https://youtu.be/KNsee-gRLAY my hand slipped while i listened to this song and this is what the pencil did to the paper so i had to come back and check on this comic battle

damn, I must have slept on this one! everyone kept recing it to me and i was like :thinking emoji: no, i should have just read it. really nice. Rantu's side esp. made me care about Holden. XD yes. give me a reason to not like lillyfeather. I need it. remarkably sweet. kind of shippy. another satisfying one where the two authors made the characters go through the exact same thought processes, right down to Holden remarking about Rantu's nose. hope we get a rematch or sequil later. props, you guys! hope you win a category in the best-ofs this year~

Reread this for best of void and dang, @Rantu forgot how great of a scar this was.

Fantastic zombie battle!

I enjoyed the hell out of these, great job. The writing in both of these was so snappy and entertaining, these two characters have great chemistry. Ran I'm genuinely in awe over how fluid and fun your action scenes are. Bang- Buckets of personality and style. I liked how light-hearted you kept the writing.

Ran2: This is definitely one of your best comics- it's also very clean! And while fight scenes are your strength- the way your framed their expressions and drew them really portrayed the emotions each character felt. How the conflict evolved between the two was so organic and well-written. It was a very bitter ending where no one got what they wanted. Both characters were very dead-set on their values and it was such a breath of fresh air how it's not black and white; both had very valid reasons to oppose the other. SUUUPER fantastic job!!! Bang: I'm gonna go ahead and parrot on how absolutely delicious your color choices were here- the rendering was really damn good, the lineart clean and crisp, the atmosphere was perfect!! The character's expressions were really good too! The cold tones really emphasize Holden's blood abilities. I'm amazed at how minimalistic the backgrounds are, but they don't seem like empty space at all, you've got great eye for it! The ending felt a little rushed personally, but that doesn't take away from the comic's enjoyment- really damn good round!!

I remember my read through these stories with Cab and I remember how much we were talking about the plots of both of these and then it helped us start a discussion about life and death and the afterlife it was a really neat night when this battle dropped on void. You guys did well and It was kinda hard for us to pin down a winner. You two should be proud of what you guys made and I hope to see these more of these guys in the near future! I will be waiting till then.

This was a dream match. WOWOWOW Ran2 - Love the depth of the story you gave us here. The dialogue felt natural and even with just pencils, your visuals are very VERY GOOD. I am still curious what a truly polished work from you would look like. I bet it's gonna be phenomenal! Bang - Mmmm delicious colors. That green/blue muted tones (also indicative of undead) really made that red blood pop. Great choice of palette here! While your visuals really stood out, the story kinda suffered a bit. Still understandable why a sacrifice had to be made being a battle with time constraints and all. Anyhow, I really enjoyed both! Thanks for bringing us this match that we've all been waiting for!

Hough this is gonna be a hard vote OTL Ran - Your writing is SO good. I love how you built up Ran and Holden’s friendship; it made the Lily reveal come out really organically, and gave the fight so much more impact. And what a creative scar! Damn!! So much potential for story there. The action was also excellent and very clear, dug the soul parasite design too, simple but cool. Few minor crits from me... I was confused as to why Holden was sometimes a blob with floating limbs while Ran was fully detailed, it looked really weird. There were also a couple of typos and pages were the reading order wasn’t clear, like 5 and 12. Still a great comic overall though! Bang - The atmosphere here is top notch, the palette really screams misty graveyard. Great rendering and action too; I love Holden’s blood attack, and how its shapes (as well as his attack style) changed when his tattoo got cut and he went mad. I think you could’ve benefited from an extra page or two though, since the scene transitions feel a bit abrupt? There’s no time for Holden to react to his new ability at the end for instance, as he’s immediately ready to go for the drink.

OMG both action in your comics is DELICIOUS I LIVE FOR ACTION, YES, ALL THE YES Both characters work so well together!!!

Jesus. Okay. Ive read both of these comics like ninety times because i love them both so much I LOVE THESE SHARK TOOTHED ZOMBIE DIRTBAGS PLEASE STAY FRIENDS SOMEHOW. For the few who dont know, I draw Lilyfeather, Holden's necromancer XD so obviously i have extreme bias in favor of my ship lol Ran2: Holy fuck this hit me ALL OF MY FEELS. This was TURMULTUOUS. First of all, your art is FANTASTIC. You have amazing fight scene choreography and your expressions are the best in the game. i could FEEL how hard this fight was for both of them, they were in ANGUISH that it had come to this. I'm not bothered that its pencils only, in your style it never feels unfinished, HOWEVER i do wish you utilized spot blacks a little more. Holden's all-black clothes are only ever drawn in silhouette, but compared to Rantu that makes him look a little *empty*, it might have worked better to lightly scribble on some dark shading the way you do with Rantu's eyes. Otherwise, no complaints on the art. The story is one of the most beautifully devastating stories Ive read on this site. Their friendship was so wonderful, and the fight was so PAINFUL because I can see both sides of it, Rantu hates necromancers and hes going to rescue his friend no matter what, but Holden is blinded by love and going to defend their relationship to the death. What will Lilyfeather feel about all of this, when she gets back? This was heartbreaking. a MILLION points from me for this beautiful tragedy. This is goin in my favorites playlist. Bang: HOLY MONSTER FORM, BATMAN?? This is news to me LOL! That was fucking SWEET- i LOVED the creepy eye and the horrible teeth and blood... you have this incredible way with your art to make things look so dirty and GRUNGY that works REALLY well for monsters and gross zombie boys, and i love the colour choices. I do think that the story maybe feels a LITTLE superficial... I feel bad but i cant help but compare it to the richness of Ran2's story, but i would have liked to see more emotion out of both of them. but fucks sake, DO tell me more about the monster form! THESE WERE WONDERFUL AND YOU BETTER BELIEVE LILYFEATHER IS GONNA HAVE WORDS ABOUT THIS FIGHT ME RAN2

Thank you for the crits! Especially since now I realized I forgot to resize the pages AHDSJSKSK

Somewhere, Shen senses a disturbance in the Force.

I haven't had much energy lately, but you guys deserve at least a little critique! RanI love your composition and action scenes so much! I'm also impressed by how clean your pencils are. High key jealous of how natural your art feels, and I dig your jagged edges and stylized backgrounds. The story here was great, too! As a long-time Lily fan and owner of one of her other raised undead, I really loved that you took advantage of that connection for this comic. I know Lily and Holden are both trying to deny the effects of her necromancy on him, and it's something she's worried about in other comics, so it's a perfect plot thread to pick up. On the other hand, I have such mixed feelings about your pencils. I have to give you a lower quality score, but I feel like doing just pencils also allowed you to script a much more engaging fight scene, and tell a broader story. If you'd cut down your page count in order to ink or color, we might have missed out on amazing scenes like the boys pranking that couple on a date, or we might have gotten a shorter fight scene. So I think at this point my advice is just to find the balance that lets you make comics you enjoy, and if that's where you're at right now, I'm totally on board! Being able to make a comic this engaging and fun to look at with just pencils is super impressive imo. Something I'd recommend to basically everyone here, and this comic included, is to level up your speech bubbles. There are two amazing tutorials on those right here on EnterVOID.com: "I love you guys, but not your text bubbles" Nachte's speech bubbles tutorial. Jackster's Magnificently-Stupid-Yet-Helpful Tutorials I'm not sure what program you use, but those guides should at least give you some good ideas! I also highly recommend creating your own handwriting font (I use Calligraphr but it requires a subscription for more than just super basic letters), but that's completely a personal choice. TL;DR: I'm amazed at the quality of comics you're able to make with just pencils, and I think you should focus on whatever balance of finish and storytelling makes you happy. Your comics are great to read as they are, but it could also be worthwhile to try out shorter comics with more polish! Your action scenes are so well scripted, your composition is great, and I love how natural everything feels. I'm not sure what "natural" means here, but idk how else to describe it XD bangThe MOOD of this comic 😩👌 I just can't get over it!!! Your selection of colors is perfect, from the swampy greens in the background to the bright reds and limes of the characters' powers. And the little bright spot of pink for Lilyfeather was just an excellent touch, I cannot gush enough about how much I love these colors! I feel obligated to mention that these pages were just a bit too wide for my screen. Nothing a little zooming out couldn't fix, but it might be worth double checking your uploaded pages on a smaller screen if you've got a really big one. I'm just on my laptop (13" MacBook Pro), which I think is a bit under 1500px wide? Zooming out a bit was nbd, so obviously I didn't dock you any points, but it's just worth double checking I think. Anyway, real crit! I think your art in this was top notch, but the writing could have used some work. Rantu's motives seemed mostly kind of surface-level, and I would have liked to see the two bond over more than just their fight. I wish you would have explored their perspectives on Lilyfeather a bit more, maybe make the fight about that instead of being incidental to it. It kinda sucks because Ran basically already did that, but I think you could have done it in a way that explored Holden's inner world a bit more deeply. I enjoyed his blood monster form or whatever it was, though! TL;DR: I think you could have upped your writing game by focusing a bit more on character motivations and how they conflict with each other, but your art was fucking amazing and I am still swooning over those colors!!!

MY H E A R T Thank you for battling me RanZ I had a lot of fun with this one! Your side just blew me away, I loved it!

Big thanks again to Bangrang for accepting the challenge and letting my play with Holden a bit! I had been looking forward to this fight for a while now, and while I was unable to give it the polish that it properly deserves... I was still happy with being able to complete the scene I had in mind. The scar I had in mind was a little more abstract in a sense, and rather than leaving a physical mark, it's meant to be an internal one. I tried my best to make it as clear as possible (without straight up spelling it out), but incase there's still some doubts: [spoiler=] The general idea is that, since Holden was canonically raised from the dead by Lilyfeather, he is pretty much bound to her by the whole master follower dynamic. Rantu was able to see and remove that using his own powers. So in essence, with Holden being free from said bond, he would no longer be tide to Lilyfeather and have that sort of follower sense that compelled him to act in certain ways. "He is free". That said, it doesn't mean their relationship is over. It just means that it has changed. A bias has been removed. [/spoiler] That aside, I LOVED that even though we didn't share scripts or anything of the like, we ended up with some pretty similar scenarios and even fighting moves! Needles to say, I did find Bang's side super enjoyable! The render is also fantastic and def one of the best looking ones yet!

SCAR SCAR SCAAAAR >=DD Heck yeah!

STILL HYPE AF FOR SHARK TOOTHED ZOMBIE BOYS