Post any comic/novel here and I will give it a shot for ~5 pages (REACT EDITION)

THIRD UPDATE! (Replies 12-18)

The Aphuanian Tales @hippieghost
-Very nice ‘fantasy weaving’ in that first paragraph. Y’know, that thing authors do when they very subtly let you know this isn’t the real world with one little detail?
-Good dialogue~
=Overall, ok. The protag has a relatable quality, although she does read a little over-dramatic…I have this feeling like she was meant to be animated, not read. ^^;
The writing is good, and honestly feels just shy of professional work…I think maybe with a little editing to smooth out the rough spots (for instance, the sister’s and brother’s ways of speaking clash really severely, and it’s hard to tell, at least right now, whether that’s intentional or if that’s just the only way you know how to write calm/hotheaded personalities), it could definitely get there.

Hands Held in the Snow @thedude3445
-As someone ace-leaning, I couldn’t help but feel like this line:
“What? You…Oh. No, me loving you at first sight doesn’t count, since I’m your grandmother. I’m talking about the romantic kind of love. That kind of love where two people create real magic together.”
…Was a little…like “wow, really” y’know? =/ I don’t mean to spook you or anything, it came off as pretty innocuous at first glance, but I’d be lying if I said it didn’t read unnecessarily dismissive of platonic love.
=Overall, I think the writing is good, but it lacks flow. It’s very subtle, but it feels like some constant “something” is preventing me from really sinking into the world of this book.
I think it may just be that it needs some editing…like this line: “And those two pairs of eyes met, and stopped on each other’s faces.”
Obviously, the problem is that subject=eyes, and eyes don’t have faces. ^^; But before you even figure that out, the inherent awkwardness of the line immediately breaks immersion. And there are lines like this all over…
Basically, you’re really close to a very professional-sounding narrative style, but unfortunately it’s kind of uncanny-valley close. ^^;

Heaven Hunters @TedGravesArt
-I gotta say, when I saw that detailed cover art the very first thing I thought was “oh boy…this comic is only gonna update once in a blue moon, isn’t it?” Which was only confirmed by the gap between the 1st and 2nd updates...
Don’t take this as a criticism; it’s literally just a reaction…but I think it’s definitely something you should be aware of. The length of each episode more than makes up for the delay (in fact, I think 4-ish months is kinda fast for that volume of work) but any experienced webcomic reader WILL look at these things and understandably think “this comic could get canceled at any moment”. We learn from experience…
Also, they’re definitely going to struggle with remembering details…my memory gets fuzzy just trying to keep up with monthly manga updates. So if your eps have a lot of continuity between them, just keep that in mind.
-THAT ANGEL DESIGN IS SICK
Dammit, I’m hooked…this is exactly how the Stormtroopers got me into Star Wars…
=So I don’t have much to say. Your work is really clean and professional, and the action scenes are particularly delightful. Even though I kinda just barely skimmed it, I can tell Issue #2 is even better than Issue #1 in this respect. ^^
The dialogue is also very nice…it does feel a little comic-corny, but with enough gravity that you can take these multicolored demons seriously. I look forward to giving this a more attentive read later on~.

Post-Apocalyptic Introductions @Pony_wearing_a_hat
-So it feels like this is another one where the writing is really close to sounding professional, but it’s just a bit off…I recommend you get an editor; you have a good style but it needs work.
-Did you also hear that advice about doing super short updates super fast (it looks like you do a page a day, every day)? I hope it works better for you than it did for me (:(…) but I think you should also remember to make your updates feel complete. So far they seem to just stop right in the middle of things…it works when read all at once, but the majority of your readers will be following along daily in real time, and if all they’re going to get for the day is a couple dozen words, you want to leave them with a good sense of intro->event->conclusion/cliffhanger.
-It kinda feels like all the characters are just…yelling at each other? Like, I understand that a story with this kind of premise is going to be dialogue-heavy, but tbh so far the dialogue feels kinda pointless. Hardly anyone gets to finish a thought before someone interrupts them…I don’t yet know the characters well enough to get caught up in their banter.
=Overall, the atmosphere is really viscerally tense…like, to the point where it might actually be triggering for domestic abuse survivors or something. ^^; I’m actually kind of awed by it…I don’t think it’ll work long-term, though. Like, if the whole story is gonna be like this, it’ll probably just get annoying pretty quickly. =/
If this is intentional, I think you might have a skill here, but you have to use it sparingly if you want it to be effective. If this is not intentional…well, see the above. If that’s not how you want the reader to feel, you may want to tone down all the yelling and cursing and overreacting. If nothing else, it makes it very difficult to take the characters seriously.

You can direct me to start anywhere in the series that you want, if that helps.

FOURTH UPDATE! (Replies 18-28)

Smoke and Murders @Freemints30
-Very compelling start
-The sentence structure seems to be a bit confused. E.g.: “All I ever knew of it was that it was the output from the Asbjorn corporation and in its production of, power, water, life for all of Ildens, its suburbs and even its distant countryside, all with the small price of the main city being under a constant smog of Ventis.”
^Just a hair’s breadth away from being complete word salad. It’s comprehensible enough to understand with context, but still hardly acceptable.
-Erg, tense switching…
=To be perfectly honest, I think you’re a good writer, fundamentally. The flow of ideas is excellent…but the writing itself is just so distracting with all the errors and general weirdness…if you could work closely with a good editor/proofreader, I think you could polish this rough ore into a gem, so to speak.

The Story of Osram @feuersichel
-Empty is spelled with a p
-The expressions are a little overdone…I can tell what you’re going for, but it works better when you just lean on the face; all the arm gestures are unnecessary and make the comic look overdramatized. Like…these are just little quips, right? ^^;
=I can tell the humor in this is very anime/manga-inspired, very reactionary…unfortunately, that kind of humor relies totally on whatever’s being reacted to, and if it doesn’t strike one as funny/strange then there’s nothing left. Personally, I didn’t find the scientist-guy all that ridiculous (a little pathetic, maybe, but nothing special) so…yeah.
Really the whole “lives with his mother/can’t get a girlfriend, what a loser!” archetype is kind of outdated/overdone…I don’t know if it works at all anymore if you don’t do something creative with it. =/

Individuality @milejdyvan
-I really love that first chapter art…could you possibly tell me who did it?? O.O
-This is just so easy to improve I gotta say it. Consider:
“It was the day for a sixteen-year-old boy called Mathiaz Rider”--> “It was the day for sixteen-year-old Mathiaz Rider”
Just a few little changes and it immediately sounds 500% more natural. I think it could probably be improved more, even…but that’s the obvious edit.
-Yeah, in general the writing is really unnatural…the playful mood of the actual events and the overly-detailed language used to describe them clash really severely, so much so that it comes off as pretentious. The dialogue is good, but there’s not enough of it (yet) to make up for this.
=So basically the main problem is this: you have the wrong narrative voice. You’re writing Subway Surfers as if it’s Lord of the Rings…which could work if you played it ironically, but so far I’m not seeing that.
I think what this story needs most is for a lot of those flowery descriptions to be simplified or cut out altogether, at least to improve the pacing. Plus, you still need an editor: the language might be flowery, but it’s also awkward and incorrect in some places.

Paint Me a Murder @AnimeKitty
-Okay, well, that first sentence…if I’m being honest, it reads like satire. Like the kind of thing someone would write if they were trying to make fun of emo YA novels. “Color their world in shades of emotion”…?
I assume it’s just a metaphorical sort of introductory sentence for the whole novel? If so, I think you should just get rid of it. The next line works just fine as an opener…better, even.
-There’s something wrong with that first part that I just can’t put my finger on…basically, it feels like you’re just explaining a character, rather than actually telling a story.
And on top of that there’s this eerie ‘substance abuse PSA’ vibe throughout…I guess most people would just say you’re being ‘preachy’, but I feel like it goes deeper than that, with the cliché of “the one teacher who understands” (and his name is Lamphere) who then dies because of course he does, and those little statements like “drugs didn’t ruin his life— he did”...like, was this intentional? You have to know how low-key corny it reads…right?
-Gang…office??? Is…is that a thing…?
=Okay, I think I see what’s going on here…overall, the story reads like something that’s 90% research, 10% experience. The details are there, you can tell that a lot of work went into the worldbuilding…but the lens through which the world is described, the mood applied to the scenes; it all screams “I don’t know how it actually feels to live in this environment, so I’ll just give it my best (dramatized) guess”. In a word: artificial.
I highly recommend you try to consume more material written by people who live in urban/inner city areas, even if it’s just journal-type stuff about their own lives. A little less EDGE and a little more authenticity would do wonders for this novel.
And speaking of edge…those poetic bits, man…’a heart amid a cage, where it could not break out of the harsh, cold bars of hate’… ^^;;; I just hope you have a sense of awareness about that. Like, it’s not that it’s not okay to have cornball stuff like that in there, or even to have that be part of the character (some teens really are like that, and it can be cute if you do it right) but you have to make it clear with your writing that you know it’s cornball…otherwise, the only assumption left to make is that you are the cornball, and unless this novel is secretly a comedy, that would not be ideal. =/

FIFTH UPDATE! (Replies 29-35)

The End of All Things @BlunderingAlbatross
=Overall, it’s good. I think this is the first ‘normal’ novel I’ve gotten from this thread: it’s not blindingly amazing, yet it doesn’t have any glaring flaws; it’s just…solid writing.
I found it kind of difficult to get invested until the end of Prologue Part 2 where [spoiler] dies (which was really well done, btw), but I don’t think that’s your fault…I dunno. Maybe it’s the MC. As “purehearted, innocent mother” characters go, I think she’s alright, but unfortunately that’s just not the kind of character I’m at all interested in.

Life in a fearsome world @AmandaJ-art
-Wut
=It’s a cute-looking comic, but it feels very…pointless. Like, the first episode made me think “oh, this is gonna be one of those super-wholesome comic strips where the characters just demonstrate healthy attitudes towards negative thoughts”.
But then Ep 2 came along, ending with a very weak joke (?)…and then came Ep 3, where the negative thought was presented and the character was just…left with it. Eps 4 and 5 confirmed that the endings were just going to be random.
It felt like watching a stand-up comedian try to do stream-of-consciousness jokes and just bomb…like, there’s nothing wrong with finding your own experiences/reactions interesting and trying to share that with others. But entertainment isn’t the same as real life…it’s supposed to have a point. You have to make an attempt to reach your audience; give them something they can react to despite not being you or having your mental context.
…All ^that is assuming that you are indeed just writing about thoughts you had based on situations you were in IRL. If that’s not the case, and you’re making up each episode out of thin air, then…oh boy. You really need to study…something…
If nothing else, I hope the later episodes improve in this respect.

Essence of Life @julipow
-That banner art is scary. Like not good-scary, but ‘two steps before the uncanny valley’ scary. O_O
-Well…these descriptions certainly are…energetic…
-What is a flock?? I tried looking it up, ‘cause it sounds like one of those words that has a bunch of secret, archaic meanings, but I didn’t find anything that sounds like it belongs in the phrase “the wooden flock piercing his chest”.
Unless his chest is full of wood shavings?? That sounds awful…bizarre, and awful…
-Pro Tip: don’t call people “females” (or “males”) if they’re already-identified, acting characters. It’s a no-no…
-What is that ‘ne ne’ about? Are you mixing Japanese in this dialogue?? NONONONONO STOP DO NOT DO THAT
=Oookay…well, that was a trip. 6_6; Um, so, my biggest criticism would be that this has an overall extremely amateurish vibe. Like, this doesn’t feel like a novel, it doesn’t even feel like a novel adaptation of another medium, it feels someone’s misguided attempt at turning an anime into prose, despite not having read many books in their life.
I'll explain one notable thing: the constant usage of the word “female” was really immersion breaking, and tbh it made me uncomfortable…if you’re not a native English speaker (it feels like you are, though) you should know that it is usually used as an adjective (as in the phrase “female character”), not as a noun. When it IS used as a noun, it’s usually for animals (“I have four puppies; three females and one male”).
Thus, when you use it for people it sounds dehumanizing…and just in general, I don’t think you should be in a position where you keep referring to your main character as ‘the [adj] female’…like, even if you changed every instance of ‘female’ to ‘girl’ you would still have a problem.
Why can’t she just be ‘she’, or ‘her’? When you keep titling her like that instead of just using a more subtle pronoun, you create distance between the reader and the character: again, breaking immersion.
Rant over, I gotta stop…but before I do, on a more positive note: that trailer episode DOES indeed feel like a trailer. I’ve never seen anyone do that before…

Age I- Age of Darkness @TheDoublekey
-Woah, the backgrounds are actually kinda nice…
-WHAT HAPPENED TO THE ART BETWEEN EPS 1 AND 2?? D8
-The story seems kind of interesting; if the art were better I might be into this
=So, I feel like you have good composition, but the drawings themselves need a lotta work. The sketchy outlines on everything make the comic feel fuzzy and uncertain…and of course the perspective and anatomy are kind of a train wreck throughout, if I’m being honest.
I realize now that nothing really “happened” to the art after the prologue, it’s just that the prologue kinda played to your strengths: mostly background, extreme closeups, and effects; all things you do best— and I applaud you for making an excellent first impression that way; very smart~.
P.S. It looks like you’re using assets for some of the background elements? I hope you’ll be careful with sourcing and crediting and whatnot…the lines and dots will probably go unnoticed, but if you ‘acquired’ that Prologue background, rather than creating it as I originally thought, you should definitely give credit where it’s due, at the very least.

***How are you all getting so many comments and views?? I feel like such a hack ragging on all these stories and yet being a relative unknown compared to most of you…not that I don’t believe in the validity of my criticisms; I do. But they FEEL invalid when faced with the statistics… TT_TT