‘Not A Villain’ Webcomic – Page 501

Colors by Audrey with a bunch of edits by me again. Everything else is by me.

Taking damage wasn't normally her thing.

I'm in Denver! And I'm holding a meet up at Cherry on Top (in the Cherry Creek Shopping Center, east side - 3000 E. 1st Ave. #106, Denver, CO 80206) at 11am on Saturday, July 2nd. I'll have a stack of NAV books and be carrying the glow-in-the dark bag with D and Kleya so I should be easy to spot.

I'm slowly finalizing the rest of my trip to Vermont; should be completely finalized by this Friday. And yes, I'm a fan of frozen yogurt, so it's going to be a running theme. Here are the stops so far:

Denver, CO (Sat, July 2 @11am at Cherry on Top)

Sioux Falls, SD (Mon, July 4 @1pm at CherryBerry: 5107 South Louise Avenue, Sioux Falls, SD 57108)

Alexandria, MN (Tues, July 5 @11am at Pike & Pint Grill: 110 30th Ave W, Alexandria, MN 56308)

Minneapolis, MN (Tues, July 5 @4pm at TBA)

Chicago, IL (Wed, July 6 around lunchtime)

Between Ann Arbor and Detroit, MI (Thurs, July 7 in the evening)

Toronto, Canada (Fri, July 8th in the evening)

Rochester, NY (Sat, July 9th in the afternoon)

Once I've moved in, I intend to make some weekend day trips to meet fans in Montreal, Canada, Manchester, NH, and Boston, MA, too! And do I have any fans in Vermont that want to meet up?

When I come back in late August, I most likely will be following I-70 back and hope to meet fans on that route.

I'm re-opening an old survey regarding this trip. If you're near these cities (or would like to add one that is enroute) and would like to stop at your city or be put on an email list so I can email you the details of when and where I'll be, please fill this out below. Thanks!
Loading...

50 Comments

I know Kat is a dominant character who likes to smirk when she wins and who thinks stuff like “I don’t lose” or how she’s apparently primarily afraid of losing her 100% and how she wants to win like normal people, but on this page all I can see is a cute Cat-girl who suffers quite an amount of pain in order to protect her loved ones. I know that this is quite far from what is actually happening in literally every respect, but I can’t help getting that impression. So just for this moment I want to hug her. 🙂

That feeling you’re describing. The scenario where none of her motive or monologues matter? That’s what the FANS are seeing. Some is about to become much more popular.

Huh, I hadn’t thought about that, that’s a good point! 🙂

Well, really, I say that that’s probably the sort of person she’s trying to change herself into, to get rid of her previous image of victory-obsessed dangerous hacker.

I don’t think she realizes that it’s working really. But I suppose she does need to prove it to the world.

Yeah, I think that’s what she wants, too, aside from the “cute” part. 🙂 Because that won’t happen unless e.g. she meets with her mom’s NPC eventually and involuntarily breaks down in tears.

She needs to prove it to herself too.

Who else loves the fact that the bandit is just completely shocked at this action? I know I do.

Someone’s beginning to sound like a broken recorder 😛

Wow. That was really unexpected. i completely expected some kind of Zeus ex machina thing. An obscure ability to block the attack. Or bandit cancels the attack. H*** even Marie doing something. But nope. Just took the hit.

Well, that has bound to earn her more popularity.

DUDE: “Dude…you fried your girlfriend to prove a point? That’s AWESOME!”
BANDIT: “SHE’S _NOT_ MY GIRLFRIEND.”

Still all this hate for Bandit. It’s like no one understands. His plan, the half of it that determined whether he could maintain loyalty to her, worked! She didn’t have to sacrifice her 100%, she did something else that she’d never ever allowed to happen before. Without hacking. Without preventing it. Anything. She took it like a regular player.

Bandit no longer needs to worry as much if he can trust her or not. He’s got proof that she’s different now. That he hasn’t been supporting /the person who destroyed civilization/ and has, in fact, been supporting his old friend.

Like a regular player who is able to determine the perfect angle and speed required to catch the blow at just the right moment AND like a player who is able to actually jump at the right angle and speed from the back of a moving monster. 🙂

Yes, Bandit wanted to cover Kat, but he was essentially backstabbing his team mate during a battle with another group. Even worse, he attempted to kill Danni if it weren’t for the Dude who “accidentally” hid in the same tree as her and then hugged her out of “fear”. I wonder if he could’ve taken the blow, though, because he already facetanked a kick from her.

Its not really backstabbing… If you look at it strategically he was making the assumption that she could only block the damage from one attack using the chimera. He made two attacks, one of them aimed at the enemy and one aimed at Kat’s friend.

Let’s take his assumptions as fact for the moment.
You have incoming attacks against 2 people, your best friend and your enemy… You can block/save one of them. What do you do?

If Bandit’s assumptions were correct, the answer is you save your friend leaving the enemy open to his hit. He thought he was forcing a choice on her, and he didn’t see that there was a door number 3.

How the h*** is that not backstabbing? Just because you didn’t backstab with two hands doesn’t mean you haven’t backstabbed with one.

Bandit attacks his own allies while his group is in ongoing battle with an enemy group. That’s all it takes for his action to be of the backstabbing kind. If he had attacked the other enemy tied up on the ground instead of Danni&Dude, then it would have been understandable, but attacking team mates is backstabbing, even more so while enemies are around.

Seriously, why are there always so many people willing to praise Bandit for being a teamkilling jacka**?

People praise him because Jake (Bandit’s player) realizes the truth. The game does not matter. (When compared to what’s at stake.) We’re talking about Kleya, the world’s most dangerous person who also happens to have the power/skill to be its greatest savior from the dire circumstances dominating the world. It is astronomically more important to determine whether Kleya can be redeemed, or should be caught/imprisoned to safeguard what’s left of humanity’s future from her wrath. Though Jake is tasked with finding Kleya, so TENKA can attempt catch/imprison and force her to destroy the world’s virus, he knows that gaining her trust and willing participation in fixing the world’s problems would yield far greater results.

Oh… yeah, I didn’t quite understand what was going on first read. Maybe I understand better now:

– Everyone knows Kat won’t let someone die, so much that she incapacitated Bandit
– Bandit, knowing she’ll just block it if he straight attacks their enemy, tries to force her to abandon the enemy by sending an attack against their friends at the same time
– It doesn’t work, (… and maybe Kat comes out of it looking like a quite a hero) (and maybe people understand why Bandit did it, and it doesn’t really look like he intended to attack his teammates, but it does show that he’s at least willing to take a risk like this with them.)

I’m surprised more people didn’t see this coming? It fits the narrative that I at least figure Aneeka is going for perfectly. Also I want to say that that top panel is some of the best art I think I have seen in this comic to date. Really nice Stuff.

As much as I like what Kat did and everything, and it’s going to get a huge amount of fans and save everybody and is just THE RIGHT THING TO DO, I’m worried at how Bandit’s dialogue cuts at the end there. I hope the pain doesn’t cause Kat to be unable to keep the reins on D, even momentarily…
But seriously, I’m really satisfied by how this is going down. You’re painting a very believable picture of an antisocial person with the drive to be dominant trying desperately to be a hero rather than a villain. I really bloody like it is what I’m trying to say.
And yes, those colors look just right! 😛 The explosion and Kat and the blending of the colors… it’s really COOL.

I don’t think Kat really gets “Normal”. Point of fact, trying to save everyone isn’t exactly “Normal”

It should be.

Good reply Siva. Besides, she’s an Erbana. Trying to save everyone IS normal… which is something Bandit failed to remember.

I don’t think he failed to remember this. As far as I can tell, he was never concerned about her *trying* to save everyone — only about her being so perfect at it…

Just here to make things clear, there is no comic character I hate more than the bandit, man that guy is plaing with the live of his allies just because he can’t get that d**** stick out of his…

I hope he gets killed sooner than later.

I don’t like him either — but… Dude, it’s a game. It’s all about playing. There are no actual lives at stake…

(Except in this case indirectly there are — but that’s a *special* situation 😉 )

Sorry to disappoint, but there have been hints that Bandit is gonna be the love interest. He’s probably gonna stick around for a while.

Hmm… The emphasis on ‘full’ might indicate that the full damage is enough to OHK Kat…

I suspect that she may have ‘only’ just lost her Esone (Which would also mean that she loses access to her specials if I recall)

it is hard to see her face though the glare, although it seems to me that is Kat smiling.

This panel is beautiful.

Hmm… fans may not be nearly as pissed off as we think, mostly because THEY have some information we don’t. Namely, what the Dude’s special is! Even fans that didn’t see his special in the tournament just got a glimpse when he ran off and grabbed a Lion-thingy.

Its possible that Bandit is gonna play this off as an attempt at a power-stunt with The Dude’s special. (Except Kat got in the way) Heck, depending on how the special works…. it could still work.

Okay spill. I missed it. What is Dude’s special?

The in-comic fans of the game know The Dude’s special. We do not. But… its something that requires a large amount of violence to trigger.

The Bandit would never simply kill two teammates just to annoy Kat. That is why I think this might have something to do with the ONLY unknown variable in play – The Dude’s special.

Yeah, the whole NAV-world knows it except for Kat and Danni, but we’re still in the dark.
I remember the Dude saying that he requires an excessive amount of violence. This may be just me nitpicking, but dealing 5 damage to someone with 4 HP is excessive, so even a small amount might be enough to trigger his Special.

I wonder if he was close enough to profit from Herve’s area attack, which burned lots of innocent trees, grass and especially a barely-alive Mean Eater. Maybe all of this excessive damage charged his Special up so much that he was able to summon the super rare Deselione. Judging from the Bandit’s reaction to that beast appearing he knew exactly that the Dude did that on purpose.

…is going to watch as D deatomizes you.

Some of you don’t seem to get it. Bandit is a true hero. Lets look what our player’s stakes are in this game:
Kleya: 1 avatar
Jake: His life, the lives of everyone close to him still alive, possibly the last vestiges of civilization.
Maybe you missed the last Reality update, but Kleya almost killed every man, woman and child in TENka City BY ACCIDENT because she was upset. Jake is literally gambling the fate of the world on not revealing her, and he needs to be absolutely sure about her motives. If that means he has to pull some d*ck moves in a video game, so be it.

Honestly some of us aren’t even sure how involved Kleya was with everything. Did she do one thing that got out of control, or a majority, or is she a scapegoat? We still don’t have the full picture and considering that by the tattoo it was her own father calling her a monster, the one most responsible for her mindset there is plenty room for fishy business.

WE might have doubts that Kleya was responsible for the Ending. JAKE believes she was responsible, at least for hacking the mecha soldiers and blowing up the hospital her mother was in. Jake pretty clearly hopes she has changed and wants to believe she has, enough to lie to protect her, but yeah, Steve is right about the stakes.

The viewers won’t know any of this, though. From their point of view, there’s a villain group on their entertainment channel, they expected Kleya’s known temper to conflict with her character’s Erbana alignment, and instead she’s putting on a good show as a dramatic hero.

To the players, this is a game and perhaps a food ticket. To everyone else, it’s “reality tv,” and there are probably varying points of view about how much of it is scripted in advance, but who cares so long as it’s entertaining? Kat’s riskiest action was the breach of kayfay when talking about Jane needing to stay in the Game. Everything else has been good theater, as far as the viewers are concerned.

As their manager and sponsor, Sandra should be delighted… but she’s playing her own game, and I don’t know how well this fits with her plans. But she did want to drive a wedge between Kat and the two known TenKa players, so she’ll probably still be happy.

Not talking about the ending. Kleya is upset here http://navcomic.com/not-a-villain/page-308/
Triggers D http://navcomic.com/not-a-villain/page-310/
Power goes out in TENka City http://navcomic.com/not-a-villain/page-312b/
Risk of fatalities http://navcomic.com/not-a-villain/page-317a/

If the power had stayed out longer, there would be several thousand new corpses at the bottom of the ocean, and it would be 100% Kleya’s fault. Bandit is absolutely correct to test Kleya to her limits, no matter how it looks in the Game.

OUCH!

Yesh, you dufus, she took the full hit. Which is the options you left her:
1) Either cheat and reveal herself– which is exactly what you didn’t want.
2) Stand by and let others die, which is against the Erbana code.
3) Take the full hit.

In short… what WERE you thinking?

Oh wait… it’s just a comic. It’s just a comic. It’s just a comic…

Great time for Bloody Mary to show up and kill Bandit!

OK well now Dr Grace’s HE (whoever *that* is) is going to get involved.

!!!
Images aren’t pixelated anymore! 😀
What changed!? (Been reading the past few chapters on my PC so I’ve only just noticed, and nothing’s changed on my iPad since I last tried. No updates.)

It was a back end issue. A plugin of my site was messing up how the images were being displayed on mobiles. Assuming the problem doesn’t return when that plugin updates, we should be good from now on!

HOLY S*** THE ART IS GETTING BETTER

(and the story was never anything short of excellent)

(*chinhands @ jake WELL NOW WHAT*)

Error! Bandit 2.0 has suffered a fatal exception and must reboot.

This page is stunning. Kat’s character development is also stunning.

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 501