OK Zuda fans! Gimme a Z! Gimme a U! Gimme a … holy crap, I’ve been at this too long! Never mind, here is the new look all-different Star Chamber ranking for the month of July.
The new deal is thus. A whole heap o’ judges from all the four corners of Zudaland, sometimes twenty but never less than ten, consider, cogitate and then pronounce the order of ranking they would like to see at the very end of this month’s competition. Their rankings are put in a blender to make a spectacular Zuda-smoothie. Then we sprinkle some opinions over the whole shebang and slam the door in the face of fear, publish and be damned.
Although I take part in the ranking process the opinions below are not mine. Oh no, I would never say such things. I comment by the title on the general ranking position having taken all the judges comments into account. Read on if you dare …
The Star Chamber Ranking for July 2009
1. Bloody Pulp: a close run thing for the critic’s top spot!
“Twilight Zone, Road to Perdition and Bird all put into a blender for one smooth read.”
“One of the most sophisticated premises for a comic I’ve seen at Zuda yet.”
“…interested in the sociopath butcher. He strikes me as a character I would enjoy reading about.”
“I enjoyed this, but ONLY after reading the synopsis.”
“At first I was not digging this at all but by the end I was intrigued enough to read the synopsis.”
“Bloody Brilliant! Such a great juxtaposition of narrative flavors. The gruesome followed by the idyllic.”
2. Children’s Games: in fact a tie-breaker was called for!
“Busy black and whites meets distracting and intrusive color … and some of those backgrounds were just straight off of a stock photo site or something.”
“Surprisingly the stock art effects kind of work with the hand drawn pieces. Initially I flinched.”
“… everything I love about comics. It’s surprising and ridiculous, and quite whimsical on the surface, but there are deeper levels of both comedy and drama at work here.“
“I may be allowing myself to be sold on storytelling tricks rather than the story presented, but lacking a truly deserving winner this month I think storytelling tricks is enough.”
“For the first three pages I was in love. The last three pages broke my heart.”
“I felt part of my dislike for it may have been driven by my aversion to heavy-handed commentary on religion.“
3. The Adventures of Mr Simian: It was obvious but kinda compact too!
“If I could draw like that I’d take over the world! I’d be unstoppable! It didn’t feel like comedy though – the first four pages were all horrifying!”
“Artwork is wonderfully loose and lovely, which is a rarity at the site, but its the set up of this piece that makes me see its huge potential as an on-going series.”
“Art was very pulpy, which suited the story, a zany concept…”
“How have comics made it this far without someone naming an intelligent monkey/primate Mr Simian? Seems impossible.“
“I liked it until it devolved into a fun-filled romp.”
“And what’s up with the noise filter?”
4. 9th Year: Judges couldn’t make their minds up about the monsters but it didn’t insult either!
“Promising Mike Mignola-esque art on the first page goes to unforgivably bland and simple art on the interior pages.”
“Technically well done though the art fails in a few places and some pages seem a bit wasted.”
“Trying to trick us into reading about zombies again!”
“The monsters look kind of cool I guess, and I like red heads!”
“I like the tension, scary in the sense you couldn’t really tell what those things were!”
“Enjoyable artwork, average story, but the real letdown is mutated, albino, naked Stretch Armstrong – not as scary as you might think.”
5. Vigilante Granny: They so wanted to like this one too!
“Not being your typical hero was a plus, but story didn’t go far enough.”
“Imagineering Wonder Woman without the cosmetic surgery would have been a good comedy in color.”
“Great art. Needs color. Uninteresting concept.”
“Her dialogue doesn’t sound like an old lady. This would have been great if her voice was like my granny – or anyones granny.”
“I really like the black and white design here. Good pop. Good storytelling.”
“It’s funny cus she’s OLD! HA HA HA.”
6. Interrogation Control Element: There’s always one that polarises opinion and this was it!
“Why is it when the American speaks in Arabic the translated words we see are grammatical correct, but the Arab’s is broken English?“
“Great attention to detail both in art and script, one of the most complete strips I’ve seen so far in Zuda, nice set-up, very topical, I dug the political setting.“
“Gets my vote for worst name.”
“This was too preachy and heavy-handed. Feels like third-hand information patched together into a dimestore manifesto.”
“Well written. Well drawn. I have absolutely zero interest in reading a Zuda comic about this subject.”
“Turns out Obama is as gray as Bush when it comes to Gitmo, but striking idealistic realism is a valuable addition to Zuda.”
7. Assignment: too much confusion on direction was the problem here!
“Why is eight pages such a difficult number for presenting a contained sense of action? We have four scenes, three obviously pivotal characters (not to mention a strange cowled figure in a pick up truck) and no real sense of what’s occurring.“
“Started out interesting became incoherent. Writing uneven. Art uneven. Dots distracting.”
“An interesting train wreck of story. I had forgotten the beginning by the time I got to the end and only later remembered it started out in the arctic.”
“Too many unappealing characters. There’s no one I want to know more about in this story.”
“Why would you deliberately go back to the look of poor newsprint?”
“What’s with the dots? Are you serious?”
8. Rockstar: The target audience hasn’t arrived yet, but it may!
“Will grow up to murder Enigo Montoya’s father some day!”
“Technically the art is well done, but the characters are unappealing and the story didn’t impress. So I’m not sure why it has so many favourites at this early stage.”
“This feels like recycled astro-boy on acid… that’s not entirely a bad thing though.”
“Nice art. But way too busy and chaotic for my tastes. Hurts my brain to look at it too long.”
“All the galactic heroes being in a cult out to recruit you and not taking no for an answer is a good premise, wrecked by a confusing fight scene.”
“Like reading Rick Veitch on acid. This is, of course, the best way to read Rick Veitch. But I am, unfortunately, too old for acid and too young for this trip all over again.”
9. Metropolitan Siege: There was at least some sympathy for this entry.
“Learn to draw movement … instead of relying on photoshop techniques.”
“What comics need more of is half-naked ex-cops infused with the power of the universe.”
“Brutally crude art fits the story, but this month has too many other more thrilling contenders.”
“It’s a bit ‘Fifth Element’ but I like it anyways. Goofy but fun.”
“Gets the Azure award for most naked babe!”
“Worst thumbnail ever.”
10. The Ares Imperative: The title did for this (an unfortunate transposing of a couple of letters maybe) and then it just got worse … !
“Eight pages of techno-babble left me yawn(ing). Art seemed xeroxed from other comics.”
“If not for this Star Chamber I probably wouldn’t have finished it.”
“Not to be ignorant but … too many words. Can’t read all that while people just stand around. Art looks like John Byrne.”
“Oh my God. Do you seriously expect me to read that? For the love of all that is holy, get an editor. I’m not reading that. I’m just not.“
“Oh Jesus Christ that was boring. Eight pages of two guys standing around looking at old rusty crap and talking about stuff. At the end they see some skeletons. Nothing happened!”
“It’s the speech balloon that never ends: Blah. Blah. Blah. Blah. Blah. Blah. Blah. Dead bodies!”
And is that the judgement of ye all? Take him down …
PS. You do realise that if ever I get into a competition you’re going to have to do this yourself!!!!
July 11, 2009 at 9:48 am |
I like the new way of doing things, cuts to the quick of the things that worked, or didn’t of the comics involved.
July 11, 2009 at 2:15 pm |
Blurb commentary was definitely a good idea, Mike. Much easier than looking at a graph.
July 11, 2009 at 2:31 pm
Wish I could take credit for that. I think it’s what the judges wanted all along
July 11, 2009 at 4:02 pm |
Wow. That doesn’t reflect what’s going on with the voting much, does it?
Which is why I like this little feature you got running, Mike. And the new setup too. The graph was a little dull. Like a year 7 math assignment.
July 11, 2009 at 4:07 pm
Yeah, I didn’t notice anyone saying Rockstar would be the one to beat – although (ahem) I did rank it quite highly I recall
probably an accident!
July 11, 2009 at 4:03 pm |
This does work a better than the standard graph. This is like mini movie trailers, except they’re not all spliced to make even the bad reviews sound like praise.
Good call.
July 11, 2009 at 4:18 pm |
“Why is it when the American speaks in Arabic the translated words we see are grammatical correct, but the Arab’s is broken English?“
How about the Arabic guy is being waterboarded and under duress, thus his sentences are short and choppy, while the American is in his comfort zone? I get the complaint, have seen it elsewhere, and was aware of it when I wrote the script. I’ll stand by the words on the page.
Funny. Tackle a controversial and polarizing subject in a comic, and the reaction to the comic is…polarized.
July 11, 2009 at 4:31 pm
Perhaps polarisation is not something you’d be looking for when trying to win a popularity contest? I felt polarised all by myself
July 11, 2009 at 4:47 pm |
Is that the proper waterboard technique? It looked as though they were pouring it directly into his mouth, which isn’t the way you waterboard someone. The trick with waterboarding is to cover the nose and mouth with a piece of cloth or something. You pour the water on that, which gives the feeling of drowning. Pouring it directly into the mouth is more likely to lead to actual drowning, which defeats the whole purpose.
July 11, 2009 at 5:13 pm
“Why is it when the American speaks in Arabic the translated words we see are grammatical [sic] correct, but the Arab’s is broken English?“ At least one judge is an Arab – just for balance
July 11, 2009 at 5:35 pm
I would expect no less, MPD.
July 12, 2009 at 4:29 pm
Shawn,
There are multiple ways to waterboard. You can tilt the head back and pour water directly in the mouth and/or nose, like shown on the first page. To step it up a notch, you can force a rag in the detainees mouth and then soak that as on the second page. And if you really want to be a bastard, you dump a bunch of salt in the water, so the eye will sting like a mother during the process.
July 11, 2009 at 6:23 pm |
I’m happy to see that Vigilante Granny is number 5 instead of number 10, at least.
July 11, 2009 at 6:36 pm
I rarely edit comments and I don’t know why but I thought you might not want to say any of the rest of that out loud! The Health and Safety Executive read this blog religiously! I may be wrong.
July 11, 2009 at 10:20 pm |
It’s like reading Twelve Angry Me’s.
July 12, 2009 at 5:27 am |
About Ares Imperative, you really should read it, people talk a lot in “Watchmen” too..
(no other comparision though..that thing is a masterpiece..)
As the penciller/inker of the thing, I have two things to say.. I’m from sweden so I wonder what comics I would have “xeroxed”? And secondly, the original art has been reformatted for zuda, so it’s not always a good fit.
The story is (well) written, and thus it’s using a lot of those pesky letters from the alphabet.
This is not a story relying on visuals, take it or leave it.
Rockstar is the exact opposite on the other hand, the visuals *are* the story, period, and it’s ranked #1.
See, surface matters.. it’s like with Rob Liefield..
July 12, 2009 at 8:16 am |
Ha ha! ^_^ Yeah… I have to rely on others to protect me from myself.
July 12, 2009 at 3:42 pm |
Surface does matter: Ares finished dead last in my book, and Rockstar next to last. I don’t like all fight scenes, or characters just prattling on, mix it up some Zuda creators.
I also like Rob Liefield’s art work, and think Watchmen is overrated -to make the disagreement total and complete.
July 12, 2009 at 6:07 pm
Well, fair enough. As long as you like comics, you are still ok in my book. This industry needs that.
July 12, 2009 at 10:58 pm |
Yes, people talk a lot in Watchmen, but there’s also punching and stuff too.
July 13, 2009 at 10:19 am |
We’ll get there. This is like those 4 pages where they didn’t. But I can promise you this – this story is an action story, and one long all-out giant action sequence dominate one whole third of the ENTIRE STORY.
July 13, 2009 at 2:31 pm |
Maybe these particular eight pages weren’t the best choice as a starting point. Again, Watchmen opens with a spectacular and puzzling murder mystery, a very good hook right from page one. Hopefully you get a chance to share the rest of the story with people.
July 17, 2009 at 1:05 pm |
[...] interviews Tyler James. MPD57 also looked at Bloody Pulp and posted July’s Star Chamber results. I dig the blurb additions, too. And Webcomics Critique reviewed [...]