What makes an epic comic?

A large archive?
Becoming very popular?
Being a fantasy genre?

JillyFoo
What makes an epic comic?

A large archive?
Becoming very popular?
Being a fantasy genre?

As long as the author is able to continue to manage cranking out pages of it.

A large archive I suppose.

However to have motivation to create a comic with a large archive may need external sources to motivate the author. Would you keep doing a comic if nobody reads it anyway?

Genre is not as important. So what if its fantasy and its got a huge background story into it like star wars or lord of the rings?

But if its 10 pages and it just stopped updating, its not 'epic'. lol!

Depends on your definition of "epic." Epic can mean either big/long (poetry especially) or dramatic and moving.

For me, I think of something epic as being especially intense. "Big" in terms of story and visual appeal moreso than number of pages. However, epic can simply refer to page numbers.

"Epic fantasy" is a different term altogether. It refers to a genre also called "high fantasy." High fantasy is a form of fantasy that takes place in an invented world/universe and/or contains a lot of fictional creatures, magic, etc. (As opposed to low fantasy, which is usually set in the real world with no invented species, where fantasy elements are rare but powerful.)

"Epic" has nothing to do with popularity.

To me, epics are defined by the scope of the story -- the heartbeat of the writing. Something can have a large archive of mundane or near-useless material that goes nowhere and does nothing, even if it is a popular fantasy piece. Fluff does not equal epic, even if it's good fluff. :)

Usually a very dire scenario that is wide in implementation, something that really makes the odds worth something -- an all or nothing gamble in a winding tale that is well-defined with well-defined characters and a beginning, middle and eventual end.

That's my Cliffs Notes definition of an epic comic... B)

kyupol

JillyFoo
What makes an epic comic?

A large archive?
Becoming very popular?
Being a fantasy genre?

As long as the author is able to continue to manage cranking out pages of it.

A large archive I suppose.

However to have motivation to create a comic with a large archive may need external sources to motivate the author. Would you keep doing a comic if nobody reads it anyway?

Genre is not as important. So what if its fantasy and its got a huge background story into it like star wars or lord of the rings?

But if its 10 pages and it just stopped updating, its not 'epic'. lol!

EPIC: extending beyond the usual or ordinary especially in size or scope

I find that it usually helps to begin these discussions with a definition. This is even though about half the time I happen to disagree with any official definition. Sigh!

If you are focusing on quality then fine artwork and fine story telling or fine joke telling have to come together. Then you consider the practical mechanics of the situation. Often some things early on demonstrate great potential but the artist fails to follow through and the effort dies with a whimper. You have to be a consistent artist and more or less produce the pages you say you are going to produce when you said you were going to produce them.

Yes, consistency is key, but then equally important are those other two elements I listed: art quality and story telling/joke telling ability - depending on which sort of work you are producing.

In theory you can have an epic simply because you have loads of stuff on line and you very nearly never miss a deadline. But that's NOT what made the most famous online comics or cartoons epics. If their art work had been cruddy or the story-telling or joke telling stunk then they would never have gained a huge following and equally huge reputations.

I'm saying this, mind you, when I pretty much have to hold my nose to read almost any popular sequential art work that's making its home on the internet. They aren't doing anything wrong though, I'm just super hard to please in some respects and even among cartoonists I have strange tastes.

What makes an epic work, in my opinion, is understanding how and why good story telling or good joke making works. If you really don't understand the fundamentals of your craft then you are unlikely to craft an epic anything. The fundamentals also include knowing when and how to use unusual camera angles and special effects to help tell the story or deliver the joke. You don't have to be perfect at everything, but you do need to have a fair understanding of how everything works in concert to advance your goals.

In literature, an epic is something fairly large scale in scope that contains enough drama and wisdom of the day to inform while entertaining the reader and hitting them in the heart or between the eyes on a fairly regular basis. An epic in the classic sense has a beginning and a middle and an ending and the characters usually change in some respect over time. An epic usually deals with large issues and the vital questions of the day and somehow pits good against evil in powerful ways.

Something like the Star Wars series - for all its major faults - is an epic work, and ditto for The Lord of the Rings, Beowulf , The Iliad and the Odyssey, and many Japanese movies and stories are also grand epics. MOST sequential art efforts fall short of the mark.

This is only natural, though, as usually there is only one or two epics produced per generation.

A great plot, and lots of updates.

Is werewolf an epic?

I tried to use the quest template and involve allusions to other works, but the idea that it was an epic never hit me until just now. It started off with that "every page could work on its own" idea from penis, but after about three pages in you can't really just walk into it.

I've tried to look up epics, but the best I could find was epic films from wikipedia. I'm trying to do an over the top and overarching story for werewolf.

Over in penis on fridays, the pothead snowman could be considered a parody of long running epics. Especially since the main character is such a barbarian type rouge who become king at a later point. I'd hoped for it to hit just about ever genre at some point, right now its a space opera, but in a few weeks it will be all about running a kingdom. I started the story off small about two months ago, and now its snowballing into other directions. Characters are separated and going off on their own paths, its going to become bigger than it it is now. But at the end of the day its just lame jokes with one of the worst characters ever as its star. Which in itself, is a joke.

In truth I think you have to be very deliberate in creating an epic of any sort. I roughly know what goes into the making of an epic but could not produce such a work myself because I haven't the endless patience necessary nor the tolerance for painstaking attention to detail required for such work.

Another epic work is The Belgariad saga novels by David Eddings. Or perhaps I should be cautious here and speak of it as a near epic, in the same way that the Star Wars movie saga is more truly a near epic than a genuine epic in the classic sense.

The reason that I bring up both works is that they were each deliberately and cynically crafted to BE epic works. Technically each meets the requirements of an epic work and yet each exhibits some aspects of shallowness or artificiality. Of course in the case of Star Wars, the work is simply so riddled with technical problems and plot holes that it entered the epic category only through sheer size and scope of the project itself.

Anyway, I'm not really going anywhere with this. It's just that an epic work is very complex, has multiple levels of stories weaving throughout it and it somehow effects to change the reader or audience to some extent by the time it ends.

The definition is simple. Read the comic and try and imagine there being epic background music going with it such as lord of the rings music or something. If it fits, the comic's epic.

My comic is clearly epic.

I've certainly never thought of "epic" as being limited to any one genre or having anything to do with popularity. Most generally accepted epics do tend to be lengthy (think of books like War and Peace or movies like Lawrence of Arabia) so, in comic terms, a large archive could be an indication that something is "epic" but it's not really the deciding factor. The archives for something like Peanuts, for example, must be huge but I think you'd have trouble convincing people it's epic.

Somebody else has already mentioned "scope" and, for my money, I'd say that's at the heart of it. An epic storyline will usually feature intense human drama against the background of some major political/historical upheaval in a way that gives a real insight into both.

I doubt if there are many comics (web or print, mainstream or indie) that could be classified as truly epic.

I would consider the cartoon series Avatar to be epic. A grand adventure encompassing a whole world in order to achieve some goal and having mucho mucho characterization/development.

I am attempting to make an epic tale myself. After Avatar came out I decided to use it's story telling formula for my comic. Though you can't really tell in the 1st 6 issues since they are more "run on" comics. I still tried to make each issue it's own unique event.

DAJB
Somebody else has already mentioned "scope" and, for my money, I'd say that's at the heart of it. An epic storyline will usually feature intense human drama against the background of some major political/historical upheaval in a way that gives a real insight into both.

I hope I do all the above well enough for people to think my comic is kinda epic down the road =P

Good input guys.

The only comic I've ever heard of that they called "epic" was BONE.

Is there any other comics that are epic?

So basically some of you guys think webcomics can't be epic? I guess I understand that webcomics or maybe normal comics too can't be epic like Lord of the Rings or Star Wars.

I thought an 'epic' story usually has a big war scene in it? XP

I would say Watchmen or most other of Alan Moore work's to be epic.
It a sense of development and adventure.

Yep, "epic" when it refers to stories, which it should, refers to the scope: a WIDE scope.

It has nothing to do with updates, or anything superficial like that unless you're using the term in one of its secondary meanings... Like talking about a big porject or something. But yeah, that's not really an "epic" lol! Not at all.

A webcomic can be an epic, any story can if it uses that sort of scope. There are lots out there like that. Pinky TA for one :)
But it's hardly unique in that respect. And remember, "epic" doesn't make something good or bad, it's only a description of the scope. If your story encompasses more of the world and the events in that world than simply the smaller ones surrounding your characters alone, then that's a good indicator. ;)

SarahN
I thought an 'epic' story usually has a big war scene in it? XP

That would be every war movie that I watched.

Or are guns not allowed in epic movies?

I think that violence is almost a mandatory requirement in the epic formula; but not just violence for the sake of violence. The violence of war or merely the inclusion of a back alley mugging scene has to in itself be a vehicle for conveying deeper meaning.

In Lawrence Block's old Matthew Scudder novel Eight Million Ways to Die there is a passage wherein the protagonist has cause to enter an alley. He gets mugged but manages to turn the tables on his attacker and winds up deliberately and graphically breaking the attackers knees so that the man can't come after him again nor will, in the future, take any more victims in that manner.

Okay, not only was this a clever reversal of a typical mugging scene but it spoke volumes by way of social and ethical and even moral insights into rules of conduct and human nature. This is one thing that war or battle scenes in epics do, they examine or lay bare the roots of human nature and the artificial patina of civilization and rules through which nations or armies fight their battles, and do so in order to deliberately invite further examination.

In this respect, among others, Pinky TA is running along the lines of an epic and may eventually achieve that status. If OzoneOcean's grand work is ever utilized to torment media majors via required analysis then we will know that he crafted an epic.

Haha, but you're still looking at the term is regards to "quality", rather than a descriptive device.

"Epic" fantasy isn't always good, and war "epics" aren't either, but they're still "epics" because of the scope of events they portray. War and Peace isn't "epic" because it's literature, long, or because it's thoughtful writing, you'd call it an "epic" because of the wide range of events it portrays. The same goes for something like Gone with The Wind. You only tend to have battle in "Epic" stories for the same reason you have violence in any story: dramatic events, except that because they paint the world on a bigger canvas, the violence becomes much, much larger: a war.

As I say though, plenty of really crappy stories are written on an "Epic" scale, so it really, truly isn't a label you give to something just because you think it's good lol!
Nonnononononono. If you're thinking in those terms, then you're reinventing the use of the word.

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Some webcomics that could be described as "epic" because of their scope: The Gods of Arr-Kelaan, The Order Of The Stick, and Alpha Shade.

Think of it this way: In an epic work the action and story doesn't just focus on the lead characters, but wider events also occurring in their world. Or, the actions in which the lead characters are involved are world changing...

If you were to write about the world of a fish tank and everything that happened inside that little place, with the little fishes as characters, that'd be great, but what'd make it an "epic" is if one of those character went outside of that world, or if you were to also write about The world OUTSIDE the tank and how what was happening out there affected the smaller world of the tank. heh, I don't know if that's a good example or not :P

Example Pirates of Caribbean

You're right OzoneOcean, I do sort of failsafe on quality, or the idealized concept of an epic work. The thing is like that old saw issued by whereupon he stated something along the lines of not being able to define the term 'pornography' but knowing it when he sees it. I think that pretty much the same thing is happening with the term EPIC.

Well, let's drop gears a bit to consider the classic novel Moby Dick as falling under the term CLASSIC. Altogether now, "Gag me with a spoon!" Yeah, I'm not a big fan of the Herman Melville novel.

Consider that the novel begins with a character "Call me Ismael," as the protagonist and then soon drops him - without a word of explanation - after you've more or less got hooked enough to want to read more. What was this but being too damn lazy to re-write the beginning? How in the hell did such a botched work become a literary classic? That caveat aside, at least half of the tome is dedicated to the freaking biology of the whale! What a travesty of literature to call this thing a classic worthy of serious study.

Yet it IS a legitimate classic literary work and does deserve at least passing study. By any reasonable definition of readibility it should be struck from the list and yet the emotionally ravaged captain against force of nature whale story is compelling ; and the captive crew is also a compelling study. For better or for worse the reader is there, enduring what the crew is enduring; alternatively admiring and deriding the insane captain; alternatively admiring and fearing the awesome great white whale. The ocean itself is a living part of nature in this novel, as well, and merits it's own admiration and derision or fear.

Flawed though it is - and oh my God, but is it flawed! - Moby Dick does deserve the term 'literary classic,' and so do the works of literature, film, and web-comics that have received the label of epic. Why? It's frequently difficult to pinpoint the why, to be honest, but we know it when we see it.

So it goes.

Anything clever, but new.

what makes a comic epic? thats easy...


Boobs

I think for a comic to even be considered in the running for 'epic' is must contain talking martial-arts practicing rabbits.

My rules, I make them up!

I think CharleyHorse nailed the basic idea down. A sure way to know something is not epic is when something claims to be epic.

Obviously, there are exceptions, but when someone like Rob Liefeld says this next mini-series is going to be EPIC, don't believe it.

Nadya as a comic is deceitful. You'd think it's about death, and returning back to life. But things in the plot move and shift to the point where there're many more layers to what one would think is simple and straight-forward.

That's what I think is epic. When something is looked at from a small scope at first, but it's actually looking at something immense. I hope I'm making sense.

Warning! Shameless plug ahead:

I refer to my own comic as epic. I even wrote a tutorial about it.
http://www.drunkduck.com/tutorials/view.php?id=68

To me, epic is big. Really really big. Lotta characters, lotta plot twists, lotta locations. A story that spans generations is always good. Death and love and betrayal.

Big.

Epics have:

Blood

Landscapes/Scenery

Visual Dazzle

Masses of soldiers

Deaths of major characters

These things alone do not define an epic, but I think they're key ingredients. They're why Frank Miller's "The Dark Knight Returns" and "300" are epics, while his "DK2" is not.

DK2 doesn't have the right ingredients. It's like trying to bake a pie without using butter. Doesn't work.

The old John Wayne film "The Alamo" and David Lean's "Lawrence of Arabia" are epics by default, because they contain so many of the above ingredients.

I also consider "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan" epic for the same reasons...compare it to "Star Trek IV"--a very likeable, well-made film, but no epic bits and pieces. It ends with Shatner playfully dunking Nimoy in the water tank.