Thanks to everyone who commented. My purpose in joining this site was to improve, and the feedback really helps.

Evil Eye & Roflqu: Awesome art, uh... unique take on my character. It was enjoyable being matched against you, with this new 'artist/writer' setup and with such an interesting character. I'll be watching to see where your story goes from here. Good work.

Prometheusd: Interesting, though I would have preferred the two characters met. Even with the style of your art, I think there is still room for you to add more details to the deserts your characters drive by.

Evil Eye & Roflqu: Neat story, too. I don't know if you had the time to, but it would have been nice to clean up the pages more so that the font was more legible.

Keep it up you three!

Prometheusd: Interesting, though I would have preferred the two characters met. Even with the style of your art, I think there is still room for you to add more details to the deserts your characters drive by.

Evil Eye & Roflqu: Neat story, too. I don't know if you had the time to, but it would have been nice to clean up the pages more so that the font was more legible.

Keep it up you three!

Shit. This one is close!

Prometheusd:
You did wonders with such limited gray tone. I think I have a lot to learn from that skill of yours.
You also have such a great way of creating an atmosphere and timing with your large quite still panels. Don't know if you've ever read 'The Road' by Cormac Mccarthy, but evokes that quite placid sense of grandeur.
Criticisms are that I think you should do more drawings of real people, just cuz it seems you struggled drawing Starker. Seemed quite forced and out of your comfort zone. By understanding a harsh face such as his, it will be easier for you to simplify it.
Also, a bit of the art was quite pixelated in certain panels, dunno what program your using, but try and sort that out cuz it just looks a bit poop and drags the work down a bit.

Evil Eye and RoflQu:
The art looks really great. I think that using the screentone is cool but if you are gonna use it you should probably lighten the flat/non-screentone tone up a bit. Makes it seem muddy.
Story wise, it was going good but it all got a little lost because of the lack of finish toward the end with the art. This is totally understandable but as a writer artist duo you should probably co-ordinate the time better or limit the story length a bit, especially with such short deadlines.
I'm wondering if RoflQu was given room to change the story as he went, (nothing major obviously) just because I find that I have the majority/skeleton of the story down before I start but through the process of the art it can be pushed in new and exciting directions. If not maybe there should be constant dialogue between you throughout the project to allow for this maleability.
By the way Evil Eye, I really appreciated your comments on my comic and would also find it awesome to battle you at some point in the future. Especially with how exciting this writer artist matchup is. Just hit me up when the Tournaments over for you, whenever that is.
I just had a thought. Maybe you could try doing a story which is quite grand and let different artists do different chapters, that way much more could get done in a smaller amount of time, if that is what you are looking for. This probably wouldn't be suitable for a battle because it is a huge advantage but just for a fun project perhaps.

Prometheus: SImple and clean. Charming, even animated story telling but its so flat, its basically a story board. Everything is paced at exactly a shot every 10 seconds. May as well be from the viewpoint of a sidescroller or a security camera. You could do with moving your camera more, the fisheye lens on the rest stop is great and I like your settings being so solid but you don't make the best use of them. Starker offing the wrong guy didn't come off as clean and the story you set up in the truck didn't quite come to pass. I hope to carry forward so we can see more of it.


Rofl: Dayum duder, You know I love your gritty style and its perfectly suited to this grungy space mine you've set the tale in, your pages start off strong as ever but decay in quality by the end. I realize we've got little time. As always your expressions and framing are the high points, even your pencilled pages are full of character and detail, you're an artist after my own inky heart. I think a cohesive sense of place would be helpful and a sense of scale- you drew this great space scene and never zoomed down into it and through the halls of it, taking us down to Stanleys small world of space twinkles could have so much punch.

Evil Eye: I'm interested to see how you guys handle the scripting, story telling process? Do you brainstorm together, hand off a detailed script or just a basic plot then go back into it for the dialogue after Rofl's interpretation is done. There are many ways of performing that artist/writer symbiosis.  I dig how you added in the homey creatural bits about eating ice-cream and really making Stanley such a peon. Starker is a badass but I wish you'd invested more time in him and explained more of his motives and actions. Your world is compelling, as is your remaining of Stan to suit it but I think you talked in circles and decompressed needlessly. Ask anyone- more words isn't usually better. Strive for concise words. I'm super guilty of being a man of words myself so I sympathize, but let the words tell the story- your words should just tell us precisely what they can't and tell us as much info as possible with as few words at that. I loved the cyclical nature of him being told to DICK-ON and cowboy up, conspiracy theories are always tight. Strong showing, keep it up.

PrometheusD-your comic was simple and charming. I do agree about your fonts, remember it's a comic, not a paper you're writing. I think pacing wise you could have cut quite a bit out. While I'm all for establishing a setting and slowing down the pace, this comic mostly had one pace all throughout which made the comic feel very slow.

Evil Eye/Rofl-The beginning was very nice, but I think you went a bit overboard on the texturing. It felt overwhelming and distracting after the second page. Story wise it started out nice, I liked the banter in the opening. But once we got to the ending it felt sort of rushed and abrupt and I was unclear of what exactly happened.

PrometheusD;
Go to blambot and download some nice, comic friendly fonts. The ones you've used are not particularly pleasant and really stand out as kinda mechanical.

Slice of life is no excuse for such slow pacing, you could have easily chucked a page here or there. Did we really need an entire page dedicated to Stanley pissing? Keep in mind what is important and what you need to make the story work.

It also takes awhile for your opponent to show up. I'd rather you had given him a larger role than simply having some small side story just brush Stan, but you handled it well and I can find no complaint with it other than "not my cuppa tea".

If you want to pace it that slowly, I'd throw more details in. Just stuff to catch the eye and inform the reader of the character of the places and the cast of your comics. Finally, if you want to draw a perfect circle don't use a tool that pixellates so easily.

Good going, hope to see you do more!

Rofl/EvilEye;

Holy crap I love the opening page. Space is always difficult to pull off but you got it there. And theeennn BAM! helluva quality drop, which really detracted from this but there wasn't much time for you two to collaborate.

I think there were a couple of missed opportunities here, such as showing the shuttle on page 3 with the "shuttle incoming" part would break up a few of those similar panels. The cut to the interior of the ship is also rather jarring, especially with it's proximity (underlaying the previous panels). Utilise the natural breaks between pages!

On the next page we can see the two gas attendants(?) head towards the shuttle, and one of them says "Wow Mr Starker! []blah]" and we know it's Stan talking due to the syntax. But the positioning of the characters makes it look like the thin tall guy is speaking. So I'd keep that in mind next comic.

Some of the dialogue could be cleared up a bit as well, stuff like "eat it" instead of "eat those" is a grammatical thing. You should have made what Stan was on about at the beginning much clearer, as the first major speech we're hit with in this comic it feels alot like gobbledegook.
There's also that odd moment at the end of page 4, where Stan says that Rophael sabotaged something and Starker replies "that's funny, I'm looking for someone too". Stan never said they were searching for the saboteur, he seemed quite certain of everything. This makes Starker's dialogue feel forced.

I feel a beat panel where the scan indicates that the skinnydude is who we're looking for would have much helped with clarity. It just go scans complete and BAM he shoots a dude. It's also never clear why he's after him, only that a forged ID tipped him off.  I feel like we're missing alot here.

Beyond that, good work from both of you! It'll be interesting to see how you two work together from now on.

Prometheus - really liked the angle you took here. it was lite, but it felt genuine. the little details like the old man's frown and buying snacks and such, they really sell characterization and shouldn't be overlooked. art-wise, your lines could use some tightening up, but i think that should come with time and practice. the line tool is super convenient when working digitally, but don't rely on it too much. get used to drawing straight lines by hand and you'll elevate your skills to the next level.

evil eye - neat story, i felt like you fit things together pretty nicely. the early dialogue could have been a bit clearer about who/what they were talking about, but a few jumps of intuition are fine. not sure how much of a hand you played in the paneling, but i really liked the layout of each of the pages. pacing felt really well done.

rofl - it's a shame you ran out of time on this one, that first page had me jumping out of my seat. that wash/texture combo for pages 2-3 is pretty sweet as well, you know i love the new direction your art has gone lately. the lettering seemed a bit difficult to get through at the top of page 2, but it clears up soon after that. yeah, in summary, really strong work from you, just might have been a bit too much for one week after all.

Well, there's little I can say about yours collectively, so let's get to it.

Promie-D: I really enjoyed your kinda slice of life approach. A lot. It's good to see variety like this on the site. You even positioned your objects in your panels so the empty space seems more of a frame to the action and people than just empty space. You make very good and consistent use of your style. That said, I still feel as if you should develop how your characters and people look in general. I don't mean realistic, but I do mean how their cartoon anatomy forms and where they're positioned on the panel. Everyone in the comic walks six inches from the wall. I am aware I'm guilty of this too, but it's just something to think about. Also, stylistically, yes your buildings and walls and toilets are fine, but I think you should work on how things look so they seem to take up space and feel as if they have weight and density. The walls are paper thin and are positioned awkwardly.

Even with all of that, you did a great comic and I look forward to your work.

Evil Eye: DID YOU READ HIS BIO!? OCCUPATION: UNEMPLOYED! DAMN YOU DUMB!

Haha kidding, this comic was fun. I enjoyed your interpretation of Stanley as some enthusiastic gas attendant in space. Even more interesting is he actually turned out the opposite of how Promo writes him. He's a regular gabby gabe. I actually have little qualms with your writing at all except for how Stanley seems like a weird conspiracy theorist. It just seems off, but doesn't really injure the story. I'm actually curious how your scripting looked like for this though. Did you do panel layout and stage directions? A lot of the layout does seem like how ROFL does things, as doe a smidge of the writing. I'm also wondering how much of your story had to be cropped, as it seems some scenes are missing. Just a vibe I get. Turned out well though.

Rofl: I THOUGHT YOU WERE TRYING TO FINISH! Haha, hey, it looks like your work. Your faces are great as usual. It was a bit unclear in the end who Starker was shooting or why he was scanning. Also, I think you should have shown the ship coming up to the station before showing the interior asking about the fugitive. Mind you I know you were pressed for time. My only complaint really is that this started out so well and the art at the end was so unfinished and layed out a little poorly. I could likely chalk this up to you had less time to work as you were waiting on a writer. Nothing major.

I'm kinda with sloth on this one. While EE/Rofl's win with quality, Prome's impressed me with entertainment. I gave you guys even scores, but I still loved both. Can't wait to see more from ya'll!

I'm gonna have to confess, I really had a hard time following what was going on in the Evil Eye & Rofl comic. The art and beginning were nice, but I think it overcomlicated itself and was something of a mess by the end. In this case, I'm just gonna say simple is better!

Also: Both comics had poop jokes. Amazing.

We had to trim a lot of stuff down both for time and to make it fit.  Unfortunately, sometimes that made the dialogue get a little stilted.  And yeah, I really wanted to see the whole thing like the first couple pages, but ah well.  Busyness gonna be busy.  Time makes fools of us all.


Prom: Fun little go at it.  It works for a prologue of sorts for Stanley's entry to Void City I guess.  Does have an amusing vibe that Stanley was so close to being a witness to a murder.  It's a bit of an easy out, though, to write a comic that features Starker on the periphery and just killin' some random guy without interacting with your own character.  If you win this one I'd suggest trying to brainstorm a plot that engages your opponent a little more.  

Prom: I was pleasantly surprised by your comic. Not having much to go by with your character, I had no idea what to expect. Nice pacing, nice character portrayal. Simple, but still entertaining. You really gotta work on your backgrounds though, man. I think if you can step up your backgrounds, you're quality will take a nice leap forward.

EE and Rofl: Interesting take on your opponent, for sure. I was curious to see how you guys were gonna pull this off. I voted you the same quality-wise as Prom due to the scribbly unfinished pages. However, the completed pages look hella nice. Good grungy texture there, Rof. I like it. As for the writing, I felt there were a lot of really awkwardly structured sentences. I know nobody speaks in perfect grammar, but when you're trying to read dialogue- it's nice to have things written out a bit more clearly. There are several spots where sentences  seem to run nonsensically into eachother. You'll want to watch out for that. Otherwise, the story was good and I enjoyed your portrayal of the characters.

I'd like to see you both move on, honestly. Enjoyable matchup!

Prom, I really your pacing. You know your way around a panel, without having the moment's draw out too long. I wish there was a bit more in the way of backgrounds, but I'm not sure if that would interrupt the vibe you already have going, but it might be something to try in the future. I also wish there had been a bit more of your opponent, but a week is a short time.

EyeRofl, I really enjoy the two styles being combined here together but like some others the story overwhelms a little bit in the middle for me.

Prome: I really like your style as this is the sort of style that attracts my attention comic-wise outside of Void, so you've got me as a big fan already. Your comic had a nice atmosphere and I liked the old man too, it's a shame we didn't see much of Starker though, even if it did make him very mysterious, perhaps a bit more dramatic tension for him other then he just walks in during the background and stabs a guy while he's trying to have a shit (lol). I liked your toning too.

Rofl and Evil: Okay I'm going to try and concentrate more on the writing here because Eric knows I approve of his art always (just a shame you couldn't finish the last couple of pages). I liked your writing style and the dialogue seemed to flow well and natural, but at some points I sort of got lost in the words and the story washed over me a bit.

Great job guys!

PromotheusD: Nice clean lines and nice clean shading.. me like! Stanley really is an interesting character

Evil Eye & RoflQu: Shame the comic runs out into "roughs" middleway, I really enjoyed the art in the beginning.. having some trouble following the story though, but that might just be me..

Okay, sounds good. Thanks.

you just wait until comics are posted and voting begins.....we try to get everything thumbed ASAP and then post everything all at once

Finished. I just uploaded my pages. Not sure if I'm supposed to do anything other than wait at this point.

Okay, that's what I thought too.

Yeah, I wanted to make sure I at least finished my very first comic here. Wouldn't look to good if I was already defaulting. I was VERY surprised at how many people joined the Invitational. Once everyone posts their first round comics, I'm probably going to spend the day reading through them all to see what other people came up with.

Think so, yeah.  Not really in a divisive way, I figure.  Just judge it as a piece like any other comic.  That's what I assumed anyway.

whew, not long now.  Hope Rofl's got a fire under his arse!  Looking forward to your stuff, real glad you're not defaulting haha.  In fact there aren't nearly the kinda default numbers I was expecting for such a behemoth tournament.  Fuckin' awesome to see all this newbie enthusiasm goin' around.

Yeah, I'm excited to see what you guys come up with. Will the comic be judged on your writing/his art then?

Rofl and I got jammed up in busy-ness a bit, but we got some good headway in earlier in the week and it should  be full steam ahead now.  Super stoked to see what you've got in a couple days!  I'm still adjusting to being on this side of the sneezeguard.

Good so far... just have to make time around work! How's about you?

So how's it goin' over there, Prome Dome?

Dammit Orange why would you wish such a fate upon me!  

We even talked about bacon; I thought this was something special.

Anyways, finally got some momentum going.  File "it" under "on", because that's exactly what it is.

Thanks, Evil Eye. Good luck to you too.

I'd tell RoflQu to fuck off from this fight, but that'd be condemning his partner to also fail. I've got my eye on you though FolfQu.

But good luck Evil Eye and Prometheus!

Pretty exciting stuff.  Gotta wake my ass up, then hopefully I can slap into the writer's chair immediately.

G'luck Prometheus.

Thanks Roflqu. This should be fun!

Watch out for snakes.

Double Post, DAMNNNNN.

Hey Prometheusd! Best of luck on your first round, I can't wait to see what you cook up!

EEgah, let's make some magic happen, baby.