Judging criteria:
- Each story submitted in timely and proper manner as part of the competition
will be judged on three criteria:
- Quality - How good the reading experience is. This
encapsulates both the quality of the story being told and the quality
of the presentation
of that story. Art, writing, spelling even - it's all in this category.
Each judge will rank the story in a range from 1-10, and the
individual judges results will be averaged together to calculate
the final quality score.
- Adherence to the challenge - This rates how well the
story meets the challenge of the contest. For example, if the challenge
is "do a story
about a pineapple", and you submit a story showing how a pineapple
is planted, grows, and is harvested and canned, that would likely score
the maximum score - a 10. Or you could be creative in your interpretation
and do a story about the type of hand grenade which was commonly
nicknamed
a
"pineapple", and that would still qualify for a good store. But if
you did a story about a new car that happens to be called "The Pineapple",
that would likely get a lower score - the "pineapple" aspect isn't
actually
integral to the tale. And if you turned in the classic EC Comics
story "The Master Race", while it might get a 10 for quality, it would
score
a 1 in this category. Points may also be lost for missing other aspects
of the challenge - if the work isn't 8 full pages, or isn't the right
ratio of width-to-height to fit well on a standard American comic
book page. Each judge will rank rate the story in a range of 1-10, and
the
individual judges results will be averaged together to calculate
the final adherence score.
- Publishability - with the goal of this contest being
to create an anthology of the winners, all of the winners must be publishable.
They must be
free of libelous matter; of copyright and trademark infringment;
of inappropriate language, gore, and nudity (the goal is an "all
ages"
book - not that
the stories have to be interesting to all ages, but they shouldn't
contain material
that would be apt to cause retailers to restrict sales based on age),
and of anything else that would inhibit publication of the work.
This determination will be made by the referee with input from the judges,
and will be scored as either a 0 (not publishable) or a 1 (publishable).
Note that only stories that are in the running for a prize following
the quality and adherence ratings will be rated for publishability.
- Each story's final score is calculated by multiplying
final quality score by the final adherence score by the publishability
score, leading
to a value in the range of 0 to 100. The top three score earners will
be granted the Gold, Silver, and Bronze "Comics Jammies" awards.
- In the event
of a tie within the top three scoring stories, the tying teams will
split the money from the spots covered and will both be considered to
have
won the higher award (i.e., if the first three teams score 90 points,
90 points,
and 85 points, then the two 90 point scorers would split the combined
Gold and Silver Award prize money, and both will be considered Gold "Comics
Jammies" winners. There will be no Silver winner; the third team will
get
the Bronze.
- In the event of a tie that keeps the top three from being discernable,
the referee will act as a tie-breaker. For example, if the top 5 teams
score 90 points, 85 points, 85 points, 85 points, and 85 points, the
referee will use his own judgment of merits to eliminate two of the 85
point scorers. The remaining two would then be considered tied for the
Silver and treated as per the previous rule.
- Decisions of the judges and referees are final.
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