Asshole

Alright! *rubs hands together* Let's do this!

Art
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First off, massive amounts of improvement on proportions (especially on the head vs body ratios)! The coloring looks much simpler now than at the beginning (though it's probably deceptively complicated). The less-glowy images fit the style of the comic much better these days. Trevor's strongest point artistically is definitely the portrayal of expression. All his characters have extremely expressive faces - with the exceptions of John/Charlie and Susie who - to date - don't HAVE faces. The characters' movements are fluid and dynamic and seem to be more stills from a movie than posing for pictures. The speech bubbles are always clean and clear. The use of real pictures for backgrounds throughout the first half of the comic's duration was fun, but these days, the backgrounds are mostly solid colors. I'd like to see more effort put into the backgrounds, but that's my only complaint on the art.

Story
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Trevor has his characters say and do the types of things we all wish we COULD do. The dialogue is sharp, clever, and often snarky. The pages are entertaining and sometimes mind-boggingly random. Humor-wise, it borders on slapstick but stays away from the gross (well...usually) and idiotic to remain genuinely funny. There were times I laughed so hard reading (and then re-reading for critique purposes) that my coworkers had to come see what was so hysterical. Trevor puts a lot of social commentary in his comics along with pop culture references and political themes which keeps the content fresh as the world is constantly changing (which means a never-ending pile of fodder - yay). It's a great and silly read that's easy to jump into in the middle even if you missed some of the earlier pages (though I'd recommend catching up on ALL of the updates to reach your awesome-quota of the year).

Overall, I give Asshole an 8/10 - definitely space to improve but a worthy comic as-is. *high five*

Closing Comment: Trevor, I never realized this before, but you get a TON of guest/fan art!

Art:
Man I was really not too blown away by the art at the beginning. The shading seemed very silly. I think it improved when it went to black and white though. The lines are now bolder and they stand out a lot better. At least when it goes to color now the color is in nice, solid shades.

Writing:
I think this is the biggest problem I have with the comic. The older strips had better flow because they would set up and get to the punchline without any fuss. Now it takes big blocks of texts to tell TOO MANY jokes. The clutter bugs me and I hope the comic goes back to how it used to be.

I'm also not too fond of topical humor because although a story may be hot one day it wont be the next. Sometimes a hot topic will just be completely forgotten in a few months. Then you're left with a confusing reference that no one gets anymore and the joke has no staying power. I think my favorite strip would have to be the one where the main character says "I'll bag the first thing that screams your name" and then proceeds to stuff some screaming guy into a bag. The joke is simple, clever, and gets to the point quickly. It also has staying power. That is the way it should be.

Overall:
There are some good points and bad points about this comic. I think that, with time, the comic could show even more promise. The cartoonist has shown that he can be funny and he has shown that his art can improve so I think it's only a matter of time. Keep at it.

7 out of 11.

Well let's get down to brass tacks. Or brass ticks, whatever.

A$$hole is a comic about the life and sometimes surreal adventures of Trevor, an everyman who just wants to spend his free time with his girlfriend and play video games. But along the way, things get more complicated when Suzie, the girl from The Ring, shows up to kill him after he watches her video, but instead decides to live with him.

The story is a mix of gag strips and in-depth storylines, and I have to say, most of the straight gag strips seem to fall a little short to me. We have a couple of good gags here and there, but the real strength in A$$hole is in its more lengthy delights.

For instance, we had a 41 page-long story about Trevor buying his girlfriend a present, and I felt this was one of the strongest points in the entire comic. Not all of the jokes worked throughout, but most did, and since there was a whole story to tell, with a beginning, middle, and end, I felt it held together much better than most of the single strips. I also enjoyed the parody of The Prisoner, another storyarc where Trevor was nearly killed by his poltergeist.

The humor here is edgy at times, very outlandish, and occasionally crude. It's never offensively over-the-top though and is often hysterical.

I think my biggest problem with A$$hole is that I could never get into the main character as much as the others. Trevor, being based on the author, lacks personality when compared to the outrageous Suzie. That's not to say Trevor is bad, but he seems to be the straight man out of this comedy, and he doesn't always play that way. Which is another reason I greatly enjoyed the mall storyline, where his personality seemed much more fleshed out.

The art is usually good, especially in action scenes or other scenes that showcase movement. The facial expressions are also good, and I feel the comic works better black and white than in color. There were some good strips that made excellent use of color, such as the two-part Interview story, but sometimes the color actually distracts from the art.

Overall, there is a lot to like about A$$hole. With some minor corrections, such as for spelling errors, and a larger focus on bigger storylines, I think this could be a really excellent comic. As it stands now, it's still fun to read and I would be happy to recommend it to anyone interested in something a little off-the-wall.

A$$hole: 3.9/5.0

Hmmmm, so here's what I'm getting from everyone so far:

1) The art has improved, but needs further improvement (which I knew, so that's good)
2) The single gag-strips aren't so funny, but the story arcs are rewarding and fun to read (which is great, because they're also tons of fun to do)
3) People seem to prefer the black and white pages to the color ones - but I'm curious as to whether or not that's because the comic updates more often when I did that, or because the art actually looked better, or both?
4) People seem to like the characters, dialogue, and story - except that Trevor (the main character) is a little 1-dimensional. I think Laura is pretty flat as a character so far, too, and I plan to fix this sometime soon.

This is all excellent feedback, please keep is coming! :D

trevoramueller
3) People seem to prefer the black and white pages to the color ones - but I'm curious as to whether or not that's because the comic updates more often when I did that, or because the art actually looked better, or both?

Well part of it is that you're a really excellent black-and-white artist, but I also felt that sometimes the color accented some of the imperfections in your art that were easier to miss or ignore with the black-and-white. Plus, I tend to notice the sense of movement and scale in black-and-white better than in color. But that's just my opinion. :)

Steely Gaze

trevoramueller
3) People seem to prefer the black and white pages to the color ones - but I'm curious as to whether or not that's because the comic updates more often when I did that, or because the art actually looked better, or both?

Well part of it is that you're a really excellent black-and-white artist, but I also felt that sometimes the color accented some of the imperfections in your art that were easier to miss or ignore with the black-and-white. Plus, I tend to notice the sense of movement and scale in black-and-white better than in color. But that's just my opinion. :)

Yes yes, this is good. Here's a question for you about the black and white, though - would you prefer solid black and white, or gray scale? Or, black and white characters with gray scale backgrounds (if I used a photo or something)?

Well personally I think the idea of the characters being in black-and-white and the backgrounds being grey-scale or shaded would add the necessary depth to it. I'm not really sure how the characters would look if they were grey-scale, but it might be worth trying.

But hey, take any advice from me with a grain of salt. I'm a writer, not an artist. All I can offer are opinions. :)

Alright, here we go: "Asshole"

Art: Art is kind of a mix of realistic (though idealized and simplified) bodies and cartoonish expressions. Overall the art is slightly above average for a DD comic and has improved by leaps and bounds since the starting strips. Trevor looks good in the style, but all the female figures look..... off. Your girlfriend character has very broad shoulders and a strong chin, it makes her look masculine. In fact, all of your female figures (aside from Samara) seem to have unusually muscled bodies.

I'm gonna throw in my 2 cents on this. The black and white strips look a lot better. I think its cause you're stronger in inking than shading and the line drawings bring out the best of you.

Some other things to work on: What about the hair in the last panel here ? Hair has to be shaded in a way that suggests hair. You're shading every texture the same way and its making your hair look like plastic wigs. Also, if youre gonna try to do realistic looking bodies, you should also spend some time mastering fabric folds as well.

So, in my view, there's two options to take the art in this strip to the next level. One is just to improve on drawing until you can pull of the realistic look (which may not take that long, at the rate you're improving). The other is to simplify/stylize the hell out of it. Although, like I said, it's already above average, just not at the level of great.

Writing: Writing is a mix of one shot gags and longer, humor and character oriented story arcs. I prefer the one shots. Here's my absolute favorite strip: link. It's a clever, unexpected joke. Unexpected being the keyword here, because a joke won't really make you laugh unless it betrays your expectations in some way. Take this one. If the rest of your audience is like me, then they've heard this "Oh god! I'm scared at something other than what's obvious!" joke a million times before. It has lost all shock value these days. Or take the whole Samara job interview series: We all know Samara is a murdering ghost psychopath, so it isn't surprising when she threatens murder as the punchline. It doesn't help that she does essentially the same thing three times in a row... If you're gonna build on a joke, you have to add a new twist each time. Something else these interview strips show (that Sandy Y already pointed out): too much dialog. It takes way too long to reach your punchlines. Build ups to jokes are essentially work for your reader, so the more build up you have, the higher the pay-off better be. There are good jokes in here, but if you have strips with a lot of build up and no pay off, it will discourage the reader.If youre gonna have a lot of build up though, you need to spread out the dialog a lot more to make it easier for the reader to digest.

The problem with the character driven strips is, for me, your main character lacks any obvious characteristics. I know he's supposed to be an asshole, I know, but I really didn't get that from reading the comic. You need to push it further. Right now he's just.... I dunno... average guy. He's not entirely interesting, so he's not a very good driver of these character arcs you've been focusing on recently.

Overall: Both the art and the writing are decent, but both flawed in some ways. The art is passable as is, but your approach to writing needs to be reconsidered (at least for my tastes).

Art: 3 / 5
Writing: 2 / 5
Overall: 2.5 / 5