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karamesser
Sep '19

I don't know if one reading this may know of it, but on deviantART there is a group called the Deviant Universe, where people have been able to come together to compete in monthly challenges, both single-image and story-based, and overall have a collaborative superhero universe. Well, I want to see about hopefully starting something like that going, but for beyond just a single site (the Deviant Universe requires one's comics to be exclusive to deviantART), and set up in a way to allow for characters to not necessarily have to share a universe all the time (designed to have worlds be able to converge and break apart however regularly a creator wants them to).

I was wondering if anyone would be interested in trying to be involved in such a thing. It's not something I necessarily feel I can run by myself, but it would definitely need other contributors in order to work (hard to collaborate with just yourself). The idea would be to both be able to work with other creators sometimes and sometimes challenge oneself, but I would think the primary purpose would be cross-promotional.

My idea is that this would be a universe where any comic (or novel/text story) which could reasonably fit into a superhero comic's world would be able to be involved (superhero, magical girl, urban fantasy, etc.) and that people could remain a member of the group so long as they participate in at least one challenge per year (which I'd want to make sure there are a healthy amount of single-image challenges in order to make sure the people that can't do story challenges due to how long it takes to do pages can still be involved--plus, just story challenges could be a bit too daunting, anyways).

So if people want to be involved, let me know, and if people want to help run it (I have a deviantART group for such a thing at the moment, and a placeholder for a dedicated website over on ComicFury, where I at least know a little bit how to make it look nice), definitely let me know.

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    Sep '19

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Kaylim
Sep '19

That sounds interesting. I'll have to look at deviantARTs version to really understand it. I'm not an artist, though. Is there a way for writers to participate, or does it have to be all comic? I've got lots of super hero short stories and ideas stashed away for a rainy day.

As for challenges/competitions, are there actual prizes for competing? Or just the joy of participation ?

karamesser
Sep '19

No prizes, just for the aspect of collaboration and challenging oneself sometimes, as well as promotion and the like. I know that can be something that is less enticing, and if I could offer prizes worth anything I would (it's not like anybody would compete if the grand prize was a drawing by me).

But like I mentioned in the original post, I'm also okay with people just doing writing for it. I'd of course prefer it to be comics, but that doesn't have to be the case (neither do comics have to be in color--these both are other ways differentiated from the Deviant Universe, who only accepts full-color comic pages).

Kryanari
Sep '19

This sounds interesting, and I love the idea of cross-promoting and collaboration. I'd be on the comics drawing side of things. It sounds like you're talking about connecting DeviantArt with Tapas, right? I think that's really cool.

I'm not sure how I could help out, but I'd be willing to give it a shot. I'm very new to deviantart and all of this digital art creation but I'd like to be a part of it.

So here's my deviant art. Feel free to contact me on there:

OttoGruenwald
Sep '19

Sure. I'm all for crossovers. I have a superhero webcomic of my own populated by reimagined public domain characters.

AmazementComicsThe Best Fruit Smoothies
Sep '19

A superhero universe? Sounds like a plan to me. I have superheroes in MY shared universe of comics, but i'm open to the idea of a multiverse. The superheroes in my universe are not the main face of my comics, so instead, i'll join your project with the the face of Amazement Comics, The Action Fruit Society.

CodeMonkeyArts
Sep '19

Oohhhhh A Superhero Universe you say?
What are Superheroes without....

SUPER VILLAINS?

I have a novel I'm writing and posting here that stares my Seven Sin theme super villain Mafia Family (The Dante Family)
So if you're okay with having a Rogues Gallery also collaborating, then I'm in

karamesser
Sep '19

Ideally, I'd be getting contributors from all over the web, not just deviantART and Tapas (going with comics on ComicFury, Comic Genesis, The Duck, Smack Jeeves, personally hosted sites, and so forth), but it's great to get a little bit of a foothold to start.

As it is, I feel we would need a better place to meet than just this thread. Do people feel a Discord would be good? I do have a group on deviantART (with some entries from when I'd tried it before, just with my own attempts to contact people on deviantART and only there) here1. However, I also have a placeholder site of sorts on ComicFury where I would prefer things be considered the centralized hub (no link because it's not set to public at the moment). Ultimately, I'm not necessarily happy with the old logo (it's a little amateurish and not really unique, I would think) and character bio template (those are basically stealing the Deviant Universe template and adding more to it), so I may be trying to do some redesigns, but I can always hope others can offer their own suggestions.

As far as it goes with the character bio template, I feel that it's not as rigidly needed to be adhered to at the moment. If I can get the website up and everything, it would probably be more of having pertinent information given and a proper image of the character, which can be posted on the site. Having character bios can be quite important, of course, for situations like any crossover stories or challenges where one draws others' characters. And even though I have character bios up there, I need to update some of the information for a little (and not even all of my superhero team is up on there).

But for everyone to know what my contributions will be involving, character-wise and what my art looks like, I will say that my primary comic is Almighty Protectors1 (Tapas link), but I'd be at least leaving open the idea of the involvement of other characters in my superhero universe (who probably won't be utilized, as they're not my primaries and I understand people would rather focus on active characters). I do have an "open characters" category, where it's really just some public domain and open source characters I had put up for those people who wanted to be involved but didn't have any characters they could think to make (or if people just wanted to use them--but they're public domain, so you don't need to really be told it's okay to use them)--I'd posted some trans characters in that regard (because I gravitate towards being interested in trans characters), but really overall attached to my superhero universe (as of the upcoming-eventually issue 13 of Almighty Protectors) will be a universe where all public domain and open source characters exist, essentially un-altered from their original sources (as opposed to things like OttoGruenwald's stuff where he's made characters in the public domain his own--I already am subscribed to his Stardust comic and it's a fun read), if people are interested in that.

But my idea is that the first story challenge (probably over a summer--please note when I refer to seasons that I'm referring to the Northern Hemisphere seasons) would introduce a reason why characters can cross over despite being from different universes, as the conclusion of that story would end with universes coming in and out of alignment with each other, so anything taking place within a story challenge or other crossover involving the group could be a time when the universes are in alignment with each other so characters can intermingle freely, while any story outside of those confines can be where the universe for that story has gone out of alignment with everybody else's and therefore none of the characters can interact with the others (essentially, to use superheroes who definitely won't be involved in the group as an example, a way to say why Superman doesn't come to Gotham City despite assuredly being able to team up with Batman regularly).

Maybe that explanation's a little convoluted, but it's what I have going so far. But I'd hope other people might want to get involved in a bigger capacity as well, to come up with challenges so it's not just me doing it. Ultimately, while I'm bringing people together, I don't want it to be something where I'm seen as some sort of authority figure in anything.

But I will say, beyond my capabilities as a writer and artist (the value of which are debatable, I can understand), I can also act as a proofreader for anyone who feels they need one. I wouldn't want to be an "editor" in the comic industry sense (unless for some reason people would want to use any of my characters as their primary characters and came to an agreement with me, but nobody will do this when they have other options available), as people individually would be better able to say what works or doesn't given their characters, but rather just somebody who can be there if people are unsure about their writing being grammatically correct and the like.

I need to learn to type fewer words when I post, it would seem.