What is the opening scene in your comic?

[jettemse]

I think the hardest part in the block for me is knowing how to OPEN my webcomic. Years ago hitting the alarm clock, and starting the day was a cliche way of opening out a webcomic. But I don't want to do that. How did you open your series? Action event with your main character? Dialogue? Prologue? Did you tell the scene in a series of historical panels?

I need some inspiration, and I think that's the hardest thing when starting the writing process. What scene did you open with?

[joannekwan]

I think it all depends on what tone you want to set at the beginning of your story.

Ahaha, for Demon House, it's pretty close to waking up to an alarm clock. Even though he's not the main character, I needed a segue to introduce the protagonist and establish how she ends up where she is.

For my other series, Heavy Horns, I started with a close up shot of the main character and an interesting bit of banter. Since this series is about him and his relationship with the other guy, I wanted to show their personalities right away.

For Erie Waters, it was much more mundane. This is because the story seems normal at the beginning, but it slowly gets more complex as you meet new characters and learn more about them.

[shazzbaa]

I opened with one of the main characters explaining that he's very clever to have put all these dangerous magical symbols all over his body, and his best friend telling him that this sounds like a terrible idea.

Once she starts pushing him for what exactly the symbols DO, he finds an excuse to run off and get into trouble rather than answer her question, and our story begins!!

The toughest thing for me was that the two main characters are childhood friends -- she knows he's magical, and he knows she's deaf, and they have no reason to explain their world to each other -- so I needed to start with something that would introduce some of the concepts they take for granted more naturally. Those runes are also one of the first big problems to come up in the story, so explaining them is as close to the initial conflict as I could really start! Since this means I opened on exposition, I tried to make up for it by using that interaction to show as much character as I could. : )

[Ringarune]

whatever you do, the opening has to grab the reader's attention whether it be starting with an action sequence or just having a line that grabs someone's interest. Here;s what I did for my 5 page intro:

[69Michi]

Believe it or not I still very much like your ordinary cliché opening with main character slamming down on alarm clock LMFAO there is a reason why it was popular. It just fits very well in most situation.

My comic centers around the idea of time travel.

The main character died, woke up and found himself alive, but something wasn't right. The time displayed on his cellphone was wrong, or more precisely, 6 years behind the year he remembered he was in.

And what more, someone he thought had died, now appeared well and alive right before his eyes.

The main problem I encountered during this intro was probably the main character's mindset... and how I should have him come to term with the fact that he in fact traveled back in time and everything that had happened including his death wasn't just his hallucination/dream... T_T

[Aspie_Gamer]

In my shoujo influenced slice of life comic, Life of an Aspie, the series kicks off with the popular dark fantasy Bioware RPG Dragon Age: Origins given that the main lead has Asperger's Syndrome (which is pretty similar to having autism) and its through the game that we are introduced to said lead, Susan Graham.

[Kyuu]

In my webcomic Hello Void, I tried to mimic Asano Inio by opening with detailed large panel. Then slowly introducing the setting and the characters.

But.... I thought of the current series as more of a rough draft, so the quality wasn't as great as I wanted. I prob will redo the whole series with more thoughts/effort into it

[Greg_Dickson]

For the opening of my comic, Don't Be A Hero, I actually shot ahead to the future before the final confrontation. I find it gives a sense of scale for what's about to happen, while also giving many questions for the viewer to ponder about how things got to this point. Also, some tidbits of information may make things seem painfully obvious how things will play out, but I really do have some curveballs in mind. I also made the opening only 3 pages, to get to the point as soon as possible to grab peoples attention:



Actually, that's my whole comic so far, as I've only started a few weeks ago. I do really feel that it gets the ball rolling, and gives the reader something to look forward to, to see how things got to that point, as well as what will happen afterwards. The pictures are pretty small, so here's a link to my comic in case you can't read it:
https://tapastic.com/series/Dont-Be-A-Hero

[phen]

Hitting the alarm clock and starting the day... cliche but there's a variety of angles you can use to spice it up! I've always found it more interesting when a work uses a common trope to get you hooked by altering it slightly~

As for me, There's No Such Thing as Jason -- I.T. opens with =ba-baaam~!= an error prompt and the anxious main character agonising over it. It was really fun coming up with the panels and focusing on his reaction to the problem as it popped up right away.

My other comic, Candour is Going Mad, opens with a prologue (about 12 pages long), establishing the mood and setting by following a little owl creature to our main character, Brian.

[Jewe11s]

I agree with Joanne that it all depends on the tone of your story...

I also believe in the old adage that a great way to start a story is in the middle. That doesn't necessarily mean you start Harry Potter in the middle of the Tri-Wizard Tournament as he's choking down some gillyweed and wondering if Neville's just poisoned him. But it does mean skipping over baby Harry getting his scar and years and years of maltreatment via the Dursleys.

So for me, although I can't tell you what I 'skipped over' just yet, I started with a chase. My first two pages are of twin elves running through the forest, looking over their shoulders, and laughing.

[heterodont]

Much like what everyone else said, there isn't anything bad with starting off with a 'cliche' opening! If it fits with the mood you're trying to go with your story, then who cares if it's cliched? IMO its better than trying to force an awkward opening only because it's not as cliched as other openings.

I'm going to disregard my current comic and opt for my in progress one. I just started it by establishing the setting and one of the MC's personalities. The latter of which isn't as expressed in the first two pages but definitely within the first 5. Just for the sake of keeping my buffer buffer, I'm posting the first two pages as I've already uploaded them elsewhere.

Also bc my first comic is rly. laden with closeups and I wanted to practice more with establishing a setting so the opening was more for me.....

[Mane]

Custode starts with a charcter leaving and uh, backgrounds ?

Generally, I always try to avoid exposition in the form of an info dump , especially in the beginning.

[BlackMantaStudios]

For Discount Magical Agency, I thought that showing the lead magical girl fighting (in the broadest sense of the word) a monster right off the bat would save me the trouble of boring exposition. I wanted to establish her character as well as give a rough overview of the world they're moving in without all the cringey explanation bits.

[jettemse]

These are all really great. I'm feeling my inspiration growing. :o Gimme moar to look at!

[agentfink]

I started The Pale pretty much how I start my day... with a cuppa coffee.
Only... the character we meet is not having any luck with the new coffee machine.

The tone in the beginning is a slow town type of feel... so going through this little moment with some of the characters, I felt, were important.

[AnnaLandin]

Grassblades opens with one main character, Masahiro, walking on a forest path. He spots a broken branch with a piece of cloth on it by the side of the path, and goes to investigate. Deeper into the woods, he finds a clearing full of recently dead people - clearly travellers attacked by bandits. As he stands in the clearing, surrounded by blood - the travellers gave as good as they got, and there are dead bandits on the ground as well - he is attacked from behind by one surviving bandit.

He spins around and lashes out with his sword, managing to kill the bandit. As he stands over the newly minted dead body, unsure of what to do, a little girl emerges from the underbrush; she's covered in blood and she doesn't speak, but examines his bloody sword, and then latches onto his leg in the fiercest hug imaginable.

... and that's the story of how Masahiro gets saddled with a selectively mute orphan girl who won't stop following him around.

It establishes a.) the relationship between the two main characters, b.) their personalities (Masahiro is a big grump given to bursts of violence, the little girl he names Akane is quiet and kind of withdrawn, but trusts Masahiro with her life), c.) level of violence in the story, and within the first 16 pages of the story, also d.) a big clue to the reason why Masahiro is wandering around the world with his sword.

[mariusthered]

I decided that due to the amount of information i had to get across a history lesson was needed on the first page of Talesfromswipecity

introduced by the cast...

[Robosaur]

The intro for Slide to Unlock Isn't as action packed but i suppose i opted for suspense ahaha Cx Sorry the file comes out a lot smaller on here. Check it out if you want!~

[sorrelma]

i'm a disaster! both of my opening scenes are the most cliche in the book i.e. character waking up to unfamiliar place. i'm such an innovative writer lol

[Robosaur]

I think those openings are just timeless though :0 or maybe its just me. Straight to the plot openings a pretty cool ahaha