PixelNomad

I want to write a comic book about a superhero in his 20s who comes from a very wealthy family but my friend says its stupid. Should I give up?

https://sopuli.xyz/post/42597772

I want to write a comic book about a superhero in his 20s who comes from a very wealthy family but my friend says its stupid. Should I give up? - Sopuli

I’m writing a story about a biracial superhero. He’s in his 20s, and his dad is a Black billionaire. His mom is Japanese, and she comes from a wealthy family. I don’t want to give too much away, but there is something about his family’s history that resurfaces, and it connects to his powers. He is basically trying to find out what it is. My friend says the story is stupid and no one would want to read it.

Mar 14 at 10:38pmWeb
Show threadSanctusMar 14
A wealth superiority comic does sound dumb as fuck, your friend is right in thag capacity.
Show threadboatswainMar 15
Yeah, surely nobody would ever like Batman… /s
Show threadSanctusMar 15
Yeah but that comic exists already. OP probably has cool ideas that don’t rewuire every character being wealthy. I would bet the wealth is used to excuse why they can explore this instead of beung an integral part to the character, thats exactly how batman uses it.
Show threadSolumbran6d ago

The fact that people like batman is a problem.

If you think that everyone should do what works without any concern about what is right, that’s your issue.

Show threadParagone6d ago

Diversity exists in all kinds of dimensions, even values.

That is what the human-category of life is for: exploring interactions between different kinds of human-category-meanings, including values.

( souls not interested in catching-in human-category-lives can catch in other kinds of lives, obviously, & most do )

Humankind couldn’t outgrow the overly-simplistic 1950’s-America pseudoreality until they EXPERIENCED it.

The same is true of ALL human-category meanings.

Some have to experience being a monster, & then reap the karma of what they had “sown”, to use the terms of the root-guru of the Christians, before that-soul/continuum can viscerally understand valuing-others.

Once the consequences have happened on them enough .. then they’ll understand.

Without actually-experiencing it, though, how could visceral-learning be?

All the people who hold that “you don’t need to face what’s in your unconscious: just maintain acceptable-appearances, & be the appearances, & then everything’ll be fine” want inauthentic meaning, inauthentic-realization-of-a-soul’s-meaning.

IF a soul/continuum has being-a-horrible-monster in its nature, & it wants to explore that, THEN all it has to do is catch-in a world where monsters are currently happening, & then explore that meaning.

There are countless worlds, in the endless-stream-of-universes..

some are currently hellworlds, some currently paradises, some in between.

The majority of the souls who’ve caught in this-world’s human-category-lives want ideological-reacting instead of upright correct-reasoning.

So?

IF that’s what humankind wants .. THEN it’s humankind’s right to persue enforcing ideological-reacting, until humankind’s extinguished from this world.

Then humankind’s “entitlement” will have no “home”, & universe won’t care.

Then those-souls .. will have to try again, on some other world.

Endlessly, forever, until they grow-up.

Endless-stream-of-universes is perfectly efficient & effective, & has NOTHING to do with “religion”.

It’s just a mechanism in-which souls explore meanings.

Souls currently caught-in the lives of monsters, on worlds that are having those, included.

Why would it be “a problem” for others to have other values?

Ideological-homogeneity may be your idea of heaven, but MOST of the world doesn’t want to be homogeneous with you or me.

If that’s your idea of “a problem”, then too bad.

Salut, Namaste, & Kaizen,

_ /\ _

Show threadSolumbran6d ago

Or, you know.

Humans are a bunch of savage monkeys, and it’s up to them to make up rules that enforce what is best for everyone, and morals do that. And if you sacrifice morals to follow an illusion of success, then that’s a problem and I’m going to call you on it.

I don’t believe in the idea that “if most people want shit then let them have it”.

Kids want to eat kilos of candies, yet you don’t let them eat it and die. Well it’s the same with humans. If a majority is having shit values or morals, then you need to educate them, not let them be. The idea of letting things be is what led to things like the nazis, where no one wanted to oppose them until half of their country was invaded.

And understanding things without experiencing is called empathy, and it’s a trainable skill. Which also needs to be enforced upon people. It’s crazy to me that prehistoric humans were having more empathy than current humans, even though we now have thousands of years of philosophy behind us.

All in all, we need to stop being so complacent about others being shitty, and start enforcing rules and safeguard that force people to be held to a certain moral standard. That’s how we’ll evolve.

Show threadsouthsamuraiMar 14

Why are they saying it’s stupid?

The idea is solid, if not exactly new territory in terms of the rich young superhero thing.

So, if that’s what they’re griping about, screw 'em.

If they’re saying that trying to create a comic at all is stupid, they’re stupid. Nothing wrong with a creative endeavour, though if you aren’t realistically planning ahead on how to make it happen, that would be pretty stupid. Anyone can do their own thing if they have the talent to actually crank out the art and writing (most people struggle with one or the other tbh). But getting it published is a very difficult proposition. Indie artists struggle like hell, even if they do their own site and distribution.

So, if you haven’t planned that far ahead, they might be right that your plan is stupid.

However, if you’ve actually gotten some pages done, and they’ve read it and think it’s stupid, it comes down to how much you value their opinion about comics. Being real, some people’s opinions are shit on a given subject, so if theirs are known to be bad, then fuck 'em. But if they tend to have reliable quality takes on comics (or the craft that goes into them), maybe they’re right, no way for us to know.

But nah man, there’s nothing stupid about this kind of project in and of itself. Nor is the basic concept stupid.

Show threadsolrizeMar 15

But getting it published is a very difficult proposition. Indie artists struggle like hell, even if they do their own site and distribution.

Getting retail distribution beyond your locale is difficult, making a profit is very difficult, but publishing in its own right is quite easy ;).

Show threadDagwoodIIIMar 14

All stories are stupid.

It’s the writers’ job to make them interesting.

A lot of the most popular heroes are rich. Heck, Richie Rich comics were a thing for decades.

Show threadgivesomefucksMar 14

OP gave some surface level details that are pretty much all existing tropes…

If someone read it and said they didn’t like it, the issue probably wasn’t any of the things OP said.

But writing is a skill, you don’t start out good at it, you get good by doing it a lot. Every author’s first stories suck

Show threadMelobolMar 14
If you want to make something for yourself go ahead, stupid can be fun.
If you actually want to create it for other people to enjoy - you will need to find your audience.
It would make more sense to be an adopted child and to not know their origins, than coming from a rich family. Historically speaking all powerhouse/money families have the family tree figured out -they need it to prove the plebs they are better than those poor peepz.
Show threadI_Fart_Glitter6d ago
There can be family secrets beyond the family tree.
Show threadmoonshadowMar 14
In a vacuum, no. In context of your other posts, you really need to gather some more experience to inform your writing. No forum is a meaningful substitute or alternative. Write what you know, if you feel drawn to something expose yourself to it
Show threadsolrizeMar 14
We can’t know whether a story is stupid til after it’s written. But wasn’t the Harry Potter series about a wealthy superhero who spent his early childhood in privation as a plot device?
Show threadParagoneMar 15

If you want to write a story, then it is in working-out the meanings that you will earn what your unconscious-mind wants to earn.

Same with people wanting to earn a pilot’s license, or climbing a mountain, or doing SCUBA.

If some of your meaning is hidden in that kind of work, then you aren’t going to earn that part of your meaning by putting it on a shelf, because somebody-else deemed it unimportant.

I’m recommending that you read & understand 5+ books, though, as they dismantle story the technology so that you can more-competently work out your story-meanings:

https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the-anatomy-of-genres is the most important: it is on the 14 genres that the West has landed on, & the dimension-of-human-meaning that each genre works-on.

Horror works-on one’s unconscious-mind’s understanding of death, & its relationship with it.

Which may explain Grimm’s, tbh.

Detective is intellect.

etc.

The 14 happen in a particular sequence because that’s the sequence in-which each mind-development stands on the previous-ones.

https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/presenting-to-win-updated-and-expanded-edition-2 may seem a strange recommendation, but understanding the 12 TYPES of information-presenting, will help crack some story-problems.

Need a character to fail to communicate something?

Pick the correct for your story wrong-method for them to use, if you see what I man.

https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the-anatomy-of-story is the other-half of Truby’s work. The 22 steps in story, & why each.

https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the-story-grid is THE book on editing. There is no book that tops that.

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Framed+Ink is THE book for getting visual communication working in comics & visual-novels.

Now I discover that there are multiple books in the series ( I got the original, long ago ).

Dig in, earn what your unconscious-mind is trying to earn, grow your meaning, & clobber your difficulties/obstacles.

  ( :

_ /\ _

The Anatomy of Genres ebook by John Truby - Rakuten Kobo

Read "The Anatomy of Genres How Story Forms Explain the Way the World Works" by John Truby available from Rakuten Kobo. A guide to understanding the major genres of the story world by the legendary writing teacher and author of The Anatomy ...

Rakuten Kobo
Show threadParagone6d ago

Sorry I didn’t realize this earlier:

You NEED to understand what Paul Fussell wrote about the North American Class-System, in order to make that work

( & if you’re in Europe, or elsewhere, it’ll still clue you in to many important things about class-systems )

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/%22Paul%20Fussell%22?Ntk=P_key_Contributor_List&Ns=P_Sales_Rank&Ntx=mode+matchall

You can see his Class-Status book, there, & also his one on why uniforms are the way they are ( which I didn’t know-about until right-now ).

Coarsely, there are 4 classes:

  • Upper ( measures status by someone’s POWER )
  • Middle ( measures status by someone’s INSTITUTION OR INSTITUTION-BESTOWED-DEGREE )
  • Working ( measures status by someone’s MONEY )
  • Under ( homeless-people, etc: people like me, who’s racked-up 7+y outright-homeless )

More finely-grained, however, it’s more like:

  • Upper { Monarchs, hereditary-Oligarchs, minor “nobility”, etc }
  • Financial ( have the wealth to be exempt from most of the regulations & many of the laws )
  • Upper-Middle ( doctors/professors/lawyers/diplomats/engineers/etc )
  • Middle ( lower-to-mid beaurocrats )
  • Upper-Working ( self-employed, or owns their own business )
  • Middle-Working ( foremen? )
  • Lower-Working
  • Under

Upper-class do not have a “job position": they hire middle-class people, like hired-dogs, to get specific jobs done.

The sycophantism to the upper-class is real.

You can see upper-class behavior among some top upper-middle-class people, when they intentionally walk too-slow, so as to force everybody all around them to pace-match them, “showing their importance”.. ( I’ve seen that, repeatedly, on a deputy-minister, at one site I worked, years ago )

Anyways, I hope that your story’s awesome, & is sooo well-wrought that you gain many many many readers.

Oh, this’ll help, too:

Logan, King, & Dr. Fischer-Wright’s book “Tribal Leadership”, as it’s on the 5 social-process-levels, so if you understand those, you can use that to show the process-change in characters when they’re stressed/opressed/afflicted, & they’re climbing down into Level2 or Level1 of social-process function.

https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/tribal-leadership-revised-edition

Here’s the TED Talk to go with that book, so you get the gist of it, to understand why it’d be important to make a story more true in your readers’ minds: https://www.ted.com/talks/david_logan_tribal_leadership

_ /\ _

Show threadactionjboneMar 15

To be a writer, write.

At first, what you write will be bad.

In time, what you write may not be bad.

Write because you want to write, not because you want other people to read.

Show thread🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 🇮 Mar 15

Slap ypur friend with a stack of Batman comics and ask if he thinks that was a dumb idea.

Sounds like a cool concept to me. I’d read that.

Show threadSolumbran6d ago

I love the fact that the only details you gave about your story are money, skin color, country of origin.

Maybe the problem is that if your character is only defined by their skin color and wealth, it’s not a very good character. You should be able to have a better description of someone than just talking about their skin color and bank account.

So it feels a bit shallow, from whatever small information you gave, which might be what your friend picked on.

Show threadIconoclast6d ago
I doubt that it was a genuine question. Looking at their post history I’m suspecting that they’re just posting about controversial topics in hopes to start up something.
Show threadFtumch6d ago

Honestly, if you’re that easily discouraged, maybe you should give up.

Ask yourself, are you passionate enough about telling stories and creating comic books? If this is your first comic book it probably won’t be very good. If you want to become a good writer you need to put in the work. Finish this graphic novel, reflect on what did and didn’t work and make another one, and another and another.

Even if you do become a good author eventually, chances of commercial success are very slim. For every writer that succeeds, there’s a hundred who failed. At the end of the day, the only thing that keeps struggling artists going is sheer love of the game.

Do you care enough about this story, that even if only your mom and a handful of other people end up enjoying it, it was still worth telling? If not, then you’ll never make it. If you do, then you probably still won’t make it.

From what you told us, your friend doesn’t sound like a great friend or critic. What is stupid about it? Why would that stop people from being interested? Even stupid things can be very entertaining. Evil Dead 3: Army of Darkness is very stupid, but one of my favourite movies. Ask your friend for some constructive criticism or just ignore them.

Show threadJimmycrackcrack6d ago
With what you were willing to tell us, there isn’t enough there for a story. It’s some character background, but if that background is going to play a big part in the story then yeh that sounds interesting, I wouldn’t describe it as “stupid” at all. If it’s just background for a bit of detail and motivation but not a major driver of the story then your friend and also I don’t have enough information to form a conclusion, because that’s not a story yet, but it’s still an interesting little bit of background that I can’t see why anybody would immediately jump to “stupid”.
Show threadpinball_wizard6d ago

Surprise is overrated.

Spoil the best bits early. If it gains traction, you can fill in all the earlier and later details.

Silly example: Star Wars owes it’s success today at least in part to Lucas being willing to drop into “Episode IV” first to let folks know what it’s really about.

Show threaddustyData6d ago
Bad example. Star wars premiered as just “Star Wars”. The episode IV monicker was added in later remasterings of the film. It was indeed episode four of a six part saga Lucas wrote. But it was filmed first, as it was deemed the easier and cheapest one to film. The original script was a mess, and it was Lucas’s wife who salvaged the movie by cutting about a third of unnecessary fluff and bad dialogue that Lucas had filmed and editing the whole deal as a traditional hero’s journey.
Show threadNutinButNet6d ago

It doesn’t sound like something I’d be interested in, but who cares? Write it anyway.

I hate it when people say “no one will read it”. That’s untrue for most things. There is at least one other person who will read it and like it out there. If nothing more than for you to finally get it out there and on paper for your own satisfaction of doing it. And even if no one else does, it doesn’t matter.

It doesn’t sound like you’re doing this in hopes of being the next Jack Kirby or Stan Lee or to get rich. It sounds like you just have a story you think is cool that you’ve been sitting on for a while and you want to flesh it out. Go for it. Spend some time and get it out there and then release it for others to read.

Show threadangrystego6d ago
Just write it, your friend doesn’t have to like it.
Show threadchocrates6d ago
Get better friends. Write!
Show threadGreenKnight236d ago

who are you writing this for?

for your friend? for you? to sell?

if its not the first one, then ignore your “friend”.

Show threadBluefruit6d ago

First of all, that sounds harsh coming from a friend. Its OK to be critical, but insulting an idea like that is pretty rude and not constructive at least from what you’ve put here. You should reevaluate your friendship with this friend if that is an accurate portrayal of how they said this.

Second, your story sounds like a normal super hero story which isnt a bad thing. Theres this weird idea that you need to come up with super original concepts to be successful in art but that’s not really true. If you do something that someone’s done before, but different enough, and do it well, people will probably like it.

So yea, write your story man, not because you think people will or won’t read it, but because you want to do it.