Stay up to date with DOC IMMORTALIS news and other projects from Jason & Michael at 50 Foot Robot Studios!
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Coming in 6th place was awesome for our first go-round on ZUDA. We went up against some real Powerhouses last month, and it was a honor to place where we did. Thanks again to all who voted. Congrats to Team Hammer! You guys deserved the win for the amount of work you put into the competition. Way to go!

Hey guys! Just dropping in to say again how much Doctor Immortalis rocks. Your presence made the month more fun and should've ranked way higher. I'm looking forward to seeing you guys take another shot. Victory is that much sweeter when you've lost a time or two. Just ask Steve!

Pretty Frickin Awesome!

If I haven't said it before, I think this is a really great start. I'd love to see where this goes.

Oh, sweet! We moved up to #6! Thank you everyone who voted and pushed up in the rankings!! We obviously couldn't have done it without you. The support is deeply appreciated!
So now we sit here at the top of the bottom 5, and does it feel good? Heck yeah it does. Going against the powerhouse month of Hammer, Azz, Ninjas and the others, has been an great experience. We honored to be included with this strong bunch of creators and comics. Thank you again!

This is a good comic man, keep it alive, congrats on your acceptance into this comp!:)

I don't know how this is freakin in 7th.

Hooray for Realityman!!
You hit every nail on every head, my friend. You GET what we're doing here! Thank you! :)
My most favorite stories always start similar to how we started this story. It's kind of how we start all our stories, because I find spoon feeding the reader backstory and holding their hand through basic storytelling points that should be fairly obvious kind of boring. We trust and respect the intelligence of the reader. There is even a name for this "technique" called "in media res", which is Latin for "into the middle of things". I love this technique as it frees you up to allow the environment and character interaction to inform the reader as to what's going on.
I won't argue with Kingofsnake on my art, I did these pages in a bit of a rush.

The weakness in the art is in the human characters, especially the facial features or the one's not in close up. The strength in the art is the really great environments and the coloring. The story, or lack there of, is the real problem here. You thrust us too quickly into the middle of events without really anything to use as a reference point. Who is this guy? Why is he in space, bumbling around, flipping levers in 60 year old Nazi space stations? This is by no means a poor comic, but there are some major flaws that seem just like obvious problems that could have been fixed in the rough draft stage of the writing. You could have used some of the earlier pages that now focus on talking about technical jibberish and instead given your character a back story.

The very first page basically reads, "Nazis on the Moon!"
How can people be missing the comedic element of this just frankly scares me.
I really liked this comic and think its definitely the kind of material that would be a good addition to the Zuda catalog. Can't really vote for it this month because of selfish reasons, but it definitely gets into my favorites.
-Rob

mpd57: I think you might have hit on the problem we're having with some people seeming to not "get" our concept. It's supposed to be over-the-top, crazy fun. There's often an element of comedy to great drama, and most certainly in our work (not saying we're great drama, but we're inspired by such works) The tongue-in-cheek elements can fall short of fail to register with some folks it seems. As well as the subtleties Jason worked into this short story that tell a lot about the character. Like how even with a giant, super-smart brain, Doc Immortalis can often be child-like in his wonder and fascination with his wild discoveries. And it shows in this story, in the subtext, that his curious nature has over ridden logic in this case, and he starts flipping switches before casing the whole place :)

Big news today! A special one-of-a-kind type thing. Read up and enjoy! :)
http://www.50footrobot.com/news/

Thanks to all for the positive feedback and for really GETTING IT. Much appreciated.
For those who don't get it, and are very vocal about saying such, I wish I could change your minds! But if it's not your thing, it's just not your thing.

Thanks for reading anyway.
M!

Oh, and how did the Nazis get in front of our hero's escape when they were originally all in the same stasis chamber? And wouldn't they have been slightly disoriented? And how did they know Immortalis wasn't also a Nazi? Jeez... this strip just really agitated me.

http://leftyfilmsblog.blogspot.com/2009/02/zudafebruary-2009.html

Mini-reviews are up.

RKB: I always thought the signing in to comment would keep out the Spammers, not people actually trying to communicate with us on our blog :)
I changed some settings over there so that hopefully won't stop people in the future from slinging some quick "You suck" comments our way :)

Glad you dig the DOC IMMORTALIS concept! Yes, the idea, as we lifted from some Conspiracy theories we'd read, was that the Nazis had built rockets, traveled to the moon, and some say even Mars, back in the 30's and early 40's. In our world this is true, but no one has been able to uncover it... until DOC takes up the task. The idea was that he was doing some research at his own Moonbase, Attis Labs Luna Colony, and he couldn't pass up the opportunity to look for "Sturmherstellar", which is German for Storm Maker. A base set up as a repository for German secrets, knowledge, and technology, with a secret purpose that shall not be revealed as of yet :)

As this story continues, we leave the moonbase behind, as well as the nazis for the time being, and head into a different adventure. The nazis would come back around later in some other interesting ways, but are not by any means the main antagonists in the DOC IMMORTALIS universe. Just a fun, pulpy villain to kick off this "prequel" sort of set-up story presented here on ZUDA.

Thanks for reading! There's much more planned for The Good Doctor, wether it be here or on our site. Stay tuned!

M!

Hello everyone. I thought I'd pop on and thank everyone for voting, faving, and letting us know what you think good bad and otherwise. We had alot of fun working on this strip and we look forward to continuing Dr I's advetures win or lose. Thanks again for your support!

Oh, flippin' awesome. Who cares if it's Nazis again? This is brilliant stuff. There are a few tiny flaws but when the artwork and overall concept is this outrageiusly entertaining and captivating, it doesn't really matter.

I dig Doctor Immortalis for sure. This may have my vote...

This is, by far, the best comic in the competition. The story pulls you in right away, and the artwork just blows the rest out of the water. I'd rather read this one over and over then waste my time with the rest of them.

I love this comic!!! 5/5 stars and a fav. Our doc savage style pulp hero finds a moon base of the nazi's from the 30's and then goes inside. Of course something bad is going to happen. I really like pulp action style comics, so of course I'm glad to see this. A few crits but I'll get to those as I come to them, really great art, and writing.
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SCREEN 1 First off I love the 3-d movie style letters of the title, very nice. The art's great, love the colors here, and the letters are very readable. I liked the screen composition/ pace on this screen and the reveal -nazis! It damn sure made me want to keep clicking to find out what was going on.
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SCREEN 2 I liked the way you handled the cut shots of the extreme close-ups of the read out screens nicely done. The dialogue was well written, and here on this screen you didn't use so many three dollar words in the dialogue that I started to tune out. Well done laying out of the background to the story. The last panel was a good note to end on nice sense of foreboding.
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SCREEN 3 In panel 1 the nazi flag was menacing in the background. i liked the fluent in german joke (i failed that class like no other back in high school), but (here's a crit) a bet too much wordage going on here. With the word balloons, and talking dick tracy wrist bands (he went to the moon too), all the dialogue really started to cramp the art here. I wanted to see more of the big scary moon base. The last panel was also very good, just an awful lot of words.
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SCREEN 4 The way you colored this comic reminds me of lynn varney before the style switch in DK 2, that's a good thing. Impressive colors got a star for that alone. The look on this screen really blew me away. I kind of got a slight johnny quest vibe from the art too. I lot of wordage, but things to the layout it didn't really cramp anything. I actually really liked the dialogue here, you can hear the Doc has his own voice, so very nice job with that.
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SCREEN 5 I really enjoyed panels 1, 3, and 5. The doc's opening the door and the use of light here to frame him was great. Also in panel 3, the way you drew this face, doesn't look like an evil aryan, but it is. Maybe your planning we see more of this gal right.... The last panel was so well done, with a classic set-up in the dialogue talking about how many people they could hold above their crew. The doc looking at all these nazi's waking up, and his reaction was fantastic. Such a great turn the page cliff hanger to end on too.
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SCREEN 6 Another funny moment: Run doc run.... I really liked all the action in this screen, great composition. The banter going back and forth was also really good too.
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SCREEN 7 Again I like the way you do the extreme 'I'm here' close ups. Using the wrench on the pipe is a good gag, and it helps to show his smarts and thinking on his feet. The last panel here of him about to blast off was a great image.
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SCREEN 8 One of the things that really struck me about this submission was how much it was like a horror story. We start off with the scary haunted place you shouldn't go in, but do anyway. In the ending you have the bad guy hidden in the back seat of the car -escape pod. I really like that touch in the story. Of course i thought you ending on a great danger hook, to get people to want to know what happens next. Panel 6 looked a little weird the way you had the aryan drawn, the ax handle wasn't that long was it. You ended on a classic image of these two fighting it out, with of course a set-up to a crash landing which is great. I really enjoyed panels 1-5 good sequential art there, but the ax looks like it's as tall as the aryan around 6 foot or so. The perspective you used in panel 6 made it have less of an impact with me, same with the long shot on them fighting in the last panel. If the image had been more of a close up, the art would have popped out at me more.
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My vote is going to another comic, but small crits aside, really nice job here. Thanks for the read.

"in the thick", Not "in the think" I wish I could edit my comments :)

Pretty cool comic. I like the art-style and colors for this sci-fi story. The zoom feature you use is interesting but works with the flow of the story and everything. The computer talking is ok with me, because I think it plays an important part, a character in itself. Fonts are a little small for computer language. I did see some anatomy issues throughout, but it didn't bother me to much. I think you put an interesting concept and character up this month. Best of luck. Doctor Immortalis needs to watch out for that axe, uhhh... I mean hammer!

Pretty good stuff. I like all the tech jargon. I agree that most of the time this sort of stuff is just left out. It is nice to see it. Although there is a lot of it packed into these 8 pages. I wish it had been stretched across more pages, but since you only had 8 I'll take it. 4/5 stars and a fav. Best of luck this month.

Thanks for all the positive feedback, everyone!
There's some talk about all the "technical jargon" being hard to get through. But I must be weird, because I dig that stuff. Because when I read sci-fi or goofy comics I always ask all these questions that never get answered and seem to be just glossed over by the author. There's usually too much reliance on a suspension of the reader's disbelief. We've already asked you in page one to believe Nazis on the moon, so then we have to sell that with some "facts" to back it up :)
I made a comment earlier about it being hard to pull off everything needed, especially characterization, in just 8 pages. That really got me thinking, and I realized that my writing partner, Jason (mCrC), did a fantastic job of sneaking everything into these few pages. If you listen to his conversation with his assistant and watch his reactions, you do begin to get a sense of the man that is Doc Immortalis.
As for my "jumpy" panel layouts, that was to convey a rising sense of tension. as they become more and more overlaid and at different levels and sizes. I don't know if I pulled it off or not...
Thanks again! There's so many cool looking comics this month, it's an honor to be competing with this group!! You guys all rock!

Great Work. Liked the Title lettering on pg. 1. Good Job on the layout, palette seemed to fit your story well. H.P.L. references/influences are fun.