Champion City Comics

Kav and I were discussing some Champion City Comics projects on Sunday, and we started talking about ideas for posting some different takes on superheroes. The idea of a female Captain America was brought up and within a few hours, Kav sent me his idea of a female Captain America. Kav named her 'Lady Cap' and I think she looks great. I also love Kav's title of 'Champion City's Battlin' Femmes!'

The End of Paradise

Writer: TonyDoug Wright

Pencils, Inks, and Lettering: A. 'Kav' Kaviraj


Webcomicography is a weekly article from Champion City Comics that goes behind the scenes of our webcomics to give you the complete story. This week we are starting part two of our series for The End of Paradise, a crime noir tale of revenge. Did you miss part one and two of the story? Click here to read party one and click here to read part two.

OK, pages one to five established the characters of Nick Hamilton and Marshall Jackson. Nick is buying weapons and a car from Marshall and is not interested in sharing his plan on why he needs the weapons and car. Marshall easily puts two and two together and tells Nick he is on a suicide mission to avenge the death of his friend, Danny Calhoun. Nick and Marshall exchange words and Nick storms out of the motel room to search for a car. 

Let's examine page six below:


Five simple panels show the reader that Nick has no idea what car Marshall got for him. I wanted Nick to be rusty because he had been away from New Ravenwood for over a decade. At the time, I didn't have a plan together on why Nick had been away from the city. Part of me thought that he had gotten out of the game and moved away to start a new life. I thought about him having something of a family, but they get killed and the killers are linked to Frankie Paradise. Looking back, I should have had a better developed plan of action, but I thought I could make it up as I went along. Let's continue on to page seven, which is below.  


Marshall tells Nick he is driving a Shawnee Arrow. I decided to create a fictitious car company just for fun. The car company is named after Shawnee High School, which is located near my hometown of Springfield, Ohio. The model 'Arrow' is named after the mascot of Tecumseh High School, which is in New Carlisle, Ohio. Let's review page eight below.

Page eight shows how Marshall took care of the Shawnee Arrow for Nick's mission. Also, Nick starts to drop his shields and reveals that he might be on a mission to get Frankie Paradise. However, Frankie Paradise went into hiding and so did his top crime lords. Nick is looking for the number one crime lord, Sato Akio, so that Nick can get Paradise's hiding location from Akio. Marshall mentions that Sato is just as tough to find as paradise, but Nick mentions "a little birdie" told him everything. I know Kav is highly critical of his own work, but I still love that last image of Nick's eye. Let's examine page nine. 


This is the first of many flashback sequences in The End of Paradise. Looking back, I should have shown Nick taking out the two guys, but at the time I didn't think it was necessary. However, it was important to establish Nick as a bad ass. The guy he has tied to the chair is Ronnie Bird. I named him Bird because I was watching The Wire at the time and Omar had done his famous line of, 'What up, Bird?' I decided to make Bird the weak link in the world of Frankie Paradise.

As a reader and writer of comic books, I think torture is overused and unnecessarily used at times. Nick's no dummy and he uses sodium pentothol (truth serum) to get the information he needs from Bird. Although Nick took out the two guards, he does not kill Bird. Why? Bird knows he gave away Akio's location and there is no way he'd fess up to that major mistake.

Ten pages have been reviewed for Webcomicography and next week we will review pages 11 to 15.

TonyDoug Wright is the owner and editor of Champion City Comics. His webcomics include Dr Death vs The Zombie, The End of Paradise, The Red Devil, and Day 165.

Victor Pozzi is the artist for Westwood, Naira, Naira 2, and The Captive. Victor recently sent me this picture of himself working on a project titled "Gárgola" (Gargoyle) at a Comics and Magna event in Olavrria, Argentina.

Champion City Comics artist and resident guru, A. 'Kav' Kaviraj, loves Big Brother, so every Thursday he sends me a drawing of a cast member as a superhero. This week he has selected Frank.

This is what Kav has to say about Frank as The Greatest American Hero: "This week its Frank drawn as the Greatest American Hero-cause of the hair. I think Frank made a mistake this week-he and Mike Boogie wanted Joe-the veto winner-to work with them. Then when Joe wanted them to save his ally Jojo, Frank blew him off. DUDE! Now Joe has no reason to honor YOUR request if he wins Head Of Household, DUDE! I really hope it happens.

We deserve a good Superman movie and Man of Steel (2013) appears to be the movie that will wipe out the disappointments known as Superman Returns, Superman III and Superman IV. I'm doing my best not to go off on a rant, so let's stick to the Man of Steel trailer.

I was a little bit worried when I saw the trailer for the first time because I thought I was watching some sort of coming-of-age movie that blended The Deadliest Catch with Into the Wild. When I saw Superman flying then everything returned to normal. I really want to see this movie and we have many positives involved in the process. The first positive is that Christopher Nolan and David S.Goyer are involved with the story and those two have done a nice job with the Batman franchise. I don't know much about Henry Cavill (Clark Kent/Superman) but the rest of the cast is pretty solid: Kevin Coster and Diane Lane (the Kent's), Russel Crow (Jor-El),  Amy Adams (Lois Lane), Laurence  Fishburne (Perry White), and Michael Shannon (General Zod). Share your thoughts on the trailer in the comments section below.  

Webcomicography is a weekly article from Champion City Comics that goes behind the scenes of our webcomics to give you the complete story. This week we are starting part two of our series for The End of Paradise, a crime noir tale of revenge. Did you miss part one of the story? Click here to read.


I sent Kav the first ten pages of script for The End of Paradise during the end of March of 2010 and awaited the completed pages. Below is the original page one from April of 2010.

PAGE 1 - CLICK TO ENLARGE

PAGE 2 - CLICK TO ENLARGE

PAGE 2 - NEW SHADES - CLICK TO ENLARGE

Last week, we posted Base Basvic's drawing of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and this week, he has given us his drawings of Wolverine and Batman. Check them out and enjoy.

Webcomicography is a weekly article from Champion City Comics that goes behind the scenes of our webcomics to give you the complete story. This week is the beginning of our series for The End of Paradise, a crime noir tale of revenge. TonyDoug Wright was the writer and A. 'Kav' Kaviraj did the pencils, inks, and lettering. To date, The End of Paradise has been our most ambitious project, and at this time, it is an unfinished webcomic that will be completed in the future or completely revised. What was to be a simple revenge story turned into a 138 page epic adventure into the criminal underground of New Ravenwood, Ohio.

When Champion City Comics launched during October 2009, we had one title, The Champion City Fire. The first Webcomicography series covered The Champion City Fire and you can click here to read the history of that webcomic. By the end of 2009, it was apparent that The Champion City Fire was dead in the water because Joe's work schedule kept him very busy. I asked him if we could put that title on hold and he agreed. My plan was to create a new story and have it posted to Champion City Comics.

The End of Paradise was going to be the next project, but it was going to be a science-fiction tale where two hit-men were sent on a mission to kill a droid. I wasn't sold on creating a science-fiction story, so I changed it to a modern day criminal story. I had nothing developed regarding characters or a basic plot, but I was inspired to write, so I then decided to post a help wanted ad at Digital Webbing for an artist that could do pencils, inks, and lettering. The artists were asked to send me a link to their work or to attach some images.

Although I had nothing developed for The End of Paradise, I knew I had to find someone that could deliver a gritty black and white style. Some readers are not fond of a basic black and white comic book or graphic novel, but I have a special place in my heart for a basic black and white story. Within an hour posting an ad looking for an artist to draw a black and white crime noir tale, I had my first response.

It was an artist who had a thing for drawing anthropomorphic cats. I wanted Criminal but was given Heathcliff. A polite email declining anthropomorphic cats was sent and I waited for more artists to reply.

An email from a person named Kaviraj was next and the message just said "avengers assemble! check me out!" along with a link to their artwork. The link sent me to Kaviraj's page at deviantart.com where I was greeted to some images of what I thought were for a Buddhist or Hindu comic book. I was pissed for a moment, but then noticed some images of various criminals for a comic book project. After reviewing those images for a few minutes, I knew I found my guy or girl. With a name like Kaviraj, it was impossible to determine their sex or where they lived.

Kaviraj and I started emailing each other and Kaviraj said they were able to do two to four pages a day of pencils and inks. Kaviraj also stated they were inspired by Ed Brubaker's Criminal and I was feeling great about The End of Paradise. Meeting Kaviraj inspired me to develop characters and a plot. Everything was sent to Kaviraj for development and we talked about the goals for The End of Paradise regarding publishing, creative control, and possible profits. Within a few days, I had the first ten pages of script developed and Kaviraj told me to call him 'Kav'. We had started a great project and I waited for the first few pages of our collaboration.

Next week, I will discuss the first five pages of The End of Paradise.


TonyDoug Wright is the owner and editor of Champion City Comics. His webcomics include Dr Death vs The Zombie, The End of Paradise, The Red Devil, and Day 165.

Recently, we had a poll for fans to vote on what characters they wanted A. Kaviraj, the artist for Dr. Death vs The Zombie and Dr. Death vs The Vampire, to draw. The selections were Wonder Woman, Batman, Black Widow, and Captain America. Wonder Woman won the most votes with Black Widow coming in second.

Let's take a look at his drawings for Wonder Woman and Black Widow. 

Amateur and pro MMA fighter, Base Basvic, contacted me recently about submitting some of his artwork to Champion City Comics. Base had originally contacted me a year ago about working on a webcomic project, but sadly it never came to be due to a variety of issues. However, Base is back and he wants to share his work with the Champion City Comics Community. His first submission is the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Enjoy.

CLICK TO ENLARGE

This movie should be used in film school as an example of why movies using non-actors will always suck. The producers et al thought, 'Hey! Let's do a movie about the Navy Seals but we'll use REAL Navy SEALs! Genius!' The thought, 'Hey! Navy SEALs can't act' never entered their craniums. So there's bad acting in this one-LOTS of bad acting.

The dialogue is stiff and about what you would expect when non-actors make a movie. There are no natural pauses in the dialogue-just rapid fire delivery like they're reading a teleprompter. Even one acting class would have brought them up to speed on this but no, they didn't need acting classes, they're NAVY SEALS! It's also loaded up on the expositional dialogue and the voice over explanations telling us over and over that 'these men are more than brothers-you have to trust them with your life' blah blah blah ad nauseum.

Combine that with the touching home scenes, barbeques, bonfires, surfing blah blah blah and of course you get BLAH BLAH BLAH! The wives are relegated to subordinate background dressing in this one. They are given no humanizing characteristics WHATSOEVER-just cardboard cutouts saying: HERE ARE THE WIVES AND THIS IS THE FAMILY AND YOU KNOW THEY CARE ABOUT THEM BECAUSE THEY JUST TOLD YOU SO.

On missions they blather on and on about 'getting home' and 'making it home' to these lifeless wives/children. Yawn. They actually do the lame thing where each SEAL is introduced with background info etc. How amateurish is THAT? Answer: VERY.

OK, so it's the terrorist mastermind they're after. Yawn. He masterminds a bombing of kids at an ice cream truck. No subtlety in this one, no, they whack you over the head with the plot like a hammer. Ok I tortured the predicate or something with that sentence but you know what I mean. So the CIA agent's girlfriend/ally gets captured and tortured in a basement. The makeup of her swollen face is like something you would get in a Halloween store-the flesh tones don't even match. Damn am I pissed I spent $2 to rent this pile of dung-but what was I thinking???? I knew it was non-actors. I deserve this. This is truly like a movie that you and your buddies would put together over the weekend, only worse. I may have to proclaim this movie even worse than the craptacular In Time...stay tuned. We'll see.

On the mission, they do the thing with the silent hand signals-then moments later they start TALKING. So, what was with the silent hand signals, dudes? Are you supposed to be silent or NOT? Dumb.

The cameraman also focuses in periodically on random shots like a spiderweb. Why, I don't know, and NEITHER DOES HE! (Or she). DUMB. If you're determined to watch this movie be prepared for lots of "Whiplash this is Raven Over". Hearkens back to the sucky Apollo 18 and the ubiquitous, "Houston do you copy? Liberty do you read me?", which took up about half that movie's dialogue. Hold on I have to go hurl.

Ok I'm back. Then there's the scene where they go underwater to creep up on the bad guys. Only problem is when they surface, they're not even breathing hard. I don't care if you are a Navy SEAL-when your lungs get starved for oxygen, you come up breathing hard! This is common sense guys. Reminds me of those movies supposedly showing a cold clime like Antarctica (see The Thing) where no one's breath comes out fogged. Reminds me of a lot of things, actually, bad high school plays, Wet Hot American Summer with Jeanine Garofolo, Plan 9 from Outer Space... the list goes on and on.

The one positive thing I will say about this movie is it shows actual SEAL tactics. But imagine if they had done that using actual actors? What a waste. PS showing actual tactics does not substitute for having an actual plot. That's called a documentary. Then they get chased in trucks by the bad guys and take one truck out with a rocket launcher. But then I guess they forgot they had a rocket launcher because they get in a rifle fight with the other bad guy trucks with ineffectual results.

According to this movie, SEALs don't shoot so good under pressure. If I was a Navy SEAL I'd be pissed at this depiction and go hands on with the director. Idiots: USE THE FREAKIN ROCKET LAUNCHER! Criminy.

Then the touching scene where Mikey almost dies, accompanied by the standard 'dying hero' music....so touching...only it's NOT. PS whoever was in charge of continuity should probably be drawn and quartered. Or at least halved. The hostage chick's wounds/blood come and go and change so often it's clear she was cleaned up between takes. Did they think we wouldn't notice? I noticed! what a clusterf*** this movie is! I might not even be able to give it any stars-I might have to just use planets instead. Hey, don't shoot the messenger-I'm just doin my job amigo.

The worst actor in this suckfest is the chief guy with the beard. He rattles off his lines like they're nailed to his forehead. Natural pauses, guys!!!!!!! Didn't the director notice this??? Some director, man-he couldn't direct someone to the nearest bathroom. Ed Wood leaves him in the dust! Then we have the touching scene where the guy jumps on a grenade to save his buddies. Only it's such an obvious set-up to show how loyal these guys are to each other that it's not very touching. Predictable, maybe, but not touching. Of course it's the guy with the new baby on the way, which has been mentioned repeatedly and so which we knew was coming. Like the guy in the war movie that keeps showing the pic of his fiance back home- you always know that guy is TOAST. It's one of the rules of war movies and of course this film certainly doesn't want to break any rules. Chain of command-you know.

Some touching funeral scenes for the downed heroes, some widows with new baby and folded flags back home and WE'RE DONE. Don't rent this movie. Ok I give this movie 1.5 stars. Not zero only because the actual combat scenes were pretty good as they had NO DIALOGUE. Amateur dialogue simply killed this movie.

Webcomicography is a weekly article from Champion City Comics that goes behind the scenes of our webcomics to give you the complete story. The Champion City Fire is the first title we published and is the first to be examined in this series. If you missed part one then click here to read, click here to read part two, and click here to read part three.

Let's jump right in and read page nine posted below.

CLICK TO READ

The Denny O'Shea crime scene was something that detectives Savinni and Foley did not expect because the murder took place in skid row, an area known for a high number of vagrant deaths. They were expecting some no-name bum and they could just send the body somewhere to be cremated because nobody would report the victim missing. Savinni and Foley are gathering evidence for the crime lab, but Foley makes an interesting discovery. A capsule is in O'Shea's mouth and that is going to be a major breakthrough for the detectives. I've been working on this comic for eight years, and I just discovered that Foley is not wearing any kind of gloves while retrieving the capsule from O'Shea's mouth. That's my bad for not writing that into the panel description, but readers can be forgiving when it comes to entertainment. Despite that slight oversight, I am very pleased at the pacing of this first issue. I really am happy that the pages move along and the story develops nicely.

Let's now examine page ten.

CLICK TO READ

CLICK TO READ

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Champion City Comics artist, A. Kaviraj, knows all the rules for creating movies and comics. Today, he shares some more tips on what you'll usually find in your favorite comics and movies. 

You can always find a chainsaw when you need one.

Any lock can be picked by a credit card or paper clip in seconds-unless its a door to a burning building with a child trapped inside.

Television news bulletins usually contain a story that affects you personally at the precise time you are watching.

If you need to pass yourself off as a German officer, it will not be necessary to speak German. A German accent will do.

If the town is threatened by an imminent natural disaster or wild beast, the mayor's first concern will be the tourist trade.

The Eiffel Tower can be seen from any room in Paris.

When paying for a taxi, no one ever looks at their wallet, they just pull out a bill at random and stuff it at the driver.

When a car crashes it will immediately explode. I checked with the highway patrol and they have never had a case of a car exploding after crashing. Then they asked why I was interested in explosions so I hung up.

Medieval peasants will have perfect teeth.

Even when driving down a perfectly straight road, it will be necessary to turn the wheel vigorously every few moments.

All bombs come with a large red digital readout so you can see just when it will explode.

It is always possible to park directly in front of the building you are visiting.

A detective can only solve a case once he's been suspended. And he'll usually meet a witness and have a hot dog standing up somewhere. Sometimes it's a taco.

No one knocked unconscious will ever suffer a concussion. And, they'll remember what happened to them just before they got knocked out, which is impossible.

All telephone numbers begin with '555'

When being chased through the city you will always be able to hide in a St Patrick's day parade-any time of year.

All grocery bags will contain a stick of French bread.

The ventilation system of any building is easy to access, large enough to fit in comfortably, cleaned and dusted regularly and polished to a high sheen, and allow you to travel anywhere in the building without difficulty. They are made of a special metal that does not make loud crumpling noises as you crawl through it. They will be well lit by invisible lights. there will be no airflow moving through them.

Champion City Comics is having a cookout and enjoying some fireworks this July 4th. We will return tomorrow with more awesomeness.

Look over to the right side of the screen and you will see a new poll for Champion City Comics. A. Kaviraj, the artist for Dr. Death vs The Vampire, Dr. Death vs The Zombie, and Rapid City needs your votes. What comic book character do you want him to draw? VOTE!

Champion City Comics artist, Victor Pozzi, asked readers what comic book characters you wanted him to draw and the end result was a tie between Captain America and Batman. Every week, we will ask readers what they want a Champion City Comics artist to draw and the poll will be placed on the right side of the page.

Here are Victor Pozzi's drawings of Captain America and Batman. I've added some comments and feel free to share your comments in the comments section. Enjoy!