You haven't submitted it yet? 
Why not? it's not like it needs revising. I honestly couldn't find anything to critique.
(Okay, there is maybe one panel where the action wasn't totally clear. I think.)
I could have revised mine every day and not been happy... and then starting wondering what I'd do if my computer went down.... or the Internet had some hiccup that wound up delaying my entry e-mail by 24 hours... and then I decided I'd give myself a bigger window of opportunity, and submitted the darn thing already.
I, um, didn't actually read any comics to prep mine, because I didn't really have any suitable ones handy. I haven't bought off the shelf comics in years, though I've got some graphic novels and a few Elementals comic books. But the radio chatter progression was something I'm pretty sure I remember Frank Miller/Lynn Varley using in the Dark Knight Returns... and that would have been the books I used to crib from IF THE PERSON I LOANED THEM TO HAD RETURNED THEM BY NOW! <straightens tie, wipes froth from mouth>
I'll have to look up Desolation Jones. That's one I've never heard of.
I'm still jealous that you squeezed a really good story into 8 pages. Darn you to heck. The story in mine finished pretty much where I wanted it to, but I'm vaguely uneasy about not having a COMPLETE story in those pages. It's all well and good to have the cutesy "back in issue#2" captions and "to be continued" banners at the end; they can add to the verisimilitude of that comic book feel, but they can also cover up the fact that, well, the story doesn't have an ending.
So now I'm contemplating doing the next part in the series. Like the angst over this one wasn't enough :-)
Some other good ones to check out:
The Heart of a Butterfly - The fight between Samedhi and the demon is just fantastic as it spills from room to bridge and back again. The story is solid, too; easily the most interesting plot twist of any of the comics I've seen.
Agent Abandon - Lag of a Lifetime - Good layouts and great use of the background frames, not to mention FUNNY! Plus, I think Agent Abandon earned the "Bloodiest Panel" award on page 5. =)
Betrayal & the Beast - This is another one with really cool background frames. Also, I like how well the author tied the main character into the City of Villains cannon with the Ghost Widow rescue, and the Arachnos betrayal subplot was well done. I'm a Villains player, so I'm a tad partial to the darker protagonists, and Ruin Raven walks the line well as an angel of death.
Heres the link to my comic book contest entry. Between this comic and building my munny CoV action figure, making this comic has been real fun!
Usurper
Heh i wish we could enter two...
Mew
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Tales From the Debt Brigade
Another one that is laugh out loud funny. "Serenity now. Serenity now." And loved the ending.
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Thx for the vote! You made some great picks out of the crop. The judges will have a time of it for every entry on this forums page there are 3-5 more on Hypercomics site. I see why the winner won't be announced anytime soon. Good luck everyone!
"Oh NO! I'm so sorry baba! you and your wife will be sorely missed...s#@!, i did it again, didn't I?" - mintmiki
Animal Farm ID:71800
When Alts Collide: 134432
Wow - Great stuff everybody!
[url=http://starwindgraphics.deviantart.com/]My deviantArt page[/url]
[IMG]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v292/AceFrankly/Starwind-Name-Signature1.gif[/IMG]
Proud member of The Impossibles/Pinnacle -[url="http://www.theimpossibles.org"]www.theimpossibles.org[/url]
After ditching a more serious action/character piece due to not understanding the demoeditor, I put together this piece about two of Freedom's groovingest heroes: California Hustle and Soulshriek!
Dance Off!
Wow, great work everyone, sheesh!
[edit again] Okay, it stopped being dumb, here we are:
Identity Crey-sis
* i had some issues with the uploading, it kept messing up my text formatting....
-STEELE =)
Allied to all sides so that no matter what, I'll come out on top!
Oh, and Crimson demands you play this arc-> Twisted Knives (MA Arc #397769)
Wow, there are some cool submissions so far. I liked some of the ones listed in this thread. Kudos.
I submitted mine tonight. I did mine by publishing using PDF (I bought the full version of the software, hey I like it), and not through HyperComics, so I don't really have a link to share here.
I too had a hard time trying to create a viable story without cluttering too much into just 8 pages. In the end, I used the starting parts from a kind of fan fiction I had written previously (a pretty long one, which could fit 3 issues, argh) of my main hero.
I basically looked at the starting parts of the story (the prologue) I had written and it looked perfect to fit into 8 pages. So I went with that. Plus I added a few more story bits from the rest of the first issue in the fan fiction.
Yes, my submission ends with a "to be continued" type of scene (I wrote in "End Prologue"), since it's only the beginning of an arc.
I'm hoping the judges will look at the overall quality of the submission and the story/action that was placed in it, even though the story doesn't end in the submission.
*crosses fingers* 
I'm really enjoying seeing the stuff the COH community is creating for this contest. I've been using CBC for about a year with COH to produce my comic "Neighborhood Watch." The day I saw this contest announcement I got really fired up. COH is such a great fit with CBC- and everybody always has a story to tell.
The 8 page limit has been especially tough for me, since I'm used to cranking out a lot of pages per episode- but I appreciated the challenge of it. Really helps you distill things to the most important details. Of course, the story I started with I had initially planned to use as the seventh episode of NW, so I had a lot of distilling to do.
Hypercomics is okay- seems like it takes a long time to load books though and from what I hear there are a lot of problems. I'm planning to post all of my Neighborhood Watch books up there eventually. Anyway, looking forward to the final results and to reading some more great comics!
Check mine out here: The Lure
You can check out the first six issues of Neighborhood Watch here.
Neighborhood Watch
Good luck everybody!
Oooh. Another awesome entry. I'll put The Lure in contender's spot with I Saw It and Paragon City Stories for Best Overall. The Lure may get the nod ahead of Paragon City Stories based on story, but just barely. I Saw It may be the one to beat.
Because I'm insane and can't leave well enough alone: the revised version of The Archangel's Song for your perusal.
UH OH, The Lure just took the lead...
GREAT work there.
"Oh NO! I'm so sorry baba! you and your wife will be sorely missed...s#@!, i did it again, didn't I?" - mintmiki
Animal Farm ID:71800
When Alts Collide: 134432
Well, I'm officially pissed.
I own a registered copy of Comic Book Creator but I upgraded to Vista so it refuses to work for me. I cannot print it or pubish it to another PDF and it will not upload to the site. It goes through all the motions and then gives a vague error message. I've gotten no responses to my emails to Planetwide.
I'm going to go ahead and mail in an entry regardless giving a link to the comic otherwise hosted. It won't be accepted but its done so to Heck with 'em.
http://www.victors.ca/comics/scar/issue3/index.php
One thing I've learned in looking over the submissions is, Wow, some people have some awesome graphics cards!
I did a rough PDF-to-jpg conversion, but I'll upload better images when I get back to my authoring PC.
Mydnyght in Paragon City
--NT
They all laughed at me when I said I wanted to be a comedian.
But I showed them, and nobody's laughing at me now!
If I became a red name, I would be all "and what would you mere mortals like to entertain me with today, mu hu ha ha ha!" ~Arcanaville
I guess my entry has no shot... at least I had fun making it.
Ashes to ashes,
Pheonyx
The Cape Radio
"It's good to have friends. Wish I did." - Troy Hickman
Glad you guys enjoyed The Lure.
I meant to mention Paragon City Comics in my last post. They have been publishing City of Heroes comics for quite awhile. There's a lot of good stuff over there. The site is based in the UK, so most of the stuff created by those guys wasn't eligible for this contest. Still- lot of great comics out there. Check 'em out sometime.
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Well, I'm officially pissed.
I own a registered copy of Comic Book Creator but I upgraded to Vista so it refuses to work for me. I cannot print it or pubish it to another PDF and it will not upload to the site. It goes through all the motions and then gives a vague error message. I've gotten no responses to my emails to Planetwide.
I'm going to go ahead and mail in an entry regardless giving a link to the comic otherwise hosted. It won't be accepted but its done so to Heck with 'em.
http://www.victors.ca/comics/scar/issue3/index.php
[/ QUOTE ]
It's a bit of work, but you could construct JPGs of the pages and upload them at the hypercomics site. That's what I did for my wife's comic, and it worked well enough.
My Arc: The Power From Out Of Space, ID# 64800
Mrs. Spoon's Arc: Shades of Betrayal, Acts of Salvation, ID# 59147
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Well, I'm officially pissed.
I own a registered copy of Comic Book Creator but I upgraded to Vista so it refuses to work for me. I cannot print it or pubish it to another PDF and it will not upload to the site. It goes through all the motions and then gives a vague error message. I've gotten no responses to my emails to Planetwide.
I'm going to go ahead and mail in an entry regardless giving a link to the comic otherwise hosted. It won't be accepted but its done so to Heck with 'em.
http://www.victors.ca/comics/scar/issue3/index.php
[/ QUOTE ]
It's a bit of work, but you could construct JPGs of the pages and upload them at the hypercomics site. That's what I did for my wife's comic, and it worked well enough.
[/ QUOTE ]
I made mine a PDF and e-mailed it in but I also wanted to put it on Hypercomics so I could get peoples opinion of it but to do so I had to upload jpegs. I made them by copying and pasting each image from the pdf file into a new image in my graphics program, didn't take long with only 9 images. It's my first attempt at making a comic and it shows. In hindsight I think I wound up using too many shots from the main character's back but since I was doing the mission solo it made it hard to fight and move the camera around for decent shots at the same time, especially the EB battle, was more interested in staying alive in that one. 
Hope the link works, like other things with that site been having some trouble with it.
Spotlight
I had the same trouble with the pdf writer that a lot of people did. But I did get it up on the website. Here is the link:
City of Statues
I don't think it has a chance of winning, but I'm happy with it. Whew, I'm glad it's done. Wrestling images out of the game was tough.
Lots of great entries, guys! Those judges are going to have a tough time!
Avatar: "Cheeky Jack O Lantern" by dimarie
Anyone feel like critiquing/trashing my entry? I just went with straight screenshots on ultra-high detail, instead of some of the sweet filter effects I see everyone else using.
Minor background/spoiler: It's more of a short standalone story. And, in it's own way, it's a tribute to the heroes. Enjoy!
Not A Hero
Hey LuchadorFuerte- I really dug your comic. Your shots were really rich, pages were well laid out. Great stuff.
Drrmidnight: Thanks much! I'm totally digging "The Lure". Great story/layout!
It's a bit late for me to ask but -- is the "comic book cover" considered "Page 1" as far as submitting say, an 8 page comic? Meaning is it a comic book cover page + 8 comic pages = OK; or does it need to consider the cover as "page 1" and then be limited to 7 beyond that.
The Metal mandroid stuff I did was 20-22 pages per issue (like a "real" comic), and I'm actually finding it tough (dialogue wise) to portray any semblance of a storyline in 4-8 pages. As in my real life (reporting), I'm better at writing bloated than concise.
Thanks for the compliment! (On I Saw It!) Guess I should get around to submitting it... @.@ *cough*
I'd read a lot of the ones you mentioned, but had missed Baelzebozo and Wardrobe Malfunction, both of which I very much enjoyed. Baelzebobo elegantly deals with something I think most players have wondered about at least once. Wardrobe Malfunction is... well, just plain funny. And very well (screen)shot.
Your own is very clearly, very carefully put together. It's very clean and almost professional - my only gripe with it is that it ends just as it's getting good.
I'm guessing that, like myself, you sat down with a bunch of comic books and picked apart the techniques for your composition. Which did you use? (I'm sure I've seen the speech/radio/thought bubble progression in one of your vertical panels done somewhere...)
For myself, I read through a dozen 70s-era 'Secrets of the Haunted House' and 'Tales of the Unexpected' as well as cribbing a few newer ideas from Desolation Jones. (Red tones and desaturation to indicate action in panels where the action can't be explicit.)