Character Contest 13 Winner

Thanks to everyone who entered Character Contest 13, and congratulations to the finalists below for their outstanding work. Before getting into the meat of the submissions, though, I wanted to kick things off with Ian Healy's inspired cover, which would never get the Comics Code Authority seal but nonetheless is a hoot:

ian-spanky

And now, the finalists!

Chase made a lot (a lot!) of entries this week, but "The Mr. Freeze Experiment" caught my eye for the great use of the helmet air-bubble attached to the wide-collared top and the faded-out head, which is an excellent technique:

chase-mrfreezesexpirament

Several folks took advantage of the new background items to good effect as well, particularly Vigilante (who had a lot of excellent entries) with his "Leopard", sidekick to the Black Panther:

vigilante-leopardf

DeisT had a late submission that also put together a wonderful environment which I wanted to highlight with his Hercules buddy, Artus Kloergan:

deist-artuskloergan

Andre turned in another great character in "Kayalla", a companion for Storm. I love the whole look of the character and the flying rocks technique is just inspired.

Jason Ransom had a non-super-hero entry in his Dark Vader sidekick, featuring a nifty headpiece and cool light saber thingies.

jasonransom-headhuntercomp

I loved Imp's concept of a demon possessed by a human in this "Ghost Rider" companion:

imp-hellion

The overall winner, though, is Kaldath's "Iron Lad", Iron Man's new little buddy:

kaldath-ironlad

It's true there was an "Iron Lad" already, but he was definitely not a sidekick, and wasn't directly involved with Iron Man other than having also been in a version of the Avengers, so I think the entry still stands. I like how the costume is an homage to the main character without being a direct rip-off, and Kaldath handled the proportions of a youth very well.

Excellent job everyone, I am glad you had fun with it and hope to see you back for the next Character Contest, in two weeks!