Comic for Thursday, July 5th, 2018
Uh-oh, people are starting to suspect all the characters are insane, better put in a sane one- oh… Ah, you know what, nevermind…
With Rovak, he has frequently not been an interlude character, but at least he was originally supposed to be one. Well, originally I guess the interludes were all either flashbacks or flashside-ways to a different world, but I decided that was made too much sense, so I’d make a bin of entirely randomly selected characters to be interlude characters, and then, having made an entirely haphazard decision, I proceeded to not stick to it in the slightest. I’m a professional at this, after all (<- this should obviously be a joke… 😉 )
A half a page definitely saved time, but I suspect that we are already seeing that it just sort of serves to increase page density somewhat. We’ll see. I think we might do this again in the future. Going to be honest here, I think if you just rotate it 90°, it’d sort of by like one of my older pages in size. I don’t think it will be a long term thing, but I really do need to make a buffer, and this might be a good short term compromise, though frankly it didn’t save as much time as I was sort of thinking, but maybe if I make a page, and literally chop it in two, that would have to be twice as fast, right? For this one I actually just drew it as a half a page. Idk.
Enough people have voted in the “make a wiki” idea that I will look into it. I’m not making promises yet, but I don’t think it’s too far out there. I’ll keep you guys posted when I have more.
Happy 4th of July to all ye early birds who see this is while it’s still 4th of July – I mean, it’s an American holiday and all, but that doesn’t mean the rest of ya’ll can’t have a happy a day 😉
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Panel 6: so… tell me… what do you mean? Panel 8: at least he understands that much, in job satisfaction.
Hm… I’m thinking DOCTOR COAT is actually trying to design better PEOPLE and not better KILLING MACHINES.
Which is disturbing, considering how little Illa cares about a single (or even multiple) life. So work in progress
Is….this Martin? (Or is this yet another joke on how it’s impossible to tell who Martin is supposed to actually be!?)
Either way…..I think I’d disagree with Rovak. You don’t have to enjoy your job to be good at it – just makes you less likely to want a new job.
Seems odd odd for Rovak to actually take a turn at being rational. Dude must be so bored….
I mean, if we could just see his face, so so many questions might be answered. It’s a real shame he isn’t quite in panel 🙁 someone should talk to the camera man recording this comic and tell him how to properly frame his shots.
Hmmm, if his face would answer questions, that could be several people.
Peter obviously comes to mind first, as I don’t recall if it was ever made 100% clear that he and Martin are separate entities or not (and the start of the comic did say he just started using his own name again).
Taki would be another guess, but seems taller so it’d have to be a robot avatar so face wouldn’t help. I don’t recall if Kyle & Aaron have another brother or not (I recall mention of a sister, though, and we don’t have a definite indicator that this doctor isn’t a woman, though she’s certainly not hugely endowed if so).
If not Peter or his family, then the exiled family mages would be another good guess, as we know they’re involved with the Bridgeport data job. That also brings in an IDS faction, so I suppose it could be Otte Sr (seems too confident for Jr, and I don’t recall Sr’s background). Atter would be interesting, but doesn’t seem like he’d argue machine over man, and none the other IDS folks don’t fit the body type/faction (short of it being Nathan on a long-term sting operation or something).
The other doctor from Avon could be another option, though I think he’s a far outside shot, but then it’s a fake and not Martin (which is still possible).
Definitely belated to the comment section for stating these speculations.
From what I recall, Dr. Martin’s definitely been called a “he” (by Mir and Gate, in what I think is one of the first references to Martin, talking about Mium), and had (presumably, don’t recall if it was specified to be) MYM running his lab. (And apparently is built into a ton of other Avon stuff.) Can’t be Taki/Miko, especially since wasn’t recognizable at Avon. (Even by Mir herself! And Peter definitely would have been recognized, wouldn’t even risk a disguise.)
Anyway, apparently running Martin’s lab was some kind of AI that Mir didn’t like when people called it an AI, and Mium’s the most likely suspect. (Considering the list of known AI/SMAI, Mium’s just about the only suspect…) Also think Martin had an “assistant that betrayed him” (gonna need to find page links for this stuff….) and Peter definitely said he “betrayed Avon too”. I think I’d find it a little odd if he just let Mium run someone else’s lab, but you never know with him. (If impossible isn’t his calling card, not knowing what the hell the deal is with him has to be it…)
I think one of the few key things pointing against Peter being Martin is (presumably this Martin) talking to Rovak about how Mium is deadly, and he “helped make it that way”. Which just doesn’t sound like Peter talking at all, to me, in the information given, the way it’s given, etc. But, especially given the next page, there’s no way of knowing how accurate this is of Martin. (Though maybe page after next will throw that too. Dunno.)
As far as I know, the only main question left with the Martin/Peter debate is if Peter actually is Martin, or if he’s supposed to be the “assistant that betrayed Martin”. (In which case, who is Martin? And at the rate we’re going, we’ll never find out for real…)
Let’s be honest here, we are all going to figure eventually that Rovak was the protagonist, right? I mean, listen to him, what an upstanding chap, talking about job satisfaction and the power of friendship!
I thought everyone already knew that Rovak was the protagonist?
He is a good guy, his business card says so
Past claims not to be a professional, but then tosses technical terms around like “page density”, and “chop” and “compromise”.
Ah, sorry, I forgot I slipped into industry lingo there for a second. You see, chop is the technical turn for a mid mass divide of the subject matter, ideally rendering it into two or more pieces of content, so the phrase “chop it in two” would be the subdivision of the material into two pieces of roughly equivalent material content, or otherwise denoting that the comic would rendered in twain, likely be a vertical or horizontal division.
This is a strategic method of content deployment for allocating the same resources over a greater span of time by leveraging the content-interest convergence principle, which states the there is a non-linear progression between amount of content and amount of interest generated, and which I just made up while typing this paragraph of bullshit.
…
😉
Darn it, you just nerdsniped me into actually thinking about the relationship between content volume (or more accurately, content production rate) and viewership, and what sort of (linear/nonlinear) relationship these parameters would actually have.
I am somewhere between impressed and horrified by this.
Finally, Dr. Martin appears! I was wondering if he would remain a shadow character forever, but nope, I just had to be more patient.
I can’t seem to figure out who Rovak is talking about in the final panel there. The subject of the discussion does not seem to be Muim anymore. Atter, perhaps?
I think he still talking about Mium. Mium enjoys doing his job, he just doesn’t enjoy killing people (…or at least, has been asked not to). Rovak has repeatedly said that he wants to recruit Mium… or kill him.
Dr. Mir, I presume?
If it was Mir Past would not be taking such great pains to make sure they are never quite in-panel. I think this is the infamous Dr. Martin.
Too much clothes to be Mir. Panel 4 is a frontal view, and if I recall how Mir… err… “wears” a lab coat, it would be obvious if it was Mir here.
Doesn’t talk like MIR. Based on speech patterns, I highly suspect it’s the guy who appears in these two pages:
http://pastutopia.com/?comic=comic-for-thursday-march-30th
http://pastutopia.com/?comic=comic-for-monday-april-3rd-2
Additional notes: He appears to have at least passing familiarity with Dr. Martin’s work, including the android chasis used for Mium (F8). I suspect that if this person isn’t the one Rovak is speaking to, then we probably haven’t seen the person Rovak is speaking with before.
While the Doctor here and the Doctor in your links appear to have the same lack of name (or is it the same name, and lack of professional credentials?), they also wear their lab coats differently. I’m guessing this is a Doctor who is not so closely associated with Avon, since he’s so casually discussing things with one of the mages who came by one of their buildings to blow things up. Admittedly, it sounded like Rovak’s team had mostly going for stuff that guy didn’t care so much about.
Edit: I forgot to mention, this Doctor also does not appear to be aware that F5 has joined F8, or considers them sufficiently the same being to be counted as just one. The guy from thursday-march-30th would probably be aware of F5’s defection, but probably would not be aware of how close he now is to Mium F8.
Call me a conspiracy theorist, but I would say the more definite proof they are not the same person is that @PastUtopia is deliberately not showing his face.
Given that we see new characters all the time without that degree of subterfuge, my guess also leans toward Dr. Martin, as I can’t think of too many characters that would merit both their name and their face being avoided.
I think Conspiracy theorist is a term that applies to everyone who comments on the pages.
“I forgot to mention, this Doctor also does not appear to be aware that F5 has joined F8, or considers them sufficiently the same being to be counted as just one.”
What are you talking about? The doctor is clearly talking about Mium and Ila. That Mium has two prototypes to walk around in is mostly irrelevant.
Nice. I’d forgotten the references to “ark technology”.
It’s fine, pretty sure that’ll never come up again… 😐
No July 4th bonus drawing, but I did draw one 3 years ago apparently, so we can just reuse that one, no one will notice the difference… 😉