What do you think about doing a world guide chapter or any "explanation" material in comics

[Coati]

I'm a hot mess with a huge universe as the background of my story and one of the things that made me delay the whole project was a huge difficulty to start the story itself. I have the whole thing ready, but the introduction part was HARD.

At first, I wanted to just drop a quick guide explaining realms, history, and stuff, but then it felt wrong. But (again) now I feel like I should give that introduction instead of making a prologue with the characters discussing the things I wanted to put in the introduction guide.

I don't know if I made sense, but this is the discussion. It's ok to make an episode/chapter with a direct introduction to the universe? Or do we need to figure out a way to blend it with the story?

[LunarScyphozoa]

You could do that as long as it’s not just exposition

[ninjashira]

I enjoy them when it's part of a story that is already established that I already enjoy. If it's too early into a series, it just feels like an infodump that the author couldn't figure out how to tell in their story. But if it's a bonus chapter farther into a story I'm already emotionally invested in, then it's exciting because I want to know more about the world at that point.

[mannygart]

I say do whatever makes you most comfortable/eases your stress the most and don't worry so much about what "needs" to be done - especially if you are going to be posting your work for free! I personally know how it feels to worry yourself sick over trying to go about webcomics the "right" way, and at the end of the day, you'll find there actually isn't one! I've seen different artists do different things when it comes to worldbuilding info. Some examples that come to mind:
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Fantakoi starts off their series "Ghost Lights" with the original short story/oneshot they made that inspired them to eventually make the series. If I remember correctly, they posted the oneshot comic as the first episode along with a brief author's note, and it served both as an awesome hook and a useful source of information for the world that the series takes place in:

Ghost Lights

Cloverloy started their series "Black Horda" with an episode called "Our World" before their first story episode that essentially functions as a quick guide like you were mentioning. They also have a side series called "Black Horda [Extras]" with more in-depth information on the world and its various mechanics:

Black Horda

Black Horda [Extras]

I think "Rise From Ashes" is a good example of the author imparting expository information in a natural way by creating an exigence for telling the story in the first place (i.e. a character telling the story to another character):

Rise from Ashes

[hjpetersonauthor]

I had a similar conundrum with my comic, "Project: Achilles". Mine's a historical comic, and I wanted to give some explanations about things that characters mention that my readers might not necessarily know about. My solution was to put an asterisk next to key words (specific slang terms, names of battles, etc.) and then put footnotes at the bottom of pages in the gutter. That way, my readers can look at the bottom of the page if they want more information, or they can easily skip over it if they aren't interested. It's worked well for me: maybe there's a similar solution for you?

Here's a page from my prologue issue with an example:

[Kaydreamer]

I'm eventually going to make a website for Blue Star Rebellion/Dragonfeathers, which will contain supplementary codexes and such, because there's no way I can pack all the lore into a comic. That's one of the sacrifices I made when I decided I wanted these stories to be comics instead of novels.

The main Dragonfeathers story will have more lore baked in, but Blue Star Rebellion is a side story. I don't have room for heaps of world-building exposition when the characters themselves already know most of it, and so can't learn about it with the reader.

[xstarx07]

I think that it depends on what info you give out for the reader to work with. In my project‘s current chapter, I use 2 episodes to throw out said information because it pretty much fits in my eyes, being that the characters are stuck in another world and how long it would take to leave and also touch a little upon the term „Sector“

Spoiler

the term is used by the teams to describe all the worlds they have territory in, so the team Sky Diver‘s base is in Sector „0“, the world the group came from is Sector „1“, etc…

which I will develop further a few more chapters in when in matters more.

In the end, I think it‘s pretty much fine if it‘s enough for the moment - like I said, enough for the reader to immerse themselves - but also not too much, if the world you build is a really complex one.