Webcomics are not made for serial storytelling. A lot of people are going to disagree with me on this point, but it’s my contention that if you don’t acknowledge that basic reality, you will not be able to successfully make a serial webcomic. Fact is, readers of webcomics don’t read every day (or every day [...]
The first thing you have to do with any new concept is generate story ideas. I had my basic idea: superheroes in a nursing home. I even had some of the characters worked out. But what to do with them? In the fall of 2006, I spent a few minutes jotting down whatever came to [...]
So, it’s 2006 and I’ve got story ideas, but they’re not better than gag-a-day stuff because they’re not connected to each other or to any big idea. I didn’t have anything to say, just gags. And that’s the key to serialization (for me): something to say. An idea like superheroes in a nursing home is [...]
One of the things I didn’t learn to do until Chapter 4 of the SuperFogeys was to break each Chapter down by strip. Before Chapter 4, I would write and draw a strip at a time, keeping in mind where I wanted to end up with the chapter and trying to make each strip as [...]
Once I’m confident that each strip will make a proper contribution to the larger whole of a chapter (and each chapter makes a proper contribution to the larger whole of the story), I can set the macro aside and focus on the micro: making the strip WORK. And what do I mean by WORK? I [...]
AND EVEN WHEN IT’S OVER, IT’S NOT OVER… The last thing I wanna mention is how difficult webcomics can make seeing your story as whole—even with tons of planning. I want to stress again how many times I’ve read back over a chapter I thought was pretty solid and realized it just didn’t flow right. [...]
