The use of Blogs as a comics delivery tool does seem to be catching on. I think it makes lots of sense, at least until WCN is ready.

Ok, so I'm a little torn writing anything in the way of review for a strip like The Citadel.

The creator (He is named either Thomas Meade or Eduardo Moran or both. This too was difficult to sort out. ) is obviously new at this. When I first stumbled through the archives I didn't enjoy it. I found the stories hard to follow. The attempted mix of homage, humor, and violence also did not succeed. In fact, it failed miserably. The layouts were almost incomprehensible from setting to dialogue; I had trouble figuring out what was going on. That said, the most recent four pages are a marked improvement. They sport a more simplified story-line and the humor largely succeeds. The layouts and lettering are still sloppy and I'm no fan of the artwork (it just needs to evolve a bit), but overall the strips are much better than they were.

I really was ready to pan this one. Instead, I'll offer some advice: Stick to the smaller story-line. There'll be plenty of time to have twenty different characters battle to save the earth once you've gotten good at dealing with two or three. Meanwhile, more focused stories involving a couple of characters will help you develop your story-telling abilities. This seems to be the direction you're heading so good. (Of course, the next page coming seems to be a mass demon battle so feel free to ignore my advice and go wherever the hell you feel like.)

In the art department, having to worry about only a few characters will help you gain practice drawing the same character in a variety of positions, angles, situations. At some point, you should think about adding some blacks to your pages. Use them to guide the viewer's eye. They'll help things to stand out. Another  thing that might help you is layouts. On More Fun and Journey Into History: Isle of Demons, I do small layouts for every panel of every page. Most of the time, it takes me three or four drafts to get just the right angle, pose or scene. Your pages look a lot like first draft.  As a strip, The HB comic-blog is a bad example because they are purposefully drafts. You can often see the erased lines and sketch lines beneath the darker ones. That's intentional. I've done it for a couple of reasons. First, the strips need to be drawn quickly. I usually post upwards of thirty panels a week. Second, I'm dealing with a very limited palette of images, the two ends of a pencil. Even with HB though, I try to make the pencil live with thick, thin, dark and light. Your line could benefit from more attention to weight and value. It would benefit much more if you'd go through some sort of draft process.

Most importantly, keep at it. Web-comics may pop up every day, but almost as many are disappear. As a benchmark, I'd be willing to take another look at your work a year from now if you've kept at it.

Oh, and feel free to ignore my advice and improve in your own ways. I'm really not trying to piss people off with too much advice, but I wish someone had given me more at an earlier age. When I dragged the first remnants of a portfolio to a convention twenty years ago, the only worthwhile advice I got was, "Draw 100 heads for every body." The rest I don't remember so whatever you take from my rambling is fine with me.

Thanks for submitting the strip. Please keep them coming folks. I'm running low on submissions.

(I have stopped playing the top-list games because I never really had any interest in them. I played for a while because I thought people would find my strip through them. Instead, I concluded that people find new strips through boards and other people's rec's. So either people aren't willing to recommend journeyintohistory.com or I was wrong about the top list's ability to drive traffic. I haven't posted in too many message boards lately, so maybe That's to blame. Then again, maybe I've reviewed every strip on the web. Ha!)

-Bob Stevenson