In the December 2009 Zuda Comics Competition, Hypergeek Endorses SubSuelo!

Zuda Comics is a web imprint of DC Comics. Every month Zuda holds a competition where creators are invited to submit an eight-page strip, to be voted on by readers of the website. At the end of the competition period, the comic which wins the popular vote becomes a new ongoing series, and the creators are given a contract with Zuda Comics. See the full rules here.

Every month, I like to look through the competition entries, pick my favourite, and then encourage readers of this site to head over to Zuda and vote for that strip. This month however, the competition started rather late (the 7th), and I totally missed it! I only realised today that I hadn’t cast my vote, and so headed over to see what this month had to offer.

I must confess though, that as I read through this month’s entries I felt rather underwhelmed. I started going thought the strips from the top to bottom, that is, I started with the number one ranking title, then two, then three, etc. None of these strips were bad, but they all missed that spark that makes you think “I want to see more of this!”. In many ways these 8-page page prelude stories are like the Future Shocks from 2000 AD, in that you have a very limited amount of space to provide a fully fleshed out story. This is where people trip up with these submissions though, in that because they are writing for a longer piece than 8-pages, many of the stories just stop when space runs out. This is a big no no, because even though the plan is to continue these stories into a longer piece, you HAVE to provide a decent done-in-one story, with a beginning, a middle, and an end. Many of the stories in this month’s batch didn’t do a very good job on this front, and instead of feeling like the first chapter in an ongoing epic, they felt like the first eight pages of a longer story, with a hastily added Cliffhanger.

So, I was clicking though the entries when I came upon a strip called SubSuelo, and without reading the details just hit ‘full screen’ and started flicking through the pages. I knew after the first page, that I’d found my vote for this month! The first things that grabbed me about this title was the gorgeous artwork, it really put me in mind of Gabriel Rodríguez’s artwork on Lock & Key… which I found out later was because it was by Gabriel Rodríguez! No wonder it instantly appealed to me – I adore Rodríguez’s artwork. The strip is also written and coloured by Alfredo Rodríguez, who I believe is Gabriel’s brother, though I can’t find anything to confirm this.

The protagonist of this piece is Róman. Román’s parents died when he was young, and he swore to himself, from that day, to protect Aura, his shy little sister. As the story opens, this promise is put to the test, when after going to the movies, he and his sister are waiting for a subway train, and a mysterious super-powered attacker appears out of nowhere and abducts his Aura. Beaten and bruised, Román can do nothing but lie there on the platform while the villain runs off down the tracks with his little sister slung over his shoulder. Suddenly a portal opens in the air, and two cyberpunk looking bounty hunters step out onto the platform, in hot pursuit of Román’s mysterious assailant.

Why I’m voting for this strip over the others is because while they all have great art, this one also has a great story that really left me wanting to find out more. Who is the mysterious assailant? Why is he after Román’s sister? Who are the bounty hunters, and where did they come from? Furthermore, the synopsis for the strip promises that “Román stumbles into an adventure that will take him through parallel dimensions, fighting dangers never imagined before.” Count me in!

SubSuelo is currently ranking at number #5 in the Zuda charts, so it REALLY needs your help! The problem I find with these Zuda contests is that strips fall into their ranking slots in the first week, then never seem to move about. It’s almost as if people get to the site, read the #1 strip, cast their vote, and never look beyond that. It doesn’t have to be this way though, so get on over to zuda and vote for SubSuelo to win!

Remember, voting closes at noon on Monday December 31st, so make sure to vote sooner, rather than later