http://www.drunkduck.com/Heaven_vs_Hell/

This is gonna be a crappy review, but here goes...

"Eh" on the art, but it's funny as all hell.

No suggestions (even on the art), because I think it works.

Told you this review would suck.

Later,
Chip

The only way I could think of to review this one was as if it were a real review in a magazine or something. I tried to do it the normal 'forum way' and nothing happened. And since Chip already wrote a review in which nothing happened, I had to do something else.

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"Heaven vs Hell" is, to some degree, almost unreviewable. The art is purposefully amateurish and the storylines are composed by an author who constantly informs the reader that "I wrote this page because I was bored" or "this page is part of a homework assignment; deal with it." (I'm paraphrasing to a certain degree here, but you get the idea.)

It's the truest kind of Slacker Art; albeit Slacker Art about angels and demons who alternate between "zapping" one another and more pedestrian activities such as drawing comic strips of their own, which (if it's possible) are even more crude than they strip they star in themselves.

Not that any of this is a bad thing -- "HVH" has one thing going for it, and that's a consistent voice. From daily gags to larger, more well-intentioned story arcs that often get interrupted by holiday greetings, non-sequitors, or the aforementioned homework assignments, the strip maintains a simplicity of dialogue and quick pacing that's easy to write off -- until you go out and read 100 other webcomics by accomplished artists with no sense of rhythm or punctuation.

Narratively nothing makes much sense, as most new characters are introduced visually on the page but only explained fully in the accompanying comments section. Once you get into the habit of reading both the strip and its ongoing commentary, the story becomes a little more cohesive, and also offers a window of insight into how the author's life mirrors the strip (intentionally or unintentionally; who am I to guess?) A particularly nasty laser fight between characters may be accompanied by a complaint about a school dance, or a flat one line:"I can't say anything at this point."

This relation between an author and his work is by far the most interesting part of the strip. Any attempt to analyze the "power of his art" or the intentions therein is rendered moot by the intense Wall of Slack that is HVH. Its humor is hit-or-miss, but the gold nuggets of comedy are found in scenes like a Falling Angel who realizes his predicament and says, "Well, this sucks," or an Angry God who yells at the audience, "I am Kind and Merciful! Deal with it!" Overall the host (pardon the pun) of angels, demons and assorted thingies who populate the strip are multitudinous and interchangable. This is the kind of comic that needs to live on the Web, with its ability to provide a forum for running commentary and even the occasional animated, eye-spinning cyclops demon (a genuinely freaky image that takes full advantage of the crudity of the software that designed it).

HVH is too experimental to bear proper judgement, and might be too weird to recommend for every reader. But it definitely has a clearer sense of itself than a lot of strips out there.

I think it is easy to underestimate the art in this strip. It is crude and plain, simple mouse-drawn lines without background or depth. But look again, because there's something there. Look at #14, second panel, the expression he catches with a simple line mouth and different sized eyes. Extraordinarily simple, but quite expressive.

The writing. It's wonderful, sometimes brilliant. #16, where the sucubus explains her origins, and her anger at Jesus, is simple, with great depth beneath. How many who suffered pleaded to a mythical man-in-the-sky, only to be disappointed? Do you really think they all get to heaven without bearing one hell of a grudge?

This is a very good comic hidden behind what only APPEARS to be a bad cartoon.

Hmmm.....

Let's see.

That is a very good comic, despete its simple drawing. at first, it started off as a 'joke', but soon grew into a story.

The drawing is pretty simply and enjoyable enough, and acts in accord with the storyline.

The storyline is simple.
The jokes are a hit-or-miss, since they doesn't always works.
Other than that, when one read that, doesn't feels like being a part... It's mostly just a quick-and-sketch reading.

Thus, that comic isn't for everone... it's just for thoses who likes simples things, who isn't confusing, and whom will not mind the simple drawing, or who needs a quick laugher.

Voice, in some cases, is more important than art. In a comic, however, they have to work together or else the result is merely illustrated prose. In "Heaven vs. Hell" the art and the voice work together: crude, smile-inducing, but not really engaging.

The art is, by any standards, simplistic. It is, however, perfectly suited to a story involving more gag-a-day moments than character development. We can tell characters apart quite easily, and although some more backgrounds would be welcome (clouds for heaven, perhaps?) they are obviously not needed to tell the jokes. The addition of color later in the comic is pretty, but isn't much of a change from the simple black and white style of earlier pages.

The jokes never made me laugh, but many of them did make me smile. In fact, the simpler jokes were more interesting to me than the story arcs, since the characters were shallow enough to make a gag but not a tale. Once the story slipped into some kind of drama with angels fighting evil I started getting bored. There is an over-reliance upon the general idea of demons as incompetent/dumb/secretly pansy (watching Disney movies stopped being a funny joke the second time it was trotted out), but the angels are actually pretty odd in their characterizations (poor mailman-archangel!). In other words, the short jokes held my attention longer than the stories, and the angels are more interesting than the demons. Perhaps the demons just need more work to make them odd, too.

By the end, though, my attention had wandered. Without a character for me to care about, or a series of jokes to keep pulling me along, I lost interest. Still, some good smiles in there.

I don't know how to begin but um... the good points I'd say would be that the comic is funny... the gags are genuinely amusing. It started out with no discernible storyline other than just a bunch of jokes-per-page and at the first arc where there was the 'assimilator' I had to grind through a bit because I was thinking "omg! storyline!" but then I realized that it was just a longer joke. The rest of the comic strikes me as jokes-that-can't-be-told-on-one-page. A joke I really liked was page 81.

The artwork seems to be part of the joke... it's a very simple, flat, 2D thing done on MS paint as the author said, and I'm guessing, with a mouse. I saw little to no improvement of the artwork from the first to the last strip but, the addition of colour REALLY helped. It doesn't look like the author is trying to improve or change his style either so, I suppose one could say that the comic is very consistent. Page 67 had some nicely rendered fire and I think it really added to the joke there although the author never really used it again.

The characters and their personalities are also very consistent.

All in all I found this an amusing comic with some humourous jokes.

Well, lets see, Heaven vs. Hell:

Dialogue: I don't completely understand what is going on, and I am trying, but I don't have any problem understanding the pages themselves. Your writing is great and straight forward, which is awesome for some readers like myself. I also didn't see any spelling errors or grammar errors, so all is good there. The jokes are very good, although some go over my head (honestly). Overall, very good dialogue.
Story: Your story is original. I'm certain I've never seen it anywhere else. Like I said before, I don't really know exactly what is going on, but I'm catching on slowly and the story is good. You can really bring in the readers with it.
Tone: Your tone eh? Well, it's really mixed tone. I sometimes think I'm catching a little sarcasm when it may be anger or vise-versa. Your characters emotions mostly give away the tone though, so it's all good.
Drawing: I'm not gonna lie, I really don't care for the drawing style of this comic. I really, really hate the jagged lines of the charaters, and although I have no idea if you can do anything about, I just really hate it. I rarely see any hands (but that's okay, hands are hard to do) and when I do, they're circles. A lot of the characters look the same, other than the change in hair styles. In some of your recent pages, I've noticed perspective, and that's awesome.
Colour: Well, you do colour your characters, and that's nice. There is no background which is probably why your comic never caught my eye. Background aren't always necessary, depending on the situation, but I think a background could help.
Layout: Your layout is easy to understand. Just read left to right, from top of page to bottom of page. Nothing wrong as far as I can tell here.

Overall... your comic's okay. It's hard for me to get into the comic because of the art, but if I look beyond that, I can find a good comic.

I will give an average of 3/5 from someone who has no right to review comics.

Art: Piece of crap, clearly not what Lizard focuses on. It is basically some lines, circles, and rectangles slapped together on eachother. However, this comic manages to be pretty good despite its low visual appeal.
Story: Okay, it's got a pretty interesting storyline and premise. Making Biblical content into an action/comedy comic is interesting indeed.
Jokes: Funny jokes are funny. You have used some pretty good ones at many times in your comic.
Tone: Generally humorous, but it can become pretty dark and serious at times. Usually, however, it instantly diffuses those with a "d'oh!" moment.
You generally have a pretty decent comic. It is very solid and satisfying.

I don't think I can really add anything new to this review thread, but I'll give it the ol' college try:

Heaven vs Hell has very simplistic yet expressive characters, which is refreshing in a media cluttered with artists trying to put too much unnecessary detail into their characters designs (myself included).

The lack of backgrounds can disorient readers, however it does force the curious to review previous pages or start from the beginning - which is, I guess, the intention of most web comics.

The color scheme is, like the character designs, simple and fitting. It works very well with the line art, and compliments the overall feel of the strip.

Things done well: Simple, easy to follow line art. No unnecessary details in characters. Simple, sitting color scheme.

Things to improve upon: Include backgrounds to establish setting.

Heaven vs Hell is a funny and yet offensive comic. If you are very religous I suggest that you do not read this comic.

Walrus
Heaven vs Hell is a funny and yet offensive comic. If you are very religous I suggest that you do not read this comic.

...Lizard is also religous.

Atom Apple

Walrus
Heaven vs Hell is a funny and yet offensive comic. If you are very religous I suggest that you do not read this comic.

...Lizard is also religous.

Yes, I follow the religion of Laziism. Basically, it's me doing nothing, and shouting "religious persecution!" whenever someone asks me to do something. ;)