Referencing is never cheating. I bet you could draw this better now without the comic than you could before you had the comic. Referencing and tracing both give you a better feel for the curves of a character or style. This piece is great, anyway! I think this is awesome, and I bet the curse mark took forever!
Thank you very much! ANd you are right, I think the pages of Inu Yasha manga I drew and posted here helped me draw him in my own style too, Now I'm going to try to do Mugen from Samurai Champloo- there's like ONE fanart of him on deviant art and I haven't even checked this site yet
Anyway, thank you for the FB!!