What inspired the plot of your comic? (If you have a gag comic, what inspires your gags?)

[niinasalmelin]

For me and my comic Numb, old horror movies were great inspiration. Like Carrie (-76), Dario Argento's stuff, Halloween and Texas Chainsaw Massacre. There was great work with slow buildup in those ones and the surreal mood they all have going on. Since Numb is a mystery/horror/drama I wanted to reach that momentum in it as well.

As for the story, it's something that came from a very personal place and has been forming in my head for years. Couple months ago I had very first talk about for real with my sister and it was great. Before that I've kept it all to myself so I guess I can say that outside other media I consume and the experiences I have in life my infulence list doesn't go that far. It's Character driven so I take the most care to make them feel real and layered folks.

[divyadeep2007]

I mock fantasy genre because i love it so much xD. So my inspiration is basically all fantasy stories.

[Zanreo]

For Consolers, my game company gag comic... basically all the ridiculous stuff game companies get up to. There's a lot of stuff to draw inspiration from there...

[isaacfriedman]

That horrific thing that happened last night. That's what inspired my comic

[briadawson2014]

Man my series Federation Fighters is honestly just an episodic, action, slice of life series that does develop a plot later on. It's mostly influenced by the Western episodic format and the look and plot of a shonen anime.Originally, it was a raunchy, teen action series that developed into a much more rounded series with depth and social issues and representation with the action element. It came about years later when I saw how limited my characters were because I was sticking to how media and society portrayed certain characters.I wanted to be one of those artists that breaks the barrier to more diverse characters and stuff.

[CHMsketches]

My comic is about bullying. I guess that my inspiration came because I feel this topic and I want that people get knowledge about that, how they can overpass this and deal with it. The comic is a slice of life, in a positive way :)))

[Wishjacked]

I mean, I hate to say it, but probably Twilight?? I was irritated by a person I knew who was obsessed with vampires so I wrote a story about a girl who killed vampires. Like… that…. that was the only thought behind the original plot….

[kencoon7]

I started with gag comics about an old man and his thoughts. (Me. I am 76.)
Now I am trying to get good enough to make a book from Roger Wiley on Amazon. I wrote it.
Ken

[raya]

Our series Hiraya is a gag comic based on random things/events we experience in college. we originally thought that we'll just put random events but we're thinking we might put a bit of a plot. we're still experimenting ahaha

[timinabox24]

all of my comics are heavily based on my real life events

[SynCypher]

You'll probably think this is stupid but, it is literally the reason: As a kid I couldn't figure out what the heck 'The Goon' was supposed to be in the "Little Bunny Foo-Foo" nursery rhyme. I always imagined it as some loping half-rabbit dog monster with multicolored spots. The Awlers came about when I thought back to all of those nursery rhymes where, what I imagined was way off base from what was actually being said. So, hahah my comic is literally inspired by the fact that I couldn't brain as a kid.

[Down_the_Rabbithole]

Don't worry. I wondered the same thing as a kid.

I also wondered what all those monsters were on Loompa Land from Willy Wonka and the Chocholate Factory were.

[SynCypher]

I'm glad I'm not the only one. XD

Haha, yeah! I remember actually losing sleep over trying to figure out what a Vermicious knid was when I was nine. (I imagined it as some sort of bug-monster. Closest thing I can think of to what it resembled in my head then is a Whirlipede.)

[Down_the_Rabbithole]

I don't think I ever lost sleep, but I did wonder it.

I kind of got my answer from an old game from Wonka.com back in the day. They seemed to be these weird flying, green blobs with red eyes. I wasn't impressed by them.

[SynCypher]

I was a derpy kid like that. XD If I couldn't figure something out it just bothered me to no end. (For no reason, I might add)

Yeah they're like an SNES final fantasy blinking blob creature you kill off in the early levels. They certainly weren't frightening. (Which, being that the original Willy Wonka did kind of scare me when I was young, I figured they would be something a little more menacing)

[efdvorsky]

For Cosmic Fish it might not seem obvious at the time (since a lot of things are still being established) but three inspirations drive the plot when I decided to go with the story:

(1) Mental health, personal views/acceptance, and healing (how ghosts change throughout the story is the giveaway here, and it's based on a lot of personal experience/growth)

(2) Picking up and mixing older ideas I really wanted to make in comics from things I enjoyed in books, cartoons, and movies I grew up with. (The designs are based on dreams I've had or things I've drawn without a goal/pure boredom because I wanted designs that stood out or looked off on purpose.)

(3) Commentary on social and personality/identity erasure through powerful groups + some jabs at colonialism here and there (this one might sound too out there, but that one falls into the plot at least 3 more chapters in and anything so far are hints by looking at the backgrounds and the relationship between guardians and ghosts (especially later on)) However, it's not the main driving force which is why it gets third place.

[punkarsenic]

There was a War is inspired by reading up on Irish mythology, of course, being a myth retelling - and also by reading stories such as Goliath and the Dark Wife. I was intrigued by the concept of taking an old and well known story (or, in my case, just old) and flipping it on its head - I was tempted to instead use the story of Persephone and Hades, which is suitably similar, but I knew it'd be too similar to TDW and I'm enamoured by Irish folklore and culture.

In many ways, it's also influenced by my personal experiences - they always find some way to leak into my work and bite me in the bum. I come from a messily divorced family, and due to that have a very foggy memory of my childhood, leading to my past consisting of 3 holey and contradictory stories (from mum, dad, me). The frustration, confusion, and identity issues that causes are influential to the opposing stories presented in TWAW.

[joannekwan]

For Demon House, I had been seeing a bunch of stuff on tumblr with humans interacting with humans (mostly Daryl Toh's Tobias and Guy) and I thought, oh boy, wouldn't it be fun to do my own version? Except in my case, the human isn't looking to interact with them and she just got thrown into the mix. It's not like she wants them around, her life would be simpler without them. But she begrudgingly accepts their company.

For Heavy Horns, I wanted to create a BL that wasn't a BL. I'm sick and tired of the usual disparaging tropes or overly sugary fluff. I wanted to depict a more realistic relationship after I had read some articles about the less romanticized side of dating within the gay community. And ultimately the story is about two men learning to trust again, something important to any sort of romantic or sexual relationship regardless of gender.

[zilo]

The obvious influence for No-Good Heroes is Rick and Morty. Markus and I talked about how it would be cool to make an animation with the same dark sense of humor that the show has, but with super heroes. Somewhere along the way it became a comic instead - mostly due to the insane amount of time it would have taken to animate everything, but I digress. I think the plot is a result of Markus and I having a lot of weird skype calls discussing it - bouncing ideas off of each other until it became what it is. To this day I'm not sure I've ever laughed so hard and for so long as I did back then!

[StevenDacasin]

For Simon Nero It was mostly out of a sudden burst of inspiration after watching an episode of Naruto. I always found in most of history conflict was fought between ideals of freedom and control. So I went off that.