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Phoenix Epoch 01 superoughs! (revised dialouge)
McGibs
TorontoRegistered User regular
TorontoRegistered User regular
Welp, heres' the (very) rough draft of issue 1 of my new comic project.
Let me know what you think so I can make changes now, rather then later.
I'm also open to suggestions for a title.
(if you have trouble making out my chicken scratch, let me know and ill tell you what it is youre supposed to be looking at)
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Let me know what you think so I can make changes now, rather then later.
I'm also open to suggestions for a title.
(if you have trouble making out my chicken scratch, let me know and ill tell you what it is youre supposed to be looking at)
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Looking cool so far. I look forward to reading this.
Good work though. I'll critique your writing once I get some time on my hands.
"I was born; six gun in my hand; behind the gun; I make my final stand"~Bad Company
A couple of times the dialogue seemed a little bit too "this is what happened, listen I will tell you" even for a reminiscence, but I guess thats to be expected from exposition
I actually laughed at the "Holy crap on a cracker" line.
I hope you keep on with this, it seems like the sort of thing I could become obsessed with!
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But yeah, I'll probobly stick another page in between 12 and 13. or redo the last couple panels on 12 to have more light and add another page between 13 and 14.
The giant monolith thing is a terraforming plant by the by. There will a tech sheet for it, along with the suit.
"I was born; six gun in my hand; behind the gun; I make my final stand"~Bad Company
The suit reminds me of 12 monkeys a bit. (In a good good way)
Is there going to be color? i think the contrast between grey, and dull color where his light is shining will be awesome.
Dibs on the first copy if it goes to print!
You should leave it grayscale, works brilliantly with the theme....and McGibbs.....I fucking love it! I would pay money for this shit.
yes I like this
It seems to happen really fast though, but I like thatt, really interesting history. Curious if it'll stay at the same pace in the next bit or if it'll slow down.
This is going to sound like a sarcastic jackass question, but which pseudo-sciences? I actually genuinely want to know.
Also, McGibs, intentional or not, a man in a large astronaut suit pedaling a bicycle is hi-friggin-larious.
Im not sure I would give all the speech bubbles tails. At first it looks like hes just thinking aloud, and then its like he starts talking aloud, but obviously to an audience. Seems odd that he would actually be saying some of the things he is.
I was going to mention this (so therefore I win), but I gave McGibbs the benefit of the doubt that there would be some character (possibly a multiple personaility or small pet insect) that he was trying to converse with and/or tell his story too. This would assumably be revealed at a later date to rapturous applause that would gain him matrix like status, which he would then follow up with two really fucking horribile sequels.....history repeating itself and all that gaff.
I'm going to go back and "loonify" up the speech. its a little to coherant right now.
Either way I'm liking the looks of it, can't wait to see more.
I would feel more like a jackass actually writing them out, but if you're asking--
Well, microbial life is extremely pervasive and there are many many species of tiny organisms which can survive in super extreme habitats. Even with chemical, biological and nuclear weapons it doesn't seem possible to completely scourge the entire planet of life within 2 weeks. It lends itself to a neat device where the dead bodies don't compose though because of the oxygen free atmosphere. I hope that snowmobile has a 100% electric engine though, but then that begs the question where he's been juicing up for 10 years after everyone's dead :rotate:
The much more egregious shortcut is having a pocket of breathable atmosphere centered around this terraforming decive, which I am pretty sure is complete bullshit unless the terraformer runs on magic.
Like I said though, it's nit picky and I'm willing to suspend my disbelief for the sake of the narrative.
Keep in mind this is about 800 years into the future, at the ass end of a technilogical arc (corporations are kinda getting crappy by the later years). All i need to do is come up with theroeies and then handwave away the technology.
While there might still be some little critters living in caves at the bottom of the ocean or whatnot, I dont think you give humanity enough credit to be able to relitivly sterilize the surface (certainly enough to prevent decomposition). Two week is the length of the actual bombardment, the atmosphere would have taken a few months or years to shift over.
The car is hydrogen powered, and can be refueled by splitting hydrogen out of water with a hydrogen pump. And even if it was electric, a couple hours with a hand generator would have it charged (what else is he going to do?).
The terraforming plant (also made for mars, and theres several hundred of them) has a hugeass oxygen generator, which burns pre-loaded superoxides (as well as salvages oxides from surrounding minerals in the ground) and releases them into the atmosphere via those large smokestack things. It also has a big geneticics database, which is uses to clone life forms and seed them out into the world (starting with atmospheric algea to clean away carbon dioxide, add greenhouse gasses, break down toxins and radiation, and add more oxygen. and those little grass things, and eventually entire biosphere with bugs and flowers and cows and whatever).
This is about 4 years into the process, (which takes the better part of 75 years or so to fully stabalize the globe). As its just pretty much belching straight oxygen into the depleated atmosphere, theres just a big ever-expanding cloud of it overtop of the terraformer. After a few decades, the clouds from other plants start to merge together and make up some semblalence of a livable atmosphere.
Well...I don't know exactly....but I'm sure it's bad.
There will always be anal retentive nitpickers. Most of the time there just plain annoying, but sometimes they do call some things out that are legit.
So long as things have a plausible explanation things will work out smoothly. Still, the one thing I would emphasize for anyone, not just McGibs, when writing fiction is to do a healthy amount of research. Having a solid knowledge base to build your imagination upon will help immensely in writing a story that doesn't have a 'just because I say so' feeling to it.
"I was born; six gun in my hand; behind the gun; I make my final stand"~Bad Company
anyways...
I can buy the science portion, I think you did good establishing certain elements, howevor, as much time as you spent developing some the science elements of the plot, you sorta overlooked at some of pyschological aspects as well.
For starters, he is WAY too sane. I mean, for a decade he has been trapped in a spacesuit unable to even jerk it to let loose some of the sexual anxiety he must undoubtably feeling; 0 human contact; forced to roam the plains of nightmare of world were even sunlight is nonexistent(vitamine E deficiency?). Additionally, non of his senses are being tantalized in the very least are undoubtebly becoming dulled. Were talking ten years of this, and it only takes a few days for an isolated prisoner to crack. What point is there to even live beyond scavenging another corpse ridden house? Honestly, if he even hasn't question suicide by this point, then his suit must be supplying him some uephoric drug that I would love to get my hands on.
I think its pretty obvious you never intended on writing a story about a man's physcological journey through desolatation, but do consider that this is a bit extreme of circumstances for someone who hasn't even developed a few imaginary talking animals to talk to (or even a volleyball for that matter)
I certaintly don't mean to sound like an ass, but the more I read this the more I believe that this story is a flawed concept if set at 10 years. Without any sense of hope or purpose, his meaning of existence is practicely nonexistentant.
"I was born; six gun in my hand; behind the gun; I make my final stand"~Bad Company
Characterisation; I don't buy that someone trapped in a suit for so long would just chuckle at discovering he can finally get out of the suit. I mean, this guy just found God. The light, the scale of it all; he's born again, and if the impact of this discovery is as large as it's built up to be, it would be nothing short of religious.
And dialogue; I would suggest cutting down on the exposition. Using the contrivance of a guy who talks to himself is one thing, but some of it just feels awkward. For instance, I would say that an audience doesn't need to know why a corpse appears mummified and dessicated -- from the strength of the rest of the presentation, we can grasp that there has been a cataclysm. (In fact, for me, ignoring all the dialogue bubbles makes this work even better. When you're painting a scene as bleak and desolate as this, I really think less is more.)
I think it would work a little bit either way. I know that if I'm alone for long periods of time, like if I go for a hike by myself for instance. Sometimes I find myself talking to... myself outloud. Can't imagine how often it would happen if I was alone for 10 years. I think by that time it would be comforting just to hear some voice, even if it's your own. I'm not arguing with you per say just saying I think it works either way.
Edit: .... so maybe I am arguing, en guard!
Oh and mcgibbs: Top notch man, really enjoying the direction with the new comics. I do agree with Myk on the 13th page maybe being the last though for that "POW!" effect.
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Haha. Fair enough. But I can't imagine you finding a dead bird on a hike and saying to yourself "You know why you're dead? Because that's what happens in nature. You see, the natural cycle is one of birth and death; it's how it is in this zany world! Especially since they started polluting nature so much -- what with their CO2 and Acid Rain! That stuff really gets me down! Now that's when I had an onion on my belt; it was the style at the time. AND YOU KNOW WHAT ELSE? BLEE BLOO BLAH!"
So... I'm not saying all the dialogue is unnecessary. I'm just saying that a lot of it doesn't really contribute much to the piece. Spelling everything out is not always the best way to go; an author doesn't need to hold my hand, I can figure things out for myself! I'M A BIG BOY NOW YOU CAN'T JUST GO PUSHING ME AROUND!
we don't really have a story though, at least not yet. right now he's more of a post apocalyptic tour guide. Actually See317, there are tons of different ways he could go about the exposition, in fact, this is a golden playground of morbid opportunity. For starters could hold a conversation with a corpse similar to how Will Smith did in I am Legend with the mannequins, he could even carry its head around with him as he goes explorin' about. I mean, Tam gave props for a giant spaceman riding a bike - now imagine that same scene if there was a mummified head placed facing forward in a front basket wearing an actual bike helmet.
Besides there needs to be a spark that makes him suddenly recolate his thoughts after ten years of wandering - I think a severed corpse head would just nicely.
We can even name him Fred. Suddenly you got Fred the Head as a supporting cast member who loves to spout imaginary witty insults to the spaceman - who wouldn't dig that shit!?
"I was born; six gun in my hand; behind the gun; I make my final stand"~Bad Company
I cut out most of the exposition (as much of that can be done with the tech sheets I'll be doing) and now he just kind of rants to himself in a far less coherant mannar. All of the origional details are still there, theyre just further burried now.
Jim. And also jerky-face.
Oh well, too little, too late I guess.
I don't know about talking to a head. I mean, even without the bacteria to aid decomposition, Fred would wear out eventually. Then what? You're going to just replace Fred with the next head you come across? I thought he was something special, I thought Fred meant something...
God, I need to get off the graveyard shift.
Are you kidding me? This is the best part. Remember Castaway? Wiiillsssoooon!
Instilling reader sorrow from the loss of an inanimate severed head - this is how awards are won, mate.
(BTW I feel you on the graveyard shift)
"I was born; six gun in my hand; behind the gun; I make my final stand"~Bad Company
On a more critical note, at least until I see the revised version, I would try not to rely on the tech sheets necessarily to explain exposition points, if its just supportive information then right on, but if its supposed to supplant cut information then it might be less effective.
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Sorry scos, I was just having a light hearted dig...didn't mean to be taken seriously.