[CLOSED] Giving your comic honest feedback/reviews

Been a very busy week so sorry it took so long to get to this!

Starting off, the art is fairly difficult to look at because of how "busy" it feels. I'm not sure the reason you went with this style but the lineart is extremely messy which makes it hard to convey any sort of meaningful detail (ie you can't tell what's going on in this panel7 at a quick glance). I can tell the art itself isn't actually that bad so things would probably look a lot better if the lines were cleaned up a bit. The fighting was pretty good, maybe because art style complements "action" scenes. And of course to stay in line with all my other critiques, I'd suggest you change the font. Text should be eye catching as to draw a viewers attention, but the one you're currently using is both small and thin. You should also center align the text itself.

As for the dialogue, it's forced and unnatural. It kind of sounds like robots having a conversation in the sense that there's no natural emotion. When writing, you should constantly reread what you wrote and see if you can imagine people actually having that conversation. You'll probably end up changing the script several times as you find better ways for the dialogue to flow, but in the end it'll be a lot better. This also ties into the characters themselves. The way they act isn't realistic. For example, Olivia just witnessed her classmates have their heads ruthlessly torn off yet acts like it hasn't affected her. Someone seeing that would be in a state of shock, not call the guy who murdered them a "crybaby loser6".

In your synopsis, you state:

Is Dan a hero or a villain?

My biggest issue right now is that there's no moral gray area here. Dan is very clearly a villain, shown by the fact that he literally just killed a bunch of his classmates for making fun of him. If you want people to question his morality, you can't immediately throw him off the deep end. It's hard so sympathize with someone who just murdered an entire classroom of kids.

When continuing your story, I'd focus more on characters and how they talk to one another. In order to get your readers invested, you need to make them believable. It's not always an easy thing to do, but like with pretty much anything else, it's something you get better at with practice.

I should first mention that judging by the synopsis, this comic isn't exactly up my alley. I'll try my best to provide an unbiased opinion though.

The art kind of reminds me of old flash games where the characters are superimposed on a background. This is due to the fact that certain things are hand drawn while you also use external assets which causes the styles to clash. Instead of being in the environment you set up, they're on top of it, like a green screen. One way to help minimize this is to not use actual textures (the sky6, the floor2, AND FOR SURE the real life pictures7). Other than that, the art is good. Nothing that stands out, but something people would give a chance when first seeing it. Just a small not on the text bubbles, try not to make them really small2.

Before we go on to the characters/plot, I want to talk about the pacing. Each of the first three chapters focus on a character (or two for chapter 1) and then they're immediately thrown together and drive off with the plot. For a story that's supposed to be character driven (at least my assumption from what I've seen so far), I haven't gotten the time to get invested in the characters themselves. I would have preferred if you spent a little more time (even a chapter or two per character) to get a better understanding of what they're about.

Speaking of the story, there's already a huge plot convenience. I can get the characters meeting up in a random towing shop, but not how they were able to escape from not only cop cars, but a police helicopter. Not to mention it was done by getting into a brightly coloured RV and driving down an open road3. It's all extremely unbelievable and got a laugh out of me that you probably didn't want. As for the comedy, I cracked a smile for some of the jokes. The humor is silly which is perfect for me, so I'd say to keep it up.

There hasn't been a lot of worldbuilding (so this is going to be a short section), but it looks interesting from what I've seen so far. You were able to incorporate it nicely without making it feel like exposition. The idea itself isn't the most original, but you can do a lot with it.

The characters haven't had a lot of time to develop yet, but you've done a good job at expressing their personalities. They all feel believable and their interactions seem real. Sometimes the dialogue feels a little stiff, but flows well for the most part.

As a final note, I like how how the last page slowly got updated as new characters were introduced.

And last but not least, The Behabiour of Emotionally Disturbed Meatballs. That's a... very... unique title.

The art style is really interesting. Everything feels messy and chaotic while still being able to convey what it needs to. It also meshes well with your panel layout. The speech bubbles and text would be my biggest complaint. I noticed a lot of it is white text on a light background which sometimes makes it a little hard to see5. It's also sometimes hard to distinguish between what's being said out loud and what's being thought, mainly during scenes which Lilith is talking to the person on her phone/watch thing.

The setting, while not built up much, seems cool. It sucks that the story is ending soon because I would have liked to see it expanded upon a lot more. I was first going to complain about the pacing with the plot, but since this seems to be a short story rather than a full on series it does the job. As for the characters, Lilith is really the only one who has had time to get some proper characterization so I can't really say much else on the other two. An issue that I have with her is that her "emotional turmoil" ends super quickly. The first two chapters build her up to be a lifelong assassin with no empathy, but then almost immediately flips and "resigns". It just felt unnatural.

On the topic of unnatural, I'd highly recommend using contractions during conversation. Something like "Finally I've found you" sounds a lot more natural than "Finally I have found you"2. Other than that, the dialogue was decent. I liked how Reevs used writing on his body since he can't actually speak.

With that, I'm finally caught up on reviews and I'm open for submissions again! I've changed the max limit to 3 for now since classes have started again for me so things have gotten busier.

Like I've mentioned in my previous critiques for comedy comics, the art work isn't as important as the quality of jokes but should act as a medium to tell them. While your art isn't anything to write home about, it definitely gets the job done in creating the setting and displaying the actions of the main characters. What I would like to mention is your paneling (especially since you asked for feedback on it). As of now, the layout itself is very bland. Every chapter follows the same format of rectangular panels stacked one on top of another with the only different panel being this one3 from chapter 3. I'd recommend you change things around a little bit to "spice things up". That doesn't mean changing the layout for the sake of changing the layout, but by making changes that complement either the art or the story. I'd also make sure that each panel flows properly into one another without jarring breaks4 between them.

One thing I'd like to do is ask who the audience is for this comic. Right now, I get the impression that your target demographic is young children. The entire "feeling" of the comic feels like a flip book a kid might pick up at the library to read. This definitely isn't a bad thing, but it is if you're trying to appeal to an older group of people. This mainly comes from the fact that the dialogue and situations your characters get in feel very childish. If you're reaching your demographic then don't worry about it, but if you're not I'd recommend thinking more about what your target demographic is looking for.

In the notes I made a couple weeks ago when I first read this, I mentioned something about not using enough contractions making the conversations feel stiff and awkward. I'm not too sure if you went back and edited some of the dialogue or if past me was a little too tired when writing these notes, but if you did make some changes you did a good job.

With all of that said, I don't really have much else to critique. Since you've adopted the "episodic" approach where chapters (for the most part) are disconnected from each other, there isn't a plot that I could give feedback on. The characters also haven't had enough time to have any sort of development although they seem to be basic archetypes in this current state. Sorry for taking so long to get to this!

There's not much to critique so far but I'll give my initial impressions on what's been posted.

First off, I'm really enjoying your panel layout. Each page feels unique and the panels flow together very well. One thing I'd look out for is your use of black3 in a panel that's on a black background. While it's not the worst to look at, the panel ends up blending together with the background making it difficult to distinguish (unless that's intentional).

This brings me to my next point - colour. It's always a bit of a letdown when you start reading something in full colour and then it switches to black and white and this is no different. I'm not here to say that you should go back to colouring each page - I'm sure you have your reasons for making the switch (assuming time) - but just know that it can be a deal breaker for a lot of people. That being said, the colour added to the panels adds a nice bit of emphasis to certain panels.

As for the story, I can't really say much about it because there hasn't really been enough time for one to form. Looking at the synopsis you posted, it looks like it can be fairly interesting if done right. It might be a bit generic depending on how the idea is executed (since it doesn't seem the most original), but it'd be a bit presumptuous to assume that off a 5 sentence summary.

Lastly, I'd slow down on the bonus episodes. Having too many can feel like bloat and deter people from subscribing or encourage people to unsubscribe. Unless you have an audience extremely committed to your work, I'd space out the "filler" posts a bit more or combine them together into a longer release.

With that, reviews are open again! I'll try to get to them a little quicker this time, but I won't make any promises I might not be able to keep.