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Our work on Volume 2 is progressing at a staggering pace! Joe continues to rewrite many of the old pages, adding some far better humor and removing some of the more juvenile bits that make us cringe looking back. For someone who’s been berating the Star Wars Special Editions for, what, 17 years now (GEEZ, even the re-release of these movies are old!) it may be a bit hypocritical to be going back and changing things up ourselves!  But unlike an alteration of a beloved movie moment in an attempt to sell more toys, we’re really trying to match the tone of the earlier part of the comic to its current state, which, I think we’d all agree, is the superior tone… state… thing. The next update we’ll show some comparison pages, old vs new, and the work in progress for the Volume 2 cover illustration! Forward momentum, I say!

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for serious, Joe and I laughed at “FISH AIN’T BREAKFAST!” for at least two days before we could finally breath again. Yeah, we laugh at our own jokes, sure! That’s, like, how you know they’re good, right?

On a related note, we’re going full steam ahead on getting NN4B VOLUME 2 formatted for printing! This involved the painstaking process of making Joe add word bubbles to all the crappy dialog of the old pages, and then rewrite that crappy dialog so it’s not so crappy. There are a lot of old pages that are not a standard size for printing, so he also has to cut and paste panels into a more page-like shape. For anyone who remembers, there are several pages that utilized hideous photo manipulations for backgrounds! So despite my best effort to make Joe do all the work, I’ll have to at least redraw and color those backgrounds.

In truth, I intend to clean up a lot of the old art, not too any extreme degree, but mainly fixing some awkward face shapes and expressions. We intend Volume 2 to be a MASSIVE book, with around 200 pages. It’ll cover everything from the page just after the Demons of Sorrow to a time after the second Yori vs Ryoku fight. We want to get a Demon of Sorrow battle into each book, so Volume 3 (which is looking a bit far into the future) will cover the entire village arc, weeeeeeee…. We’ll keep you updated, and even let you know when we post rewritten pages to the archive! It’ll make re-reading the comic a worthwhile endeavor, I assure you. Of course, Volume 2 will only happen if we get a successful Kickstarter off the ground, so expect to get more news on that in the not too distant future, dear readers!

On an unrelated note, the first Star Wars novel of the post Expanded Universe white washing comes out in two days! For those not in the know, the past 30 some years of Star Wars stories expanding upon the universe of the original films has been chucked in the garbage by Disney to avoid the hassle of fitting the new films into a pre-established continuity. Despite being an EU aficionado, I’m basically okay with this since I care far more about good storytelling than convoluted continuity. A New Dawn is a prequel story to Star Wars: Rebels, the cartoon that’ll premier a few months from now. I am going to buy this book and share my all too inconsequential opinion of it with the internet because you guys NEED TO KNOW MY OPINION OF STAR WARS!! Hopefully I’ll like it, is all I’m saying. But I’m also the one guy on the planet who was underwhelmed by Guardians of the Galaxy, THE HIGHEST GROSSING FILM OF 2014, so who knows!

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NN4B Character Alignment Chart

Reader Adam Bolander – ajbo(at)cox.net – has given provided a RP character alignment chart for the main Bushido cast! In light of the most recent page, Tadashi’s ‘evil’ alignment status may be in question, but without Adam’s knowing several of these characters’ internal motivations, I’m impressed with the result.

No Need for Bushido Chart

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OH, Tadashii! Such a flowery way to say “I won’t tell anyone you ain’t dead if ya git outta here and don’t come back!” And, sure, Genchu’s still bleeding and wet and will probably die of hypothermia, but maybe he can walk it off! Just a flesh wound.

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Oh, THERE’S Tadashii! Well, mystery solved, I guess! And he was even kind enough to retrieve Genchu’s sword. Nice guy. The sound effect’s a little ominous, though.

Matsuricon 2014 Announcement

If you’re in the Central Ohio area this weekend, you should check out Matsuricon!

Matsuricon is kind of like NN4B’s home convention – we’ve been there every year since it started in 2006! We’ll be hosting panels, selling exclusive convention swag, and signing stuff. Matsuricon is also your best opportunity to get a coveted NN4B custom sketch card by Alex!

Swing by our panels or table and say hi!

Panel schedule (Subject to change)

  • Friday 1:00PM – Photoshop Layers Deep
  • Friday 5:00PM – Webcomics without Borders
  • Saturday 1:00PM – Legend of Korra Fan Panel
  • Saturday 2:00PM – Webcomics 101
  • Saturday 3:00PM – Kenshin Ballad of the Man Slayer
  • Sunday 11:00AM – No Need for Bushido/ White Noise

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Ryoushi’s not just gonna let that whole arrow stunt slide. It’s suicide time! This is like Genchu’s worst day ever.

So I saw this movie, maybe you’ve heard of it, GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY! It’s okay, I guess! Have some of my stupid opinions, why not-

Pros: So much funny banter! Peter Quill is my new favorite Marvel character maybe I guess? Yeah, I think he is. Also, cool spaceships, I like ’em!

Cons: CARTOON PHYSICS! Everyone bounces off explosions and flops around like indestructible plastic fish and then the movie says “fear their possible demise!” and I’m like “nope, sorry, movie. You have gone out of your way to TEACH ME that spaceship crashes and explosions do not hurt these people and I can no longer feel an ounce of concern for their well being!!” It kind of makes the supposed emotional stuff at the end a bit less so, is all I’m sayin’. SOME TONAL INCONSISTENCY!

To be fair, my cons basically apply to all the Marvel movies (although Captain America 2 did a much better job of grounding its story than most). Tell me I’m not the only one getting tired of the over CG’d action adventure experience! I think it’s not so much the quality of the effects that hurts newer films but the lack of restraint in how much stuff gets put into them. There’s no room to digest the big impressive set pieces because you’re already onto the next ‘ooh ahh’ moment! Slow down, movies, take a breather, I can only ‘ooh ahh’ so much before I stop caring. Try showing us something impressive, then relaxing for a little bit before showing us the next impressive thing. IT’S CALLED PACING and I remember a time where it was very effectively implemented in films. Also make your movies shorter! GEEZ DOES EVERYTHING HAVE TO BE OVER 2 HOURS LONGS NOW!!! Concise storytelling can actually be a pleasurable viewing experience, you know!

PS. Did anyone else think of The Last Starfighter when those little fighter ships linked up to create a force field?

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Oh how the tables have turned! He’s not actually dead yet, but I don’t think there’s any coming back from that for Ryoushi. I debated doing one of those full spread painted pages for Ryoushi’s neck wound shot, but I think we’ll leave those as a ‘Yori vs DoS’ thing and not a ‘general DoS death’ thing.

In other news, we have some new Comictron comics! Numbers 196, 197, and 198 at the bottom of the page.

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ARG, I hate when those pesky cliffs just show up out of nowhere! It’s probably related to that cliff from Jurassic Park that magically appears in the same spot where the T-Rex busted through the fence. WHERE DID YOU COME FROM, CLIFF?? To be fair to Genchu, visibility was not great, and they’re clearly up in a mountainous region where there’s always snow and such; plenty of opportunities to fall large distances.

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WOO, stayed up late getting this one done, BUT MISSION ACCOMPLISHED! Not much dialog, though. I mean, GAH, but other than that, nothin’!  Genchu’s not looking so good, he may be at the end of his rope! HOW’S HE GONNA GET OUTTA THIS ONE??

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There is so much action stuff going on with this page, I love it! I LOVE DRAWING ACTION SCENES!!

So a couple new things on the site! Yesterday Joe mentioned to me “Yeah, I put the comictron back online a while ago”, and I was like “WHAT?? Why didn’t you link it on the site??”  and he tells me “Oh, well, I tweeted about it, like, a year ago.” Naturally, that’s now been corrected. The Comictron is  linked on the site under the extra section! If anyone accidentally makes a comic they want want to share, send it Joe’s way (there’s a link on the page)!

We also finally got up a ‘New Readers‘ Page! Admittedly, it’s mostly the hiatus story-refresher pages with some text to clarify what the comic is, but hopefully it’ll help new readers catch up on the story and start on the newer art after the hiatus if they don’t want to read through the old archive. Granted, I always recommend the full archive to get the full Bushido experience!

Also, I don’t know how many people saw Joe’s remix’d page, but it’s so crazy hilarious I’m just going to link it again.

 

 

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