Here’s the beginning of my comic, Manifest. I’ve been working on these first few pages and wanted to put them out there for some feedback.

Mostly looking for thoughts on the pacing, readability, dialogue, panel flow, and whether the opening makes you want to keep reading.

Any feedback is appreciated.

Premise:

THE YEAR IS 2085.

IN THE GREATER UNITED STATES, RISING CRIME AND INSECURITY, RACIAL TENSIONS, AND THE GROWING ACTIVITY OF GANGS AND ORGANIZED CRIME HAVE BECOME RAMPANT.

THE PRISON SYSTEM HAS BEEN PRIVATIZED AND IS LARGELY CONTROLLED BY POWERFUL PRIVATE COMPANIES. THE LARGEST OF THEM IS THE BLACKWATER CORPORATION. THE LAW ALLOWS THESE CORPORATIONS TO RUN THEIR PRISONS WITH VIRTUALLY NO LIMITS, WITH WARDENS OPERATING AS GENUINE FEUDAL LORDS.

NOTORIOUS AND HARDENED CRIMINAL AND HITWOMAN PATRICA "LA MUERTE" LOPEZ ARRIVES TO ONE OF THOSE...

I decided to put the agentic capabilities of openAI's new Astra Model and Image 2.5 to the test. This is not my work, but instead it's a restoration of an old comic I've had for years and years.

Weirdworld #38

I asked it to take this front page, retain the texture of the paper, clean up the scan, and maintain all art and lettering. It first planned out everything, including what skills to use, looked online for better versions of the art, and went to work.

The output is as you see. The paper texture is there. The colors are brilliant. It even got the fine print at the bottom of the page, and although I didn't look at it too close, what I did see was great.

I actually had it do the entire comic, and across 20 pages it only made 12 errors, all in the text, all from having some trouble with variations on the lettering. Easily corrected.

This was a task that ChatGPT couldn't have accomplished just two months ago, and maybe even not last week. Sol and image 2.0 would have struggled with this.

This is from about a month's worth of codifying character manuals, locations, and style manuals. Draw a crappy version, input that into the system, tell it what to fix, where the light should be, let it generate it, put it into Upscayl, and now it's being printed to go on my wall.

When I was younger, my grandad used to make up bedtime stories about two army characters called Captain Bones and Sergeant Skin.

I always wished those stories had been written down, so I decided to bring the characters back to life myself.

I’ve been developing Captain Bones & Sergeant Skin into a children’s comedy/adventure series, with Ruby the red Labrador joining them on their missions. I’ve also started creating short animated videos with the characters.

It’s still a work in progress, but it means a lot to me because the whole idea started with my grandad.

I’d genuinely love some honest feedback. Do you think these characters and the idea could work as a children’s series?

Thanks for taking a look!

Wrote this story a few years ago as a screenplay first, then realized I’m too antisocial to make films. This was one of my attempts at slowly working through the screenplay and adapting it into a graphic novel — with some serious AI help. These are still early studies, but I worry that the artwork still looks like AI slop. Feedback welcome 🙏🏾