Is making fan comics a bad idea?

Guest post by Genejoke

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In the time I've been making comics, until recently that is, I'd never made a fan comic. It's something I've considered but always felt more comfortable doing my own thing, much like Banes talked about in his newspost a couple of weeks back.

That changed during lockdown as I watched loads of star trek. I found myself really getting into the lore and background, and the new trek shows have left me a little unsatisfied. I wanted to know more about what happened after voyager and wasn't overly keen on some of the story elements in Picard. After digging into the lore and getting inspired by a two part story in voyager I decided to make a comic that hopefully fills that gap.

It occurred to me that working on something with so much established lore and a dedicated fan base I felt I had a duty to do it justice. I didn't want to just play in the sandbox, or revisit characters, but to do something both new and familiar and stay faithful to the source as if I was making an official star trek project.

It's a large undertaking, I know the lore somewhat but it's so expansive, there's 50 years of history to the show, there's unfilmed scripts, abandoned projects, official books and comics. Where do I draw inspiration from? Where do I stop researching?

I've watched every star trek film and TV show and I've read wiki pages about show canon and the expanded media. I've played a little star trek online and read more about it. I've read numerous online sources for information on ships and watched a hell of a lot of YouTube videos about trek lore and the ships and I think that's about enough, beyond checking specific things as and when required.
It has been an absolute joy doing it. Even though I'm not building the world, it feels like world building. Taking all the bits of lore, official and unofficial and fitting it all together to get my starting point.

It started with a collection of vague ideas, all pulled from the star trek shows. There's a vast galaxy and a wealth of unexplored ideas, what could I add to that? During research I finalised the concept and began writing.
Anyone that has read my comics knows full well my output is a far cry from star trek. Full of gore, swearing, horror and god knows what else. Writing something so different has been a fantastic learning experience. It's forced me to approach writing differently from my usual free form approach.
There's been a similar effect on how I approach designs as well.
All in all it has been a fantastic journey so far and I'm glad I decided to make a fan comic rather than create a homage.

Is it better to make fan comics or your own thing? No doubt there are many pros and cons to both.
Ultimately I think going your own way has more going for it, however I hope some of you find my experience of it an interesting counterpoint.

Have any of you made fan comics? What sort of response has it had from other fans of the source material?

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Thanks to Genejoke for this Newspost you can read his Star Trek comic, Albion here:

https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/Albion/