Before you post

Hello, I'm new here! I'm seeking a review of my webcomic, it's a new one so there aren't a crazy amount of pages!

http://asystemofsolares.webcomic.ws/

There it is. It would he helpful if you also reviewed the writing as well as the art if you would be so kind!

Thank you for your time.

Since you seem to be interested some story feedback, I'll jump in there and leave the artwork to the many members who are way better at that than I am.

You seem to have constructed a very rich mythology for your comic, which is a very good thing! However, I fear that you're trying to do too much too soon. A glance at your characters page reveals a cast of something approaching thirty characters, and there's not enough at the moment to make them truly distinguishable from each other besides their archetypal planet, constellation, or alchemical sign.

I think this is a common pitfall of comics that choose a Zodiacal theme, because it's such a complete framework that the temptation is to simply slot characters into a predetermined place in the established system. But astrology speaks to archetypes and generalities, and to make an interesting story you need to deal in specifics. What will make a character unique and engaging is the way in which they stand out from the reader's expectations. Character contrast is a basic element of conflict, which is itself the basis of drama. Right now I don't see a ton of it that can't be predicted from the astrological system that seems to be the core of your story's workings.

For starters, there are too many characters to keep track of in the core cast. If there are really thirty mission-critical characters it's going to be impossible to really identify with and care about any one of them. That's already apparent from the fact that you switch between them so rapidly over the course of the first chapter - you're trying to give screen time to too many different people, and they all seem more or less the same, and as a result you're limiting yourself to more or less a single dimension to each character in the ensemble. That's flattening out the dynamic of the whole story.

I would like to see future chapters zero in on a main character, one with many dimensions to them. What is the landscape of their inner life? Do they see their friends as conforming or do they see themselves as trying to live up to a standard their world-system imposes? What are their struggles? What are their thoughts and hopes and dreams beyond the archetypes that dominate them?

I think you have ample leeway to do this within the story framework you've established. However, I think it will require a little restraint on your part, to really cut away the wood and get into the essential core of the story you're trying to tell - and not the plot, which is in service to that, but the real philosophical center of what you want to explore in this story. If you can get at that and focus in on the character you think is most capable of guiding the reader to it, I think you'll move the story very strongly in a sustainably interesting and engaging direction.

Thank you for your in depth reply! I agree the cast is severely bloated, but I think you will be happy to know that no, all of the characters there are not main characters! The main characters are indeed unit Astro and you'll get real up close and personal with them as time goes on.

However I don't think the comic will ever single out a single character and follow them around from then on, since that's not what the comic is about. It's about groups. So choosing one single person to focus on forever would kind of be out of character for the comic as a whole. So unfortunately that's something I can say won't happen.

But overall, thank you very much for this review. My writer and I have considered what you have said and are working on applying some tweaks where necessary.

Thanks for stopping by! I really enjoy your art for this. The character designs are interesting, and would love to see a little more of the world these characters live in. I hope there'll be a little more activity outside of the classroom in future pages so we can get a sense of the society and culture and how they've shaped their environment. But even in what we've seen, a lot of the background trees and furniture look very mundane and earthly compared to the cool alien character designs, so a little more attention to environment would be cool to introduce in future arcs to really make your world engaging.

Like Mr. Average, I'm a little confused keeping track of all the characters. As a fellow big-cast-comic, I definitely know how hard it is to manage everyone, and hate having to put certain characters on the shelf because it takes so LONG to get back to them in webcomic time. But I do think it's a necessary balance to try to figure out so you don't overwhelm the reader.

Sailor Moon is a good example here, which also has the same big-cast-of-solar-system-characters to introduce. Naoko Takeuchi started by introducing the leader (Sailor Moon) first. We met her, we got to know her alone, and she carried quite a few of the initial story arcs. We gradually met Mars and Mercury, and spent some time getting to know how the three of them worked together. We then meet Jupiter and Venus, but after that, just the five "inner" planets carried two whole seasons. But note that even in the later seasons when we met Uranus, Neptune, Saturn and Pluto, they didn't ALL show up to every monster-of-the-day fight! Instead, they formed a few "units" that could be utilized depending on the scale of the challenge or focus of the episode:

• Sailor Moon + Tuxedo Mask and Chibi-Moon
• Sailor Moon + Mercury, Mars, Venus, Jupiter
• Sailor Moon + Sailor Neptune + Uranus
• Sailor Neptune, Uranus, Saturn, Pluto
• Sailor Moon + Sailor Star Fighter, Maker, Healer
• EVERYBODY (that's when you knew the stakes were super-high!)

Even if you don't want them to meet gradually like the Sailor Moon example, I would look at your characters and see where the natural pairs/trios/larger groups start to fall (Mars/Venus is obvious right now, but the rest don't seem to have particular attachments to one another). See what you can do to highlight their specific dynamics and places in the team; the rest of the group can be there peripherally, but really focus on the challenges and mood of this "unit". Then incorporate them into the bigger picture when their skills and perspective are relevant to the situation.

Hope this helps!

Thank you for your input as well! Oh don't worry, these characters aren't going to stay in classrooms forever, that would be dreadfully boring and even I wouldn't want to draw the same backgrounds over and over.

you bring up a very interesting point about the background elements, and incorporating more futuristic designs. And I think that's something I could consider. Part of the reason I decided to make them a bit more earthly is so they read more easily to the audience, rather than making floating furniture everywhere. My fear is that I may go too overboard with it and end up making so many weird contraptions that people don't even know what they're supposed to be.

The nature elements are actually story important to stay as they are, but I can put in some fictional plants and the like in the BG just to balance it out. ;P

Thank you very much for stopping by!

Hi there, aSystemofSolares!

I'm just popping in to clarify a few points in regards to the above critiques.

To summarize, Mathieu let you know that your cast is too big. Not "may be" too big, is too big. And that the result of having such a large cast is that your readers can't remember who's who, never mind that your readers won't be able to connect with your characters, because there are too many to develop as real characters on screen. Delphina demonstrated some techniques to adjust for that specific issue using Sailor Moon, and also let you know that the lack of backgrounds suitable to your chosen time/place is definitely something that needs work, or your readers will lose immersion. I do not think strange plants will suffice. If your comic is set in the far future, but looks like the present, this is not a small problem.

While I realize as a comic creator that these are two critiques that hit immediately at what I'll call "core problems" with an in-progress work, I'm going to ask you not to take what they say lightly. To fix these on-going issues will require a lot of work from both you and your writer. If your goal is to approach your comic as a critic yourself (rather than as a fan), these are not critiques to ignore.

If however these kinds of core critiques are not something you are interested in receiving, could you please edit your first post to let folks here know exactly what you'd like critiqued? For example, paneling, or expressions, or slang, or word balloon structure? Art and writing are widely encompassing. We are very happy to focus on areas that you want to hear about. We're not here to tell you what kind of story to make, only how to improve in the areas you want to improve in.

But please don't ask for critique and then not accept it when two very veteran comic creators gently explain your core problems. Perhaps you don't mean to come across that way, or you genuinely don't understand why these issues brought up are real problems, or you need some time to process what has been said. That's fine. That's cool. But when your reviewers agree on certain things, and you disagree, this usually indicates a need to step back from the emotional attachment to a project and re-evaluate.

tl;dr: Make the project you want to make, but don't ask for critique you don't want to hear.

Hi there!

I'm sorry if you think I am deflecting, But I assure you I am not. I agreed with the critiques and am discussing with my writer on how we can fix them.

For instance, Delphina's suggestion on focusing on smaller groups/pairs was an amazing idea, and one that I am definitely using!
The only reason I disagreed With the idea to focus on a single character was because it would go against the entire theme of the comic. So Delphina's suggestion was one that helped to solve the issue with the cast, without losing what I wanted the comic to be about.

These critiques I am taking to heart, and it's making me think very heavily about my comic in general. Perhaps my responses were misleading in that way, and I'm sorry.

Sorry for jumping in, but I didn't think aSystemofSolares was being dismissive? They agreed the problem was there, and the only disagreement I could find was that they didn't want to use one of the suggested solutions. They didn't comment on the other suggested solution, which was to focus on couples/trios, which I don't really see as a dismissal. I thought "I guess that's the approach they might take?" And even if they found a different approach that wasn't suggested here... (can't imagine what that would be in this situation, but hypothetically) I don't think that would be particularly dismissive, considering they acknowledged the problem?

Again, sorry for butting in! I've been stalking the critique threads to learn from them, and this surprised me a bit. I thought the back-and-forth here was a good, healthy conversation XD;?

Hey guys!

I think I'm just going to end the thread here, since this has been getting off topic and the direction this thread has gone is really starting to bum me out. it's sort of killing my mood to draw right now and that's not a good thing.

So I'm going to end it here. I may or may not delete the thread in the future. I hope you all understand.

That's totally understandable! I'm sorry, it looks like there may have been some crossed-wires -- there's definitely something to be said for how tone is perceived in written internet posts, and I think some intent here may've landed on the wrong side of that, perhaps on both ends. I can say with certainty that none of us here meant to bum you out or put you off of your comic. I do wish you and your comic well, and please do what you need to do to stay productive. Good luck!