Poll For WC #75: Epic Fail

[WildAces]

Critiques

Tudore- A well-framed story but it was hard for me to keep all the kids straight and the build-up to the punchline (for lack of a better term) seemed slow. The dialogue also seemed dis-jointed. Very poetic in the beginning and then very normal college kid at the end. I did not understand the line on P1-5: I took it to mean they had left frat row and entered a more posh district of nightclubs and swank italian restaurants. Not sure though.

Shaun- First, Disappointed you did not continue the LUX story. Topic seemed perfect for your world, if not the character himself. Second, I really loved this story. I loved the juxtaposition of his typical day at school with the dark secret of what he did. I could only think of minor tweaks I would do but they are unnecessary to the piece as a whole so why bother. Great job!

Red Fox- Page one has 7 panels and you want the first to be a large panel? Seems you would need a large piece of paper to handle all that. I loved the Novelty-Related Crimes Unit and thought it was a great set-up. I just wish the ending had more punch. They caught the Magician where Malone could not seemed a bit anti-climactic. Maybe the Magician could have turned himself in to add that insult to injury? Not sure that's any better. But I enjoyed reading it.

Cbikle- Always like your stuff and your sense of humor. Only critiques would be that Trader Bill's accent gets a bit too thick to read. And the ending was not as strong as some of your other stuff. But still, very strong story that kept my interest throughout.

[WildAces]

Reply to Critiques

Red Fox- Thanks. But don't get too attached to her current job. Prison doesn't look well on the resume.

Shaun- O.M.A.C. is the Russian version of S.W.A.T. I had a creative writing teacher berate me for using nunchakus in a feudal ninja story since nunchakus are a chinese weapon and ninja's are japanese. I was extremely pissed, but it changed my mindset about story-telling and I am now OCD about details. (So much so, I double-checked the origin of both items before writing this reply!) Seemed wrong to call them Russian S.W.A.T. and if a artist is working with me, he best learn to research things as well

Tudore- You've found the wall I hit every time I write one of these. How to get across everything about the characters, plot, and setting I want to portray in only five pages. Vespa SHOULD have been more apprehensive about turning Chalres from friend to lover. I would have loved to have stretched that 'Should she or shouldn't she' out a lot longer. In order to tell the larger portion of the story, I had to cut that apprehension out. I think this whole story could have been a full 24-page comic without ever feeling drawn out but alas. The nail file came from the thought 'what does she have to extract the jewel that's more delicate than a climbing axe'.

Cbikle- I am sorry it did not grab you. Was it just you saw the ending coming or you were not invested enough in the character? As I write Vespa and think about further adventures, I have to agree with you. This is not exactly comic book material.

Hmmm.

[cbikle]

Drunk Tank by Tudore

First off, I think having all the characters listed and their descriptions is very useful for the artist and I imagine it's done that way in most comic scripts that introduce new characters. Having said that, I don't think it was necessary to give that much detail to 9 characters who only have the one shared line of dialogue (unless of course you plan to use these characters in future stories and this story is just the 1st in a series).

This is essentially, a pretty simple story (2 vehicles leaving a garage, but the driver in the second vehicle gets pressured by his drunk friend into trying to race under the garage-arm and winds up getting his rear window smashed. The End.), but all the characters and their exact placement in their respective vehicles makes this somewhat difficult to comprehend on the first read.

The dialogue is pretty functional and I liked Dan's line about PA frats & Italian mixers as it conveyed personality to that character.

EDIT: Also, I don't get the "Drunk Tank" reference or why they were shouting it; is that a college thing ?

[cbikle]

The Putrefaction of Richard Mandrake

Not really my kind of story, but well-done nonetheless with good pacing. I can't really think of any relevant critiques right now.

EDIT: Thought of one - I felt the ending was a little predictable, but with page limits, I'm not sure what a better ending would be.

[cbikle]

Epic Detective Fail by Red Fox

Very fast-paced and funny parody of 70's cop shows/movies; personally, I would have liked it to be slightly more grounded in the real world, but that's not a critique so much as a personal preference.

Humor in writing is hard to pull off, especially in the comic book script format, but you did it. Nice job.

[Red Fox]

Tudore- Thanks for the read and crits! Chavez's line seemed awkward as I wrote it and reviewed it. I should have changed it. The invisible box may have been a little weak too.

Wild Aces- Thanks, man! Endings are always tough. I wanted the end to be the actual fail. Malone spent his entire career trying to capture this guy to avenge his Suzie's death. In the end, two clowns pull off what he could never do. I see your point about The Magician turning himself in and there's some comedy to play with in a scene like that!

Cbikle- Thanks a lot for the comments! I'm glad the parody element worked for you. As I was writing it I was thinking about how off-reality it was getting.

[Red Fox]

Shaun- The Putrefaction of Richard Mandrake

Boy, is Teddy one sick puppy. That dude's got some serious issues. They always seem to stem from a creepy mom or grandma!

It's always interesting being in the head of a serial killer, and you illustrate that nicely. I also liked his creepy dialogue, narrating certain events and coinciding them with the decomposition. Creepy.

It was tough for me to buy the fact that the teenage Ted pulled off this master murder so expertly. It might have made it more believable if Ted committed it more clumsily, thinking he could pull it off but making a mess of things. But that's just one way to go. In the end you did a great job in creating one sick individual.

[tudore]

@ Cbikle
Initially, the background characters had between 1-4 word descriptions, but I felt those were too vague, and so over-elaborated. I probably should have cut the cast from 9 to 5, and that would have helped. And "Drunk Tank" is just what they call the car.

@ Wild Aces
That dissonance is typical of college students, right? Capable of being very poetic/analytic, and profoundly crude/vulgar/dumb.

Thanks to both of you for the crits. Though I made an attempt to be clearer, I faltered with the frat/Italian line: Dan's looking forward to the food Sara's mom is making for them. As for pacing, I wanted to try to capture the defeat and exhaustion felt after a night of college drinking, and that seems to require going slow.

[Red Fox]

Hey Tudore,

As I re-read your script I realized that any confusion of panel descriptions just came from me not paying closer attention as a reader. They are quite clear. In fact, they are improving with each script you write! I think about your first script in a competition to now and this latest story is really told clearly and succinctly.

[Zepster]

@Red Fox
Thanks for the feedback.

I’m caught between the devil and the deep blue sea on the context thing, as invariably feedback highlights a lack of context when you leave it out. This is a consequence of working from a single story with the competitions, so I’m happy to live with the downsides as the additional feedback is always valuable.

The feedback on Majestic is quite useful too. I used this story to provide some depth to him as a character and show how he becomes the man he is when we see him in the main sequence. This particular story is set many years in the past and was one of his “Growth” moments, so I never intended his characterisation here to be quite in touch with the main sequence as he has a lot to learn from this point forward and changes over the years.

Many thanks for feeding back though

@Shaun

Majestic, in his mind anyway, got a little carried away with being gung ho. They’d successfully cleared a number of ships before this one and he got cocky. The end result was a colleague’s death and the subsequent loss of the other ships. He may well have been too young/inexperienced to understand that sh!t happens in war and it is easy for an objective outsider to know this.
The back flashes all contribute to the main sequence over time. The history builds into a significant thread of the main plot and you’re spot on when you suggest there is a greater shame there for Majestic.
Thanks, appreciate the feedback
@Tudore
Hey thanks for that. Yep, I should have worked on creating more emotional depth with Interface in particular. Infernus on the other hand will be returning to the main sequence and this is partially setup for his arrival and tension with Majestic. I’m trying to avoid the old Wolverine/Cable thing where both seem to have retroactive history with every main player in the Marvel uni and instead present the history before it becomes relevant in the present. The changes between then and now in terms of personality ( such as it was ) and outlook should hopefully make the reader wonder just what the heck happened to them in the interim period.
Thanks
@Cibkle
Thanks! Very happy to see that pacing in particular seems to be a consistent part of the feedback this time out. It can be a struggle with a 5 pager, particularly an action based one to get it right, so glad that it seems to be hitting that mark.
I’ll continue the research on dialog though