At which timeline did you begin the beginning of your comic?

[Chocolate]

Is it in the last, present, or future or just a random flashback? Did you do random timeskips and settings like Jojo? Or is there structure in relation to the time in your comic like One Piece?

[BoomerZ]

My comic starts at the first meeting of the main characters, but I do have flashbacks. I try to keep them clear as to not confuse the reader. Random time skips I would not suggest as the reader might not know what's going on. Memento is a great movie, but shouldn't be done unless you know exactly what you doing and have the experience to pull it off.

[llobucervallince]

Me too, both main characters meet, the story of the co-protagonist is told in the second chapter throught a flashback (Letter), the protagonist I haven't decided yet

[AmysGames]

I consider the start of the comic to be the morning before the inciting incident that the whole story is based off of, AKA pretty much what you would expect, lol. But technically there's a very brief flash forward before that which occurs during said incident, so I guess it starts there?

There's also a prologue that describes events that happened thousands of years ago, but I don't really count that.

[SirCoockie]

(post withdrawn by author, will be automatically deleted in 24 hours unless flagged)

[taselty]

14 years before the comic, in 1995!

[VibrantFox]

I'll be kicking off h+h from what i tend to refer to as it's second start point in the characters story line, since i've made it where it can begin at a much earlier period before their death/rebirth which has a different set of conflicts, versus the other that dives right into all the supernatural fantasy goodness. I think my reason for choosing it too is coz i figure it engages a reader much more but i still intend to flash back to that first start and things from that period of the timeline to give certain things context.

For Journey to Nowhere it'll be at the very beginning, at least for the protag, with some dips into the past for a variety of other characters and the mc's partner

[stiatent]

The Demo/intro episode takes place around 5am on April 6th to quickly establish the tone of story and then rewinds to April 5th 8:00 pm where we get a bit of the 2 MCs daily lives. It never time-jumps again.
The episodes naturally build up to April 6th 5am, but this time it's seen from the MCs pov and continues to Apr 7th and beyond.

Regarding flashbacks: The MCs are never taken out of the present moment: They look at videos and photos on various digital devices to gather past information. One of the MCs has a camcorder, and records most of the story's events, so he'd re-watch the important ones on his downtime.

[Kelheor]

Three in a Tree starts a few (3-4?) months after main characters meeting. Them meeting was an important plot point, so we just had flashback about it.
The story is episodic, so maybe we will do more just for the heck of it, especially flashbacks with cute kids MCs seem like a sweet idea and readers seem to be into it

Hexameron starts at the present, right the night when the main plot begins. There are 6 years time skips between each season to jump immediately to point.

[darthmongoose]

Funnily enough, in a lot of early drafts of Errant, we started in the "Present" where Rekki is a jaded 24 year old knight, and then only later flashed back to show the events ten years prior.

After several drafts, I realised, it just wasn't working. Rekki was really hard to like and empathise with if you hadn't seen that she was actually a pretty good kid, Sarin is really hard to get into if she just turns up and you're told "she used to be Rekki's BFF" and her trauma was a lot less impactful if you hadn't lived it with her, and overall, it just wasn't starting with an exciting inciting incident.

So Errant starts with the prologue, a chapter that takes place 10 years before the main story, and then it skips forward to the "present" and reintroduces the characters. There are flashbacks along the way, but they're usually only a page or two long after the prologue gets all the big stuff out the way.

[Halecs]

My comic was originally supposed to start in 1992, almost seven years after the start of a zombie pandemic, with the details of what happened beforehand gradually explained as the story progressed.

However, after deciding that not giving little to no context about what is going on would make my story more difficult to get invested in, I decided to make a prologue that starts in 1985 (showing the start of the outbreak) but that midway jumps to seven years later in 1992, introducing the deuteragonist (that would have appeared much later otherwise), with what was supposed to be the first episode actually becoming the second one.

[GumshoeComix]

Guardians of Man starts with a very brief flashback 8 years before the story then cuts to 'present' in 2002 as the story starts.

[powerplantanimations]

Naota got reincarnated the minute after he died, reincarnating entering the stick figure world at the exact same year and time of his world. The thing is though that it's implied at the end of Season 1 that he got SUPER LUCKY. There's been Isekaiers in the journal world since the beginning of time and he could've gotten displaced.

Toshi's been in the stick figure world a while longer than John and Quincy's been there for two months. With Toshi, I introduced him in a flashback on Episode 5 revealing "Oh so that satellite took out more people, huh?".

[UrMom]

My comic starts with a 3 page prologue that is kind of a flashback and kind of a super simplistic explanation of the MC's backstories in context to the main story. I'm not a fan of exposition so there's very little text, the visuals carry a lot of what needs to be said. Even though the text is a little melodramatic the pages do their job giving reader an idea of the story's tone, and if it's something they'll want to read imo.

The first official chapter is set at the present time with one of the MCs working at a bar, and the pages showing how he's kinda shit at it with him sneaking drinks, and not taking the job as seriously as he should.

[pilot-obvious]

My story starts in present time (which is the year 2033 in my comic!)

I have the occasional flashback if necessary, but most of it takes place in present time. I was thinking of going forward a few years into the future for the epilogue... but I probably won't have to worry about that for a few more years.

[dsptss78]

Dan starts in the present, right in the middle of things. Later on the story uses flashbacks to fill in the dots or add context to dan's reasonings or emotions.

[N1ghtm4r3]

it starst in the furture time of 2731, where on of my main heroes in hading begins the sotry of how things came to be

[morganicfoods]

The beginning page of my comic flashes back from the present and earlier that day, but the changing of the time is guided by external dialogue: "Earlier today, I visted the Humifiki..." and then shows character doing such.
Flashbacks are something that I personally get confused about easily, so I try to make it as clear as possible (without overstepping "show don't tell" too much).

[allisoncandraw]

My comic is a slice of life, so I suppose the present haha

[toonben]

For my comic, Chion and Kobi, I start at the beginning and the story goes in linear order since then all the time except for one flash mini episode. Maybe linear order is more of my thing.