The author of this comic is blond. And plays the saxamaphone.

http://www.drunkduck.com/Soapbox_Hill/

I'd love to give you a rewiew but I need to read the first 2 chapters first!

Chapters 1 and 2 are apparently being redone. I've read parts of this comic before and I remeber I lost track of exactly what was happening because the characters LOOK SO SIMILAR. Anyway I find it nearly impossible to review this because of the fact that it's missing its beginning.

Can't you guys just review what's there now? Is it really that hard?

I've always liked Sarah's stuff... it's funny, artistic... just entertaining.

Art: You're good with the art. You can draw pretty darn well. Coloring... not so much. But your pencil and line art does such a fine job on its own, it really doesn't matter. I bet you could do a REALLY nice job with a set of colored pencils. And Photoshop DOES have some nifty functions where you can color in things with lots of crowded lines (see Ian Jay), but I know you sometimes don't use photoshop so I don't think that helps.

Story: Well, I managed to only get snippets of the first chapter, so I dont, you know, have any clue what's going on. From what I'm seeing though, I like it. There's some REALLY gut busting things that you're writing. Sometimes it can get tedious in places, but for the most part it's good. I recommend writing things yourself, as opposed to letting certain trenchcoat-clad, sunglass-wearing egotistical villains getting involved. A heh heh. (Something tells me Kent's gonna mod this...)

Oh KAYY. We'll TRY.


It looks like this person is a pretty good artist from the look of their cover page and positioning of their characters. But comics is more that just cover art. Let's read on.

Anyway two of the characters look very similar. They have the same hair style in the front and don't have much on their face that seperates them. As seen here. Geez this text is hard to read...

Anyway since I don't know the story there's no harm skipping ahead a good number of pages to see what's up in the future. Your artwork and lettering and backgrounds in chapter 5 are much improved. But the panels feel constrictive. And it sometimes feels like the characters just aren't part of the background. When you do use color it REALLY helps.

Anyway you've got some nice art here but everything is just too convoluted for me to grasp. Characters are hard to tell apart. And there seem to be a lot of characters. I'm sure it appeals to others though.

I really like the artwork, but the text is kinda hard to read.

Part of the reason I'm redoing chapter's 1 and 2 is that Cyan and Ceasura look too similar. I can try a new font set, or larger text to make the pages more readable. Are the more recent pages any better?
There was a long time that I didnt work on the comic at all, I went on Haitus a month before DD died and then didnt work on it much the entire time the duck was down...no excuses though. I know the story's disjointed, another reason I'm redoing Ch 1 and 2. I shouldnt have even signed up to be reviewed yet. Sorry guys.

I can see there's a lot of effort in the comic, but when you're doing a B&W comic it gets really hard to tell all the characters apart especially when they're crammed up inside small panels. That was one (of the many) problems my comic had.

All I would recommend is less panels on a page or bigger pages. Cause the audience doesn't want the comic to feel restrictive. You're a good artist though. I mean, your character's positions don't look unnatural, and they're drawn consistantly.

Read all you had there. I'm conflused as hell. It annoys me that you skip the first two chapters in there. Who cares if you're redoing them; still have them there and replace the pages when you fix them. Ahh how do you expect to get more readers if the comic has no story foundation?

Art: Okay. Sometimes have a lack of backgrounds. There are characters that look too much alike. Drawing style, details, anatomy: good.

comic directing: Off. Some times you put two dialogue bubbles in one panal on one character and it's obvious in the words that the expression of the character is different saying this dialogue. It's cheap to shove dialogue where it doesn't fit.
http://www.drunkduck.com/Soapbox_Hill/index.php?p=10894 chapter4p7
"Ms. Badger, Please pull Cyan to safety!"
"Are you nuts?! Her magic repelling aura will turn me into a human!"
"My appologies I did not know that!"

this one: http://www.drunkduck.com/Soapbox_Hill/index.php?p=10569 chapter5p13
"I expect you to be gone by week's end."
"But what about the heathens this town's crawling with them."
The sheriff has her eyes wide open. Is she saying her words psycho like to Phoenix Perry or is her expession her reaction to what he said to her?

Story: What story? Your charaters lack modivation. They're just hanging out with vampires, fighting demons, have weird pasts that I don't get... I don't see where this is going. I don't know why all this stuff is going on. Why does this girl have a sword? Why is there a badger girl with them? What's with this vampire that randomly comes to their door? Why did the vampire go to their door in the first place?

One thing your story needs is for your characters to have wants, goals or something that modivates them to do something...
An example of this could be: guy likes girl. Guy goes to weird forest to pick flowers to give to the girl so the girl will like him back.

Phoenix had modivation. He wanted to give a town salvation in God. He wanted to stop the heathens. There. That's modivation. It's something to work with. Your main characters? Nothing! they are so dull because they don't have that!

You need to set your character's apart from eachother through their wants.

The only story that made any sense was the Phoenix Perry backstory. Dispite your characters complaining of that back story I was actually quite bored and frustrated with the main story.

To tell the truth I don't think you should have posted your comic up for review with your missing chapters. How do you expect a good review with your missing content. Who really cares if your first pages aren't so pretty as your style now if one reading it for the first time can't understand the story! This is my first time reading your comic and I'm disappointed.

Sigh.. maybe I'll just do the review over when those chapters return....

Jillyfoo, Thank you so very much! I will repost the first 2 chapters tonight and tomarrow and then replace the pages with the new ones as I finish them. I shouldnt have put SbH up for review with it as fractured as it is...

*EDIT*
Ok the Old Ch1 and 2 will become active tonight! (It took me awhile to load them in the system so i set them up to become active on Sunday. I thought it might take me longer to straighten out the archives.) One day, when I get my story fixed, I'll come back for Round 2 I guess.
-Neila

Due to school and other things I likely wont be redoing all of chapters 1 and 2, some day I'll finish redoing the intro for Chapter 1, but that doesnt appear to be soon. Thank you all that participated in this review.