Thread "Ever shocked by your old comics?" in forum "Comic Talk and General Discussion *"

Posted at 5:12AM, Dec. 12, 2022

Not so much at the art, but the writing.

I started working on a small comic recently that was based on an idea i had over a decade ago. I still have the initial sketches from then lying around… and my god, it's Sonic the Edgehog levels of angsty writing.

I was in a very, very dark place back then, haha. Pretty much every character is an irredeemable, selfish bastard. There's death and mutilation on every page, betrayal, abuse, rape, drugs, any kind of human cruelty you can imagine. It's uh, embarassing to say the least.

(Now that is not to say i lost my edge completely. I still delight in bastardish characters, and diving into the abyss of the human soul. But i am much more prone to even it out with a lot of emotional scenes. And genuinely kind-hearted characters. I guess it's a refelction of my own growth as a person.)

So yeah, anyone else have that occasional moment of "Jeez, wtf was wrong with me?"

Posted at 6:12AM, Dec. 12, 2022

When I look back at older writing I usually marvel at how it was much more clever than I remembered it being and I marvel at the complexity of the art.

And so I don't sound conceited: The art was complex for me and the writing was clever for me.
To anyone else it probably seems probably awkward and basic.

Posted at 1:12PM, Dec. 13, 2022

I write everything to be a comic I would like to read…but when I read it back it's so cringe I melt into my shoes. Haha! So I guess I can't be upset when no one else reads my comics if I can't even do it! So yeah, I'm with you.

…on pretty rare occasions, though, there'll be a page or a line here or there where I'm like "huh…I don't hate it." and those are the ones that really surprise me.

All that aside, I wouldn't worry about it, OP. You kind of HAVE to do that sort of thing in order to move beyond it. No one's good at anything right out the gate, but you can't improve until you start, and we all have that edgelord phase.

Posted at 12:03PM, Mar. 22, 2023

I'm surprised I haven't seen this thread before, but I do have to say, not so much my comics, but I do have experiences like this when I look back on some of my older examples of writings, such as fanfics, or even original stories, and mainly because there were two elements that I had a tendency to overuse in my writing: dream sequences and (dated) pop culture references. The latter of which does tend to embarass me moreso, because that usually is a sign of poor writing anyway: sure, it may make your writing seem "hip" and "with it" at the time, but eventually, those pop culture references will become dated as whatever it is in pop culture you were referencing fades away from relevance, even as soon as a year or two, which itself ages your writing like spoiled milk rather than a fine wine, which, of course, doesn't help in giving your writing a "timeless" quality that makes it feel like it could happen in any time period.

As for dream sequences, admittedly, the reason I did this a lot was because I personally enjoy trying to get into the characters' heads and explore their psyche and inner selves a little more in order to try to bring and add a little more depth to them that the canon's source material perhaps doesn't necessarily provide, and dreams always seem like an interesting place to do this: after all, they say that the two things that comprise the majority of our dreams are our biggest wishes and our biggest fears, so again, exploring the characters through their dreams seems to me like an excellent place to really peel away with their layers. The thing of it is, I had a tendency to this a little too frequently to the point that it almost felt more like a gimmick than anything . . . and what's really ironic is that I used to do this with Alvin and The Chipmunks fanfics I wrote a long time ago, but eventually, when that newer CGI series on Nickelodeon came out, there was one particular season where Alvin having some kind of anxiety-induced dream sequences had practically became a once-an-episode thing, and in that case, it really did feel like it was an overused gimmick to the point that it felt like beating a dead horse.

So yeah, unless either of these things are going to be used specifically to set up and/or pay off some kind of joke or gag (depending on the context), I usually try to avoid either of these in any of my writing at all costs now.

Posted at 10:03PM, Mar. 29, 2023

not Shocked so much as embarrassed!
I feel like I have to fix everything but nobody in the world has time for that.

Posted at 3:03AM, Mar. 30, 2023

Sometimes I feel like my skill level had never ginger up. I took a long break, like at least 7 years. That didn't help. Since then I've probably drawn about 1200 pages of "practice" sketches. But sometimes I look back at my older work and think " that was better" part of the problem is I have a lot less free time now and put more emphasis on speed.