I saw a thread for artists, but I thought I'd start one for us wordsmiths.
So... what comic book inspired you to pick up a pen or keyboard?

For me, it was definitely Alan Moore's run on "Swamp Thing." In fact, I was 14 when I read "Swamp Thing" #21. I remember reading it in my bedroom--and I had this epiphany. "I want to write comics," I said out loud. Yeah, odd, eh? Well, the next day, a buddy and I began writing and drawing comics. We sold them at school and actually made a few bucks. But the cool part was just the fact that we were really doing it--you know? Really creating, really imagining, really succeeding at our dream, though on a small scale.
Now, here I am, several published comics and more on the way. All I can say is "Thanks, Alan Moore. You are still the greatest." :)

*passes the mic*

Mic check. One two, one two. *pat pat*

Is this thing on?

:D

Uh, Ozy and Millie by DC Simpson.

His comic was the reason I started drawing (and writing) anthro stuff.

Outstanding!
Thanks for sharing. :)

Hm. Sandman blew me away but it didn't inspire me to write- I knew it was an "I wish I could do something like that", but maybe not an "I'm going to do something like that!" I still keep that in mind though, as something to try and aspire to. An enormous complex story with graceful little outlying stories, with a strong and mysterious cast of characters, and with a lot of human emotion and drama mixed in with otherwordly type stuff. :) At one point my ex-boyfriend was complimented on his webcomic as good reading in Neil Gaiman's blog, I was more excited than he was (and horribly jealous, haha).

Hellboy probably came the closest to getting me to start doing my first webcomic. :) Things could be short and fun and uncomplicated but still really enjoyable. There was a lot of fantastical stuff in Hellboy but it was all presented in kind of an off-kilter way. So The Repository of Dangerous Things happened! (After I put out the first 3 or 4 weeks of the webcomic, "The Amazing Screw on Head" came out, which had "The Museum of Dangerous Books and Paper" or something like that in it.... I still dunno what to think of that. T_T)

Currently though the things that inspire me to want to write a comic are fairly random. I suppose they're kind of artificually restricted by the theme I want ('made-up stories') but I've got about 10 good unrelated stories inspired by stuff from Gilgamesh to some books I read to This American Life (public radio show) to Wal-Mart. The hard part is doing them. e_e

I think Sandman has inspired a lot of folks in comicdom. You're exactly right about that series. It still stands as one of comic books' crowning achievements, in my humble opinion. Hellboy is amazing, too.

I totally understand where you're coming from. I have three webcomics--in addition to my comic book projects--and would love to do more. I simply don't have the time. :(

Speaking of Hellboy comics, you should really try to find the "Zombie World" comics that came out a few years back. The art is quite cartoony, but incredibly effective. You'll love it...and Mike Mignola did the covers.)

What comic gave me the will to write...hmm.

Well, interestingly enough, it wasn't a comic, but a group of people I wrote collaborative Pulp-action stories set in the 1930's that really whet my thirst for writing stories (and created the idea for the Revenant character), and I've got to say that I am a HUGE Spider fan from the 1930's pulps. I guess you could say it was the Spider pulp stories that gave me the will to write?

Most directly, though, I was doing thumbnails (in the traditional comic page style) for my first Revenant story "The Fleshless Legion", when I stumbled upon Travis Charest's "Spacegirl" comic. It was done in a single panel, much like the old "Tarzan" or "Flash Gordan" comics in the newspaper. The idea struck me as something I would like to try, and the next day I sat down and made my very first panel of "Sea of the Dead!".

Life is strange.....and pretty darned nifty!

Roguehill
Speaking of Hellboy comics, you should really try to find the "Zombie World" comics that came out a few years back. The art is quite cartoony, but incredibly effective. You'll love it...and Mike Mignola did the covers.)

HA! I have them--and love 'em. :)
Great minds...

Roguehill
What comic gave me the will to write...hmm.
Most directly, though, I was doing thumbnails (in the traditional comic page style) for my first Revenant story "The Fleshless Legion", when I stumbled upon Travis Charest's "Spacegirl" comic. It was done in a single panel, much like the old "Tarzan" or "Flash Gordan" comics in the newspaper. The idea struck me as something I would like to try, and the next day I sat down and made my very first panel of "Sea of the Dead!"

Travis Charest rules!
Very cool.
I loves me some pulp, too. :)

Watching cartoon gave me the will to draw
Then reading books gave me the will to write
Then reading comics gave me the will to combine these two so I started making comics. This way I could be making stories with the use of images, I was happy ^^

Some 'normal' books I've read gave me the will to write some more again, but comics don't really have that effect on me. The only comic that inspired me a little to write a humorous fantasy story was the French comic-series Donjon. It's BRILLIANT! My fantasy story didn't work out tough, I only made it to 4 pages or so, and they were crap/

I believe almost no one on this forum ever heard of Donjon (or 'Dungeon' as the American title says) so here are pictures of it:




There are all sorts of Donjon series, you have the main series and the others are some sort of spin-offs with every time a different artist for the drawings. I mean, this [li.an.free.fr] page from 'Donjon Monsters' has a totally different style than the ones above here.

I've only ever written 2 fanfics in my life...

(1) A fanfic on Zapan from the manga Battle Angel Alita (Gunnm). I felt that his accidental killing of his lover Sara didn't get enough elaboration, so I rewrote the brief scene into a short story. It is posted on the Gunnm fanfic website Angel of the Scrapyard. Some really good fanfics on that site.

(2) A fanfic for the Impromanga round-robin comic Point Blank Assassin. I got the idea for the villain of the story based on someone my dad once knew - an assassin who used an unique gun he customized himself. The story is a stand-alone in the theme of those 1-shot episodes of Cowboy Bebop or Trigun.

I started making manga from a very young age. I still have some of my old comics from when I was 7 years old (lol. their so weird.) I never really havce liked american comics much... except for Elfquest and a little bit of X-men aswell. I love a variety of styles that are unique and great storylines so there are some manga and also some american style comics that I'm not fond of. But X-men, Elfquest and a whole bunch of manga (works by Rumiko Takahashi, Miho Obana and many others) have made me want to write and draw comics.

With print comics, the inspiration would definitely come, for the most part, from Sandman. I couldn't do something like that if I tried, but damned if it doesn't make you wanna *write*.

With webcomics? Questionable Content and Sinfest are the big contenders. The writing there is something I aspire to. It flows well, it's funny, and it's awesome.

And Websnark. Because Websnark rocks.