Thanks everyone for the comments/critiques! These were some of the best I have received. I am not really able to hand letter due to penmanship/time issues so I will try to find an easier methid. I am not "throwing the advice aside" (I don't even know where that came from), it's just not feasible. I don't really want to be a letterer, so while it may not look as good as hand lettered, my only goal is to make it legible and easy to follow, which I believe can be done by computer.

Phil, I don't particularly agree with your type of storytelling. The "let it settle" principle annoys me in films and just seems like a waste. While I agree the movies you referenced are great, I don't have 6 three hour movies or several hundred pages. Rev waited till the end to blow up the monster because he had to wait till the creature had ate all the soldiers. Rev is in the business of destroying evil, which doesn't necessarily include being good. The soldiers were doing their job by being a distraction.

thanks!

Micheal - This is great. I love some of the panels angles. Your wonky ink work seems to work through out the whole thing. The only thing that bugs me is the word balloons and font. You should of hand drawn your bubbles and text. Your free ink lines don't mix with the controlled computer stuff.  

Micheal- The art is alright, I kind of feel it lacks a lot of detail. The lines are rather squiggly (as if you're inking with a mouse) and it just pulls my attention AWAY from the artwork. I guess the lack of line widths kind of help towards that. I understand you're learning towards a particular style, but everything just blends together when you get into the heavy shadows. Basically what I'm saying is it's very flat and hard to look at.  I think cross hatching, halftones (tones might help that inking style) etc would look EXCELLENT with your work.

I really enjoy the CLEANLINESS of your lineart. I don't see nasty pencil marks and erasings, grit from paper, etc. It's just perfect and crisp.

Some of the anatomy of your faces seems a bit off every so often. The facial features tend to be off centered like they were supposed to be going in a different direction. Try to pay attention to that (a good way would be flipping the piece over and looking at  it that way to find errors in anatomy and placement).  You seem to use the same angle, technique for your noses A LOT. (the whole shadowed out under the nose thing)  It really ruins the angle of the face and doesn't follow any correct light source in some panels. It works for most, but not all) Continuing on with talking about facial features, I find your expressions very empty. In a situation I find could be serious or dramatic, their faces are "o_o" (thats the best way I can explain it! lol!)
This is certainly my own opinion and view and expressions can be looked at upon differently.

Continuing on, I would like to see more details in your panels.  There's A LOT of negitive space that could be filled up with background or even people. Just... more details.

Storywise, I could barely pay attention. Establishing shots ARE GOOD (and definitely not for pussies) and if you think otherwise, good luck getting a job in this industry ya know? Opinion of course. I agree with Pong with the sound effects. It would add A LOT more life to your comics if you implement it. I won't press on with that, he said what needed to be said.

I hope this is ... helpful AT ALL to you and isn't just thrown aside like some of these comments I see. I realize people will say "I know my mistakes, I know what I have to work on". It's a defense mechanism and in some aspects RUDE to say if I may be honest. That may or may not have been your approach however. Take in any comment you get, because in the end, you're only as big as your followers and peers that help you out.

Good job on finishing. Sad your oppenent defaulted.

Um...It may be because I have been looking at Michael's art for the last 7 or 8 years or so but I had no problem telling what was going on. Establishing shots are for pussies. It was an enjoyable read for me, but I thought the dialogue could have been I don't know...punchier. Maybe more one liners...

I would say if you are going to be using BnW as design choices I agree with Kuro or Pong or Jack I forget who said it but you need to be consistent with it's use, not necessarily thorughout the comic but within a panel would be nice.  You've obviously looked over Frank Miller's stuff who varies his use of BnW for dramatic affect.  Also check out The Path by Bart Sears...who normally draws horrendous over muscled abominations for DC and Marvel but decided to get more "arty" with this Crossgen title...he uses Black ONLY as a design element, sometimes it's hard to read but it doesn't lose its visual impact.  I think one thing you're missing those fellas and others I've seen have is balance.  Your B to W ratio is actually pretty even overall which makes things look spotty. kinda like a dalmation or zebra, I'd shift the balance so that it's a bit more uneven. Page 4 is a good example of this the black dominates the panels making the white spaces more intellible.  This shifts on Page 5 where everything is a bit more even and hard to read.  In this I would look at the whole page for spottiness.

As for details...I'm not sure adding more details would make your style more interesting...maybe more cluttered...I guess if you were going to add "details" I would suggest the whole foreground background thing...jesus...I dont know if that makes sense.

Phill: WTF are you talking about...

Again, that's like saying "If you speak a native language, that's a stereotype" to me. Would you believe that some other cultures do that as well? Like a Japanese man speaking in the English language one minute and shouting out a curse in his native tongue the next. Really though, I don't see how letting a few things slip when you speak a second language is such a stereotype, no no no... it's more of an force of habit. Throwing down a sombrero and doing the Mexican hat dance as a mariachi band plays while eating tacos and hitting a pinata is a stereotype. However, I do understand you if the said person was raised with English as their primary language, but again if they're Hispanic; I honestly think that it's good for them to keep their culture alive by speaking Spanglish or whatever. If not then they're just posers who want to be something they aren't.

And yeah I don't understand your comic because when I look at this I see you shading things on characters like under their noses and underneath their chins as if there's an identifiable light source somewhere, but then you put in those design inks on everything else. It ends up looking inconsistent and makes it look like you're rushing everything else. If you're going for a flat stylized look for this, don't put in those heavy shadow details on the characters and instead give them the same flattened look. If you're going to do those shading details on the characters, do the same for the backgrounds.

As for pacing, there's a lot to take into consideration, such as showing what exactly is happening while building up towards a big finish, not hoping from conflict to conflict without any pause to let things settle in for the reader. How the demon is fought and when the two main characters enter the building are two good examples of this. Personally I would leave out the finding of the package for very last as it's odd to know that people are getting snatched up by the monster, but Ghost waits until the last minute to actually kill the creature and thus maximizing the damage it could cause and lives it could take (granted it seems like he had a plan to kill everybody in the end anyway which seems a bit hypocritical of him since he's supposed to be on the side of Justice and if there were a few soldiers still alive with that C4 around their necks... well they're dead now!). Once the first obstacle is overcome, let that shit settle in for a bit before you finish the last part of finding the package in the obviously dangerous building, build up towards the climax by showing that they're being followed by the remaining demons, and be sure to actually show the fight instead of just a bunch of tentacles spreading out and having the monsters killed off the screen (That's a bad Bleedman style habit and cheapens the experiance). After that you let things settle again and close out the story.

If you need more reference, pick out some good movies like Star Wars, read books like Lord of the Rings, or read comics like Watchmen. If this isn't what you want, then I give up in helping you.

honestly pong, that was EXACTLY what I wanted. Thanks.

I was actually just commenting on the lettering.  Not the art.
Anyway you look at it, that font is an abomination if only because it fails to adequately communicate to the reader.  My personal opinion is that hand lettering is the only way to go, especially when you're working in a looser style like this.

The art?  It's not poor per se, but it's really hard to look at here.  No offense intended, it's just that it's difficult to read.  Look Harris, there's really only two ways to go about using black.  You use black for shadows.  OR you use black for black things.  Its nice that you use it arbitrarily here and there for either or, because of "design" reasons, but it does make a lot of things really confusing when you don't stick to one method or the other.  Now you could make this exponentially easier to comprehend with the inclusion of grey - or even just some variation in line weight.  Take the last panel on page three - it's confusing because there's no sense of space in this whatsoever.  There's no scale, it's completely flat visually.  There's no good reason for the guy in the back to be a silhouette other than to throw the entire panel into visual chaos.  IF that person had DETAIL it'd be much easier to tell where exactly they are - IF you used grey for shadows you could also create some depth that way - IF you used some variance in line weight you could have created space that way - IF you put some drop shadows anywhere other than just on people's faces and necks - everything would be so much clearer and more interesting to look at.

That's what makes your inking difficult to understand.  It's a chore to look at.  Admittedly if it were in print, it'd look much better because it's be smaller so the lack of detail, drop shadows, texture, etc. wouldn't be so obvious - but it is here online, so think about it.

Or don't. Just whine at me for offering advice if you think that'll make you a better artist.

Now before you think I'm just picking on you, you did actually have well laid out speech bubbles.  Which is pretty unusual for voiders.  The lettering itself is bad (if only for the font), but the bubble placement is pretty good.  So good on you for that.

But it doesn't make up for the lack of sound effects.

There's a giant explosion on page 6.

It's completely silent.  Absolutely tranquil.  


And monumentally boring.

Now before you think "well I don't like sound effects"  also think about this:  even though that is a large panel - most readers are barely going to look at it for a split second before going to the next page.

If you had used a sound effect you would have slowed your readers down - this also plays into PACING. Obviously you want that panel to be important because it's a BIG panel.  But you filled it with nothing, so the reader doesn't treat it as such.  They fly right over it.

The rendering of the explosions is also, I dunno - prosaic - to put it softly.  Which also makes that big panel uninteresting to look at and ruins the pacing of this comic.

So there.  You made a comic which is poorly designed, inked, and paced.  But you did layout your speech bubbles wonderfully on several pages.

I welcome your thanks for my advice.

Cheers.

Pong's just talking the way Pong talks. But the fact of the matter is, the suggestions on how to fix it that you're needling him for were given to you in the comments your past battles. I should know, I told you what should be done. Others have as well. And they didn't recommend DA. And besides, not finding one shouldn't be an excuse when hand lettering is a viable option. Yet here we are, again, in the same situation. So while what Pong said is maybe a little too straight-to-the-point, who's to blame him for figuring you'll just ignore what constructive things he did have to say?

What do you have against making your comics looking good & easy to read?

Dude... I so wanna go to Canadia

Gregos: Dude, that suck monkeyballs. I'm so sorry that happened to you, homie.

michaelharriss:  I liked what you have to show. some creative panels of Black and White without the raciest stuff. I had no problem wit the font. Nothing really negative.

HOLLA AT YA BOI!!!!!!

Jack, Cool man, I see what you're saying. If you have any suggestions on what kinds of details to add, I'd be open, Most of the time when I draw I just don't know what to put in places.

King, Thank you so much for all your advice on my art, I totally know everything I did wrong and exactly how to fix it. You are like, God's gift to artists everywhere you should totally be a teacher, thanks for all the useful advice. Do you have a website?

Silver, what about the inking was difficult?

Phil, I said that giving your character simultaneous spanish and english lines was stereotypical, not having foreign language characters. EVERY hispanic character in the 90s did that ALL THE TIME. Please comment on what I write and not what you think I write.

I don't know if you just didn't get it, but I don't use light sources. The blacks are used as design elements unless I really really want to do a light source shot. If you are a total stickler for light sources, buy some DC books, you probably won't want to read any more ghost revolver stories. If you have good suggestions on how to better use shadows, either for understanability or visual aesthetic, I am all ears.

Everyone, I guess there are pacing problems, if people want to be more specific of have pacing suggestions, I'd love to hear them. I don't usually have enough free time to devote to battles so I tend to squeeze off a page or two. I looked for a good comic book font, I went to DA fonts and I couldn't find anything that was non-obtrusive I am looking for suggestions on that, too. Thanks!

You shut your whore mouth about Cadillacs, pinko. Call yourself 'Merican. Get back in your Beetle and go to Canada commie.

That said, I liked what this comic should have been. It was a little slapsticky and predictable, but in all the right ways. It kills me how poorly paced this was, this desperately needed a few more pages. And I wish you'd tighten up your work a little bit, you can pull off detail, why aren't you doing it?

PS-Phill, what?

There are two ways to letter a comic.  Hand lettering, and the wrong way.

Gregos: Well that sucks about your comic, I hope nothing like that ever happens to you again. (I keep a little water proof portfolio especially for those kind of situations.)

Michael: I have to agree with Philip in that when I was reading your text I read gun as guni, and the inking was a hard to understand, especially in the scenes when Ghost Revolver and Kuma are retrieving whatever they needed to be retrieving. But your ending made me laugh, in that kind of morbid, oh my god ew, kind of way. Which is what I think you were going for.

Well, lesson learned here is that you should keep your art in a safe environment, or at least in an appropriately sized portfolio. Also, write down whatever dialogue on something besides the pages themselves, makes editing a ton easier!


Anyway, I think Hux is forgetting that when people use a different language that they're being a total stereotype, amirite Michael? :3 ... OK, let's be serious here, yes, I totally agree with Hux here, that text is awful, especially when I at first confused "GUN!" for "GUNI" and every other ! was looking like an I. As for the art, this to me is just lazy and poorly thought out, background on the first page started strong, but it quickly took a nose dive as the pages went on. Let's go through the pages, shall we?

Page 1: This page is in dire need of an establishing shot. Now... I understand that you don't need an establishing shot for everything, and you don't have to show one on the first page, but you eventually will need to use one to show where the characters are at despite the use of text. I didn't even know they were in a helicopter, even when they stepped out it just looked like they were in some kind of metallic waiting room. Pan out on the second to last panel and show what they're crawling out of instead of giving us upper-body shots and silhouettes of the characters. Establish visually what's going on and don't rely so heavily on text to move the story forward!

Page 2: What is that big black shadow behind the building? I see no real light source to really establish that there's something there aside from one side of the building being black as well, and even then I see nothing but white space there followed by a big tar pit. Bottom panel I can see that there's a light source coming in from my right hand side, but even that is looking shabby as I'm looking at the front of Ghost's shirt and it's covered almost completely in shadows.

Page 3: Did that building disappear on panel 2, or did everybody manage to sneak up behind the demon? I didn't see anything to suggest the latter, so somehow that building just vanished off the face of the earth. Also, what's going on with the shadows in the background of panel 3? If there was some sort of curved architecture up above them I'd understand why the shading was round in appearance, but again... no establishing shot to show where they're at leaves me wondering if this is just a style thing or if you don't know what you're doing.

Page 4: OK, so last page you showed them running towards a package and the entire area around them was perfectly lighted, now everything is black as night. Is that package inside that building or is it outside? I assumed it was outside for some stupid reason that and you didn't establish that they went inside the building unless you count the close up of their feet. Again, establishing where they are is a great way to show where somebody is in a comic, otherwise the viewers are left guessing where they are.

Page 5: Again I ask what's going on with the lighting and shading here? At first from the shading on whatshisname's legs in the bottom panel, I'm assuming it's behind him or from above, but then I look at the mechanical toilet flusher and see that there's a shadow covering it from the front. What the fuck is going on with the lighting here? Understand how light affects shit like backgrounds and characters, don't just slap down a bunch of inks and hope for the best! I couldn't even tell that whoever the hell that is was sitting on a toilet until the third read. Something is clearly wrong here!

Page 6 and 7: OK, I get the feeling that you really rushed this comic as backgrounds are non-existent, you had 3 weeks plus an extension available to ya, why didn't you use this time to your advantage?

The story was OK, but without establishing shots and proper pacing of the story, it was a chore to read overall, an extra couple of pages would of helped, but you have lots to work on. Know when to put in establishing shots to show where your characters are, don't just slap down big puddles of black to show something is in the dark, know where your light source is, and don't let your backgrounds lose their strength and consistency.

Sorry horrible ugly things that don't really make sense but people use them anyways are an American classic. Just look at Cadillacs. Sorry. They stay.

If we're banning languages, can we ban HORRIBLE FUCKING FONTS THAT MAKE COMICS LOOK LIKE CURDY PISS as well?! it seems only fair. sometimes that shit looks so bad, it's like reading a different language. a language of pain, hurt, & ugliness.

uuuuuuploaded! schwing!

Well said. We are still in a north american site, anyway!

Best of luck, you guys!!

portuguese is NOT allowed, seeing as how it in not 'Merican! It will also get poorly translated through altavista.

Hey speak whatcha like, if I cant read it I dont pay attention. Anyway this should be good. Gregos loved your last hoping theres some kind of continuation from it. Michealharris make it good!

Is portuguese allowed?

NO, NOT MORE SPANISH! I'm gonna hafta git me uh Kays-uh-dilla and a sombrero to read this. Bitter, I am actually making fun of American stereotyping of foreign cultures. I probably won't stop. I don't really care what you are tired of. I am endeavoring to make October drama free, no matter how much people like to mangle my ideas.

MORE BABELFISH FUN!
Paizuri said,"That they give everything him! The two Ok, not but perhaps gregos luck to. ajaja. But pon him desire!"

I believe that is Spanish talk for "Go Michael, you are so sexy, and will win. Gregos eats cheetos and leaves orange stains on everything."

Bitter :3 America is a continent, it has many languages.

 This week's been nothing but Dramapalooza 2009. I can't speak for Angie and Wei but I'm positive they're getting pretty sick of it.

So before someone rides in to possibly clean this mess, let me clear up a few points for you Mike m'fellow American...

1. Babelfish WILL translate text in a broken manner. Nothing will make sesne as it's a pure word translator
2. Be WARY son, for I have a secret to share. Believe it or not, not everyone on VOID is an american citizen, nor is english always their first language.
Now I know there are certain ground rules for speaking english on this site. However, you could confront these matters in a more civilized tone other than this whole 'SPANISH IN MY AMERICAN?' attitude. Even if you are joking, it may come off as disrespectful to many of the international artists on this site.

So please be a bit more mindful before you go off on other people's native tongues.

So let's move on and give support  for this match instead eh?

Que le den todo! Suerte a los dos-  Ok, a lo mejor no mas gregos. ajaja. Pero pon le ganas!

SPANISH SPANISH SPANISH.

I'm not sure if these comments belong here, haha.
Can't wait for the battle! Good luck you two.

I'm not Greek...what the fuck are you talking about

Suerte cheeee!!!

Dave is a faggot. An unamerican boy lover.

Argentina!!!!!!!!!!

'MERHICA!!!!

ooooor.. Canada...

we don't have Cd players in our tanks...but healthcare is free...

I think that wins

oh and we aren't 11 trillion dollars in debt I think Canada actually has a surplus right now...

throw it up for CANADIA!!!

This is 'MERICA!

NO!!!! DAMMIT!! English! God damn AMERICAN English! I'm gonna go eat some Freedom Fries.

¡Deseo suerte a usted dos!

dale duro grego!!!!

We're american too XD. And sorry, they were inside jokes

Just so you know, I translated everything in Altavista babelfish. aaaaand it doesn't really make sense.


"Hard male fight!"


But why? If the life is going away to finish?


Hello, I am its brother.

what's with all this foreign language on my AMERICAN battle? Speak civilized! You savages!

Hola, soy su hermano.

Lucha fuerte macho!