Comic and Novel Reviews (Closed)

I decided to start with some novels! I'll go episode by episode (I won't get to all the episodes) and then end with a general overview of my points. I chose to read The Rising Darkness.

Prologue

Okay! So some things stuck out to me but before I get to those, I just want to put across, and I'm not saying this to be mean, but it was a little boring. In the sense that there was intrigue, but not emotion, specifically from the point of view character. Throughout the majority of the chapter, it's hard to pin down what their feeling because it isn't clearly explained in the narrative.

For example, the paragraph: 'Before I could think about what I was doing, my gloved hand covered her mouth. Looking into her tearing eye, I said. "Don't worry about that. You still have a long time ahead of you. We'll get you fixed up.'

This feels like a very anguish inducing moment where both the reader and the mc should feel some degree of hopelessness or a fear that Cathine may die. I think it's lost on the reader because we don't get anything from the mc. We don't hear about the tears on her face, no sniffling, no scrunched brow, no rocking as a way to soothe oneself, nothing. There's no fear of loss communicated during the entire prologue. I think it's because the mc is so assured that Cathine is going to survive that I as a reader kind of lose that sense of fear halfway through reading. On the other hand scene also goes on a bit too long that the tension dissipated. Two paragraphs later, you write:

'I felt her weakening, her hand slipping from my face leaving a bloody trail behind.'

I thought she died, I really did. It's common in media when a person is dying in someone else's arms that after their hand slips away from the person's face, the life has slipped from their body. I was taken off guard when Cathine started talking again. So the tension for me was lost and I assumed she would make it out of the scene.

I'm not against the make-out bit, I just don't see the utility. I thought Cathine was dying so when that happened I was just thinking: Is this the time? No, and I realize that Runa understands that well. But girl, priorities .

Onto the more technical stuff!

Where are they? ...Like, where are they? I don't expect a long winded description detailing the types of tiles on the floor or the number of blades of grass in the field, especially in a prologue, just enough framing so I know what context to place the characters. I know there's a wall and doorway, but could that be any building!

Next, diction! There's honestly nothing wrong with cracking open a thesaurus. Instead of saying 'poured' you can say 'funneled', instead of just 'smiling' you can say 'grinning'.

Lastly, filler words! Don't worry, most people use these, I use these. It's a very hard habit to break. By filler words I mean unnecessary words, usually related to action (verbs), that just clog up prose. They don't need to be there and often have the narrative reading passive and not active. When the narrative is passive, there is a degree of separation between the reader and actions of the character. For example, your second sentence:
'She was lying on the floor...' would just read smoother as 'She lay on the floor...' (Complete transparency, I had to double check my grammar for this one. Lie vs Lay is always a mess.)

Or further down:
'When she didn't answer immediately, I started sitting up.' would read more in the moment as "When she didn't answer immediately, I sat up."

There were also some missing or misplaced commas here and there, but overall your grammar is pretty good.

Chapter 1

I'm going trying an focus more on the story for here on out.
So the story's good so far. I am interested to see what is going on between Runa and Cathine, and to see where Kan's story goes.

So my attempt to focus on the story alone failed.
Okay so... All the information we learned in this chapter, why are you telling me all of this? Wait, it's because it's information that needs to be known. But the better question is, why aren't you showing me this instead?

Rather than telling me about Mr. Kin, have Runa, I assume it's still Runa, and Kan at street level watching on as Mr. Kin and Anna are up to their tricks again. Have Runa and Kan overhear other vendors talking about Mr. Kin and his downfall or have him yell out something along the lines of "If this were twenty years ago, you all would be throwing bread at me! It's all because of those goons that I'm like this!" I didn't mention the Underworld here because I think the name and who they are/what they do is something that can be explained slowly over time through some internal dialogue and character interaction.

Okay, you've probably heard this before but 'The Games', sound a lot like The Hunger Games. I would personally recommend changing the name to something else. I'll throw our 'Festival of Fights' as a generic option, but if you want a deeper cut and don't mind allusions to Greek mythology, I posit 'The River Styx' or something related. The River Styx is the river the souls of the dead would take to the Underworld in Greek mythology, ferried along by Charon (which would be a great name for the overseer of The Games if you choose to Change the name).

I'm going to iterate on said earlier which is: Diction. Diction, diction, diction. I'm tired of hearing about bright smiles, please pick another word. Warm, brilliant, dazzling, radiant, beautiful, nostalgic, heart-warming. All of these are better options than just bright over and over again.

Also descriptions. I said before that you don't have to get into long descriptions, but no descriptions isn't a better option. Aside from describing character emotion and action, I say take more time to set up your settings.

Again careful with your comma placement, I got confused a few times because they weren't in the correct place.

Chapter 2

Again, I don't mean to be cruel when I say this, but it's a little boring. Things aren't being explained slowly over time as the information become relevant. I feel like I've been frontloaded a lot of information about the Underworld and The Games when I'm not sure if much of this is important. And it's being told, not shown. This is one of my qualms about first person perspective writing. It's of course a fine perspective to write from, it often allows for a deeper connection with the reader and the main character, but the crutch of it is, writers will write narration not narrative. In this case, Runa is just regurgitating history of this land with no personal spin and no gaps in her knowledge. I understand she's affiliated with the Underworld, but I feel as though she shouldn't know everything about it; maybe she doesn't know all the families, maybe she isn't aware of the Underworld stealing powers. She's is a part of the Underworld, are they not sheltering her from all their bad dealings so to make her a more compliant pawn. I'm not saying she can't know anything, but she seems to know everything.

I also noticed a few typos in this chapter, make sure to proofread.

Chapters 3 and 4

So read both of these chapters, by the way nice reveal at the end of chapter 4, but they carry the same issues I mentioned before so individually I won't speak on them.

Overview (in order of importance)

1. Show vs Tell
   So it's all pretty much telling starting in chapter 1. There's little to no text spent on showing the reader what is going on. And to that point, there is a lot of unnecessary exposition. For example, explaining Lord Malum is the ruler of the underworld before he arrives at the games. Upon his arrival, we should have been told who he is and his importance. Before that he doesn't really mean anything. Also Mr. Kin's backstory, if it was even important, was told rather than shown. You need to be able to strike a balance. There was more showing in the prologue though that could just because there wasn't much to be told.

2. Diction
   Like I said, crack open a thesaurus and read your writing out loud. You'll quickly see how repetitive you word choice is. Also try to read through and get rid of those filler words.

3. Descriptions
   There is a stark lack of descriptions and a lack of interesting descriptions. You're barely describing the settings, you're not describing character actions too well or their emotions (the latter two are the most important things you need to be describing). And the character descriptions are boring. I enjoy character design, so I'm going to harp on this for a bit. All of your characters so far have only been delineated by the color of their hair or the color of the color of their eye, and even then, you're just using the colors not metaphors. Spend time on talking about the texture of their hair, their skin tone, the clothes they wear, an identifiable feature, like a scar or freckles, something! Maybe Lord Malum has a crooked smiled with messed up teeth, but no one can say anything because he could have them killed. And because of the lack of description, especially through character interactions, I'm not really sure who these characters are. I spent 4 chapters with Runa and I couldn't tell you a character trait that she has... rebellious, I guess.

4. Typos and Grammar
   Just proofread and you'll be fine. If you're worried about comma placement, see if you can get a friend or family member, just a different set of eyes to read through your drafts. They may catch something you might miss.

Overall a good story with a lot of potential for drama and intrigue! Just don't scare away readers by overloading them with a lot of info and work on your diction and descriptions.

Whew! that was a lot. This wasn't the plan, I'll try to be more brief in the future. I hope this helps.

I'm hopping around a bit in terms of order, so onto my first comic review! I'm going to split this into two parts: Art and Story

Art

• Overall, the art is really great! Beautiful clean lines, nice use of colors, good framing and variation of panels. You got that down pat!
• Because the art is very polished, I don't have much to say about it outside of some nitpicky, detail things.
  • On page 10 in the last panel, Max is missing a drop shadow so it kind of looks like he's floating. There's a harsh red light illuminating him, there should be a shadow under him. Same thing on page 20 in the first panel, both Max and the walkie-talkie are missing shadows.
  • Between pages 17 and 18, Max picks up a walkie-talkie, but is hard to place where the walkie-talkie is in relation to Max, so when he just all of a sudden has it in his hand it's a bit confusing.
  • Page 7, I feel like the thought bubble could be higher so it looks like Max is looking at it, further directing the reader's attention to it.
• I know this was probably a choice for the sake of time and using your buffer effectively, but I wish the first three (or even up to seven) episodes were combined into. I think it would've read a lot smoother.

Story

• There's honestly not much to say on the story since things are just getting started. I did think the pacing of the opening where Max is asking why he's in the forest again is a little slow and could be cut down. You could cut out page 4, or at the least remove Max's dialogue since the point has already been put across in pages 2 and 3 then again in page 5.
• Things are in a good place though with the story, there plenty of intrigue, I noticed the little code you hid on page 11, though there may be more that I missed.

Overall the art is great, just be mindful of the details and formatting. And the story is off to a great start! Hope this helps!

I understand you wanted just a review of chapters 4-7, but I decided to just cover 4-6. Please forgive me if I miss something because I didn't read the proceeding chapters.

Art

I have to commend you for trying interesting poses and varying your figures, especially during actions scenes. Those are some of the hardest scenes to draw when making a comic.

I've seen you get other reviews from other people so I won't g too in depth in my critiques.

• When it comes to how you draw you figures, it feels like there's a lot guess work involved. There's a lack of construction with the faces, bodies, and even the hair, though things do get better as time goes on. I'm not a proponent of the idea that before you can draw stylized people, you have to be able to draw people realistically. However, it is easier to stylize and end up with more appealing figures if you have basic understanding of the fundamentals. So I would recommend either finding a course, a free one (don't spend money if you don't have to), or a series of youtube tutorials on anatomy and constructing human figures. and use it as a practice guide. Or if you're like me and you hate sitting down and doing studies, just whenever you draw characters outside of working on your comic, use references, trace (only for practice), and spend a little more time in the sketching phase.
• Perspective, oh I hate it too, but it's important to get it right (or close enough to right) to make the space your characters stand in believable. The scene in the dusty arrow specifically stands out to me. the lines on the floor have a different vanishing point than the bar counter. And all the tables have the same perspective even though some are farther back than others. Same as before, practice drawing simple shapes in one point perspective, two point perspective and work you way up to more complicated shapes.

Story

Overall the story is fine. Nothing particularly bad, nothing outstanding. It like a pretty standard story as is. I'm just going to go over from general things that stuck out to as I was reading.

• At the end of 4.6, Fredrick is telling himself he can't give up when he's so close to the truth, but earlier he said he didn't trust the mysterious man. And even though the mysterious man is aware of what happen to the brothers' family, it doesn't mean what he says will be true. Fredrick seems like the serious, skeptical one, so I guess for me it would make more Fredrick to just want the information out of him, rather than assuming the information would be true.
• In 4.7, the mysterious man claims he can see the future and I think that's something that need to be mentioned before. It would've made the fight scene longer sure, but It also wouldn't have come out of nowhere, only to be swiftly undercut by Fredrick kicking him in the face rather than punching him. And how many abilities does he have? Clairvoyance, super speed, controlling roots, a wall of air? I'm not saying that he can't have multiple abilities, but they all seem convenient for the situation he was in and none seem connected to one another.
• While I understand why Kay would tell the brothers about what happened to Drake and Miriam, I don't understand why he thinks they can kill Drake while he's overtaken by the dark lord. As far as I'm aware, since I didn't read the first three chapters, neither of them have elemental powers and it doesn't seem like they use any weapons, so what about Fredrick and Nigel make them confident that they can defeat Drake and save Miriam? You know, other than them being the main characters.
• Another thing a bout Kay that doesn't make sense to me are his motivations. He says what he wants is the shadow horseman to be defeated so that no more innocent lives are lost but, while that is an altruistic cause, there's a personal element missing from all of this. From an individual perspective, why does Kay want the shadow horseman defeated? What wrong has he done to Kay on a personal level to have him be so passionate about this. The only thing I can think of is Kay's defeat by the hands of the shadow horseman and Kay feeling bitter about that.

Like I said before, overall a fine story with the artwork being the main thing that I think you need to focus on improving. I hope this helps!