I have a load of ideas lying in wait in a document that I keep in case of a "rainy day", should I run out of stories to draw and need a new one to develop. Even shitty/tiny ideas are kept because they might make me think of something good and useful, either as a side plot of another story, a new story entirely or two meh ideas combined suddenly become interesting.
But I guess this thread is more about telling the story of our failures and abandoned ideas? Here goes.
I used to run a slice of life comic about my own life and opinions on tapas. People liked it (aside from some New Atheists and Anti-Feminists who didn't like me making fun of their toxic illogical mentality in one of the comic posts), but I personally hated it more the more time passed. Mainly because I tend to dislike things I've done or said as soon as a couple months have gone by. I change and develop pretty fast so I'm quicker to be embarrassed by past behaviors or art, and if it ties to me personally it just makes me anxious. So now the series is deleted.
I had a short comic that I'm not even going to mention by name in case there's still google results of it out there. I started it up back when I was primarily on dA. Tons of people accused me of copying a character I didn't know jack shit about??? (which, now that I know who the character is, I can definitely see where they are coming from) so I looked up the character, made design and story adjustments to avoid the comparison (because aside from some similar visuals and one personality trait, the characters and stories they belonged to were nothing alike) , and fired it up again simply because fans were really wanting the thing done. But honestly, the heart was lost, the point was gone, and thus it became probably the shittiest comic I have ever made. It has since been deleted.
Oh, and here's the biggest one!
I used to run a comic called The Key to Reality. It ran for 300+ pages I think, before I said "fuck it, this is an unsaveable mess" and rebooted the whole thing. It has been changed entirely and now runs as Ghost Play, which has been far more successful with audiences. So technically it isn't abandoned? But only 1 of the characters has the exact same design and nearly exact same story and personality as in the original. Most of the story has been cleaned up and flipped entirely, the approach is different, the main character has changed entirely, many characters have been removed and some have been added in their place.
I do not regret doing those 300 pages. It's not a failed project, since it helped establish me, reach an audience and has helped me improve as a creator.
Here's a comparison of the two:
The Key to Reality:
(Mommy, I'm scared, will those eyes haunt my nightmares?)
Ghost Play:
Oh and, by the way, on top of those 300 pages that TKTR ran for, I also redrew 3 whole chapters from scratch before deciding to reboot it.
I'm not a man who gives up.