How To Create Historical Comics Part 2

So now we’re here. After the previous article going over the background information on how to create a historical comic, we now will get to the meat and potatoes of the subject! In this part, we will talk about the visuals, the plot, and the characters that will make up your comic.

So let’s start!

There is existing documentation available for comic creators to take advantage of when getting ready to plan out the visuals like the setting, the populace, fashion, and more for the historical era they plan on depicting.

As a comic creator trying to create a historical comic with great, engaging, or accurate visuals you will want to use:

• Photos
• Art and
• Literary Descriptions

These available resources will make it possible to give the visual aspect of your comic that extra kick.

There are two ways that you can create historical comics with a focus on story, and that is with either a focus on tangential or enactment in mind.

What do I mean when I say that you can tangentially educational historical comics? By basing a comic’s story with references to real events, people, battle formations, etc, you can make your readers interested enough to go and do the research on your original source materials themselves.

These references can be:

• Visual (i.e. illustrating the battle formation from Hannibal’s battle of Cannae)
• Oral (someone says or thinks it about the event’s similarity or inspiration)
• Plot (i.e. take the series of events from a particular battle or another event in history and write it into a different setting with characters with the same or different names and roles.

You can enforce a tangential learning experience with the use of writers or editors notes to the source materials used, adding a bibliography at the beginning and or end of your comic can help. Alternatively, maybe creating a webpage explaining the research behind your comic and encouraging readers to check it out. An idea like this can also lead to a new point by which fans of history can come across your work and be interested in purchasing it. Keep that in mind!

The alternative to creating tangential historical comics is to make a historical comic that does its best to accurately enact all aspects of your research in its work. You take the time to display every little intricacy behind a particular battle or another event in history. If you need an idea of what this might look like, consider checking out people that enjoy reenacting historical battles for fun.

When trying to create historical comics, the characters can be a little tough to handle well. The main reason being, there are not many records that outline an individual in history’s thoughts and intentions. Most likely, any conclusions laid out in these regards are deduced by taking in a variety of factors into account like religion, culture, education, and more. However, it is still nothing more than an educated guess.

With that in mind, you can always find people with varying opinions on what may have been affecting and directing a character’s actions, emotions, and mental state before during, and after any particular event in history.

What you want to take into consideration when it comes to characters in a historical comics is:

• Dialogue
  • Are there any accurate records of what these characters said?
• Surrounding Events
  • Battles
  • Location of generals or advisors
  • Speed and dependability of communication of the time
  • State of the population (availability of resources, religion, economical imbalance, etc)
  • Upbringing
  • Experience
• Varying opinions on their thoughts and state of mind
  • You want to have something to compare
• Appearance
  • What did they look like
  • What did they carry around for equipment
  • Habits
  • When, and if, did they have a disability or a wound.

One way to avoid inaccuracies with the main plot or character design and development is to not make them the main character in your story. You can make the focus of your story take on a tangential approach by creating background character (more than one is up to you) with whom you have control and more liberties toward their thoughts and opinions, but react to the environment and choices of historical figures and events.

Well, this sure has been a topic that I had fun writing about.

So now you have a good idea of how you can begin to create your first historical comic! Everything from the visuals, plot, and character design and development.

On a side note, I swear that if I ever end up turning Unknown Comics into a publishing company I’ll make an effort to fund the production of historical comics. I feel like these would be a lot of fun while being very educational to their readers.

If you know of any historical comics that you enjoyed please leave a comment below!