January Zuda Wrap-Up: Controversy Strikes

Okay, so it's a little late in the game, but it's finally time to wrap up last month's competition over at Zuda (as a quick refresher, you can check out part one of my January reviews here and part two over here). As you can see, it was a fairly strong batch, though there were no obvious favorites or stand-outs. My highest grade went to War of the Woods, which ended up winning the competition. So it looks as tough my influence has spread through the internet and everyone agreed with me that War of the Woods was the top choice, right?

Well, not exactly. As long time readers know, Zuda seems to be a pretty front-loaded operation; the title that gets ahead in the first week almost always ends up winning (or, at least, that has been the case since I started following Zuda). In January that comic wasn't War of the Woods, however, but instead was The Thunderchickens. Thunderchickens jumped out to a quick lead and throughout the month maintained its edge, which normally would produce a pretty sure win for the comic.

That didn't happen this time, however, for an unusual reason: the comic was pulled from the competition entirely.

As a result of the withdrawal (the reasons for which we'll get into momentarily), Zuda decided to void all the votes given to Thunderchickens, allowing people who had voted for it to instead cast their votes for a different title. Those votes apparently broke overwhelmingly for War of the Woods, because before the controversy began it had been tracking steadily in fourth place. The comic did move up one spot while the controversy was raging on the message boards, but until Thunderchickens was pulled it was still in third place behind NewBot, which had been solidly camped in the number two spot for the entire month. When the Thunderchickens votes were voided, however, NewBot remained in second place while War of the Woods vaulted over it to take the win and the contract from DC Comics.

Voting curiosities aside (and I am stuck by how similar to a political convention that turn of events was), there still remains the question of why Thunderchickens withdrew -- or was removed, whichever it actually was. Those details are a bit fuzzy, with the only official announcements being Zuda's declaration that after discussions with the creative team it was decided to be the best course of action, along with a cryptic statement from Thunderchickens artist Bill Blankenship indicating that the withdrawal was due to some action on his part that resulted in a mutual decision with zuda to pull the strip.

So what happened? Well, apparently Bill got in an online name calling contest with NewBot creator Chuck Harrison that sprang at least in part from a cartoon Zuda reviewer Bryy Miller drew as part of his commentary on the January entries. Or something. At this point it would pretty much take CSI to unravel it, as most of the pertinent info has been ab-blasted right off the face of the Earth, but apparently the argument between Blankenship and Harrison escalated to the point where it involved accusations of cheating and vote tampering, finally requiring Zuda to step in to correct what Blankenship described as unprofessional behavior.

The end result, of course, is that neither Thunderchickens nor NewBot won the competition; NewBot's involvement in the Thunderchickens disqualification may also explain why fans of Thunderchickens decided to throw their support behind a third party rather than boost NewBot from the number two spot into the win. Instead the big winner out of this mess is War of the Woods creator Matthew Petz, who now finds himself in possession of a professional career and one year deal with DC Comics.

In the end it is that professionalism that should be the focus of any post-mortem of the January competition. The fact that Zuda presents an great venue for up and coming creators has also, in my brief experience with the endeavor, been it's achilles heel; just as many of the submissions seem to be works in progress that fall somewhat short of professional standards, so too do many of the creators seem to be in a formative period regarding professional standards of behavior. That's not to paint all Zuda contributors with the same brush, as many are very friendly and positive in their fan interaction, but the nature of such a public competition also seems to bring out the worst in many. Going forward, then, the withdrawal of Thunderchickens will hopefully prove to be a valuable lesson and perhaps even a turning point in the life of Zuda as it strives to be a showcase for professionals rather than just another online amateur hour.

Let's hope the lesson is well learned.

Read More

January Zuda Reviews part 2

Welcome back to our look at this month's batch of competitors over at Zuda Comics. Previously, we reviewed the first five entries, which you can catch up on here. Today it's the last five. Who will win? And more importantly, will any of them be awesome? Let's find out... together.


Phantom Sword
Nick Edwards

Phantom Sword is a fairly fun little fantasy strip which, like fellow competitor Beyond the Borderlands, uses familiar cartoon and video game tropes to appeal to modern readers (specifically in the way the characters cast spells and use abilities by shouting them out with attending spell animation).

Where Beyond the Borderlands seems pretty straightforward, however, Phantom Sword is more of an offbeat humor strip and is bolstered by some pretty sharp art that is appealing in a Care Bears meet R. Crumb kind of way. There are a couple grammatical issues which are fairly blatant but which don't significantly detract from the story due to the fact that it's too whimsical to seem to care about those sorts of little details. It's not perfect -- the opening was a bit abrupt for me, even with only eight pages to work with -- but it's worth the read.

My Grades: I'm not sure I'll vote for this, but it wouldn't bother me if it won, nor would it surprise me. B.



Road Monster
Nicolás Raúl Sánchez Brondo and Diego Cortés

What would a Quentin Tarantino comic starring Danny Trejo look like? I don't know, but that's the question creators Brondo and Cortés seem intent on trying to answer with Road Monster, which combines horror and... horror... in an apparent attempt to capture fans of The Hills Have Eyes.

Look, I'm not going to bag on this too much. The art is pretty good, writing is fine and the production quality is sharp. I personally don't like horror and, as I have had to state more than once in my Zuda reviews, I'm also a little tired of the grim anti-hero protagonist, which in recent years has morphed into the "not a hero at all" protagonist. So the main guy doesn't want to help the kid begging him for assistance at the start of the story? Well, it proves he's a hardcore badass, but it also proves he's a giant douchebag. And I get enough douchebags in the real world without wanting to read about more in my spare time.

My Grades: If this is your sort of thing, you'll like it, which seems obvious but kinda isn't. So even though my personal interest in this can't be above a C-, I'll give it a B- for technical merit.



The Thunderchickens
William Dean Blankenship Jr. and Chad Boudreau

I like the name Thunderchickens and the accompanying thumbnail, because you pretty much instantly know exactly what this comic is about. In this kind of competition, that's an important edge for a comic which may have only couple seconds on the main page to entice people to click and read further.

If they do read further, they'll get a reasonably entertaining anthropomorphic superhero parody, though parody isn't quite the right word; it's more like a loving study of the superhero genre (or, at least, it seems set up to be that; eight pages is a little too short a window to get a full taste of things). The individual characters are well enough realized in the brief time we get to know them, and the superhero genre is well enough known among people who may be reading this that the conceit, while perhaps a little too inside baseball, probably will work anyway. They may want to think about coming up with a new logo, though, just to be safe; the current one seems just a little to close to Thunderbolts for the legal eagles to be comfortable should this win.

My Grades: A fun enough read and likely to appeal to a lot of comics fans. B.



War of the Fallen
Quinton J. Bedwell

There's been quite a bit of discussion at Zuda about the word balloons for this entry and, I think for good reason, because they were the first thing I noticed about the strip. Even at full screen size, the font chosen seemed a bit diffuse, as though it was intended to be viewed at double size and was therefore missing some pixels. This made the comic just a bit more difficult to read, but even that small annoyance is enough to turn off a lot of readers, especially considering that by today's standards, this comic has a whole lot of words in it. In the future, I'd suggest that the creator may want to try out a slightly different font or font size for his projects.

Those many words in those balloons also are just a bit stiff, as Bedwell seems to struggle a bit trying to work in necessary exposition in a natural fashion. As a result, the comic, which is competently drawn, feels a bit clunky and obvious in places. The ideas seem to be there, but a bit more polish may be necessary to get them into winning form.

My Grades: There's a lot of promise here, but unfortunately I don't think most of it is yet realized. C.



War of the Woods
Matthew Petz

As always, before reading the comics each month I take a look at the titles and thumbnails as part of my study to figure out what presentations work and don't work at Zuda. This one was, for me, the best; between the titles, which works both on its own and as a reference to War of the Worlds, was pithy without being annoying, and the artwork was appealing and interesting enough to make me want to see more. A good start.

Sure enough, the art inside is very nice, though perhaps just a little formal; and the title does, in fact, directly reference War of the Worlds, as the comic seems to be a retelling of those events (i.e. an alien invasion of Earth) through the viewpoint of intelligent animals. If I were still 13, I would love this. As it is, it still brings a little smile to my face. So how are these animals going to avert world conquest by aliens? I'm certainly curious to find out, but I know who they shouldn't ask for help: that guy from Road Monster. Because he will f**k you up.

My Grades: Yeah, kind of the opposite of Road Monster for me in every way -- I'll give it a B for technical execution even though for my personal tastes it's more like an A- and will likely earn my vote. First impressions are powerful things.

Read More