Crimson Game - Requesting Feedback (Awesome Art)

[Merryweatherey]

http://tapastic.com/series/Crimson-Game

Please only critique the story, not the art. I didn't make the art.

Thank you very much~~ ^^

[MylCreates]

Hi Hi, Myl here from Hacheeachkee
I read your comic and it's rather catchy. Honestly I thought at the beginning it was going to end up a generic, boy has crush on girl in highschool scenario, but the twist in story of the cellphone contract and the popular girl he had a crush on coming down with a terminal illness hooked me in. There are some pages where I just thought there was far too much dialogue in ratio to pictures and I ended up glazing over all the little conversations that I felt didn't really matter until something dramatic happened.
I'm always weary and cautious when it comes to a blatant narrator, this character that just hangs around nonchalantly handing the story to the reader (as I'm not a big fan of this method), unless this narrator has a significant role not yet reviled. I'm also not a huge fan of characters taking up pages to "teach" a main character or the reader about all the rules and such, like in videogames you kind of just want to get past the tutorials as soon as possible. Though finding a solution/balance to this is difficult and I understand the need to explain to the reader and protagonist what's going on, but at some points, I already was able to assume what was going:
example:
with the drop of blood on the phone and some demons popping up behind the protagonist. The simple dialogue of "He doesn't know does he" kind of already self explained that the protagonist signed some kind of blood contract.

I feel, as the author of the story your emphasis is on the dialogue, making it flow and adding it where needed. People read comics more for the artistic aspect rather than like a book for it's words, so adding too many words on one page dulls the mood. The challenge to you as an comic author is to provide as much description in as little dialogue as possible, giving the art speak for the situation instead of just dialogue and learning how to coexist with it. I do not know how closely you work with your artist, who makes thumbnails and if you know how the page is set up with dialogue included, but i see this comic having much potential.
Try to stay away from the overcliche, keep those twists and turns coming, turning assumptions like i had at the beginning of the comic into a hook to keep me reading.
Goodluck Reon!

[MylCreates]

oh, and a bit more:
I suppose if you'd like to practice, check out this amazing graphic novel called The Arrival
There is no dialogue or writting whatsover in the book yet somehow pictures alone are able to communicate everything in the story to the point where you could simply imagine the dialogue being spoken. Try going thought this and just image how the characters might narrate the story in as few words as possible, and that should be some great practice,
Good luck
MylCreates Hacheeachkee

[Merryweatherey]

Thank you very much for your review of my comic book, MylCreates!

This is something I wrote almost a year ago, and was in fact my very first comic book project. I did indeed have trouble with how much dialogue I could put per page, and there were a few communication errors that had to be spurned out.

It seems you think this comic will continue, which I'm very afraid it wont. It's just a oneshot. However, we have planned a series version, with an all new cast of characters, taking place in Northern Europe instead.

If you'd like to see something a little more representative of my current writing style, try reading The Steam Dragon Express here on Tapastic. The first chapter has a few flaws, but the second chapter is where I really caught up ^^

[Merryweatherey]

Ah, in addition, about the Narrator:

He was supposed to be two things.

1: A refference to Alfred Hitchcock. He would often narrative his TV show, and pop up like Schrödinger from Hellsing, about the background of all of his movies. This always kinda fascinated me, and I fantasized about him playing 1 character, a Twilight Zone-esque narrator.

2: It being a oneshot, and also my first manga, I had a hard time telling what I wanted to tell, before the demonic game took off, and on my early drafts you can see there's clearly not enough space for it. So I used the narrator as a way to give out expositional text, and hoped the writers would be charmed with his own characterization.

[MylCreates]

Ah, that's too bad, but I'm glad you're still working at your authoring skills Interesting references, the Twilight Zone narrator was always an interesting character, a bit hard to pull off however i'd say, perhaps if it was like a different array of stories then such a narrator would fit right in.
I'll definitely check out that comic.

[Merryweatherey]

I hope you'll write on the comments section of that story, your review^^