Most difficult premise to make a comic from?

[jamontoast98]

You can make a comic from ANY premise, but I've been thinking recently what concept would be the most difficult to produce while still making it entertaining

One answer I came up with was a serious political comic set in Victorian times. Not only would you have to know the intricacies of Politics, in a time that isn't our own, but you'd have to know how to draw complicated building structures like cathedrals.

What do you think the most difficult premise would be? Also, feel free to show off your comic if you do think it has a difficult/unique premise!

[NickRowler]

I think political stuff is probably the hardest to write. If done wrong, you could create something that doesn’t really appeal to anyone. Readers rarely enjoy seeing themselves as a strawman. People who agree with you may be off put by you preaching to them. And if you do not do your research, you also come off as someone who is just rambling nonsense. It also doesn’t help that younger people have labeled some political comics as “boomer humor” due to them just seeming very out of touch.

[allenT]

I'm not sure about difficult premises. I only know if there's strong premise or weak premise. It's the protagonist's goal.

My story premise on my logline is just the easy-to-see 'outward' goal.

Maor, a village cat boy is going into a crossroad in his life. In question about his peculiar palm aura, he needs to enter the distant pagoda to find out.

However this is not the entire story, this is only storyline A. The hidden Storyline B is inside the comic pages waiting readers to explore (which is his family matter) And maybe some side-storyline about Maor's mentality about certain stuff... It's introversive and contains angsts & tears. After all it's a coming-of-age story.

All in all, the premise of 'going to Pagoda' is for new fantasy-oriented readers to hold onto, (and it's a win if they can enjoy the dramas) until Act 2 to finally get the goal fulfilled. After that I keep later storylines as mysteries, it's 'come what may' for the readers.

Read MAOR | Tapas Web Comics

[Lensing]

The most difficult premise to make a comic from is abuse

[Kuma]

Any I'm not interested in. If I'm invested in what I'm writing, I'll try to give me utmost effort for it. I only work when I'm hyped up.

[ar-ninetysix]

To me, anything music related is hard to showcase purely through a comic.

As a musician, I want to believe that an author knows what they're talking about, but trying to convey audio purely through images and descriptions is sort of weird. Even amongst musicians, there might be common quirky terms that are used, but then you'll have individual ideas that can't really be expressed by words, you'll just have to hear it to get the gist of it. Even if you do manage to describe it, someone there will disagree with the description because it's perceived differently by others. But that's only describing playing styles and genre basics.

Once you get into comparing sounds and what makes one better than another.. then it's something else entirely. I can imagine lots of music comics delve into the "judgy" aspect of music, like with competitions, battle of the bands, auditions. Lots of writers are aware that drama and conflict makes a plot interesting, and the competitive music events are a natural breeding ground for that.

This in itself is perfectly fine to write about to the average audience, but for me, any suspension of disbelief disappears. These are fields that I'm aware of, some that I actively take part in, and a lot of the experience varies from person to person. For music, audio is the experience, and to not have that be included just feels.. off.

You could literally get everything factually correct, but the second you start describing sounds? You'll lose me almost instantly. To some extent, it feels like a very petty instance of me seeing the whole thing as "just trust me, bro".

[TheLemmaLlama]

Probably something set in Lineland There might be interesting implications to explore at first, but things would probably get dull pretty quickly with only 1 dimension to work with, not to mention visually uninteresting in comic form XD

[powerplantanimations]

Stuff you don't have experience with. Or stuff you THINK you have a grasp of, but really, you end up realizing that there's more than meets the eye. That's why I always tell people WRITE WHAT YOU KNOW. Start off simple so you can improve. No one will get mad at you for writing from your point of view. It makes things feel more real.

Also side note, be sure to keep everyone's criticisms in mind and try to find similarities between all of them to know the truth of why your story didn't work (no matter how harsh or stupid). You may end up learning something at the end of the day or you can create a new arc addressing this.

[goatbat]

I mean, anything set in Victorian times would be hard to draw for sure! As long as you were willing to do a LOT of research that seems very doable though, especially for certain types of people. Some people just love doing intricate period stuff! (And, with CSP 3D models, tricky backgrounds are becoming increasingly more easy for people to tackle.)

All of these options seem very doable, just very difficult for different people. Probably most difficult premise would be something that doesn't adapt very well to a comic format- which is kind of hard to find, since comics are such a malleable and flexible medium.

Personally I struggle with getting into most comics that center around have lots of pages set at concerts or something like that- so for me one of the most difficult would be like . . . a battle of the bands type comic. Those are super hit or miss for me.

[system]

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