Psychopath: A Love Story
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What happens when guy meets girl? If that guy is Henry Price, then he may have met a reason to live. Because for the past six months this formerly depressed, insecure wallflower has been going by another name. Out in the streets and on the front page of the Daily Post, calling him Psychopath. A lone nut jumping from rooftop to rooftop and fighting crime alley to alley. What unfolds is a love story set within the violent and crazy world of superhero vigilantes, drug kingpins, trigger-happy cops, bounty hunters and freaks.
Feeling there isn't much worth living for has given Henry a taste for cheating death. Maybe it's a way to feel something... anything. One thing is for certain, what started out as a death wish has become a lifestyle. And Henry is beginning to make a name for himself, he has the attention of the police and the criminals alike. Everyday people are either hunting for his head or singing his praises. If Henry can survive long enough he might actually make a difference...
But life has a way of interrupting grand plans. Just when you think you're well on your way to becoming a brilliant suicidal maniac vigilante... Someone goes and opens your heart.
Psychopath is about falling in love. It's about hoping the one you're with won't leave you because of your faults... like attacking the bad guys with a hammer.
Matt~
I just wanted to say that I love your work. You have gained a new fan. I hope to get my comic rolling as soon as I finish my book. I'm glad that I found this site.
~Taj Sonchai
Hey everyone. here it is last chnace... if you havent voted yet VOTE ! If you give me your vote I promise to give you the best ongoing story on Zuda ! I want to also thank everyone who has voted already. This whole thing has been a blast and I'm gratefule to everyone whos taken the time to vote !
Mike Allred's Mad-Man meets The Punisher. Cool.
Very keen. Some say it doesn't go the right distance, I say they're over-fed on extremity. This is a well-measured work in art, style, pace and writing. Great work even if it isn't on top after all. Heck, /I'd/ publish it.
Aw! Makes me wish I had a girlfriend ... however the wife won't allow it! Tsk.
Nice job, bud. Can't believe it's not higher rated. Am I detecting a little Sam Keith influence? Love the art, quite like the story. Great venue to showcase; keep it going no matter what.
**Matt's the best. I can attest, he's worked super duper hard on this, and is just thrilled to be able to bring his work to everybody.** I just wanted to say that, Matt, I love what you put into your work, you're genuine, humble and incredibly creative... I really look up to you, and I believe in your dream.
Matt,
Came over from CGS to give you my read and vote. I really enjoy your artwork, man. I truely mean it. The characters seem very interesting. Your writing is also up to par, sir. Good luck!!
Alec
Hm no clue on the accusation...BUT....
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I 'm inetrviewed on the amaizng Comic Geek Speak Podcast trying to get out the vote ! take a listen here
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I want to thank everyoen whos voted and whos liking my story...it measn so much to me !
No no no no no no no no no no!
I have made a serious accusation against DUAL, go to its comments and read it! It is important!
Greetings, my friends! Criswell predicts that this comic will remain in this position until the end of the month. Decent citizens will refuse to give their vote to a murderer, however fictitious it may me. I foresee you will enter the competition again in the future, but will lose to a comic called "Ed, the Dentist Horse", a defeat which will lead you into depression and then to devote your life to homeless children. Farewell!
you're telling me a world without "superheroes" WOULDN'T call a guy jumping buildings to beat the snot out of bad guys a "psychopath"??? I sure would. especially since he has no obvious gimmick (bat-ears or webbing all over his body)... the greys are done really well and i think too much color insertion (the title was fun) would be a bit too much of a nod to Sin City. ...it's hard when your vote isn't in the top two. i want this one to go on for a year.
This is just great! Love the story, love the artwork, (I wouldn't add any color, the grays are very well done). I can't think of a single reason not to vote for this book. I do have a couple more to read, but this is at the top of the list. Looking forward to more.
i agree w/ jasmine some splashes of red throughout would help it pop
I love the red title page with black and white art...but the rest of it was not for me...he's not "Psycopath" enough.
I like it! I like it a lot, so far!
This gets my vote anyday
I've always been more of a fan of street-level comic-book characters, and this strip seems a lot more honest and un-pretentious than something like Kickass
dig the art. dig the story. good luck. maybe a little work on the romantic dialogue... he got the date/girl pretty easily, but i understand the space limitations. i would really like to see this win, and you got my vote.
uuum ok I could say alot about this comic but surely we can agree that RKB said it all...Basically I just want to get with the Hot Librarian,
I also like the "real-life" superhero concept, and the idea of learning costumed vigilantism at the library is great.
Dear Zuda Competitors/Creators,
I recently started a Zuda fan blog, and I would love to interview all of this month’s creators. If you would be willing to answer 5-10 questions, to be posted on the Zudafan blog, please contact me at: zudafan@gmail.com . I’ll try not to repeat any of Rob Berry’s questions. :)
Feel free to check out the blog: zudafan.blogspot.com
Thanks!
Awsome. great writing, catchy art, black and white is always dope. best zudacomic i've read yet
Reminds me of Casey Jones from early TMNT comics... but way cooler.
... overall it hangs together quite well for an eight screen submission. Bound to be a hit with younger readers who still fantasise about righting wrongs with abilities they don't actually have. Not that our hero here seems ...
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Want to know more? http://www.mpd57.blogspot.com/ where it's always hammer time!
Very cool. I always like these stories about "what if someone REALLY started doing superhero stuff" Like the scratchy style. Something different than the usal clean lines.
The concept of this work is great. I hope you continue with this comic regardless of your final ranking. I really want to see the evolution of this plot.
This is the bomb! I'm loving your work more and more everytime I see something new. Excellent. Keep up the good work!
This is awesome - too bad there's so much great work this month. I had to vote for Dual, but this is a very close second!
Very original concept. I really enjoyed reading this!
This is the first one I read. I like the metal face plate mask and the hammer. Nice satires and good last line. The girl is a little unbelievably forward, but I still like it overall. The line work might be a little TOO scratchy, but I like scratchy.
Honestly it was the tag-line that got me, love story... intriguing. This is my vote because it's the comic I want to keep reading. It's hard to be gritty and cute at the same time... I like it.
GPH,
Good Question. For something like this I can usually draw like 2-3 pages a day. The Zuda format is like half an 11x 17 page, so slap two of them on top of each other and you get a regular comic page....thos ei can usually do one a day. Then add in the fact that im penciling and inking...and that for this my style is looser then normal. So the actual drawing goes very fast. My pencils are VERY rough so Im moving to finished line art quickly. So if i want to do six a week, I'll take 3 days to pencil. 1 Day to scan and grayscale, then letter which would take another day or two...that part I really hate. IF I was to win Zuda I'd most likley get a Real Deal letterer and turn over pages when they were done so it was even faster and better.
Matt,
Given your desire to be able to update this comic at 6-8 pages a week, and in keeping with Rob's questions for creators, how long does it take for you to complete a single page (from pencils to inks to grayscale to lettering, etc)?
-gabe
I liked the last 4 pages better than the first four. I could really see this going somewhere.
Rob,
Gray tones were doen in Photoshop. Done with a tablet. The line work though is all hand drawn with pen and ink. My Process is this. Grab some paper, lay it out , and then I start inking over very very loose pencils. The whole thing tends to be very smash and grab. After I have everything hand drawn, I'll scan at a very high DPI ( 600 ) and process the lien work so its pure black. Then I tablet in some garyscaling, and use PS to do the panel boxes. Real simple, very fast. For this story, and my stule It really seems to be a good way of doing things.
*joker laugh*
wait... Bea Arthur from Golden Girls???
sick.
Yeah I was trying not to use the words S&M, but hey you did it for me RKB. I glad you guys have a sense of humor or my post might have sounded a bit asinine. And we all know I don't want to sound asinine. Oh one more thing, I'm sure Bea Arthur would hit on P.P. And body other than RKB get that reference?
Sorry for not moving on with the questions sooner, Matthew, but I was off the grid (and at the MoCCA) for the weekend. So, back to the comic-specific questions;
There's a really nice rough edge to the line-work here. The panel design, which uses a lot of cropping and coincidence-of-line, is pretty sophisticated, but it's the sketchy and frenetic energy in the line-work that I think keeps it from looking overly "design-heavy."
6) The middle grey tones are pretty clearly done on the computer in Photoshop or Illustrator, but are the blacks drawn in ink pen first or do you work exclusively on a tablet? You've got a nice and immediate look to this comic that doesn't require a lot of "bells and whistles" and it really seems to suit the material. Future contestants might might want to know something about the process.
-Rob
She's probably a S&M freak behind closed doors, it would add a twist to the story.
-Wow that post was almost pointless.-
... but not quite. It's true, even i've got a soft spot in my heart for the rough-and-tumble bad boy types (umm... Wolverine, anyone?). Maybe this librarian has a dark and twisted side... hopefully we'll be able to find out!
Ku3nsting: If boys are gross then what are men? Just nasty? Also I can't agree with you totally as there are some interestingly weird women out there. Some of them have to like violent minded, cut and bruise covered, bed-headed, men. I know I have dated a few myself. Did I mention I love violence in my stories, usually have cuts and bruise some where, and most likely wake up with bed-head a lot. Especially since I cut my hair. So I guess I speak for all us psychopaths when I say, we can get the ladies too. Just not the ones you take home to mom. Wow that post was almost pointless.
If you add any color it should be just the red of the blood. I love b & w with red only in blood. I think Frank Miller did that a few times. Can't remember right now, maybe I'm just thinking of myself, as most of my comic en devours in my youth had this black, white, and blood scheme.
RKB,
You bring up alot of great questiosns/comments ! And I like that we can short hand psychopath as P.P. ! Also Its great to use those stars as a way to seperate thought...I'm going to steal that from you as i love line breaks
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I think there a balance I'm trying to establish in the first 8 pages. I wanted the thug to know this guy WAS infact P.P by seeing the the hammer because this let the narrative get to his name/past activities etc etc. The face smash and face plant, even though it wasnt a whack with a hammer , helped establish the violencee...at least that was my thinking. But dont worry i have every intention of showing hammer smashing. :)
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NO Color because...hmmmmIm a sucker for B/W. I think my art looks good like that as well. That said I havent ruled out introducing color at some point in a specific way. Ist something I'm thinking about.
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Hes not talking now...and wont for a bit. But on the subway the other day I thought up a weird/cool way for our "hero" to start talking to te ebad guys...farther down the line he won't be able to just be a mute crazy...hes gonna start talking.
Oh, and also: most girls won't hit on you if you have bedhead, tons of cuts and bruises, and always check out suspiciously violent books from the library. Did he even shower after he woke up?
Boys are gross.
I like this! I like this a lot!
I agree with some people that a little color would've been nice, but hey - this is your style, and if people don't love it that's their problem, not yours. I like how you've got it billed as 'a love story.' It's not every day that I can read a comic where there's both a romantic plotline and a vigilante with a hammer. And fireworks, too! It's good stuff.
For a (anti-?)hero called psychopath he seems like a nice little hero, and that's a problem i'll tell you why.
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Who P.P. (yeah i know) reminds me of spiderman, blue beetle, a little batman, a little the wretch (by phil hester), if all those heros's were having a bad day and wanted to act like the punisher just a little bit.
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I used this crit for another comic, but same thing goes here as well. If this guy's stock in trade is beating people up with a hammer, he damn well should smash someone's face in by screen 8. Yes the face plate gag was cool but still....
If you got a gun on the mantel in act 1, it needs to go off by act 3, you expect it and if you don't get it you wonder why bother. i know seeing the hammer let the bad guy know who he was dealing with, but us readers saw nothing to make it seem like this guy earned the name psychopath.
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His look and actions make him seem more like spider-man than some dark avenger. Of course you could be going for a batman type relation between him and the bad guys he faces. Meaning some of the gotham underworld think batman is a giant bat, their really afraid of him, it gives the good guy an edge. So maybe P.P.'s rep isn't all that deserved, it's just villains and cops telling stories and getting the facts wrong, making P.P. seem more like the punisher type than he really is. I don't know -that's the problem. It would have set things up even better to me if you had Psychopath beat the guy with the hammer (low-tech weapons also reminds me of the Jam, but anyway...), then had the love twist at the end. As it read i kept wondering what this guy did to get called a psychopath, if he's more of the shadowhawk/punisher type why isn't he embracing the viloence "smack. smack. smack. went the hammer, ring. ring. ring. went the bell", kind of thing. The guy not acting meaner really got to me in this story, but moving on...
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Love the art very good panel layout, letters are fine as well. Hammer aside I liked this story much better than PZ, that had one of the biggest 8 screen teases in the short history of Zuda (yes robot monster fight, no it's the 8 screen and still no real action, dang.), the hammer thing *shakes head*, but besdie that great mix of action, and story in the 8 screens you had to work with.
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You should go over to the Sam and lilah comic and think them in their comments section. Why??? Before i read their comic I had a strong bias against the romance in comics genre, but after liking their work I decided to give it more of a chance. So i actually like the romance angle, it set's the story apart from standard cape comics. One thing, if you win and have our hero and his girl get married, don't have some wanna be devil demon divorce them, because you can't write for a married superhero. That would be get run out of town on a rail lame.
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This comic really did remind me of spider-man.
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Why no color, on either of your two comics??? You may have been asked that before, but i would like to know how you think the gray tones will add to the story???
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It would be nice and add to the psycho label if the hero never talks to the bad guys he faces, maybe he could worry about someone remembering his voice.
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I not a big fan of thought balloons that pass themselves off as text boxes, but it fit the story here very well.
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3/5 stars but I'll read it some more it could grow on me.
I agree we don't need a text box to tell us what we see in the frame, for example, "I pull a hammer." However, I want his monologue to explain what is going on in his head...to explain his psychotic behavior and intentions. Perhaps he is obsessive about one or two values...like loyalty and cleanliness and those values override all others and as he tries to enforce those values through extreme behavior he appears psychotic to others. I would like the love story to take a sudden, dark turn that helps us understand the nature of his being "Psychopath." I know this is not your intention, it is just the story I would love to follow.
I liked it... even the internal monologue. Reminds me of the Punisher!