Oculama

Excited to see a continuation of the think-y style death puzzles for your take on the tournament. It's more or less expected with a character like Eckert, but it's always engaging to see what sort of games a writer can come up with.

I like the continued use of the color-coding for the OCs. It's a neat solution to the increasing number of bodies in play, and I overall really enjoy how you've executed the decision to have all the OCs in play all at once - there's lots of opportunities to play ll the personalities off one another and highlight the communal aspects of a death game setup, whether that ends up being to the benefit or the detriment of those involved.

The non-central OCs that get highlighted here look really good in your style - distinct from their original designs, but also very recognizable as who they are to anyone who's been reading the other comics for this tournament, with or without the nametags.

The writing hits its high for me where we explore Maggie's service industry background. I enjoyed the paper roll segment quite a bit, both showing how the routine of it seems to genuinely put the otherwise anxious Maggie at ease, and how taking time to see to the task, the ostensibly responsible thing to do, ends up killing her and, I would assume, her counterpart in the button-pushing game.

I'm equally intrigued by what the story implies about how the first round went for her. That she survived means she was able to pass the logic gate with utter certainty about the code, but the fact that she was pressured into being the one to do it implies a lot about the power dynamics that must have formed in the room.

Good work on completing another round; hope you are taking a well-earned rest!

I'm impressed with how much juice you're able to squeeze out of the single flashback page up front - there's the meta-philosophical setup of the divergence from the expected, but also an interesting look at the sort of person Maggie is, and what ha led her to the life she led immediately prior to the game, which is, itself, yet another layer of the comic's exploration of destination, of the pre- and chaotic flavors.

You have such a way with faces, and there's some really good ones throughout this round. Maggie's shift from truly neutral shell shock coming out the elevator to almost comical reactions of suspicion and exasperation upon meeting eckert and starting to open the boxes, respectively (middle of page 5 had me cracking up fr) were great touches that lent an element of visual humour to the already excellent gag of Eckert constantly winning the battle of weapon rock paper scissors.

(Nice use of the Oculama stock graphics - really tied a bow on my favorite sequence of this matchup).

Eckert, while not as widely expressive as Maggie, looks terrific under your pen as well. The cool calmness and slight showing of smugness find a great balance in your style, and he feels convincingly in control of the entire situation from his first panel all the way to the neck-cut.

Eckert's expression as he registers the wound in his neck on the last page especially stayed with me, even after just the first read - the veneer of calm *just* warping under the stress of the unexpected in the moment before death.

The death-blow provides a lot of sweet juice as well to the larger story of Maggie - we learn she really has been paying attention to what's going on around her, even when it looks like she's just sketching trogdor in her notebook, and what's more, she retains it. She's made some bad decisions, but she's sharper than she lets on, and she's growing to fit the death tournament quite quickly.

Great round 2 entry - Maggie's having a hell of a rough time, but I'm loving every second of it ;)

AH YEAH! That Gore covered arm is doing absolute work in this comic. It adds that extra little bit of layers that I was missing in the last comic. It also feels like you used more spotblacking this comic as well which helped separate everything and really made it hit. It's wonderful texture you use for the blood and gore. The slow flow down Eckerts shirt was veryyyyy nice. That and page 9 were easily my favourite. While the art was fantastic I thought the writing could use a bit more work. The plot worked and fit the Eckert, but what I was missing was Maggies Characterization from round 1. She's a very different character in the two rounds and in this was specifically I felt like she had gotten over the fact she had killed Verm very quickly and thats just that. Personally I yearn for that return to R1 Maggie and in doing so elevating the stakes back up to how fucked up a situation this is. Really good work on this comic though, my only real gripe about it was personal taste. Great job!

It's impressive that youre really going for that larger story with everyone in such a short period, I know I wouldn't be brave enough to include more people in mine hahaha. Props to that, for making it all work and including in your own way how some arent moving forward and such. I Think the comic gets lost in the complexity of it, with so many moving parts. We lose Eckbert for a bit which goes towards his "is he part of the game or running it" mystery but I would have loved to have seen more from him interacting with Maggie. In terms of the actual game personally I honestly thought it was confusing and didn't work as well as you thought it would.. I feel like we missed seeing the other side of the computer which would have hightened Maggies side and what she was going through. Which is where I think Eckert would have been a fantastic piece. Instead of having Angelica who we don't see, if we got Eckerts perspective on the other side I think that would have been perfect and added a lot to the story and Maggies eventual death. Leaving us to think well did Eckert do that on purpose or was it a mistake. Good job on this comic.

Eckert really feels like the character he was presented as. Self-assured and well equipped with knowledge. The inclusion of the lecture was excellent, and the way it was integrated into the story even more so. I'm a sucker for that kind of thing.
I love how Eckert remains composed to the end, it feels, again, very in character.
You got him down to a T.
Also the "that shouldn't have felt that good" was a good ending, funny but also pointing at deeper developments in Maggie's character.

Marybelle Mention!
But seriously, this is a pretty well written round, even if it lacks the extra oomph of your opponent's. The long explanation is a bit to it's detriment, though I don't know how it could have been avoided.
Also I love how straight faced and smiling Wave is when telling people that Marybelle killed before.
The ostrich with a gun was hilarious, but Maggie's death still felt solidly shocking and tragic.
Eckert feels kind of secondary in his own round, too.

I do love a good planting and payoff! This was a fun take on Eckert's character and it revealed a little more about Maggie as well. The past two rounds have been a good set up for a larger narrative and I'm excited for what you would do with that set up should you continue. The death felt a little quick and I would've liked to have seen her react a little more to it rather than explain her feelings in words but it didn't bother me that much honestly as it was still a clever way out of Eckert's puzzle.

I enjoyed this game it was a fun read but there were just a few times I was scratching my head, mainly at the end. I'm not gonna hark on it too much as it looked like you were planning to explain it should you make it to the next round. Same goes for the character of Eckert. It feels like you're slowly revealing his purpose and intentions though I wouldn't wait too long if I were you. You left on a good hook and I'll admit it is making me want to see more from this side. you both made it very hard to vote on this one!

I really love your lineart! It's a treat having so much of the comic be in straight black and white to show it off. Using stark silhouettes and alternating between white and black dominating the background really helped break things up visually. The grimy textures for the gore on Maggie's arm and the motion of her stab are really great, too. Some motion lines for Eckert faceplanting might have been good, but that's the only visual nitpick I can think of. As far as layouts and pacing go, I think this was super smooth. Your panels were varied page to page while pages like #4 and #9 helped give good visual/pacing breathers with large panels. All around fantastic!

The setup is good while doubling as a flashback for Maggie and showing us a bit of the kind of person she is (outside of a life or death conflict). It lets you know how this chapter was going to end but not exactly how, so the reveal that she was looking at a shard of metal on page 2 was really fun. The determinism angle worked well. Eckert's ability to predict Maggie's every decision is basically a superpower without any explanation, but I think that works fine in the context of the comic. Nobody can actually predict someone's minute, effectively random decisions and trying to explain it would just draw too much attention to it.

Great stuff all around!

I mentioned on the previous comic that I thought the smudges behind the characters were a bit distracting, but I think how you do them in this one works really well. They grew on me a lot. The white backgrounds with colored characters is a visual trick I really enjoy for distinguishing them. You used it in fun ways like draining Maggie of color after she was shot, or dimming it for her after images as she's working to restock the paper. Great pacing and paneling, too! It's a really smooth read!

I think your choice to have all of the characters present at once continues to be a great choice. We get a lot of fun banter between them and I loved Emilio and Cassidy being the confident dumbass duo while Maggie was more meek and put upon. Jokes like the other team actually starting with 10 people really hit for me. I love the setup of this death game and how the little logic puzzles play out. The only quibble I can think of is that it would have been good to see the plan used by one of the other characters, even just summarized, to contrast Maggie and Angelica's screw up, but this is done in a week and some stuff has to remain on the floor. All-in-all I really love the plot and banter in this!

Great comic!

Love the setup and pay off of the final butterfly effect bit, it actually feels pretty rewarding on the re-read of the comic to note why Maggie was so tense and paying attention to their hands in the opening sequence.

Its fun to just have the initial thought of "oh this is just deliberate pacing choices" but having Maggie triumph in a twist that's almost more anime than Eckert's usual schtick was hilarious.

You really know how to make every part of a comic feel important, its good to see your comic skills haven't rusted a touch!

Maggies little moments of becoming more and more of a killer make a me smile :)

this is a fun round with a pretty fun death game to it, it maintains the good balance of starring other characters and adds to the feel of the tourney, making it feel like a shared setting and is a fun way to facilitate fan art of everyone thats still involved! The only major thing i have to point out is that while i can love a talky, text-heavy comic as much as one without any text, this one feels like it has juuust a bit too much. Too many paragraphs and large segments of text that arent broken up the best.

Skwid - you've delivered yet another banger. The clever writing hooked me from start to finish, and Eckert’s unsettling calm was portrayed in the best way possible—you nailed his persona and character perfectly. I really appreciated how you connected the flashback classroom lesson from the intro into the ending. At first, I thought it was just a bit of backstory to flesh out Maggie (which I enjoyed), but the payoff tied it all together brilliantly. Your inks are crisp and clean - nothing to critique there - and I loved the clever touch of adding the Oculama Death Match icons to the panels.

Cro, this is such an ambitious entry—wow! I love how you again included all these characters before zeroing in on our main contestants. The color-coding of the characters is a great touch once again, and those pencil-like textures in the background gave them a cardboard cutout vibe, which I enjoyed. It does lend a slightly 'lighthearted' feel to the death game scenario, though—unless that’s intentional, lulling us into a false sense of security despite what’s coming! Some parts felt a bit wordy, but I really appreciate the intellectual approach you took. It showcased Eckert’s character beautifully, especially in contrast to Maggie. The way you captured her palpable panic against his eerie calm really showed how these two couldn’t be more different.

I love your approachable take on such a cerebral character such as Eckert. I don't know why but there's such elegance in the common sense take of 'I totally looked in all the boxes already' instead of some convoluted rube Goldberg machine of someone dying because of some big machinated reason. Something as simple and chaotic as a shard in hand is just another notch in tally of "omg she's so dang lucky". Your expressions are really great as well. Ekert has such a good face for smug smiles and knowing looks as poor Maggie looks box to box. I'm excited to see how this ramps up as we began in a pit of grisly meat. there's no way to go but worse lol

Ekert thinking in that 4D chess mode. I must say with the ambitious take on using ALL the participants, color marking is a smart move. Just at a glance we know who's who and I had to do a doubletake because it hid the sneaky elements in your background to the end- namely the stuffed bird packing heat! Really enjoyed that lurking in plain sight until the proper time.
Speaking of ambitions, its neat to see someone with something of a closed tale, following the line of events YOU set up in your own last round. It'll be interesting if you move on how the groups dynamic changes after this explosive end for Maggie.

I really enjoyed the way this story went. This worked incredibly well with the way your opponent was written, you really brought out his "know-everything-and-more" attitude out and the fact he was two steps ahead of Maggie, except where it counted ultimately was a great direction for the story. Getting a little bit of her backstory was super appreciated and I loved how this all happened. Your art continues to impress and is gorgeous. You have such a terrific handle on your inks and the additional greys in spots are used to good effect where they are, but I wish you had remained consistent with it and used it throughout, or else used ink for the utter mess on Maggie's arm going into it. Outside of that, however, this was an excellent comic and I am anxiously awaiting more skwid comics. Fantastic work.

When I first saw Eckert I wasn't totally sure about how he was going to work in the comics, but I still feel like he's aware of a fourth wall, just not one that belongs to us as the reader, but in the narrative of the comic as someone playing in a video game, if that makes any sense at all. It's an interesting approach and I thought it actually worked nicely with these comics, because it became less about Eckert involving himself with his opponents and more about his opponents dealing with the puzzles at large in front of them, which is again, an interesting approach. At the same time, it's also a bit of a weakness because it makes Eckert feel disconnected from the story at large. Artistically speaking, I thought your simplified single colors for each character was a good idea to keep the production economical. Overall, this was a good set of comics. Nice work!

A great escalation from your previous round, with not only more deep storytelling but a level up on the artwork and blocking as well, which is always great to see in a tournament. I really enjoy the framing of using Eckert as a totem for Maggie to come to terms with her slacker past and to get some self actualization in these death games, a great melding of the opponents character to further your characters arc.

Cleverly written as always, I love the concept of lampshading the prisoners' dillemma by adding unforseen hangups that someone wouldn't account for. And bonus points for including all the opponents in your comic world, thats always gonna get brownie points from me. You've adeptly pared down your artwork detail in order to deliver a good amount of quality pages in a short time span, my only qualm is that the background lineart is a tad bit too light and i found my eyes glossing over it on a first read.