“Striking Sparks” — Page Sixty-Eight
First off, if you are reader of Not A Villain and came over here to see who we are, welcome! It’s a pleasure, and we hope you decide to stick around! Kind of the nice thing about webcomics; it’s not really a zero-sum game. Reading a new comic doesn’t mean you have to stop reading any previous ones. In fact, I’ve added NAV to my own reading list.
For those who don’t know: there’s a site called ComicMix which is having a webcomics contest. The first round positioned 3 Minute Max against Not A Villain, which is a well-established and popular comic with a huge fan-base of rabid vote-maniacs. Now, I think the first round is already over; the page is a little glitchy and it is kind of hard to tell.
In any case, if you are feeling in a vote-casting mood, it’s a safer bet over here. Plus you get to have a drink with Marissa, who is probably in a rebound mood right about now.
More below!
Bobservations
Burden of Responsibility
Regarding today’s page, there might be a certain amount of validity in claiming that – in a comic about a teleporting hero who stops his own heart, sees dead people, and recently survived being blown through the wall of a skyscraper – this page is nevertheless the biggest stretch of one’s credulity. I mean, who the hell would turn down that offer?
Well, someone who has been in command situations, probably. Our hero is well aware that Marissa could be teasing/testing him. Even if she’s not, he’s just had the existence of his supernatural girlfriend fairly well confirmed, at least in his own mind. Gotta give some priority there.
Not to mention that Marissa has other shyly interested parties on the team, and the last thing the wise warrior wants is to tick off the technician handling the Strike Gate switches.
So yeah. It happens. In fact, I remember a similar situation happening to myself many years ago. Except it was a bit different, in that the car was nowhere near as cool, the girl was blonde, and I — well, I totally caved. Not my finest moment, really.
But I did get the artist for this comic out of it. So there’s that.
— Bob out
Eh, I’m ace. Panel 3 was a puzzle for me as I was trying to figure out the hand signal. Because clearly thats what she was implying when she said “getting any signals?”
My thoughts: Lets see… I don’t think thats a word in ASL… lets just move on and come back to it.
Next few panels: Taken… next panel is… Okay, its some sort of come on maybe? Hmm… Lets examine again…
Later still: Oh, she unbuttoned her top button.
Huzzah, fellow ace! Let’s pass around the cake, as is our custom.
Cake for everyone!
Heh, I didn’t know about the cake thing. But yeah. Yeah, I can see that. Cake.
The “signal” was undoing the button on her blouse… It’s always nice to to be in a position to take advantage of such signals as well.
Lovers can come and go, but a really good friend will last you a lifetime. In fact, I would almost list a solid friendship as a prerequisite to becoming more intimate.
And a really, really good relationship goes on into the afterlife, as is the case here.
I’m adding an iron will to the list of Max’s superpowers.
… Are we absolutely sure Max doesn’t have parts that are still dead? Because DAYUM.
double DAYUM!
I’ve never read Not A Villain. Is it any good? Can anyonr describe it in 100 words or less?
Lets see…
Apocalypse happened. Caused by people hacking vital sections of society (including mechs apparently). Little data, still trying to figure that out in the comic. Almost anyone with computer knowledge was killed in the madness afterwards. Magnetic Pole flipped?
Main character was possible source of Apocalypse. Humanity is scattered in cities with functioning life support. Major recreation is the Virtual Game L.I.F.E. Think Sims. Our heroine is trying to prove she’s not the villain she was. Since she’d be shot on site, she’s playing in the Game. She’s being hunted by those in charge though. They need her and fear her.
100 words. Its a fairly good comic. Art isn’t as amazing as this (until we get to real life comics. Then the art improves dramatically). Story is fairly interesting.
Okay. Sounds cool. I’m usually only interested in comics with good art, but Order of the Stick is one of my favorites, so I might give this a shot.
if you don’t know already, theres’:
scholck mercenary, grrlpower, goblins( although that one is slow to update now due to certain circumstance) spying with lana( funny one) check out the site topwebcomics. good repository
I really love Grrlpower. The art is fantastic, and the powers are pretty rad.
I’ve always thought OotS had quite good art. Highly stylized, but good.
XKCD, on the other hand, has bad art. I read it occasionally when I come across a link referencing it, but I can’t follow it, even though it is usually amusing.
OVERT little vixen isn’t she?
You can actually hear the “pop” when the blouse is unbuttoned
That was my eyeballs, not her blouse.
Max’s next armor needs to be made out of the same substance as that top button. If it’s been holding that blouse closed back all this time without failing, it must be the strongest material on earth.
Now the ball is in Sophie’s supernatural court. Will she give Max a hug, or plant her spectral foot in his posterior and tell him to go ask Marissa if that offer is still open?
Max and Sophie are in probably one of the more alternative of ‘alternative relationships’ already, and Sophie is largehearted enough, I think, to want there to be someone there for Max that doesn’t require a team of people to make happen, and only for three minutes at a stretch.
Though the actions of Max’s spirit in the tube would be *cough* entertaining, at least for Mari.
I fail to see why that would matter.
I also figure this is a temporary situation in many ways. We have at least one person that can see this stuff already and Max was seen trying to get his deathsight thing working already. He currently needs the extra oxygen, but thats probably all he needs. No need for the tube, just lots of oxygen.
I also fail to see why he’d want to move on to another with all the problems it would cause.
Because he’s effectively in a long distance relationship for the remainder of his life? With three minute visits, which at least thus far have to be shared with him either killing bad people, or saving good people, which cuts into their already miniscule ‘us’ time?
As you’ve pointed out, they have tried his deathsight thing working, sans tube.. and it didn’t. Which gives circumstantial evidence that his ‘soul’ has to be tubed while his body is elsewhere for it to work.
At the time, they said it was the lack of time in that. Waiting 2 minutes before being able to see her isn’t huge. The issue is somehow managing to stay in that with his heart stopped.
Of course, its possible that tube is needed. At this point we simply don’t know and thus it seems stupid to make a rash decision like this.
He’s not seeing with his soul’s eyes. Thats what I find facinating. His soul is in the tube, but he’s still looking through the body’s eyes. And there she is.
Heh, Ladyhawke. That was quite a movie.
Was thinking Wesley in Princess Bride ‘Death cannot stop true love, only delay it for awhile’
Funny I was thinking exactly the same thing.
Wuv! Twoo Wuv!
Hover text is showing “not these puppies” but I can’t tell if they are or aren’t because I don’t see their little noses.
Lol there’s another side to this.
Near death experienced induced by having Too good a time.
Gives a Whole new meaning to being blue balled.
Huh. I find that kinda nasty of Marissa. I’d guess she knew that Max would turn her down, so it was a test/tease/joke, but still – what would have happened t the strike team if not.
I like her a bit less now.
(Also… just saying, Max is a much nicer and cooker person than I am. I’d react rather badly on getting played like that. My reaction might have been like “:-) 😐 🙁 … Let’s go.”, starting the car and not looking at her during the way back.)
Especially as he has shown before he wasn’t interested in her that way. I mean seriously Marissa, you have a nice geek guy that would be more than suited for you needs. I honestly thought better of her character but yet again all the nice ones go for the muscles and abs and leave us poor egg heads on the shelf *sob*
She’s an adrenaline junkie. Asking her to be interested in a complete bookworm is as unfair to her as her tease of Max is here. Identify a person’s interests, if they match what you do/are into, cool, if not and if there’s nothing you want to change about yourself to match, then nothing should be expected/hoped for.
And you’re all solely interested in Marissa for her mind, too. 😉
Oh, dunno. For all the expectations there seem to be that Emil and Mari are ‘an item’, there hasn’t been any evidence of it. Closest its come to anything physical is Emil’s ‘nerdgasm’ when she broke out the lightsaber. Yes, Emil, your cast page says you can tell she’s totally into you.. and you’ve done what exactly in response to that?
Max knows that one of Mari’s roles is to keep Emil happy by being the ‘hot assistant’, and put her in the out of bounds box from day one. She just let Max know she considers herself ‘available’ and interested. Being hella smart, she knows the possible repercussions, and its not like she doesn’t know she could hit any bar and have prospectives lining up for some anonymous ‘letting off some steam’.. but she knows Max respects her for her mind and appreciates her body.
I know what you mean I don’t know why anyone expected her to be actually interested in Emil. She knows part of her job is keeping Emil’s interest and I have a feeling Marissa would need to clear a few things up.
I mean right now a significant portion of it is playing up her sexuality to some guy by doing sexy nerd cosplay. She’s not going to fall in love with him just because it would be convenient. She’s already shown an interest in Max this would be a perfect opportunity to drive home the “I’m available” message. It is also playing it a bit safe, Max is hurting right now, she probably expected to be turned down, even if she probably wanted him to take her up on the offer.
Starting to wonder if Mari didn’t indirectly let us know already, re Emil, in her ‘all the yummy ones are gay, married, or haunted’ comment.
Max nailed the look of “Heh, she likes me” in panel 4.
She’s an adrenaline junkie.
Well, that makes a lot of sense. Even & especially in this situation… I’m curious what she will say or think about it later.
(Also, damn typos… please imagine an “o” behind the lone “t” and the “k” between “o” and “e” should have been an “l” in my first post.)
Ive been reading NAV for a while. And several others. I feel weird suggesting that creators of one read another. I love for them to be creatively distinct.
I don’t see why it would be a problem — I already have 47 comics on my Comic Rocket reading list, and can always use more (some have stopped updating.) I may get inspired by something or another, but I’d likely take it in a new direction anyway. Inspiration is good. After all, it’s hard to create in a sealed room.
I’ll keep that in mind. I have a rather large list myself, all of my comic bookmarks have things like M in the case of here or M Th, M T Th whatever the publish days are. I could have a RSS for many of them, but comics while I read a bunch, are something I read on available time. 3MM and 10 or so others are on my regular reading list.
Just to clarify: the list over to the right there in “Targets of Opportunity” is only a partial list of the ones I read and which I feel are deserving of all the linkage they can get. I also read, for instance, “Girl Genius” and “Sluggy Freelance” but jeeze, they’re huge, don’t need any more plugging.
(And I also read “Whomp” and “Supernormal Step” but they’ve annoyed me by de-listing their comics from Comic Rocket so I have to make a special search for them when I feel like getting caught up, and that vexes me.)
Now watch, Comic Rocket will go under and leave me in the lurch again. Could happen.
As a card carrying Defender of the Nifty, I feel I have to protest. While Sluggy may have once been a comic powerhouse around the turn of the millenium, it has since fallen into relative obscurity. Part of this is Sluggy’s lack of advertising. It is listed on TWC, but the comic does not possess a link to the site itself. Any plugging I can convince you to do would be very much apreciated by myself and my fellow Sluggites.
I recommend Spindrift for its awesome art, and Strong Female Protagonist for its awesome story (the art is excellent too, but usually understated). They both are readable through the Rocket.
“Sluggy” was the first webcomic I ever read. In fact, I didn’t even know what webcomics were; my sister just gave me the first book. This was back in the AOL Age. In any case, I assumed it was still huge, but if links will help, done and done. I’ve also added Spindrift and SFP to my Rocket.
I guess if you have the willpower to literally stop your own heart on command, you can resist even the largest…tracts of land if it comes down to it.
Here’s some weekend thought fodder.. how much of a factor in Max’s dogged determination to be having a relationship with Sophie is due to guilt for being the reason she’s dead? ‘But he didn’t kill her, Tarne!’ No, but his heroics got her killed, and he knows it.
Hey, she did some heroics of her own in that little shindy. Not like she was getting up close and personal with the linoleum or anything.
But she didn’t act until Max did. Thus, if he’d just kissed the linoleum, she probably would have as well, instead of stopping bullets that would have probably stamped ‘game over’ on Max, ability to stop his heart for 3 minutes or not.