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Oct 2016

It's in my comic too...Heroes OF Thantopolis. But I did name the comic after the original Thantopolis story called "Journey to Thantopolis"

To me the easiest and often most effective titles for a comic is just....the name of the main protagonist (assuming you have a central hero), or something that sums up the theme of your comic rather than who or what's in it. Or you can go the path of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure or Scott Pilgrim vs The World, and do both of those things.

I tend to avoid comics like "my boring life", "fuck my life", "random derp comic x33"..
Some people might wanna rip my head off for this, but i'm also getting tired of seeing titles like "my trans/nonbinary/intersex lyfe". it's cool that you are whatever the hell you are but if your comic doesn't even focus on that and if it's just filled with boring 2011 9gag humor then just no.

5 months later

Cliches! Don't start it with the word "The" or "Fate" or "Darkness" or "Amazing"

Actually, I never cared about titles. I mean, I also read manga and I don't have the minor idea what some titles mean, I just read it if some drawing catch my attention or the summary, or the tags.

Sometimes I don't even remember the name of the comics I am reading but I see the thumbnail and I remember.

Just try to avoid something that might be misleading I suppose.

You are of course free to call your story whatever you want, but both those titles basically amount to "The sequence of events that has been predicted's sequence of events that has been predicted".

Well, there IS a bestelling book called "John Dies At The End", so.

I'm not a fan of long titles (basically anything over like four words) or titles that include character names (odd, considering one of my favorite book series is titled with protagonist names).

My comic has a one word title. I suppose "CRUSADE" is super vague and kinda cliche, but I really like how it fits my comic. The word is directly defined as "a journey or effort to stop injustice" and that's what my story is about. I personally love one word titles, they really draw me in and I love to figure out what a story is about instead of having it given to me, but maybe I'm alone in that.

I recently heard there's actually another comic called Crusade floating around the world but I am very tired, man.

I just named my comic spire because my characters are searching for a place called the star spire and i hate titles ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Right? It got really common recently, which I think had something to do with the success of Re:Zero. It really annoys me mostly because a lot of people use it when they don't actually know what the context/meaning of "Re:"

I went with The Way of the World. It sounds very "Slice of Life" like. But its supposed to represent the diversity of the comic

As someone who created a comic with a god awful title...these are my tips.

-Avoid super long titles, especially on this site where thumb nails have a title limit. If you have a longish title, at least have a way to abbreviate it. So when you or anyone is talking about it, you are not saying/writing a long title over and over.
-Avoid super common single word titles. "Magic", "The Fate", "Awaken", "Host"
-Also, do some research and see if there are other major comics/movies/books with the same name. I originally wanted to call my comic "Crow" but I found out there is a TV show called "The Crow" as well as other webcomics with that title.
-Do research to make sure your title does not have an unintentional double meaning. The book "The Spook's Apprentice" title was changed for both the US release and the film due to "spook" being a derogatory term.
-Unpronounceable or weirdly pronounced. I'm looking at you XXXholic. Similarly, symbols should not be part of the title's pronunciation. It's like "Star★Land" vs "★Land"
-Never put "desu" in a title.
-Avoid memes

Also, keep in mind that if the title's abbreviations doesn't have any other connotations. Example ur title is called "Daisy Cooks", also known as "DC" people will immediately confused if you're talking about DC shoes or the DC comics. It's just a pet peeve of mine but I like memorable abbreviations.

Titles are notoriously difficult but luckily they can be approached from so many different directions. You can go for a thematic title or a very descriptive one. Names of characters or even places can work wonders as a title. Both short or long title can work well in the right situation. The Lord of the Rings and The Hound of the Baskervilles are both excellent titles and are quite long, so in my opinion there really isn't any need to completely steer clear of long names. Sometimes giving plenty of information in the title is a good thing and helps grab people's attention. Think of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, for example.

I think the key thing to avoid are titles that can easily be confused with a popular title. Unless, it's a parody or on purpose. The title doesn't have to be the most original one in the world but being recognizable is important. Another thing about recognizability is that the title needs to be easily remembered. A foreign title or an unusual word may sound good in theory but people may forget it quite soon.

In the end what matters the most is that you feel confident and comfortable with the title you've chosen. It can sometimes take a long time to come up with something that works (and isn't taken yet) but it's worth the struggle.

  • A title should communicate at least two things about your story.

  • You will be tempted to make it cryptic but the average reader is put
    off by this.

  • It should never really exceed three words.

  • It should be easy to remember/read/write.

  • You should not (knowingly) copy a pre-existing title.

  • (This one is kind of obvious).If your title provokes a response from
    the reader in some way that is a good thing.

  • Make sure the title is in the same language as the contents of the
    book. (This one seems obvious but I have edited a lot of manuscripts which misuse Japanese phrases as the titles for English books written by English authors frowning )

Make a title. People will always have opinions both good and bad. If your story is good people will adapt to your title, abbreviate it, acronym it, or whatever it is to make it theirs.

Titles people thought sounded dumb when they first came out:
- Call of Duty
- Gears of War
- Burger King
- RadioShack
- Best Buy
- The Old Man and the Sea

It's all about content