All right, now for a change of pace from Fantasy, we have a slice of life comic, The Stars Above Us
I'm kind of a snob when it comes to slice of life. Some of my favourite webcomics (and webcomic spinoffs, hi, Giant Days) like Scary Go Round, Dumbing of Age and Roomie are from this genre, and I honestly wish more comics of other genres would take note of slice of life and incorporate the subtle character dynamics and naturalistic dialogue (this is what's so great about Netflix She-Ra, it's a fantasy action show written like a slice of life comic because the showrunner comes from an indie comics background), but I find a lot of slice of life to swing between melodramatic and boring, or to feel like they were written by some sort of alien who only knows about how humans live through reading comics and watching TV and anime. I was extremely relieved to find that this one is actually pretty good!
Writing:
The writing made me feel old, but in a good way, like as in, I felt like I was reading a comic by somebody younger than me who knows what current teens do, dress like, talk like and how they communicate. It felt very real and like it was based on experience rather than stereotypes or stuff seen elsewhere.
The dialogue is really well-written. It feels natural, and particularly because the written dialogue always lines up so well with the gestures and expressions of the characters. There's also never too much of it in a single bubble. It's nicely paced.
The only area for improvement I'd suggest for the dialogue is that I didn't necessarily get a strong sense for the different voices of the characters and what their personalities are like. I felt like a lot of what I found out about characters personalities and biographies was coming from stuff other characters said about them rather than stuff I saw them say or do that demonstrated those traits clearly. It was compounded by a bunch of them all being introduced at once.
A trick I picked up somewhere that can really help when you need to introduce a lot of characters in one go, is to try to have the first thing a character says or does in a scene be as typical and emblematic of them- or at least of what you want the audience's impression of them to be- as possible. Now I've told you this, look out for it in ensemble cast TV shows!
Design thoughts:
I'm not completely on board with the modernist font being used here. It's quite tall and so feels a little awkward in round speech bubbles. Comics tend to use fonts without too much height variation so that you get nice clean lines that fit neatly into bubbles.
The speechbubbles aren't the worst I've seen; they at least leave good breathing room for the text, but I would advise checking the tutorial earlier in the thread and trying to get some neater tails and more inflated ovals in there.
Art Talk:
The art has a nice fusion style of manga mixed with a sort of indie comics look and is very expressive. It could just do with a little polish in terms of neatness, because it often looks rushed, and there were several panels where it looked like characters hadn't been cut out properly on top of backgrounds and had white filled areas in the space where a filled hole could form, like between arms and bodies. The inks sometimes look like the lines are a bit careless and it makes characters look flat in places where a more deliberate line could give them a bit more volume and energy. I'd recommend reading a book called "Drawn to Life Volume 1" by Walt Stanchfield; it collects lecture notes and handouts from the legendary disney animator who trained the young animators behind the Disney Rennaisance in the 90s, and is full of tips on how to make a small number of lines do a lot of work.
The brown line art is almost working, but it's maybe just a touch too light for the overall palette on some of the darker skinned and black haired characters. Also the decision to do brown lines on the characters and black on the scenery kind of feels the wrong way round. You want characters to pop from backgrounds, and backgrounds to fade into... well, the background, so really you generally want stronger contrast and punchier lines and colours on your characters, while backgrounds should typically have thinner or lighter lines (or no lines) and softer colours, often with lower saturation or value.
There's a decent amount of variety to the shots, with thought into focusing onto important props where needed and competent use of establishing shots, group shots etc. I would say that maybe since you are using the scenery a fair bit, maybe putting a little more work into the scenery might be good. It feels very.... Line tool-y, which naturally tends to lead to it looking exactly like what happened: You used the line tool a bunch. I'd recommend as an alternative, drawing the lines with a brush tool, but turning the line smoothing up high, so you can get those simple lines, but with a little more flavour.
Here's a good example of a page of Dumbing of Age, a really good slice of life comic about wacky college students:
You can see how the characters have black lines, and the environments use browns, greens and greys, as well as how the environments in this comic are coloured with softer, lighter colours overall compared to the characters. They're simple, but use lines with a little character to them. I believe Willis referenced a real college campus. Never be afraid to use a bit of reference or to put little real details into a scene. Rather than just a generic rectangular book, think of a close up of a text book as an amazing opportunity to put in something funny satirising school books, or that evokes a time or place, or is relateable or nostalgic. Every school hallway is an opportunity for flyers or posters, every bedroom is an opportunity for weird nicknacks and funny book, album or video game name easter eggs. Specific is always more interesting, characterful and funny than generic.
Overall I thought this was pretty good. The dialogue is well-written, the scenarios feel very believable, it has a diverse cast who feel like they could be real school friends and talk and act like real teens. I'd like to see a little more polish to the art, which is expressive, but a little rough around the edges, and some more bold characterisation to help us get a stronger sense of the contrast and tension between characters.