The comic adaptation of the eponymous web/TV series and the second addition to the Noob franchise written by Fabien Fournier (the series's scriptwriter and director) and drawn by Philippe Cardona and Florence Torta, the authors and illustrators of Sentai School who also happen to play Bartémulius and Nostariat in the webseries.
Most of the story happens inside a MMORPG named Horizon 1.1 and follows a guild said to be the worst in the game. In addition to a being a Ragtag Bunch of Misfits that only seems to stay together thanks to the Guild Master and the cooperation-encouraging nature of the game, the guild has an actual Noob as a healer. The first few pages of each book show a Day in the Life for one of the players, making the comic first to reveal anything about the real life of some characters.
The three first comics are a collection of stories of varying length, while the series starts sticking to one story per book as of the fourth one. The chronological situation seems to be between Seasons 2 and 3 of the webseries for the five first books, with the sixth and seventh starting to tie in with Season 3 events. The comics would however need to be their own continuity to avoid a Continuity Snarl.
A translation into English via ComiXology has been announced. The translation will start with comic 4 (the first to not be a collection of short stories), thus likely making comics 1 to 3 No Export for You.
The character sheet is shared with the other media.
The Noob comic provides examples of:
- Adaptational Heroism: In the novels and series, Tenshirock decided that all/most of the guild was off the hook during book / Season 3 due to them indirectly serving his cause. In the comic, Gaea negotiated that immunity as part of their business relationship, while the extent to which she cares about her guildmates is usually ambiguous. The only part of the deal that doesn't make the trope too strong is Omega Zell's non-inclusion.
- Adaptational Early Appearance:
- Castörga showed up much earlier in the comic than in the webseries.
- Ditto for the guild of Gaea admirers, including Meuhmeuh.
- Mist is introduced in the equivalent of Season 3 and the third novel, while she was first mentioned to join the cast in Season 5 and first appeared the fourth novel.
- Adaptation Dye-Job: To varying degrees, but Gaea is the most obvious case as her hair is a darker brown in the webseries and the pink part of her dress is actually red.
- Adaptation-Induced Plot Hole: Inverted. Both Season 3 of the webseries and the third novel included the need to replace one of the Justice guild members and trouble finding said replacement. The Season 5 reveal that one of the Empire players was an acquaintance of Mist's player all along created a plot hole as to why that person didn't simply ask Mist to come back on Horizon two Seasons ago. Mist's Adaptational Early Appearance in the comic version of the story resolves it.
- An Adventurer Is You: Arthéon is the tank, Omega Zell the DPS, Gaea is the nuker and Sparadrap is the healer.
- All There in the Manual: Some elements that are at best implied in the comic are made explicit (at least much earlier) in the webseries and novels, notably the reason the former Noob guild leader stopped playing and the fact that Heimdäl is the leader of the Justice guild.
- Beard of Sorrow: Both Fantöm and Omega Zell get one in the seventh comic.
- The Beastmaster: Gaea.
- The Benchwarmer: In one story, the characters need to build teams of nine people (five on the field, four backups) to play a Fictional Sport that was recently introduced in the MMORPG in which the story is set. The team made of the game's top players from both the Empire and the Coalition only adds up to eight and Saphir interviews people to fill the vacant slot. Saphir is so picky that she just plain runs out of applicants and chooses the last guy in line just so the team technically has nine people, explictly telling him he won't be allowed to actually play. Subverted in that the guy is so happy that he blurts out that he'd be fine just being the team's mascot and a later panel shows that Saphir took him up on that offer.
- Big Little Brother: Ystos to Sparadrap.
- Blessed with Suck: The battleground strategist position from Gaea's point of view. Away from the frontline, rest of the allied players mandated to protect you? Perfect for a Dirty Coward! However, you'd better not screw up organising your army or enemy players will kill you on sight.
- Bridal Carry: Fantöm has to pick up Gaea to keep her away from danger at some point, and ends up briefly carrying her like this.
- Broad Strokes: Implied by facts that aren't affected by the Negative Continuity that would otherwise cause a Continuity Snarl with the webseries:
- Gaea seems to live alone until the short story that reveals Golgotha to be her roommate. In the webseries, Golgotha moved in just prior to the events that got Gaea the dress she's wearing since the start of the comic.
- A Season 3 episode was the first real-life meeting between Kevin (Sparadrap) and Catherine (Golgotha), who mentioned she would have liked to meet the absent Stanislas (Arthéon). The fifth comic has Catherine meet both Kevin and Stanislas at a convention that chronologically happened before Season 3. Out of the core members of the Noob guild and Golgotha group, Morgan (Omega Zell) is actually the only one who didn't meet the four others nor got noticed by them due to spending most of the time staring at the player behind Fantöm who was one of the convention's special guests.
- Tenshirock is seen giving items he takes away from players to Ash, while two or three discussions in the webseries have Ash complaining specifically about Tenshirock's refusal to do so. Tenshirock is also never seen criticising Ash's job choice. As a consequence, Ash and Tenshirock seem to be getting along quite well and possibly have a Villainous Friendship, while it seems to be more "I'm letting you do your thing only because you're an old friend of mine" in the webseries.
- The Noob guild seems to not know of Tenshirock's existence before the unbanning of Arthéon's old avatar incident. In the webseries continuity, Tenshirock already shared a tavern meal with them and established something of a business relationship with Gaea by the end of Season 2. The latter gets revealed to exist in the seventh comic, much to the surprise of the rest of the guild.
- In this continuity, Nazetrîme's berserker is hinted to be an avatar she used on Horizon before meeting Master Zen. Since "Nazetrîme" is an anagram of Master Zen's French name and can't be its actual name, the berserker's name is obscured by speech bubbles.
- Art Shift: The art changes towards a more manga-like style (specifically yaoi manga) when Gaea puts her Shipping Goggles on. There was also a Dream Sequence during which the style was closer to American comics.
- Broken Aesop: An In-Universe case manifests as Feminine TV, the location of Omega Zell's day job. The channel is hinted to be quite feminist and shows "women can be as good as men" documentaries... alternating with lame-sounding shows that are stereotypically associated with female audiences such as interviews with good-looking male actors or senior cooking contests.
- Call-Forward: Due to the comic running behind the two other media, quite a lot of in-comic Foreshadowing alludes to events that have already happened in the webseries or novels by the time the comic containing it gets published.
- Call-Back: In one of the early short stories, Omega Zell refused to take possession of a looted outfit because it was literally a Harley Quinn costume with good stats but a cost in charisma. Later, Tenshirock punishes Relic Hunter guild for interfering with his projects by putting them into an Involuntary Dance while wearing Harley Quinn costumes.
- Captured on Purpose: Sparadrap mistakenly has this done to him by Dark Avenger and Précieux in the fourth comic. All he really did? He first decided to go along with them because he thought it would be fun, then switched to running after a smourbiff right when they happened to have their backs turned.
- Cassandra Truth: Master Zen tried to tell the guild of Gaea Admirers that he was the one who posted the Fantöm-incriminating video, only to be met with this.
- Celebrity Resemblance: Some random teen thinks Dark Avenger's player looks like Viggo Mortensen.
- Class and Level System
- Comically Small Bribe: Part of the plot of comic 10 involves Gaea ending up in a hard to reach prison cell. She's so desperate to get out that she offers two credits to whoever will get her out of there.
- Continuing is Painful: Little boxes list the penalties for cemetery resurrections: loss of experience and reputation, equipment damage. Gaea is seen putting off resurrection on two occasions to avoid the associated financial cost and would rather bid on a healer resurrecting her.
- Continuity Cavalcade: Sparadrap is seen walking a bunch of his pets in the eighth comic, including some he got in previous comics.
- Continuity Creep: Some early short stories seem to get Negative Continuity, while the later books are quite obviously part of an overreaching arc.
- Day in the Life: At the beginning of each comic for a different player.
- Decoy Protagonist: Once the player whose Day in the Life has been shown at the beginning of the comic logs on, he or she may not be standing out in the story two pages later. Actually averted with Omega Zell (finds out that his boss is in the Coalition), Arthéon (his level 100 avatar gets unbanned) and Sparadrap (the story with him and Dark Avenger gets established in the comic's continuity). May however get more frequent if later comics start with a Day in the Life for more secondary characters.
- Distaff Counterpart: Omega Zell's boss seems to be basically a Straw Feminist version of Omega Zell (who fits the Straw Misogynist description to a T), with Gaea even lampshading it. Couette also starts out as one to Sparadrap before showing character traits of her own.
- The Dividual: NPCs Bartémulius and Nostariat.
- Doomed by Canon: Sparadrap's pets die in comic 11.
- Doomed New Clothes: The reward outfits from the fourth (for Omega Zell) and sixth comic.
- Expressive Mask: Heimdäl, from time to time.
- Fictional Sport: Fluxball.
- Foregone Conclusion: By the time the seventh comic's events merged with the series and novel's emerging Myth Arc, the comic was respectively two Seasons and one and a half books behind the other media. Anyone following the two other media hence has an idea of where the comic will be going.
- It's actually possible to peek at the last page of the seventh comic and not be surprised at all as it's basically a retelling of the events between Fantöm's deletion and his new avatar joining the Noob guild.
- Something similar happens in comic 10 for novel readers. Just after Mist's introduction to the rest of the Justice main roster, someone mentions that the Coalition players plan to attack Centralis six days later. That comic ends on a cliffhanger linked to that information, namely the the fact that the attack turns out to be actually planned for the next real life morning.
- Comic 11 as well, being the follow-up to comic 11 and name after the last line from both Season 3 and the midway chapter of the third novel.
- Good Angel, Bad Angel: Gaea has the ignored / mistreated good angel variation.
- Hoist by Their Own Petard: Comic 12 has three players from the next day's rival team plan to take shifts in basically ding-dong ditching Kévin/Sparadrap all night so Noob's best fluxball player will be sleep-deprived the next day. They didn't count on the fact that he was sharing his room with someone who is more astute than him, sleep-deprived into a very bad mood and extremely protective of him. The dressing-down they get from the room's other occupant keeps them up all night (they even consider all moving in together after the tournament because they don't want to sleep alone anymore).
- Iconic Outfit: Castorga enforces this for Mist. He wants her to keep the same appearance as eleven years ago, so he has her upgrade her existing equipment instead of getting new stuff.
- Idiot Ball: In a battleground subject to Decapitated Army, Dark Avenger and Papy PK decide to leave Précieux, their army's randomly selected leader, so they can help Roxana in making the Empire's Respawn Point useless. Roxana has to leave right when they arrive to keep Justice from becoming extra protection for their own leader. This rotation of tasks leaves Précieux alone in a situation that seems to have suddenly gone for the worst for his safety the second his guildmates left and Dark Avenger in the same place as the Invincible Incompetent that has a steady record of accidentally killing him. All this apparently happened only because Dark Avenger got frustrated by Sparadrap (from his point of view) letting himself get killed early in the battle to keep the real range of his talents hidden.
- I'm Standing Right Here: Played with. After Tenshirock gets mad at Master Zen for indirectly meddling with his plans, he takes over his avatar, places it in the middle of crowded tavern and makes it sound like he's insulting Judge Dead. The panel that shows this happening includes Judge Dead's presence in the tavern.
- I Need to Go Iron My Dog: Gaea tries to bail out of the Centralis battle by claiming she needs to go see the eye dentist for an ear infection in real life.
- In-Universe Catharsis: Implied to be what brings Golgotha into the game.
- Loophole Abuse: Discussed and subverted. When Elena/Saphir says she doesn't want to see her guildmates lose time on a Pokémon GO-like app that came free with the smartphones given to everyone, Max/Fantöm teases her by pointing out that this warning technically doesn't apply to him. Saphir is not amused and points out that his situation actually means that he can afford to be distracted by something else even less than everyone else.
- Joined Your Party: As a little text box a few times, and implied to have happened many more, notably due to Golgotha technically being a Psycho for Hire.
- Lethal Lava Land: The Brûlcan dungeon, the name itself a Portmanteau of the French words for "burning" and "volcano".
- Living Crashpad:
- Omega Zell to Fantöm in the fourth comic, made even more hilarious by Omega Zell not complaining because it means Fantöm is right next to him.
- Repeated in the ninth comic, but this time he serves as a crashpad for Gaea falling off a tree.
- Magic Music: Bard Boléro.
- Mythology Gag:
- The looted dress that Gaea is holding on the cover of the second comic is identical to the one she was wearing in the webseries before getting the one she's depicted with in the comic.
- In the fifth book, Dark Avenger and Précieux accidentally fall off a cliff, reminding of a scene in Season 4 of the webseries where Dark Avenger has his avatar slip off a cliff after telling Précieux he was quitting the game.
- Depending on how accurately the later comics follow the webseries timeline, that scene may be more of a Call-Forward.
- A story has Gaea disguised as a penniless player and claiming that "a mean hacker" stole all her money. She used a similar excuse in the webseries, this time explicitly naming Tenshirock, with whom she actually gets along quite well.
- While the Noob guild's visit to Max Middle/Fantöm seems to not have happened in the comic's version of the story, Max Middle is shown in his room, wearing only one sock ; the webseries version of the comic-absent scene has a throwaway gag in which Gabrielle/Gaea notices that Morgan/Omega Zell stole a sock during their visit.
- A scene in the webseries had Arthéon mention he had flute lessons at his boarding school in a dreadful tone. Guess what instrument he ends up having to play for Magic Music in the eighth comic.
- The Come with Me If You Want to Live moment from the ninth comic is a nod to WarpZone Project and would have involved the two same actors in a similar situation if it had been done in the webseries.
- Negative Continuity: The events of some early stories would fall into Remember When You Blew Up a Sun? or a variation of it without that trope.
- New Media Are Evil: Arthéon's principal thinks that books are inherently better than computers.
- Non-Combat EXP: The boxes showing quest rewards include experience points and a short story has Sparadrap attempting to gain a level only by exploring new places.
- The Password Is Always "Swordfish": Or "Fantöm" in Omega Zell's case.
- Perpetual Poverty: The Noob guild's finances are stated to be quite bad. The common funds however tend to be completely empty or just enough to pay for something essential to the plot. Since the situation is partly caused by the member's reluctance to contribute to them, their own finances are doing just a tiny bit better (especially Gaea, who's just greedy). Gabrielle, the player behind Gaea, is in that situation in real life, but is also said to make a little money from the ads on her blog and gets good computers and consoles by participating in multiple contests in hopes of winning at least a few of them (and it seems to work). That is probably balanced out by all the geek stuff in her room and possibly having Catherine / Golgotha as a roommate.
- Pick-Up Group: The players Gaea was Ninja Looting in the third book and the one Omega Zell joined in a short story.
- Rainbow Pimp Gear: The end result of a short story involving Omega Zell and Gaea helping Sparadrap choose better equipment. Ironically, one of the stats Omega Zell was paying attention to while choosing was charisma.
- Scandal Gate: In comic ten, Tenshirock calls the events from comic seven the Fantömgate.
- Schmuck Bait: Arthéon wonders why his boarding school, in which the principal has a New Media Are Evil attitude, even has a student-accessible computer room that he seems to be the only one using. It turns out that it's here to trap students that would not resist using the computers, and hence those that would need "detoxing".
- Seppuku: In the final panel of comic 9 that has Sparadrap be chosen as the strategist for a new battleground, Omega Zell is seen pointing his dagger towards his own stomach.
- Sequel Episode: Comic 12 to Comic 5, as it follows up on the fact that the Noob guild won the Fluxball cup in the latter.
- Ship Tease: In addition to Omega Zell's ambiguous relationships with Fantöm, Gaea and Golgotha being inherited from the webseries, Sparadrap and Couette seem to spend much more time together than in the two other media.
- Snowball Lie: The comic points out more clearly than the two other media that Master Zen's Frame-Up of Gaea ended up being this via the existence of the guild of Gaea Admirers. Gaea herself starts maintaining it the second she finds out about it, because allies in an enemy faction can't hurt.
- Status Quo Is God: Frequently played straight in the first three comics (mostly longer stories that give time for actual changes). Zig-zagged as of the fourth one where progress is sometimes made, but some situations seem to have their own built-in Reset Button. This has stopped being true by the time comic 7 rolls in.
- Sticks to the Back: Omega Zell's sword and Level 100!Arthéon's mace.
- Stripperiffic: Averted with the main cast, played straight with some background characters.
- A short story that has all the Noob guild drawn like American comics characters has Gaea wear a quite revealing outfit under a coat that looks like the pink part of her dress.
- Suicide as Comedy: The real life sequence at the beginning of comic 9 has a teenager about to jump off a building over a celebrity couple breaking up and changing her mind after finding a resemblance between the guy who kept her from jumping (Dark Avenger's player) and a famous actor.
- Tempting Fate: Two major cases from the ninth comic:
- At some point, Gaea hides from two enemy armies for whom killing her would be an Instant-Win Condition by climbing up a tree. The second she hopes nobody will find her, Sparadrap calls her from the top of another tree quite close to hers and reveals that the other members of the guild saw him climb it. Cut to the rest of the guild looking up Sparadrap's tree and getting noticed by enemy scouts.
- After the Noob guild decides to do another battleground, Omega Zell states that the system randomly choosing the Empire's army leader can't do worse than Gaea. Cue the comic's last panel that is obviously the strategist selection for another battleground: congratulations, Sparadrap!
- The Unreveal: Comic!Heimdäl's real life face.
- His player appears in a convention in Comic 5, wearing a mask identical to his avatar's.
- Stéphane (his palyer) get his Day in the Life scene in comic 11, but he's wearing the mask mentioned above the whole time. This same comic covers the very scene in which the webseries had his mask fall off, but it doesn't happen in the comic version of the scene.
- In comic 12, Kévin happens to be sitting next to Stéphane on the plane, but he happens to be cleaning his face with a towel when this is shown. Later, he's seen wearing sunglasses and an anti-germ mask.
- Throwing Down the Gauntlet: Elementalist!Fantöm does this to Gaea in the eighth comic. Where the gauntlet came from is a lampshaded mystery as sunch an object isn't even part of his usual equipment during this part of the story.
- Trash of the Titans: The few times Gaea's apartment is seen before Golgotha turns out to be her roommate.
- Tropaholics Anonymous: Arthéon is seen attending a support group for players who lost their previous characters because they did Real Money Trade and are trying to resist the temptation to do it again. His story tends to make everyone else feel better about themselves.
- Unreliable Voiceover: After it turns out that Master Zen is back on Horizon, he explains what he's been up to ever since escaping jail via flashback. Part of the anecdote includes him "patiently tracking down" the Noob guild. In reality, Sparadrap found him first, and apparently quite quickly.
- Victory Is Boring: It turns out Tenshirock was counting on this eventually pushing people away from Horizon before his plans got messed up. He expected Amaras to give up trying to beat Fantöm and the whole Coalition quitting along with him. The Empire would then easily beat the much weaker Order. The consequence would have been the Order players quitting because of the loss and the Empire players quitting from lack of enemy players to fight against (according to him, at least).
- Wham Episode: Comic 7.
- Welcome to Corneria: Bartémulius and Nostariat in the short story introducing them, otherwise averted.
- Webcomic Time: The comic timeline is only about half-way through the time covered by the webseries and novels, that cover a period of four or five years. Add to this that the release rate seems to have fallen to one comic per year and that the author wants to do several comics of Adaptation Expansion on the Fantöm in the Noob guild portion of the story that was subject to
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot in the two other media. - Worthless Treasure Twist: The treasure turned out to be valuable only for the Non-Player Character that the Noob guild was escorting. Arthéon pointed out that it was a low-level quest and that his guildmates' high expectations about the treasure were their own fault.
- Yaoi Fangirl: Gaea, who writes fanfiction about Omega Zell and Fantöm.
- You All Look Familiar: Ardacos is basically this, handwaved as New Job as the Plot Demands. From his own words, he's just running several businesses at the same time and even advertises the others when players visit any one of them.
- In the fifth comic, the fluxball coach isn't him, but his identical-looking cousin.
- The hairdresser is hinted to be a third cousin, suggesting that the situation is slowly slipping towards Inexplicably Identical Individuals or Uncanny Family Resemblance; new cousins, however, seem to be limited to professions that can create a pun or the original name in French (Ardacoach and Ardacoiffe are the names of the known cousins).
