I know its late and promise next Review-A-Thon won't take nearly as long, wanted to read each comic twice before fully writing a review down, combine that with life obligations and also my own comic and well, yeah haha. But lets get back to it......
@DualDragons Rise of the Heroes is a shonen like webcomic that follows Andrew LaCondore, a young man who prior to the first episode has split from his brother in order for them to cover more ground in search for their missing father. But as the story unfolds ominous layers of Andrew's history as well as his father's begin to unfold. Combine that with comedy, fights and new characters that join in on the mishaps in order for Andrew to finally find his long lost father
Okay, so first I really want to praise you dual for how much you have grown as a artist and also a writer from episode one to the most current episode, this type of progression is what I love about the medium that is webcomics, which pretty much pushes creators to grow due to having to draw things that they may not be use to. Just comparing episode one and the latest episode is night and day but despite the early episodes having those notorious early webcomic art growth woes I didn't find myself not being able to not know what was going on within fights or the story which is great!
But a few things;
I love that since the art style has grown, you have kind of slowed down the pacing of the comic, in the recent episodes, think a specific one was episode 49, where Greg finds Cress alone staring at the forest below and questions him about what is wrong; scenes like this are great.
I think however, scenes like this is what was missing from the early episodes and which is why from my first and second binge of your series it was hard keeping track of the names of some of the characters for a little awhile. Nothing to do with Art, but just in terms of not remembering them from a writing point of view. Early on many of the members of Rising Heroes literally just joined Andrew just because they wanted to help, and while I don't know if this was for comedic effect it does make many members have a lack of motives to go with Andrew to find his father in the first place. Like why exactly are they risking life and limb? Is it just for adventure?
I don't remember one character in Rising other than probably Luna, who is a princess that wants to escape her monotonous life of solitude and actually adventure out, that has a actual real goal on going on this adventure with Andrew to find his father. Some members literally join probably a few panels after meeting the group in some instances.
I think a very solid work that you could pull from if again, (the group coming together quickly was meant for comedic purpose), would be Avatar the Last Air-bender and One Piece, for example purposes I'll use the latter.
In One Piece, each member on the main character's crew doesn't join to help him in his goal, they all have dreams, motivations, and reasons for joining and it doesn't take a page for some to join, some take entire arcs for them to finally join. It isn't until the crew warm up to the main character's dream, as well as how they see how much he cares from them just as much as reaching that very dream do his goal become their goal. But again, this took time
Again, this can be also just a slight hiccup as you were probably growing as both a writer and a artist but still wanted to point it out, but base on the recent episodes and your trying to flesh of Cress' backstory I believe you realized that
Characters aren't memorable because of how good the art depicting them looks, its how someone as a reader can understand their goals, flaws, personality and all that in between that makes them memorable. Nobody says their favorite part about Aang from Avatar is his tattoos haha.
Other than all that stuff aside, I really am inspired by how you construct fight scenes, even in your early work, the Leviathan fight comes to memory, I could see you have a solid feel for pacing and positioning of characters in fights that even some artists struggle with, this skill even skyrocketed for you in your most recent episodes into the digital shift for the comic which is great.
All in all, I can't wait to see how much you continue to grow come future arcs for Rising and hopefully a future Review-A-Thon haha but until then,
Keep rising.
FINAL SCORE
7.0/10