And if you think your review was long, you should see my response:
djracodex wrote:Banners for the different chapters are great, though maybe some page numbers, or links to specific pages would be nice. That being said, each chapter is easily digestible, so it’s not a big deal.
If you click on the banners they should take you to a page with a list of the comics from that chapter. Or were you referring to something else?
djracodex wrote:Artwork and style evolves in all comics, but Inhumation suffered a bout of style-puberty to become the clean-looking comic it is today... For 30+ pages there was some serious stylization soul-searching going on, but after that it’s pretty smooth sailing (bonus alliteration, booya), and I believe to be unique to the comic.
Oh yes. I started Inhumation back in college, and for a long time I used it as a way to practice whatever style I was learning at the time. On the one hand it was a great way to learn, but looking back I would prefer to have a more... "homogeneous" archive.
djracodex wrote:As for the art in general, there was some anatomical offness (pg 64) at the beginning
Oh god, that page. That fuckin' page. I was perusing my site-stats the other day and I happened to notice that that page in particular received a few page views and my first thought was "Oh, no she noticed. Djracodex is reviewing my comic right now and she is looking at that horrible page.

djracodex wrote:When rooms are drawn they are very bleak and simple (a couch here, a shelf there, walls are pretty plain). Though, the market scene is filled with details.
That is probably my biggest shortcomings in art: my lazy sucky backgrounds (and why I felt so guilty criticizing Cuddly for the same). Glad to hear the flea market stands out as an exception though. That was pretty much my main goal with this chapter was to force myself to draw more interesting and detailed backgrounds.
djracodex wrote:As far as her ‘goth’ persona, behind the face tattoos and dark clothing she’s not very angsty (considering what she’s going through, she could be a lot worse, but she is literally going through hell). She seems to love meeting new people, tolerates her work, and get excited about cute things. She hasn’t really grieved about dying, she just sort of rolled with it.
This is partly because that's is how a lot of goths are, at least the ones I knew in my high-school. One girl I hung out with in particular (on whom Kame is loosely based) was very bubbly and outgoing despite always dressing in all black and being obsessed with monsters gloomy poetry.
Though I think part of it may also be me hating how when men wright women, they often portray them as balls of "omgEMOTIONS" who will cry at the drop of a hat. So I'm always hesitant to portray her as being overly emotional. I may have taken it too far in the other direction.
djracodex wrote:Let’s start with Kame and Claire arguing over what Kame should spend her hard-earned money on. I appreciated that even though this was clearly a parent-child sort of fight, it wasn’t handled like a bad episode of Seventh Heaven. Never once did I get the feeling that Kame was going to scream “You’re not my real mom!” and sob as she runs out crying. She does walk out on Claire, but how else to you leave an argument when you’re a teenager? This interaction not only reminds us that Kame is still an immature teenager, but that Claire has changed drastically from her former self.
Thanks, I spent a lot of time trying to figure out just how that interaction should play out. It's a relief to hear that it came off well.
djracodex wrote:When Kame sits down with Marcus and Theo (and eventually Claire, after some glaring from the Warden) and discuss what exactly the Wardens are, I got really excited. I wanted to know what the hell they were and what kind of system runs hell, and what exactly is the point of this anyway? Instead the crew just sort of muses on the subject and everyone had to go back to work. We’re on chapter 6 now, and I still am not really sure what else there is to hell besides working a greasy job. I’m not saying there needs to be a sit down session with the Rules of Hell, but I would think by now there would have been some more opportunities to show what’s going on. And where do the cigarettes come from?
This is mostly a matter of personal preference. I try to keep things ambiguous deliberately. Mainly I do it because 1) One of the things that turns me off the most in writing, and especially in comics, is when a creator hits you with a bunch of exposition showing off the Cool intricate expansive world they came up with. I get that there are people tho like that stuff, but I'm just not one of them. I sort of like not knowing exactly what's happening all the time. If I were going to make a really nerdy comparison, I'd say it's what makes MegaMan Legends 1 a much more interesting game than MegaMan Legends 2.
And 2) the characters don't really know the answers to these questions either. I like to have the audience limited to the same amount of information the characters have. That said I do plan to explain more stuff as the comic progresses, but only as it becomes relevant to the plot. So...
djracodex wrote:Along those lines, I hope the current altercation between the Warden and the creepy-shop-dude leads to some more world-explanation. What sort of shifty junk is this dude up to?
Don't worry, it will.

djracodex wrote:Point of View- Most of the time we are in the POV of Kame (or main characters around her), but there are 2 instances where it breaks and we get to hear what other no-name people are thinking. Once is when the Warder first shlorps Kame into the level of hell at the beginning, with the dude walking by, and the other time we hear from the disgruntled clerk. I'm pretty sure these weren't supposed to be read into, but Hell would be the kind of place where you would have to hear what everyone was thinking, and you had no privacy, but I'm probably thinking too much into it, lol
Yeah, nothing really much to them other than I felt like they should be there. Though the fact that you found them distracting/confusing is worth noting for future writing consideration.
djracodex wrote:Seventh Circle Flea Market- "Flea Market in Hell" Good band name. At first sight I was like, "I only remember the first level of hell in Inferno, I wonder if the 7th is Greed? That would make sense I guess," so I wiki'd it, and all I got was the seventh circle is violence. Maybe I just don't get the reference?
I really didn't put any thought into what I named the flea market, I just pulled a roughly hell-sounding thing out of my ass. I never in a million years would have thought that anyone would pay any attention to it. But the fact that you brought this up is kind of interesting, because it just goes to show you never know what readers are going to pick up on. It's not the first time it's happened to me either. I was showing an early drawing from the restaurant chapter to someone a few years ago and they assumed that "Satan Burger" was some dig at massive fast food chains, when really it was just, again, me pulling a name out of my ass.
djracodex wrote:The boys, Marcus and Theo. We don’t really know much about these guys, but Marcus appears to be the guy that adjusted all-too-well to hell, and Theo kind of keeps him in line. I would definitely like to see more of them.
Being that this is Hell, I would really like to see more scenery and imagination. I know it’s supposed to be sort of normal, and boring, but that doesn’t mean it can’t have some sinister/odd theme to it. The first glimpse of hell we get is Chapter 3, where there are just people chilling in a land of flames like it’s the mall. Pg 88 has a frame of buildings that look a little wonky (in a good kind of wonky way), I think more of that sort of feel would help define the world a little more.
You can get more of both of these things in the Mini-comic I did for the Boston Comic Con [/shameless plug]. The final version only exists in print, but you can check out an almost-finished version here.
LibertyCabbage wrote:That right there's Pom from the webcomic Reckless Youth. IV probably should've left a comment about it beneath the page so that it's slightly less bizarre.djracodex wrote:And what the hell is this guy behind the counter, and why does he look like that? (pg 78) (I really hope the answer is that he's some sort of lesser clerk demon)
Yeah, that was back from the days when CG was Keenspace and giving other people's characters cameos was all the rage.
So, thanks for the review! You pointed out a few things I never would have noticed myself. But I guess that's sort of the point, so cheers!
