Syndicated Comics - Some Groundwork - I

I think there are two broad categories of comics. Ones with a protagonist on the fore and others without one.

Between Friends, Peanuts, Garfield etc. they fall in the first category while, Frank and Ernest, Dilbert, Wizard of ID although have characters, are more about quips on situations and are less personal in nature.

With protagonists on the fore

You naturally go this way when you want to give your personal opinions a free expression. You wanna laugh at thing without worrying about others. Your comic character represents your uninhibited self, and as you can record even your character's thoughts in the thought balloons, its not just actions but thoughts as well, that you can polish into a comic strip.

They say to draw a comic is tedious only until you start drawing one. Key is to develop the character and live with it till you begin to identify with him/her and see him/her in your head. You need to cultivate it and bring it to life. One proven way of doing that is to draw you character in various poses, and keep drawing it till you've covered all possible gestures your character is capable of. Once that happens, the character takes over and starts giving you stories.

In every ordinary situation you would be able to see your character doing something extra ordinary which may be amusing to your readers. His reactions, his shenanigans, it would be like recording a persons's actions, like Garfield, even some of his mute strips are amusing, as his facial gestures alone can make you laugh your socks off. Or Between Friends, where the protagonist often has a lot of cheeky and some times kinky thoughts.

You would actually have more ideas than you would need, out of which you need to choose the ones that you think are most appealing and hilarious. Such, comic if treated well get a huge fan following over a period of time, we know a certain Mr Schultz who was sooo rolling in the stuff thanks to snoopy and other members of Charlie brown gang.

Having said that I'll say all the action hero, crime fighter, mysterious vigilante comics fall into this category. The comics with such characters depend heavily on their presentation aspect for their success as very rightly put by The Riddler: "The difference: showmanship!"

With protagonists as observers

You would naturally go for such types if its more the situations that drive you crazy than any one person. You might have a huge collection of situational anecdotes that you recorded over a period of time in your profession like Scott Adams did who, by the way, now also happens to have at his disposal sources like blogs reader, emails etc to help him with ideas.

You could also be a natural with certain joke types like word play, and a genius like Frank and Ernest's Thaves who have always been the trend setters and first ones to have done many things in the world of comics strips, digitally colouring comics amongst one of them.

Last but not the least you could be a really creative thinker like Brant Parker (Wizard of ID) I so found it hard not to cry when my friend pointed me to that news on net that said Parker is no more, I don't know him in person but it felt like a big lose. These comics have real philosophers behind them, the ones who are able to see the funny side of gravest of situations, who are able put across to you the gravest of messages along with a quip on the superficiality associated with them.

These people and comics are revolutionaries of sorts. In these comics the protagonists are more often the observers or victims (on occasions they are simply absent) and act as your spectacles into situations. Such comics have heavy literary demands but personally, as an artist, I see more satisfaction in them.

Others

Then there are ones like Calvin and Hobbes and Frazz that you can keep somewhere between these two extremes as you would see the protagonists shenanigans running the show most of the times but once in a while he takes a back seat to a quip that's entirely philosophical in nature, I can quote as examples the musings, the questions Calving would put up to Hobbes during their leisurely walks, that Hobbes answered and Calvin piped out a Othello-esque observations on.

More in part two of this article in which I'll cover the mental preparations before you set about making a comic book and also a few facts pertaining comic syndicates.