First off, wow. Visually this is stunning. Lovely styles, great use of limited palette, and just overall very clean and polished looking. I expected the style change to majorly throw me off, and while there was a big difference between styles it didn’t feel jarring at all, I think due to a cohesive palette and the similarly soft, fluid lines. A damn near professional looking comic, kudos to both of you!

Individually - Alouisse, really dig the texture you used for your half, and your backgrounds were amazing. Especially liked how you drew the exterior of the house. I also love how you draw hair? It just looks so soft and swoopy hehe. Cats, man that blurry, soft-edges effect you did on page 11 looked killer! Not just the big void in the middle of page, but the simple little panels of Reimi walking towards the light with her sword, damn those looked nice. Also loved the first panel on page 18, very dramatic.

I have to say though, I wasn’t really engaged by the story, sorry. These are totally new characters being introduced, there’s no bios to read or comic archive, so automatically as readers we’re going to be less invested in them. You needed to establish them at the beginning, so that we have a reason to care about them and be interested in what they do. Instead we get exposition and a flurry of names that mean nothing to us. There’s 20 pages here and despite reading it thrice I still have little idea of who these characters are. They’re a couple, they somehow know the cult members, the lady is a little sassy and can use a sword, the guy is... well, he loves her and doesn’t like talking about his past. You essentially drop trivia about them, but not what their personalities are?

Despite the amount of exposition, I still felt like I knew nothing, and the whole thing came off as generic. What was the cult actually doing that was bad enough to require this couple’s... services I guess? Bad enough that someone wanted to track them down? On my third reread I got that they’re going to end the world via mass hysteria and read things such as:

“Using this madness as a way to bridge, the city of Carcosa will be summoned into this realm of reality and along with it, Hastur.”

1) We aren’t told what this actually means. Why is Carcosa significant and how would it end the world? 2) There are so many names and so much text on these first few pages that this information is easily missed, as are other important details. Why does the cult want to end the world in the first place for instance? What’s the deal with Hastur? Without meaningful specifics, they read as another Bad Guy Group who Want to End the World because they’re Bad.

I felt little to no suspense throughout the comic as well. I think this is partly due to not knowing the characters enough to carel, but also because everything is very convenient. Struggles are over before they start and apart from Sani being dragged off to read the book, there were no obstacles in the couple’s path. Reimi is tied up and left in an empty room with no guards, no alarms, nothing, so she escapes almost instantly. When the madness starts, there’s one panel where she feels some of the effects and then it’s never mentioned again. Why does she seem mostly immune, having only have a tiny struggle while the rest of the crowd are outright ghouls at this point? On page 12, she’s attacked and then kills her attacker in the very next panel. On page 18 she’s knocked heavily to the ground but is already conscious and on her feet by the next panel. The struggles are too easy and too quick. Even in the final confrontation, the siblings just talk and then suddenly one is dead, and when Reimi is grabbed, she is saved and the other sibling killed within just two panels. Sani’s eye definitely felt like a plot device in that situation too, how he suddenly say Reimi through the smoke. It was introduced earlier, yes, but again we don’t know anything about it. Why he has this eye, what it does beyond seeing undefined Stuff that other people can’t.

One minor, minor note I also had was that this comic was titled “the play must go on” and they call the performance a play, but we never see a play. We just see one guy reading a book on stage. Not really a crit, I just found that weird haha.

Whew. tl;dr great visuals and a very polished look, weak story and characters. I actually had more I wanted to say but I though it might be a bit too much. If you’re interested to hear feel free to DM me on discord! I feel like I have to state this wasn’t a bad comic despite my wall of crit, like I said at the beginning it was pretty excellent visually speaking. I just feel like getting into specifics can really help explain a point, and especially when you’re tackling story the explanations can get lonnng. So I really hope this helps!