"Not A Villain" Webcomic - Kleya remembers...

‘Not A Villain’ Webcomic – Page 305

Page is up! I made it! *collapses in a heap of exhaustion*

This is the end of the Reality memory pages. Back to an easier art style! Yay!

Vote to see pg 304&305 as a full-page spread (ie: stitched together). If you're a part of the AneekaChannel (NPC+3 or higher), check out the incentive I forgot to post for pg 304.

Also, I'll be at LTUE this weekend! I'll be doing panels. This is my schedule so far:

Thur, Feb 13th:
Fri, Feb 14th:
Sat, Feb 15th:

27 Comments

I’m reminded of a very particular line: “A great force. The power it holds can bring forth either salvation… or destruction… at the whim of the user.”

Hahahaha, I prefer the Outsider’s line from Dishonored myself. Nothing like complete amorality to spice things up.^^

Thats less fitting though. Since it isn’t in relevance to an ultimate hacking tool, in a game that has captivated the entire world.
… Then again the timelines almost blend together (but not the tech levels). Someone should really introduce Kleya to Helba. Or vice-versa.

So if TV has taught me anything when those Zzit,kzzk,zzk appear it means very important context of the sentence they are relaying has gone missing. And that somehow thanks to these missing words actions of drastic proportions were taken for the wrong reasons, against the wrong enemy.

I’m not sure how or if that is true here but that was the first thing to come to mind and is making me wonder about how those lines could be taken instead with random missing words put in. hmmm.

Maybe.

But not necessarily in this case, because for one thing, it might just be this specific tv set that has a poor signal. Furthermore, the line “she’s the world’s greatest enemy, the world’s greatest monster, we have ever known” is pretty much narrowed down to only one interpretation, you know?

“They” call themselves Deconstruct Me. They claim “She” must die by the hands we created. “They claim” She’s the greatest enemy, the greatest monster,we have ever known. “The target is Deconstruct Me we” must annihilate at all costs.

Know I’m not sure it is correct in this case it could be just to show bad signal as you say, a cosmetic. Especially with that last line it is hard to fit a plural target word into that line without it being long winded like this one.

So is likely just cosmetic fun but that was the first thing that popped into my head that Zzks have been known to remove important context lines to the meaning of these. But it seems unlikely that this is anything but cosmetic, especially since for us to find out what actually was relayed would take too long and take too much additional character back story to get to a part that would set up the change to the meaning it seems unlikely.

But it was fun to think about for a bit.

Ok, apologies, because I know you worked very hard on these two pages, but I’m having some trouble making out what you’re trying to show here.

What I think you intended is:

Kleya is in a crumbling building with two mechs breaking in, one at the door, one tearing through the wall/ceiling. There’s a lot of smoke and dust catching shadows and light from outside the room. Kleya is holding something, possibly a broken headset, in her left hand.

I can’t tell if the extra scribbles are supposed to be evidence of D/hacker vision, or just smoke, or flying rubble, or something else. I’m also not sure sure what the diagonal at the far right is supposed to represent. A falling wall? Shadows? Motion effect?

Again, I’m sorry. I love your work, and ordinarily I don’t have any trouble figuring out what youre trying to show….

Kleya’s not holding anything. That’s part of her bionic exoskeleton/comuter interface thing. I’m not sure if it’s literally fused to her hand, but she doesn’t take it off either way.

The big chunks of scribbles look to me like obscured whatever-is-lying-around-on-the-ground.

I didn’t notice mech at the door until you pointed it out. It looks unfinished, which is unfortunate, but the page overall looks really good for something I assume was rushed.

I had the same troubles, too, and understood a little more after seeing both pages together in the vote incentive, but I still don’t get everything. I think there is a lift opening and a mecha in front of the rift. Is that perhaps a supermarket she’s in? I think, too, that she is or was holding something that is now falling down (the dark parts), because her exoskeleton is on the back of her hand, not in her hand. I’m also not sure what is lying on the floor. Debris? People?

Seeing it now on a different monitor makes the picture clearer! It seems as if she was holding some of this terrible artificial food and it falls down the moment she is shocked to hear the people in the TV talking.
I wonder if this is her Mecha waiting in front of the store…
And I’m sure it’s Dr. Grace talking, with his two assistents we’ve seen before standing next to him.

It’s okay; I was rushing to finish this page so I didn’t have time to refine a lot of the smaller details. I just focused on the big ones, like Kleya and the TV. When I have time (or maybe when I’m prepping for Book 3), I’ll go back and finish this page.

There’s no hacker vision. Most of the scribbles are supposed to represent debris/rubble. The diagonal line on the right is a fallen…oh, what are those things called…shelf case? The shelves are empty cause I ran out of time so I guess you can think the items all fell off when it fell?

Here’s a question for everyone:
Would you rather I throw up a filler page than rush a page? I’m not an art snob. I’d rather get a page out on time and keep the story going instead of holding onto it and making the art great. But what are my readers’ opinions?

Personally I don’t really care if you rush a page, but making filler pages could reduce the stress of having to quickly finish the page… Filler pages can be fun, so I don’t have a problem with them either.

I’ve always felt like story-centric webcomics should be written for archive readers. By that logic, you should post filler or delay the update until it meets your quality standards.

You want to make me wait more?!?!
Story! Story! Story!

I think I’d actually like if you were to give us some “filler” or more question/answer pages and build up a buffer so you’d feel less rushed and could give yourself more control over the pages. These last two pages were a little weird, for me personally, to try and understand. But I know you like, have a life and other projects, so I guess if you need a filler day, that’d be cool with me.

This is my vote, as well. You’re trying to use both words and images to tell a story. I’m not an art snob either, but if several of us are having trouble making out what you intended for this image to represent, it probably would have been better to hold off. A filler page could have a preliminary sketch, a bit of trivia, random comments by D, whatever. 😉

In general, I think you’re doing a great job telling this story! I always check here first thing as I’m waking up Tuesdays and Fridays. 🙂

There are some basic perspective problems with the falling shelf unit, which is why I couldn’t figure out what it was.

So what, if anything, is Kleya holding/dropping with her left hand? Or would that be spoilerish? 🙂

Not sure I care whether it’s filler or not since I’m trying to get in to the habit of waiting for multiple pages being out before reading again (so I can have a few at a time instead of just one every few days, helps with context).

However, based on the face in that first panel….maybe it’s just the first time we’re seeing Kleya’s real face, but I thought it might’ve been Danni…
(PS: The vote incentive page is kinda small compared to the two comic pages….or even, either one of them, really….)

But we have seen her real face before, on page 206 and a few after that. It is Kleya, just a younger, less haggard Kleya.

To be honest, I like a lot of your filler as much if not more than your main comic (the Q&As were some of my favorite pages to date) so I really wouldn’t mind more filler. That being said, slightly unfinished art doesn’t bother me either. Whatever is easiest/least stressful for you or, failing that, whatever results in the most content has my vote.

Oh, that’s shelves! Okay, I can see that now. I think it’d be more obvious they were shelves if there were one or two things on them. Doesn’t have to be a lot, just enough to say “hey, these are shelves”.

I’m going to vote against rushing pages. Whatever shape that vote takes.

Oh, so that’s what you were doing. Okay, that makes sense.

I just noticed, between the speach baloons and the crack in the screen I don’t think we ever see this guy’s eyes. Is that on purpose? What could that possibly ominously represent?

So they hunt down anyone with enough power to hurt them? No wonder everything got so messed up…

I’ll still thinking scapegoat. In addition to previously mentioned reasons, there’s the giant cyborgs themselves – Kleya’s skills are in software and neural interfaces, which suggests another group / team built the cyborgs.

Given their size, they’d be difficult to hide, so couldn’t exactly be built in stealth by amateurs. That would suggest they may have been built by the military before the disaster – which would be even more reason to blame the hackers for them “going rogue” – especially if it was an inside job (the hackers being the group most likely to find out what actually happened).

It’s rather ironic that now, two years after the hacker riots, the population are once again trusting technology – technology that’s created and operated by a single company.

Meanwhile, can anyone remember the page number of The Bandit!Jake’s reminisces of ‘before’? I think his RL appearance was pictured there – it would be interesting to compare it to TV guy…

Ahh You don’t see the bonus stuff. The mechas weren’t built by Kleya or anyone from Deconstruct Me. They were built mostly by IHI. The hackers just.. hacked them. Whether or not Kleya and the others were truly the ones who actually hacked them is a possible question, but it’s more likely, judging by Kleyas guilt that she kinda went a little power crazy.

I am getting the impression Deconstruct Me were acting as vigilantes and nobody but the people they were acting against really got what they were after. Which made it easy to make it “all their fault”. First because they were acting as vigilantes(when does that really work in real life?) and second nobody outside the targets understood what the goal was. Thus authority could make up any reason they wanted.

My tendency is to give Kleya’s version of reality the benefit of the doubt – she was a villain, she is now working on being a hero. I don’t need her to have been misunderstood in the past for me to like her now.

As for art vs speed, I like the balance you’re striking right now – art can always be improved, but you have to call it good sometime.

Not A Villain Webcomic

Webcomic of a semi- reformed hacker trying to redeem herself in a post- apocalyptic world she may have created.

‘Not A Villain’ Webcomic – Page 305