Oculama

This comic was overall excellent! The visuals were very interesting yet simple and minimal, and the structure of each page and panel was very interest and eye-catching to read, without feeling snarled and incoherent. Also points for cameos of other passengers! The story is hilarious, Jax being petty enough to frame Coach Wizard for destroying a world monument just because he was forcing Jax to stand by not sharing his seat. My only issue, one that I can understand as a limit of time, is that while some pages and panels are colored, others are not. But even still, this was made into an interesting stylistic choice by things in the background being colored beige while things that caught the eye got coloration.

The comic doesn't even start, and somehow they manage to destroy the world's largest tamales! Honestly an interesting choice that instead of "competing" in some way they actually work together to create a new batch of tamales. Very wholesome loophole to the "somebody misses the bus" that Jax is instead able to just drive alongside the bus as opposed to being completely left behind. The panel structure was very interesting, and the colors and composition were excellent. I can't really think of any critique other than the interactions between Jax and Coach not having much dialogue, but instead worked as a silent montage that needed no words to convey their cooperation. Great work!

Loved this comic, amazing expressions and body language from all characters and your color palettes are amazing! i love Jax even if they're an asshole, and i admire how far they'll go to avoid asking someone politely lmao. Very good characterization for both characters!

To be honest i have very vew critiques with this comic, the only thing that comes to mind is at the beginning of page 6, the framing sort of looks like Coach Wizard got trapped under the rubble, and that the comic ends a *little* bit abruptly, but neither of these issues impacted my reading experience at all. Plus i love your use of hatching with the lineart for shading, it adds a lot of grit and character to the comic. Overall, awesome work <3

I love that this comic starts in media res with the tamales burning down, it lets us jump right into the meat of the story. I also enjoyed that most of the storytelling was done nonverbally, although I think it did leave some character development unexplored. Each panel is packed with personality and emotion! (the two at the end of pg 5 are so fucking good), super clean colors and a totally on-brand ending for Jax.

In terms of clarity, I was slightly confused on page 4 as to how the tamales grew to such roadside-worthy proportions, and if this was a moment of exaggerated silliness. Regardless, a thoroughly enjoyable comic packed with tons of goofs, gags, and great art! awesome job! <3

First off, I LOVE the design for the road trip bus - somewhere between a tour bus and a trolley, with a nice old-timey but not too old-timey look to it. The selective application of color to sort of sandwich the pages is neat - I like how it puts focus on the more...pivotal (?) panels.

Mostly cosmetic critiques, as the story itself feels solid. Not sure if there's italics on the font you're using, but the slant gets *slightly* distracting on some of the panels, the bottom of page 2 being a standout example. There's a plane or two where the action is clear, but could use a little more "oomph." Specifically the tour guide tripping out the bus (knowing It's Jax's influence helps), and Coach hitting the pyramid (I'm a bit torn on this - it feels like a moment that deserves a more dynamic panel, but on the other hand coach collapsing the pyramid with a brush is pretty darn funny).

You've succeeded in making the road trip feeling like, well, a proper road trip, which different comics in R1 have succeeded to to different degrees - from the good and varied shots of the bus interior, to getting a little interaction in with the OCs not directly in the matchup (poor Mehira...). Jax also feels like a proper heel here (affectionate), but since Coach is also being a bit inconsiderate, I get the nice vibes of like, Bugs Bunny being mischievous at someone who sort of deserves it, just not to the degree it's inflicted~~~

Strong stuff, and really excited to see Jax in action!

Opening this comic mid-debacle was a terrific choice; not a single panel wasted on explaining how we got here where none is needed, and executed in a way that got a real chuckle out of me from the get-go. The conclusion is easily punchy, and even if you see it coming, what with Jax's grinch-face mugging the reader, the panel of the police chase at the end still hits and gets a laugh. Having Jax ditch the bus via stolen car feels very natural and a clever way to take your opponent out of the road trip.

The text-less progressions in this comic are quite impressive. So much so that I really think you could have lost even more of the speech bubbles to heighten the comic flow and heighten the comedy. The text on page two, for example, I think could be absent entirely without the reader losing any understanding of what Jax and Coach must do, and without needing to change any of the art on the page. I'm a little more on the fence about the dialogue on page 5 - I think that Jax is being asked to transport the tamales might require some alteration to the art to come across, but it feels doable.

Jax and coach make a nice visual duo throughout the comic. Coach's more or less unflinching face throughout makes a nice contrast to Jax's parade of emotions over the course of the comic (the focus during the cooking and the starry-eyed wonder at their success were highlights for me). Coach does feel a bit extraneous to the comic from a story point of view, but he adds enough visually that I feel you've used him well.

Very fun comic overall - punchy and deft!

Jax being a little shit is excellent. He really did just go like "my tour now, bitches". And her petty revenge against coach wizard by implicating him in her bad luck curse, causing him to destroy a precious historical site was just perfectly on flavor.
On the other hand though, coach wizard really should not have been taking up those two seats. Didn't deserve to get arrested for it, but I'm just saying.
Coach Wizard's face after bringing down the pyramid was excellent, too.
That poor tour guide though. They were just trying to educate people on the world's biggest pyramid and got thrown out of a bus for their trouble.
Good round, overall!

This one was also pretty good.
Congrats on managing to tell a (mostly) silent story effectively and congrats on giving an ending in which Jax continues on the road trip without assistance of the bus. Jax's Do Not Kiss apron was a pretty good gag, too. And of course Jax would run away with the car and the Tomales in tow.
Didn't notice the cop car following him til this readthrough. I guess both of you got your opponents in trouble with the law, huh?
I suppose my one writing gripe is that I'm not entirely sure that Jax would feel bad about the destruction of the tomales or try to rectify her mistake.

The visual style in this comic is really standout, in part it's just refreshing to see a setting that's different from the US midwest that I think most of us had in mind but there's also suck a bespoke quality to the art. Like that feels like kind of a weird thing to say but there's something about the muted colors, the trolley-bus, little details like Jax's headscarf and the tour guide's nametag, it all just feels so lived-in. Jax is great in how hard he goes on being a petty shithead, making a child cry is an all-time character highlight.

This is fantastic visual comedy, the expressions and poses go so hard. Page 3 is a highlight for me, I think there's something inherently funny about Jax stirring with furious intensity. Also I just noticed that top panel on that page, is Coach Wizard just chomping an onion slice that's great. So many fun details like that, like Jax's apron, coach wizard's little ass, the fact that they spend the whole comic making totally normal tamales and then they're just suddenly enormous, it all gives the comic such a lively energy. Also enjoy just how down for anything Jax is, immediately ready to cook and then immediately ready to steal a car when the opportunity arises, it's really snappy.

Really dig the sepia tone of your gutter space and pages. Gives a nice warm tone to your overall setting which feels thematic but also out of the box. Love going outside the 'default' of typical western sights to Mexico. The great pyramid of Cholula as our sight to see and literal punchline of poor coach wizard was pretty funny. Poor little dude. Shouldn't of seat hogged! XD
Really dig your eclectic exaggerated character expressions varied angles and creative composition on this too. The low angle shot from the grass on page four has to be my fav. All in all nice work!

Mmm this comic made me hungry. Gotta love tamales. I like cutting to the heart of the matter from the get go of page 1 with our delicious landmark burning down and solving the matter with the tamale laden car seen through the tour bus. I was half hoping to see a break down of the recipe to see what exactly these two were adding to the dish, or an explanation on how the tamales got so big. With a wizard in the mix I was looking for some magical hijinks or enbiggening spell. Still all in all really out of the box comic with your choice of 'biggest something'

this comic takes place in mexico, which naturally makes me very happy and slap my stomach, but other than that, this was one hell of a showing for a comic!! i love the color scheme and how authentically it carries the feeling of not just mexico, but also those old aged newspaper comics that have been tinted off-white over the years! i fucking love Jax in this and i love how much of a TARGET Coach wizard is by sitting his fat little ass on the seats NOO DONT CALL HIM A GRINGO YOU CANT CALL HIM THAT HES LITERALLY GREEN

Is it weird that i feel like you draw Jax like an Edd Ed n' Eddy character? great stuff and i like Jax feeling like the star of the show here, also you really like cooking comics huh hahahaha

I think a theme for Road Trip that i find myself warming up to comics where the opponent willingly leaves the bus of their own accord and i really like how you did it here! befitting of the OCT-Papa of the very tourney hes partaking in! Good pacing and tamale-ing throughout and i really like u working these digital colors more and more

I really love the colors you did for this comic. They're nice and warm and kind of lend themselves to both the location and the vibe of the comic. I like that you gave Jax an active reason to kick off Coach Wizard, which helps it stand out from everyone else's comics in that regards. As simple as a lot of your backgrounds are, they're really effective and worked great. On the whole, this was a terrific comic and I'm really interested in seeing more of Jax in the future - he's definitely grown on me in this first comic. Great work!

This was fun. A real short and sweet comic in the sense that it got across a very straight-forward comic with minimum dialogue and none of which came from our two leads. I think you really nailed it and did something that's also great - divorcing Coach Wizard from Protein Wizard. Showing that he can stand on his own makes him a lot more endearing for some reason and I want to see more of him now. I think the only thing that would have probably made it better is if you had included an actual recipe for making tamales and turned it into a short cooking comic! Still, great read. Great work.