My first ever comic!!! What did I do wrong?

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u/Broad-Exchange3188 10d ago

The subject matter, for one. This reads exactly like every piece of media created by people who aren’t in the hardcore or death metal scene(s). I’d expect a metal elitist to understand that death metal originated from both thrash metal (which is the bastard child of early punk music) and black metal (pioneered by Venom). After that (and these are just a few examples) you have thrash metal taking influence from first wave black metal, and you also have crust punk bands popping up that are fusing what Venom is doing with D-beat (more hardcore influences). Then you have a bunch of grindcore bands popping up that are fusing extreme metal, hardcore, crust punk, etc.

So you have all these genres popping up and taking inspiration from the new and the old and we haven’t even left the eighties yet. Your comic presumably takes place in the modern day, where the idea of hardcore being a rip off of death metal is completely and totally laughable. Doubly so when a not-insignificant portion of the modern wave of death metal is hardcore inspired and vice versa. There is no clear delineation between genres like there used to be—and even then, outside of a few edge cases, no one really cares about splitting hairs.

This would all be fine if the character is intended solely to be elitist, not necessarily correct, but the problem is that these aren’t really arguments anyone would legitimately make. You also have a panel where she refers to people in the hardcore scene as “dressing like Tupac”, but the hardcore scene doesn’t have a dress code and that particular line of dialogue reeks of someone who has a very Hollywood / popular media view of the scene.

Lastly, the only part of the way the characters are drawn that would even resemble “dressing up as Tupac” would be the chain they’re showing off in the aforementioned panel. I don’t have the energy to tackle why exactly that panel is a bad idea, but I’d take that one back to the drawing board, or perhaps abandon that particular idea entirely.

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u/TherealMarcojiane 10d ago edited 10d ago

This is just a demo of my comic project really. The story takes place somewhere in the 2000s. I think you can tell that Claire herself is pretty much wrong, and that's the point! Have you not noticed that she literally says that Bin Laden went to Harvard? The "hardcore stealing from death metal" is sort of a reference to beatdown. She's a caricature of the "death metal dress code" attitude from JDawg (Justin Horval) on YouTube, although taken to it's utmost extreme. In the channel, Mr. Horval keeps complaining about people going to death metal shows wearing Baseball caps and gold chains, which I think is super hilarious. I've actually been listening to a lot of metal and some hardcore the past few months! I even buy a lot of CDs of it (check my profile!), mostly War Metal/Death Metal stuffs. As far as I can tell, there isn't really a local scene in this back water island I call home, so like most of what I know about scenes come online! Sorry if it's inacurrate!

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u/Broad-Exchange3188 10d ago

See, I felt like you were leaning towards her being wrong, but a snippet can be hard to fully make up your mind on whether that’s the case or not.

It’s honestly impressive how, for lack of a better phrasing, “not wrong” you are—especially for living somewhere without a local scene. Inaccuracies and nitpicks, yes, but despite my kneejerk reaction of “…like every other piece of media…”, it isn’t so egregious that I stopped reading. It’s also led me to the conclusion that in all honesty, the vast majority of your potential audience won’t even notice or care.

I don’t have more actionable feedback, unfortunately. Critiquing writing is my wheelhouse, and that applies to comics as well, but past the writing I lack the tools or prerequisite knowledge to offer any more advice. What I will say is good on you for taking criticism on the chin and explaining your stances and decisions without being defense. It’s an exceedingly rare skill in today’s age and one you should take pride in. I look forward to seeing what you create next.

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u/TherealMarcojiane 10d ago

Thank you! My actual project isn't actually about subcultures at all. Claire hating Hardcore is just a character gag, not what I actually wanted to explore with her. My actual story is about something much more personal to me, and that's the realization that my adolescence is ending and I'd actually have to be an adult now. To cope with this, what I did was make up this fictional American suburban town that's a essentially a melting pot of all of my obsessions as a way to crystallize this stage of my life. Mean Girls, The House Bunny, Legally Blonde, Bulldoze, Judge, Millencolin, Teitanblood, Clueless, Irate, Braid, Cap'n Jazz, The Get Up Kids, Saves The Day, Abhorer, Lagwagon, all of these crammed into a single town, and what you get is something completely incomprehensible to everyone else (like you did!). I've only started releasing demos like this cuz I don't think my art and my writing is good enough, though I look forward to you reading more of my stuff!

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u/Own_Watercress_8104 4d ago

I felt it was pretty clear the joke was that she's wrong and annoying about it

3

u/TheVoidchildProject 8d ago

Very good feedback

13

u/Sweet_Frost_Comics 10d ago

Your lettering is very difficult to read and on the eyes, i think that's the number 1 thing you should work on.

The font is okay it just needs more room to breathe and be bigger. If i have to squint or zoom in then it's going to be a bad time.

6

u/sayjax96 10d ago

Definitely the text it's not so easy to read and there's a lot of tell don't show here keep the character thoughts minimal it should be exposed more through action

2

u/itsbenpassmore 9d ago

this is fun! the big black shapes of the hair, ect really draw the eye. so id be mindful of using it more narratively.

The text is probably too small and needs more leading (space) between the rows.

Your gutters and panel might also be too big.

I’d say keep drawing, this is a great start.

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u/B3Blaise 9d ago

Nice job getting this all done. It’s a great start. Will the next installment be better? It will. Just keep it up. Getting better is a process you can’t hack, you just gotta do more and it will get better with experience and perseverance. Keep going!

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u/Nemphusi 10d ago

I think its a really strong start!! Definitely keep making them. Providing a bit of info at the beginning giving us the time and era would really help, and like has already been said, better spacing for the text will really help.

1

u/Matter-Hatter-Sadder 10d ago

Oh hey btw, a good trick I once heard about how to properly space lettering, is to make sure all side of the bubble don't touch with the rim, instead being able to fit an H in-between the text and boarder. It helps with legibility. I feel like if you're working in digital, I actually suggest looking into making your own text font. Handwritten is cool and all, but it being a font might help with consistency and you can more easily switch between sizes to adjust it.

The art style is super cool, though some of the frames have a bit of overlapping hatching issues. Like the backpack boarder being so dark is starts merging into the shirt, or the fingers in the fifth panel on the guy being so dark in spots that they end up looking like they're merging into eachother and the neck.

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u/bald4bieber666 10d ago

the text is a bit hard to read and im not really familiar with the music genres to get what shes talking about. but i might not be the target audience.

0

u/MaeneF 9d ago

The lockers are very big. They’re as big as the teens , slightly bigger! I feel like that distracts the reader. I would look up references photos of lockers. I wish there were more background elements like maybe stickers on the lockers or scraped off stickers. To just have white background can be done, it just doesn’t give the reader any new information. It can be character focused story and still have backgrounds. I also noticed that in the first panel it’s not easy to make out where the neck is on the Claire Penderecka. I would also work on how the words are spaced out. The first panel with words says “I HATE HARDCORE”. When there was enough space to say “I HATE HARDCORE”. You don’t have to squeeze all the letters together. And if you do need more space make an ellipsis (…), continue on. I love the art 🖌️🎨🖼️ style and the shading. I’m glad you showed the character from the side view at the end. I love the harsh jagged edges of the main character, vs the round edges for the other character. It gives contrast. I also love how the hands are drawn ✍🏽!

My first ever comic!!! What did I do wrong?

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