Biggest rework you’ve made for your story?

Errant is a massive rework of an old comic of mine called Fan Dan Go6. Which is actually still up over on The Duck. There was about a nine year gap in between running out of steam on FDG and starting Errant, with a lot of times in-between where I was like "...should I continue FDG?"

There are a lot of changes to Errant, many of them addressing issues I had with my comic like "needs more diversity" and "Okay turns out I'm gay, I want to reflect that in the themes of my story", and then issues readers had, like that the 1970s British setting, complete with a lot of Northern English slang, was alienating to readers, there wasn't a strong villain or stakes etc.

A big, central change to Errant from Fan Dan Go, is the addition of Arthurian legend stuff. It feels weird to think that this wasn't in FDG, because it's pretty much the central basis of the whole plot in Errant. It was such an obvious way to both add a strong core conflict, and to make it something that's definitely very British, but also that a broad, international audience could get into; everyone knows Excalibur is an important magic sword, and that the King who wields it lives in Camelot and has a round table and knights. People understand the significance of pulling Excalibur out of a stone and becoming King (and yes, lore buffs, I know that actually it wasn't Excalibur that was pulled from the stone in the legends, it was a different sword and might have been an anvil etc. etc.), so it was really convenient. Then rather than having Jules' brother be dead, I had him as the main villain, because Jules was the most popular character even back in FDG, but was really the least plot relevant, one, so I shuffled things to make them actually vital to have around.

All in all, it took a lot of planning, but I think Errant is so much better than Fan Dan Go was. I definitely spent months just writing out all the lore, and basically everyone is redesigned to at least some extent. I did a lot of historical and mythical research too to make the whole thing feel fleshed out, and even put a lot of time into renaming it, from a name I came up with on a whim as a teenager that basically means nothing, into what I consider to be a much more fitting title!

Well... Vampire Prince did go from

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It doesn't really have that many in common with what I was drawing in middle-high school beside the title, Tirau and Waris being leads, one of them being a vampire and the other a vampire hunter, them travelling and becoming a couple and well... maybe general vibe... xD

I've been making West casually for nine years so it's always being reworked! Not that I've ever sat down to hack it out. I'm a pantser, not a planner. Some character motivations have changed entirely, characters have been added and chapters scrapped. The biggest change has probably been the ending which, at a certain point, will come down to a choice I'll have to make. It can go one way or the other and be good or bad. I'll have to find out which I feel like when the time comes! If it ever does

I got rid of a whole arc in favor of making it a side project
it was making the story unnecessarily long and didn't really add much

The biggest change for Frostpeak West was changing the Kumo family dynamic. The Kumos and Shine originally had fire powers. Ace was the only one who was level headed but was traumatized by the horrific things he had to deal from his family while growing up. With discussion around Stop Asian Hate, I was worried that some people would read too much into it. So I changed the Kumos to having air powers and their family dynamic isn’t as disturbing.

Shine was originally Zanna’s older brother. But I changed his powers to water, so now they are no longer related. Ken and Zanna originally had sort of a step-sibling connection. I still want the two to be friends but I am worried people might want to ship them. I do still see them as brother and sister even if they aren’t related.

Of a recent one? I’d say the whole draft of Cracking Eggs and its Order of Benedict Ovum storyline.

The first draft of Cracking Eggs was WILD! Winston had blue hair, he had a love affair with a chicken and then it turned into a tall beautiful woman like what the? Merlin was in it. Jack was the main character and he discovers he has the ability to hear the voices of the dead and speak to ghosts. Because of some British folklore crap. Jack and Winston’s mum was a witch. Wellington was a cop like bruh. If you think I’m making this up, I’m not! Also Jack’s boss Mister Fine was English and he was 300 years old and trapped people inside a magic mirror and fed off their souls. It was not wild it was just- like- weird. Really really really weird it had nothing to do with eggs.

I’m glad I reworked it into the way it is now. It’s got everything to do with eggs now. Now if you don’t believe me this is real. It is. My Instagram account has the original so if you’re curious go ahead and check it out. (@cila_17_)

Now with my most recent work with Cracking Eggs Order of Benedict Ovum storyline Eric and Winston were already married and they are looking to adopt. Eric and Winston were originally going to grow apart because of differences and lots of crap. Then I dropped it. Ugh.

I did a pretty major recolor for several of the first pages to make them more inline with the rest of the comic. The older version was largely flat muted colors.

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Deleting pages sucks. I had to write like 7 weeks worth of material or something and then I realized I can make the arc much shorter, so I threw them out before my artist got to work.

I've said before, but That Stick Figure Isekai was going to be a different comic than before. The Dodgeball Arc opened the floodgates with what I'm allowed to get away with.

I wanna talk about Quincy's story for a second because Red Giant (now renamed to "Red Giantess") was in development during That Stick Figure Isekai and is going through some massive stylistic overhauls. Me putting Quincy means I HAVE to kill him-off in the most anti-climatic way possible. I had to find a way to make a narrative about that instead? Where it leads up to his death and then the story is about the impact. It's become a prequel-sequel.

Second, the story was going to be a straight-up tribute to Jack Kirby, but after Season 1 of That Stick Figure Isekai, I felt like I wanted to make a project that had its own look? Something that you can't find anywhere else while also being marketable on webcomic websites because... LET'S BE HONEST. No one's going to want to look at an old timey superhero comic. I don't even call the superheroes "superheroes" either.

So, Quincy's comic is not going to look like this despite what my comic wanting the audience to believe:

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If I remember correctly, the Dodgeball Arc also gave me the opportunity to transfer the themes of Red Giantess to That Stick Figure Isekai. I was struggling to figure out what to talk about and I was like "Well QUINCY'S here and his arc is going to be about God, so let's do that"

Although I've had some extensive rewrites and pivots from my main story to its spin-offs/reboots, I really love the reworking that happens on a day-to-day basis with making comics. The constant conversation between Writer-Me and Artist-Me is my absolute favorite part about making comics because it delights me on almost a daily basis.

My usual art process:
1) Write the Script with "Writer-me" (who tries to think visually, but let's face it, it's about the dialogue, baby).
2) Writer-Me hands the script over to "Artist-me" (who then changes panel order/focus of shots, cuts dialogue, and adds more panels when he realizes Writer-Me missed an opportunity to make a visual gag or sweeten a moment emotionally).
3) Artist-me hands the drawings to back Writer-me for additional dialogue tweaks and both of us walk away happy.

I really love that process of not perfectly following the script (and sometimes even veering off it entirely). And to be fair, Writer-me really tries to be more judicious with panel/word count because he doesn't want to load up Artist-me's time, but hot damn, let Artist-Me fly, dude. The whole process of not being precious really gives myself room for spontaneity (and seriously, taking advantage of the visual gags I missed in the original script is the closest thing I'll get to improv in such a planned-out art form. It let's the characters breathe and interact in a way that's unexpected and natural.

In the first draft of one of my WIPs, I had originally intended for my MC's daughter to be the lead and have her be the "chosen one" who saves her world. When I wrote the character aged up to college, I realized that she had strong "not like other girls" energy and was making solid "leading lady in a YA/NA college romance" choices and I wanted none of that.

Eventually, I realized that the plot would be stronger if it was told from her father's POV. So I rewrote it and the story went fine but I struggled to "finish" the story since there is a lot of pressure in serial fiction to keep the story going. One commenter said my story had major dystopian vibes. So I am currently trying to rework the story into a futuristic dystopia.

🤣🤣🤣 fair it’s why I made Winston gay but I don’t blame you it’s funny that he dated a chicken

STS was based off the backstory of two characters that gradually eclipsed my interest over the original project where Alya and Najm fall to an abandoned planet and get guided to the last functioning space port by the original main character, Thana, who is kinda like the aesthetic of Boba fett slapped onto Hans solo if he was a aging lesbian on her 3rd divorce.

When STS actually entered production the structure has stayed pretty consistent but I add more scenes and ideas as I go, a major change was skipping a romantic subplot, which was going to last until the 2nd act by just going "these two are obviously flirting with each other and have become official offscreen". I dunno, I'm not really one for slow burns.

as of late i have been redoing some older chapters as some of the dtory and art doesnt work anymore,and cover soem plot holes i had made ,its a process,but it is worht it to me atleast as i want to have my best out

Probably just reworking the story to include a character I didn't initially plan to have around more than a chapter. Basically, he filled a hole in the plot that allowed me to tie together a lot of other portions and flesh out other aspects of the story.
I think when I started trying to put things together I didn't have a clear indication of what the "first arc" was really going to be about, and in the first run when I thought I was getting around to reincluding him I think his reappearence would have felt too random. The gap would have been something like 8 chapters and we barely even knew anything about him.

There was also the big decision for him to get bitten and up the stakes for both him and the other characters. (Is he gonna turn? ooh, ahh...)

Since it was more or less a reboot, you could say that the whole thing was my biggest rework. It went from basically just being an undead slice of life to having something for the characters to work against, and a solid way to move the story forward.

I just remembered one of my favorite spontaneous moments (I mean, as spontaneous as it can be producing a comic). When a little kid (Valor) was giving a deaf character (Penny) crap for flirting with her wife all the time. The ASL for "flirty" reminded me of birds flying, so I tagged the joke with Valor calling Penny a "flirty birdie." The drawing still makes me smile.

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Oh! And I totally forgot, I completely rewrote my original series (Unstoppable Monkey Bunny) when I realized the main character (Penny) would have nearly killed the bad guy in their first encounter. So instead of de-powering her (or building the bad guy up), I let the fight happen that way and had a lot of fun completely changing the whole arc of the narrative with a bad guy that was mostly taken off the board from issue 1 (and seeing how the world reacted and what power vacuums/dynamics changed as a result). That was a lot of fun (and still is).

Also,
@LostKelp

Thana, who is kinda like the aesthetic of Boba fett slapped onto Hans solo if he was a aging lesbian on her 3rd divorce.

Dang! And now I'm going to have to check out this comic That is the best bit of marketing I've encountered all week!

She's not as central to the story as she used to be, which is a shame we need more space cowboy lesbians. but there's also Najm, who's basically wolverine if he watched 1 000 cooking shows and stopped being so angry about everything because of their love of their friends and cakes.

The closest currently to Hans solo is Rahat, cuz they're a pilot and they used to steal shit. But they're also a massive coward and have all the rougeish charm of two pieces of ham stapled together.

As for Thana she will definitely get her time in the sun one day. She is one of my favorites.