Snager: I fun little comic! It feels like a saturday morning cartoon that I would've watched growing up :] The concept of a kaiju school sounds very fun, lol.

Snowy: I know that it can be difficult to make something more personal like this. It came out fantastic and like a proper glimpse into a life. The usage of textured brushes here is interesting - it brings to mind stained glass for me.

Pizza: Great work! You managed to get that old comic PSA look down pat. The switch to a more modern setting was an interesting choice, and it all feels like a setup to an episode of a show.

Dr. Salt: Such an interesting and gut wrenching comic, especially for one this short. I was honestly expecting a horror comic at first, so having it be something so bittersweet instead caught me off guard. The heavy texture added so much to the atmosphere as well.

Fowlie: I absolutely ADORE your work here! The way that you manage to combine such a simple and cute character design so smoothly with such detailed backgrounds absolutely blows me away. It makes this an absolute visual treat to flip through!

Pizza: you've once again got me hooked on a new idea for a webcomic. I definitely am catching the scent of a world that needs some social justice or reparations and characters too depressed to want to change it. You told me you were trying to capture a specific 1960's PSA comic look, but if I may be so real, I'm not familiar enough with those comics to know if you captured the aesthetic. this looks like the usual pizzaman security-camera's-eye view on most of the blocking and the usual detailed conceptualization of forms, too. the psa comics have detailed illustrations, but the line quality is different and there's hand made spot blacks. psa comics have that 'professional architect taking up side gig' cleanness to their backgrounds. they're cartoony and stylish, but not as far off from reality, much more referenced. as for the story, it is so nice to see you gaining confidence to do something a little more serious. alluding to the 'alone in the woods with a bear or a man' argument makes the world seem just as dark as real life. but also lets the reader know that the monsters in the woods are not as bad as most evil humans. it's very smart and topical.

to all y'all: Hey, OP. are you ok?

Thanks for the nice comments, everyone! I'm glad it resonated with people so much.

For those curious on how I made the tones, I first coloured the page in greyscale, then randomly distributed dots using geometry nodes in Blender, with more dots distributed on darker areas of the image. The dots themselves have some variations in shape to make them look a tiny bit more organic.

Thanks for the battle!

You had me interested, but then I was a bit confused at the end. I wasn't sure if these characters were a reference to something I'm not familiar with. I assume this is something you intend to continue? I'd be interested to see where it goes!

this new art style is interesting to see, i like to see such experiments!

Good job!

Fowlie - This is so cool! I love how you stylize your pages! Your knowledge of panel composition is something I aspire to have someday. The only crit I can think of is that page three is a little overwhelming. I think it has to do with the speech bubble tails not leading the eye down the page but it’s still a fantastic page to look at once I got my bearings. My favorite page is the fourth one. It’s so sudden and bizarre I wonder if it was inspired by an art piece in real life.

Dr. Salt - That's a really awesome effect! I have some guesses but I'd love to know how you did it. It does feel like there's something missing about it but I can't for the life of me figure it out. I do wonder what this comic would look like with color, muted, mono or otherwise. There's a good chance it wouldn't make any positive difference but it could be worth experimenting. The story was gripping and somber, a perfect representation of a good fever dream which are incredibly rare.

Snowy: I like the personification of 3 AM being a set of hands that slowly suffocates the page that was a neat touch! I definitely get a similar feeling at 3AM when I'm drawing for a morning deadline or a 24 hour battle. The only thing that’s worked for me is going to bed before 3AM or telling myself that I don’t think this way 90% of the day and I should see how I feel about it in the morning. It IS weird that the feeling usually goes away after 4AM hits at least for me.

snager: Glad to finally see this comic pilot from you! I'm sorry I didn't see the Ed Edd n Eddy inspiration right away. It took me a little bit to understand this word was created with both humans and kaiju in mind. Really crack down on the world building of your story in the backgrounds it'll give your story a big boost! As it is I still love the concept and it was fun seeing the monster designs and expressive characters.

I know you’re not 100% set on the main character you have currently (who really reminds me of Ada now that I’m seeing it) I’d recommend trying changing around the gender, race, height and hair color first and seeing if it makes you feel any different. Maybe give them an outfit that makes them stand out more since they’re a normal guy in a monster school. You could make them a real monster nerd and have them gush over each monster they see regardless of if the monster wants to beat them up or not. Or you could go the opposite and make them originally afraid of monsters and have them slowly learn that most kaiju don’t intend to destroy property, they just emerged in a world that was too small for them. Either way, establishing your character's opinions on kaiju will also really give your story’s world a huge boost!

Wow, I needed that. I’m working on a pilot myself with a missing protagonist and I think I just answered some questions about it for myself lmao

The horror mystery is cool!

Really fun playing with the vintage comic look! The ending has me wanting to know how Vera is gonna fare with that bug monster!

Y'all did amazing work here! these were such a joy to read and I really like all the different stories that were told here

Diggin the style you got going on for this one Pizza man!

I like the classic newsprint feel of this one. Great job!

Dang, what a treat from all of you. This was really difficult to vote on because each of you had some great work.

I enjoyed the vintage look quite a bit

This was an interesting story Pizza! Got me hooked.

I like the vintage feel you got for the majority of the comic. it was a nice touch!

HOLY SHIT???