I need to get this off my chest, I feel slighted

[AVXP]

I have a lot to say (when don't I?) but I'll try and avoid rambling. lol
And I know this topic has evolved into new territory.

Most of what I talk about is from a business perspective.
And I suggest more of us adopt a more business-minded approach to stuffs.
Not that it's about "selling something" but considering that potential usually makes you step up.

I always hear "What do you expect for free?" or "I'm not getting paid for this so...." as opposed to working at a level that's worthy of being paid for - or realizing that whatever you do, someone will be doing professional-grade work for free right beside you.

Meta, I'd say we don't know what any of this will mean in the future. Someone on here is making THEIR BIG COMIC and in reality, it will only be their first comic and (better) comics will follow and today's precious thing will be pushed aside for the more shiny and new.

For others, this is it. Artists lose passion, switch direction.mediums, change interests, etc..so this may really be all you contribute to comics. What not make something worth revisiting? As stated above, you can't get these hours back.
I'd rather have a little bit of high quality stuff that shows my potential than a ton of material that I need to keep making excuses for- that doesn't show what I'm truly capable of.

And if we're going to jump to the "It's not that serious, for me it's just....." then we can stop worrying about fans, reviews, critiques and even readership. Have fun and keep it moving. The work that's truly created just for the artist is under a wrap somewhere or buried on some hard drive. It's certainly not uploaded on a site with tons of potential readers.

Other than that -

a) You absolutely have a relationship with reviewers. They are supposed to be one of your biggest assets and also any review (good or bad) means you stay in contact and submit future works (for almost guaranteed attention).

b) Some reviewers (or tastemakers or insert more modern name) are SUPER-OPINIONATED. The whole point is to get their subjective opinions and takes. Their readers know their slant, know what they like and can judge in context.

We want a reviewer to spend an Hours reading our comic, but can't spend an hour doing research on them and their site. Everything else dives into business stuff, but that's neither here nor there.

[Luminosophy]

This reminds me of an incident with a guy on a comic critique subreddit. I went through their post history and they were somehow who had just honestly started learning to draw, but they were in an art school and that fact seemed to seriously inflate their ego. I'm not even sure why they were on a comics critique forum in hindsight now that you bring it up, because the only thing they'd ever do was tell people to "lern 2 draw" and even the golden "learn to draw real art" to someone who was trying to emulate 50's retro cartoons. That individual I might add, had a wealth more experience with volume and shape than this art student. I think it's all about them trying to be 'big fish in a small pond' in their eyes because they know they'd be absolute rookies in a fine arts community.

[darthmongoose]

We want a reviewer to spend an Hours reading our comic, but can't spend an hour doing research on them and their site. Everything else dives into business stuff, but that's neither here nor there.

I'm in absolute agreement on this, as a person who does reviews, because I want the people who ask for a review to be asking because they genuinely respect my opinions, not because it's free.

I don't want to waste hours of my time reading through somebody's comic and writing my thoughts in detail, only for them to turn around after I've done it and say, "okay well I'm not going to follow any of your advice because it's all just your subjective opinions and you're not that successful, I'm clearly doing better than you on my own." It's a waste of everyone's time, especially mine, and honestly kind of a dick move.

If they do research and read through my review thread a bit, they can hopefully get a measure of the kind of reviews I do and how they're rated by people in terms of quality. If they don't have the level of ability in critical analysis to see if my comments are insightful or just opinionated they're maybe not going to get the most out of a review anyway.

People are welcome to think they're above being helped by my feedback. If they do, they shouldn't be asking me for feedback, they should be going for portfolio reviews with publishers instead of wasting my time. The opening of my review thread is honest about my following, and that the purpose is to help people hit subscriber targets (ie. 100, 250 bookmarks) which hopefully makes it clear that I'm not necessarily making these reviews with comics with way greater popularity than my own in mind. I generally do say, when reviewing comics with considerably larger followings to take my advice with a pinch of salt because they're clearly doing something right for their audience.

If I wanted to sell my reviews for money, I could big up my reputation, like yes, actually I've been published by Penguin Randomhouse in a Doctor Who art book, and yeah, I've placed in national competitions, I've run comics workshops for multiple events, government authorities and organisations like English Heritage and yeah, my day job is working on a book series with animated tie in in collaboration with Walker publishing and Cartoon Network. Yes, I did once sit on a panel alongside Scott McCloud to talk to educators in my region including the local MP about how to use comics in classrooms. But you know... if somebody needs to know that... then they're not reading the reviews, thinking for themselves and deciding if they're actually good for them based on the quality of my insights. They're asking for a review because some person told them my opinion is worth something because somebody in a position of authority said "Kate Holden knows about comics because all these other people in authority have agreed she knows about comics, look at how many award winning comic artists and writers and publishers she's mutuals with on Twitter!"

So yeah, anyone who thinks I'm just an opinionated bitch with a massive ego: You are allowed to think that. Don't ask for a review.

[StrangeVision]

I feel you, and in regards to that last point, I will say I'd been following this person's blog since submitting my comic. I had an idea of what to expect, as well as the focus on art, which is why I started to temper my expectations and anticipated a negative review to begin with. Even still, in reading much of their other reviews I got a sense they actually read enough of the work to speak on it by going further into character portrayals and the like.

Getting my entire genre wrong put everything else they wrote in a different light. If it weren't for that I would've just taken it and it wouldn't have stung so bad.

[skicoak]

Getting my entire genre wrong put everything else they wrote in a different light.

And while there's been a lot of people weighing in with bigger picture comments and commentary on reviewers/critiques.... This is the crux of the problem.

The reviewer didn't read enough of the comic to even get the genre right.