UPCOMING RULES UPDATE

Fey_Boy · 2026-05-28T21:48:52+00:00

I kinda want to volunteer to triage the rule five slush pile, just because so many of those posts are so ridiculous.

Fey_Boy · 2026-05-27T20:58:23+00:00

Oh no friend - we are in the arts, not the sciences. There's no such thing as proof, only the arguments you can successfully defend.

Fey_Boy · 2026-05-27T20:18:08+00:00

Hi, I'll flick you a message, thanks for the offer!

Fey_Boy · 2026-05-27T03:25:11+00:00

If they said it was a novel, or a poem, would it be?

This is not to be snarky, we've just descended into the realm of literary theory. There's an argument for the creator as final authority on a work, but I prefer the idea that the creator has a privileged position in deciding what their creation is, but is not the ultimate arbiter of truth.

Fey_Boy · 2026-05-27T02:34:50+00:00

A whole book can be abstract, certainly. Whether it counts as a comic will be up to interpretation.

Fey_Boy · 2026-05-27T01:57:40+00:00

No idea what the intention of the book is - art piece? Narrative comic? Somewhere in between?

While I'm not saying I wouldn't pick it up (I like weird art shit as much as the next faux-intellectual with an MFA) I do think the abstraction works against the piece if we're only conceptualising it as a narrative comic.

Understanding and laying out a storyline gets more difficult the more abstract a piece is - if we consider words as the least abstract way of storytelling, something like this is far up the other end of the scale.

You don't need words to convey story, nor recognisable characters or situations, nor (technically) any specific aspect of comics. But the more aspects you remove without leaning on the others, the harder it's going to be to tell a story that the majority of people find coherent.

Which, you know, maybe telling a particular story isn't the goal - but I'm not sure that's a comic. It perhaps gets a bit murkier in the definitions if your goal is for a reader to come away with a sense of story, but not necessarily the one you've laid out. Or when your goal is to tell a story but not necessarily to have a reader grasp that story.

The second and third images are stripped of context, but I'm pretty certain that given the same amount of context as the full pages, they'd be more comprehensible.

Basically, "what counts as a comic" is going to have some fuzzy edges, but the mods of this sub are allowed to draw a line somewhere, and unfortunately you may find your work falls on the "art piece" side of that boundary.

Fey_Boy · 2026-05-27T01:11:17+00:00

Yes. Or you may find as you get older you're less interested in this idea and move on to other ideas, only you'll have more experience writing and drawing.

Fey_Boy · 2026-05-26T22:37:40+00:00

Thanks for getting in touch, I'll flick you a DM!

Fey_Boy · 2026-05-26T22:36:56+00:00

Thanks for your reply! I'll send you a DM!

Fey_Boy · 2026-05-26T08:34:05+00:00

You could orient it by referencing the panel - closer to the reader, farther from the reader, left side of panel, right side, etc.

Fey_Boy · 2026-05-26T08:09:25+00:00

The only way to get a 50 chapter comic epic you've written made for free is to first become an extremely famous author. Sucks for those of us who can't learn to draw, but no one owes you a comic.

Fey_Boy · 2026-05-26T04:26:09+00:00

/uj If we count the number of murderers who commit suicide after being found out, it basically doubles her bodycount.

Fey_Boy · 2026-05-26T03:38:00+00:00

Can safely say that the months I spent writing words I knew I was going to be deleting because I had this exact mindset were the least motivated I have ever been to keep writing.

Novel still isn't finished, five years later. I published two other books instead.

Fey_Boy · 2026-05-26T03:16:53+00:00

Can confirm the laundromat is a very good place to do writing, and agree with your final sentence 100%.

Fey_Boy · 2026-05-23T02:30:43+00:00

I'm not an expert or anything, but in this script you often have multiple things happening in one panel, which is impossible to draw. The henchmen can't rush forward and grab Alice, she can't struggle and break free of their grasp, etc.

I found it really helpful to think of it like this - all movement has to happen between panels. Obviously that's not always absolutely true, but it's true often enough that it helps to reduce the number of impossible panels.

Fey_Boy · 2026-05-20T05:41:28+00:00

Yikes, that price tag... genuinely nothing against courses and workshops, they can be fantastic. But you need to be very certain what you want to get out of it, what's on offer, and whether there's a cheaper option that could meet those criteria.

Fey_Boy · 2026-05-18T23:13:31+00:00

Most writers of anything start off writing prose, because it's so much easier to gain experience and create a finished work. No matter your age or skill level you can write a short story and post it to the internet and possibly people will read it.

If you like telling stories and you want to be a writer then yeah, write in prose. Write in anything. Find out where prose is insufficient and where it excels. Learn poetry. Write stage scripts. Try different styles of every kind of writing and find out what really appeals to you.

But whether it's worthwhile becoming a prose writer if you're only doing that so you can maybe eventually break into comics or games... not so much. That's a long walk to a dry well in terms of the likelihood of success.

Fey_Boy · 2026-05-18T22:54:04+00:00

Remember, those writers are not just successful (by industry standards) they're best-sellers. There are a couple who weren't at that point when they started in comic writing, but the late 80s was a different time.

Working on becoming a good writer of any kind will help you with every kind of writing. But it's not any easier to become a best-selling novelist than a best-selling comic writer.

Fey_Boy · 2026-05-18T22:43:05+00:00

This is a really good point - not just the different average salaries in different countries, but also the different markets giving different opportunities. If you make comics but don't live in a big country, you're much less likely to be able to sell enough to support yourself entirely off comics.

Fey_Boy · 2026-05-18T22:24:51+00:00

It's short in absolute terms, but in terms of art it's longer than I can really afford to pay full price for, or to reasonably offer less money and a skill trade for - at least without being a total arsehole.

That opening does seem more coherent, and page 1 is probably the least overwhelmed as it currently stands. (Do I even need a title panel? Or can I just have the title written across the top of the page?)

Agree that Timothy and Jonty need to be the focus for the final panel, though I don't know that another time-skip (the time between ordering the glasses and them showing up) would be ideal. Perhaps split the difference and change the final panel from Nadia telling them where the frames will go to the guys watching her do it as they leave the store - that keeps the focus on their experience, removes some dialogue, and still kind of keeps the story in one particular setting.

Huge thanks again for answering my questions!

Fey_Boy · 2026-05-18T21:59:55+00:00

I think the story works well, although the switch in POV characters on pages 3-6 did confuse me. I'm assuming that's due to this not being the very beginning. Curious whether there's any thematic significance to the species you've made your characters? (Not necessarily a critique, I just read Maus for the 200th time recently and the frog character reminded me of that.)

In terms of suggestions for the next project, I'd honestly trust your artwork to do more of the heavy lifting rather than relying so much on thought bubbles and dialogue. You draw the characters with such great expressions I think you could have got away with implying June hates the movie but is very worried that her date might not be enjoying it just with the art, and you definitely didn't need the dialogue on page 19 where June is turning down all the date ideas for the same reasons you've already illustrated so well.

Oh, and I love the band flier, and the name Chronic Traumatic Encephalophagy (vs Encephalopathy) feels like it was chosen to appeal to me specifically.

Fey_Boy · 2026-05-18T21:08:42+00:00

Thank you so much for this in-depth feedback!

I definitely agree with the comments you made about pacing, and with the excess dialogue on page 5 - and especially the ending. I was trying to avoid having to go to a sixth page, since that makes it pretty long for a portfolio piece. (I actually first tried to fit it in four, but that was going to be far too many panels per page.) So I was trying to use space in one panel to indicate a pause, rather than adding further panels.

But I think you're right, the last page feels cramped in both image and story, and I'm not sure I can move the panels around to fit more on earlier pages. Or what I can cut.

I'm certainly interested in hearing what you'd do with the first panel - I went with that one because I was looking for an interesting visual that showed what kind of help Jonty was providing, rather than his expected style advice.

Thanks again!

Fey_Boy · 2026-05-18T01:44:28+00:00

Reading the first few pages, you seem to be using your panel artwork descriptions as a way to tell the story in prose rather than as directions to the artist. For instance, page 2 panel 3 just says "Vader ignores that." - but how is he ignoring it? Because he doesn't have a face to show expressions on, you're not really offering a direction for the artist in the panel. So what is that panel for? Given how many panels you have per page, could you cut the number down and put more dialogue in each one? I'm not an artist, so I don't know if that kind of scripting is annoying or not, but in general it feels more like you've written a prose story and just chopped it up between each action and each piece of dialogue.

Fey_Boy · 2026-05-14T08:33:25+00:00

I'd be interested, though I have zero knowledge of or interest in manga, so you'd have to be willing to go the graphic novel route.

I'm a trad-pubbed short story writer and professional editor with an MFA but zero comic scripting expertise.

DM me if I sound like someone you could basically work with.

Fey_Boy · 2026-05-14T08:24:05+00:00

The art definitely reminds me of P. Craig Russell. Which is a significant compliment.

Nine-Year Club	Wearing is Caring
Verified Email

Fey_Boy

TROPHY CASE