Hello there I write Straight Face Comics, My Partner Donald draws them. Before we went live today we did a lot of research on who was doing what and what it took to make it and the first couple of years grind that a lot of webcomics go through. Out of all the stuff out there Joel's was the most postive. I loved his pay it forward attitude on helping others realize their dreams. When I read his first penny-arcade forum thread, I knew if we decided to do a critique thread I'd want to do it here. So have at it you fancy bastards. My thanks in advance to anyone that takes the time to write something on this, I really appreciate it.

Thanks Mike! The original comic was actually drawn with only 3 panels and I decided I wanted the comedic pauses so we added two more, although I was shaky on whether or not to cut panel 2 after the fact.

Nice! I love the art style, and the chibi-Matt in the last panel cracked me up. Don's character is somewhat inconsistent between panels, though I realize Don is still settling into the routine of drawing you guys. I agree with Mike that panel 2 should go, and I'm not sure how I feel about breaking the fourth wall, but it's great otherwise. I subscribed to your RSS feed and can't wait to see more.

I agree about the "panel 2" thing. My *ONLY* other criticism is that on your link, the word should be spelled "sensitive". RSS feed bookmarked.

Great work man, made me laugh pretty hard...

"Potentially Damaging Content". Stupid web filter.

the art is pretty solid but I have a couple of crits on the first one. Like others have said, drop at least one of the pause panels. I think those pause silent panels can be a crutch that should be used sparingly.

In Panel 3 I want to read the "what first" The first character talking should have the left-most bubble. Even though it's higher up, we always read right to left.

The font is a little hard to read. Finding a great font is quite difficult. I switched 3 or 4 times at the beginning.

In panel 4 your characters get smaller as if they are further away but their couch stayed the same size, so it seems as if they shrank.

Cthulu looks great.

In the second comic you've got too much text crammed into bubbles that are too small. Keep your font size consistent. If they words you wrote dont fit, cut some of the text out or rework the panel so they can fit without dropping the font size. Your writing will usually get tighter if you force yourself to cut out 1/3 to 1/2 of the original dialog.

I would lose the drop shadow in the yellow box. Do go for "special" with text. Go for legible.

I know most of these crits are for your partner, so pass them on if you like. I think you're off to a good start.

Looks awesome dude. I'm not an artist (more like a nega-artist really- a few artworks have actually burst into flame at my touch), but from what I can see it looks really cool. Have fun with it.

Thanks for the comments guys. Will have a new one up for you on Thursday.

Wow. Maybe to soon, but still good. So whats the reason for the other one?

She played Bea Arthur's mom and was actually like, much younger or only a few years older than Bea Arthur.

Yeah it's younger we had a long conversation about that at work the other week. Why a bunch of 20-30 somethings are talking about golden girls while work--I'd like to say it was the comic, but it was well before that. I was about to use the word mediaphile here to talk about our levels of geekery, but I think that it would start to take on a whole new connotation.

It is odd how much we all know about Golden Girls....I'm going to go watch Murder She Wrote. Peace!

By that analogy, Castle is just Murder She Wrote for the young?

New comic up today, sorry guys no old ladies in this one.

I haven't put up a comic in awhile thought you guys might like this one considering subject matter: