Ben got himself a great big thing of cotton candy and he's going to eat it all! As usual, you're ambitious, with a framing device, multiple backgrounds, a huge cast of characters, hidden details, and lots of action and scares.

I think your staging could use some work. For example, is overlapping Edward Mordrake with a closeup panel really the best compositional choice? The blue potion missed my eye the first readthrough, and a clearer silhouette of that action may have highlighted it more. Also, the foreshortening of the first panel of the second page shows some need for more fleshing out before final inks.

I am guilty of adding side characters no one asked for so I can't speak much on that critique, I will say that since this is a beyond battle you're not filling the cast at the expense of your opponent's character so it doesn't really ring problematic to me for this one though I can agree the sheer amount can be superfluous. I'm curious if there was a reason the second page was uncolored or if you simply lost time to continue working on this comic? As a quick nitpick, the tartarus title at the end feels artificial since 'tar' repeating like that gives away that it's a digital font; you can fool readers' eyes for situations like this by modifying the height, width and length of the individual characters a little for each repeat letter

Good job with this first part, since it's just the first part There's not much i can say in terms of story as you can change it as you go on to the next parts and from what you mentioned it sounds like the next parts will be more focused on Craven. Also it's good to see you work on varying up your linework so just work at a bigger canvas size and keep trying to work on it some more. I will agree with shen's Crit that I think you should consistently color it, whether that's full colors for everything or just limited color for some parts sticking to one of those feels more complete than switching between the two.

MY SON YOUVE MURDERED MY DEAD SON i'd say hes suffered enough but i mean youve met him.
Cool story so far! I like your death eater lore, and this new arc for Craven. Wish you'd coloured or NOT coloured the whole thing though as this way it feels a tad unfinished. My crit is actually sort of the same as Flytee's. I love the big, full worlds you make full of fantastic characters, but its starting to feel a bit less Void comic and a bit more webcomic, you feel? Not just in this one but others as well, you make really cool villains but then they take up all the good story time that should be used on your opponents- or in this case, your own character. I'll go easy here since this looks like a "part one" so hopefully Craven and dario's adventures from here in will be more about them but maybe you should consider simplifying a comic now and again so it doesnt feel so heavy, which is easy to get lost in?
But i highly appreciate the amazing amount of work you put into this! A carnival is no easy setting, you nailed the backgrounds, and LOVE all the cameos! hahahaha, eat shit, Misery.

The previous comments eloquently sum up my feelings into terms of art crit. So I'll just share some other thoughts!
-I love all the cameos, it's great that you give so many nods to other characters.
- It's really cool seeing so much colour in this comics! Your choices are really bright and fun it totally changes the vibe of your art and makes things clear too follow. I'm looking forward to seeing more in the future, maybe a full comic at some point?
- Weaving MotD Into the story was a neat touch, I wonder if any of this will come into our battle? ;3

Ok now I have a weird pseudo-crit, that's maybe a tad subjective, but I can't shake it off, so here I go haha.

- I've noticed you like to have big casts in your comics, to the point where you add your own villains and side characters. Their designs are always thoughtful and interesting. However, *occasionally* for me personally, you're introducing too much for the length of comic/ it weighs down the story and takes attention away from the mc.

In this comic you had 4 side characters with noticeable designs and screen time. It was difficult to get invested in all of them and I was really stricken by how unnecessary some of them felt to me. I just wanted to see more Craven!
for example Clown girl / Circus announcer = their roles could've been combined
Shaw / Edward= too a certain extent these two characters could've been combined too, I get what you were going for, Shaw comes across as this conflicted cog in Edwards evil machine. But, This kinda of hint of ethical drama, would be so much more interesting put on your own characters as opposed to new side character, who we're not invested in.

So why no just have Shaw/ Edward just be some dude being puppeted by an evil demon hand, and get some ethical drama out of that situation?

Basically tl;dr- your side characters are really cool, but they can overshadow your main characters, sometimes with these shorter stories less is more.

 

I love the premise of the dead character arena especially how it fits Craven! The colors are really nice and I wish you did it for the second page also since this is a BB after all. I absolutely enjoyed the cameos and the carnival scene.

I do agree with the crits on the linework. While your style is really nice and clean (not to mention very efficient), I think studying variation in thickness for the lines would help you a lot especially if you want to do more comics that don't have shading/colors. The thicker linework where shadows would fall would give your work that extra dimension without having to do shading and coloring. Also spot blacks might also help you as well in this regard.

Overall, great job as usual and I cannot wait to see what happens next!

I agree with Cy, and will add that the line weight variations you're using appear to be completely haphazard. In 2.2, you've given thick line weights to the guy's nose and sideburn, when it's the figure's outline that should be thicker, if anything. So there seems to be a fundamental lack of understanding of how to utilize line weights to emphasize and indicate form and the direction of light.

Another thing I've noticed that makes your art a little hard on the eyes is that you resize the art while inking, which leaves you with figures full of blown out lines and then sharp details here and there. I tried to find one specific example of this, and realized it occurs with literally every single drawing. I don't know what your process is, but I kind of suspect your pencils are extremely minimal, if you use them at all. You should be doing all your resizing and rearranging in the pencils, so when you ink it's consistent across the page. I would also suggest that it's fine to copy and paste your own work, as you have with the skull, but I would like to see that done in the pencils as well, and then each copied drawing be inked, so they aren't exactly the same.

I've said this before, that many of your technical shortcuts are very obvious, and while I still admire how prolific you are, and appreciate how you're able to tell such involved and lively stories, the cut corners are beginning to glare, and they're lending a decidedly assembly line product quality to your comics. I want to see you push yourself out of your comfort zone.

COLOURS!! Finally! I have to wonder why the second page is back to black and white with just touches of colour though? This is a BB, there’s time for you to finish.

I have no comments story-wise since this is just part one, but I do have some thoughts on the art. I can see you’re making an attempt to vary up the lines, but I still think you need to do more - play with line colour or be more selective with your detail. For example on page 2, when the beak-nosed man took a swig of something and then punched Craven, I had to re-read it to tell what was going on because even though I could see the sound effect, the motion was obfuscated by the extra lines and lack of colour. I couldn’t see where he ended and where Craven or the flask began. In the circus scenes as well, the backgrounds don’t have to be so defined. The cameos were fun, but there were so many different colours, then fully rendered stalls and everything was equally bright, so it ended up blending together. Even though Craven should be the focus in some of these panels, he doesn’t pop, especially when he follows the clown girl or when the ring toss booth is behind him in the background - the sign is bright orange and sticks out far more than the dull blue of our main characters. A circus sign that has no importance to the story shouldn’t be drawing the eye more than the characters. The clown girl also tends to blend in since the ring is bright pink, and she’s dressed in similar shades.

I apologise if I seem harsh. I truly admire your speed and skill and want to be able to enjoy your comics, but the clutter honestly tires me out. Story gets lost on me when my eyes are moving all around trying to figure out what to focus on, and action is slowed down a lot too.

Welcome to spooky fight club, Craven.

Also looking forward to shaw