Socialfist In The Making: The History

Way way back three years ago the world of the Internet was very different at least for me. For one, I read some horrible webcomics that I don't care to name. Fanboys also updated regularly. Kate Beaton was not getting discussed in newpapers. I didn't have the blog. I also was pretty naive about the Internet and the cultures that existed inside of it. I still am pretty naive to be honest but I understand enough to function inside of it.

I had recently moved towns across Ohio and was studying graphic design. I made friends with another student and we started making comics for a website called Sketchbattle. After two comics we stopped because I wrote really long scripts and they were not all that funny. When VG Cats had its holiday comic contest, we went and made a comic more complicated than it needed to be - we actually drew everything out when all we needed to do use clip art. We didn't place to our knowledge since Mr. Rasoomair never discussed winners besides the first place which was disappointing.

The contest rekindled and refocused the ideas we had. We'd not go ahead and simply write comics insulting people. We'd not make a video game strip. We would make a comic unlike anything we were aware of. A comic to take the webcomic world by storm.

The plan was to create a sort of parody X-men team. We decided to make the team Russian and to give all of the heroes horrible superpowers or ones that seemed stupid. We called the team Super Feudal Communist Russia Team Squad Now!. To be honest, the title was "somewhat" similiar to another cartoon show we were unaware of at the time called Super Robot Monkey Team Hyper Force Go!. In our defense though, the comic was on ABC Family. We liked the title and I came up with a list of Russian names with superpowers to go with them. The list included the following now-abandoned characters:

Robot-Stalin - Stalin's head on a robot body!

Aria - carries a cornucopia that summons snack food!

Konstiantinova - attacks with onomatopoeias turned into weapons!

Spera - able to smash beer cans!

Zach - able to turn 7up to club soda!

and

Pankrashka - able to barf acid from his butt! (That was actually what I wrote down.)

Needless to say many of the characters lack class and tact. It was going to be a series where the heroes would have a theme of the week. They would make jokes about Mongolia. The enemies would be characters like The Wiki, Super Hemophiliac and and Carbok the Destroyer. Adam drew an image of Robot Stalin and then stopped drawing the comic (http://majorca.deviantart.com/art/Robo-Stalin-53995984).

Since I had done the writing and concepts, I decided to continue with it and I went through a string of artists who did very little work as well. One quit after drawing two facial sketches and a few never kept up.

Eventually I asked a friend and trusted critic if he wanted to draw it and he blatantly told me he did not. He thought the idea was juvenile and it needed work. I was stunned and went to reconcept ideas. I went back and cut out heroes. I decided to plan out ideas. I decided to not write down my ideas at all. It was still a bit of progress.

At this time I finally reached college and posted offering money for illustration and I began the first revision of the comic. The artist, Iori Pic (http://iori-pic.deviantart.com/) was ready to do work so I sent my character ideas and he did the character concepts. I was honestly not sure what I was doing. I didn't want to complain about his work because I figured he knew more about comics than I did. He probably didn't but I never complained. Even when he purposefully put in a character design as a joke. I literally had to be coaxed by him to complain. He started drawing the comics though and I finally had content. Then after 11 pages, I stopped.

I have a lot of confidence in my art. I liked what I wrote when I originally write it. The problem here was the fact that I didn't know if it was good. I eventually linked my dad who I trust. We have similar senses of humor. He had no idea what was going on in the comic. I went back through and all of the "really good ideas" I had were just being strung together. I sent Iori an email to stop production - I had a rewrite to do. This time I planned out chapters and arcs. I looked into symbolism. I tried to be more professional. After 11 pages (done over several months) he was forced to quit due to work obligations.

I decided to revamp more. New character designs. New personalities. I was going for an epic restart. The work was hard and finding an artist was tedious. I finally have one though to consort with. I have a co-writer who will disagree with me. I also have a title now.

Socialfist is going to be amazing because of my failures, because I have matured and because it is a strong idea.

Over the next few weeks I will introduce characters, character designs at various stages and some of the ideas all while getting stories done and progressing more and more in the comic design.

Hopefully the next blog updates will be more frequent, I ended up watching all of Xmen Evolution on Hulu, all 52 episodes in about 24 hours. I think I have "earned" a rest.