Thank you very much for the kind words Pi ^^
And Mr. Ronin, whom I respect very much, I appreciate your feedback. It sounds like a cop out on my part, but the honest truth is this chapter was intended to read just like one of those fighting anime where it drags on with no other seeming purpose than to annoy the hell out of the reader. Why? Cause I\'m a fan of stuff like that for some reason. My apologies however for being so self indulgent.
Also to address one other comment. NFN and Gin are bland looking characters who are purposefully unremarkable in appearance. I believe in the power of simplicity. And Ken/Ryu? Perfect, cause they\'re exactly what I had in mind. I\'ve always loved the polar opposite fellows in fighting games, even the bad ones.
So although I have falted a good bit here, I\'m happy for myself that I at least delivered my intentions.

Looks nice, especially the stark black and white panels you did.  If anything, I would say to have more consistency between those kinds of shots and the normally rendered ones. Those shots really stick out because they\'re mostly white, so I guess what I\'m saying is to balance out the light and dark more.  I like the cover page a lot, very Sin City, but Gin\'s head looks a bit too far to the right relative to his left shoulder.

Keep it up, this is some good stuff.

So NFN\'s SUPERMYSTERIOUS RIVAL is...A GUY THAT LOOKS JUST LIKE HIM ? OH TWIST.

*cough cough* Okay I\'m calm now.

Now recently I\'ve begun to practice restraint when it came to simple character designs...but c\'mon, NFN and Gin are about as differenciated as Ryu and Ken. I wasn\'t a big fan of NFN\'s design, so I was hoping at LEAST his story was decorated with more outstanding characters (not that it\'s a good thing to grandstand your hero, but at LEAST make this more interesting than the \'Sleeveless Shirt Wearing, Shoulder Tattoo Bearing Man Circus\').

Although that isn\'t even a fraction of what I\'m finding unappealing about this comic. While I AM being patient about your designs, art (which actually isn\'t half bad except for the lack of backgrounds), and story, this Beyond Battle DRAGS like a cow walking uphill. If there\'s something important you have to consider when it comes to storytelling, it\'s PACING, and from how this segment of the story is told, it\'s clear that you\'ve paced this so that an event that could have been covered in maybe THREE pages made up an entire \"chapter\". It\'s called \"NFN VS GIN : ROUND ONE\", so in Round Two do NFN and Gin shake hands ? The main problem with why this comic drags so much is because of the dialogue separation and the framework. You tend to lean more toward BIG DRAMATIC PANELS, for panels that really don\'t need that much attention. For example, if you cropped panel 1 of page one to slip in panel 2 of page one (also cropped), you could have stuffed the rest of that space with the entire top half of page 2 (with some cropping to get rid of all the unecessary empty space). All of Gin\'s dialogue on page 4 could have EASILY been placed in the gigantic \"MY NAME IS GIN\" panel. You must also consider the CONTENTS of the panels you choose to use, because here it seems rather silly and redundant that Gin gets so many SUPERBIG DYNAMIC frames when he\'s only striking ONE POSE for THREE PAGES. Also, the sideways panel on the last page isn\'t really working for me. If you used maybe a regular angle with a bird\'s eye or worm\'s eye view that could have covered the dynamic aspect of that frame, but the sideways bit is just awkward and uncomfortable (it also looks like Gin is totally facing the wrong way in that frame).

You have to remember that it\'s just not about your pictures or script, you have to SELL this and make people not regret that they paid money for this. In this industry it\'s all about giving more than what people pay for; you don\'t want to settle for something less than you\'re capable, you HAVE to make this look your best, especailly considering that Beyond Battles have no deadline. You have to make me WANT to see what happens next, because I felt I had to force myself to read this. It helps to reread your comic several times over and see if you yourself appreciate it, not as an artist, but as a reader; does it come off slowly to someone who doesn\'t know the story ? Does it reveal enough to keep a reader satisfied without having to give away too much or too little ? You have to ask questions like these to yourself and make sure that you\'re satisfied with the product and presentation.

I hope you take these to mind because as it stands your story has LOTS of potential to get better. Keep at it, you\'ve got a powerful pedastal to stand on, but that alone won\'t take you anywhere.

I thought the pacing of this one was rather slow.  I was reminded of a long-running anime series that doesn\'t have enough ideas to fill up the whole twenty-some minutes (or in this case, five pages) and ends up being a back-and-forth banter between some key characters that fills up the time instead.  The poses and angles are good, but nothing really happens, which disappointed me.

The dramatic use of shadow is pretty interesting though, especially on the title page-- it\'s very simple and yet very powerful.  Hopefully what you\'ve set up here will lead to bigger and better things, like what you did for the battle with Slack.