Ch2 16
Seriously, Hass. How did you not see that? It’s a 50 foot giant’s foot. I mean, I guess if you were too busy with your own internal monologue or something, you might miss something so obvious?
As well, Alli has a sort of announcement to make:
I wanted to let people know about a decision that I have come to regarding My Hero! going forward.
Originally we wanted to market the comic as NSFW based on nudity but as I have been going I have found that in some cases the nudity almost felt like it was there to be there. Or in some cases I just didn’t feel comfortable drawing certain things. And on top of that it’s been a nightmare to market.
As such I have decided to change MH! to a sfw comic by taking that nudity away and putting people in sexy clothes or revealing outfits like the vote incentive of Sklee’s design.
I understand if this may upset some people as what we were doing hadn’t really been done with out it turning into full out porn.
Thank you to all of you who are supporting us now and have in the past and we hope you continue to enjoy MH! as it goes forward.
Speaking of missing out on something, it’s time for another little-known gem of…
Hasera and Lark review:
Panthera
Lark:
Panthera follows the story of a young girl named Taylor Quinn who gets recruited by some kind of organization that fights her plane’s villains. This organization doesn’t just hire anyone, however – it hires people who can turn into cats! Well, okay, not house cats, but like, big, mean-lookin’ cats. The kind Savages like to hunt with.
Taylor finds out that not only can she turn into a four-legged fanged monster of death, but while in this form, she’s capable of some kind of elemental based magic! Why you’d need magic when you’ve got claws and fangs like that is beyond me. Just put your teeth into some guy and it’s off to the Strife with them.
Things go from weird to weirder as more and more strange things keep happening to the kids. Of course, most of that stems from trusting some madman who says he has all the answers. Let that be a lesson to you all, if someone ever tells you he knows it all, it’s best to just give him a throat punch and toss him in the ditch – it’ll save you a lot of trouble later on.
The art starts off a little sketchy, like, literally, but the lines get cleaned up pretty good later on. A lot of minor things catch the corner of the eye once in a while, but not enough to really detract from the comic as a whole. The most difficult thing for me in the whole process was trying to figure out why no one realized the badguy was bad. He might as well have had it written across his forehead in glowing pixie dust, or whatever it is their plane uses.
It’s a good read if you’re into the whole ‘kids finding their way’ kind of story. Throw in some awesome cat-on-cat combat with magic and you’ve got yourself Panthera in a nutshell. They even have explosions. Throw in a horse chase or something and I’d say this would make a story the Order would be willing to publish.
Hasera
I didn’t think I’d like the whole ‘turns into a cat’ thing from Panthera, but it kinda grew on me. So, Taylor is a young girl who finds out that she is some kind of shape-shifter who can go between cat and neutral with a thought. She gets recruited by her brother to become what they call ‘A superhero team’. As it so happens, that team finds out the hard way that sometimes good guys and bad guys are hard to identify right away.
Taylor and Fletcher make such a cute couple. I’m hoping that they don’t do the whole ‘suddenly we need to be enemies’ thing that I’ve seen happen with cute couples like this! The characters are all interesting, Jason, Taylor, Fletcher and Kira have such an interesting chemistry behind their stories that it’s a bit of a shame that a lot of their interactions get muddled up with the current arc of the story. Then again, maybe I’m one of the few people who don’t mind when a story takes a bit of a back seat to allow some of the characters time to grow (AND KISS, DAMMIT!).
The art style I’ve seen before and where it really shines is when the ‘superhero’ team are in their feline forms. The magical effects look pretty good and the locations are easy enough to identify, even if they’re from that whole ‘future’ plane everyone seems to like doing their stories in. Maybe I missed a really good book or something? Everyone else is acting like it’s everyday things, but I’ve never seen one of these ‘cars’ before. Maybe they have a sorceress under inside the thing? A tiny, really upset sorceress? I don’t know.
The story is pretty good, the art’s pretty good – all in all, I’d tell most people who were into stories about people trying to figure out the treacherous path of life while being completely alienated from the norm to check this out. I’d also tell anyone who liked cats, the idea of being a cat, magical powers or enjoys seeing those awkward “your best friend wants to ask out the Champion she just met on a date, but doesn’t know how a Neutral would take a severed limb” moments.
Hahahahah!! Okay I didn’t notice all the hints the previous page of said giant… but going back I can spot all of them. 😛
So I guess I”m as bad as Has in this case.
Let’s face it, we were all dreaming of The Lark and got lost in the imagery going on in our heads. Am I right?
WWWeeeellll, not so much… never been much for the Starbuck’s, Johns, and Ponches’ of the world… I’m more the Apollo and Roy kinda gal. And if you get any of those references, I’ll be surprised! LOL!
‘M out!
Battlestar Gallactica reference with Starbuck (80s version) Ponches was from that police show about two cops on bikes… Can’t remember what it was called. Apollo is either a Rocky reference or something else. Other than that, I’m lost
Well two outta three aint’ bad… Yes 80’s BG, also 80’s CHiP’s (Short acronym for California Highway Patrol), Apollo was also BG and John and Roy were from Emergency, which was a 70’s show about how Paramedics were first instituted in LA… good show… taught me a lot about emergency medicine!
Poor guardian :/
Such is the fate of all of The Lark’s Guardians. I’m sure Hasera will meet such a ghastly end… or perhaps worse? Maybe a Giant’s bum will fall on her.
Death by Giant Ass… I mean, I guess if you want to twist the phrasing a bit, most Guardians of Lark probably died from that… metaphorically speaking, of course. 😀
I seriously need a thumbs up button for comments. Cause I’d hit it at LEAST a hundred times for this one. 😀
I must admit, I had not noticed the giant, though I did notice the giant hold in the wall.
Interesting how such a large thing can be missed.
Obvious in retrospect though.
Trouble was afoot yet the guardian didnt take to her heels? I guess her intelligence was her feet of clay.
I guess you could say the giant was her ARCH nemesis! She got caught flat-footed when Lark cold-clocked the guy. Truth be told, she really was on her toes until the giant put his foot down on the matter.
You know, I was just thinking about how this comic, despite the art, was a little NSFKids due to the sudden violence- I’m perfectly okay with a little censorship- I honestly think it’ll fit the design of the comic better anyways (though the pinups are nice).
In all- you do you. Or your comic. Whatever. Let it work out how it feels is right for the story and the design- if there’s a little nudity here and there, so be it. As long as you’re not oversexualizing it (or, like you said, turning it into outright porn), it shouldn’t be a huge issue.
MH! was never intended for children. If kids are reading this, shame on you! You should be watching Paw Patrol or something!
I’m a *LITTLE* disappointed that the NSFW-ness is going away. As a person who has marketed a number of NSFW-Adult comics, it’s really not so bad. Project Wonderful has a clear “AO” setting, Juicy Ads is a FANTASTIC place to get the word out even for non-porn, The Webcomic List is EXTREMELY liberal in what they allow in the top bar for $15/month, and DriveThru comics has a HUGE selection of adult-only comics in their lineup (I know, I have like, 15 volumes up there XD). Across my comics I have something like… 5000+ readers? It doesn’t sound like much, but in terms of “cheap as free” advertising I’ve done, that’s pretty decent.
That said, you gotta do you. I’m just disappointed we lost another in our ranks of nawty comics. *sigh*
Sadly, as I’ve been looking at future content, there isn’t enough NSFW in the next few chapters for us to keep the ‘brand’, so to speak. Until future chapters (around Chapter 6, truth be told) there aren’t any NSFW scenes planned – and this was before the decisions.
If we’re not gonna go ‘balls to the wall’ on it, we’re going to disappoint a lot more people because they would expect more nudity. Rather, we’re going to tone back the NSFW content that was already liberally applied to the scenes and make the comic more accessible to everyone.
Who knows, maybe we’ll print a naughty/nice version in the future. For the near future, the decision has been made for us to remove the naughty and play nice.
I do honestly expect even more people to be outraged by some of the ‘battle armour’ Alli has planned. Then again, when you’ve got magic protecting you, you don’t need anything else other than something that makes you look good.
Well, truth be told, there were no intentions to go into the domain of sex like your awesome comic. Which means we’d be trapped in limbo between the two ideals – one that has explicit sex scenes and one that is completely safe. Being in such a middle ground offers very little in the way of wiggle room, so to speak.
I’ve seen a couple of other comics I read encounter the same problem, so I completely understand your reasoning. It’s a shame, though, that it’s so hard to promote a comic that’s neither strictly SFW nor straight-up porn. It’s especially annoying, since the field of webcomics manages to defy so many other limitations of style and genre.
Indeed, I wish we could have far more material that has adult content without being porn. Sex and nudity as actual parts of the world without generally being the focus. That was the premise I was told to expect here, sad to see it was removed.
“The Monster under the Bed” is exactly what you’re looking for. It has nudety, but it always feals organic and not forced and isn’t afraid of going for a large number of pages without showing nudety. plus the story is amazing
Okay, so the story will be slightly more safe for work, but you can’t completely cover up the T&Abyssals. They’re supposed to be walking embodiments of temptation.
I’m gonna be designing them the equivalent of sexy lingerie as costumes.
Ohh, I was wondering why I found this marked NSFW but wasn’t seeing anything NSFW anywhere. Oh well, it’s still got me hooked.