I’ve been making webcomics for quite a long time now (I started HFH in 2006, so I’m starting into year 12) and I like to think that I’ve learned some stuff along the way. However, I’ve only recently realized how very different webcomics is from the printed comics and newspaper strips that inspired me to be a comic creator in the first place.
That probably sounds like an incredibly stupid statement. It seems like I’m saying that I’m suddenly aware that going for a spin in a driverless electric vehicle sure is different from riding in the ole horse and buggy. Duh and Duh again….
But I’m not talking about how the comic is delivered to and ‘consumed’ by the audience, It’s about how I think differently about the finished, final product that was always my creative goal.
Before I started webcomics, I wrote and Illustrated children’s books for a local Hawaii publisher. It was always a thrill when a final printed book appeared on the shelves in the local bookstores, but it was also inevitable that after that new book “honeymoon” period, I would find myself just slightly disappointed in the final product.
There was not anything wrong with the books themselves, but I would often wish I could go back into the book and tweak things. Sometimes I would find a word or a phrase that would have been better using an alternate choice, or sometimes artwork just didn’t feel like my best work, and I wished I could have changed it entirely. But I couldn’t, because it was “finished.”
That was how creating things worked. Finished products were out of your hands and took on a permanence. Once you declare them to be complete, your creative hatchlings step up to the edge of the precipice and either soar off into the sky or plunge into oblivion, but in either case, they’re gone.
But it’s different in webcomics.
I recognized the difference when I was collecting the HFH Dark Legacy story arc into a graphic novel. As I was re-reading the whole tale, I realized that the ending would be more satisfying if I added one more page to the story. Since I needed a page to meet the required page count for printing, I added the new page to the graphic novel. (You Patreon readers saw it in a post awhile back also.)
That was a revelation for me: There is no “Final” version like in the old days of print. At the end of the day, what’s important is to make the best comic I can….
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So what’s the point of this rambling post? I started publishing pages for the new “Origins” story arc on the HFH website, but during the process, I had this sudden inspiration for a new, better path for the story to follow. In this alternate story, the action is more interesting, the villain is more evil, and the twists and turns and reveals are much better. “Origins 2.0” is a better story to tell.
Now in the old days, I would have forced myself to stick to the first version. For the last couple of weeks I’ve been wrestling with the thought that I need to stay the course. This rambling post is actually my way of talking myself into committing to go where the better story takes me.
So, what that means is I’m going to step back for a couple of weeks and refine the new “Origins” story, and the next new Henchmen for Hire page, following the new arc will appear on December 5.
All of the current “Origins” pages are still relevant, EXCEPT for the Tek Girl pages. Tek Girl is NOT going to appear in any more of Origins (unless I get some other inspiration later.) The places in “Origins” where she would have appeared are getting picked up by new (and underused) henchman Lowla.
I’m still planning on a Tek Girl spinoff comic in early 2018, but she’s probably getting her own website, and going off into her own story arc that won’t seriously involve the Henchmen in the near future.
Thanks for following the stories. The goal is to make the best ones I can….
