So, when did you make your first attempt at drawing a comic. Not necessarily the first one ever, just some of the early stuff. What were they about? Do you actually have scans of those first efforts? Care to share? :)

My first comic ever was something I drew when I was... I'm not sure... 8 or so. It was "inspired" by the French cartoon "Il Etait Une Fois... La Vie" (Once Upon a Time... Life) - if you ever saw "Osmosis Jones", you get the picture. It wasn't a comic, really, just pages full of humanoid blood cells and bacteria attacking them. Not very well drawn, either :)

My first "serious" comic, with dialogues and some sort of a plot was, was born out of the idea to make Muppets into insects - Gonzo being a mosquito, Kermit being a fly, etc. So I drew Gonzo. And he looked NOTHING like Gonzo, save for the nose. But oh well! I drew him a buddy, a spider with red hair. Then, a year later or so, I remembered them and started drawing loose stories about them. I gave them more humanoid bodies, but in spite of that they were still a spider and a mosquito. The spider-dude even played Spider-Man in a movie! lol! Yes, they were movie stars, adventurers, the spider dude had bionic implants like Inspector Gadget, yadda yadda yadda ;) I actually finished a full 48 page volume. I started another one - and ran out of ideas after 4 pages ;) Later, I wanted to revive the project in the scenery of Alice in Wonderland, but didn't even start that one.

I'll try to dig up and post some of my early stuff. Don't think there's much of that left, most of it coming from 1993-94, so my early teens, actually, and the most interesting, if still clumsy and plot-less, comics I drew.

Now, your turn to share :)

the first comic i ever attempted was a story about my cat and what he did while he was missing for three days , i was prolly around 8 or 9 when i did that one , and being easily distracted as a kid i don't think i ever got more than halfway done with it . i used to staple a whole bunch of sheets of paper together to make a little book before i started drawing it , a good way to set yourself up for dissapointment !

My first comic was called Falo and Jak. It was about two... things... and was filled with very bad jokes.
Next I made Teddy. This was about some possessed teddy bear following somebody around for no specified reason. This was not on the internet, but I tried to make them in PAINT and this is the second comic:
http://img210.imageshack.us/img210/1240/2ndstriplc0.jpg , my first DD comic.
Since then, I've done a few side projects on DD, but LOLZ is my REAL comic.

I drew tons of fanfic when I was a kid. It was basically my own characters interacting with Marvel characters, mostly Spider-Man. I can't remember when I started doing this - I'm guessing I was 6 or 7, but it's really one of these things like the way you can't remember how you learned how to talk.

One of the funnier tidbits I remember is how I read The Dark Knight Returns around the same time I saw Tim Burton's first Batman movie, and how that led to a complete and utter obsession with the character. Now since my silly fanfics were set in the Marvel universe where Batman would be a fictional character just like in the real world, I had to come up with an origin for a guy who dresses up like Batman for some reason because I wanted to use Batman. Then I think I drew nothing but Batman comics with stolen panels from DKR for about a year.

I stopped doing this stuff regularly in middle school and started drawing nothing but pinup pieces for various reasons. I did a few short things here and there and tried to put together the comic that my SN is taken from for the longest time, but the only thing I ever completed was this .

Last year I wised up and started working on Bulletproof. A lot of the character designs come from that phase in middle and high school where I was just doing pinups, actually.

When I was a kid, I used to draw all sorts of comics, which I would convert to "book form" by folding the pages and stapling the "spine". I used to do a lot of Transformers comics, having been annoyed by the abrupt end of the series. I always wanted the old characters to come back, so I would always find a way for Shockwave and Starscream to reappear, as well as Jazz and Cliffjumper, since they were supposedly still around. And of course, it wouldn't be Transformers without dumb ol' Grimlock!

I also had my own GI Joe rip-off comics, about waring factions that fought each other for no apparent reason. Like Cobra, the bad guys never seemed to be an immediate threat to society. They seemed to exist for the sole purpose of attacking the good guys, who only existed because there were bad guys. And thus, there was a whole circular logic to the concept.

Fortunately, I realized this and did a lot of fine tuning. Better, more original villains were eventually created, and my GI Joe-esque team was eventually condensed down and changed its name to The Phalanx, a team of superheroes and elite cadets. And that, of course, spawned something else...

Only now you know... the rrrrrrest of the story!

I used to doodle one panel Far Side-esque comics (usually a biology or physics theme).

The 80's. I was a 5th grade elementary school student. The first comics I drew were comics abut Pacman. Yep, that's right. That big yellow pizza looking character with a slice missing... Yep. I had "Pacman Fever" at the time...

Now thanks to this thread I'm thinking of starting that up again. O_o

(hello, i'm soliloquyv by the way.)

The first comic I drew and completed . . Haha, wow, was when I was thirteen. It was a twenty page dramatic one-shot with a story I'm still baffled by today. The subject matter was hefty for a thirteen year old. It was about a family torn apart by illness. A gay couple ( a physician and a cellist ) have a young daughter, the daughter of the physician to be precise. I guess the mother disappeared or died, I'm not sure. Anyway. It was about the day the girl, Kathleen, realizes that her second father, the cellist, has Aids. They confront one another and it's all very sad.

I don't know why I wrote such a thing.

Considering the relatively serious tone of the comics I'm doing now, it seems most of my early stuff was (supposed to be!) humorous. I have recently uploaded some of the short comics I made in my mis-spent youth. These include:

The House that Drac Built.
Starring me. With Dracula. Kind of.

Where the Buffalo Rome.

Starring Caesar and Mark Antony. Oh, and Boadicea. In fishnets.

DajbDevil.
Starring me. As Daredevil. With Snoopy.

Laughter in Cold Blood.

Starring me. On a school journey to Wales. With homicidal yet fluffy little critters called gofals.

Don't Spok the Afflicted.

Spoofing the original Star Trek TV series, back in the days before spin-offs, big screen movies or Galaxy Quest. I was ahead of my time, I tell ya!

Cool stuff, everyone :) Keep it coming!

Lothar: yeah I used to do just the same thing. I hoped that seeing it as almost a book from the start would keep me motivated. Oh how wrong I was lol!

Bocaj: I went through a phase where I only drew stuff in Paint, too, when I first got my pc. And I still use it to this day. I do all the character shading in it. Oh, and I really like Stuffs!

Spacehamster: I was a huge fan of Marvel as a kid - especially of Spider-Man and X-Men - which led me to coming up with my own superheroes. Which were a lot of times complete rip-offs of Marvel and DC. There was Rubber-Man, Ant-Man, Bee-Man, Water-Mand... and by far the most blatant copy - the Ultra Turtle: a superhero could fly, see through walls, wore green spandex and a cloak. He came from another planet, which went ka-blooey seconds after he was shot into space, got allergic to some space mineral etc... And at the time I didn't think of it as a rip-off 'cause they all had different names and all lol!

Neilsama: I designed a bunch of Transformer-like robots when I was 9 or 10 - the difference being they'd transform into pencils, pens, pencil sharpeners etc. Dad jokingly promised we'd start making those (our company actually does make all kind of things of plastic). Never happened lol! As for fanfics - I did a bunch for the Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles. Including them, Shredder and the gang as kids (remember when they started making all the Flinstones and Scooby Doo Kids cartoons?) Ohhh and how could I EVER forget my He-Man fanfics? Back in 2nd grade my classmates and I formed the Comic Maker Association, and we all drew He-Man fanfics. Mine lasted for quite a while.

Kennatsu: Let us now when you do! Now that I started to draw again, I was thinking of reviving some of my old comics, too!

In highschool I quit drawing comics. I just drew different characters, most of the times with no intention to make a story around them. I did orcs and trolls, then mangas. Then I wanted to do video games. I did a couple designs for a Mortal Kombat style game and for an adventure game. I even wrote a longish script for the latter. Then I turned to writing and came up with a different style to illustrate my stories and books. In my senior year I TRIED to draw a comic again, in the same style, but got discouraged after one page.

Soliloguyv: I'm always baffled by young artists coming up with profound stories. I never could do that when I was a kid. I always came up with something silly, stupid or downright retarded. Up to the age of 20, my idea of profound was Cow & Chicken lol!

Oh and by the way, here's some of the things I dug up just today. They're from 1992-94 more or less, I used a couple of styles back then.

This is something I'm still kinda proud of. I was 13 when I drew this and I still consider some of the character designs, ingenious, especially the big robot and Halfbrains, the Siamese Twins. I like the colors, too.
http://img340.imageshack.us/img340/3479/commandocovergz2.jpg [img340.imageshack.us]
This is a page of the actual comic, which I drew before the cover. The art here doesn't compare, mainly because I drew it on a crappy paper. The lines are too thick. I drew 7 pages of it before I ran out of ideas.
http://img523.imageshack.us/img523/7030/commandopagede3.jpg [img523.imageshack.us]
Here's a cover for a Captain Planet rip-off. Yeah, I was only good at doing the covers. I drew lots, mainly for comics I never even started to draw.
http://img166.imageshack.us/img166/8981/ekora8.jpg [img166.imageshack.us]
And that's my very own superhero comic. A whole page, even! I like the silvery thing, it was my homage *cough*rip-off*cough* of Terminator 2. The other guys are Rubber-Man and Wasp-Man.
http://img254.imageshack.us/img254/2974/mutantsgg6.jpg [img254.imageshack.us]

I'm going to say first grade. I'd draw stuff like Tom & Jerry meeting the Predator or Batman hanging out with the ninja turtles.

At some point I started creating a stable of characters that somehow keep finding their way into penis.

For example this guy:

[imageshack.us]

All the way back to at least the second grade maybe even earlier than that. I've always drawn goofy monsters and mutant people. Its just much easier to do with a mouse for some reason.

4 score and 7 years ago, i drew a little strip about my friends, Jt and Brendon. it was really horribly drawn. It was mostly about shitty underwear being thrown into the eyes of Robinson's May customers. It was awesome.

Fitz
Spacehamster: I was a huge fan of Marvel as a kid - especially of Spider-Man and X-Men - which led me to coming up with my own superheroes. Which were a lot of times complete rip-offs of Marvel and DC. There was Rubber-Man, Ant-Man, Bee-Man, Water-Mand... and by far the most blatant copy - the Ultra Turtle: a superhero could fly, see through walls, wore green spandex and a cloak. He came from another planet, which went ka-blooey seconds after he was shot into space, got allergic to some space mineral etc... And at the time I didn't think of it as a rip-off 'cause they all had different names and all lol!

Hahaha. Yeah, my main character at the time was kind of a Superman ripoff as well. Then I saw Wolverine and gave him claws for a while. Probably until around the time my Batman obsession started and I turned him into something that actually looked kinda like the costume from the Batman Beyond character (though it preceded it by about 10 years). All the while thinking I was coming up with brilliant original stuff, of course. Ah, to be 12 again.

In my case, I did a couple of comics, if I can call them that, back when I was really little, no idea where they ended, anyway they were really simple, just 3 or 4 pages, and I used one of those stencils with figures like animals and so.

Years later when I met my cousin she was alredy doing fanficts of Dragon Ball mostly, and I liked the idea, I think that was the point when this became a hobby. I also started with my own char of DB, and then I did a char for Sain Seiya __< and she lost it, I hated her for that; anyway, I decided to re-write the whole thing again, the chars suffered minor changes, but at the half of it, I dropped it because I didn't liked it at all, and started again, that version is the very same I'm using now, 10 years later XD. Whith extra things, a more elaborated plot, and a better character development, at least I hope that.

Something very dangerous with that, is that I already know the chars as if they had been my friends for years, and I might fall in the mistake of giveing their personalities as granted <--- I'm trying not to do that.

Well anyway here are some scans of how the original thing looked like (remember it's the 3th version.)




Each color belonged to a char, currently I trying to take all that to a script, to reduce dialogs, and make things clearer.

...guess I talked a lot, well hope that at least the few who read this won't get bored.
=P

When I was little, my sister and I would position our toys around and I'd draw and copy them. I still can't help but giggle when I look at them, because my drawing hasn't gotten much better. But I've been reading books and researching comic book layout and so-such, and my overall knowledge of how to make a comic book has gotten better. Too bad I can't draw.

When I drew anime...no comic. I planned on some, but never got around to it because I wasn't proud of what I drew.

I drew Star Trek (the original) comics *years* before I even knew about comics. I was 6-8 years old. I don't have anything left from those (which isn't a bad thing).

Later,
Chip

The first comic I did was about Stupid Man, who was a little kid in elementary school (I was also in elementary school when I wrote it - coincidence?) who donned a superhero outfit and fought crime. There were three comics in all, each one focusing on different aspects of his abilities.

The first book was about him defeating the school bully. The second comic was about him falling in love. And the third comic was about him retiring his old costume and becoming another hero (who had the ability to run really fast when he lit a string attached to his belt, and he could spit fireballs), overcoming a villain, and then retiring from being a superhero.

Stupid Man could fly, and apparently survive lots of physical pain (since he got cut by knives and swords, and occasionally flew into walls).

After that, I did a comic not unlike Batman, but it was about two characters who dress in the garb of Bat-men and fight crime in LA. They both lived in a hotel and had a "crime cave" underneath it, as well as a budget that allowed them to buy whatever tools they needed. I worked on this comic with my friend Kevin, and we sold it to people around the school. 75 issues were created in total, and the title changed at least once (LA was eventually destroyed and replaced by Omega City, which was ruled by one of the character's father). This comic was done in middle school, and was never finished.

In high school I did G-Man: The Defender of Food, which I'm slowly updating and getting ready for the web so I can do new adventures with these characters. They were done on lined paper, and followed the adventures of a slacker high schooler and his friend T-Man who were charged with protecting earth's supply of food. They beat up bully's who stole lunch money, and stopped aliens from stealing earth's supply of women and chocolate. They also stopped time-traveling clowns from throwing a giant pie at the earth in the future!

I stopped doing comics until late in college, but never stopped wanting to do them. I spend way too much money on comics at the store, too. ;)

Man I miss the old old days... :)

Man, I've been drawing ever since I was old enough to hold a pencil. I really can't remember any exact one to be certain... The first one I do remember was The Unknown Guy and The Dynamite Guy... my sister and I made them up. It basically featured a stickman and a stick of dnyamite that... chased each other and stuff. I'm pretty sure that there was stuff like that before, but I can't remember any of it.

However, since many of my old works border between comic and drawing, I guess it doesn't really matter anyway.

First comic: Hamster Island.
It was like My Little Ponies except it had hamsters with wings and rainbow colored fur instead of the ponies.

Second comic: Pokemon vs. (season 2) Digimon
Pikachu saw an episode of Digimon on TV and send them a flame email to the Digi world asking for a match
It had...
Mewtwo vs some megaform digimon (Mewtwo got stepped on)
Porygon2(because it's a digital pokemon) vs Gatomon (Porygon2 got lucky)
and
Pikachu vs evolved form of that orange dinosaur (Ash saves Pikachu and they have a draw)

well, I still have a couple of my old comics that I made when I was in like grade 3:P

The Stick. A stick man with spiky hair. nothing special.

I started my first, original superhero team series in 1980 and kept it going until 2001. I did the 2006 tribute final issue because I didn't like the first ending. And yes, this was a teensy bit giant robot-influenced! :) I really enjoyed doing this stuff (as you can probably tell) but I love doing Due East now.

And like Spacehamster, in my early efforts, I had my characters interacting with Marvel Comics characters like the X-Men and the Fantastic Four and even the Avengers. I did a separate comic that was my own fanfic version of Marvel's New Mutants, with a couple of my original characters as members of the team. Not a great idea but it was good for developing my writing skills.

I don't have any of my oldest stuff but the art below is from the superhero team comic I called "The AR-MEN." I did this as part of a farewell final issue late last year.





The whole 37 page issue (including two "blooper" pages) is online (and full-sized) here:
AR-MEN #147

the first comic i ever drew was a duel type comic (yu-gi-oh obssession) and it sucked. the characters had foot long necks, no ears, button noses, and crappy hairstyles.

a while later i tried a DBZ rip-off called Tensu Tenkai. i'll post some pages later.

i also done strike force 5, a superhero comic. it included Scalper (deadpool rip-off: you know how deadpool's tagline is the merc with the mouth? scalper's was the assassin with attitude), Shockro (Shocker), Blaize (human torch rip-off), Clawz (wolverine), Metalex (colossus), FireBird (Phoenix + Invisible Woman + ShadowCat), Me-Fisto (The Thing) and Wire (Cable rip-off)

this is the prologue for tensu tenkai. you can see why it's bad, can't you?



and here's some of the original characters from strike force 5.

dark link
this is the prologue for tensu tenkai. you can see why it's bad, can't you?

Tense Expansion LOL!

Reminds me of something... NSFW.

I had a 70 page spiral notebook when I was 8 or 9 that I filled with my rip-off JLA. They weren't necessarily rip offs of actual JLA members but the premise was that it was supposed to be like the JLA.

I also had another spiral note book of a character called Hyper-Active-Man! Eventually I started killing off characters in my JLA and Hyper-Active-Man joined the team.

Let's see I started several different concept works during the early 1980s. One was a fairly well hammered out daily strip cartoon featuring an apprentice sorcerer who was a total screw up in the magic department. Naturally he got assigned a job to do that was way above his skills level and hyjinks occurred.

The main reason I worked on it though was to master old-fashioned pen and ink drawing techniques. Pretty much as I recall, everything else I did was to enable myself to tackle and master a different aspect of art techniques.

It's sort of interesting what old memories this stirs into life.

My very first comics I drew back in 2004 will never see the light of day but I'll give you the premise:

3 kids in High School and a talking dog.

---

Why I did not shoot myself that day I will never know...