Jaco’s Random Writings

The Obstacle:

For years now, I’ve been toying with the idea of doing a web comic. Now, those of us who read web comics know that the internets are littered with the corpses* of web comics that no longer update due to:

• The author not caring anymore
• The author doesn’t have time to keep it running
• The author never intended for it to run on and has run out of plot ideas
• Honestly, no-one reads it

I don’t want to fall under those categories. The rule for web comics is the same as anything else on the internet: The more things get placed out there, the higher the likelihood that something good will pop up. Basic law of probability. However, this means that even if a person puts out an excellent web comic, unless they partake in some aggressive marketing, the reader base will remain fairly small. Now, there’s a few ways to avoid this fate. One can either have a web comic that has run for a long time (see Sluggy Freelance, Real Life, PvP, Goats, etc…), or put out lots and lots of money for ads**.

So there is a lot of pressure on an up and coming web comic to perform just to pull a small reader-base and stand out from all the sludge that’s out on the wide-open expanses of the internets. And I’m not even talking about a web comic that has the aim of making money. Majority of web comics are a labor of love (or hate, depending on how long the guy’s been at it) and are usually done at the expense of the author.

My Ideas:

Now, I have a few ideas for a comic. Some of them I have been mulling over for years, others I came up with literally within a 3 month time span. So here’s the ideas I have so far:

RMAD (Random Metal Arm Dude)

This has been on the back-burner for almost 5 years now. It started in Senior year when I came up with a drawing of a guy with mechanical arms after reading S.Cry.Ed (don’t bother looking it up. It sucked). I then drew 4 versions of him throughout that year. Since then he’s kind of drifted to the back burner, but I’ve always wanted to do a comic for him, since I feel that I can have a lot of fun with the character. I got him an origin story and everything.

Obviously, the character has evolved since I first dreamed him up. He went from a guy with just metal arms to a full-body cyborg with a human brain augmented by cybernetic components. Throughout the story, I thought of him going through 4 stages of evolution. He would start off as a secret government project to create the perfect assassin, to being known as the first of his kind: a fully cybernetic being with a human brain.

Outland Wanderers

Two guys are traveling through the desert on a buggy, stopping at various outposts and towns. However, these two are not normal. The shorter one is a young fellow, but it’s difficult to judge his age. He could be anywhere between 15 to 25. However, a lifetime of being much shorter than everyone has left him with a Napoleonic Complex and an obnoxious attitude. He has the ability to fire bolts of energy from his left arm. Noted observation: For split second before he fires a bolt from his fist, there appears to be a large gun in place of his arm. After the bolt clears, there’s nothing but his arm and whiff of smoke rising from his fist. His partner in crime is somewhat older than him and seems to be a monk of some kind. He is reserved and quiet, keeping to himself in conversation and rarely speaking more than a few words. He always carries a calm demeanor and has been described as having the patience of a mountain. He comes from an order of monks (or warriors, not sure which) who, through intense training and meditation, have attained abilities that appear to transcend the limits of the human body. His fists become harder than steel and his reflexes are faster than the crack of a whip.

These two characters I came up with about 6 months ago. I think putting them in a sort of Wild West type scenario might allow some freedom as far as what I can do with them. The world they live in isn’t necessarily post-Apocalyptic nor dystopian. Rather, they are on the lawless fringe of a society that has become technologically advanced. I haven’t worked that out too much.***

Flapper Punk

This was an idea Brandon and I came up with for a comic. The idea is to do a comic very much in the same vein as the old Tintin comics of yore; a good pulp adventure with some noir and detective elements tossed in depending on the story arc. The idea is that the main character seldom intends to go on an adventure finds himself inadvertently pulled into one on almost a regular basis. He’s a guy means well and tries to live out his life, but due to his profession (we’re not sure what that would be yet), he finds himself in these situations that are beyond his control.

We were thinking of initially putting this in a Steampunk world, but decided against it. My opinion was that Steampunk is already starting to play itself out a little. Instead, I wanted to set it in a world where the idea of steampunk remained but it having moved beyond the Victorian Age and more into the period in between the World Wars: 1920s into the mid 1930s (without the whole Depression mess). The environments will be very Art Deco and I’m envisioning the world to be very much as if taken from the original Metropolis. Each story arc begins with the character retelling it after the fact, reflecting back on his experience. The plan is for Brandon to be the writer and for me to be the art monkey (each weighing in on the other, of course).

Day to Day

This idea is more of a modern day comic focusing around 4 friends. The idea started almost a year ago when Brandon asked me to draw a D&D comic he had written a script for. It was 3 friends sitting around a table playing D&D. I then had the idea of taking it further and basing the friends more off of Brandon, Ian, and I (taking our personalities and exaggerating them significantly). They wouldn’t look a thing like us. That kind of got abandoned until more recently, when I noted on how many web comics have started with breaking the “4th Wall”.

So I started plotting on how I would start a comic by poking fun at the very idea of the “4th Wall“. It would start off with one of the main characters (Steve for the sake of differentiation) introducing the audience to the comic. This would of course get interrupted by one of the other main characters (Greg for the Hell of it) interrupting Steve and asking who the Hell he is talking to. Steve points towards the audience and says he’s breaking the “4th Wall” to introduce the comic. The next shot is of the wall Steve is pointing at; it’s blank. Greg says points out that there’s no-one there and that it’s just a blank wall. Steve then says that the audience is behind the wall. Greg looks into the next room and points out that there’s no-one behind the wall. Steve then insists that the “audience” is invisible.

The next main character enters the room (Tom?) and asks what all Greg and Steve are bickering about. Greg says that Steve is delusional and thinks that they are all in a comic being spied on by an invisible audience. Tom then tells Greg that the audience is real, just like the Gopher People in the backyard. Steve points at Tom yelling “I knew it!” and Tom urges him to go prepare the fortifications in case the Gopher People decide to invade. Steve runs off and Greg asks Tom why he antagonizes Steve so much, to which Tom responds that it’s easy and damn amusing.

Conclusion

So, those are the ideas that I have. I’m not sure which to move forward with, since they all seem like they would be fun as all Hell to work on. I’m thinking RMAD, as I’ve been pondering over that one the longest and maybe doing Day to Day as a side thing that I doodle in my lunch break or something. Flapper Punk I also really want to work on, as that just seems like a damn interesting project all together. Decisions, decisions! I honestly don’t know which to start… Should just toss a coin.

* Fortunately, web comics that have been left to die on the internets don’t always fester for too long. Web server hosting doesn’t last forever, so when a comic is abandoned, its corpse will be completely decomposed when the hosting runs out. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said of comics hosted on free comic sites (Comic Genesis to name a few…). That’s pretty much the equivalent of a corpse drowned in formaldehyde; it’s going to be around for a while…
** There is a third option: Word of Mouth. By this method, your comic is so good that those few who start reading it quickly develop into a deeply devoted community who are quick to recommend this to their friends. Viral Marketing can also feature into this. This way, your fans are marketing this for you. However, this requires a lot of dedication to the comic (regular updates, keeping the plot and characters involving, etc…) and not pissing off your fan-base. Remember, fans are fickle little bastards with feelings that are easily hurt. This is a pretty hardcore way to go as far as building up a reader-base.
*** I could tie one of the story arcs of this one in with RMAD. The two could stumble across a village that has a legend of a quicksilver walker, a being made entirely of quicksilver. The legend would be based off of actual reported sightings by various members of village. The character who would divulge the legend to the two travelers would a homeless man sitting in the center of the village. This arc would explain what had happened to the original cyborg after the resolution of the RMAD comic. This would place the Outland Wanderers comic well into the future of the RMAD comic’s world.