'Not A Villain' Webcomic - Dude freaks out.

‘Not A Villain’ Webcomic – Page 249

Not all robots were hacked but militarized mechas had over a 90% chance. Unfortunately, Shanghai boasted one of the largest mecha armies. It was gone within hours of the first Hacker Attacks.

There's going to be a schedule change. Most likely I'm going to start splitting the pages in half again. I'm too slow of an artist 🙁 But I will get better! 😀 Full details will come on Friday.

Thanks for reading, though!

EDIT: The chance for cheap international shipping is closing (as well as for Artist Editions where I add a sketch of your favorite NAV character in the book). I have a few spots left but it'll definitely be closed by Saturday, June 1st. They will then get shipped most likely the following weekend.

51 Comments

First time I’ve gotten the “No sneak peaks” page.

Told ya guys ‘killing everyone’ meant Kleya was a supervillain. 😉

My, my, Kleya… you make us feel guilty for liking you. But we still do.

your assuming she was the one who did it. the group she belonged to was made up of more than one person, and also they can’t have been the only hacker group around. so the chance she is responsible isn’t that great. we don’t even know what she was trying to do with her group, how many others there are, who is responsible for what, and even what all has happened. so until there is actual proof of her involvement, just assume her biggest crime was bringing a band of arrogant misfits together.

and causing her mother’s death.

Will you guys PLEASE cut it out? I’m trying to like the main character here!

Correction: I love her, and want to know more about her. Unless that makes her an evil soulless monster, in which case I’m fine where I am.

On a so-not-related note, I really wish we could see more of D.
Anyone else? Or is it just me?

Awww… people can get better. 🙂

Kleya’s an excellent example of that. I think the ‘evil soulless monster’ thing (which even evil people aren’t in my opinion) is exactly why she wants to be a hero these days. ^_^

I’m a fan of D.

In fact, I was the *first* fan of D!

I was a fan of D before we knew his name was D or that he was even a sentient AI. Back then I called him HackerVision. I used to go, “I’d like to see more of that hackervision that Kleya uses. I like the quippy ideas it gives her”.

I’m also a fan of Kleya, and I’m sure that the Dude will be revealed to be the true enemy soon. Oh, he may seem likable but I know the truth. All men are evil! 😉

I think Daddy holds some major responsibility. Think about it: we know that her biggest smiles were for her dad, but now she doesn’t even allow him in the picture. I wonder if the attack wasn’t her attempt to save her mother who was hurt during the super volcano eruption.

To Toma i just have to say i a male and even i am agreeing with you.
Most of the other male members of society seem to treat others as inferiors or as tools. It honestly makes me sad to be a male at times :'(

Hmmm, good points. Though she was the leader/ace of her group it could’ve been another group, and the accusations of the Dude that were not refuted by the Bandit could be based on misunderstandings.
There must be lots of misunderstandings floating around naturally, what with the apocalypse.

Personally I think her mother dying must’ve been an easily preventable accident, at least.

Given the scene a few pages back about her mom being sick, I wonder if her mom was already critically ill, and died when she tried to get up to stop Kleya from freaking out.

that is not only very plausible, but makes enough sense for a credible theory. I am supporting this as how it went down until we know better. given how competitive Kleya is, and how sick her mum prolly was…Kleya may have simply pushed her mom away and didn’t realize the damage that was done until it was too late.

I still think Kleya is a mass-murderer though… 😉

There’s a small chance there’s a misunderstanding, but it’s a distant hope (and one I don’t want to be true! it makes things so much more dramatic :D)

“Anything/Everything can be hacked.”

Aneeka, you plan on getting the game Whatchdogs later this year? anyone?

By strangely suiting coincedence the Whatchdogs-universe and the NaV-universe might be the same… before and after the apocalypse.

Never heard about it before but it looks awesome! Parkour + hacking = WIN!

I think it’s fine if you cut the pages in half; you’re putting in a lot of images and a lot of information, and that’ll slow down anything. Some webcomics that have been posting half-pages successfully include: Love And Capes (romancing a superhero comes with its own headaches, even after the happily ever afters, rated PG at most for mild comic-book violence and occasionally people lounging in swimwear on a tropical beach somewhere); and The Challenges of Zona (a rock musician from our world ends up in a world of hot warrior babes, nasty lizard-men, and magic he didn’t know he had; not entirely safe for work due to long expanses of skin, occasional adult words, and of course barbarian-warrior-style violence from time to time, but usually not worse than PG 13). (I dislike dropping people into a webcomic without them having any clue what they’ll be encountering; it’s only polite to give a little plot synopsis and movie-ratings summary.)

Love and Capes is literally a comic book brought to the internet, with each “page” posted being a half-comic-book-page, unless it’s a splash-page. It posts regularly M-W-F with rare interruption. The Challenges of Zona is a cgi “comic book” that started out with the usual comic-book style pages, but the artist has recently switched to posting a couple postcard-sized images, as his plots tend to be dialogue-heavy.

Doing so has allowed him to post 5 times a week instead of twice a week with occasional lag…so you might find switching to half-pages to actually speed up things for your own work. You might even discover you can get ahead of the game by building up a backlog by a few weeks to a few months. That in turn might give you more leeway for drawing the “reality” images that ocasionally crop up in the storyline.

…tl;dr version: I’m all for it, because it means you’ll be able to keep posting -something- for us, build up yourself a backlock, and not get stressed. (Hopefully.) Because I’m enjoying this story and want to enjoy the ride all the way to the end, however long that may take.

If it helps her find her stride, then I am for the half pages as well. The biggest sin a web comic can commit is repeated use of the dreaded hiatus, especially if its frequent and unplanned. All too many comics, good and bad, try to push beyond their limits, get burned out, post haphazardly, and then quit. Sometimes without even telling the readers they have.
I detest such half a**ed efforts. Thus I will always consul that our dear Aneeka should always keep in mind what she can really do, what she can reasonably expect to stretch herself to being able to do, and what would be unwisely beyond her abilities. So, just do your best and don’t kill yourself over it, Aneeka.
This might work out for the best, you might find a way to plan more plot into less space effectively. Try and see what you can do with the constraints you are under 😀

Your art noticeably improves with each page, kudos 🙂 And I love panel 3, talk about body language.

Anger, the great equalizer when it comes to things you’re terrified about.

This page just makes everything even more interesting. Now at least we know that it wasn’t only nature that killed people, but also an army of hacked robots? Curious what else “helped” destroy the world.
And… hacked robots, sounds like one situation that got waaaaaaaaaaaaay out of hand.

I think this is one of the few times we have been given a reason as to why hackers are so hated.
That is an interesting design for a combat robot. As we can see in the RL flashback from the last strip the robots have a gun arm and I guess a claw hand.
I never understood why hackers were so hated. But if they were willing to unleash the full force of the Shanghai Mecha army on people I can now see why.

The Dude lost his cool… Paddy and Sandra made a real big mistake. The way I see it, the mecha-vatar is like wearing a cosplay of a nazi for Memorial Day in the US: not the most tasteful thing to do, and some may react reaaaaally badly, even if it was never intended to be an insult.

Love panel 4, the shading is great, really effective, really powerful. I also happy to have some insight into the past of one of the side characters now, often it frustrates me that stories only touch that subject far in, to develop the plot, because until then, the side characters seem only two dimensional. Great story, it’s really shaping up to be something big keep up the great work.

Duuuuuuuude….Not okay dudes, not okay. In other news, our “hero” is certainly taking her sweet time.

Well, Tre called it on the fetal position. Interesting that both Sandra and Paddy seem surprised at the reaction. I had assumed they were trying to provoke some kind of reaction.

Do what you need to for the schedule… Your story is worth waiting for. 🙂

I am honored and pleased you mentioned my previous conjecture^^.

They are surprised cause they didn’t think anyone survived. So having an PTS episode wasn’t the reaction they were going for. Paddy and Sandra prolly just like mecha.

anime fans!~

Woah, that is scary. Poor Dude.. Keep it up Aneeka!

This is perhaps this is just me but I’d rather one full page a week rather than to half-pages per week.

Since this is a temporary change, I’d prefer to keep the two updates a week schedule as much as possible. I’m open to other ideas, however, if you have any.

Would it help at all to go to b&w for a while? Or is that a compromise you’re not comfortable with? I love the way your art skill is progressing, but the story has always been the main draw for me, so switching to uncolored pages for a while wouldn’t detract from my enjoyment of the comic significantly, and should save a lot of time on your end. Particularly if this is a temporary change.

It’s actually the inking stage that is the main consumer of precious time (the new avatars have a LOT more detail in them) so removing the color stage won’t help that much. Besides, I’d have to go back at some point and color them all which would consume time at some point. Might as well get it over with now.

It’s really the desire to improve my artwork that is fueling the scheduling hiccups, but I hope to improve quickly enough to return to the normal schedule soon(ish) and have awesome art skills for the Game. 🙂

I’ll give a longer explanation come Friday so that everyone can understand why I’m making this decision.

So, your doing something with the time saved by half pages that would improve your skills and hopefully speed up the process. Classes or some such?

Umm…kind of?

I’ll explain everything Friday, I promise! 🙂

Now I am curious how Kleya would react to that avatar… too bad she isn’t there yet.
And, this page just made me realise even more why I absolutely adore this comic. I don’t think I can actually put in words why, but I just know I do. :D.

Super Volcano, egh?

Yellowstone National Park maybe?

We apparently had a magnetic pole reversal, so that could easily have triggered volcanoes. Yellowstone does seem a likely candidate, I agree.

“Gone within hours”? Now I understand the hatred a little more, especially the Dude’s. The fact that people expected no survivors speaks volumes. It also doesn’t seem an isolated incident.That kind of destruction and malice. What were “The Hackers” trying to accomplish?

On another note, its sweet to see Bandit showing such care for his friend.

Things are pretty extreme NOW if you can’t work if you’re a Citizen. AND a Citizen gets offed if she dances beautifully but there isn’t enough food to go around. Is there panic and hostility out there?
Can you give me a few reasons why a person who has the capability to hack might wig out enough to kill? Get organized enough to wipe out cities en masse? Perhaps society was screwed up even more BEFORE the present situation? I wonder in what ways. um. I’m in a holding pattern here and it’s a real exercise in patience. woo hoo

you have a point…but one can assume that the current regime wasn’t in effect until after The End. now with limited resources, the people in charge have to spread what little they have over prolly more people they can support…even with the assumption that a crap ton of people died. so hard, even cruel, choices have to be made…or everyone meets that same fate.

Aneeka, I know that I must sound like a terrible person for asking you to do this, but as demanding as it is I was wondering if you could do half-pages MWF. They would be shorter and easier to do, and you would be producing a half-page less content than you do now.

Just a thought. That and it’s killing me to wait so long for my comics (I know, I’m a greedy wench.)

Sorry, but Mondays are evil. Maybe TWF or THF, but Mondays shall be boycotted by me 😉

Maybe I should split the page into three parts? It would be easier than splitting it into two… hmm….

Personally, even if it’s half a page, I love two updates a week. >.>

*pets the Dude*
It’s okay, no one thinks less of you for your little PTSD thing there. *gives a cookie*

I like how he bounced back quickly once it was gone. Strong psyche there!

And even more impressive self control by the Bandit… I wonder if he saved the Dude’s life… that shot really looked like the Dude was done for.

It really was rapid, but I don’t think he really bounced back, so much as his fear/depression suddenly switched to anger. When I get really upset, that happens to me sometimes.

I hope we’ll find out how he survived.

that is a normal reaction. he was having a traumatic flashback to something that inspires fear. we hate or are angry at that which makes us afraid. so when he got a grip on the fear he switched to anger.

Try changing the thickness of your lines,with different ink brushes your shadowing and colour have gotten a lot better.

I think this setting intentionally has more detailed shading. The canon universe mostly takes place in a virtual world after all, not all art is the same.

I wonder if Paddy or Sandra had a hand in designing those robots before everything went wrong. Their reactions indicate that not every robot was deemed universally evil right after it happened, so Shanghai may not have been the norm for the results of hacking. Regardless, I can’t wait to see the answer! Thank you for writing this comic.

I can see that in the future I will be reading this over and over for details–Paddy designed what avatar for Sandra why? And if people can have several avatars, then “Paddy” could be also . . .

Aneeka,

Please make two updates a week. I’m hopelessly hooked. You’r page is chrome’s top then for me because of the frequency with which I check your page!

Love the improvement in art!

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 249