Review Request: Excelsior - Marvel Parody Comic

[Pinto]

There's only a handful of them up yet, but if anyone would like to check out or review our comic, we'd really appreciate it.
http://excelsiorcomic.com/

[Wulfmune]

On a scale of 1-10 I'm probably only a 3 as far as my knowledge of the marvel universe goes. These jokes flew right over my head. I had my husband, who is more of a 7-8 take a look at the strips. while he was able to explain the jokes to me, he said he felt your comic would only be understood by a select fandom. He felt you should allow your comics to encompass a broader audience, given the popularity of more mainstream marvel properties. As a fan of Marvel and DC super hero comics, he would still prefer to read original works, rather than fan parodies. He doesn't visit this forum and tends to be a harsh critic of online comics but I thought you might be interested in some feedback nonetheless. I personally didn't feel I could give an opinion, as I didn't understand the humor and things seldom seem funny when they need to be explained.

[eishiya]

This is feedback for you, the creator, rather than a review meant to be read by others, so I'm posting it here instead of making a review thread:


Please make your pages link to the next page. It makes navigation much more pleasant.

A blob of text at the start of a comic, even a short one, is generally a turn-off for new readers. Your particular blob seems like something one should find on the back of a printed version. I realize that yours is somewhat important to the interview format of your comic, which brings me to my next point...

The interview format is a bad idea for a webcomic. I'd love to see this as a short series of video clips made to look like excerpts from actual interviews, but as a comic, it just looks dull. I love that you played with the characters expressions and body language (well, mostly shoulders and hands), but it's not enough. Your comic is a talking head comic, which is boring to look at, and worse, all the heads are the same size - even more boring. Worse still, you can't really do much about that if you want to stay true to the interview format. If the interview look is a must, then I highly recommend switching media to video, but if this must be a webcomic, I recommend a different format.
It could still be an interview, but perhaps it could be more of an "on the street" sort of thing where we can see more of the character(s) and they're doing more than just standing there. That way, your comic would be more visually interesting, and you could have room for visual/physical gags. Rare Candy has a few examples: Example 1, Example 2, Example 3. These aren't straight-up talking heads for a reason. Even actual interviews on video are often peppered with B-roll to break up the visual monotony. With a 10-second interview like yours would be it might not seem necessary if you imagine it as a video, but in a webcomic, 4 panels of the same face are enough to be boring, and it just gets worse when every strip is the same way, with different characters. The fact that your characters are expressive helps, but it's not enough. Even if you stick to your current format, at least put the characters in some sort of (relevant, or perhaps humorously irrelevant) environment. Gradients look lazy and boring.

Another problem with the "interview" format is that the interviewer doesn't sound like an interviewer, but rather like an angry, snarky fanboy. That's still a valid interviewer technically, but I think it would be funnier if the interviewer was more of a classical, respectful interviewer rather than someone who sounds like a common convention attendee. For example, on the 7th strip, I think it would be more effective if the Red Robin gag was delivered in a more formal manner rather than with a "don't get me started." I think the interviewer is injecting too many of his own opinions into the interview and spurring the characters on. I think it would be more effective if the characters showed how angry/upset/messed up they are without such emotional prompting.

As for the jokes themselves, I got a few of them even though I'm probably a 3-4 on Wulfmune's scale. Even in those cases where I didn't know the details, you provided enough clues in the strip itself that the jokes still made sense, which is great! They weren't haha-funny to me, more sad. #1 (Uatu), #2 (Hank Pym), #3 (Dugan), and #6 (Human Torch) were the most effective, I think (#1 was my favourite). Despite being more sad than funny, the humour still manages to be juvenile, however. A bit of juvenile humour here and there is fine, but your premise as stated in the Introductory Blob of Text sounds more serious than that, and I'd love to see more of these strips be less juvenile and focus more on the larger issues. The Dark Ages in particular are ripe pickings for overly-grimdark character drama, there's much more to them than bad hair and death.

[Pinto]

Thanks guys!
This is all useful stuff.