Psst, link to your comic when posting a comic critique thread. We are a simple people at CG. We don't always think to click on the button down on the bottom. Make it easy for us.
Your artistic style reminds me a lot of
stain boy and other Tim Burton characters. An influence there, I think? The current comic got a little too bun-bun, but in general you have a good style. Sort of how Calvin & Hobbes might have gone had Calvin been a girl living with a sadistic uncle instead of loving parents, a Calvin whose imagination tapped into a vengeful evil place instead of a lighthearted mischevious place. It's got goth heart.
You will advance and improve artistically and creatively, but right now the thing dragging you back and keeping me from getting into your comic is the site. Writing and art are very imprtant, but you still have to SELL you strip with the way you display it, and right now you're not.
You have a bunch of stuff before you reach the comic that serves only to get in the way... including this line:
WARNING: You may be required to "scroll"...finally you can use that finger for something besides armpit diving!
You are officially irritating your readers now. You WANT the experience to be as seamless and fluid as possible. We want to see the comic
BAM! right when the page loads. A large banner on the main site is okay, but every page in the archive having the same crap to scroll past gets old. Making people do extra work to read your comic (and then mocking them for their trouble) is a surefire way to turn potential fans away.
The tagboard, as a general rule, is tacky in every archive page. I've seen it worked smoothly into the layout on a few sites, but it's not on yours. People can go to the front page to leave messages, clear out the clutter in the archives.
Also, the horizontal layout is fine. The vertical layout is also fine... But they don't seem to be employed for any purpose. I would suggest sticking with one consistently, unless you have a reason to change in a given comic. If you don't have enough room left-right, go with vertical. People don't mind scrolling, but a page that extends past the
right of the screen always obnoxious. It's one more speedbump in the way of an easy read.
Also, we generally will not want to navigate to the next page until we've reached the bottom of the current page - so moving your nav buttons below the comic will both eliminate some of the clutter up top and prevent readers from having to double-back and scroll all the way to the top again just to move on.
Finally, the background pattern should merely break up the blankness of the screen, not distract from the picture. You didn't make it pure white on black, so I'm guessing you were trying for this already, but making the pattern even darker will enchance the aesthetic of the site. I want to barely realize they're there until I actually look at them.
Zebra Girlhas a nice pattern which is used subtly, see how you like the way that works.
Read comics. Read many. See what aspects/elements of their site design and navigation wind up making you give up and not want to read them, and which aspects help to suck you into the comic and say
"oh, sure, just one more..."