Why I’m glad I didn’t make my ‘magnum opus’ my first comic

Completely agree. Too many try to make the greatest story their first story. It doesn't work that way. First you don't know what what you don't know about making the comic. The problems that will arise and the like. Second most first tries are not that good. You get better by practice. Make a small comic with a beginning, middle, and end. Then finish it.

One little step, feedback, repeat. Doesn´t matter if you are a child prodigy or not

I don't know. I wrote the story that I thought would be my magnum opus when I was 13 and at the time, it really was. Looking back, I've let that story go and can see the numerous problems with it but that does not mean that I'm not glad that I wrote it at the time. Actually writing it and finishing it gave me such a confidence boost and taught me so much about writing that I'm glad I was not afraid to start on it. Now I can look back at it fondly, knowing that it's written down, out there in the world, cringy as hell but at least I did it.

I'm trying to say, don't let the fear of starting on your magnum opus consume you. Just do it. Your priorities will change, you will make a lot of mistakes and you may even find out that it will not be your magnum opus after all. But at least it will not remain an intangible, unreachable idea.

OM is the highest achievement as a creator and we can only say that in retroperspective when looking
at a creators work, not before starting something or during working on something

I have a couple MO, they're all novel though. None were ever a comic. My grammars sucks so I decided I'd rather write scripts for comics than writing novels.

I wanted my first comic to be long because it's what I want to do, it's a project, it's a concept and It's a love letter to the world before I dip.

I've only been doing comics for 9 months and I've learned a lot. Of course, the previous illustrations are jank but the story is still readable. It's something I want the readers to experience, the art improvement. I don't want people to just fall in love with the art, I want people to fall in love with the journey as much as I have fallen in love with the story.

Of course I'll also do something similar with my future stories, really long stories that follows an artist's journey. I love trying new things so I don't see myself making comics forever.

I just draw comics to build characters and the world around them. I never really had any "magnum opus plotlines" in my head but I've had ideas for short stories about characters n' stuff and even wrote a few scenes so far. I actually kinda wanna do a little switch-up where I've got a weekly gag comic as the main attraction, and do a longer form comic as a side thing, but I certainly need more practice with background work since the setting is supposed to be very active, like its own character. Except, more literal in that sense. My current comic is based on said universe, but I honestly made these characters out of thin air for a one-off gag and now I like them.

I think creators shouldn't be afraid to try something new, even if its recycled ideas from earlier works. Sometimes you can just randomly invent something way more interesting than what you've been entrenched in.

Ooh, I have a story about this too!
5 years ago, I had a comic idea that was VERY based off of another one.. that I refuse to name right now.
Over 5 years, I completely revised the story multiple times, and then wrote about 6 chapters about it. I started drawing chapter one, but realized that it can be a self contained story, so I turned it into a one shot.
This is the comic that I am about to release, and originally I was planning 48 chapters but.. for a first comic, I'm limiting myself. I also have another idea in the works at the moment.. not too sure about making it a one shot or a longer one yet. Anyways, that first comic was my "magnum opus" and now I'm leaving it unfinished in the dust for now.

I did the same thing. I have a big dream comic I wanted to make which is an epic fantasy. But decided to make simplier comics and one is a slice-of-life story inspired by my middle school life which is Chion and Kobi. This is the best story for my first comic to help me hone my craft and skills before doing bigger projects. Now that I'm almost done with the current comic, I wonder if I should do the epic fantasy comic next? My other projects are bigger than the dream comic I'm developing with one being sci-fi and I'm also taking my time on my dream comic.

I wouldn't call this story I'm planning my "magnum opus" since all of my babies are my babies (despite me being super excited to get it into production). I WILL say tho, it was clear that despite me having something and artists who hopped out telling me to update them on the project since they think I have something going, it wouldn't have gotten attention due to its genre (although I've made the thing appealing).

Glad that That Stick Figure Isekai is a weird backdoor pilot.

Yeah, that's something I've been struggling with a lot with recently myself. I've had quite a few projects I've been working on since I was 14 that I considered my "Magnum Opus" work. One in particular that I've had is the oft-mentioned Dragoons project and the general "Empyreverse" setting it's been intended as a starting point to.

I know I started doing things like EGT and Alpha Alpaca and other projects to "practice" writing and art to "get ready" for the Dragoons and the Empyreverse stories like Tales of Phaeton and beyond, but I still for some reason don't feel like I'm "ready" to match the image those works (or any of my ideas for a larger scale project) have in my head, yet I also feel I need to do the Dragoons or ToP soon due to how long I worked on the Dragoons and how much I promised people I was gonna publish both projects soon.

It's honestly not a healthy mindset at all to have and I've been trying to get through with it so I can work on stuff I'm passionate about not because I think it'll make people like me or it'll make me successful and detach all the baggage I've built up around my work and especially the Dragoons and the Empyreverse on how it has to be I feel. Because I do genuinely love my stuff and do hope to do soemthing with them sooner or later in my life. Just that general "It's fine if it's not your magnum opus" thing for whatever project I tackle next.

I started uploading what i considered my magnum opus at the time, but never discarded the possibility of a new project becoming the magnum opus instead.

Personally i just work in projects that i believe that have potential and/or projects that entertain me.

while this makes sense I've always been under the impression that you dont get to decide what your magnum opus is, the audience does.

you could make your big epic fantasy story after your short story that you make specifically to hone your skills, and the short story might be the only one to get popular.

I have to agree with @GumshoeComix. You don’t get to choose what your magnum opus is, your audience does. The first story I ever published was The Action Fruit Society. It was a concept that I thought up on the fly at 13 years old. I didn’t waste time putting paper to pencil and began to create a series out of it that I would show to friends. Then, several years later, I found this website and published 4 years of stories on it. From beginning to the end.

My main point is, I thought so fondly of my comics, mainly because the people in my community liked it. The older I’ve gotten though, the more I’ve come to realize that your first project doesn’t guarantee you views, a fan base, or clout. What I’m focused on now is expanding the lore of this fictional universe I’ve constructed consisting of many mythologies and characters I’ve worked on since middle school in the hopes that one of these stories will catch on with my audience. Only then will I consider that my magnum opus.

I don't know if I'll ever reach a magnum opus. I do intend to finish everything I start, but with every project I get better. So even if one of my works is my "magnum opus", who is to say a later one won't surpass it?

Now I don't disagree with the OP at all, because this is one of those questions where there is not right or wrong answer since it depends on the person so much. But for me I'm glad I made my "magnum Opus" my first comic because it taught me that it wasn't my magnum Opus. But, getting it onto paper, and getting it drawn meant that I could move on to something else that I can do a lot better. I think a lot of the hangup happens when you think your first childhood story is your only story--which isn't true, we're all creatives here made out of infinite stories. So I think it's best to just draw what you really want to draw at the time, before you outgrow it, so you can at least enjoy it for a little while before it's time to move on.

and like maybe one day I'll go back and perfect my first comic idea of magic cats or whatever, but trust me when I say it was so complicated that comics was actually a pretty bad art form for it. Which I know now, but wasn't really aware of until I simply made the damn thing.

Perhaps better advice than "Don't make your Magnum Opus first" is "Don't expect whatever you make first to be your magnum opus, and don't feel disheartened when it inevitably isn't." But also "Don't be afraid to revisit it later."

Because there's really nothing harmful in being passionate about a big idea when you're a newbie, and sometimes biting off more than you can chew is the best way to learn rather than playing things really safe and avoiding challenge.

I feel like the problem occurs when somebody gets really mired in their first creation, which is obviously going to be the one with all your beginner mistakes, and can't get away from it. It's that sunk cost fallacy of "no, THIS ONE has to succeed, THIS is my greatest comic!" Because you don't always get to decide which of your creations is the one that takes off; I know so many people who have two comics, one of them a soulful personal work with deep themes and fascinating experimental art and nuanced characters, and then one of them that's way more popular that's a fluffy romance or slice of life with silly meme jokes or lots of sex.

I don't think of Errant as my "Magnum Opus". It'd be cool if some day people describe it that way, but the way I describe Errant is "The most me comic I'll ever make". It's the comic I feel like "if I didn't at least try to make this, I'd go to my deathbed with regrets." more than "I think this will be the most popular thing I ever make for sure." It's a comic I've been trying to make since I was a teenager that just won't stay in the box. On some level, I've always known this is a great comic, or at least a great set of characters, and the weak link has always been me, so the reason I've revisited it three times over the course of 20 years is because I want to make this idea... but good.

I don't regret my failed attempts at making Fan Dan Go/ Errant, but I think it would have been bad if I'd just kept going with any of those past versions expecting them to become popular based on my passion alone and without all the work I put in outside of them on short comics, other illustration, games work and study. But I think I'd regret never having made them.

Ultimately a big reason Errant happened is because a pro comics friend randomly drew Rekki one day on social media (hilariously unaware it was the day before my birthday. It was apparently just on a random whim):

John Aggs Nov 2018 FDG.jpg852x1135 104 KB

If you need to put your magnum opus in the box for a while, and come back years later, you can do that. Sometimes after a few years or making other comics, you'll think "wow, no, that was an awful comic, I'm never rebooting that" (I feel this way about.... all the attempts at an RPG gag comic I ever made) but sometimes you'll realise maybe teenage you was onto something and it just needs refining and approaching with your more mature art and story skills.

I'm glad my very first comic attempt was my 'magnum opus'. I'm also glad I dropped it after like 4 pages and moved onto something else, for all the reasons you mentioned, but I'm glad I made that initial attempt instead of forcing myself to work on a shorter comic because everyone says you should The difficulties of making a long comic was something I could only really internalize from experience tbh XD

But sometimes I see people working on their first comic for years, sticking with it while having very little improvement both art-wise and story-wise (wrt my judgment, at least), and idk, I feel really mean saying this, but I really wonder if they're going to get anywhere by continuing down that path? I definitely don't think their story is doomed to fail, but I can't help but think that incarnation of their story is doomed to fail, and they should take a step back, work on honing their skills instead of consistent output, and come back to it when they can see why their previous attempt needs work.

This is totally just me projecting my past self onto them btw; in a 'what if' scenario where instead of giving up on my 'opus' after a few pages, I continued with it even though I had no idea what I'm doing, and then found it harder and harder to quit because I've already put so much work into it. I thank the flying spaghetti monster every day that I didn't end up going down that path. (I'm probably just being dramatic; if this is you, you'll probably be fine, don't listen to my ramblings lmao :P)

On a side note, my 'opus' Carefree1 has since evolved a lot and is currently The First Principles series1. It's almost unidentifiable, with basically completely different characters and lore, with the only common thread being 'epic fantasy with a well-intentioned extremist antagonist'.

I'm glad I didn't commit to Carefree so that it could evolve into something I'm much happier with, and heck, it might evolve some more before I finally start the damned thing

Anyone else who's glad to have delayed their opus in no small part because of how much it evolved?

A lot of people have said to start with something smaller for your first comic but I completely ignored that because frankly, I don't care about any of my other potential stories as much as my one series (my "opus magnum" in this case, I suppose). They'd all be set in the same universe anyway.

Does this mean there's mistakes in it and things could be better? Yeah, probably, but it's the story I want to be telling, no matter how long it takes. I'm happier doing this than I would have been telling myself "you're not good enough to make this yet, shelve it". That's just the path I've chosen for myself. There's no right way to do things.

Ok ME ME ME ME ME

I was so emotionally attached to multiple stories, but the main one, Secrets, god bless the 150k word mark, but it was a MESS. Can't even say it was good.

Comic wise, I had another idea with The Forgotten Queen and it was .... okay. But with thief of bones, goodness it just feels like I can do SO much better and it is much better constructed and not thrown together all a sudden.