#the thing about comics is that once I draw out something I can easily think of the next drawing
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candyheartedchy · 1 year ago
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Kinda just want to do a fancomic now about CoralBob instead of the fic.
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phantomarine · 2 years ago
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Clam's Quick Tips for Starting Your Very First Webcomic
Howdy! Here are the three bits of advice I tend to give people who ask me about getting into webcomic-making. Maybe they can help you jump into the fray with a little less fear.
1) Make Your First Chapter a Pilot Episode
You will be told by webcomic veterans to start with a short, simple comic idea first - which is wise - but if all you can think about is your big magnum opus, then you might as well hop in, right? Otherwise you'll just be glancing back at the other cooler project forever.
But if you can't start with a small simple story, start on a small, simple part of that larger story. Your first chapter should be a snapshot of the main conflict - show us a simple scene with few characters, ease us in slowly, keep things clear and focus on emotion/impact/clarity. Get the audience to care by offering something easily digested, but full of promise.
Once you're done with that 'pilot' chapter, and you're feeling more comfortable with the whole comic process, you can open the gates and show us the larger world. At that point, you'll be way more ready.
2) Simplify Your Art Style For Your Own Sanity
Always try to make your webcomic's art style as simple as possible - the standard rule is to use only 75% of your artistic skill for every comic page you make. Otherwise you will burn out quickly and terribly.
But you also need to be PROUD of your art style. If you're really feeling itchy, add a couple bells and whistles to your style so you can look at the finished page and say "Yeah, looks cool." You'll find the right balance the more you draw.
Also, don't be afraid to change your art style as you go along. Ultimate consistency is often impossible in webcomics anyway - so embrace your desire to try new things, streamline your work, whatever you feel needs to happen to be happiest. Sometimes the coolest part of reading a webcomic is noticing that style change - so don't hesitate to embrace it!
3) Resist the Reboot! RESIST!
The curse/blessing of drawing the same things over and over is that you'll inevitably get better at drawing those things. The trouble comes when you look back at old stuff and start thinking "Damn, I could draw that way better now."
You must recognize that this feeling never goes away. Not after a hundred pages. Not after three hundred. Not after a thousand.
I think everyone should be allowed one soft reboot for their first webcomic. Redraw some panels that bother you. Change up some dialogue if it doesn't make sense with your new story ideas. Do maintenance, basically. One of the beauties of webcomics is that they can be easily edited, without reprinting a whole book or remaking a whole game.
But if the ultimate purpose of a webcomic is to tell a story, then constant reboots will just be retelling the same story - slightly better each time, but the same at its core. We've heard it before. Most audiences would rather you save your strength and just keep going, rather than circling back year after year and going "Wait wait wait! I'll do it better this time."
Reboot early, not often, and only when you absolutely must! You're a storyteller, and you're constantly getting better at telling your story. Don't be ashamed of it - look back how much ground you've covered, and keep walking!
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That's a good start. Happy webcomicking - don't be afraid to jump in, but be prepared to learn a lot very quickly. And if this advice doesn't work for you or adhere to how you did it, that's absolutely fine - webcomics are diverse by nature, and so are their creation processes. Feel out what works best for you, and good luck!
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tibbycaps · 5 months ago
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Do you know have any tips on how to draw a comic? As in simple style and easy to draw and consistent in redraw? I love your style and I can't help but wonder how you got here and if you could help. Thank you
okay sorry i left this in the inbox for a bit because. where to start lol! there's a lot of thought that can go into making comics i think. but i believe you're specifically asking about having a consistent art style and being able to draw the same character a lot over and over again, so i'll try to focus on that
i think a lot of consistency is just playing around with character designs and getting something you feel comfortable with. ill use grian as a good example because it took me a while to come up with a grian design that i liked. once i liked it, i was able to draw my grian a lot & very consistently. every time you draw a character, even if it's a little doodle, you gain that muscle memory for ur lines a little better, so you should doodle always as much as you can and never be afraid to try something new and experiment with your style
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the pipeline
i think a good way to establish a character design that you really like to draw & can familiarize yourself with is by defining some key features about them. like in this image for example, my older grian designs don't really have anything about them that stands out to me. he wasn't rlly that fun to draw. but nowadays i think i have a distinct hairstyle & expression & glasses shape i give him, which are fun to draw. even if it's a tiny doodle with like, 15 strokes, you can still identify it as my grian design i think
something that i noticed (i didn't consciously do this but it just sort of happened as i was trying to make them all look different from one another) is that i assign different shapes to grian, cub and scar. these guys are good examples because 1. they're the three characters in my hotguy comics part and 2. they're the three guys i draw the most often
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grian i tend to go for more rounded shapes, cub more squares/rectangles, and scar is more pointy and triangular. little things like this can help them stand out from one another and makes them fun to draw in my opinion. when i draw grian's hair i always have the hair come to a rounded point and is more neat/tidy. when i draw scar the hair is more spiky and wild. cub is sort of in the middle where his hair is more pointy, but is kept neat, which gives it those straight lines and right angles
TL;DR how i draw characters easily and consistently is make key features & shapes that make them fun to both draw & look at. and then draw them a lot
i hope that makes any sense, i like yapping about character design so hope you don't mind the long response lol ^_^
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starryluminary · 1 year ago
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♪ Jane Doe - Alicia Keys
The EX Files finally!! The episode where Cody and Noah face the consequences of their actions (the consequences they frankly don't deserve)
I hope this is coherent. I had to add and change some things last second to tie it together and I reeeeally hope I managed to have it read well
Notes about this episode under the cut! (There’s extra detail I couldn’t fit in the doodles and needed context for future episodes, so skimming them is recommended!)
* (It’d be funny if Noah had a black eye this episode from Sierra’s backhand.)
* It starts off with Sierra crying and Courtney and Heather making Cody comfort her, which he does reluctantly.
* Cody's not entirely sure what to say to try and calm her down, but she retorts with “Whatever… it’s not like you're in love with him.”
* Sierra looks back at him… and he’s frozen. He doesn’t know how to respond.
* Sierra can take a guess, though. “…No you aren't.” She harshly grabs him by the arms and yells at him, desperately, “NO YOU AREN'T!!”
* Heather grabs Sierra and Courtney grabs Cody to separate them. Cody promptly runs away and Sierra promptly gets yelled at by Heather (not because she cares, but because Cody being injured would make him a liability.)
* On Team Chris’s side, Alejandro, Owen, Duncan and Tyler are huddled discussing the incident. Owen tries his best to be on Noah's side, defending him, but Alejandro twists the story to paint Noah as the one in the wrong. Owen doesn’t want to admit he’s making sense. Duncan is completely against Noah, backing up Alejandro. Tyler however doesn’t participate until Noah gets fed up of the not-so whispering and storms out of first class.
* Cast regroups for the challenge rules and Noah joins Cody's side, quipping something I can’t remember. Cody quips back. Sierra pushes Noah to the ground in response, pretending to be in on the joke.
* The “Courtney throwing challenges” bit is replaced by Tyler watching/paying extremely close attention to Noah to determine if Noah’s situation is sympathetic or immoral. Noah gets more mad the longer the episode goes on cause Tyler isn’t exactly subtle.
* Cody finds the cloning pod and makes Alien Cody like in canon. [I’m making him a bit more curious and a bit less initially threatening, like he has Cody’s thoughts and opinions and feelings.] Alien Cody approaches the real Cody slowly, and Sierra finds them. She’s shocked at first: “Two Codys?” Then she starts wondering, and asks the Alien Cody a question. “Do… you love me?” Alien Cody sticks its tongue out at her and scurries away.
* Once Sierra and Cody are alone together, Sierra tells him she’ll forgive him. Cody is confused. Sierra explains. “Obviously Noah got into your soft, easily manipulated mind, and that was wrong of him!” She grabs Cody’s face. “But don’t worry.” She leans in and puckers her lips. Cody looks at her horrified. “I can fix it.”
* Before Noah and Cody find each other, Noah finds Alien Cody. He thinks it’s the real one at first, approaching it casually. He then notices the messy hair, green tinted skin and the eyes (which I’m making entirely black cause these are pencil drawings with no color) and becomes more cautious towards it. “You’re not Cody. What… are you?” ET finger touch.
* Duncan sees this from afar and yells at Noah: “Are you *seriously* messing with Cody right now?!” Noah tries to respond: “I’m not! This isn’t-“ Alien Cody interrupts him with a growl directed at Duncan. He charges towards him with malicious intent and Duncan punches him, making him explode into goop. Noah does not falter. “Way to kill our winning ticket, idiot.” Duncan does not hesitate. “I’ll kill you. I swear I’ll kill you.”
~ *[Events of the comic]* ~
* Team Amazon makes it back to Chris with an artifact first and win the challenge. Cody looks back at Noah (whose team was only slightly behind his own) sympathetically. Noah looks back with understanding. I want to say Sierra’s slightly too loud and exited about NOT the Amazons winning, but of team Chris losing. Tyler (who’s paying way too much attention now) notices and comes to a conclusion.
* Owen gets voted off this episode for being dead weight, and he and Noah hug before he jumps. Owen tells Noah to “win for him” and Noah replies that he makes no promises… but he’ll try.
Sorry that’s. Like a lot. The story kinda got away from me
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siggiedraws · 11 days ago
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Hello! i absolutely adore your art and agree with your sonic opinions, you're overall one of the best sonic blogs out there. May i ask how do you plan out and draw your comics? How do you choose the formatting of panels themselves, the composition, the dialogue and so on? From A to Z, please! I apologize if this ask might be inconvenient, but i'm curious because i love your comics and have attempted to draw a sonic comic myself that failed miserably.
Typically the first step I will take is to just rough it out in a sketchbook, because I find it much faster and when working digitally I feel more pressure to make things look nice. This is where I start thinking about paneling and composition. It doesn't look perfect or cohesive at this stage, but at least now I have a rough idea presented with barely legible scribbles that don't make sense to anyone but me.
For paneling, large panels linger more, and small panels indicate quick succession. This is the most important rule I personally follow when making panels. It affects things like comedic/dramatic timing and how the reader will be guided through your comic.
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It's important to vary up the composition when it comes to dialogue scenes where not that much is happening. The shot-reverse-shot format works, but remember that once you have an establishing shot and the reader knows where the characters are, you can get creative. I like to do close-ups where not everything is shown to create a sense of vagueness around what emotion the character is feeling.
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Don't do this too excessively unless you're trying to create a claustrophobic feeling - let it breathe with a medium shot or long shot after!
In film-making, there's a rule called the 180-degree rule that basically states that in a two-character interaction, there is an invisible line drawn between them. The camera does not cross this line and stays on one side. This basically keeps the characters on one respective side of the frame at all times to avoid confusing the viewer.
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This is by no means something you have to follow for comics, but if you want to create something that is easier to follow, it's a good rule of thumb that I consider when drafting! It can also be broken depending on the effect you're going for.
Once I have a draft, I'll typically go into editing and changing things that don't work quite as well as I'd like. This can be done by yourself or you can get it revised by a friend, like I do!
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After the draft is finished, I'll get to lining and colouring. To be honest, it's not something I can teach so easily, but rather something that takes a lot of time and practice to learn. I typically draw the backgrounds with thinner lineart so that the characters stand out. Same deal with colouring - the characters stand out from the background colour-wise. There are multiple ways to do this, but for example, here I made the background have less colour contrast than the characters and stick to an orange-ish tone, while the characters are different colours from the background.
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For speech bubbles, generally the words should fit the shape of the bubble to the best of your ability. The line spacing should be as close and compact as possible without touching the lines above or below. This is to save space on the page so that speech bubbles don't take up a majority. The tail of the bubble should point towards the character's mouth.
Avoid tangenting! This is when the very edges of two different things touch each other. It creates a flatter effect so you want to avoid it as much as possible.
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That's about all I can think of right now. Hope this helped!
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whisper-cats · 1 month ago
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Hellooooo! I’m working on a clangen blog of my own, so I’m going around asking my favorite clangen blogs some questions. I’m happy to get answers to whichever you feel like answering (or none at all if you don’t feel like it!)
What program and file size do you use?
If you use a font, what font is it?
How far ahead do you recommend playing?
Do you have any advice for layouts?
Do you have any tips for lighting/drawing fur?
Do you have any tips for making cats look more unique?
If you do backgrounds, do you have any advice for creating them?
If you use them, where do you recommend finding reference images?
hi hi! Thank you for the questions 1. Clip Studio Paint, my comic pages' size is 1600x2900 pixels when I'm working on it, but that includes empty space on the sides where my lines can go over the limits when needed
2. "HP Simplified Hans Regular"... I sort of want to hand-write all of my text tbh, but I thought I shouldn't make things too energy-intensive for myself
3. Depends what you want the structure of your story to be like. For me the important part was the setting that was generated for me so the moons going forward & the brisk pace that that gives you have less importance for my story than they would for most Clangen stories, and therefore I didn't go very far in the moons before I started sketching down pages
4. nah, i'm a newbie on that
5. can't think of anything, sorry
6. I think looking for uniqueness itself can be kind of a trap, and i think it's most important your characters are distinct from their surrounding cast of characters than them looking unique when looking at the wider art community. Any kind of design can be recognizable if it makes an impact. I think using patterning especially can be something people might fall back on too easily to make characters distinct. These are the other ways I like to try make a cat character recognizable and interesting (among their cast): - Experiment with different, even subtly different whiskers, ear sizes and shapes, fur texture (sleek, puffy, curly, spiky, flowy etc) and where that fur might be most prominent in each character (one fluffy cat might have a huge puffy chest fur, another long hair cat might have their long coat look more heavy and pulled by gravity, another cat might have the puffiest tail but less in the chest, etc). Also of course the usual, like different eye and nose shapes. - Use color contrast to make the character demand more attention to itself. If a cat has a big white patch on their face when the rest of their body is dark, it immediately brings your attention to their face. I often like to play up and heighten the contrast of a warm-toned body against cool-toned eyes like Whisperingpaw's reddish body against his deep blue eyes, but it works just as well in reverse or with other color contrasts. This can be muddied though if the design is full of highly contrasting small elements in unimportant places of the body which instead can just become confusing to the eye. It's why I don't really like designs from for example Genshin Impact
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^ Whisperingpaw, I even made his grey pawpads more cooltoned than usual for some extra contrasting details - Try designing two characters at once instead of one at a time. When you design two at once, especially if they have some connection to each other, you can already start laying out some opposing or just different physical traits to them. If you make a huge cat next to a small cat, both of their sizes are immediately noticeable traits about the cats that you can perceive and build on. If you only drew one huge or one small cat, you might not really even register their size as part of their design because there is nothing to compare it to. Let their relationship & direct comparison be something that contextualizes them and gives them something more than an empty paper to relate to - Continuing on the "let the characters have something to compare to", a character will always look more beautiful if they are surrounded by more bland or even "ugly" characters. A character's intricate patterns will be more noticeable if surrounded by very simple-style characters. Use this to your advantage and let things like beauty or cuteness be character-specific traits instead of something expected of each design. This is just another benefit to having a diverse cast, it doesn't just give representation to less charismatic styles of characters (which already has so much value by itself), it lets the "beautiful" designs be more convincing to the eye.
for 7. and 8. i don't have an answer to!
Hope that helps :3
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phrandallanton · 10 months ago
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ranfren headcannons
I've done everything but posted headcannons and a fanfiction. This won't do. Here's some headcannons of mine! All of them aren't serious so don't take them that way d(>_・ ). Feel free to ask me about any other headcannons I'll definitely give more!
Randal
• if he has any pimples on his face he definitely picks at them untill they pop
• either is really good at math or sucks at math and hates it. (No in-between)(leaning towrds sucking at math more)
• has tear stains on his homework sometimes
• he bathes everyday dispite what people think. (Luther forces him too)
• his hair gets really oily. He has tried to cook with the oil his hair produced once. Nobody ate dinner that night.
• if he's frustrated and you go to poke him he'll scream on top of his lungs, but like the scream that goes from normal yelling to banshee screeching. "stop touCHING MEEEEĚĘƏƏ!!!!"
• gets in a lot of internet arguments about things that don't matter at all ("I think you'll find it's 'whom'.")
• he'd get so mad if he ask you to hold his glasses, and you proceed to carelessly get your fingerprints all over them.
• draws with those "how to draw anime" guid books.
• if he ever took a driving test, he would have already failed the moment he opens the car door.
• loves kraft mac and cheese, double points if it's in shapes of popular marketable characters.
• now thinking of it, if he was a pasta dish he would be kraft mac and cheese.
• bites his toe nails off (gross) Luther tried to get him to stop but he probably does the same thing when no one is around.
• sneezes weirdly. Like..."ah...ah...AH CHOOwoowoowoowoo..." and shakes his head. Or if he's covering it in his elbow it'll sound like a trumpet horn.
Luther
• he can dance but it's weird.
• if you tell him a joke he'll turn it into a life lesson.
• he wins every staring contest. However if your eyes start watering he'll get worried and start begging you to blink.
• treats women (and everyone) with so much respect, but he won't hesitate to punch a women if he really has to.
• *shakes his indext finger* "no no no"
• Randal probably tried to set him up on a blind date, he didn't like that. It was very awkward to say the least.
• genuinely gets happy when there are bagels at the function.
• when asked for advice, it'll sound like he's going to say something really meaningful and life changing, but then does a complete 180. "Oh, you think your ugly? Well people will have their opinions about you and ...well... you aren't the best thing to look at. But there's worst out there ♡."
• I can see him gobbling up some cheese and broccoli.
• has a walk in closet filled with clothes and accessories he doesn't wear.
• he 100% definitely has the goofiest giggle in the planet.
• eats ice cream with his front teeth.
Nyon
• I will stand by this till the day I die, he's really funny. He has a really good sense of humor. But I could also seem him not understanding jokes too. But at the same TIIIMMEE I feel like he'd be naturally funny.
• he knows lots of slang and pop culture due to watching TV a lot and probably quotes stuff in his head. (Maybe out loud if he was talking to you)
• has a lot of opinions, will never say them out loud, even when asked.
• he's the smartest out of everyone, including Luther.
• easily amused. please give him one of those little fishy nightlights. He'd enjoy looking at it so much.
• he's good at card games and Nyen doesn't like that. (Nyen has stabbed him over games of uno)
• has a really funny looking smile. (There's that one drawing in the Christmas comic where he's smiling weird after he saw Luther's reaction to the fire place tape he made for him)
Nyen
• listens to death metal but then listens to a jpop song right after. ("Can't let gang know I fw this")
• good at math, sucks at reading.
• loves hearing about drama and will be nosy.(come on man he loves Judge Judy and romance novels)
• sounds like Tom from Tom and Jerry when he yells.
• he calls himself "The Tom Cat" and (canonically) "Top of the pets in the house hold" which is practically the same as "I'm the alpha" so he's probably has said that.
• sucks at card games. Will legit end up with half of the pack of cards in his hands in the middle of an uno game.
• actually the weakest of them all. (I won't go into all that right now. But I can definitely beat him up in a fight, just sayin.)
•him and Nyon probably have times where they stay up and chit chat for a bit before they sleep, Example (from my old notes I had):
Nyon high on weed:...why do we call oranges..oranges...but we don't call apples...reds..??..
Nyen:....sh*t...you got a point... does that mean we would call lemons: short yellows and bananas: long yellows so it doesn't get confusing?...
*they then discuss this for an hour or so*
• Snores really really LOUD. Sounds like a car.
• oddly very ticklish I bet.
~~~~~~
That's all I have now. It's 2 in the morning and I'm falling asleep. I might write other characters headcannons later.
"I'm going to sleep" -bop it
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shok-oy · 3 months ago
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november. 06, 2024
twd characters x male reader. headcanons. masterlist
✒️ ... prompt : their love language/s pt. 1
[ alexandria editon ]
rick grimes
- acts of service & physical touch
the man is always exhausted after a day's worth of putting out fires around the community, solving everyone's problems little by little, and slowly shaping the people of alexandria into a strong community. all he wants to do after a long day is rest, usually on the couch. that's where you come in; help him out of his boots, give him a nice pillow to rest his head on, he'll lay on your lap later and let you feed him. sometimes he'll talk; complain about how his day went, sometimes he'll just be quiet, enjoying your presence. if you run your fingers through his hair or massage his chest, watch as he just melts away, he becomes absolute putty in your hands.
carl grimes
- quality time
ever since the group arrived in alexandria, carl was sort of... left to his own devices. you and him both. while his father encouraged everyone to explore, meet the members of alexandria, you and carl would often sneak out past the wall and venture into the forest where you two would stay until the sun begins to set, reading comics from cover to cover, twice. carl often enjoys the silence, choosing to simply bask in your presence, but he wouldn't mind if you yapped his ear off. he just likes spending time with you, knowing that you were safe and happy and the two of you could just be happy together.
glenn rhee
- gift giving & words of affirmation
glenn knows what you like; even if you had only mentioned it once a long time ago, glenn would remember it for years to come. everytime he'd go out on a run, he always made sure to bring back something for you; a trinket, an accessory, anything that reminded him of you. "i thought you'd like it." is what glenn would always say. he was always right. glenn is an optimist through and through,but there are times when he'd think negative thoughts, wondering what could go wrong, pondering on people who could get hurt, and whatnot, but he always bounces back easily as soon as you talk to him. you're the person he trusts most in the world, and if you tell him things will be alright, that he's the strongest man you know, he'll believe you.
daryl dixon
- quality time
daryl isn't very expressive or clingy, but of all things, he enjoys the time he spends alone with you. just knowing that you're by his side, you have his back and he has yours, is enough for him. he enjoys a quiet stroll through the forest or a ride on his motorbike with no particular destination in mind, just you and him on his bike on the open road is enough to fulfill him.
abraham ford
- physical touch
abraham can easily go off the rails, lashing out on everyone around him when he's pissed off, but one touch from you, and he's like a tamed dog. a good slap to the face from you easily snaps him out it (if someone else would do this, he'd get even more pissed off). he likes holding you in his arms, and he absolutely adores it when you're just drawing invisible patterns on his skin with your fingertips. he likes having you close, always having an arm around your shoulders or your waist, and he would absolutely adore it if you lean your head on his chest or on his shoulder; it makes him feel powerful, and needed.
ron anderson
- quality time & words of affirmation
ron hasn't had it easy. his father was an asshole to him, his brother, and his mother, but he couldn't do anything about it. what was a kid like him supposed to do against his father? thankfully, your untimely arrival on alexandria brought him a sense of comfort. he doesn't like staying at his house, it wasn't a home, but for him, you were his home. hearing reassuring words from you was enough to keep him going, but he kept his father's abuses from you for as long as he could. but when you found out, you gave him a piece of your mind, and when you tried to do the same to his father, ron stopped you. he feared his father would take him from you, so he would endure... just for you.
heath
- acts of service
heath likes to do things for you, he always tries goes above and beyond. the apocalypse may have limited how he showed his love and adoration for you, but trust me, heath would find a way. but heath always seems to malfunction when you're the one doing things for him. volunteering to drive, or to stay up for night watch, or carrying his heavy bag... sometimes, heath would pretend to struggle when carrying his things just so you would come over and help him. he would always enjoy the sight of you walking away with a heavy bag on your back while carrying two heavy boxes of supplies without so much as breaking a sweat.
aaron
- physical touch
aaron likes to stay close to you at all times. when out looking for survivors to bring back to alexandria, there was always danger lurking around in every corner. aaron would never admit it, but whenever he's scared, he likes to hold your hand. he says he does it so you two don't get separated... but then again, that is his biggest fear; getting separated from you forever. he's big on kisses too; and he absolutely loves it when you hold his face with your hands and plant kisses all over his face, especially after you shave his beard for him.
~ shokoy ☆
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pluckyredhead · 11 months ago
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You've probably heard this all before but what draws you to jayroy? I love reading your fics and I reread them a lot but I was just curious about what made you like them, and what you want for them
Thank you so much!
To be honest, the thing that drew me to JayRoy as a ship was that I've loved Roy since I started reading comics 20 years ago but never had a ship for him that I liked, and then I saw him call Jason "Jaybird" and my brain melted out my ears.
But seriously, I just think they have such an interesting, intense dynamic that could so easily work perfectly or blow up disastrously. The cautionary tales of the superhero set. The recovering addict and the addict's son. The one who braces himself with the expectation that he will be left, and the one who clings ferociously to anything that is his because he has so little to call his own.
And somehow it works. They create this judgment-free space for each other that allows them both to heal. Jason loves with this fierce, greedy, all-consuming clinginess that would be way too much for some people but that is exactly how Roy has always longed to be loved (all the Arrow boys are helpless, impractical romantics at heart). Jason looks at Roy and sees a father who is there for his child (and would and did avenge her) and fights his way back to sobriety every time he falters, and those are the two most heroic things he can imagine. Roy looks at Jason and sees danger and conviction and he can't resist either.
I got a comment once on a fic that said something to the effect of "Roy gives Jason acceptance and Jason gives Roy caretaking and those are the things they weren't getting anywhere else" and I was like "...oh, that's what I've been trying to write with all of these thousands of words." So yeah. That.
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chippedshake · 5 months ago
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Marcia shouldn't be out on the East Side alone. She's heard more than enough horror stories from her classmates about girls who go too far out alone to know that it's a stupid decision. But every decision she's made since that Friday back in September has been stupid, so what's one more?
She's not entirely sure why she's going over to his house. He's made it clear that he isn't interested and this just makes her seem like a stalker who can't let go of some stupid flirting that happened nearly six months ago.
When she'd first asked Evie for his address, she'd thought she could surprise him a couple days later by showing up and taking him out. She wanted to wait until he called, though, so she could be sure he'd be home when she passed by. Then the son of a bitch hadn’t called her and months had gone by and she'd gotten pissed.
He'd made it abundantly clear he was into her back at the drive-in. If he wasn’t, why didn't he just reject her? Why make her go through the humiliation of months of waiting?
Now, as she draws her jacket closer around herself to feel a bit safer under all the gazes that follow her trail, she just wants an explanation. No one ever liked her before Two-Bit, not even Randy. They dated out of convenience and he hadn’t even bothered to say goodbye when he skipped town.
Marcia's always been everyone’s second choice, just Cherry's best friend, the other one. Until Two-Bit came along. He saw her with Cherry and seemed to really see her. Not a best friend or comic relief or a way to get into someone else's pants. And she let herself get her hopes up like an idiot, thinking that maybe someone who got her would finally like her too.
And then he didn't call her back.
Is there something wrong with her – something so fundamentally wrong that no one could ever really like her?
Oh, God, and now she's knocking on his door and has absolutely no game plan and he's standing in front of her – has he been always that cute? – and his eyes are wide with shock, and she really seems like a stalker, doesn't she?
"I– uh... hi." Marcia looks up at him sheepishly. The anger that’s been boiling in her chest for weeks now seems to have completely disappeared, crumbling into motes of dust that sweep away with the wind.
All she really wants to do now is hug him and bury her face in his chest and tell him all of the remarks she's suppressed during the past few months because once she got a taste of someone clicking with them, it wasn’t the same when they fell flat.
But he doesn't want to have anything to do with her. He couldn’t even bother to call. And this is stupid. This is really, very stupid. Why is she even here?
"Sorry, I– I shouldn’t be here, this is stupid, I'm stupid, I'll go now–" She can't meet his eyes as she turns back around, cheeks burning.
This is why no one likes you. It's not enough that you're weird and awkward and rough and just pretty, not beautiful. You don’t think things through and you're scatterbrained and you're so fucking stupid, it's a wonder Randy even put up with you for so long–
"Wait, Marcia!" Marcia's head jerks up to find Two-Bit jogging towards her. "I don't..." His hand comes up – to run through his hair, to touch her face – but stops midway "I don't think it was stupid. You comin' here. I also don't think you're stupid."
He's close to her. Close enough to see unshed tears she hasn't been able to suppress. Close enough to the see the bags under her eyes from worrying about what to do. Close enough for her to count his freckles, if she wanted to. Close enough for anyone walking by to easily misinterpret the scene they're seeing.
Neither of them step back.
"That’s just 'cause o' the aliens controllin' your mind. You ain't worn your aluminum hat today, right?" Her delivery's off and it doesn't land how she wants it to. It's hard for a joke to sound funny when you're holding back tears.
"I think the one thing me an' the aliens can agree on is that you're better'n most of this town gives you credit for."
It isn't the first time Two-Bit's complimented her, – he used far too many stupid pick-up lines that night they'd met, and about the first thing he'd said to her was that she was sharp – but it is the first time he's said it in earnest, not a hint of wit in his tone. She's almost too surprised to remember why she's there.
"The aliens tell ya not to call me, then?" The dust motes of anger are swept up by a gust of wind and concentrated again, building up to their former glory and crashing down in a final show of power. "Or was that all you?"
Two-Bit raises an eyebrow, trying to seem nonchalant. It's strange that she can read him well enough to notice the subtle surprise as easily as if it were written in bold across his forehead.
"That– that was your real number?"
Marcia makes a sound that's something between a bark of laughter and a scoff. "Of course it was my real number. What, you think I'd give you a phony?"
"Oh, like it was stupid to think you wouldn't give a grease like me your number."
"I wouldn't give my number to a grease like Da– that Shepard boy, but I'd say so to his face," Marcia snaps, and Two-Bit winces at her slip-up. "And I most certainly would give a 'grease like you' my number, because I liked you and I said I would, an' for all the stupid rumours you can hear 'bout me, there ain't a single one 'bout me not keepin' my word."
His smile is crooked and he's raised an eyebrow and Marcia knows she's in trouble in more ways than one before he even opens his mouth.
"Liked me? Not anymore, then. I guess you just came all the way 'round here to tell me how much you don’t care about me."
She cracks a grin of her own because maybe she should still be mad at him but how is she supposed to, when there's that gap between his teeth and that sparkle in his eyes and that tilt to his grin? "Yeah. Can't stand ya, actually."
"I reckon I could change that."
Marcia raises an eyebrow. "You do, do you?"
"How's seven this Saturday?"
"You gonna pick me up or am I gonna hafta walk all the way over here again?"
"You gonna give me your real number or am I gonna hafta go to school just to see you again?"
They're smiling so wide they must look insane to anyone passing by, but neither of them minds as Marcia scribbles her number down onto a piece of paper and gives it over to him.
"Don’t lose it this time."
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signanothername · 7 months ago
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WAAA not really an ask but just wanted to say your storytelling is a huge huge inspiration to me! I've always sorta struggled with that sorta thing and you're stuff gives me motivation to try!! Also I love how u draw killer it's so... him
ABBSHSHAAAAAA THANK YOU SOB
AND IM SO GLAD IT GIVES YOU MOTIVATION TO TRY!! Cause the funny thing is, storytelling is something that i also really struggle with, but not necessarily art wise, so like, when I make comics I can easily imagine what the art would be like and how it would flow, but once I reach the dialogue? I get stuck BIG time, it’s like I can imagine what i want, but I struggle with how to word it if that makes sense, words are just so hard to think of for me vhhchchc
So what i usually do is make the dialogue in two parts, first i’d I write everything I have in mind down, without thinking whether it makes sense or if it suits the character, and once i got everything written down, then i start actually refining it and thinking about the little details like whether this character would actually say that, or if it makes sense or if it’s better for the flow of the story
Sometimes, I know what I want the dialogue to be, but I struggle a lot with how i want the words to go, for example, the “little life update” comic
I struggled a LOT with the dialogue for that one, here are a few examples of dialogue I removed, changed, added and edited
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I originally had Killer say “I get easily overwhelmed” before I changed it to “it gets overwhelming”
It’s such a small change but for me, it makes a very big difference, cause Killer usually feels detached from himself, so it just didn’t make sense to me that he would use “I” in regards to his own emotions, so I changed the dialogue so it would match Killer’s detachment and used “it” instead
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Here I originally had the entire dialogue to be “monsters and Determination don’t mix well” followed by “ I mean my body’s already suffering from it”, but when I reread it, not only did it make the flow of the comic awkward and jumpy, but it also made me think “literally everyone in the Undertale fandom knows that I don’t need to reiterate it to them like they’re stupid”
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Here I decided to add “but you already knew that” to the og dialogue, to further emphasize Nightmare’s manipulation of Killer
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Here I removed an entire sentence saying “cause it’s not like you truly cared about my wellbeing” cause it felt a bit too spiteful even for Killer (who’s extremely spiteful bdhdhsh) and it gave the vibe Killer wanted Nightmare to care about him, which is not what I wanted to imply at all
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And then the biggest change, the last few panels, the og dialogue and the one I used are completely different, and it’s mostly just me not knowing how to end the comic originally, but then when i reread it I realized that 1- Killer wouldn’t care about Nightmare’s feelings of loneliness when he barely understands his own emotions, 2- the dialogue felt extremely out of place with the rest of the comic, and 3- this comic wasn’t about Nightmare, it was about Killer and I needed to keep it that way
Anyway sorry for rambling about it but it genuinely makes me happy to see people loving my storytelling when i struggle a lot with it hahahaha
AND THANK YOU! Killer is my son and I just want to do him justice, glad to see so many people loving the way I write him EEEEEEEE
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musicalmoritz · 5 months ago
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Some funny and cute head canon between hanako/amane and tsushigomori?
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Yayayay I love their dynamic sm. The father/son duo ever. I’m gonna do a mix of Amane and Hanako headcanons bcuz their relationship at any point is so sweet to me
• So for AUs I think it’s super cute when ppl have Tsuchigomori adopt Amane (+Tsukasa)- or at least it would be, I don’t think I’ve seen any actual fics like that lmao. But for canon it’s definitely more of a “teacher you accidentally call dad” dynamic
• I still view Tsuchigomori as a father figure to Hanako but I think they’d both be very reluctant to admit it. I feel the need to specify that because fandoms tend to take parent/child dynamics and make them into super traditional families, which can be cute in AUs but sometimes for canon it takes away the nuance
• It’s the same as when I call Teru Kou’s dad, there’s more to it than that. Yes he is Hanako’s father, yes he is his teacher. Two things can be true at once
• Okay now that that’s out of the way, onto the headcanons
• Circling back to the first point, Hanako has accidentally called Tsuchigomori “dad” twice. Once as Amane, and once as Hanako
• As Amane it was a very emotionally heavy moment, when Tsuchigomori finished bandaging him up as usual. He gave him a mini lecture on standing up for himself, and Amane let out a quiet “Thanks, Dad”
• The minute he realized what he said, he bolted out of that classroom. He wouldn’t talk after that until Tsuchigomori reassured him they could just forget about it
• As Hanako it was more of a comical moment. He was hanging out with Tsuchigomori and Yako, annoying them as usual, but as he was getting ready to ditch them he said “See ya later, Dad”
• Everyone froze until Yako started laughing her ass off. Hanako quickly tried to cover it up but Yako wasn’t willing to forget it as easily as Tsuchigomori had been that first time, so he had to hide out in his bathroom for quite some time
• Yako started calling Tsuchigomori “Dad” too whenever she wanted to mess with him
• Tsuchigomori would try to help Amane make friends by pairing him with other kids for group projects. This always backfired, seeing as Amane had trouble socializing and was an easy target for bullying
• Sometimes he still tries to get Mitsuba and Mei to hang out with the kid so that he has more than two friends (one of which is his girlfriend)
• But progress is still progress and he’s obvi very happy to see that Hanako has made friends
• Hanako hangs out in Tsuchigomori’s office whenever he’s bored or sad
• When he’s bored he’ll just annoy him, telling him unfunny jokes and going on long tangents about whatever comes to mind. Tsuchigomori complains but never seriously attempts to kick him out
• When he’s sad about something, he’ll usually just sit at one of the desks or in the corner curled up in a ball. Tsuchigomori doesn’t comment on it, but he might give him a blanket and some candy, or a book to read
• Hanako tries to go to Tsuchigomori for advice on Nene, but Tsuchigomori’s love life is, frankly, pathetic, so really he’s the one who needs advice
• Some of the only times Hanako isn’t floating is when he’s running in the halls to provoke Tsuchigomori
• Every year on Father’s Day, Hanako brings Tsuchigomori a rock. He started this tradition as Amane and has kept it up all these years
• That’s not to say he didn’t love his bio dad, but he wanted to show appreciation for the teacher that looked out for him too
• Before they left school at the end of every day, Tsukasa would thank Tsuchigomori for “babysitting” Amane
• Hanako’s favorite books are the Sherlock Holmes series so Tsuchigomori lets him know every time the school gets a new copy
• He used to draw little smiley faces on Amane’s papers when he’d get a perfect score
• Amane would stay after school for tutoring even though he didn’t need it whenever things got too tense at home with Tsukasa and his parents
• Hanako frequently asks Tsuchigomori to update him on recent scientific discoveries. If anything major happens, Tsuchigomori will give him reading material
• Tsuchigomori was the one who taught Hanako how to use a computer
• Amane was always deathly afraid of asking questions or raising his hand in class, so if he had any comments he’d reserve them for when the rest of the students left (another method he used to delay going home)
• Amane strikes me as one of those kids who ate lunch with the teacher (ik it’s common for Japanese students to eat in their classrooms but this would be true even when his other classmates decided to eat somewhere else for the day)
• Before Nene came along, Tsuchigomori would encourage Hanako to clean his own bathrooms by giving him science and mystery books as allowance
• For Christmas one year, Tsuchigomori bought Hanako a toy rocket
• When Hanako needs to be cheered up, Tsuchigomori and Yako will play astronaut with him. Sometimes Yako pretends to be an alien, sometimes she’s part of the space crew, it depends on the plot
• Whenever Tsuchigomori is showing his class a movie, Hanako will sit in and watch
• Tsuchigomori has absolutely written “a pleasure to have in class” on one of Amane’s report cards
Okay I’m gonna end it there, ty for this ask I rly enjoyed talking abt them :D
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narfin-frood · 1 month ago
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how do you plan the panel layouts for your comics? i always get stuck and it feels cramped or unsatisfying
okay so i went to college for 2 whole semesters and one of the only art classes i took (and definitely the only one i retained much from) was my sequential art & comics class. so i'm gonna try to explain my process in so many words, but there's a LOT of stuff that goes into a successful comic and i'm by no means a professional. i can however throw some tips and tricks and some recommended reading your way (another longpost ahead!)
first, know what you want to do. know where your comic starts and ends. if you find any joy in writing scripts, you can also do that, but i'm not the best at writing with no visual aide so i usually script while i thumbnail, but always make sure you've got a concept and a goal.
next, start thumbnailing. my initial thumbnails usually look like this:
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(incidentally, my storyboard thumbnails look a lot like this, too)
there's no real structure, and i'm just noodling my way from the top left of the page to the bottom right. if you've got what you want from your comic in mind, this part can sometimes just pour out of you. i feel a very strong attachment to these characters and the situations i put them in, so that definitely has to do with how smoothly this part goes. draw the panels as small and as detail-free as possible. i usually don't do speech bubbles, and instead treat it like a storyboard, writing my rough script under the panels as i go.
once you're satisfied with the way your story is coming together, THEN you start laying your panels out. this part looks like this when i do it:
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(these are actually from a gfalls comic i never cared to finish from like. five months ago but who's counting?)
honestly, it's best to do this as small as you can possibly get it, to really get your head out of the "but i have to fit all the panels exactly as i drew them on the page" funk. remember that, at least if you're writing the comic in english or other languages read in the same direction, that you're trying to lead the reader's eye from top to bottom and left to right. this is really hard to keep track of, and i still make mistakes and flub up the readability all the time. like here:
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the panel layout should be reversed here. the panels in the top left and bottom right should be smaller than the other two, so the gutters would actually guide you to read it left to right instead of top to bottom, but laziness and initial drawing blindness struck me and i never fixed it.
once you have a layout that makes sense to you, it's as simple as blowing your thumbnails up to comic-size and going over your very rough sketches with your final clean panels & inks, or, if you're doing it traditionally, re-sketching your page on your big bristol board after doing some measuring to see where your panels should actually be.
there are other rules to keep in mind when you're in the thumbnailing phase of your comic, like the 180-degree rule (something that carries from film to animation to comics to, really, any form of sequential art), which is easiest to explain with a little diagram:
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keeping this in mind really helps with readability. you can do a bunch of things with your angles, you can even omit the other character, but keeping them on the side of the frame you establish them on is very helpful. this is mainly for dialogue, but it does also help if you want to display one character walking in one specific direction, or if you want a fight scene to read as well as possible, etc.
and, if you look at your comic sketch now and think, hey, this looks great, this is so clear and easy to read, i highly recommend stepping away for a few hours to look at it again, or, if you're impatient like me, sending it to a friend. you're also totally welcome to send it to me, if you just need someone to tell you whether your comic is easily readable.
to learn more about drawing comics, i recommend two things. one, read some comics. by professionals in the industry, ideally, though there are many many competent and incredibly detailed comics by independent creators out there. people in the industry will (MOST of the time) be held to slightly higher standards of readability than the average independent artist, and the workflow for professional comics involves several people at once reading and reviewing and revising what's made so that it'll be digestible to the average audience.
two, i recommend getting your hands on a copy of "understanding comics" by scott mccloud. love this book. lots of comic artists love this book. it's fun and informative and packed full of tips, while also being a comic, which makes it even more fun to read. mccloud goes into a lot of detail on stuff i didn't mention, from the gutters between panels to lettering to working with other artists and writers and finding an art style that fits the story you want to tell. great stuff. go to the library, check it out. you won't regret it.
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lemonandtheart · 1 month ago
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April's Family Photo Board~! Click for more facts about my April!
April's family lives on the West Coast, in Portland, Oregon! (This is because I live there and I will do literally anything to make things about my home I fucking love Oregon)
Her family consists of her father Kirby, her older sister Robyn, and her Uncle John!
She was a very sick child and spent nearly the first 10 years of her life in the hospital where Uncle John works so he could take care of her. How kind of him...
April has no physical photos of her mother
The only thing she has that belonged to her mother is her heart necklace. Uncle John made sure it was given to her once she left the hospital. It makes strange beeping sounds and a little light flashes from it on occasion... but he said it's nothing to worry about. She never takes it off.
April has no actual memories of her mother. She can't even remember her face without looking at the photos that her family gave her, and they've given her only as many as she can count on one hand. She wishes she could remember more about her mother, but no one will say much about her.
April has no clear memories of anything before she was around 10 years old. When she tries to think of anything before then, her head hurts. She doesn't have many memories from her adolescence either. She keeps a detailed journal so she can remember things that are important because she forgets very easily.
She doesn't spend much time with Uncle John now that she's older. She always falls asleep at his house. Robyn always insists since he transferred to NYC around the same time April started going to East Laird she should make sure to visit often since she's the only family he has there and doesn't want him to get lonely
April can feel most emotions, but they don't last long. She feels neutrally happy most of the time. Her father says it's a good thing, and he's a psychologist so it must be...
She has two human friends as it stands - Kendra and Vernon. Of those two only Vernon actually likes her.
Vernon is in charge of the student news club and she's his second in command. The two of them spend a good amount of time together. Even though he hasn't been featured in the comic yet, she has been seeing him basically daily for club activities and just hanging out. She spends about 70% of her time at school with him.
She doesn't have any photos with Kendra because Kendra disappears every day after she's done on campus and doesn't answer her phone >:(
April's favorite color is yellow because it reminds her of sunshine and happiness. She wears a lot of pink because pink is easier to find shades that don't strain her eyes.
April is 5'5" and around 170lbs. All of the boys can lift her easily.
April's very fond of animals. She hates being mean to them. She's the kind of person to catch spiders and set them free.
April is 19 in the comic, born 04/01/1999. The comic is set in 2018, around October.
Casey will make an appearance and she will like him a LOT
I think despite Donnie being her best friend, Leo and April are the most similar and get along extremely well.
I might reblog and add more later <3 I needed to try to fix my drawing tablet so I figured I'd make something for April! Ily all and enjoy!
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iluvylalevu · 2 months ago
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hiii, good day! just dropping by to let yoy know we looove your toh art, especially your collector, titans, and archivist drawings!! they're all super cool and you draw a really soft cute collector that is one of our favorites. we love rereading your comics cause the collector growing up with the titans is just so sweet. ToT <3 and we especially especially love the archivists you designed, we are obsessed with the archivists as a type of being(?) ourselves so we love seeing when others come up with ideas about them and, well, yours is one of our favorites. (⁠ᵔ⁠ᴥ⁠ᵔ⁠) the themes of what they collect are super interesting and give us much to think about... crawlies's design also makes us /⁠╲⁠/⁠\⁠╭⁠(⁠•⁠‿⁠•⁠)⁠╮⁠/⁠\⁠╱⁠\ (that's a smiling spider emoticon). we're wondering if you might have any more info on your archivists to share? we'd love to learn more about them... \⁠(⁠๑⁠╹⁠◡⁠╹⁠๑⁠)⁠ノ⁠♬ no problem if not, hehe, just thanks and hope you do well!!
Oh man, my Archivists, it's been a while since I've visited them, let me see what I remember/saved So first off, my Archivists designs are overall based on the paintings we saw in the show, particularly this one
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I used the hats to pick what each of them would be designed after, with Extravaganza's design taking after a sun since suns are stars, just to make him more unique/separate from the other star character, which ended up being Crawlies
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This is more a really good coincidence, but I only found these paintings after I'd designed Extravaganza and Blind Spot (all's well that ends well I suppose haha)
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The Archivists, despite being siblings, are very detached from each another. Their relationship is more of a co-worker type of thing than anything. They don't hate one another, but they wouldn't really care if one got stranded (cough cough)
Here's some little trivia about them individually (with a couple doodles to boot)
Extravaganza (sun guy):
-Extravaganza was the first one I designed, so one of his "fun facts" is that his nose always faces right. This kinda ended up not being unique to him since it also happened with Blind Spot (moon gal)
-He gets jealous easily. He wants to hoard all that's "unique", so whenever his siblings get something he likes he'll try to get it out of their hands very aggressively. This jealousy sometimes extends to things that are inherent to his siblings like Prevalent's rings
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-Because he tends to reject normalcy, he can kinda be like Crawlies in the sense he might move creepily or weirdly. Even in human form, he tends to rotate his head the same way he does in his "abstract" form
-He loves being the center of attention. When the titan war happened, he took on the biggest and brightest form he could, making a spectacle of himself (and continuously getting injured by Titans like an idiot)
Blind Spot (moon gal)
-Her hair was made to resemble a waterfall in abstract form and a cloud in human form. I could argue this is because the sound of water and the cotton-like sensation we picture clouds having fit with her collection's theme but if I'm being honest I just thought it looked neat
-The reason she keeps her eyes closed is because she thinks the comfort that comes from an object/creature is "ruined" if you know what it looks like, since now that you know its appearance, it is all you will think about when you touch it or hear it instead of fully focusing on the sensations
-She has a very calm demeanor, but she's easy to anger. Her coldness makes it easy for her to approach other creatures and evaluate whether she wants them in her collection or not
-She's one of the more dangerous Archivists. If something she finds is not to her liking, she is more prone to opening her eyes. Once she's seen something, she WILL deem it as worthless and destroy it unless one of her siblings has already claimed they want it
-When the Titan war happened, she had her eyes open the entire time
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Crawlies (red star guy)
-I decided to base him on a cold star, hence why he's almost completely red (that day I learned the colder the star the warmer the color. Wack)
-Very sneaky guy. Able to slip through undetected almost all the time
-The way I designed his face is so he can have "two noses" and you never really know which is the actual nose, if he has any. This unfortunately didn't translate to his human form
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Prevalent (Ringed Planet/Saturn guy)
-They're the only Archivist that went through different names before I could land on one. These names were Pebbles, Commonplace, Trivial and Stamps. Pebbles and Stamps were considered because rocks and stamps are some of the most common collections people tend to make
-Actually on that note they absolutely have a rock collection
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-Their eyes look Like That because of being based on a ringed planet. The triangles on their left are also surrogate eyelashes for their left eye, but I couldn't figure out how to translate it to their human form
-They usually get to decide where to go next once they're done with whatever planet they're visiting at the moment
And finally, not an Archivist but
The Collector
-Baby
-Healing the damage his siblings caused one best friend at a time
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literary-illuminati · 3 months ago
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2024 Book Review #63 – Saga, Book 1 by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples
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I first starting reading Saga a literal decade ago (I think literally because Rachel Maddow recommended it on a podcast? Which, god, what a 2010s sort of sentence). I absolutely loved it at the time, and read intermittently until it went on an extended hiatus. So extended, in fact, that I’d kind of assumed the series was dead and only learned it had restarted a couple years ago quite recently. So, seeing as I am now in need of a new comic, I figured I’d restart from scratch and work up to the new stuff. It holds up! (and the letters to the editor are a fascinating cultural time capsule).
The series follows Alana and Marko – star-crossed lovers who eloped together from opposite sides of a brutal and galaxy-spanning race-war – and their newborn daughter Hazel as they evade the numerous forces trying to see them all murdered before than can become an embarrassment. The first arcs of this are most one long blind panic finding transport off-world and only afterwards deciding upon a destination, it’s only in the last volume (with the pointed assistance of Marko’s parents) that there’s any thought of finding stability or a status quo. Along the way, both the family and the series collect a wider and wider circle of colourful hangers-on – and the narrative begins switching focus to give real narrative focus and character arcs to three different groups that find themselves tracking down the family. None of them are particularly happy lives, but they all make for very compelling drama.
The best way to describe this is I suppose a ‘science-fantasy dramedy’. Which sounds viscerally and violently wrong, but the comedy and the drama are both absolutely vital motors keeping it running. And this is the incredibly rare work that actually makes them work together seamlessly. It’s an incredibly vulgar book in a dozen different ways, but the characters are all plausible and compelling, and once you have granted the slightly contrived explanation for why both governments care so immensely about Marko and Alana the plot coheres enough to never take you out of the story. Which is helped by the pacing being fast and tight in a way that always kept me (at least) engaged. I do deduct points for the wise author character basically looking directly at the fourth wall and saying ‘and the profound message of my work is-’ (moreso because said message is truly eye-roll-inducingly vapid and dumb, granted), but that’s easily forgiven.
The comedy was...more hit-or-miss. There is a lot of clever wordplay and funny, high-context character beats. There are also a bunch of just absurd or striking visual gags or background details that really work. And then there is the giant with balls so big and hideous that they almost crush someone to death.
It’s been said (by people with far more knowledge of and investment in the medium than I) that mainstream American comics are these incredible wells of repressed sexuality – full of physically implausible women dressed for a burlesque and with panels framed by a particularly sleazy tabloid photographer, but oddly coy about actually talking about or including sex itself. Which tracks with my limited experiences, but might just be bullshit I don’t know – what I do know is that Saga is basically the exact opposite of that.
Which is to say, this is an intensely sexual comic, but an atypically non-sexualized one. Which is a bit of an odd distinction, but compare how Saga shows an uncensored orgy and how any given artist at a con draws prints of Power Girl and you’ll get the idea. This is on balance a very good thing, occasional junior-high-level visual gags and gross-out humour aside. Sex is a part of life, of varying importance to different people but something present and shaping the world regardless (and Marko and Alana very much do believably seem like a couple that’d have a kid together without a huge excess of planning beforehand).
Aside from Alana, Marko and Hazel (and hangers-on including a phantom babysitter and Marko’s somewhat-approving parents), the various groups hunting them get a really surprising amount of page-count – The Will, Lying Cat and Prince Robot are all basically main characters in their own right, and Gwendolyn, Sophie, Upsher and Doff aren’t fair off. It’s an immense accomplishment that a series of 28-30 page comics manages to bounce between so many characters and always keep them all moving, both physically and emotionally. (The character work and character design of this is worth at least the price of admission on its own, really).
The thing that most makes me love the comic is, I think, how it will introduce characters and tell you explicitly they are murderers and monsters – and then show them struggling and risking their life out of guilt or altruism or love, show them falling for people and being part of rich social worlds, show the trauma and baggage and shitty relationships that made them who they are. Make you care about them and root for them, want them to accomplish what they need to to get a happy ending – and then have them destroy something or kill someone else you’ve grown to care about. Aside from the really obvious stuff about intolerance and war, it’s one of the most consistent themes of the series that monsters have lives and loves too, which is frankly something I wish more stories (and just, people) took to heart.
The setting is glorious, in a ‘mural on the side of a stoner van’ sort of way. Laser guns and spaceships that are giant flying trees, a kingdom of robots with TVs for heads and the planet-sized egg of what’s basically a living black hole – nothing that’s designed to bear scrutiny, but endlessly inventive and evocative and clearly very fun for the artist.
The most striking thing is that – even for now, let alone fucking 2012 – the comic is just incredibly diverse. Even leaving aside the really weird or cartoonishy exaggerated species there’s more diversity in body type and silhouette in one crowd scene of Saga than in most Hollywood movies I’ve seen recently. Same with race and sexuality—the whole setting seeming functionally queernorm except for the one couple whose character arc requires that they come from Planet Homophobia is slightly eyeroll inducing but again, compared to the early 2010s norm it’s soaring so high above the bar you can’t even see the ground.
So yeah, have fallen entirely back in love with it. Can’t wait to start in on Book Two.
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