deep dish peat moss posted:

I have gone through a whole lot of different fineliners and black pens to see how they all work

Smearing is easiest to avoid through paper choice in my experience. It depends on what you're doin' exactly and what kind of drawing you like and what you want to do with it but I am a big fan of Legion papers. You can get a sampler pack of small pads of their papers for pretty cheap, this one is all of their Stonehenge line which is made with watercolor in mind and therefore very absorbent, so it should minimize smearing. But it's also a thicker, heavier paper more like construction paper so keep that in mind.
https://legionpaper.com/artist-pad-collection

They also have a line of treeless paper called Yupo that I absolutely love for many things (it's the only 'paper' that liquid chrome actually works on!), but it is entirely non-absorbent and therefore will smear like crazy unless you let it sit for several hours to dry

Not what you're looking for because these are super smear-y but I really like Marker pads like these from Canson:
https://en.canson.com/artist-series/pro-layout-marker
It's a very thin very non-absorbent translucent paper that just looks great w/ black ink, and if you use markers (of any kind, not just copics or whatever) they blend so incredibly well because of it being translucent, it's amazing.
They in fact smear so much that drawing on them taught me how to be careful about smearing so (it's just unavoidable sometimes though)

Pen-wise one thing I've noticed is that pen quality seems to vary from lot to lot, sometimes I buy a pack of pens that I usually love but they all dry fast or have brittle nibs that break or whatever, so YMMV, but I would suggest Pentel Pointliners, they're very light which makes them feel kind of 'cheap' but they're not cheaply made, the nibs are good, the sizes are consistent, and most importantly for your purposes they dry fast and have minimal smearing - I use them specifically because you can go over them with alcohol markers with only the most minimal smear. I tend to have minimal smearing with Microns too which are like the go-to workhorse of fineliners and black ink pens, they're the best bang for your buck and very cheap, there's nothing they're bad at and overall they are above average at most things, you can get them anywhere.

But maybe also try out acrylic pens like Posca, I love drawing with black poscas and it's a much deeper black than you'll get out of ink pens, plus acrylic dries super fast and therefore doesn't smear like ink does. The only real downside here is that they don't get any smaller than 0.1mm and you need to pump them occasionally (just push them against something to depress the nib) and shake them to keep the ink flowing.

Here's a deep dive into different fineliners including side by side comparisons in different situations which I found very helpful, it's where I found pointliners:
https://www.pullingers.com/what-is-the-best-fineliner-pen

Staedtler pigment liners (NOT the triliners which feel very cheap and have weak flow) are probably my favorite fineliner overall and do well with smearing (but not with copics), as well as having the most durable/well constructed pens and sturdiest nibs imo.They at least used to be much more expensive than the competition but maybe that's because I was getting them individually at an art supply store instead of in packs from Amazon

I have literally hundreds of pens, maybe even thousands at this point, someone send help

e: Also drawing in a dry environment helps with smearing! The faster the ink dries the less it will smear. Turn on a fan or something if possible.