Syraxis: You're getting better with your use of color and effects, and better with the effort you put on your opponent's character design. This has happened for you before and you gotta be more aware of it: your blacks for your characters getting lost in really dark backgrounds. Maybe it's your monitor settings that they don't seem as dark to you? but you need to think of how to get past this; in page 5, louise's child is mostly lost in the background. When setting up your battles you don't want your reader to get lost with where characters are, and you want to remember the 180 degree rule as it will help keep the reader oriented: Echo's position on the battlefield gets completely lost between page 9 and 10. I'm not feeling like Echo has any reason to not capture/kill Heratik, she only meets Louise's child once and she didn't ask echo to spare him or anything, so the ending's a little weak as a result. Something that Heratik's comics really need is a new catalyst; for the past three comics it has always been the same thing, character stumbles upon/confronts/finds Heratik, battle ensues, then nothing else changes. The only other difference in his narrative is this girl that keeps appearing in the holiday comics, when is that gonna matter in the storyline! I would really like to see a new turning point occur in your next comic for Heratik~

Seki: Same problem as your last comic! These are too small! Also extremely dark, check your monitor settings as well! I notice you're having trouble with word bubbles, take a look at some of the top artists here to see what they're doing with word bubbles and chosen font and try to mimic that. Honestly simpler is better. Are you planning on facing Navy after this? In my experience setting up who you're gonna fight next in the comic before can sometimes backfire, especially if god forbid something goes wrong and you can't have that battle after all. Focus on the now with your current opponent~

Keep it up guys, you'll only get better with continuous practice!

I didn't like either of these comics.

@Syraxis: I liked your comic slightly more. This comic had lush 'payoff' moments where Seki's character enters into the crystal cave. The payoff being a beautiful environmental shot- HOWEVER we already seen this place already in a past comic. The payoff isn't that great because we're only revisiting a previous location from another story that you did that had even bigger stakes for the characters. The emotional pay off too is kind of lost when Seki's character tells Heratik that he is missed since he hasn't really demonstrated any sort of quality where being told that would have any impact on him. Acting hostile, hiding in a inhospitable crystal cave, and telling assassins to get lost doesn't seem like anything that would tug on Echo's heart strings. In the end I'm not convinced that Echo would have enough emotional stake to be motivated to spare Heratik, since as an assassin, she would probably have to confront targets who she has more in common with pleading for mercy on a regular basis.
You seem to have a good sense of how writing actually works though, and how to set up emotional payoffs. I would recommend developing that sense that worked in a more logical fashion.

@Seki: Nothing actually happens in this comic- except for what seems like the set-up for a cliffhanger. The first 2 pages are unimportant to the rest of the plot here. You could have started on page 3 and you would have gotten a more concise comic. We learn nothing about Echo, her target or who the blue-haired chick is at the end of the comic. The amount of information presented in your pages can be abridged into 3 or 4 pages at most- you would then have 4 more pages left to give the readers a plot that tells us something about these characters- what they want, what they need and why we should be emotionally invested in their lives. The story is lazy.
The art is also lazy. Not a huge fan of the anime-emoticon faces. They seem like a cop-out from actually drawing what their expressions would really look like. The word bubbles are part of the design of the layout of the comic page. Here they look terrible- the type isn't centered in the bubble area, the font is inconsistent. From what i see in your art is what looks like a heavy reliance on methods you're already used to- well placed color saturations and then using black for the environments so you don't have to draw anymore detail. There is actually a visually appealing way to use heavy blacks that might actually require less work for you to do. I highly recommend checking out the art of Frank Miller's Sin City on that. But the reason you use heavy blacks here is so you can skimp out on details... and it looks lazy. For your next battle I would recommend trying to create only 3 pages and make them the best damn pages you can muster. Put some effort into this, people are reading it.

Great comics, you two.

Ohhh man both of these were so good! I love both your styles so much!! Lol @ that Colorado cameo. Thanks!
Thank you both for such wonderful pieces of art!

Syraxis: As always, sick colors ! Heratik is now fighting against his basest instinct, it's interesting that he do, and i'm really curious to see how it will play out. ( The Fleur de Lys hotel cameo is awesome, thanks bro ^^)

Seki: Pages a bit small, but it doesn't really bother me. Echo does seems to have the worst luck ever tho.

@Syraxis Pretty great! You've really got the bones of it down, which just leaves a few nits that need to be picked. Some backgrounds feel a bit like a half-measure, namely during the questioning process. You went with squarish 2-tone building shapes, and while I can understand that, they really stand out since nothing else was done that simply. Either dropping the shapes entirely, or just having like, a mailbox, a fountain, a street sign, etc behind her would show "this is a different location" without feeling incomplete. Second nitpick is the sound effects. The scratchyness of em really takes away the impact, and that's especially iffy during a fight.

@Seki Not bad! Though I feel a lot got lost in all that darkness. For night scenes, try and avoid just making everything black; try overlaying some blue or purple instead. This way the panel borders and lineart don't find themselves lost in the coloring. And it almost looks like you're drawing in the word balloons before you add text. Which is sorta backwards and leaves some very squashed-and-stretched text. Also, center it. Left-aligned text is more of an essay-thing than a comic-thing.

@Syraxis omg your pages are amazing! I love them

submitted! I had lots of fun with this

Turned everything in, looking forward to how this goes

Sweet, this should be awesome!

hypehypehype

WRECK EACH OTHER

i'm excited! i'll do my best!

DUDES
I AM HYPING THE SHIT OUT OF THIS

Make it a good one!!

AND IT BEGINS