Round One Feedback

Well here goes.

I must make a disclaimer * these are not personal attacks

By popular demand, my review.

I will cover every page and/or story. Someo of this is pure visual and some technical, being a graphic designer, my layout/graphic design crits will be mixed with artistic crits. A lot of this includes personal taste, so take that how you like since it's not a direct crit, but personal opinion. I'll let you know when it's an all out crit.

Starting with the cover. - This is all my own personal take and not really a crit since for the most of it, it's like saying Batman should have the yellow around his symbol. It's not too bad, the logo comes out good, though it is a bit off center, but half these issues are due to the spine glueing/folding, so it's nothing you could help. As it is, Drew pretty much gets cut off the front. Compositionally, even if there wasn't the perfect bind fold, he should have had more room to the left. But this is something that may not have been helped as far as production and layout.

I like the idea of you guys on the front, but I'd try and find something that might punch it off the shelf. Here's what I might have done. But then, these might give the totally wrong impression about the contents. I'm just having fun with it, so this isn't really a crit part.





The layout on the back works well, nothing to add there, but I would have maybe added a US price, just to make it "feel" more BIG, like this thing is everwhere.

The foreward, all is good. ... contents as well

Here comes the crits:

The Burden, by Johnny Luu - This story has good premise and good ideas, but honestly, I almost didn't care. There's a graphic novel of ideas and stories here, but I had no feeling for any of the characters. I didn't really get to know anyone, so when Stallion got killed, and the other guy takes over, he sas all these things that I should feel as well, but just like that he changes and I ask why. I think the struggle should have been the all of the six pages, the torment for both of them, the decision made. There should have been a 6 page struggle with maybe bits and pieces of this back story. The back story you created did nothing for the first and last page. Seeing these heros dead and bloody right on page one, we would have known something big was going on. The focus should have been strongly put on these 2 ... A dialogue between blows ... it just almost seemed pointless that after this whole war he gets picked off by an arrow then shot.

The art. Johnny, your structures are there, though they could be stronger at times or more fluid. Grab some posefile books to have a look. What I do sometimes is go to imagebank.com and pull down some stock photos or google some images for reference, there's nothing wrong with it, we can't be expected to know everything in our head. Next is shading/inking. A lot of the characters feel very flat, nothing makes them stand out. Even simple stuff like adding a stark shadow cast across a wall or under the tree just adds that extra depth. If you can grab my issues of Doll Steak 1/2 (I'm not saying it's reference is the best or that I am either, but it's the tangible book I can think of that has 2 versions of what I'm talking about), there's a reason I went back and put in the blacks, to give depth to the page, adding shadows on the ground or across a wall. Just those little touches add a lot and they do take a concious effort to think about.

Overall, it's a very good effort with a lot of content. ... very 'ahem' Ambitious.

A Whimsical Tale, by Drew. I'll start off by saying: I have no clue what the heck was going on ... maybe a bad thing, maybe a good thing ... but I had to read some stuff twice and look over a panel a few times to see what was going on.The first few panels left me wondering what was going on. I could barely make out what was happening and some of the inner dialogue didn't seem needed ... then it took me a few reads of the next few panels to realize he was woken up and it was a dream. At first I thought he was the captain waking up while all this craziness was going on. Mainly, the panels are too cluttered for me to know what is happening. Next, your character is so simple in shape, you have nothing distinguishing it from anything else, so for a while I could barely tell what I was looking at, especially the second half of the 2nd page, I can barely figure out what's happening. Throughout the story it's mainly consistant like that, without knowing what's going on in the first place, I can't tell ... I have to look over it many times. Why did that wall break? why was there an explosion? Speaking of the exlposion, again, I had to read it twice to understand the explosion happened somewhere else besides 'right beside the police' ... the way it looks, it looks like there is an explosion, then the next panel there are 2 empty cups and smoke and it looks like the cops blew up. I understand what you were trying to do where we cut to a different scene and then something happens having to do with the main story. The problem being is that it's too short of a cut. One panel that small doesn't work the timing out ... small panels will usually indicate a very small moment in time ... usually you have a lingering shot or conversation happening to have this sort of an effect. And usually you either 'see the explosion in the distance' or have something reacting as it happens ... anyhow. One thing I really liked was the amount of story you wanted to tell on each page ... with a panel count reaching 15, this is quite ... Ambitious ... I also liked some of the panel transitions you did have like on the 8th page. Over all I just found it a bit confusing to read and hard to pick out what I was looking at sometimes. It's like you knew what was going on and had much more to show, but couldn't all fit it in.


Wow, okay, I'm tired of typing, I need to take a break. I didn't think I'd type this much, I'm sure most of that is babbling.

I'll be back.

Very nice critique. Not personal and yet not sugarcoated. Can't wait till you get to mine. Keep 'em coming.

Oh, and nice alternate cover, going into the book we had two or three different concepts and decided putting our faces on cover would be a good way to get the notoriety going. Igor Kordey told me that we looked like the 'local gang.' That made my day.

Go ahead, its your design. Just leave out the Round One and the bullet design. Which means that you had to of scanned it, which means you had to bend your book. Tsk, tsk, comic piracy and destroying the comics collector value.

Now, Round One review ... uh ... round two


Police Dogs - by Vincent Smith

I liked the over 'feel' of this story. I could see it being an animation. A bit on the technical side ... the words in the word balloons, sometimes it seemed like the word balloons werea bit squished or the words could have been put in a little better order ... like when there is a long line of text over top of a shorter line followed bby a longer line ... this is just nit-picky.

The cardboard boxes thing seemed a bit off, I expected a bit more of a punchline or something to it. You may have been in a hurry because it seems your backgrounds were a bit lacking. It just seems more apparent because of the great art in the foreground constantly in front of white. But when you did have a scene, it was nice, I liked the chief's office shot. I would have liked to see one more shot of the scarecrow burning ... that's just me needing a bit more of a visual gag in a 'funny' comic. I really liked the last page ... very Mignola-esque ...

alright ...

How to kill a God - by Nick Johnson

It took me a while to really figues out what was going on at first, but it pulled together. Lots of stuff happening in this story, it was a bit unmanagable to follow as it seemed to jump around a bit, and didn't fully understand the need to have him shoot the girl wooden target ... I also couldn't find significance to the star/flash symbol around the one dead guys head. I thought there was more to it, maybe I missed something. I really liked the basic premise of this story. At times I didn't know if this was supposed to be a 'strong' Christian message or just simply a story. It could possibly be taken as preachy, depending on how you read it. The action seemed a little rushed near the end as everything resolved itself in one page ... but that could have been you realizing the last page was coming up. Artistically this style isn't particularily one I follow, but this is obviously my own taste, I did however like it and at first it seemed like it would detract from the story, but it kept consistent and worked. Over all, good work.


Stretch of Time - by Steve Gervais
Sorry if I'm totally wrong, but this seems like it was drawn straight on the computer. If this isn't the case, I appologize, maybe it was the scanning that made it look that way. One thing that stands out is the need for consistent shadows, especially when that seems to be part of what the style of the story is. I liked the opening and basic purpose, but I didn't see the whole purpose of the conversation the way it went down. Though it did leave me wondering at the end what will happen. Artistically, working on body form and proper shadows will really help build shape.

well, thanks for the good read guys. Overall I enjoyed reading a bunch of stories and seeing such a variety of style. Too bad we have to wait another year for another one.