Is There Something You're Torn About In Your Comic But You Can't Change?

[powerplantanimations]

I love my comic. My comic is ma' baby.

I'm just torn that my comic relies on references? Like I tell myself it's "parody" and "satire", but something about using other media instead of making my own worlds feels weird. Especially when I'm working on a second project where my co-writer and I have this rule where we're like "LET'S BE AS ORIGINAL AS POSSIBLE" and it's like the most thrilling thing ever.

I wish I could find a compromise, but I already planned the whole thing and I don't want to shake it up because what I have for TSFI is GOOD STUFF. Fans love it, but yeah. Something I won't do again in the future.

I think if I WERE to make a sequel to this comic (and that's a big IF) then I'd make the worlds where the anime characters come from more original? Like "Oh wow, they're from THIS genre! That's so cool!". Instead of "Lol, they're fighting Light Yagami".

But as for this comic, yeah I'm stuck with it lol. I try to make the best of it though like how the Date Arc is Naota pretending to be from another genre and the whole theme is "accepting yourself" which is ironic since well... he doesn't know he's a BL character. He has an identity crisis.

What about you guys?

Read That Stick Figure Isekai | Tapas Web Comics

[SoaringMoon]

EDIT: Okay your comic is awesome, I'm going to read all of it. XD

You could always just slowly transition it into worldbuilding, or do a kind of multiverse thing where they exist in a universe / world at a higher level of complexity that the worlds they are referencing; IE subordinate to it.

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Anything I don't like about my comic that I can't change now that I've started it?

I insisted that the video game world they be in be as true to a video game as I can make it. Now, I don't have dynamic range as I've limited the scope of what my characters can actually do, perform, or accomplish.

So I have panels that look like this.

Instead of like this.

I really want to go through the "exploring" part of my planned story, but I have to establish gameplay mechanics, and the bad guys before I can continue.

[Iris-Grimoire]

Honestly, maybe I should've picked another title. Don't get me wrong, Splitting Image is a slam dunk of a pun and being a misspelling SHOULD give it more SEO optimization....
...should
most people misspell it for their own works too, and the result is that it's always under a really old Marvel comic anthology.

I had a hard enough time coming up with it though, so it doesn't keep me up at night. Just wish I had a better idea back then.

[OneArtsyBeaver]

Oh yea, there are two points in the story I've been tossing and turning over for a good while now. But they are practically set in stone at this point. It's like watching a train collision happen in slow motion.

For me I've often worried about how people will react to it when they do happen, even though it's so far out. But I'm unable to change it.

[AmazementComics]

I suppose if there’s one thing I could change about my first finished comic series, The Action Fruit Society, it would be fleshing out the romantic subplots. I’m not even a romance story writer, but I really would have liked to detail the love triangle that was apparent throughout the series among other characters and their relationships. I haven’t gotten any feedback on these aspects of the series probably because it’s not a huge focus, but I do think about is sometimes.

[NickRowler]

With Crow’s Worth…

Artwise, I wish I made the kids’ heads smaller.

Storywise, I don’t like my first chapter. It makes it feel like my series is a parody of Naruto which it’s not. I also wish I didn’t add the part with the arranged marriage, because I felt like I wrote myself into a corner.

Read Crow's Worth | Tapas Web Comics

[abigaillmartin]

How I portrayed Eric and Winston’s relationship at the beginning of Cracking Eggs and then they get together anyway

[Legendofgenii]

The character deaths.

[allisoncandraw]

This is something I can (and plan to) change, but I'd really like to have more female characters in my comic.

A lot of my OCs are men, and while I do have many women OCs as well I realized I didn't have many for this particular story. I have plans to fix that though 🫡

[river121693]

Maybe you can add cutscenes?

For me, I sometimes wish my story is plotted like a standard movie than a long running series with multiple arc or a show with multiple episodes, but the prospect of working on this for more than 5 years is scary lol. I wouldn’t be able express the full breadth of my story and Id have to cut out some of my fav characters but I would learn a lot more about condensed story telling and be less stressed

[UnTalAugustus]

This is a very recent one I have been thinking of.
The pacing of the first chapters. At the time I started doing my webcomic, I focused on just writing and drawing the moments I devised in my mind, so I didn't build up to those moments that well.
For example, the first pages of my comic could have easily been the end of the first chapter, and just spend the beginning to present the main character properly.
I'm trying to fix the pacing in this new chapters, I'm still vey impatient to reach some moments but not as much now.

[kuzai]

Old art vs new art QAQ
Such as my manga Bookmark Boyfriend, old art is yuck, new art is better.

Read Bookmark Boyfriend | Tapas Web Comics

[darthmongoose]

Errant being a reboot of a comic I never finished after several attempts back in my teens and early twenties, it has a bunch of legacy features that are there because I really care about them, but which aren't necessarily good for building a readership.

Obviously the names are kind of terrible. They're names I came up with when I was a teenager! I've been torn on whether I should have left Sarin's name as Sarin from the start, because yeah, it is the name of a nerve gas...though it is also a south asian name as well, so... there are people in the world called Sarin. It's hard to say... To me, Sarin is just her name, but some people find it distracting.

The whole setup of the plot with this big time-skip and two friends reuniting as adults and trying to rebuild trust perhaps adds a layer of complexity that pushes things too far. I feel like maybe the story of Errant is too complicated, it's not a breezy popcorn webtoon where the protagonist hits you over the head with what's happening repeatedly via internal monologue. Part of me likes that you can read the comic a couple of times, and on the second time, you'll pick up all these clues and foreshadowing... but part of me is like "this isn't an easy read for most people, it'd be more popular if the story was simpler and there was narration to spell it out to people".

I regret having so many characters. I think I could have done with fewer. I'm using the ones I have as best I can and won't be introducing any more, but still.... it's surprising just how small a cast a webcomic can really support before it starts getting unmanageable!