Comic for Monday, October 26th
There is lots of rambling in this commentary. You’ve been warned.
The last panel confused some people, so I figure I should clarify in comments – while Naomi tends to glow purple/pink, so does all high concentrations of mana/psionic particles, it’s just how I’ve always (usually) drawn them 😉
Peter isn’t really just guessing randomly in the first panel – it’s a fairly logical point from what he knows. Even if Naomi doesn’t move out of the way, the vast majority of magical attacks that would stop her would probably not be suitable for using right next to someone you want alive – and a non-lethal attack she wouldn’t necessarily bother stepping in front of. Shooting may seem drastic, but Otte is fairly willing to risk shooting Peter – it’s not usually instantly fatal and there are enough medical facilities on the dropship there isn’t a very high risk of him dying.
As for Naomi’s tactic – we’ve already seen Kally use the same solution to the potential of burst rounds. A burst round tends to punch through magical effects – against physical objects it’s just a bullet; this a fairly large and obvious weakness to them, while they preclude the easiest defenses of mages, they are not exactly a trump card. That said, blocking a bullet with a piece of concrete by hand is not exactly a normal thing, even for boosted mages – dodging bullets is far easier in terms of reaction – you just have not be in the general area the gun was pointed; a normal human can’t move that fast, but if they could it wouldn’t be challenging to not be hit by a bullet; the eye-hand coordination required to block one is entirely on a different level in terms of possibility.
The art is going through some changes again… isn’t it always? 😛 I think it will be more evident for the better and the worse (like usual) this coming week, but you can see some of them on this page. Ultimately The idea is to redistribute the time I spend on the page, spending more time laying out the page and more time a “primary” panel or two page with slightly more background detail and stuff, than take the time budget from the other panels; we’ll see how that works out.
Friday’s comic will hit Patreon tonight, and I’ll try to have a new vote incentive up on Monday. No real news on other projects yet.
And if you missed it… you can edit comments now! For 5 minutes after you post them anyway. Let me know if the feature has any problems you discover.
Holy crap this was a long ramble. Sorry 😉
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Hey, Nick, what was it you said “…a bodyguard is only as fast as…” as fast as what? Help me out here. i’m sure you said something clever and accurate, and I want to compare that with actual events. 😀
A couple of notes on layout and art: I think the idea of differing amounts of background works pretty well, and you absolutely nailed the foreshortening on Naomi in panels 3 & 5. The proportions are just right. 🙂
Nick Otte will never play the piano again. 🙁
*Snicker*
I felt bad for Jayce Myer when he underestimated Naomi – to him she was just some random student; as Otte pointed out though… he’s already seen what she can do and still thought that was a good idea.
You have to wonder about some people. We’ll see – maybe he’ll come around and show that the third time really is the charm and he too can learn and adapt.
The backgrounds thing will be a lot more evident on future comics for the good and the bad; mainly saying that I’ll be messing around with stuff again (ie… status quo around here… 😛 )
Otte’s problem is that he saw some of what Naomi can do, and thought that was all of it. Surprise! That chunk of concrete has to weigh at least 20-30 pounds, and I couldn’t hold it out one handed like that let alone swing it or run with it–but she can. ^^
It’s not what you don’t know, it’s what you think you know but isn’t so that hurts you.