Alright. I'm going to fix this broken thread. To continue to keep it fixed, the next person should review my comic, I, NECROMANCER, @kevinworkman's comic, and @dglisson's comic. If you want more reviews besides mine, @ToonDoctor, just write a new post that contains reviews in it so that we can keep things moving forward. <3
Don't do placeholders-will-review-later posts, because they break the chain! Here are the next three comics to be reviewed 
https://tapastic.com/series/I-Necromancer by me
https://tapastic.com/series/Wild-Magic by @kevinworkman
https://tapastic.com/series/Beast-Bait by @dglisson
Now, here are reviews for everyone so that nobody ends up having been skipped!
Magnolia Online, by @reonmeriwethe
The art is very stylistically spot on and true to its roots. While the style has changed as you've dabbled with new ideas over the course of the comic, I must admit that the most recent stuff is the style and refinement that I prefer after having read the full comic up to date. You've gotten better as time goes on and that's great. I'd definitely stick with color -- it helps a lot.
Your paneling is very strong, especially once I got about halfway through the current published pages. Your perspective is sometimes a little inconsistent, but this is also something that's improved greatly as you've continued to publish!
The biggest technical issues that I had reading the comic were with your lettering. Your lettering has improved a little throughout the course of the story, but I definitely feel like this might be an area that you could work on to bring the quality of your work closer to industry standards. You've an awesome following, so you might as well, right? : )
In terms of writing, your winks and light-hearted satire on gaming works very well throughout the comic. The characters and plot work a little less so, for me. I'll admit that I'm not a big fan of most manga. The characterizations within the comic sometimes feel blunt and stereotypical/archtypical, which is often part and parcel of the genre, but it's not something that I can connect to. I'd much rather have far fewer characters and really get to see development of the main characters that goes beyond serving tropes/jokes. Simultaneously, the many breaks you take to post jokes/extras/advertisements/etc show that you have a really strong command over the significant community that follows your comic, but they're a little too frequent for my tastes. Artistically, the ads and announcements aren't always visually different enough from your actual comic and did break up the flow for me as I binged my way through your entire story.
Then again, it's the jokes/tropes and community engagement that's gotten you the following that you have, so you're definitely do a lot of things right! I definitely appreciate your skill and humor, even if this isn't necessarily the sort of style or story that would draw me in.
Rating: 7/10
Trinity, by @jerreaudriessen
Wow! Here's the thing: it's rare that I get the chance to read something that is truly unique. Trinity is that, for certain. There's not enough to Trinity that I really understand what it's about yet, which makes it hard to get to the real nitty-gritty with a review. Here is what I can say that I enjoyed:
You take risks. Lots of them. Some of the stuff that you are doing, visually, is super cool. The cube of panels was one of my favorite things that you've done so far.
You don't hand hold the audience and spoon-feed them the answers to what your comic's all about, which is something that I actually appreciate. I like having to think sometimes.
However, sometimes getting too experimental can be problematic. You are doing so many different things with this, trying so many different ideas out all at once, that it's very nearly impossible to really tell what works and what doesn't. Because of all of those ideas being thrown around, the clarity in the comic is lost. Being experimental to find new ways to tell new stories is great. But being unclear isn't. Some of the lettering, some of the style breaks, they just aren't synergistic.
If you focused on refining your unique art style, but went with normal lettering, caption boxes, speech bubbles at normal sizes, avoided the full page/s of text without art, proof-read the text in English (or had someone help with the punctuation/spelling/etc) and tried to focus on clarifying the action to make sure that people can follow what's going on ... then I think that you've got something. If that sounds harsh, it isn't meant to be! You really are playing around with some super cool ideas ... but I think that you need to narrow using those ideas down to the ones that are going to help you tell a good story.
I'm interested in seeing how this develops. It has potential. It just hasn't quite captured that potential, yet.
Rating: 5.5/10
Beast Bait, by @dglisson
I've reviewed you before, so I was going to wait until this thread got a little further on to avoid reviewing you again ... but it broke. And so here I am, reviewing Beast Bait.
Well, it's great. The Saturday Morning Cartoon style art works really well for me, even if it's technically simpler than a lot of comics, and mostly because the characters are extremely expressive in a believable way. They aren't over the top -- they react entirely realistically to the irrational situations they find themselves in.
Sometimes, though not always, the art style works against the story for me in moments of physical violence/action. Some of the hand-to-hand combat panels are framed well, but something just feels slightly off about them. Then again, especially as the comic has progressed, sometimes the combat scene visuals work brilliantly -- such as the showdown between the leads at the end of the first major story-arc. I have a feeling that combat/action is something that you're still working on and improving, artistically, and I can definitely see the growth as the story's progressed.
The writing is great. The story itself plays off of some familiar tropes (X-Files) but in a fresh, earnest way. The two lead characters have a fantastic dynamic, a complex need/hate relationship that really drives the story forward emotionally. Truly, the comic is original even while paying homage to other great stories, and that's one of its strongest selling points. Network TV fails at doing what you've done ... well, pretty consistently.
Beyond that, the actual dialogue is impressively believable, much moreso than the vast majority of comic books that I've read. The paneling is inventive and extremely effective, and the lettering pulls the reader's eye where it needs to be at the pace it needs to be pulled.
While there's some dark stuff in the comic, it's handled in a fairly light-hearted way sometimes, which I think makes it more accessible than most dark stories are. Not that that matters to me, as I love a good dark, gritty tale ... but I do think it has some more widespread reader appeal that it might not have if it weren't for some very good creative choices and compelling characters.
In short: I love Beast Bait.
My Rating: 9/10
Wild Magic, by @kevinworkman
What's very evident in reading this is just how imaginative you are. Even though your art is fairly simple (though certainly improving over time, which is great to see!), your paneling is actually pretty good throughout! You understand movement and how to capture the right moments to share with your readers, and that eye isn't something easy to come by. The story itself is pretty simple so far, the characters pretty simple so far, but there is a nice energy behind them that makes the entire thing breezy to read.
There's a lot of room for refinement. I notice that you're doing all of your art in GIMP, which is possible, but challenging. I think that you might benefit a LOT from handling all of your lettering, captions, bubbles, etc via Comic Life -- basically, starting in GIMP and finishing with Comic Life. Check out this tutorial. Not only will you probably save yourself time, I bet that you'd be able to immediately give your comic a significant boost in visual appeal with better lettering.
Beyond that, sometimes your choices of colors becomes a little challenging. This is particularly true in panels where there is no drawn background and you use a single color to paint the background. Sometimes that color clashes with the colors in the characters' clothing. More frequently, the color changes panel to panel even when the character hasn't moved locations, making the choice of the background color seem arbitrary and random.
For panels without drawn backgrounds (and when you do more drawn backgrounds, particularly in more recent updates, the quality jumps!), I would suggest sticking to simple white/black/grey backgrounds for the most part -- things that won't muddle the other colors in your book. Since the coloring is pretty simple and doesn't have a lot of shading, you have to be extra careful of not clashing.
All-in-all, it's a fun story! It's light-hearted, kid friendly fantasy fun. You're doing some really nice things, and for the things that are less polished ... well, just keep on learning and challenging yourself to improve!
My rating: 6/10
Johnny Bullet, by @ToonDoctor
I've read your comic before, and there are things about it that I really dig! It has a retro strip style that I think is really cool. Your line art is really rather nice. You handle dialogue pretty well, and every character has their own voice, something a lot of comics never nail! There are times where you miss punctuation or have slight grammar/spelling errors. It's not too terrible, but a little more time (or an extra person helping you) proofreading would definitely benefit you!
That said, I struggle with the premise. It's a strip style, so updates are very small and very little happens in them. And because of the style, the location and chronology jumps around a lot. If each strip were self-contained and didn't need you to know the larger story, I think it'd work well. Where I struggle with it is that there IS a standard through-line and plot progression.
So it's half old-school strip-style and half plot-driven, and it gets muddled. I'm not always sure where the characters are and what's going on. Some of that might be helped with more captions that explain the date, time, location and a snippet of the action. For instance: "Sunday, July 8th" -- "Just after midnight, a business meeting at the garage." Using captions like that whenever you switch scenes or advance time might help marry the two styles you're trying to pull off at once.
I also don't think you need the Johnny Bullet logo in every strip. The strips are so short that the logo actually takes up about 1/6th of every single update. That space might be better used to try to keep the narrative tight and help readers understand the flow of the story.
Finally, it might also be worth considering updating less frequently but doubling the size of your updates. I don't normally suggest that, but I do think it would help your readers follow your story better in your case since you're doing something so unique.
Ultimately, I really wanna see Johnny Bullet do well. I think that if you consider your structure and how you might improve it, you'll start to see more subscribers come your way. You do enough things well that you deserve to set yourself up for success and get more subs!
My rating: 7/10
