Idea for a comic book
 

First of all, sorry for posting this in Literature, but it seemed like the best place for it to go. I came up with a concept for a new comic, and I wanted some feedback before I start drawing it. It's pretty developed, and I have som e ideas for the plotline. I'm thinking of titling it "Penny Dreadfuls", the main character is called Penny.
It takes place in an art school, run by a group of officious bureacrats who have no knowledge of art, and seem to despise their pupils, Penny in particular. Although it's a school, the place has the appearance of an abandoned prison camp. The main character is a student at this school. It's suggested that she used to be a brilliant portrait artist, before "realising" the insignificance of her work, and that no-one actually cared about her paintings. This has driven her insane, and she now devotes herself to her "new project", a collection of gruesome paintings containing human blood, mutilated dolls and other far more disgusting things. The reason she gives for this is that people have been desensetised, and the only way to make them feel something is to shock and horrify them. Although it's implied that she uses the blood and internal organs of others in her artwork, she is never actually shown committing any acts of violence. She is repeatedly expelled from the school, (once because of the "glue gun incident"), but is reluctant to leave.
The other main character is Penny's best, and seemingly only friend, another student named Dee. She hates the people who run the school, and is generally aggressive to most people other than Penny. She creates wonderful still life painting, but usually ends up destroying them in a fit of rage. Despite this, she is often presented as penny's "light" side, and it's occasionally sugested that one is merely the figment of the other's imagination. There is also a female janitor, who is convinced that Penny and Dee are evil, and often tries to destroy their various pieces.

So yeah, some feedback would be great. As soon as I finish the first story, I think I'm going to post it on **********.

Sorry but your story has no direction.

Keep it simple.

What's the basic premise? I cannot be bothered to skim through your collection of poorly devised plot narratives.

Ah, sorry, I meant to post this under Literature. Oh well.

Answer the question:

What's the basic premise?

If you change the concept slightly it could be worth reading.

It wont be worth reading though because:

A) He's not even formally educated
B) He's not read enough literature
C) He's a retard.

Anyone can come up with a plot or a concept, that's easy.

This idea will just end up like the millions of over poorly written pieces of trash that clutter the internet. Akin to Fanfiction.

Good point, I never looked at it from this perspective. It's going to end up on the black hole shelf of the internet along with cheesy poems, bad comics and crap novels...

I'd honestly have to see it to tell you if its a good idea or not. Some of my favourite comics have the weirdest premise to them but they're written and drawn so well it pulls it off. If its a detailed plan and you know where you want to take it and how to end it, then draw what you can and let us see ^_^

Is this to be a series or a one shot graphic novel sort of thing? I think it would make a good graphic novel but I'm not sure it would sustain itself over a series.

A) Last time I checked, I was female.
B) I have read plenty of literature.
C) I am not mentally disabled, I have a certificate to prove it.

As for the premise, it's mainly about creative people struggling against the oppressive systems that claim to be educating them, while trying to preserve their imagination and talent. That's about it really, but there are other subplots I'm trying to work into it.

Why are you idiots even attempting to offer encouragement? To get your post count up? To trick yourselves into thinking you're nice people?

The idea is terrible. Everyone on this forum that comes up with ideas for "novels", "comics" or "screenplays" will never get it done.

Want to know why?

Because they're all teenagers who don't understand how the fuck the world works.

HumanPain is an exception - he's middle aged and calls himself a "writer". That's cheap - he's not a writer, he isn't even published. Simply writing for internet forums does not make you a writer, nor does having a youtube account entitle you to the title "director".

Sort your fucking heads out and inject a little reality people.

It's all getting a little pathetic.

Well obviously they’re going to struggle. You can’t teach creativity.

Exactly - the bitch can't even fathom the art world. I doubt she's even been invited to a private art show, or even knows what art school she belongs to.

I blame Deviant Art and myspace - it has given the most mediocre and unworthy of individuals a sense of unwarranted self-improtance.

'Brave New World' springs to mind.

Yes, but that's true of all things. Once you make something available to the masses it gets polluted with mediocrity, or even worse, horrifically boring work.

Yes, it’s pointless to make a comic about such a matter, because there’s nothing there to make a comic about. As I said, creativity cannot be taught, so they’re bound to struggle “trying to preserve their imagination and talent”, so what? Hmm I’m not sure exactly how to explain it, but that’s just how it is and you can’t get any points across. What I mean is the comic will have no purpose or conclusion.

Also I think your plot sounds rather tacky. It seems as though you have forced madness and gore/eeriness into it, just because you want to write about madness and gore/eeriness. It is rather difficult to master subjects such as madness etc, authors such as Roald Dahl and Edgar Allan Poe however have mastered it well, but you have thrown them together without any care creating a tacky combination, whereas flamboyance and class is needed.

This is a good point, but I think she should still try it anyway. You don't get good at something unless you practice, and you learn just as much from failing as you do from succeeding. So to do this as a hobby and to practice comic writing? I think she should go for it. Just don't expect it to be the next Crow ^_^

Don't be so pathetic.

Young people should just keep their head in the dirt , grow up and get a personality worthy of attention.

Helpman are you always such a bitter twisted cunt? Get yourself a life and stop being so hateful. They say that people who are always hateful do so because they hate themselves and im starting to think that this might actually be true. all you do is go around putting people down because your own life has no value to it, and so write everyone off as trash just because you yourself cant do anything.

I'm sorry, that idea is simply ridiculous. I can't suspend my disbelief THAT far.

You're not worthy of attention, but you spend years seeking it.
Either way, horrible plot - into the trash!

Garbage. Sounds like something written in an attempt to get back at an art teacher for giving you a well deserved poor grade on a project.

It's simply not the way art schools work. Utterly unbelievable and scattered.

You're a hypocrite:

Live by your own pescriptions "darling" - trying to forge a personality for yourself are we? Trying to get involved and yet seem detatched at the same time?

Don't even bother.

PS - Thanks for being a fan "sweetheart"...

"xxx"

For the record, the lowest grade I ever recieved on a project was an A-. And I know that's not how art schools work, it's fiction . Anyway, if you're not mature enough to actually give me some constructive feedback, then there's no point listening to your bitchy rants.

Lowest grade in what? "High School"?

Come back when you've done something in university and then trump your grades dumbass.

Hate to break it to ya but there is nothing that makes your concept stand out from being like all the other goth comics out there. And I believe there is already a character (at least in stationary, anyway) named Penny Dreadful.

An art school that looks like a prison?
Paintings of human blood?
An art student depressed because no one cares about her paintings?
She is "repeatedly expelled from school" as in, more than once?
She can't be taken out?
An equally misanthropic foil character?
A janitor antagonist?

Why lie and pretend it's good?

I wasn't going to give this plot another thought but some ideas just popped into my head. They're probably worthless because I suspect anything that arrives so easily is cliche but it may help. In fact, 90% of everything is just reworked cliche so maybe you can make this work if you twist the formula enough.

Rather than making it an art school run like a prison, make it a insane asylum run like an art school. The story takes place in a post-collapse dystopian future and Penny is a ward of the state who keeps coming back to the nuthouse because she has nowhere else to go until she can graduate and prove she's not insane. The main form of therapy at the nuthouse is some cheesy art therapy because the guy who runs it isn't a real shrink but some moron puffed up on self-help books and art therapy. He's like a combination of Dr. Phil and Hitler (remember Hitler was an artist who said anyone who paints the grass blue and the sky green should be killed and Dr. Phil and Hitler have the same mustache and like to scream at people). Also make this guy a fan of mainstream art, empty pop culture and old Victorian gothic novels so we see that his whole "art therapy" depends upon either making Penny into a member of the mainstream or making her act out her illness like a gothic heroine (because that sort of emotionally disturbed female is the only type he understands). This gives you room to indulge in all the cliches of those things while being able to claim it as parody.

Scrap the idea that Penny was put into the nuthouse after some sort of collapse and change in her art. Simply say that she grew up there because she's a ward of the state with nobody to take her. This would also make her rebellion seem more authentic since it comes from within and comes spontaneously without outside influences. Penny's art and rebellion reveal that there is something wrong with the school's methods, which have not been questioned until now. What makes it worse is that people who graduate from the school tend to come back as teachers, thus reinforcing the same bogus concepts (shades of Bronte's Jane Eyre!) Other students either become brainwashed to the teacher's POV or merely fake it by painting some bland mainstream still lifes to get out of the place but Penny refuses to do that.

Make the janitor a male instead of female and make him a parody of the friendly janitor in The Breakfast Club and the rebellious janitor in Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit video. Read Cobain's journals where he developed the character of the rebellious old man who secretly sympathizes with the punk rockers in the video (something that was cut from the final version).

It's still cliche after these changes, but now you can play the parody aspect anytime it seems too predictable. I suspect this angle had already occured to you merely because you named the character Penny Dreadful.

BTW: You owe me 15% since I'm a writer and all. Muahahaha!!

That's equally stupid, just in a slew of different ways.

No psyche ward would put any sort of effort into how they dress up their facility. You've actually made the plot into even more of a train wreck right up there with My Immortal.

The story is a hodgepodge of cliche's and antisocial bullshit. Scrap it.

To summarize this thread:
ALL AND ALL YOU'RE JUST ANOTHER BRICK IN THE WALL.

It's a comic by a teenage girl who cites Jhonen Vasquez and Tim Burton in her intro thread. Whatdidja expect?
It's gonna be cliché.

Are you responding to my post? I thought I was on 'ignore'.

Ets take a pill, to chill...

This has already been done. It was a movie called Art School Confidential.

Not a particularly bad movie, just not good. It's like the movie couldn't decide whether it wanted to be a comedy or a serious drama, so it sorta got stuck in-between.