Comic Book Resources

Here come the judges… (Or: I’m getting old and my heart can’t handle this $#@& anymore!)

What would Comic Book Idol be without a little drama? Even if it’s happening all behind the scenes…

On Thursday after I posted the first assignment, I e-mailed the ten contestants and asked them to check in with me to let me know that they got the script and were good to go.

Five responded almost immediately.

I knew that some of our contestants had “day jobs” and one was even in school, so I didn’t expect to hear from at least a few of them until that night. Sure enough, two more responded later that evening. When I hadn’t heard from the others, I thought I’d send out another e-mail to remind them to sound off, then I turned in for the night.

The following day, there was nothing in my inbox from the remaining three silent contestants. I wouldn’t say that I began to worry at this point, but I did remember that we had a no show one season and went into the opening round of judging with only nine contestants. I sent out another e-mail.

By sometime Friday night, I heard from two of the absent artists. It was my birthday and I was somewhat distracted, but I’ll admit to breathing a bit of a sigh of relief. It wasn’t until Saturday morning when it fully hit me that one was still missing and how “late” in the game it really was. This gave me an uneasy feeling of deja-vu. I had requested phone numbers from the contestants, just in case, but not everyone provided me with one. Of course, missing contestant #10 was one of the ones who didn’t provide me with a number.

I sent out another e-mail. And also PM’d him on the forum.

Then I contacted the CBI backstage crew to let them know what was going on, and that we should be prepared to go in with only nine… or recruit a tenth from somewhere else. During our discussion, we considered bringing in one of the alternates (the “honorable mentions”) but we could only do that if at least one of them had been doing the assignment on their own. If not, we thought about recruiting from the play-at-home thread if our #10 had in fact gone AWOL like that one contestant in the previous CBI.

I went to bed on Saturday night feeling a bit… concerned, but at least we had a Plan B.

The sun rose on Sunday morning. Still no word from #10. I was out of town and had a 90 minute drive to think about what to do next. In my head, I even started writing the blog to explain all of this.

When I got home, the first thing I did was check my e-mail. And there was #10. He claimed to have had his head down all weekend, nose to the grindstone, and apologized for not responding to any of my messages.

Lessons learned for subsequent rounds: get phone numbers from EVERYBODY and apply a mandatory ”check-in” after the assignment is posted.

Something to consider if we do this again: have at least one alternate offically “playing at home” just in case someone does back out, to ensure we have ten contestants going into the first round of judging… or is it more “dramatic” to take our chances and go in with the soldiers who make it through the first weekend of boot camp?

In any case, all ten contestants are present and accounted for and have posted their work here:

http://forums.comicbookresources.com/forumdisplay.php?f=29

After a bit of a stressful weekend, things are looking up! 

Now it’s time to bring in our judges Marc Silvestri, Chris Ryall, James Lucas Jones and our guest judge and script writer for this round, Vince Hernandez. For most contestants, this is the best part of the competition. I’m glad to see all ten contestants about to receive what some consider a once in a lifetime opportunity for a comic book artist: professional critiques of their artwork from the comfort of their own homes!

Once the judges have had their say, you will get to have yours in the poll, which is scheduled to go up on Wednesday, October 15th at approximately noon (E.S.T.) when the ten gets narrowed down to eight…

Thank you for your attention.

J.