PARAGON comic

[M.I.K.]

This works... http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/PARAGONcomic

[briantm]

Dave was nice enough to send me a digital copy of Paragon 9 to read.

First of all, congratulations to everyone involved.  It's a good comic.  I may pick up a digital copy of the next issue to see where some of these are going.
I'll try to give some constructive criticism. I'm looking at the storytelling here, as opposed to the stories in general. Little things that annoyed me or took me out of the story. Maybe that's a bit odd in comparison to a standard review that the likes of FP would give. I hope this doesn't come across as nitpicking - that's not my intention. Some of the following are storytelling choices I would have made differently and which the creators might disagree with entirely.

Spencer Nero and the Island of the Naztecs

I like the art - it has its own unique style... but the anatomy is irregular between panels and the foreshortening is way off at times.

I understand that the dialogue and captions are a pastiche, but I found this too much.  It became a labour to read.  I think the same pastiche effect could be achieved without so much infodump and characters signposting their movements and motivations.

That said, if it was edited down a bit, I have no problem with the quality of the writing itself.

The humour was good. I chuckled at some of the jokes, and humour is hard to get right in comics.

Page1 Panel 1... I read the first word balloon before noticing the phone-ringing sound effect, so the reading flow is off there.

Why did the Aztecs call Nero symmetrical? By this did they mean handsome? Or are they not normal Aztecs and are somehow malformed?

Von Zero did not get a good enough establishing shot.

I think it would be good if the mask was more visually interesting.  The main thing about it is that it's gold (I think) but this obviously doesn't come across in B&W.

It's not clearly established what the mirror stone is.  In Nero's briefing, yerman says that Zero is after something but doesn't say what.  I know it's serving as a McGuffin, but naming the thing in the same frame as it is destroyed seems a bit much.

I think it should be made clear how the Janus Mask works. He seems to be taken over by some spirit when he wears it, but he is not shown taking it off.  I found myself wondering how much control he has when he is wearing it and what consciousness decided to remove the mask.


Jikan - Cave of Death

A straight forward story with good art.  I found the narration very dry. Maybe it would work better in first person.  Also, the narration was completely redundant in some panels, describing exactly what we can clearly see from the art.

On page 1 we don't see how Jikan got off the pedestal type rock. It's not clear if he jumped down into the middle of them. Not that big a deal but the storytelling just seemed slightly off to me.

At the bottom of page 1 it doesn't look like Jikan has swung his blade. I'm not sure if it's the pose, the distance between him and the beheaded figure or just the lack of a few motion lines, but it took me a second to register the beheading.

Page 2, last panel- similar to the sword thing, the orc(?) doesn't look like he's about to swing, he looks like he's resting the club behind his head.

Page5 Panel2 It should be shown in this panel that Jikan is being pushed towards the pit so that the next panel is clearer.

What hit me most about Jikan is - isn't this just Samurai Jack? Ok, maybe Samurai Jack is based on the same legend that this is (I dunno)... but Samurai Jack did a fucking amazing job of it, so if you are going to do something based on the same material I think you need to come at it from a fresh angle, which Jikan doesn't seem to be doing.
I hope that isn't too harsh.

No Compromise

The art is nice and the opening is good.  I think the strangeness of someone arriving on the island could have been emphasized a bit more to add to the intrigue.
The more severe anatomy problems that were recurrent in Spencer Nero don't seem to be cropping up in Dave's art here at all.

Page3 Panel1 - it's not clear what's happening here. I know from Panel2 that it is a hand stopping him, but you cant make out the contact in P1... it could just as easily be a zombie-esque hand clawing towards him.

I think the composition of Page3 is unbalanced. Squint your eyes and look at the dispersal of the main black and white areas on the page.

Page 4, panels 1&2 - what the hell happened here? are the guys in the hats the same guy, the main character? It's not clear whether this is a time lapse, a different part of the bar or just a mistake when it was meant to show someone at the other side of him. A distinguishing feature on the bar, and maybe breaking it to 3 beats/panels with three different people sitting beside him would help to fix this.

Nice splash page! It's good that the first shot figure you see is the opposite angle to the shooter image. Good planning.

I think the villain needs more characterisation. He's a cliché bad guy. The good guy has some nice characterisation at the start, but your villain makes your hero!  The conflict is one sided so the overall story seems a little empty.



Rise of the MekkoSapiens

Nice story but I found myself a little confused by it and had to go back and read it again more slowly.  I think if it had started with Timmons reaching consciousness and then straight into the action, with the backstory revealed more slowly it would have worked better. Not everything that was revealed in this first instalment was needed to set up the motivations and get the ball rolling.  If some of these things were left unanswered I think the story might be more intriguing.

ending a caption box with a dash makes it seem as though it's going to be continued.  This happens in a few captions but confused the shit out of me with the last caption box of page4. When I turned the page the next caption didn't make sense because I was waiting for the end of the previous sentence. Page5 Panel1 is confusing anyway (who's who, why is one kneeling?) which didn't help.

Spencer Nero and the Last Laugh

Same issues as before with the dialogue, but again, this was funny. In fact, this one was much funnier, great gag.
Panel 1 should show his eyes looking back in response to the sound.

Icarus Dangerous

Love the name

Page1 Panel4 caption box. Bad sentence structure, it's unclear who did something to his wings - the girl or the skels.
Also, I don't think you should refer to her as blue-skinned in the text in a B&W comic. I'm not sure if anyone would agree with me on that though.

Page2 - last 3 panels. This is a bit of a waste of storytelling space.  He's just finding his way around for one third of a page. Might not sound like alot but it is when you consider the short format that the writer is working in.

Same sort of thing comes up again... page 4 does everything needed to show Icarus can fly.  The majority of page 5 is devoted to the exact same thing, showing he can fly. Ok, so it deals with some of the characters confidence issues, but I still think too much time/space was devoted to this.

I don't really know what's happening in Page5 Panels 1&2... is he damaging his right wings or has someone shot it?

Page 6, some tangent issues with the control panel - It blends with the perspective of the corridor. I didn't know it was there and presumed he went to another room to get to the controls. Seeing the control panel in the middle of the hall on the splash page at the end confused me and I had to flick back to see that it was in fact show on page6.

Great cliffhanger ending.



I hope that was constructive... it took ages! 
Again, thanks to Dave for the copy and fair play to everyone involved.

[Greg M.]

As the writer of Spencer Nero, thank you very much for taking the time to do such an in-depth critique. As others have suggested, you don't always get too much feedback for small-press projects, so it's great seeing someone taking the time to go into real detail about their thoughts and reactions to the strips. To answer your points:

Spencer Nero and the Island of the Naztecs

I understand that the dialogue and captions are a pastiche, but I found this too much.  It became a labour to read.  I think the same pastiche effect could be achieved without so much infodump and characters signposting their movements and motivations.

That said, if it was edited down a bit, I have no problem with the quality of the writing itself.

Fair point, and hard to argue with. In my opinion, one of my biggest of many vices as a fledgling small-press writer is an excess of verbosity, particularly when it comes to writing things that could be indicated visually. I hope you'll find that successive Nero strips tone this down somewhat (though I can't say the pastiche effect vanishes.)

Why did the Aztecs call Nero symmetrical? By this did they mean handsome? Or are they not normal Aztecs and are somehow malformed?

They are malformed and inbred after 400 years of inbreeding on their little island colony.

I think it would be good if the mask was more visually interesting.  The main thing about it is that it's gold (I think) but this obviously doesn't come across in B&W.

This is down to me as the writer - I indicated in the script it should be quite blank-faced. I didn't want it to be ornate - I find its plain nature makes it (to me) quite frightening-looking, because it is so lacking in human features. (In my head, it had a nose, but I prefer it without.)

It's not clearly established what the mirror stone is.  In Nero's briefing, yerman says that Zero is after something but doesn't say what.  I know it's serving as a McGuffin, but naming the thing in the same frame as it is destroyed seems a bit much.

The stone is the same thing Von Zero bangs on about on the previous page - the fragment of the foot of Tezcatlipoca, which renders things invisible around it in a set radius. I obviously don't make this clear, or my verbosity obscures it. My mistake.

I think it should be made clear how the Janus Mask works. He seems to be taken over by some spirit when he wears it, but he is not shown taking it off.  I found myself wondering how much control he has when he is wearing it and what consciousness decided to remove the mask.

Keep reading! I am glad you are asking these questions... you will get some answers to precisely these things eventually. It's an ongoing thread in the story. I agree there was certainly room to clarify the logistics without giving away the mystery though.

Anyway, glad you liked the humour of my two strips: hopefully future instalments should deal with some of your points. The two stories were written quite a distance apart ('The Last Laugh' is very recent, '...Naztecs' was written some time ago) and the humour in 'The Last Laugh' is probably closer to the way my scripts for the strip seem to be evolving.

Thanks again.

[briantm]

>>(though I can't say the pastiche effect vanishes.)

Of course not. That's the point of the character. If I came across as saying that the pastiche doesn't work that's not what I meant.

Glad you found my comments of some use.

Brian

[briantm]

>>The stone is the same thing Von Zero bangs on about on the previous page - the fragment of the foot of Tezcatlipoca, which renders things invisible around it in a set radius. I obviously don't make this clear, or my verbosity obscures it. My mistake.

Nope, not your mistake.  I just reread and I must have entirely glossed over that wordballoon as it mentions the inbreeding thing too.

So my shitty attention span is to blame

[Greg M.]

Nope, not your mistake.  I just reread and I must have entirely glossed over that wordballoon as it mentions the inbreeding thing too.

So my shitty attention span is to blame

In fairness, you probably saw the size of the wordballoon and thought "Oh, sod it, does he expect me to read all that? It's probably just the usual bad guy monologuing." and skipped it.

[locustsofdeath!]

Rise of the Mekkos: I guess I can see now the major major downfalls of anthology comic reading - and it should have been more apparent to me, because the couple of times I've fallen off 2000AD and come back I've suffered this same way. This is part three - so there's no way (or maybe there is) you could know that there are no true "caption" boxes; there are actually two G127's, the robot and the man. That bit on the first page had been led up to. There's more to find out. Of course if you came away uninterested in that 'more', that's my fault. And if there's no way for a new reader to penetrate what's going on, that's my fault too. Or maybe I've written a stinker, which is my fault most of all. This certainly isn't the first bad review the strip has gotten - and reception has been so bad that I've really felt like I've let Davey and Paragon down. Several times I've told him I'd write a quick ending so he can be rid of it (or even told him I wouldn't be offended if it just disappeared).

Jikan: I've honestly never read Samurai Jack, so I can't really comment on that. As for my captioning being dry, there's nothing I can really say to that. I attempted to echo Roy Thomas' Conan stories, so I guess I blew that! Ironically, the original script had zero dialogue or captions...

Anyway, nice in-depth review. Thanks for reading.

I find it mind-boggling that twice my work elsewhere has come away with dazzling reviews from Colin at Too Busy Thinking About My Comics yet my Paragon stuff is derided (though I went back to the FPB review of the Jikan chronicles and the fellow who constantly rips Mekkos gave this Jikan nice marks, so...I guess just mostly bad, not ALL bad, ha).

[briantm]

Hi Locustsofdeath,

I did know that the caption boxes were the inner dialogue of the man/machine. That was completely clear and I very much like how you showed this on the second page - nice visuals.

I didn't know that this was part three... it doesn't say so anywhere in the comic. That changes quite a lot... I read it as if it was the opening chapter and thought it not the best way to introduce the story.

Also, forgot to mention in my original post... I do quite like the art in Mekko. It can bet a bit busy in some panels, but I think seeing this artwork in colour would help differentiate things an awful lot. (I know that's not possible for Paragon, but maybe in a digital collection?)

>>This certainly isn't the first bad review the strip has gotten - and reception has been so bad that I've really felt like I've let Davey and Paragon down. Several times I've told him I'd write a quick ending so he can be rid of it (or even told him I wouldn't be offended if it just disappeared).

I didn't mean for it to read like a bad review. Also, as I didn't know it was part three, it was a misinformed review. Don't be disheartened man, I liked the strip.  That I felt a bit out of my depth is explained by missing the first 2 instalments.


Re Jikan - Samurai Jack is a cartoon, not another comic.  It's about a samurai who is thrown through time into the far future by a demon. Jack is forever pursuing the demon who flees at the end of most episodes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samurai_Jack
(I'm not in the slightest suggesting any copying. They are just extremely similar stories.)

[locustsofdeath!]

Hey Brian - no worries at all. I'd rather someone tell it like it is so I can learn from it. In that respect, I really really appreciate it. No worries.

Gads! You've pointed out probably the stupidest mistake I could have made: not letting the reader know that this is part three. You know, I had a blurb at the beginning of part 2 but for some reason didn't include it this go round. I can't for the life of me remember why, though it's now obvious I should have...these are the little things I definitely appreciate being pointed out to me. Thanks!

As far as Jikan goes, I'm not really sure what the inspiration for the character is/was. I'm just a "hired" gun; Davey, the editor, asked me to write a few 8-page stand-alone episodes between the larger story arcs which are developed by him and Mark Howard (I think that's how it works).

But yeah, I'd like to continue chatting with you privately if that's cool. Pick your brain a bit.

[The Legendary Shark]

Dave created the character and his world and kindly invited me (after I took my foot of his throat... ) to have a go at an origins arc. There are two scripts (comprising four eight page episodes) of mine still to be published in 'my run'. I've seen the art for the first of these, and it's bloody stunning. Hopefully my efforts will be okay but, even if they're not, Jikan fans are in for an eyegasm!

[locustsofdeath!]

Re Jikan - Samurai Jack is a cartoon, not another comic.  It's about a samurai who is thrown through time into the far future by a demon. Jack is forever pursuing the demon who flees at the end of most episodes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samurai_Jack
(I'm not in the slightest suggesting any copying. They are just extremely similar stories.)

Ah, you're right.

[locustsofdeath!]

Re Jikan - Samurai Jack is a cartoon, not another comic.  It's about a samurai who is thrown through time into the far future by a demon. Jack is forever pursuing the demon who flees at the end of most episodes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samurai_Jack
(I'm not in the slightest suggesting any copying. They are just extremely similar stories.)

Ah, you're right.

Just want to make sure it doesn't sound like I'm implying anyone stole anything from Samurai Jack. I didn't mean that at all.

[Daveycandlish]

Thanks for taking the time to give such detailed feedback brian - very much appreciated!

As the writers have already left their comments I'll just blether on about my bits;

I was kinda going for a 70s Marvel Doc Savage vibe for my Spencer Nero art, so any criticisms of the pictures is completely down to me - I had hoped that the Naztecs came across as inbred and deformed so any foreshortening issues on them are deliberate - some are meant to have big arms, squat legs, whatever. If that wasn't obvious then I've failed (note to self; must try harder)
As Greg said, one of the mysteries of this story is the mask and how it works and that is slowly revealed over the coming episodes (I already have the next four scripts in, with a couple of smaller episodes to drop in as and when)

Jikan is my creation and I have to confess I have never seen Samurai Jack - it was only on looking it up on Wiki just now and reading the first sentence that I can see how similar the premises are.
Confession time; if any thing, he's based on the Hammer film Captain Kronos. I loved the idea of a time travelling do-gooder and wanted something similar. Kronos is based on the Greek word for time - can you guess what the Japanese word jikan means?

Any issues on the art on No Compromise are again down to poor choices by me

The thing I take away from the reviews for Mekkos and Icarus is that both would benefit from a story so far caption at the beginning of each episode. The story is explained on the contents page but this is obviously not enough for the casual reader. As editor I'll do something about that for future issues.

Huge thanks for taking the time to give such detailed feedback - it's been very instructive. I hope you'll stick around for issue 10 to see if the comic improves!

[Van Dom]

Hi Brian,
as the others have said, thanks for taking the time to write up such an in-depth review.  Good comments will made about Icarus, I can see what you mean about taking too long to tell something and this helps clarify what the FPI review was saying about this chapter 'dragging' a bit. The 'finding his way around' bit could definately have been streamlined and could probably have tightened up the 'learning to fly' part too - although I wanted to devote a bit of time to that as it's kind of crucial to the character's development, since the flying thing is the BIG thing about the Icarus legend. He failed miserably in the first part (and in the legend obviously) and so I wanted to show his nervousness, trepidation, lack of confidence and subsequent exhiliration as he realises his wings are now 'magical' and he can do it by thought alone. What was happening in those two panels you couldnt figure out was some feathers from the wings were wrapping around his wrists to secure themselves to his arms as he flies. But yeah I can see how that would be hard to figure out.

Yep, thanks again for writing that, this is the kind of review/commentary I need!

[briantm]

Hi Dave,

It wasn't the Naztecs I was referring to when I mentioned anatomy/foreshortening problems, it was Spencer himself.

The ones that stood out were
Page1 p1 - his forearm seems far too long
Page2 p3 - his legs are twisted at an awkward angle
Page3 p4 - his shoulders/biceps are too big (at least in comparison to what's come before) and the torso doesn't quite match the legs.

Again, not trying to nitpick. I do like your artwork.


Also, I had a look at James Corcoran's blog http://james-corcoran.blogspot.com/
His art seems to have matured alot in the last year (since the Jikan strip was drawn)
Looking forward to seeing his take on Nero in a future issue.