Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Zuda - April Competition

I really think of Zuda as a community and a lifestyle, as much as it is a contest site and a great place to go for great free comics. The April contest is on, and there are some really good entries this time, as always. Go, Read, Vote.

Go read all of the entries and judge for yourself, but my favorites this time around are:

Intergalactic Law: Grey Squad
Intergalactic Law: Grey Squadron - I think I will go with my favorite descriptor for this comic. It's like an intergalactic Barney Miller. Grey Squadron may have been good cops at one point, but they have been underutilized to the point of complacency at the very least. Add to a precinct a by the book cop used to real action, and suddenly the fact that the captain's mother is a drug dealer seems like a negative thing. The art is great, the humor is... funny, and it seems to be a pretty neat take on the police precinct genre. I will probably talk about this more in the future, but this one is getting my vote this time around.

Earthbuilders
Eathbuilders - This looks to me like a sort of Aliens dynamic to me, only instead of Space Marines, you have Terra Formers sent in to fix issues in terra-formed environments.. It's a pretty great idea. I wish I could vote for three or four entries this time, as there are plenty I would like to see go further. There are a lot of interesting ideas in this, There are some compelling characters as well, for example, It is hard not to like Tor Mortensen, a sort of human satellite uplink with no people skills.

Mecha-Simian
Mecha-Simian - This rounds out my three favorites for this round. It's exactly what it looks like. It's a monkey in a robot version of his old body who is a space hero. It's (almost) perfect all ages , tongue in cheek fun. It's got that sort of look of Dragon's Lair / Space Ace kitsch, with buttons surrounded by large arrows pointing to them, and space ships shaped like the enemy's head. It's not deep, but it is fast and fun.

3 comments:

cuervoscuro said...

Thank you for your comments!

Rich said...

Rob - thanks again for including Mecha Simian in your top 3 here!

Kitsch is what we aimed for!

Harry Pujols said...

Hi Rob. I like your feedback on my work and the other competitor's as well. Keep up the good work.