Am I ready for a webcomic? No. Am I going to let a minor detail like that get in my way? Probably. But it’s time for me to do things that I’m not ready to do. Right now, I have 3 ideas for a webcomic. This would normally be the part where I would ask my audience via a poll which comic I would like to work on first, but I kinda put the cart before the horse here. That’s okay, I can manage to think for myself here, probably. The trick here is that making a webcomic is a massive undertaking, I’m acknowledging that right away, so I have to actually choose where to start. Now, without further ado, here are the contenders!
First, we have the untitled comic I have called the LFG project. What does LFG mean? Good question; it’s time to get weird and personal. Way back in the day, I was part of a small YouTube channel that my brother made using local talent and, as far as I know, a shoestring budget. He had to restart the channel’s momentum a few times before he moved 2,000 miles away and become an adult. Not important. Anyway, one of the mission statements that his comedy channel had was, “No Fucks Given.” No scripts, no schedules, no plans. This went about as well as you can imagine. Now, I’ve been a writer for a really long time, almost three decades now, so naturally he asked me to write some scripts for him. I agreed, so I decided to grab an old college notebook and I wrote LFG on it with sharpie, for “Last Fuck Given.” I wrote a really detailed script for more than a few concepts, one of which involving a character duo named Ralph and Susie Fink. The premise was that Ralph was a struggling artist who was forced to take in his younger sister while trying to make money. Originally, Susie was a twenty-something drug addict ruining his life, but my brother did not want to use these characters I made, so I decided to change a few things about them. I threw the characters into my trusty character development machine that the layman would call “The Sims 3” and I wrote an entire outline for three “seasons” of Ralph and Susie going through shenanigans. I changed Susie into a child character and made Ralph more focused on his struggles with getting his artwork in front of an audience (I wonder where I got that from) and, since Ralph is an artist, I wanted to make it into a webcomic.
Concept art for Ralph
I made some very early concept art for these two, which I either kept and put up here or I lost it and will have to start from scratch. Obviously, I will have to call it something different from Last Fuck Given when I name the thing, but this is my most detailed webcomic idea.
Next up, I have a webcomic that is more of a fanfiction web comic than anything. So I have a great fondness for the character Octavia from Helluva Boss; so much so that I almost made one of my Vtuber model designs look almost exactly like her. What really stopped me was, to be honest, the limitations of VRoid. What happened with this webcomic was I wanted to pair her up with someone that was like a cool older sister type who would cause her all sorts of trouble. So naturally, I picked the most insane person that nobody would ever pick; DC Comic’s Blackfire. All I really have is the opening scene of this admittedly insane crackship of a fan comic; Octavia is forced to go to a stuffy horrible Goetia party by her horrible mother and, during the party, a new Sinner arrives in her bedroom. Octavia has to hide Blackfire from the other Goetias while Blackfire, newly arrived in Hell, is keen on wrecking the place and using her Tamaranean powers to try and take the throne from Satan. Before you ask, yes I am aware that Blackfire is in her 20s and that Octavia is asexual; it’s not that kind of story. Before I can do this, I would need to do concept art for Sinner Blackfire and also Octavia in my art style, and also work on my backgrounds because Vivziepop made the backgrounds of Helluva Boss so intricate (much to my immense displeasure). Mostly the character concept art.
And finally, the last idea I have for a webcomic is the most relevant to my career as a Vtuber. It’s a webcomic about my Vtuber forms living together in the same location. Alright, so, the lore of my Vtuber, Chareon, is that she is an illusion fox Vtuber with the ability to create illusions, which includes other forms of herself. She has, as of writing this, 13 different forms. Not including different outfits, which I do have a few. The core main cast is the Fox, Bee, Bunny, and Undead forms. The fox is the main character and also the silliest one. The bee form is the overworked artist, the bunny is the writer, and the undead form is the video editor. Most of the comic interactions are between the bee and the fox, with the bee holding the leash while the fox has ADHD tendencies to climb all over the walls and eat the furniture. I would start with little slice of life, 4 panel style pages, slowly introducing the other forms as the story progressed. I don’t know how much of the planned Vtuber lore that I have created will end up in the webcomic, if any at all.
My plan with this comic is to introduce my Vtuber and how she works in a way that makes some modicum of sense. For this project in particular, I would need the least amount of character concept art but the most amount of story outlining, mostly because I have no idea what I want to do with the characters outside of introducing them. Also, the characters would be the least recognizable (and also are all technically the same person) so I really doubt anybody would be that interested in looking at this one unless I got really popular elsewhere. Best for my brand, but not unless it’s established.
Which brings up the ultimate question; which one should I focus on? Obviously, I have a very limited understanding of marketing and brand stuff, so I can only make a barely informed impression of each idea, but here’s what I’ve got so far. Project LFG has the best original story, but so far that hasn’t really done me any favors. It also is full of characters nobody has heard of and, as a result, would require additional marketing to be successful. Project Octavia x Blackfire has a built-in audience for both characters and would bring in at least some audience as a result. I do run the risk of bringing in people who expect nothing but Helluva Boss and DC Comics stuff from me, but right now I’m playing a concert to an empty audience, so to speak. And lastly, Project Chareon Comic would build familiarity to my Vtuber model and story, but objectively has the least amount of marketability of all three projects. The only audience I can draw in are people who really like it when people gush about their OCs. Which is not that unappealing of an audience to attract, now that I think about it.
This is where I would normally ask for my audience to vote, but, well, the auditorium is still quite empty. Since I’ve been holding onto Project LFG for a couple decades, I think I should polish up my comic drawing skills before I commit to it, just to make sure I don’t ruin it too early. Even with the risk of drawing in the wrong crowd, I think making a comic with established characters is the right way forward for my first webcomic, since it’ll bring eyeballs to my art in a way that may open up my work to others. Also, since I don’t have to work as much for Project Chareon Comic, I think I will try to create it as a free Loss Leader to generate traffic to my BMC account, put eyeballs on my Vtuber model, and give me decent practice with drawing comics before I have to work on something more demanding. Granted, the Blackfire x Octavia comic won’t be something I’ll be able to lock behind a paywall, of course, but it’ll be a much more complicated process to make, so I will undoubtedly have the option of adding behind-the-scenes stuff behind a paywall to give fans of the comic something to look at in between issues. Something I will set up later, I suppose. But I’ll save that for a different update later on down the road.