Using real legends, people and places in your comics?

[ArhyaM]

Hi there! You really used such a scary element for your story ^^'

But I'm here for your question and yep, I also use "real elements" for my secondary comic (Oh, Gods!). The whole story turns around Barcelona (just where I live) and I take the photos that will be used later as a background, while the two stupid main characters keep the story going on.
Sample here:

That's not the same as you do, but in essence, we use real elements for our story

[MissMagicGirl]

Oh yes Annabelle is scary ^^;;

Oh it is so cool how you use photos like that. I actually do that to. My comic takes place where I live in Stockholm and I take photos around town for my backgrounds as well

[russell_m_ols]

I've based my current webcomic in St Louis in the 1920s, (I grew up outside the city but now live in the UK, so it's kind of a love letter) and am hoping to embellish the story with cameos from history. I'm working on a future plot line to feature Cool Papa Bell, which I'm really excited about and some of the gangsters of the time will make an appearance soon (like the Egan's Rats). I think using people and places as periphery details can really enrich a story and keep an audience interested. I've been reading Fase Out and love the occasional cameos. They're like little rewards for a reader in the know.

[joannekwan]

Yeah, in my series Erie Waters I have a character based on a Great Lakes legend of a big black dog that harbingered doom for any ship that saw it. I looked up the origin story of the dog and incorporated it into my series.

[J.Z.Castillo]

[WakaXO]

My comic is based in Calgary, AB, Canada. You don't see much of the city in the 1st chapter, though it takes place near the city center. The second chapter partly takes place in the Lions Park (CTrain) station.

As far as myths go there is only one that is hinted at, the Jackalope, which is on my main cover. ( https://tapastic.com/series/Neon-Rabbit ) I took artistic licence with the Jackalope, giving it short horns instead of antelope horns. Also while my comic is called 'Neon Rabbit', a Jackalope is a jackrabbit and jackrabbits are not a rabbit. Originally I was going to call my comic 'The Jackalope' but the name was taken on smackjeeves.😅 I grow up hearing about the jackalope from my uncle (who had a mounted "Jackalope" head in his rec room) so it's sort of close to home.
Other than that if I put any other myths in my comic I would only use local ones, like the legend of the ogopogo. 😆

[scullpanda]

I do use real people in my comic everyone in my comic Wait...What Is based on a person from my life almost exactly with the exception of Birdie who is based on my older brother , They said write what you know and I know my life plus its easy to get my friends to pose for me

[voshxdaemon]

I do plan on using some history and mythology in my Idle Vampire series. Of course with thousand year-old vampires as characters, it was kind of inevitable, lol

[mariusthered]

this is from a yet unseen page of Talesfromswipecity (hence no talking)
but it shows a good sample of the poster i made from a album cover of the very real Suzie Quatro
who in the story is the hero of music mad teen Zoe Williams. (and one of my heroes)

I also have a poster of Kiss floating around in the comic.

[jennula]

SPEJS takes place in, well, space, so areas and cities are only loosely based on stuff here on earth =)

But before SPEJS, I made a comic about demons coming to earth, and that comic took place in Skövde, Sweden, where I lived during that time.

This was a pond I walked by every day when I wanted to get to central Skövde.

The two main characters are falling from heaven and comes home to Skövde

The characters also visited Abisko in northern Sweden, for one chapter =)

I also made a short comic about my home town and home region (Gästrikland, Sweden), and got to include Prince Daniel Westling (I always have to draw him with a crown, because he's the prince)...

And also the super weird Swedish "comedians" Mondo Gnarp:

[sorrelma]

not so much real people but my comic a book for monsters is an urban fantasy work set in the pacific northwest so i use some real locations(seattle, portland, seaside, etc) plus some amalgamations of different towns and cities in the area for the setting

i like to use real legends and folklore(both local and not) @joannekwan i also have a spooky black doomsday dog but she's more based on the british isles legends(there are soo many stories in the uk about scary black dogs) and also symbolism from various cultures of dogs and death(the character watches over a graveyard. i don't want to exploit or appropriate anyone's culture, though, so the character is more a nod to the commonality of the symbols than actually drawing from any one of them

[punkarsenic]

My comic, There Was a War, is entirely based on ancient Gaelic mythology, rewriting it centering around smaller characters, so, yeah, I use real legends lol. I love when people do that!
I think it gives an extra level of depth to the story that people can explore. I absolutely live for stories that use creatures from folklore besides the usual type; like the Spiderwick Chronicles with their brownies and boggarts and hagstones. So many folkstories are so heavily under used, it makes me sad : (

[jessicasurline]

I love it when real mixes with fiction! I don't have any legends in the comics I am currently making, but the main hideout in Whetstone is a real place, the Stratosphere in Las Vegas. I'm very happy I got to take a trip there and take reference pictures. It was really fun to walk around and re-imagine the space re-purposed as a post apocalyptic safe house! When I was taking pictures, I felt like a weirdo because I wasn't taking the normal pics. I mean seriously, who takes pics on the floor so they can get an extreme angle? Or stands in an empty room, reaching up as high as possible to get a pic of the floor, no people in it or anything? Yeah I got some looks lol!

[Wishjacked]

My comic Crow Summer is set in present-day small-town Missouri, specifically the Sainte Genevieve area. The whole world is basically based on the history of the area, which means there's a ton of French/German colonial mythology and Roman Catholic doctrine woven into the story.

I have references to Loup Garou (French Werewolves), Irish Cynocephalic Werewolves (couldn't find a good online ref haha), and a French story about brushing your hair before bed, lest the demon who lives under the house come up and snatch you out of bed while you sleep.

Beyond the mythology of the world, tons of the story is just location based— this is a VERY specific part of the US, and the characters attend real festivals and events (the King's/Queen's Ball, for example). They reference/walk past/whatever real places like The Bolduc House, the Set Gen Cemetery and Church, Pickle Springs Park, the city of St. Louis, the towns of Zell and Festus, and the former Illinois state capitol now-almost-ghost-town, Kaskaskia, which is now primarily located in Missouri after the Mississippi river flooded it.

[BritishChipFork]

Hi! I like how you refer to legends as being real like people and places. Also the glowing eye in your comic is fab!

My comic is folky SciFi, so it mixes science fiction and folklore.
https://tapastic.com/series/Giant-Space-Owl

The British TV SciFi of the 70s and 80s although imagining possible worlds it mixes this with wierd folklore and history. This mixture of SciFi and folklore and the time and place I grew up is what I'm trying to put in my comic.

I'm trying to make something in the tradition of stuff that's just as likely to feature space travel and computers and robots as it is to have castles, monsters,prehistoric monuments and the supernatural. It's not based on a single legend. But it does have bits of folklore smushed in. It's slowly solidifying into its own thing but hopefully it will still have that folky SciFi feel!

[MissMagicGirl]

Thank you!
I have subscribed to your comic. I really like your concept and story. Thanks for subscribing to mine! ^___^

[ToonDoctor]

I use real places and real people often. Here is Johnny Bullet with Muhammad Ali!

[bsawyer]

William Shakespeare is the main character in my series Zounds, Alack, and By My Troth. He's a fun character to draw, and has such a strong, recognisable look with the Klingon-y pointy beard and receding hairline. I've not gone too deeply into the history of his life - I tend to have him working on whichever play is funny at the time rather than sticking to the real-life chronology, but a few other historical figures have popped up in the series, including Elizabeth I (who I draw as towering over all the other characters...)

[NickRowler]

In an older comic I made, the main character works at a place called "Love of Jesus Thrift Store"

Which is the name of an actual thrift store

Tho they are for the most part in Virginia while my story takes place in Tennessee. The interior of the place, within my comic, is based off of a local Goodwill.

[bubbledrivercomics]

Oh! I was thinking of starting a topic like this! I'm doing research for my upcoming comic, Unsele and it's pretty funky. It takes place on Earth but in several fictional locations that bear a startling resemblance to real life locations....But yup, it is based off real locations enough for people of that country who know to go 'AHA!' . It's the only conceivable way I can jam in UK , US, Scotland, Ireland, Mexico together as crass as it sounds but what can I say? My best friends I met online come from those countries, and whom happen to be part of my readership, so it's the least I can do to pay homage in a small, simple way.

That said , I take reference from several places of significant mythological reference.

See. My comic is about magical realism. My comic starts somewhere near the sea, and is based off Bell Rock Lighthouse.. Buuut it's locality is based off in a location that is Kynance Cove, Lizard, Cornwall.Cornwall mythology is what is majority of the fantastical creatures and settings take place but the food and monsters that the heroine encounter are from different parts of the world! I hope this thread is not dead yet, I loved reading about all the neat references here even though it was a year back!