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Ok, I just wanted to get a few opinions, cause this chapter was hella long but it's easily been my favourite to write and draw so far, and I think I stepped up my game a little so I'd like to hear a few thoughts. It's finally done and the new chapter's starting on Monday, which should be one of the last three of the comic.

My first worry is that my poor characters have been sat in a bar for like a year, real time. I'm hoping this hasn't been so bad since we've been all over the place technically, but has that felt like crappy pacing to anyone?

Which character's story was the most interesting to you? The last two were the most plot-y ones, and Komiyan's was really just a leader into this next lot of events. Did anything get a bit mixed up for you- I've seen at least two people saying they thought that the Komi imposter was actually telling them that story out loud, and that wasn't the case, but I might have been too subtle with it. I'm a bit worried that I made Casper's story too long too, I just dragged it out accidentally because Jade is really very fun to draw and silly adventure story shenanigans are the shit.

Artwise, I did a few new tricks, specifically with Jill's story and the end of Mink's. I've been trying to throw in a lot more in the way of backgrounds, and varying faces on newer characters (Mink's brothers, the brothers Jill killed, and the bad guys in both Casper and Komi's stories), and going to town with facial expressions. Did that show?

So yeah, if anyone can offer any opinions, critiques, etc, it would be really neat, I want to make this last big arc really good so we can end this whole thing with a bang

i have no critique, only praises)) hard to tell the favourite story, i like all the stories except Jill's (which doesn't mean it isn't good, just personal dislike for detectives).
what you've done so far is really great, Komi, i hope you'll keep it up.

I think with this kind of thing (everyone going off in there own direction) it was the best way to do it, and because you did do drawings of the events (instead of just, say, haveing people talk about) it wasn't really an issue.



They where all interesting for different reasons, but i would have to say my favourites was Caspers, for the hair


You already answered that one yourself


It didn't actually seem that much longer then Jill's while reading it, nostly because it was so entertaining


Definitly



Literal bang, or metaphorical bang?

Disliked Jill's cause detective stuff is... meh? But it was decent. (Bear in mind that it could be my utter loathing for Jill speaking.)

Gort & Mink? Attack of the Spiritual turd was interesting, and making fun of Posh McPoshpants.

Komi's and Casper's were the best.

OMG Komi did you just use "hella"


The San Fransisco Bay plague has spread even further! Muhahahahaahah!



But I liked this chapter. My only critique is that I wouldn't have told Komi's story and blacked out at the end to "oh I jsut got the message and came back". I probably would have had a story for the impostor setup, where the reader finds out that the story is told by an impostor very subtlety. But all in all, good show!

That's what happened, though. I couldn't have made it any more subtle since it's already gone over people's heads anyway I was hoping the bracelet in the final panel of the last update would make it all clear but it was too small a detail..

I thought it was pretty clear what happened.


I think he meant to have the imposter actually tell the story, and subtly reveal that it's an imposter.

I really liked the chapter Komi, your worry about people not picking up the Komiyan thing you shouldn't be very worried about. As with any story webcomic, it reads better as a whole. I've just re-read the chapter and honestly I feel dumb for not realizing sooner something was up with Komiyan.

http://darkencomic.com/d/20080320.html
http://darkencomic.com/d/20080501.html
http://darkencomic.com/d/20090216.html


Not to mention how distant Komi was in all the discussions. Rolling his eyes, standing pretty far away from the group, the evil eyes. If you were updating this daily (yeah right) people would have probably been able to pick it up a lot faster. But with how you update people are more excited to read the latest page and be happy over that.

So trust me you did well in the foreshadowing.

Out of all the stories I didn't like Jill's as much, but that's more because those type of stories are not my forte. I still did enjoy it but if I had to rank em it'd be at the bottom.

Now for stuff I really liked:
Third panel is full of awesome, I hope to see a Jade/Casper cop action thriller in the near future!

Minknarperadnacles and the awkward family dinner both in Mink's story.

you all suck, Jill's story was great!!!!! Don't listen to them Komi.

How could it be great? She's still alive...

My personal favorite was Casper's story, mainly because he's awesome.

I liked Jill's story, but in hindsight I think I'd have prefered if it were a bit less "Here's what happened", and gave a bit of dialog et cetera. I'm not saying that it fell into the realm of "Telling not showing", but just that it was nearer the line than the other stories, as it had the entire thing explained by Jill.

I understand that the explanation by Jill was mainly because she -was- telling the story, and it was to help with the whole, "guess the murder" thing, but I think it detracted a bit from the overall story.

It's cool, I was giving the 'illustrated novel' type thing a try. I couldn't have made it more then 8 pages without imploding though, I miss my dialouge bubbles too much otherwise..

Yeah, I missed the dialogue bubbles too. That's pretty much the short version.

Well, did they still think that by the time the story was over (I felt the second to last comic cleared that up pretty well). If you wanted them to know from the beginning Komi wasn't telling the story then yes, that was hard to discern. But honestly not a bad thing, so long as by the time it is over we realize "Oh shi-".

The new way you draw facial expressions might seem a tad unrealistic but it does a far better job of conveying emotions. Though so long as you don't go all anime/saturday morning cartoon on us (massive buldging eyes, teeth suddenly becoming sharp and pointy, so on and so forth) or in the opposite direction with less variation (planks are no fun) you're fine. Find what you are happy with.

Personally I like what you did last chapter.

Also



This. Lets kill them all and dance on their bloodied corpses.

That said, Casper's story was not too long. I actually enjoyed it the most. Jade is fun. Picking out a second favorite from the other three is hard. I loved the humor in Mink and Gort's story and the way each of them had their own little versions (hardly original, but a stock that almost always amuses me when done right). I liked Jill's and Komi's due to their plot twists and the mystery of it. Komi's might have been more enjoyable to the fan base due to being a bit more involving with the other characters (where as Jill's story could have been left out all together. Casper's at least involved Jade). However the way you wrote Jill's story wasn't bad. It reminds me of Simon "Needs more Grimlock" Furman (who often narrates his comics) and while not wholly original it, plus the septa, made it an enjoyable read. Komiyan's story however hit me from left field. I wasn't expecting the twist at the end inspite of repeated foreshadowings, and even when other people figured it out (as seen in yonder thread) I denied it. Though that is also because I read lots of things with red herrings (and love misleading like that in my own story telling). So for me, the big reveal of voodoo drow was kind of a snowball to the ear for me. Which is a good thing.

Casper's was my favorite overall, mostly due to he and Jade being very high on my "Favorite Characters" list, plus all the spy-infiltration and Indy-esque hijinks; the Robot Buddy and the exploding cop show climax were just icing on the cake. I enjoyed all the rest equally, as they all had good and bad points:

* Jill's was an intriguing mind screw but it felt slower and more ponderous than the others.
* Gort and Mink's was good for the interactions especially once Lyam and Vargo were introduced, but beyond that and the Nightmare Fuel in the scrying session - BLEUGH - it was kind of meh.
* Komi's, surprisingly, was my least favorite... until the end, where his odd mostly-out-of-character activity and snarkiness during the others' stories made more sense. But the rest of the story was kind of blah.

Casper's though, at least for me, was the only one that was pure awesome all the way through. Though I will give you points for sheer creepiness in Mink's vision.

Mink got tentacled. D= It doesn't get much more creepy than that.

And not to derail the thread on a shitty movie based on a just as shitty book, but I take it you saw Twilight based on your sig. Do be careful about that.

A friend wants to loan it to me, with a Rifftrack.

ahahahahahahahaha

twihards apparently get very upset when you break the news that twilight uses vampirism to talk about sex without dropping the dreaded naughty "S" word

It's like MST3K! I want more!

I've seen the movie but not all of it, but I read about as much of the book as I could stand. I have gotten into The Dresden Files as a form of Brain Bleach though so it's not a total loss.

[/hijack, sorry Komi]

Well, the guys that did MST3K do the Rifftrax

The Battlefield Earth, Star Wars and Harry Potter ones are amazing.

Oh, I didn't get that Komiyan is still someone else. I was under the impression that he too was telling what the comic was showing, and that the woman who wanted to look like him was going after some other people who thought of Komiyan as a friend. Or at least not an enemy to be killed on sight. So before coming here I felt that the last story lacked a conclusion.

As for which stories I liked the best, I guess that'd be Casper's and Jill's. Action and a murder plot sure beats family dinner at the dragon mansion. I guess cleverly infiltrating the protagonist's band of villains also beats the family dinner, though just barely. Because aside from the repercussions, what actually happened to Komiyan wasn't that interesting.

I totally missed that, but it was quite plain to me that a switch had taken place.

Overall, I think I liked Casper's story, probably because I like him the best anyway. The others were also interesting. The user-participation bit with Jill's arc was a clever move. ( :

I'd be a fool to debate the quality of art or storytelling. All were superb as usual. But, t

The pacing, however... this is probably more of an issue with rate of updates, predictability, and the lack there of more than how quickly the story would progress with each update, but I'll be honest and say I ran out of patience stopped reading for a while towards the end of Komyian's Story. That and, I did feel kind of confused at one point. The transition from Komi's story to back to the main group in real time being told nothing happened took so long I'd forgotten how the conversation began and the dialog there made me to a double take. Nothing happened? He just got done telling... Oh, right.

Maybe I just missed some hiatus notice, but when cleaning out my list of webcomics, Darken went into "dead and/or comatose" bin. Normally it would sit on my keyboard's instant favorite's panel, but I'd even forgotten about the comic entirely until I saw an add for it on a Keenspot add. I, of course, am glad for the reminder and plan to follow Darken once more. Futher, I apologize if this sounds like petty complaining over the update schedule more than anything else.

Other than that, the last chapter was very well done. The background art was definitely noticeable, and seeing each of the characters in their own unique elements (Mink & Family, Casper's Yuan-ti adventures, Jill's espionage, and Komyan... getting pwned) was really worth while. I liked Casper's story the most, followed by Mink and Gort's escapades among the Blue Dragons (almost wish this was was longer, to be honest), and finally Komyan. Jill's story was well done too, but just isn't my thing personally.

I'll probably like Komyan's more when there's some resolution to it, which seems to be coming soon. In any case, I'd consider Chapter 18 success.

The dragons will be back! I liked them far too much. And I'd love to do another story the adventurey style again with Casper and Jade, I might do it for a convention booklet or something.

As for the updates, the comic hasn't ever hiatused, I'm just unable to keep up this style and quality and keep things regular. Every now and then I go through my old archives, and wish that I'd updated less but taken more time on the art so it could be something I'd be proud of, instead of cringing at pretty much every page. I really wish I could balance both but it seems sort of impossible, and I'm really sorry about that I completely understand why it would make someone forget about it, I try to do the Spot newsboxes when something new and significant has happened to remind people Darken exists

Probably the best thing to do is come back every month or so, and read it in chunks, or bookmark the RSS feed and heck the updates as they come.

Yeah, that's what I do. With pretty much every comic honestly. I find it works much better even on ones that update on a schedule like Dr. McNinja. That way you get a good serving of it and it feels very satisfying. It also allows artists to focus on art. Because we all know what happens when people focus on updating instead of on crafting a good product.

I am going to laugh my ass off if I just got unintentionally pwned by that fellow I linked to having cleaned up his act thought. TBH I haven't even looked at his comic since I left his forum as mod.

On that note, this the same Necris Omega from the keenspot forums?