InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "A is for Axe"

essaybee (essaybee) wrote in scans_daily,
@ 2009-10-30 14:03:00

Entry tags:

in-joke: shameless plug, medium: webcomic, title: fusion

Fusion #1 Completed (Links Updated)
Over on the old Scans Daily site, I posted a NSFW erotic parody of JLU known as the "Great Scott Saga." (It was composed of 4 parts: "Great Scott," "Fool Me Once . . ." "Birds of a Feather," and "Hell or High Water.") Although I'm still working on "Hell or High Water," I've also started working on an original comic series called Fusion.

I posted a 7-page preview of Fusion a few months ago and got lots of good feedback. Well, I've finished the first issue and will post it here.

I've corrected a few errors on the first 7 pages and tweaked the text on page 2 slightly since that initial preview post, thanks in part to the comments I've gotten here and on other forums.

Now that this first issue is done, I'm gonna work on finishing my NSFW Great Scott Saga and start Issue 2 of Fusion (which is pretty much scripted already). Hope you folks enjoy the comic!

(Post a new comment)

	sherkahn 2009-10-30 06:08 pm UTC (link)
	Your cut is messed up. Check your code. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	essaybee 2009-10-30 06:12 pm UTC (link)
	Yeah, that seems to happen every time I post. I copy the cut code, delete it, then paste it back in, and it works. Go fig. Thanks for letting me know. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	jeyl 2009-10-30 07:01 pm UTC (link)
	Uh, everytime I click on a link, an 'adult finder' window pops up on the image itself. :( (Reply to this) (Thread)

	endis_ni 2009-10-30 07:17 pm UTC (link)
	Same here. I always worry that porn popups try to put malware on my machine :( (Reply to this) (Parent)

	essaybee 2009-10-30 08:36 pm UTC (link)
	Hmm. I haven't had that problem when I click on them, but the pics were tagged as "All ages," so the fact that you're being linked to anything adult is troubling. I'm gonna have to upload to a new image host and revise the links. Thanks for the heads up. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	essaybee 2009-10-30 09:15 pm UTC (link)
	Switched links to Imageshack. Hopefully everything will work fine now. (Reply to this) (Parent)

psychop_rex
2009-10-31 06:45 am UTC (link)

This is pretty cool stuff so far. I do have one comment, though - you might want to rethink having so many heroes wear outfits with such a similar color scheme. Fusion, Captain Stupendous and the Riveter are all wearing purple, the silver on the latter two costumes is reminiscent of all the white on Fusion, and her black hair ties in with the black outfits of Stupendous and the Brooder.
Don't get me wrong - I like the costume designs, and I hope I don't come off as overly critical - it's just that there's very little color variation so far, which can make characters difficult to tell apart. If you get a chance in the future, it might be a good idea to vary their color schemes a bit.

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essaybee
2009-10-31 12:15 pm UTC (link)

Nah, it's not overly critical, and there's a reason the three founding members of SAS have similar color schemes. At some point, I'll probably cover their backgrounds a bit in the comic, but it's not a spoiler if I just tell you here. (More than likely, Savunn will cover the topic in either her blog or her MySpace page, where she'll soon be having cross-dimensional conversations with Harold in her Comments section. These sites will help to flesh out her world, and hopefully encourage reader comments and interaction.)

The Brooder, as his secret identity, owns a multi-billion dollar tech company. The Riveter is a tech wiz and, as her secret identity, works for the Brooder's company. She's the one who designs most of the Brooder's gadgets, as well as the tech for SAS. So, she designed both the Brooder's armor and her tech suit, and used similar materials for both, hence the similar colors.

Captain Stupendous used to wear a garish, brightly colored costume designed by his mother. However, when Alanna Alliteration and the press started reporting on Stupendous, they made a few comments about his costume and how the Brooder was the sexiest superhero. Being somewhat vain--not to mention wanting to impress Alanna--Stupendous asked the Riveter to redesign his costume into something sleeker and sexier. At this point, the three heroes had already begun to put SAS together, and the Riveter thought that the founding members should have a somewhat cohesive color scheme, and thus you have the costumes for the three heroes as revealed on page 11.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	psychop_rex 2009-10-31 07:51 pm UTC (link)
	Ah. OK, that makes sense - if their costumes were designed to look similar as part of a team, that's different. Still, I hope other characters will wear some more colorful outfits as contrast - if the entire SAS is in black, silver and purple, it'd look awfully monotone. (I note you've got a green guy in the next issue - that's a pretty good start.) (Reply to this) (Parent)

	essaybee 2009-10-31 12:18 pm UTC (link)
	Oh, and I forgot to point out that Stupendous is also an eternal optimist--hence the "silver lining" on his cape. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	psychop_rex 2009-10-31 07:55 pm UTC (link)
	I can't say I noticed the color of the lining, but that IS a nice touch. Incidentally, just out of curiosity, were you influenced by the film 'Meteor Man' when you came up with him? I ask this because 'black Superman with costume designed by his mom' sums up the character in that pretty well (from what I've heard, anyway - haven't seen it). (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

essaybee
2009-10-31 08:17 pm UTC (link)

Nope, never saw Meteor Man. Captain Stupendous, as I see him, is Superman as played by a typical Will Smith character. His name is a nod to Stupendousman from Calvin and Hobbes. Incidentally, Stupendous's secret identity is Calvin Lane, which is a double nod--Calvin, of course, being another nod to Calvin and Hobbes, and shortening his first name and taking his last initial gives you Cal L, an obvious nod to his main inspiration.

And the color scheme is only for the founding 3. The green guy you mentioned is the Grasshopper. Some of the other heroes who'll be appearing soon will add more colors to the mix, so I'll hopefully avoid any kind of color monotony. Regardless, your feedback is appreciated, since this is exactly the sort of stuff I need to keep in mind when designing characters.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	psychop_rex 2009-10-31 08:42 pm UTC (link)
	Glad to be of service. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	red_leather 2009-11-03 01:07 am UTC (link)
	I dug it! Looking forward to the next one. (Reply to this)

	ashez2ashes 2009-11-03 03:00 am UTC (link)
	I like your cover. The heroines got a lot of personality coming through in her facial expression. (Reply to this)

Feedback, impressions and criticism (aka Beware of the Teel Deer)

strannik01
2009-11-10 07:04 pm UTC (link)

Essaybee:

First of all, let me say that I enjoyed may aspects of this comic. while the art is a bit uneven, it's fairly dynamic and expressive. You have a fairly decent grasp of the body language and facial expressions, which is a very underrated (but vital) skill. As for writing, it did feel a bit too precious at times, especially with all the 4th wall breakage, I do think that, in the end, the strengths outweighed the weaknesses and there were some genuinely hilarious moments that made it all worthwhile.

Having said that, there are a few things I take issue with:

Caption boxes - good lord, the caption boxes. They take up far more space than they need to. Oftentimes, you seem to fall into the old "telling is showing" trap, describing the characters' personalities in excruciating detail when there wasn't any need for it, since you were able to convey them through their dialogue and actions anyway. I think many of those captions could be excised altogether and your comic won't lose anything. And when caption boxes do matter, they could honestly survive without that much text. Comic books give creators an opportunity to tell their stories through combination or writing and art. Just as actors can establish character through the way they handle dialogue and body language, you can use your art to convey some aspects of the characterization and use the caption boxes to cover the rest.

Characterization - having said everything above, I do feel that most of your secondary characters are undeveloped. We got the Logical Guy, the Awkward Nerd, the Friendly Cute Potential Love Interest, your obligatory Mean Girl Cheerleader and, of course, some thinly veiled superhero proxies (more on that in the next paragraph). Fusion could have fallen into this, back the fact that we read the story from her perspective gave us a better insight into her personality, so she comes off as more of an individual, but the same can't be said for the rest. They all act according to their types and there isn't a lot more to them than that. Now, that isn't necessarily a bad thing, at least not yet. Since this is only the first of many issues, you will have many opportunities to flesh them out and make them more three-dimensional.

The Attack of DC Proxies - this is more of a matter of personal preference that anything, but I am disappointed to see yet another comic use DC's Trinity proxies. Don't get me wrong - I am not saying that such proxies can't be used well, or that the proxies necessarily ruin the comic or anything like that, but at this point, this sort of thing has become a cliche and, I, for one, am growing a bit tired of it. If you are going to use proxies, why not use proxies of other characters (full disclosure: in one of my unpublished short stories, I filled a superteam with thinly veiled proxies of 1980s American action cartoon characters). Again, this is a matter of personal preference, and I won't presume that to know what's best for the story you're trying to tell, but, as I said, this cliche bugs me.

Anyway, I rambled long enough. I hope my post was at least slightly useful and I look forward to seeing more of your work in the future.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

Re: Feedback, impressions and criticism (aka Beware of the Teel Deer)

essaybee
2009-11-10 08:23 pm UTC (link)

Thanks for the thorough and thoughtful critique. All of your points of criticism are good points, and the sort of feedback that I'll be sure to keep in mind as the series progresses. I have some reasoning behind many of your points, which I'll address below, but understand why they would bug or annoy some readers.

Caption boxes--The general wordiness of Savunn's narrative is something I'm keenly aware of (and a number of readers have pointed out to me). For this first issue (and indeed a number of these early issues), Savunn will be fairly talkative. Knowing that people are reading about her life is an exciting concept for her, and she gets pretty chatty when she gets excited. Plus, I want Savunn to directly engage the reader and for her narrative boxes to be a conversation with the reader to establish a reader-character rapport. However, as the series goes on and the novelty of this becomes more mundane to her, conversation with the Reader will slow. Savunn's descriptions of Nate and Harold was a bit of a cheat and something that I frown on (the telling instead of showing aspect bugs me). Unfortunately, although Harold will make frequent appearances (and hopefully become a likable hero), Nate won't have a major part in the foreseeable future, and I wanted to establish their characters in as little time as possible so that readers will know where they're coming from in their brief appearances that will follow. Yeah, it's lazy, but I was going for economy (and, truth be told, I'm not particularly fond of the way I handled this either).

Characterization--This is definitely something that I don't want to mess up. Yeah, a number of characters will be stock characters (think a typical Disney animated movie), but I do want them all to develop a level of depth that will make you want to find out what happens to them and fear for the safety of the good guys and root for the fall of the bad guys. I want Savunn to particularly pop as a character and to become someone genuinely dear to readers. As you said, it's something that will take more than 1 issue to do. And, although Savunn doesn't like Jeanie (so her characterization was skewed by Savunn's prejudices), she's not a "mean girl cheerleader," as the future will help reveal (granted she can be superficial).

The Attack of the DC Proxies--The founding 3 members of SAS are obvious proxies for the DC Trinity, at least initially. Well, the Riveter is fairly different from Wonder Woman (she's probably more Tony Stark or John Henry Irons than WW), but she is still obviously a WW-type character. Much of this is because many people have different counterparts in different dimensions (like the multitude of Supermans in the DC Multiverse), but the big 3 help set a standard to judge all other characters by--and as the story progresses, they'll hopefully become more of their own personalities instead of DC knockoffs. And I definitely have NO interest in the characters being simple proxies--I want them to become their own entities (albeit a tribute to their obvious inspirations), which will hopefully happen as the series progresses.

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