I'd like to know, everyone. All of you comic/webcomic artists, how did your comic start? Did it just pop out of thin air? Did you have some kind of crazy dream that inspired it? Did a friend/family member say something that inspired you? Did you bump your head and have an epiphany? Or all of the above?

Naturally, I shall bore you with how mine started also. =P (Apologies to those who have read my introduction in the Intro thread in this forum, since I posted this story there too. Just ignore the following, then. LOL)

I've wanted to become a novelist for quite a few years now and have always liked doodling, but a year and a half ago I did something. Something BIG. Want to know what it was? I drew a drawing of a little kid wearing a cloak and hat way too big for him, saying "I am the Sorceror! Mwahaha!", then a frame with his Dad asking "Billy, are you wearing daddy's work clothes again?" and him replying "uh, no Dad!".

Seriously.

THAT was the beginning of Sorceror. Sorceror (both the name of the comic and the main character, who is also known as Will) suddenly jumped from that little kid into being a crazy magician with faulty magic (that rarely worked as intended) and a child-like charm (plus general childishness). Just from that four frame doodle that I did at around 10 or 11pm one night, I created something now very dear to my heart. ^.^

So how about you guys?

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Script Frenzy '08 "Sorceror - Allies and Enemies"

http://islandwriter.deviantart.com

http://www.sorcerorcomic.com

"Eight, uh...goats! Eight goats! We need to get some, let's go." -Sorceror

The manga that would become known as Spanner began to take shape in 1992 when a series of conditions converged:

1) I had an existing character who seemed to be begging to star in a story;
2) I joined an anime club and wanted to do manga like the cool guys (shout out to Brandon Graham);
3) I bought Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics and the two books on creating comics by Will Eisner;
4) Camille Paglia had exploded on my mind like a bomb, to be followed up 4 years later by my introduction (via Web) to yaoi and yuri manga. The convergence of Paglia with Ayn Rand allowed me to be imprinted by Zetsuai without losing my reason. (Zetsuai, or Desperate Love 1989, for those who don't know, is a notorious yaoi manga about a formerly womanizing rock star and the self-destructive high-school soccer player he becomes obsessed with and stalks. You know about those erotic rape fantasies some women have? Minami Ozaki wrote and drew one in which her hard-drinking, hard-loving antihero [who is a whole lot like his creator] stalks and rapes another guy.),

In 1988 I read Neuromancer, which sparked my long-running love affair with cyberpunk. This may have been latent, because in '86 or so I was already a Max Headroom fan starving for episodes (my family had Showtime, not HBO/Cinemax, alas). That same year (or was it '89?) I discovered Akira and Appleseed. When I joined the cartoonists' group in JAOC, the first mangaka I wanted to draw like was Masamune Shirow. One major influence was the incident in Appleseed book 1 which ends when Deunan kills Chiffon. I was imprinted by that sequence too (because I hated it so much), so it became the whole basis for my own manga, only reversed: mischievous Shira, baby sister of slain Ruby, is relentlessly pursued by Federal Police agent Diana Shockley (Deunan crossed with the US marshal from The Fugitive with a hint of Gundam's Char). There was a Bubblegum Crisis influence too, not just with the Knight Saber type characters in their PowerSuits (Diana wears one), but also with the mysterious Ariel Shield, a cross between both Sylia Stingrays (literally: black hair with white stripe) with a secret straight out of The Da Vinci Code (or rather, Da Vinci's source, Holy Blood, Holy Grail).

And that is the secret origin of Spanner. But it was not until I found out that Script Frenzy accepts comics scripts that I realized I must write it. And for NaNoMangO in both June and November, I am going to draw it. (And yes, I'm writing the 3rd book in my prequel Dictel trilogy in November as well, for the next NaNoWriMo. Can you tell I'm obsessed?)

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Two-Time Consecutive Come-From-Behind NaNoWriMo Winner
2006: Black Science/The Jennifer Theory
2007: Bad Company

SF 2008: Spanner

The title character of "The Mad Scientist of Brightwell Road" just sort of popped into my head with a name and a talking mink, and the rest of the story evolved around him. At the very beginning, I'd planned the story to be written in prose, and had tried several times to start it, but to no avail.

Then two things happened that gave it its current form: first, I decided that it needed to be a comic book. Suddenly my exposition problems melted away. Why try to explain that it's half-steampunk, half-1950s when you can show it?

Second, I saw the new Nancy Drew movie, which, although it was hardly the best thing I've ever seen, got me thinking about the mystery books of my childhood. And it suddenly came to me that my second protagonist was a Hardy Boy-wannabe, much as I was when I was little. Once I knew who he was, everything fell into place.

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NaNoWriMo 2007- The Januarian: 27,500 words
Screnzy 2008- The Mad Scientist of Brightwell Road

Though I've always drawn, painted, sculpted, crafted, etc etc etc I actually found webcomics only a few years ago, in my late 20s. I was really impressed that there were stories being told that weren't superheroes or fantasy, just real people living real lives and it made me think about the medium in a different way (not that I have anything against the various 'standard' genres, they just never appealed to me the way slice-of-life comics do).

I wanted to try something new, had been writing various bits of fiction for several years through NaNoWriMo but the idea of illustrating them was way more interesting so I started my reality-based webcomic last May and it's still going. I now have two projects really tugging at me; one is a superhero story (see, nothing against them, though it's more humor than action) and one is Wedding Tarot.

--Jenn

SF! '08 Adaptation of NaNo '04: Wedding Tarot
http://www.theweddingtarot.com/blog

Shadow Complex was a joint collaberation with a friend -still is-.
He and I work on the story arcs and we fuse ideas from other comic concepts we have had.

it will be done in the form of a Graphic Novel collection and I am doing the outline script for the first Graphic Novel this April for Frenzy.
:)

Oh wow...Mines not all that great. I was just bored out of my skull and when that happens I come up with about five plots at once. Some I have plans for writing out in paragraph form, but some are more easily shown and have more impact when they're drawn. My artistic abilities are less than what I want to show in my stories, but I can always cheat! ....And go back and fix it of course.^_^;;
Wish you all the best of luck!
~Laura

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Eat a live frog in the morning and nothing worse can happen to you all day!*^^*~*****

The project I'm writing this time around is actually one of the youngest concepts I've ever actively worked on. Honestly, it's not even my baby, as it were. A friend had an idea for something he wanted to draw, but he's not a very good writer. He asked if he could bounce some ideas off me and I, in turn, kidnapped his setting and populated it with characters to my liking, like my snarky search engine, good natured antivirus cop, and hardboiled noir-esque freelance virus hunter. So, he's letting me run with it and he's happy drawing whatever my twisted brain can come up with.

I suppose at some point I'll actually get around to doing one of my own projects... someday.

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Subtle like brick...

My stories usually start with a character appearing full blown in my minds eye, like stepping into a spotlight. The character will usually carry with him/her some emotional imagery and bit of backstory. This usually happens after I've seen something to incite it (could be a character in a movie, a scene in a TV show, an ad, anything). Then I'll entertain myself by daydreaming about the character for a few months and their story will become clear. Then I'm ready for ScriptFrenzy or Nanowrimo, whichever comes first. Since most of ideas come as images, I write my nanos with intention of making them graphic novels.

For example.

One of my newest characters is called "The Spy". I got the idea when I was watching the end of Doctor Who season 2 (with David Tennant) The very last episode is called Doomsday [SPOILER ALERT] and it involves people jumping from one dimension to another, via these big buttons hanging around their necks. This causes trauma and confusion to the people involved, mostly regarding where they'll end up.

So, I thought, what if a jumped into a parallel world where "he" had existed, and died, but had been dramatically different person? He would have to adjust, but also all the people who think he's the man they once knew.
I got all that in a flash of about half a second (well most of it).

Over the next few weeks I elaborated:

What if, in the world he left, Hitler had won? What if he had sacrificed his sanity and self identity to infiltrate the highest of the Nazi ranks to assassinate Hilter?
What better place to hide than a parallel world? ("It's a party over here," He told me at one point).

It still needs a lot more work, but I'm going to make it into a graphic novel at some point. It'll be sort of Noirish, and moody, with WWII trench coats.
I get a lot of flashes from "I could write something better," or "It should've gone like this." I also have flashes from dreams, and a lot of flashes I discard. Often, after I get a flash I can't think about anything else for about five or ten minutes.

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"I tell you, Brigadier, the brontosaurus is large and placid!" -- First words of the Fourth Doctor

"Oh, Lumic, you're a clever man. I'd call you a genius, except I'm in the room." --Tenth Doctor

It all started five years ago... which I can't quite remember... At that time though, I only had one of my characters, and he was being used for roleplay.
After reading several out of print books, I formed the boundaries of my story within my own perception of alternate dimensions, universes, realms, and the space-time continuum. Characters seemed to come naturally.
For a school project, I was required to write short stories. I scrapped that and started writing chapters to a novel. It was terrible at best, but the characters continued to demand their story be told. A novel in a month didn't satisfy me or them...

We want a graphic novel.
Manga.
And we want it by May.

...Good luck, Qz.