Hey there everyone! I'm here to talk about something us comic makers either love to do or loathe to do: killing our characters.
The way I see it is you're either a Beast Wars or an AEC. If you're a Beast Wars, then you accept that characters get killed in battle or for other reasons and you occassionally kill off a character (Terrorsaur and Depthcharge). If you're an AEC, then you will kill off characters, but for some reason or another you will probably bring them back in the same form or in a totally new body (Smokescreen/Hoist and Armada Starscream/Energon Starscream).
There is a third option, which I call Bleach. If you're a Bleach, then you NEVER kill the good characters, no matter HOW MANY TIMES THEY GET SLICED OR SHOT. This is a personal pet peeve of mine, because when you know the good guys have no chance of dying you realize the fights scenes are all worthless. And Bleach is full of those. >_>
So anyways, I personally find that killing off characters is necessary if you have a comic where there are any kind of serious good vs evil battles. Something like Puppylove's Comic Silliness obviously shouldn't have many (if any) character deaths.
As for my comic, I have already killed off a good chunk of my characters. As of right now the majority of them are alive again, and the only one still dead is Sharkticon, the star of the Sharkticomics.....and we'll see where that goes. :)
One of the problems I find that I'm having is that I'm too attached to my characters, and if I do kill them I always try to find a way to revive them. The time I killed the Animated Decepticons? They came back in less than 4 updates via the power of the Transmogrifier. The time I destroyed the dimension and all its inhabitants? The Matrix simply restored it. The time I killed Tuma and ShadowDragon? They were revived with the dimension. You can see my pattern here.
Another problem I'm having is that if I kill off a character at one point, what would I do later if I thought of a good joke that involved that character? I wouldn't be able to do it since that character is dead.
Another one is that I love my comic because it gives me another excuse to play with my toys. If I killed a figure, then I would have a reason NOT to play with that figure, and it would collect dust at the bottom of the storage bin where I sadly store my figures.
So while personally I have several problems involving me killing my characters, I realize that someday I need to kill one of them for good. Maybe a bad knock off or something. Or Acid Storm. :p
2 comments:
What if your killed off characters could act like a commentary or peanut gallery? like... speaking from within the matrix....
could be a good running gag as you keep killing off more characters... eventually have just this HUGE crowd of dead folks... might even create a spin-off series exclusive to the FFC forum!
-A.S.
Hey, sometimes a story calls for a character to be killed off. We may not necessarily like it, but if it helps move the story along...
What A.S. just said about having dead characters do a commentary of the comic reminds me of Shakugan no Shana -- in the anime, the first villain and his cohort were killed, but they were used for the "How and Why" segments of the anime. You can do something like that, if you want to.
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