Who is a hero? Heroes are those who put their lives to help those in need and inspire hope within the hopeless. Myths and legends about heroes have existed in our history for hundreds of years. Epic stories of larger-than-life individuals help display good morals like courage, selflessness, and responsibility.
Nowadays, the pop culture of comic book writing has introduced us to many comic heroes within the gaming and literary worlds. In the latter, the comic book industry always produces new superheroes with exciting stories.
The Internet gives great opportunities to the creators to popularize their heroes. Additionally, it offers much-needed platforms where superhero fans can play blackjack online for money at ELRoyale Casino and unleash their best skills, read amazing books, or watch impressive movies and films.
Overall, there are a lot of materials on the internet on how to make comic books, games, and related stuff. This article breaks down how one can create a new comic hero and how to popularize it. When writing a script for a hero comic, one should keep in mind the following.
- Know your genre
- Understand your main character’s goals and challenges
- Create a believable setting
- Make your story consistent, with a good origin and an exciting plot.
The hero-type genre of comic books or games contains salient features that a comic writer/ hero developer/designer should consider. The characteristics of a hero construct should, among other things, include the hero features, background story, and the hero’s image.
Choosing Your Hero’s Features
Superheros must have unique features. Their uniqueness makes them interesting and sets them apart from other superheroes. A comic book writer or a hero game designer must first choose the superhero’s powers. One should choose the hero’s power first because their power identifies a superhero before everything else. In addition, the powers should be unique because other characters have already claimed most superpowers.
One should consider a hero with a unique power. It makes it easy to differentiate their hero from others. It is worth remembering that some superheroes do not have superpowers; an example is Batman from DC comics and Ironman from Marvel. The lack of a superpower adds a great twist to their stories.
Create a unique personality for your hero. A hero can have two unique identities; for example, Batman has two identities: Bruce Wayne and a justice-seeking superhero. The unique identity makes your character interesting, letting the fans put themselves in the hero’s shoes. For example, Batman’s two identities make it easier to operate as an effective crime fighter. In addition, his enemies would not fear him if they knew he was Bruce Wayne.
One can give your character a flaw to add spice to your story; some examples of heroes with flaws are characters such as Ironman with his heart issue and Superman, whose weakness is kryptonite. Of course, adding a flaw to a superhero is not a must, but it makes them very human in their vulnerability. It also makes their battles with their enemies engaging because the heroes must overcome their weaknesses in combat.
Creating Your Hero’s Background Story.
A hero needs a background story. The background story gives the comic hero a human side. The story often comes from a unique experience that changes the person from an ordinary Joe to a superhero. For example, Superman’s origin story is that he was born on a planet called Krypton, and his name is Kal-El. Kal-El is sent to Earth as a baby by his parents before his home planet is destroyed.
The background narrative story is a way of presenting related events and creating a unique world. Conflicts and turmoil can help shape a hero’s character and tragedies. They inspire the person to be a hero or force them to become one.
The background story also entails how a person got their power. For example, Flash got his powers when lightning struck his lab and splashed some chemicals on him, giving him powers; before that, he was slow, methodical, and often late. The story of how the hero uses their power for the first time. The story of how the hero masters their powers and when the hero chooses to use their powers to do well. These scenarios create a lot of interest in the comic genre.
The hero’s interactions with the people and the community before and after gaining the powers are another significant part to highlight. The story should also include how the hero’s personality changes.
The background story can include how the hero’s rivals come to be. Rivals are essential in a hero’s story because, without rivals, the hero’s story is incomplete. The enemy may be someone the hero has to know throughout their lives or someone from another planet or dimension. The rival may have existed before the hero was born, and the hero’s birth triggers the legendary story between the hero and the rival.
The rival may be a friend who turns to evil; an example is the story of Captain America and the Winter Soldier. Almost all heroes have multiple enemies, but some rivals stand out as the main challengers to the hero and have a mirror effect on the hero, for example, Thor and Loki. Thor is the hero, and Loki is the villain. They function on the opposing sides of good and evil. People love a good villain story; some try to understand what led the villain to become evil.
Taking time to create the villain’s traits and motivation will make them more engaging and the comic more interesting. Intertwining the hero’s origin story and the villain’s backstory is a creative way of making the comic more captivating.
Creating The Image Of Your Hero.
Heroes come in all shapes, sizes, and genders, and some are not even human. How you want the image of your hero to appear depends on a matter of factors. One of the main factors that will affect the image of your hero is the power you give them. For example, a hero with super strength will be depicted as bulky. In addition, a hero can be gender specific; for example, Wonder Woman may never become a male character (Wonder Man) due to her background story.
Naming your hero is another crucial aspect of creating the hero’s image. Picking the name can depend on the hero’s superpowers their personality, or you can just give them a standard name. Superheroes need a trademark symbol; for example, Batman has the bat symbol. Trademark items like Thor’s hammer and Captain America’s shield can also work. The items and symbols can also have a background story on how the heroes ended up with them. Finally, one may add a catchphrase that can be attributed to the hero.
One can decide to give your hero a sidekick, an example is Batman and Robin. A sidekick character has their own origin story and how it intertwines with the hero’s story. A hero can also be a part of a team; each team can have a different backstory, for example, the Avengers and how they met, or have the same origin story, for example, the Fantastic Four.
Lettering
New comic content creators tend to overlook lettering. You may have a good story and illustration, but people may not read your work if your lettering is bad. Using installed font improves the appearance and readability of your work. In addition, websites such as Blambot offer a wide variety of free and paid comic fonts.
Coloring
A scene’s color scheme may make or destroy it. In addition to choosing the right colors, consistency issues can also cause problems. Imagine how perplexing it would have been to see Superman’s cape on one page colored red and on another page green. The goal is to maintain consistency; otherwise, your readers may get confused, even though this silly example is quite frivolous.
Layout
The goal of having a good layout is to keep your readers interested. To do this, one should employ cliffhangers at the end of each page. It draws the reader in as they expect something interesting to happen on the next page.
How To Popularize Your Comic
Make Your Comic Available For Free Online.
It may sound counterproductive to make your work available free online, but the benefit outweighs the drawbacks when someone is new and trying to make your work seen. Social media sites like Facebook and Twitter make it very easy. You can create a daily post telling everybody about your new venture. Let people know what it is and how they can get it. The advantages of making one’s work available online may include:
- Making the work easily accessible online allows people to read one’s work, building readership.
- It makes it easier to link one’s comic content and social media so that people access it quickly.
- When one gains fans through your online content, they may want to buy hard copies of their comic book.
- One can add merchandise, for example, selling t-shirts branded with images from one’s comic book online.
- The first editions of the comic book can be offered for free to entice the readers, and afterward, one can sell the next issues to fans hooked to your work.
Crowdfunding To Promote One’s Comic Book
Crowdfunding allows content creators to gauge interest in their works and secure preorder channels to reduce the risks. Patreon is a popular crowdfunding site that one can use to get their work funded and an excellent way to get the word out about the new work. Other popular crowdfunding sites are kickstart and Indiegogo.
Selling Your Comic Book at Comic Conventions, Bookstores, And Comic Stores.
One can gain readership by selling your work in real life at conventions. Convection events offer an opportunity to interact with readers in real life and get their opinions about the new work. In addition, convection allows people to meet other comic writers and share experiences and ideas. At Comic conventions, one can also get funding for their work.
Bookstores and comic stores sound old school options for promoting your work but working with them and building a relationship with them can help you promote your work.
Blogging and Reaching Out To Blogging Sites.
Comic book content creators can guest blog on-sites that are dedicated to comics. As a guest blogger, one can review their work on comic blogs. People will raise awareness of their work and increase interest by including links to the comic on the author’s bio, thus promoting the new work. Reaching out to bloggers on comic-centric sites to see if they can review the comic on their sites is another way of promoting one’s career.
Selling Merchandise Of Comic Art.
Advertising through merchandising is a great way to promote anything. For example, fashion items like T-shirts, hoods, and items such as coffee mugs are creative promotion tools. In addition, when someone buys fashion apparel with art relevant to the comic, they may want to learn more about it, making it an excellent tool for advertising.
Conclusion
Creating and popularizing a hero comic book is hard, although technological advancements have made some parts of the process easy. Writing a comic about a hero, a superhero with problems ordinary people face, is easier to relate to and write about. Creating a comic book takes time and patience, and working on it alone is challenging. Collaborating with others on comic books lessens the workload and creates an environment for developing new ideas. The internet has many great places to get started as a beginner in comic writing.
Comic book writing is an art that will never go away, thanks to the popularity of movies such as Avengers and Justice League, which were adapted from comic books. However, maybe somewhere in the creative world, a new Stan Lee works on his masterpiece that will shock the comic world.
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