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