New around here - intro + crit needed!

[Chris2.0]

Hi all...

Greetings! A fellow writer this way cometh!

Been writing comics for years, but only got really serious about getting a comic done recently!

But in any case - here's a story I wrote a while back that I'd appreciate a crit on? It was supposed to be part of a "Super-Hero Horror" series of stories I was writing, but it's the only one I finished... And it's more depressing than horrific!

Any and all crits shall be welcomed!

Anycase - here goes!

(Looks like I can't attach a Word doc, so here is the copy&paste edition!)

Superon - the last son of a dying planet

STORY BY CHRISTO VAN WYK
ART BY ...

ALL CHARACTERS © CvW


Synopsis:
Start w/ the classic Supes origin tale & then go on, showing his adventures – growing up on a farm, his best friend going evil, his parents dying, his 1st day in Megapolis, up to his death vs Armageddon & he dies… He comes back and has more adventures, but it's all so overwhelming! The major twist at the end - all his adv are in VR, he never actually set foot on Earth - died alone & in space... The ship’s AI just wanted him to die in peace...



Surroundings:
Takes place from his planet, to the farm, to the city, back to his planet…


Character Descriptions:
• Superon – Kial - make it an amalgam of the classical Superman archtypes – Supes, Shazam and even Sentry. Blue sleeveless costume with V motif in front formed by lines coming from shoulders down the chest. No belt, no briefs, no boots – costume covers his feet as well. Cape is a black darkmatter fabric – can expand and contract as needed. Contrasts with the luminous V shape on his chest. Longish hair and grey eyes.
• Lian Lee – Asian chick with the hots for Supes, reporter with the Globe Daily.
• Ares – Childhood friend of Superon – freckles & make him a Archie Andrews lookalike.
• Rory – childhood girlfriend…


Notes:
• Caption-over of events and percentage of life support left... Caption of the rocket is in Red, captions of people and “voice-overs” are Blue. Superion’s captions are yellow.



Script:

Page 1

1/ Start w/ the classic Supes origin tale – show a baby in a rocket – and his parents around him. The rocket looks like the last spaceship in Planet of the Apes...
The mother activates the AI and it runs a self-diagnostic.

Red Caption (All captions on the right of the panel, unless otherwise noted) – Running self-diagnostic. All systems online and functional.

Speech - Goodbye my son... I hope that my calculations have been correct and your ship will find Sol3 intact.


2/ Shot of the rocket taking off from the building, his parents looking on...

Red Caption – Power cells 101%. VR edu-vironment in standby mode.


3/ Show the spaceship streaking away from the planet as it explodes!

Red Caption – Life support at 100%... Target is 3rd planet of the Sol star system. Starting VR edu-vironment


4/ And then streaking towards the Earth in a mirror image of Panel 3

Red Caption - Target in range. Life support at 21%


5/ It lands on a dirt road in an vast open field – it sets down exactly like the last spaceship in Planet of the Apes... Show a glimpse of their pick-up truck on the road.

Red Caption - Target reached. Life support at 10%.


6/ The ship opens in front of a couple – POV from inside the spaceship – from Kial's eyes. The truck doors are open and they are standing next to the truck, mouths open in shock and wonder…

Red Caption – Navigation systems going offline.



Page 2

1/ Then show his adventures – He lifts their 4x4! Kial is wearing a blue jump-suit and he has the front of the pick-up lifted up!

Blue Caption – Kial can pick up many times his own weight…


2/ Growing up on a farm – show a young boy of around 5 jumping from field to field

Blue Caption – Jump a large distance on his own…


3/ Him and his best friend playing – Kial, Ares and Rory...

Blue Caption – Childhood friendships that…

Speech – Rory: “We’re going to be best friends forever and ever!”


4/ His best friend goes evil – show him in a wrecked lab with smoke and fire all around him… He looks at Kial with hate in his eyes…

Blue Caption – Turns into adult rivalry and then enmity…


5/ His parents dead – show him in front of their gravesite – 2 Jewish gravestones? Pagan? He’s on his knees in front of the graves…

Blue Caption – But the ones we love are always taken too early…


6/ He breaks up with his girl... Show her with tears in her eyes, make-up running down her cheeks. She’s walking away from him, Kial in the background, looking down…

Blue Caption – And the most important decisions are the most difficult to make…



Page 3

1/ It's his 1st day in the big city – show him walking into the street, skyscraper skyline visible behind him.

Blue Caption – One year later…


2/ He saves a huge airblimp and everyone on it from a fiery death. This is not your grandpa’s blimp – it’s got jet engines and it’s translucent with a 10 story passenger compartment visible inside!

Blue Caption – Kial has found his place in the world.
Blue Caption – His place and his purpose…


3/ He sets it down on the ground, homage to the cover of the 1st Supes comic where he sets down the car he’s just lifted…

Blue Caption – And his destiny


4/ LL storms out of the blimp gondola! She’s wearing a the same outfit Lois Lane wore after she stormed out of the Space Shuttle in John Byrne’s Man of Steel…

Blue Caption – As well as his wife to be…


5/ She bumps into him! He catches her! It almost looks like they’re embracing!



Page 4

1/ It's a wedding – Superon & LL's! And they’re in almost the same pose as the panel on P3P5 – he’s just wearing a ceremonial version of his costume and she’s got a super-hero inspired wedding dress on! Do a tight closeup of them – just the two of them and the female minister marrying them… Around the edges of the panel could be a few people, but this is the two newlyweds’ panel!

Blue Caption – It is the wedding of the decade…


2/ Superon’s back in his old costume - he fights and defeats a clone made of him. Clone looks like him, only with translucent skin – you can see his skeleton and organs… Costume also has inverted colour scheme…

Blue Caption – But interrupted all too soon by Kial’s growing list of enemies…
Blue Caption – Anti-Superon


3/ Superon is out in space – he battles a sentient Wolf-Rayet star – it wants to destroy him & the Earth. He’s pushing it away from the Earth – far away in the background…

Blue Caption – If the sentient Wolf-Rayet star Hypernovas, gamma ray bursts will kill every living thing on Earth…


4/ Superon vs a female version of himself from a mirror universe... She’s wearing a black costume with a red luminescent V and blue cape. Black hair as well, glowing red eyes… It’s LL!

Blue Caption – His enemies even try to turn his wife against him…


5/ Big panel - up to his battle to the death vs Armageddon (Pose from Supes 75). Armageddon is a 9 foot tall cyborg with bony protrusions and Wolvie-like claws and X-23 foot blades… Purple skin…

Blue Caption – But not even Superon can win every battle…



Page 5

1/ He dies in LL's arms… As part of the panel, show his heartbeat flatlining and doesn't come back...

Blue Caption – Superon – Something doesn't feel right...
Red Caption – 1% of life support left... Target reached.


2/ Show a baby in roughly the same pose as Superon above, heart still flatlining

Red Caption – Error! Error! Life support offline, user death imminent! Stopping VR edu-vironment.


3/ Pull back and we see him still in his ship, optic fibers sticking out of his head, only one faintly lit up – all the others dark...

Red Caption – All systems offline. Power cells 0%.


4/ Pull back even further, show the ships engines dying out.

Red Caption – Systems shutdown.


5/ Pull back even further and we see the same image as in P1P3, now the ship is just falling back towards the planet – or what used to be the planet – it’s a loose collection of asteroids now, in the shape of a planet... His ship gets pulled back into the gravitational pull of his home planet

Blue Caption – Welcome back my son …


6/ His ship explodes when it reaches the planet's surface

Blue Caption – The last survivor from a doomed planet returns home...



THE END…

[Chris2.0]

And anudder one:

And here's my take on a 1&Done from http://investcomics.com/features/inv...idelines-rules

So it's one page only...

1&Done - Just another day at the office

A day in the life of a cleaner… At Z-Ω-B Cleaners…

Except this is after the fall and he cleans up zombies…!

1. Show a normal Joe going off to the office, dressed in a cleaning uniform. Either leaving his home, showing the cleaning truck parked out front, or show him pitching up for work, the same sign on the building that’s on the truck… And barricades (fencing, razor wire, etc) behind him…

Caption – “I loathe my job”


2. He’s at the office – sitting in a meeting. His boss shows him & one other on a map the area they must clean today… Also worldwide maps, showing red and blue areas? Also graphs, one showing the infections – first an increase which flattened out & now slowly going down…

Caption – “The hours are long”


3. Show them putting some long duffel bags into their cleaning truck. The duffel bags are the same kind Neo and Trinity took into the lobby of the building when they had to rescue Morpheus… And their cleaning truck is like a garbage truck on steroids – armoured and looks like it means serious (cleaning) business!

Caption – “Pay is crummy”


4. They take out sniper’s rifles from the bag! What kind of cleaners are they??

Caption – “And the working conditions are hazardous”


5. They’re on the top of the truck & sets up their guns… Or on top of a low building, shooting from the roof?

Caption – “But the perks and benefits…”


6. [Big panel, at least 1/3rd of the page...] They start firing! Here we see what kind of cleaners they are – they have to take out all the zomz so that people can reclaim the city… Show 2 or 3 inset panels to clearly show they are shooting at zomz, and not people… If on the roof, there are some random newspapers lying around (mostly to their right!) with Zombie Attack headlines… At 99% infection rate – there are over 6.3 Billion zomz on the planet… Luckily there are more bullets than people alive on Earth!

Caption – “They make up for all of it!”

SFX – Blam! Blam! Blam!

THE END...

I had a slightly different panel 4/5, but that looked too much like the cleaner was contemplating taking his own life, so changed it to the one I have... Perhaps not too much of an improvement!

[My name is Tommy]

I didn't read the 5 pager yet, but I intend to.

The one and done isn't bad at all. Zombies have been done to death(pun intended), so, much like superhero's, all we can do is try to bring a fresh approach to it. I feel you did that pretty well here. The ending makes me want more, making it a good short. :]

[rralph]

i think that your story really captured my interest as usually i don't get to finish the story halfway if it get to predictable but i really like your fresh twist to it and hopefully i will be able to read an update on this story and see how the story develops. i commend you for your work and i can really see your talent in writing so keep up the good work!

[Chris2.0]

Hiya!

Thanks for the C&C's!

Just an update as well - my "Superon" story is being pencilled - will post the pages once complete! Jorge is doing a kickass job!

[Ermol]

Dude, I'll confess, because of Supreme, Sentry, the Planetary version, the various Elseworlds tales, I was kind of tired of the various ways of redoing the Superman myth, and initially glazed over the first story and went straight for the Cleaners which was a really good 1-page short. Short, clean (pardon the pun), simple, 1st panel hinting at nothing of the last, it's great.

Then I reread the Superon story properly and I have to say it is pretty damn good. With the right artist to convey the "realism" of his life, and then nail the last few panels it would really hit the reader.

[Shaun]

Hey Chris,

Glad you got a penciller for the Superon story. It's an interesting premise and maybe too much to cover beginning to end in a five pager. Might have been better served just focusing on one or two events and then referencing his history, since it's such a classic story that we're all familiar with I don't think you need to paint it out quite so clear. I was confused by the reference to the ship crashing as Planet of the Apes crash scene, didn't the astronaut's ship crash into a lake? Or do you mean the Tim Burton version? Either way, since it's just a small ship landing it doesn't seem like the kind of thing that needs a reference. So if the planet blew up at the beginning how does his ship crash into the planet at the end? Also why would his mother say she hopes he reaches Earth and go to all the trouble of setting up this whole VR system. Also, I'm not sure I would've understood that the computer wanted to give him a peaceful death from the way it's written. I only know that because of the synopsis at the top. Might have helped to clarify that a little at the end.

[Ermol]

I figured the Planet of the apes reference is just to give the artist an idea of how to draw the ship

[Shaun]

I figured the Planet of the apes reference is just to give the artist an idea of how to draw the ship

I was referring to, it sets down exactly like the last spaceship in Planet of the Apes.... I wasn't clear if that was the '68 version or the 2001 version.

[Chris2.0]

Hi all,

Thanks for the continued C&C's!

I wrote Superon (originally Superion - before a Transformer took his name!) in 2007, so its age is showing! In the mean time I have decided [because of the absolute lack ;-) of Superman-type characters!] to also release it as a Creative Commons licensed character, more details on the way!

@Ermol - thanks for taking the time to go back to reading it! And you're right, with the right artist it can work! And I'm pretty sure that fellow PencilJacker Jorge will do it justice!

And @Shaun - my fault for the messed-up descriptions - hopefully everything will be clearer when the comic is done...! And I maybe took for granted that this would evoke Superman movie/cartoon/comic flashbacks because it is another take on the "Super-powered sole survivor from another planet" archetype...