Comics inspired by fairytales

Klaustasya 2018-09-29 06:15:00 UTC #1

What's the most important thing if you were to make a comic about a popular fairytale?
I heard about many (maybe too many) adaptations of fairytales in movies or tv series, luckily i didn't find any popular comic inspired by fairytales but i made one, which was with Red riding hood (and now i'm planning to make like a triilogy of fairytales comics lol nvm)

Original fairytales, i'd like to say, have more plot depth and symbolism than the Disney version (i don't really like disney) so in my opinion picking up informations from the original script is very important (If you go look at Snow white real fairytale you'll find out you can make a series of comics just with that)

I don't even know why i opened this topic to be honest (XD) maybe i'd like to hear your opinions about...yeah, re-adaptations of fairytales in comics/webcomics and how would you generally handle it, like:

How much do you want to stick to the story? you just want to use small parts of it?
What to cut off from the comic story, How deep to make it (in terms of symbolism),
What genre etc etc....stuff like that, just as an overall check.

Raven_C 2018-09-29 06:52:05 UTC #2

Re-adaptations are always interesting! I like it when a comic or series is based on a fairytale/folklore but it deviates a lot from the original story. I find it more interesting when the author changes a lot of stuff and offer their own version of the tale. I also like modernizations, taking place in the present time.

If I were to make a comic about a fairytale, I definitely would NOT base it on Disney's fairytales because even those are their own interpretations too.

And I know this is not a fairytale but...... a story I'm working on right now for Tapas Writer's Camp will have characters inspired by Greek gods. Yeah, it's very typical to choose Greek mythos, haha... but none of the original gods or events will be in my story; it will only be slightly based on the gods' personalities.

Example: Instead of 12 gods, I have 7 guardians. The focus of the story is a character based on Hestia, the Greek goddess of domestic life. No one ever talks about her, not even in the original mythologies -- which is why I think there's all sorts of possibilities for a story here.

Anyway, I think stories inspired by fairytales and other legends are cool and I prefer that an author uses small parts of the original and spin a tale of their own, or focus on characters that are not that popular!

J.Lovelace 2018-09-29 07:14:06 UTC #3

I decided to retell the "Sleeping Beauty" once XD

The main thing stays the same - there's a person sleeping for a long time in a secluded place, and there's someone coming to wake them up.

Now for the changes, the whole setting is sci-fi and BL. Earth is in danger, and the mast hope for mankind is a man who was put into a coma for 25 years. He's in a security tower where the security bots went rogue, so a soldier is sent to go there and wake the man up.

In the original Sleeping Beauty the princess wakes up with a kiss, so I decided to keep that part too (hence BL XD).
The password that is supposed to end the stasis state is coded as "kiss" and boy, it will surprise the soldier.

It probably sounds lame in the summary, but I had a lot of fun working on this, and I hope I can finish it soon. I also came up with a whole backstory/sequel that is unrelated to the original fairy tale.

Here's what I have so far:

X.J.C 2018-09-29 08:16:52 UTC #5

I like to play with the expectation of the reader (who most likely is familiar with the story) and ad another story to the storyline. Fairy tails (in my opinion) rely a lot on certain 'roles' (the good prince, the bad wolf etc) and I like to experiment with those 'roles'.

OttoGruenwald 2018-09-29 09:29:00 UTC #6

My comic dips into a lot of different genres, and sometimes it borrows from the fairy tale genre. I believe it was GK Chesterton that said that the difference between fable and fairy tale was that in fables characters and elements are what they seem to be. The hare and the fox and the tortoise act exactly as they are said to act. But fairy tales by contrast always deal in false appearances be it through trickery or a transformation. The Power of Stardust is about transformation and false appearances, and I took inspiration from the stories of Lord Dunsany and George MacDonald in creating the story.

The brief scene in the world of Lor is perhaps where I most clearly tipped my hand as to the fairy tale influences.

Klaustasya 2018-09-29 10:35:55 UTC #7

I totally agree with you about the Disney part =___= my fairytale comic is just my own version with swapped roles too and i can't wait to publish it here on Tapas and get some good feedbacks for the other fairytale comic i'm plotting right now.

Klaustasya 2018-09-29 10:37:35 UTC #8

Actually in the very first story, Sleeping beuty is raped in her sleep by the prince (who leaves right after) leaving her pregnant with two twins xDDD (Grimm Brothers, creepy dudes lol) but actually i like the story you plotted!

J.Lovelace 2018-09-29 12:08:59 UTC #9

Yeah I remember reading about the originals, and all of them are terrible :''D
Thanks!

DokiDokiTsuna 2018-09-29 20:55:10 UTC #10

I think the most important things are (1) CHARACTER DESIGN and (2) building an interesting 'transformation' of the original fairy tale.
Both are because, as you said, this has been done to death. Everyone and their mom has their own "gritty, edgy" version of the old tales; when I was growing up (in the heyday of Once Upon a Time and Grimm) it was totally the 'in' thing. So now it's very important to have something unique that will really draw people in and not have them go, "Oh, another sexy Red Riding Hood; hard pass..."

OttoGruenwald 2018-09-29 23:54:29 UTC #11

I think the French version was before the German version, and Sleeping Beauty doesn't get raped there.
The evil witch does end up boiled alive though. So that's something for the darkness.

OttoGruenwald 2018-09-29 23:55:11 UTC #12

Yes exactly. The goal should be to copy the feel of a fairytale rather than the plot of a fairy tale.

lil-sea-salt 2018-09-30 02:42:48 UTC #13

I try to find like the overall story arc . . . like beauty and the beast . . . it's a boy who traps a girl somewhere and tries to get him to fall in love with her . . .and then use that as a base before I build a character or a setting around it because without a strong frame a story falls apart.

I think it's really interesting to see how someone puts a fairy tale in their world without retelling too much of it.

I have a novel like that, you can skim it to get what i mean. It was something I wrote for the first writer's camp so it's a bit old by now.

eochoa92 2018-09-30 05:33:54 UTC #14

Steering from the original is fine so long as it's still recognizable.

I love Disney, though I haven't looked into many of the original stories - Cinderella probably being the only one. However, I have read the original Grimm tales, and found them to be quite repetitive.......maybe I don't have an eye for that kind of storytelling. I did recently finish a series based on the Queen of Hearts before she became Queen of Wonderland which was just brilliant. It was so different from what the Disney Alice in Wonderland movie had, and if I just listened to a preview of what the books entailed, I probably would never have read it, but I enjoyed it.

How would I take on a re-adaptation? I've toyed with the idea of taking the concept of 'The Picture of Dorian Grey' and mixing it with Beauty and the Beast.