Oculama

Oh wow, I quite like how you've taken the gumshoe-story staple structure and twisted the ending around. While I like the overall narrative of the absolute dogged pursuit stopped cold by an encounter with the unbearably unknown, I did have trouble following the fine details of the story. I think the solution is twofold:

1) Recommend a different font for your text, and maybe less text per box in some panels. the bold font/tick lines made reading very difficult in places.
2) Recommend an additional round of proofreading/ handing off the pages for a peer review; Clyde's cadence is a bit awkward in places, and it's a little tough to follow the step-by-step details of his investigation.

Otherwise, your illustrations do a great job helping the reader along through the action, and I really dig your close-in focus panels, and how they emphasize the investigative nature of the story.

I'm impressed with a lot of the elements here: how wonderfully expressive Clyde is; the exceptionally fun depiction of induced detachment from reality, THAT SPLASH PAGE. The flow of the story keeps excellent pace too; I'll admit I needed to re-read a few parts to fully get what Clyde was seeing/ perceiving, but I was never so lost it took me out of the adventure through the rabbit-hole. Kudos also for taking such a unique opponent and the chaotic multiverse setting, and really putting them to work at the core of the narrative. (Also, is that a little Leslie I spy?)

Bruh. This was a TRIP. Your art is just... SO good! I want to have the kind of fluidity, expressiveness, and sense of composition you've got throughout. You do such a good job of making Clyde's expressions easy to read on a face that I think a lot of people would have a hard time doing that with. Even with the week and a mostly B&W comic, you add great details and texture to help lead the eye without being too overwhelming. The way you have the hints of Void Heart hidden in the details of page one, the way the panels break when the hallucination does, just ALL OF PAGE 4. Ugh. Just great cartooning all around.

Your writing is great too, jeez. It's a great use of your opponent as a way to give us more insight into Clyde's personality and past. I love how absolutely unflappable Clyde is, even in the face of these wild hallucinations and staring at the Void Heart itself. I think the only thing I could say is that I love the handwritten speech bubbles, but there were a couple that were slightly hard to read at first. Super minor. Great work, absolute banger of a comic!

The added touch of the classic P.I. music really lends itself to the vibe of your comic! Clyde works well in this kind of noir style of story. I love all the cute expressions you gave Clyde as well, and Void Heart is such a fun eldritch, unknowable horror!

Your pacing with the narration is pretty good for the most part, but one thing I'd say you could try in the future is giving the words a little more room to breathe, some of the caption boxes are a bit small. It might help to make the borders a bit thinner to help give you more space, and maybe break up some of the bigger ones? I forget where I read this, but I remember seeing a tip that word bubbles or captions should have a max of around 40 words in it so they don't get too big and seem too daunting to read. Breaking up some of those bigger captions (I'm thinking like at the bottom of page 3) into separate captions for the different thoughts can help readers process what you're writing better, and with some smart positioning, lead their eyes where you want on the page!

Great work though, I love how you fit Void Heart into this detective story and seeing Clyde get literally shot in the head last round and then still noping away really lets you know Void Heart is NOT to be fucked with.

God damn, phenomenal stuff here, you are completely virtuosic at divvying up the work here so that all the art is clean, good looking and readable, and also giving yourself enough time so that you can flex, like on the penultimate page. It's incredible how much emotion you can get out of Clyde's expressions considering how alien he looks, it shows that you are so comfortable in his character design and know exactly what strings to pull. The writing is fantastic as well, using a psychedelic, eldritch character to completely warp the time and space of a comic so that every image is a Clyde's Hieronymus Bosch-esque psychodrama. I feel like I'm getting hints at Clyde's personality, his fears, secrets about his past, pure characterization. Honestly, with such an ineffable opponent, it would have passed to have them just be a setting, but you completely stick the landing by having there be a compelling and chilling interaction between the two characters at the end. Just killer, keep it up, Clyde's on his way to the finals if you keep this pace and quality up.

There's some really clever art here, I especially like the two panels at the end where we can see Clyde's eyeball reflected in the shard of glass, and I really enjoy the detail of seeing the map get refined over time. This comic shows me you have a knack for good pacing in a comic, every page has good narrative movement, with some flavor panels thrown in so that it's not just pure business. For the future, definitely work on how much space you give your dialogue boxes - they look to be a bit haphazardly placed and sized. They also often cut through panel borders, and while that can work, it also sometimes can stall pacing and panel impact - if every panel was a slide in a slideshow, it would be very disjointed if there was just half a dialogue box hanging off the side of one. A comic of course is not a slideshow, and every panel can be seen at the same time, but there is a similar effect that happens.

Really nice art here, lots of fun things to look at. You're really good at big scenes with lots of funky little characters and details and you use that really well here. I think it's really smart how you use a lot of stark black and whites on the more polished page, it helps it mesh with the rest of the comic while still having that wow factor.
The story feels like it could be more focused thematically? It's still fun but the hallucinations don't really seem tied to Clyde in particular. Examining Clyde's greed could have been interesting, or a deeper look at his backstory besides the glimpses we get here? I know you like keeping things flexible, which is a good instinct, but I feel like sometimes you go TOO far with not setting things in stone and then end up spinning your wheels.
I feel like Void Heart was a little defanged by Clyde's lack of fear? I know he's a tough guy, but in places it feels like Clyde is on a stressful errand instead of facing a world ending threat. It would sell VH as a threat more if he got roughed up a bit, physically or emotionally.
I really like integrating your opponent into your character's backstory, that's cool! Using VH as a weapon to wipe out another world when it was also responsible for killing Clyde's world really sells his coldness in a neat way. "It's quite common for men your age to lose their worlds" is a good joke. The weird little mummy hand is great.
+5 points for Leslie but -5 points for Leslie

Weird thing to focus on but damn that's a nice looking map. Lots of cool background details to look at, and I like the little jokes you've scattered throughout. I also like all the fun side character designs you have. I like the last page where Clyde's expression is seen in the broken glass.
I found your font kind of hard to read. On the last page, Clyde's hat has a pretty bad tangent with the train, making him look kinda weird. The mystery feels a little bit anti climatic, especially with Clyde just walking away at the end? Maybe instead of the client just trying to get a promotion, Clyde could have discovered a plan to use VH to do something really messed up/exciting? Mysteries are hard to write though, especially under such time constraints.
I like how you went through the procedural stuff of detective work! You also did a great job of giving your opponent a lot of focus. The mystery itself seems logical to me, like all the parts fit together and make sense.

Love the noir style detective setup you've used here and it was very cool to see Clyde on the job shaking people down and following up leads. The writing is quite good and nails the tone but I think in terms of presentation it could have used some work. The large text boxes feel a little clunky and take up a lot of page real estate, especially when the comic itself has no dialogue. I feel like you could have split the dialogue up a bit more between panels to flow from the writing to the art back to the writing. The ending is great though and really sells how threatening the Void Heart is. Honestly would have loved to see the section extended just to really sell how terrified of it Clyde was.

It was nice to get some very indirect backstory about Clyde but the structure of this comic itself is really the standout. Absolutely great example of a dream logic comic that still is fully parseable and filled with great jokes. The way you layered each "dream" on top of each other made for a very relatable feeling of waking up from a dream and realizing you're in another one. This all culminating in your page 4 which has an impressive feeling of scale. The lines and composition are both strong, especially on page 3 which really nails the surrealist vibe. My only critique was the ending was a tad rushed, with Clyde being a bit more expository than I expected, but the setup early in the comic focusing on the arm smoothes out Clyde's explanation and definitely makes it clear what is going on.

Skwid - Whoaa what a trip! This was a fun read. Got me as confused as Clyde the whole way. I think that's the intention right?!?! One moment I thought the gnarly arm was part of his body, the next he was holding it lol. Page 3 was so well done. I love how it progressively looked more chaotic the further down you go. It's visually compelling both in an aesthetic and storytelling ways. A descent into madness so to speak. Just when I thought you were done impressing me, cue page 4. Damn..that was EPIC and it really gave me chills on the scale Void Heart is in this panel. The additional shading/colors you did really made this page stand out. Clyde's all-or-nothing approach to doing the job he was supposed to do is also very intriguing. The story overall was so well executed. As I said, you took us on a journey with Clyde, and that climax/closure at the end on how Void Heart was offered an escape...was very satisfying albeit kind of terrifying to think about what will come next!

Jojo - I did your request! Listening to 'Spy Glass' while reading your comic really did add to the experience. That was pretty cool and I love it. Thanks for taking us on a ride on how Clyde goes about this investigation. I think your art style really worked well with the narrative you got going as well. Maybe more splot blacks and try to separate the narration into several smaller boxes. Some of them were too long, particularly the last panel on Page 3. I think a traditional comic font would be cool to try too. I feel that the extra bolded text (and thick narration box) clashed quite a bit with your artwork. Man, is it just me or did this feel like a prelude to Skwid's side of the battle? Did you two talk about this? Like..the part where Clyde said he could be there staring at Void Heart for hours, days, or weeks got me thinking that he was in that 'dream' state that Skwid wrote on their side of the battle. Pretty awesome stuff!

Expertly crafted story and a fantastic flashback to Clyde's world in between the delusions and imagery. I am a super fan of Clyde and this continues to cement him for me even more. The brief flash of color brings out a ton of character and really gives the weird realm that Clyde's in more gravitas for sure. You do a great job having the action and everything else in here work so well. For the one week deadline, I can't give anything to say. You know what you're doing and I'm extremely impressed with all of this. You did excellently. Terrific work, keep it up.

This was a fun read. Your narrative improved greatly here and I think having an active participant trying to find and study Void Heart makes for a much more compelling read. It even helps that you leave us with plenty of questions as well. I'm certainly curious how they'll progress and develop more as a character.
With regards to reading it, however, your font isn't unreadable but its definitely hard to parse out. I would get a less thick font in the future if you plan to work at that size. I also really wanted to see some more grayscale like you utilized on page 3. Would have really bumped it up. I did like this comic a lot and I am excited to see where you plan to do more of this. Good work!

WOW WOW (I can honeslty type WOW for this a million times and still not get show how much I love this comic) This is fucking SICK. Just small thing, cause there's so much going on in this comic there's like a tad bit of stuff that doesnt fully read well to me, but nothing big enough that changes anything. Page is a fucking WILD time, it's so trippy and crazy and I have no idea what is going on but it fucks so hard and I'm sitting here like no way you one up that but right after you produce probably one of the coolest most polished pages in oculama rn. the size of it all, the composition everything is amazing. you went crazy, I love Clyde and cannot wait to see more of them in here.

This is a really good comic Jojo. I am honestly surprised you took the chance to do a mystery in such a short page and time limit. The writing really shines here, I could totally see a much longer drawn out mystery written by you. would be super cool to see. My biggest issue with the comic just lies with the readability of the dialogue. I don't know if it's been bolded or that's just how it is but it makes it hard for me to read. A simple fix there would do wonders in the future and enhance all your future comics. I was wondering when the void heart was going to show up and was wondering if they spent too much time away from the lime light but damn those two panels at the end back to back were so good that it doesnt even matter that they didn't show up at the start. They have to be a real favourite for me. seeing Clydes face in the reflection and it change because of witnessing the void heart is such a good subtle detail, real big brain move. Great job on this Jojo

Dreamscape trip!

Absolutely love every moment of that part. Going through character backstory through manifested memories is brilliant. I'm a little lost on the plot though, I think it's using the key to let void heart destroy a world? But it seemed like it was doing that anyway? I was also a bit confused at the arm; I assume the dreamscape turned it into his arm but maybe he just had it and forgot he had it for the doctor bit. Its a little hard to tell.

Aesthetically though, beautiful. pages 3 and 4 are so neat! And page 1... All the little big guys.

Really neat comic, even if I got a bit lost. I can't say how many times ive gotten lost in even the big name professional comics tho and it gets leeway for being a dreamscape. Also it might just be lore I missed somewhere for the site-wide setting itself.

Noir Detective Story!

I've a weakness for a good ol' detective story. Big Bug Man scouring the city for clues to find a missing person with the narration boxes, I adore it. I did get kind lost though; I'm not entirely sure why Big Man was hired for the job alongside a bunch of others. Or why they were snooping around his office? If that's what happened. Or what the client's whole plan was with hiring a bunch of people and giving them little info. Maybe to keep their peers from getting info from them? Much as I love detective stories this was carried for me on flavour and emotion far more than an actual intriguing plot or setup.

Aesthetically we got big man making some fun faces, and the comic is overall pretty solid. Nothing too fancy, but it works!