two years ago. That means that Naomi was probably already working on her project to save the world prior to working with Peter.
Another interesting timeline point that hadn’t occurred to me, that means that either Naomi was still doing sporting events after dropping out of Levenworth, or the Consul has been in power for at least two years, since the Consul recalls meeting Naomi (though as Naomi didn’t recall meeting her it is also possible that Consul wasn’t the Consul at the time).
That would fit Naomi meeting Peter while he was working “for” Avon (stealing MYM), but that doesn’t necessarily mean it was the only science lab Peter would have been in at the time.
I think Naomi wanted to punch Control (as opposed to Peter aggravating Control). My only question is “Would Naomi punching Control have resulted in the Skycarrier being blown up by Control?”
There’s a funny moment in one of David Brin’s “Uplift” novels, where an alien is helping defend a human outpost and asks “in your language, is there a term for asymmetric warfare by small bands of people?” The human looks at his troops of genetically-uplifted apes and bursts out laughing – “Gorilla guerrilas”.
You kept spelling it guerilla… I thought her nickname was “the purple GORILLA”
Honestly on Naomi, I suspect if any of the debatably sane scientists we’ve seen in the comic got a chance they’d try and figure out how she ticks so they can make more of her, and more biddable ones at that. So being found in a lab isn’t that surprising.
Ehh, we’ve already seen illegal genetic engineering by multiple companies. With varying levels of ethics / cover-ups. And that’s illegal by the standards of a world with designer children.
Naomi does have her own sports clothing brand, so obviously understands how valuable she is on some level. There’s no reason, aside from boredom, she wouldn’t be willing to sell her time and DNA to one of the many ethical labs we never see. We never see those labs because it turns out reasonable workplaces are boring and don’t explode or have random Demons showing up.
My guess is that Naomi broke into some sort of illegal science facility to try to solve the problem by punching everything and ran into Peter, who convinced her to solve the problem with more targeted punching.
Or she somehow encountered the original Mium prototype and tried to save it not realizing it was a SMAI (or given her personality not caring).
She does immediately insist on saving Ila’s existence, so that sort of checks out.
Are you sure there are any?
In our world, as much as the less ethical genetics researchers want to shut their more ethical competitors (along with all of their other competitors) out of the market, However, genetics is relatively cheap to study, so it’s really hard to shut everyone out. I mean, stuff can still be expensive, but compared to other industries, getting into the business is not as expensive as many other fields.
In their world… having access to Arc technology is immensely advantageous. It’s my understanding it’s go Arc or go home in this particular field. Also, it seems like shady boyz have a monopoly on Arc technology.
As such, there is probably somebody out there who would count as ethical, but they would probably need more help than Naomi could provide to have any hope of sustainable business.
Naomi and Peter? Maybe.
That could explain why Peter was so utterly uninterested in anything Evan had to offer.
To be clear, I’m not saying that AVon is at all associated with anything ethical, except maybe dubiously ethical. However, Peter could easily be playing the two off on each other while the company he actually supports does their business away from even our prying eyes. We’d literally never know. Also, it would probably be too boring for us to care.
I’m pretty sure Miko should be saying Gorilla, not Guerilla.
I’m pretty sure Miko really means Gorilla, not Guerilla.
vertical panel 5: “well at least they’ve gone from shouting at each other to whispering conspiratorially.”