Petarvee: Really love the look and feel of this. If this is you making it easy on yourself (line width and so on), I can't wait to see more of your work! I will be checking your previous posts for more goodness. That said, first panel on page 6 and had some readability issues for me, as did the last panel on page 13. Overall, really lovely. Radji: Great movement, shapes, and colors, very vibrant! I most enjoyed Smiley here, I appreciated how sad she was about Karrin's pain, and her punchline at the end. Also really liked the motion blur and text emphasis. The "rules" seemed arbitrary, but I guess that's the nature of a Saw-like experience! Energy: Like another critique, I'll agree that it was enjoyable seeing Claw's healing being his "scar". I did feel a bit lost because I don't know some of the character history, and I felt (perhaps unfairly) that I needed more information to really get what was going on.

Patarve: Twin slimegirls?!!!! You are a freakin' genius!! 8O You're art is beautiful, like usual, though I have noticed that you stay very close and intimate with your shots. It's not necessarily a bad thing, since you always manage to include all the visual information we need to follow the story, but pulling the camera back more often might have helped establish and solidify some of the character scars, especially Claw's, which was the only one I was especially confused about. Also, while I like the paper texture, I think it's a bit too visually distracting and needs to be made a little less intense. I like that you decided to go with scars that significantly change how these characters are going to live their lives, and it's cool that Karrin gets a scar out of it as well. Radji: I like the limited, intense colors you decided to use. They really increase the anxiety of the story. It would have been nice to get a better introduction of all the characters – give their names and show some defining personality trait so that we can relate to them and care about their struggle a little better. I also think the crowdedness of your pages and panels makes some of the action confusing to follow. Oh, also, gotta mention that I love how you do your sound effects! They're very well-integrated into the art. Energy: It's sad you couldn't finish, but it's interesting to be able to see your under-drawings and how you construct your characters when sketching. You're using a lot of basic shapes, like rectangles and triangles as your basic building-blocks, which is good. Try exaggerating those shapes even more to create different body-types. Like for a strong but squat character like Karrin, use wide rectangles and squares, while a tall, lanky character like Finnegan can be made from really long, thin rectangles. Experiment with using different kinds of shapes for your character construction so that they all end up having very different silhouettes. I'm really glad you submitted your comic so that we could read your story!

PSA - I hope that after seeing how it can be hard to track down scars in these entries that for future scar matches folks choose to make a scar sheet on their last page hilighting exactly what the scar is! Petarvee: This is just a real treat to read you've got this game mastered so well it's hard to crit. I dont know how much a fan I am of the papery texture being used here, I mighta been on board if it was also present in the blacks. As it is now I think it hurts some of the visibility of your lines and details. I had to read a few times because I still wasn't sure what was the scar you had given Finnegan (only realized after a few sifts that its his powers that changed, but his standard form is left untouched?) Radji: Ambitious and full of energy as always, this was a fun read. But I really believe you need to get a natural English speaker to proofread your work because every grammatical/spelling error causes readers to disengage and get thrown out of the immersion. It would have been nice to have some shading on the white-laden characters, it would have added to the dark situation. I'm not fully understanding what happens in pages 7-onward, was Smiley and Claw crashing in through the wall part of the test even through it allowed them all to escape? Energy: There's an invest-wall in the first five pages, it was hard to push through that exposition to get to the meat in the last few pages which fortunately are all drawn out and much more enjoyable. There's a bit of stuff that is hard to comprehend in the sketches but good on you for submitting a complete story. You may not feel it but you are improving little by little. I hope to see a completed piece from you in your next battle. Keep up the good work guys~

@petarvee: ooooooooooh !!!!! loved it ! Karrin can't take a break apparently ! the scars are sick, and Smiley just rocks, so many new possibilities !! @Energy: congrats on posting something at least, the story was good !

@petarvee dog these scars are so good. your framing is good, black placement is good, you know you're good. the only real bug i could find was that you used the wrong 'whose/who's' on page three. i like how you scarred karrin too, and worked in the slaughtermaster title. Keep it up! @Radji these colors are sweeet. your artwork is very expressive and there are a lot of good action poses, like jessie grabbing the remote. In the middle the action gets a bit hard to read though. You're a machine, keep on making stuff! @Energy this is really good! the pacing and framing in the first half of the comic is really well put together, the introduction of the bad guys and the dialogue feels pretty natural. after the action start it gets a bit hard to follow along but it made more sense on the second read through. It'd be nice if you could fill in your bgs, but keep making your storytelling this clear in future battles!

@Petarvee Oooh, look at those black and whites, from someone who has their strength in ART! :I I really liked your scars, they were really unique. @Radji I've never seen a saw film, but I still feel like you did them justice. @Energy you were up against some really tough competition this battle, I think you did well regardless. I really liked how you took a mixed bag approach to your scars, some were action violence but then there was claws reparations to his face, that was kind of sweet. you've been held back this time by the incompleteness of your comic considering that the only other two entries were fully rendered. But, from what my experience here at void has been so far I would say you deserve mention for getting a full comic submitted regardless. at least two contestants in each of these battles didn't submit a comic or were disqualified in the end, take that for what it is, you are a success here regardless of what you had hoped to achieve.

One thing I think would be super helpful, and I'll post this on all of the Scarmageddon battles, would be to possibly open a forum post with a scar reference page of all the scars made to your opponents. With the massive amount of characters in each comic it can get kinda murky on who did what to whom. I do want to congratulate everyone for working so hard to incorporate so many fastincating characters into their works something I can only dream of doing. Regardless of the results thank you to everyone who attempt and participated in a fantastic multi-match smack down!

I feel like I wanna start doing "Artist Statement" type things for my Void Comics. Because a lotta the reason I came here was to try new stuff and new approaches, so making a conscious effort to record that really helps. I'll try and keep it spoiler-lite for anyone who reads the comments before the comics, so here we go: ART: This time around I wanted to try a few things differently. Namely, honest-to-goodness black and white. No greys or screentones to carry me through it. Mostly because I feel like one of my strongest suits is the way I color; and what better way to really up the stakes than to handicap myself from the get-go. I really looked towards folks like Alex Toth and some old Tales From The Crypt type-stuff for some decent methods on it. Mostly, I've landed on using shadows to really frame the action and direct the eye, rather than having them act like shadows-proper, effected by light. Plus, because October was an Everythings On Fire month for me, I had to come up with a good way to ease the strain on my hand, while juggling Scarma, a webcomic, 3 part-time-jobs, and pitch-packets. So I went with a totally uniform line. No matter how light my stroke, it all came out the same. I've been meaning to experiment with something like this for a while, leaving Shapes to telegraph most of my figures, and their actions to give the figures weight. Fun challenge overall. Wouldn't do it again though. Feels a bit unnatural for me. Oh, then I slapped on a fancy watercolor texture over it all, because A) I love textures, and B) it helps it look more finished. WRITING: What a weird cast of characters. Like man. Not enough Regular Folk to do a heart-to-heart, not enough Weird People to do a straight-up adventure. But I found what they all had in common was that they were thankfully all street-level-powers. No gods, no demi-gods, no wizard folks. Their personalities naturally clashed a bit, and I felt like that was the best angle to play off for this one. Gettin them all in a room together and letting it play out. The Cabin In The Woods trope seemed like a nice, fitting, way to keep anyone else from getting involved as well as any outside aid. Plus, I wanted to dip a toe into the idea that Karrin wasn't all peace and love. Like, she can't fight, but ya don't need to know Krav Maga to tackle a slasher. Plus, with Claw's little vision of Karrin as some weird Slaughtermaster Figure; I wanted to give a plot-thread to follow and maybe some meaning to the title. (Which was totally Roflqu's idea). SCARS: So, this round, I didn't wanna aim for superficial scars that gave way to superficial changes. So I figured "Lets just fuck this up." For Smiley, I wanted to give her a temporary cure for her loneliness and yearning for a family. For Finnegan, I wanted to take away some of the goofiness of his powers; or possibly make everything that much goofier. For Claw, depending on how Mindmeats takes the scar, he's either Doubly Lethal or Totally Ruined. And for Jessie, I figure some time off her feet will do her well, and give her some time to explore who she is outside of her job.

I'm sorry to inform you all about this. I bit off more than I can chew when I entered. I've been stuck on writing my comic in all of the weeks I was given to writing this comic. I have a job that makes me come home too exhausted to work on it, making me hold back on my progress. In this last week before the deadline, I can see that I will not be able to finish this comic on time. The story isn't even halfway done, and I've stressed myself to the point of losing sleep. I'm sorry I had to be another person to drop out in this group of 5. I feel really bad about this happening, and I hated to think that I would be someone who had to go default in this round. I had fun discussing and thinking up ideas, and I wish you all the best of luck. You all have pretty neat characters and I have a feeling this will be fun to see. Also, good luck neens!! Congrats on the new opportunity in building your career!!

A chance at a promising career is never a bad reason to fold, You've proven beyond a shadow of a doubt what a great artist and comic artist you are, and I know we all wish you well with what's on the horizon for you!

hey! I have some good and bad news. my focus during the last month has been channeled elsewhere, with the promise of some very ideal work for me. unfortunately this came unexpectedly right after scarma started, when it was too late to back out. I had a very good meeting recently so I'm deciding the best course of action is to continue focusing there, to build a career or whatever. from what I've seen from my opponents, I didn't have a chance in hell anyway. good luck everyone!

I'm rooting for one of you. I won't reveal who until you win, so work hard.