cool that you both included elements of the same mystery and call backs to the same person. JCEE I like your color pallets and textures. Reecer, nice spot blacks

JCeeYour tone work looks great with these colors! I love how such a subtle change can add so much mood to an already great piece of art! This was a stirring comic, and a great finale to Swan's tournament arc. It's got me legitimately hyped for what's next, something new and different but still very Swan I'm sure! The poster art for Giselle is absolutely gorgeous. I guess my one tiny gripe is that MEGRE himself didn't seem very important to the plot, other than being someone who could tell Swan things about herself that she needed to hear. Like he was a perfect candidate for the job, being a detective who would do the legwork to find out what he needs to know about his dates, and maybe it's hard to know exactly how he would act with only a few comics under his belt. Like I said, tiny gripe. Sometimes you just need to tell a specific story, and your opponent's character can be the conduit rather than being a determining factor, I guess. I thought this comic was stunning and engaging from start to finish. I loved looking at the love and care you put into your backgrounds, which is especially impressive under a one week deadline! The colors played together nice to set a mood and communicate everything you wanted us to feel, the dialogue felt natural and meaningful, and I love seeing Crikey pop up, reminding us of how this all started and how important that relationship is to Swan. I ship Pascaline with ballet. OTP 🙌 Excited for more!!! CroI hate starting this off with a nitpick, but the second panel of the first page has Swan saying MEGRE is tall, but the horizon line suggests we're looking up at her. So either she's staring at MEGRE's magnificent robo-chest, which we are looking out of, or you just didn't realize the inherent irony of the composition of this panel XD Okay, onto actually important business. I really love the care you've been putting into all of these backgrounds. Reusing the same shots definitely made that easier, I'm sure, but it's still impressive and makes your comics feel really grounded. I also see how you're using spot blacks, and I'm really enjoying your approach. I'd encourage you to push it even more into an almost graphic design direction rather than just comic art. idk if that makes any sense, but I'm not sure how else to describe it. This whole tournament has been great, and I think your "experiment" with it has been a success for me! I'm invested in this investigation, and look forward to more of it! I want to know what happened to Harriet!!!

JCee: Once again, art-wise, this is just. Stunning. So prettyyyyyyyy aaaaa. Especially the little string lights, such good aesthetics! And I love how you draw MEGRE, you really conveyed his bulk very nicely :D Story-wise, I think this would've been an excellent stand-alone story, but as part of this overall arc I think it does end up feeling a bit... not necessarily repetitive, because it's definitely not exact, but echo-y? Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, just something to keep in mind, I guess? [Edit to add] There is something to be said for having a story that has parallels between the beginning and end, but it's something that has to be done carefully and imo works better for longer-form stories, as a way to bring everything together and lowkey remind the readers of what happened at the beginning. As this was done over a shorter period of time, I don't necessarily think it warrants that reminder? But! That isn't to say you did it wrong, because I'm sure there are people who would disagree with me. Drawing parallels between past and present in stories is a fine line to walk and I'm not sure there's any one way to do it right. anyways I'm rambling so-- [end edit] I do like the ending, it felt like a good close to the arc, and I like that Swan is getting more in touch with the things that brought her joy in life! I'm v glad that even if she struck out in the love department, at least she seems to be getting back on her feet in the life department. And you can bet that even if it's a different continuity Croi will still be keeping good on his promise to be the first to buy tickets to her performance :P Cro: This is going to sound odd but I swear I've been in this exact house, that one of my Idahoan relatives lived in. Maybe I'm just projecting but it continues to bring me joy that you're capturing that rural Idaho feel in even subtle ways tbh. I'll second what Kilcra said, the dialogue and panel arrangement made the conversation feel awkward, but in a completely intentional way. More like the conversation itself was awkward, rather than it was being portrayed awkwardly. However, there were some moments that I had to sort of do a double take to figure out what was happening, (like when MEGRE is rifling through the drawer, or when he shifts on the seat--for some reason I guess I thought there was something more going on than him just shifting in his seat a little? but ultimately I was able to figure it out so *shrugs*). I've been watching enough true crime videos on youtube to get a feel for where this mystery is going, but I'm still very interested in seeing if I'm right or if there's another twist in the works. One thing I think I would've liked to have seen in the story that wasn't addressed is Swan being hurt/offended/reacting at all to the fact that MEGRE lied to her, repeatedly. It did feel a bit odd that that was brushed over so easily, tbh also MEGRE's calm "it's getting a bit drafty" as the wind is howling around him had me wheezing so thank you for that XD

Loving the completely different directions the twist endings went on these! JCee: This was so human! The whole message of this comic is lovely, and it's always great to see someone overworked being told to pursue their own passions and to take care of themselves. The colors were gorgeous, and I like the shift at the end to cool colors. The comic is dripping with atmosphere, and seeing Megre act so sweetly is very charming. Great job! Reecer: I love how you set up the tension here. The repeated shots of the conversation start feeling uncomfortable by the ends of pages 1, 2 and 5, and I think that helps communicate that something is wrong with this date. Like Black Swan doesn't know what's wrong, but she's getting uneasy right from the beginning. It gave me the feeling of an awkward silence, or when someone has bad news to tell you but is warming up to it. Excellent tension! Also that apartment looks so stylish!

you ever plan to go to the costume party in a two-person outfit and your partner shows up and you gasp because the stunning coordination of your costume shocks even you?

you ever plan to go to the costume party in a two-person outfit but the other person forgets so you're just left hanging in half of a costume, except you didn't even actually tell the other person you were doing a two-person costume so honestly they had no obligation to wear their half in the first place?

SUBMITTED! I wanted to try some things with this comic colourwise. And I apologize if it's too wordy ^^;