October Zuda Wrap Up

Last month, we thrilled and delighted you with our look at Zuda comics, highlighting the October entries, reviewing some of the past winners and theorizing on what makes a successful entry. So it's only fair that we follow up with some post-competition commentary to see what we were right about and what other people were wrong about now that the October competition is over. Because Zuda has announced the results for October, and the winner is...

Pluck!

Yes, Pluck, the somewhat sarcastic, slightly post-modern black-and-white fantasy epic by Gabe White and John Amor, ended up winning the competition and is therefore the recipient of a long-term deal to continue providing content for Zuda.

So, just what can we take away from this result? Well, the first thing that jumps out about this win is the number of hits each entry received. Over the first few days of the competition, Pluck received a little over four thousand hits. By comparison, Where Evils Dare received over 24 thousand views, while Doc Monster reeled in a whopping 27 thousand views. So the first and most obvious lesson to be learned here is that views do not equal votes. There are two reasons for this. The first and most obvious is that people might read the entry and not like it as much as another. However, since only a small fraction of the people who read Doc Monster also read Pluck, the second explanation is more likely: they just weren't motivated enough to vote at all. In order to vote in the competition, viewers have to register with Zuda and while Doc Monster was my personal favorite story of the month, was well structured, featured nice art and was a super-hero comic and therefore theoretically more attractive to the comics viewing populace at large, it didn't seem to grab the readers enough to make them want to spend the three minutes to register and cast a vote for it.

Pluck, on the other hand, was able to motivate a much higher percentage of a much smaller viewer base in order to grab the lead, which it held for the entire month. Which brings us to the second lesson from last month, which is that the early leader has the big advantage. This is partially because most of the regular readers, who are most likely to vote, read the entries during the first week, but it's also due to another factor: front-runner syndrome. There is a portion of the reading audience who only reads those entries that are winning. Whether this is because they don't have the time to read them all or because they want to vote for a contender, more than one commenter on the Zuda forums has said that they are influenced by the rankings. And the figures bear this out to a degree: after that first week, first place entry Pluck more than tripled its view count, from 4k after one week to 14k by the end of the month. Conversely, third place Doc Monster, which started strong at 27k, ended with just 31k after a full month.

Of course, this isn't a hard and fast rule; the second place entry, Where Evils Dare, started with 24k and continued strong throughout the month, finishing with an impressive 47k views. Part of this can be attributed to the fact that Where Evils Dare was done by a professional team who perhaps had access to more a more developed fan network in order to hype their entry. But overall, it seems that once Pluck took the lead in the first week, it snowballed, suggesting that grabbing the early lead perhaps foreshadows the final results.

Beyond the numbers, the other major lesson learned from the victory by Pluck is that black-and-white is not necessarily the major negative that it has been described as. If you read the forums or the comments on the site, there seems to be a consensus that black and white titles have an inherent weakness in the competition. This may be true, but in the case of Pluck, the fact it was in black-and-white did not seem to have a negative effect, as the title led the voting wire to wire, proving that color or lack of color, while perhaps important to some readers, is not the determining factor. I also have a totally unfounded idea that this may be in part because of the specific nature of Pluck's art, which featured fine linework as opposed to solids, meaning it was much more white than black and thus had a lighter feel to it which may have been more attractive to readers than many heavier black-and-white entries.

So, lessons aside, what do I think of the results? Well, I voted for Doc Monster, so I am a little disappointed that I won't be able to read more of that story. The win by Pluck doesn't bother me, though. I thought it was both well written and well drawn and the structure was okay as well, ending with a nice tease. The characters left me a bit cold, however, so I have to admit I probably won't be reading more of this story unless I have a lot of free time on my hands. Obviously a lot of people liked it, but it's just not to my taste. I originally gave it a B+, which is probably about right, but in my memory it's faded to more like a B- as far as my personal enjoyment.


One final thought now that the new entries are up. I touched on a lot of factors that go into crafting a successful Zuda entry, but one area I didn't discuss was presentation. When you go to the Zuda front page, it displays ten thumbnails such as the ones I used here, one for each of the current competitors. Below each is the name of the title. As we have seen, many people will only read one or two entries, which means that this brief intro often serves as the only chance you have to grab the attention of the reader and get them to check out your story. I talked earlier about how important it is to grab the reader on the first two pages of your entry, but in fact you have to try to get them first on this front page, using just one tiny thumbnail image and the title of your story. This seems like a nearly impossible task and probably random to boot, based entirely on the whims of the viewer, but I actually think there is a little bit of craft involved.

The title itself is important. When you only have the title and one picture to create an impression with, it's key that you have a title that is both memorable and representative of the story. Last month, some of the titles just didn't work for me, in many cases because of the length. Whether it's comics or television shows or movies, a shorter title such as Evil Ain't Easy or Impure Blood is going to be more effective than longer, convoluted titles like Fly Me From the Moon or Old Cthulhu's On the Rise. Even something like Where Evils Dare, while relatively short, isn't as precise as it could be; sure, it's a fairly nice pun on the classic war movie Where Eagles Dare, but that is probably lost on a lot of the audience. Creator Tony Lee referred to this property in some of the promotional stuff as being about Hitler's evil SS group Platoon 666, and I think Platoon 666 may have been a better title for the strip.

Pluck is an interesting example to look at because even though I personally don't like the word pluck -- it resonates too closely with "perky" for me, meaning I find someone with "pluck" to be annoying, plus it's an unattractive sounding word -- it fits perfectly with the image chosen to represent it. The face of the main character, looking slightly upward with an optimistic and somewhat surprised expression fairly screams "pluck". That's a plucky looking guy. You get a good sense right off what the character is going to be like and by extension what the feel of the comic is going to be, all from one word and one image. It sets in your mind a (perhaps minor, but nonetheless important and present) expectation of what you are about to read that must then carry over into the reading experience.

I really noticed that effect this week when I gave the titles a once over before beginning my reading. I planned all along to read all ten, so this was not going to be a determining factor in those terms, and I also already had in mind a reading order (good old boring left to right, top row first), but I found that just from glancing at the titles and thumbnails, I was looking forward to some of them more than others. Of course, some of the ones I was looking forward to ended up being a letdown, but the fact that I was looking forward to them at all from such a small sample indicates to me that there is importance to this presentation that may determine for many readers what they read at all, if not whether they end up liking it.


Tomorrow: People seemed to enjoy the Zuda reviews last time, so we'll be making it a regular feature. Not a whole week of Zuda stuff, mind you, but we'll take two days a month to review the new entries when they come out. Tomorrow, then, we'll be presenting our first batch of reviews: Big Ups: A Space Adventure, Brother of Bronze Hammer, Children of the Sewer, In Maps & Legends and Little Earth People. See you then.

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Breaking the Fourth Wall: Episode 9

Last week we took a look at the webcomics engine Zuda Comics, where every month a new group of ten comics competes for a contract with DC. While some critics have issues with this sort of American Idol mentality in comics (either because of concern over creators rights being exploited or because of squeamishness over the idea of art being a competitive process), most creators rightly view Zuda as perhaps the single best means of breaking into the business today. Even if you don't win the competition, merely being accepted as a competitor guarantees widespread exposure within the comics community and tens of thousands of new eyes on your material.

In this episode of Breaking the Fourth Wall, then, we'll take a look at just what goes into crafting a successful Zuda submission. Of course, as I have yet to submit anything to Zuda, by definition this will be more theory than practice. However, some of my observations about the structure have been reinforced by my interview with pro writer and current Zuda competitor Tony Lee, so for another look at this topic you may want to check it out if you haven't already.

So what is the key to a successful Zuda entry? Well, in broad terms, it's the same thing that is key to crafting a successful story for any medium, which is this: write for the structure. Every format of story, whether it's the novel, epic poem or mainstream comics, has a specific and unique structure that determines how the story is told and, perhaps more importantly, how the story is read. We've already discussed in previous episodes some of the specifics of writing for comics, but even though Zuda may seem at first to be a straightforward comic medium, it actually has some specific quirks that can greatly affect the success of your submission. And the first of these is actually the structure of the competition itself.

Eight pages isn't a lot to work with, but because of the nature of the competition, you meed to fit a lot of specific information into those pages while also maintaining readability and pacing. Your goal here isn't just to create something compelling to read; it's to create something that will compel the reader to want to read more. In effect, you have to do everything a mainstream comics writer has to do, but with only one third of the space to do it in. Crafting a satisfying Zuda submission, then, requires focus on three things: the hook, the setup and the tease.


The Hook

Back in the Golden Age, comics used a symbolic splash page to draw readers in -- it acted almost as a second cover, teasing what was going to happen later in the story, which would then actually start on page two. During the Silver Age, Marvel perfected the technique of opening right in the middle of the action with an action-packed splash and then filling readers in on how they got there. Today, comics often start with a tease: the first page of pages will be a slow build, hinting at what is to come, and then the payoff will come with a big reveal a few pages in.

While I don't think the symbolic splash will work for Zuda, either the Silver Age or Modern Age hooks can be done effectively at Zuda. From this months entries, for instance, Impure Blood is a pretty good Silver Age style opening, with the reader jumping right into a massive gladiator battle right on the first page. Doc Monster uses the more Modern approach, with two slow build pages teasing the reader's curiosity and then the third page being a big blowout sequence, with a flying saucers erupting from the ground.

For my money, though, the most effective opening this month is Where Evils Dare, which is more in the Modern style as well. Page one shows some Nazis standing around talking, one of them is Dracula, it's kind of intriguing -- and then the second page is a full splash with hordes of Nazi zombie vampire dudes swarming forward. It's effective and visceral, but it also has another important quality: it's short. Just as the writer has fewer pages to work with, so too does the reader have fewer pages to get invested. A highly unscientific survey of comments on the Zuda boards indicates that a lot of readers just check out the first couple pages and if they don't like them they don't bother reading the rest of the entry. Even though eight pages doesn't seem like an overwhelming time commitment, it seems to me that on Zuda you probably only have two pages to hook your reader; as much as I enjoyed Doc Monster, I think it might have been better served by getting to the flying saucer a page earlier.

Whether you go with a Silver or Modern Age approach, though, the lesson here is the same: craft a good hook and get the readers involved right away, because even if you have the greatest page four in comics history, chances are if your page two isn't awesome, nobody will ever get that far. (For examples of this month's entries that I don't think had effective openings, I think Old Cthulhu's On the Rise took a little too long to get to the hook -- the fisherman guy didn't show up until page five).


The Setup

Even in a short, eight page tease like this, you should look at the submission in terms of classic story structure, with a beginning, a middle and an end. Usually, this can be roughly described as setting up the conflict, exploring the conflict and resovling the conflict. In the case of a Zuda entry, though, the whole eight pages is part of the beginning of a longer story, so the "middle" here is where you set up the conflict that you will explore if you happen to win.

That means a couple specific things. Firstly, you need to introduce your characters or, if they appeared during the hook, you need to show the reader why they are the main character and why the reader should care. And secondly, you need to present the premise of the series: what the story is about, who is in it and how you as a creator are going to tell it.

In terms of examples from this month, Doc Monster and Where Evils Dare take slightly different tacks with this. Where Evils Dare uses a fairly straightforward, classic style of comics storytelling; in the setting of a wartime mission briefing, we are introduced one by one to all of the characters and the premise of the series is literally spelled out by the officer giving the briefing. Doc Monster, on the other hand, presents the information through the use of narrative captions; while the characters are battling aliens in an action sequence, one of them gives an internal monologue commenting on the action and, more importantly, his co-star. The result is that the story doesn't bog down with exposition, as the reader is carried along by the action, but at the same time we still get an idea about what both characters are like and what the series is going to be about. While I think Where Evils Dare is a well crafted submission, in this case I think Doc Monster comes out slightly ahead and will be more readable for many modern readers.

(For an example of a current Zuda entry that did not have a proper Setup, A Polar Nightmare is probably the clearest example. After eight pages I'm still not really sure what the story is about other than there's an evil Santa involved somehow)


The Tease

And, of course, you have to go out with a bang in order to get your readers wondering what's going to happen on the next page. The cliffhanger is one of the oldest elements of serialized storytelling in literary tradition, so it's no wonder that most of the entries on Zuda do a pretty good job with it; even submissions that otherwise aren't particularly well crafted usually manage to end on a tease for future pages.

The main mistake Zuda creators seem to make is treating the entire eight pages eight pages as the tease. In a meta sense, as I've already discussed, this is true; but what ends up happening in many entries is that the first seven pages are slow buildup to the cliffhanger on page eight and, for reasons I've gone over, this doesn't work because most readers won't get to page eight if you do this. Impure Blood, Doc Monster, Where Evils Dare and Pluck all end on solid teases this month, while A Polar Nightmare is an example of an entry where the entire story seems to be a tease.

I also wanted to mention Blitz, which runs into a less common issue at Zuda, which is a story that doesn't seem to have been specifically crafted for the Zuda format. In this case, the tease at the end almost seems tacked on at the last minute, with one of the characters randomly finding a newspaper in the last panel that tells them some shocking information. This is part of why I think it's important to create a story specifically for Zuda, because if you don't take into consideration the specific structure requirements of the competition you may end up with a story that is well written and well drawn but that still fails because it was intended for a different format.


Page Structure

I know what you're thinking: you're not done yet? Well, I do have a couple more things to mention about the unique challenges presented by Zuda. But these are more nuts and bolts comments about the technical details of working with something that has befuddled and irritated thousands of people over the last two years: the Zuda page viewer.

Not that there's anything wrong with it; I happen to find it intuitive and perfectly functional. But it also has a couple minor details about it that might at first slip by without notice but which can be very important to writing a successful submission, the first and most important being the shape of the page.

When I asked Where Evils Dare writer Tony Lee about this, he deferred to his artist, Stefano Martino. And if you are a successful artist or are working with a someone experienced in layout, this will be less of an issue. Even so, as a writer, when you are planning sequences within your story you need to always be aware of just how this will be portrayed visually on the page. And that's a bit tricky on Zuda because of the horizontal page shape for two reasons. Firstly, as a comics reader, we've simply been trained over however many years to think of comic books in terms of a vertical page, so figuring out panel sequences in a horizontal setting can prove challenging. Secondly, though, and more subtly, the horizontal structure isn't necessarily as conducive to action simply because the human form is vertical in nature. If you have people running or jumping or fighting, being able to show them in a vertical panel is simply more natural than trying to fit a vertical shape into a horizontal panel, because their body will basically bisect the frame.

I won't get into it too much here, but I wanted to mention this difficulty because I think the creator needs to be thinking about this from the moment they begin crafting a Zuda submission. The structure has to come first and in this case you will want to work very closely with your artist in planning page layouts and choreographing action sequences; or if you are drawing it yourself, you'll need to be careful figuring out how to make the sory flow not just between panels, but in this case within panels as well.

Lastly, the Zuda viewer also presents a slightly different experience form a traditional comic book because it only shows one page at a time, whereas comics sometimes show two. Sure, you're only reading on at a time in a comic book, but for a writer this is important because of a technique I haven't had a chance to discuss much yet, which is the last panel tease. Basically, when you're writing a story and you get to a page break -- where the reader has to literally turn the page to get to the next part -- it's a good idea to put a small tease, such as a mini-cliffhanger or perhaps an interrupted dialgoe balloon (where the sentence is completed on the following page) in order to get the reader to turn the page instead of putting down the comic. Zuda, though, only shows one page at a time, meaning you need to always be aware of every page ending. With many readers only giving these submissions a brief test before even reading eight pages, it's especially important that every page end with a lead into the next page in order to convince them to hit the Next arrow and keep reading. It means being somewhat more careful with pacing, but if you want to ensure readers stay engaged, it could be vital.

Conclusion

To sum up, then, to craft a successful Zuda submission you need to draw the readers in quickly, introduce the plot and concept of the series, show them who the characters are and why they should care, and end with a cliffhanger tease to get them wanting more. This needs to be done in eight pages, using unfamiliar page shapes, panel layouts and page counts. Because of this, when you write a story for Zuda, you need to do that: write it for Zuda specifically with Zuda's unique challenges in mind. Otherwise you risk crafting a story that may be great, but might never be read.

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Zuda Week: October Reviews part 1

Yesterday, Zuda Comics posted the newest batch of competitors on their website, which was awful nice of them considering this is Zuda Week here at The Vault. What a handy coincidence, right? So today and tomorrow we'll be offering mini-reviews of then new series currently being featured so that when you finally queue up to vote, you'll have all the information you need to make an informed decision. Today's offerings: A Polar Nightmare, Blitz, Doc Monster, Evil Ain't Easy and Fly Me From The Moon. Let's get to it!


A Polar Nightmare
Amancay Nicolas Nahuelpan Bustamante

First up is A Polar Nightmare, with art and writing from Amancay Nicolas Nahuelpan Bustamante, aka annb. Done in a fairly stark black and white style with just hints of color thrown in here and there for emphasis, A Polar Nightmare tells the story of two kids who journey to the North Pole to protest a lack of decent Christmas presents. When they find Santa, however, they discover he's some sort of flabby, demonic A-hole who passes judgment on kids through sinister doggerel.

The art is the best part -- it's strong, bold and oddly reminiscent of some of Todd McFarlane's early work on Spawn; the evil Santa could easily be Clown and the kids look like kinda like McFarlane kids as well. The writing, however, doesn't keep up with the art (another McFarlane hallmark!) and I have to say the basic premise doesn't do much for me either. Okay, so Santa is kind of evil instead of good. And? While the pages shown here set the tone pretty well, they don't really tell us what the story is about; as I've said before, a concept is not a story. Stronger writing, both in terms of plot and text, might make this viable, but I have the feeling this dark Santa thing has been done before and done better.

My Grade: Despite some nice art at the start, the best I can give this is a C-.



Blitz
Ted Dawson

Blitz is an interesting departure from the standard Zuda style, if such a thing could be said to exist, deviating from established fan-favorite genres like zombie horror into a more cartoony world where a semi-cuddly alien runs into a scruffy dish-washer while trying to find his missing mother. Readers will still find it somewhat familiar, though, as the writing and design of the strip both seem strongly influenced by Jeff Smith's groundbreaking epic Bone.

Of course, you could do a lot worse than emulating Bone, and Dawson does have some nice moments. I enjoyed the sequence where the unnamed Bone-like alien tricks the bad guy into releasing the title character Blitz by forcing him to count on the fingers of both hands. But in general, though the characters seemed to have some promise and the art was fluid and competent, this apple seemed to fall a little too close to the tree to really stand out. The danger in doing something like this is that people who recognize the influence will automatically compare it to the original. And by those standards, any series going up against Bone is likely to come out on the short end of things.

My Grade: The talent is there, but some more refinement might help differentiate this. I was also a little confused by the layout at one point, which is hard to do considering the whole thing is just two rows of square panels. B-.



Doc Monster
David Flora

Doc Monster brings us back to the world of the 1950's, where we meet a G-man named Clay who has been assigned to a strapping, pipe smoking scientist known by the code name Doc Monster. Just why he has been assigned to this otherwise benign looking fellow soon becomes clear: when a flying saucer filled with bug-like aliens suddenly erupts from the ground, Doc flies into the air to combat it. Looks like there's more going on here than meets the eye.

Creator David Flora renders the story in a pulpy style which, when overlaid by a subtle coloring job, almost appears to be painted. It perfectly suits the retro tone of the story, as does the dialogue and even the choice of fonts. There are a couple hiccups with placement of narrative captions, but other than that, Doc Monster provides a fun, fast paced glimpse at an old fashioned superhero adventure. If that's your kind of thing, then this is a strip for you.

My Grade: A highly enjoyable, professional effort. A-.



Evil Ain't Easy
Seth Wolfshorndl

Evil Ain't Easy is the work of cartoonist Seth Wolfshorndl and is essentially a comedic riff on supervillain tropes. Dr. Nimbus is a mad scientist who bears more than a passing resemblance to a talking thumb; armed with his Destructo Ray and the ability to create henchmen by animating the dead, he sets out to conquer the world. Or so he claims; in reality, he seems too caught up in every day evils like trying to pay the rent to get very far on his master plan.

Wolfshorndl also plays a bit with the format; the eight page sample is less of a story and more of a series of (sometimes) related gags, some of which take up only a single page. The horizontal layout of the Zuda viewer only emphasizes the feeling that you're reading a collection of Sunday comic strips rather than a unified piece. Unfortunately, some of the jokes, while mildly amusing, are just that: mild. This may be a function of the pacing, as the art serves the premise well; but trusting more in the art to build the gags rather than using occasionally stiff dialogue might lead to better punchlines. There's some promise here, but I'm not sure it will garner enough votes to see it fulfilled, which is too bad; this strip has some charm and I enjoyed it, just not as much as I wanted to.

My Grade: It's better than, say, Garfield. B-.



Fly Me From The Moon
Gabriel Bautista

No, this isn't a sci-fi Frank Sinatra bio, but you might be forgiven for thinking it was based on the name. Indeed, Fly Me From The Moon almost seems like the result of a bet or a college writing exercise; you know, everyone is given a weird, punny title and then you have to build a story around it.

Well, the finished product isn't quite that bad. In fact, it's pretty okay. The story, as far as I can make out, is about a guy who sells his business in order to escape a political coup and then takes a space ship to the moon to rescue his wife from the insurgents. I say "as far as I can make out" because just what is going on isn't entirely clear. Half of that is intentional, as the characters speak in mysterious terms about shadowy operations, and half of it is the result of just confusing writing and art. The art is actually pretty good, as far as linework is concerned, but the pulpy coloring job is so pulpy that at times it washes out the images, making them muddy and difficult to follow. The end result is a series that tries to jam so much style and so much substance into eight pages that it ends up overwhelming the story and the reader.

My Grade: I really wanted to like this, but... I kinda didn't. C+.

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