‘Not A Villain’ Webcomic – Page 514

Colors by Audrey with edits and everything else by me.

And so begins Volume 5!

Thanks for letting me take that short break. Your input was invaluable. And for those that missed it, the surveys are still up. I'd love your input!

Road Trip

I'm traveling across the country again and am holding meet ups! Here are the planned stops so far:

~~Providence, RI: Angelo's Civita Farnese (141 Atwells Ave, Providence, RI 02903) at noon on Sat, August 20th.~~

~~Hartford, CT: Sweet Frog West Hartford (13 S Main St, West Hartford, CT 06107) at 4pm on Sat, August 20th.~~

~~White Plains, NY: Cold Stone Creamery (City Center, 25 Mamaroneck Ave, White Plains, NY 10601) at 8pm on Sat, Aug 20th.~~

West Chester, PA: High Street Caffee (322 S. High Street, West Chester, PA 19382) at 11:30am on Tues, Aug 23rd.

Washington, DC: FroZenYo (One Farragut Square, 1634 I St NW, Washington, DC 20006) at 7pm on Wed, Aug 24th.

Pittsburgh, PA: (Sincerely Yogurt (2737 E Carson St, Pittsburgh, PA 15203) at 7pm on Thurs, Aug 25th.

Columbus, OH: Lucky's Grille (Roberts Crossing, 5387 Roberts Rd, Hilliard, OH 43026) at noon on Fri, Aug 26th.

Indianapolis, IN: Ella's Frozen Yogurt and More (8028 S Emerson Ave, Indianapolis, IN 46237) at 7:30pm on Friday, Aug 26th.

Louisville, KY: Lula's Frozen Yogurt (1501 Bardstown Rd, Louisville, KY 40205) at 11am Sat, Aug 27th.

St Louis, MO: Fitz's (6605 Delmar Boulevard, St. Louis, MO 63130) at 6:30pm on Sat, Aug 27th.

Kansas City, MO: Monday, Aug 29th, evening

Omaha, NE: Tuesday, Aug 30th, afternoon

And then I'll skid into Salt Lake City, UT, just in time for Salt Lake Comic Con, Sept 1-3! Whew!

31 Comments

Oh hey, Jane is back! Maybe some of the trees she killed were actual players and now they can respawn and continue to play again. Or some were important NPC that will respawn in Porto del Fama, e.g. traders.

I didn’t expect the NAV break to be this short. 🙂 Well then, I’m off to another break myself now, because I wish to read a couple of pages at once. See you in a couple of weeks!

Wow that was a short break. I wonder to if those count as kills. Are those npcs or players?

Also Aneeka is Manic Jane there to save the day? (Sorry couldn’t help the alliterative pun 🙂 )

Either way, I look forward to maybe seeing a new side of our favorite villain ;3

Yeah, it actually makes me wonder if she’s actually helping people by “killing” them. It would make an interesting contrast to Kat/kleya’s character. As some people around here have theorized.

So, I was wondering… if she sliced the trees that used to be characters, does that count as murderers?

Also, I thought you’d take a longer break.

looks to me that someone is culling the forest.

what UP Jane, milady?!

I love how the first tree is “blinded” in the first panel. Just makes it extra creepy.

Pretty sure that’s the point of this exercise. Blinding all the trees, probably some attempt to get an advantage on that NPC that’s in charge of the area that no one’s been able to best yet.

I am not so sure. The second tree looks to me as if it was cut above the eyes.

Oh, no… Is Jane about to ‘tree’ herself?

Is. The Bandit. A tree. Yet.

Tellus tellus tellus tellus tellus gwrargle!

Maybe we will find out next year. 😉

We probably jumped back in time a bit and Jane will encounter the Dude first and he will summon the Deselione as a knee-jerk reaction in-between them. That would make for a fine double-splash-page.

How is Jane not yet a tree herself?

Most of the trees are Erabana’s or npcs I think? I am not sure myself. (scrabbles to look back a the previous pages)

Afair the tree-ing is triggered when destructive Specials happen, not in case of physical attacks.

You know Bloody Mary isn’t just a folktale used to scare kids into going to bed. (like modern horror video games)

The real Bloody Marry (Mary I of England) was an interest pramatically evil person. So for fun, I thought I would share some of that history with you all:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_I_of_England#Legacy

Question for Aneeka, is Jane from England?

A surprising number of nursery rhymes & folktales are rooted in either actual history, or political commentary from a time in Europe that it was dangerous to openly criticize the monarchy. The singing game “Ring around the Rosie” is loosely related to the Black Death, as an example, because it was a widely believed myth that the Black Death was caused by miasma (bad air), and thus spending time near flowers would prevent it, but it didn’t, so the children would still “all fall down”. Another is “London Bridge is falling down”, which *might* reference the destruction of London Bridge by Olaf II of Norway in 1014.

Sorry, the Ring around the rosie thing is false.

http://www.snopes.com/language/literary/rosie.asp

Question for Aneeka, is Jane from England?

No, she’s not.

Waaait a minute! Did Jane just gain a massively increased amount of details and shading in panel 3 compared to characters in previous comic pages? E.g. http://navcomic.com/not-a-villain/page-507/

Please tell me you’re not upping the art quality yet again, as you’ve been continuously doing in this arc, because it looks like we’ve reached a point where it happens at the expense of plot development and – looking at the break you needed – time and energy and buffer. Do you want to burn out again?

Yes, it is pretty, but no, I don’t like it. At all. Sorry. 🙁

I did notice for some time now that compared to the super-detailed background trees and grass and the Mean Eater, the people and the Deselione look bland and out-of-place, even though they’re pretty and plenty detailed as well, but that doesn’t mean you have to adjust by upping everything. You will end up in Reality style if you do that. Tone down the background instead. Seriously, who needs a tree to be as detailed as on page 508?

If you gained a lot more followers and income by focussing on art rather than plot, then I’m happy for you and I believe that by all means you should stay on that path, because you’re the one who needs to make a living off NAV, while I’m just a supporter, but since I am a story type who cares little for the art, I feel left out.

Maybe you need to set your game graphic settings to lower background detail 🙂

But seriously, I’m a person who takes plot over art any day and I don’t feel the art is taking anything away from the plot here. In fact, She has told us under every one of these pages that the colors are done by someone else so it’s not like that’s taking time or effort away from plot development. Frankly, I don’t see story quality suffering compared to earlier pages before she had help with the colors. I only see teh plot thickening and becoming more rich and I can’t get enough! haha

I’m sure you have nothing to worry about 🙂

Yeah, my graphics card is too good indeed. XD

Yes, Audrey is doing a great job with the coloring (and her DeviantArt gallery is quite pretty, too, I think it’s worth checking it out), but is shading and the amount of details part of the coloring? I have no idea. But note that Aneeka is the one who needed a break just now.

The story quality isn’t suffering, only the speed. That’s what I meant by “plot development”, but I can see how it can be misunderstood. The last two months were fairly packed with splash pages and the amount of panels per page has been lower than before. Just pick a few random pages from earlier, e.g. the tournament, and compare them. I understand the choice of doing the attacks that led to Kat’s death in slow-motion to emphasize the drama, but now that it is over, I hope the plot picks up speed again.

I mean, the entirety of Volume 4 is probably less than 10 minutes of NAV time. At this rate, I am not going to live long enough to witness the potential tear-jerking meeting of Kat with her mom’s NPC on Erbana Island, because they won’t even reach Porto Del Fama until next year.

Tree 1: “I have a splitting headache!”
Tree 2: “What? Who said that?”

lol 😀

Oh, d***it. When you’re going to be in my state, I’m not going to be in my state. What an inopportune vacation.

Question, are the wounds in the face-trees red because of the setting sun? Or because they are player characters wounded in the game?

They are FORMER players who were turned into trees & made to spy on any activity nearby for the AI player formerly controlled by Kat’s Dad. I’d say they probably still “bleed” when damaged…

There is no sun in this area.

Unfortunately, annotation page 13, part 3 isn’t working. I keep getting redirected to the Channel page.
http://navcomic.com/annotations-webcomics/annotations-page13-p3/

Huh, it works on my end. I reloaded the page. Hopefully that fixes the problem!

I’m actually going to be in Indianapolis tonight, but I’ll be staffing a convention at the time you’ll be there.It’s too bad I won’t be able to come to the meetup.

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 514

Road Trip