What I Learned Making An Indie Comic I Couldn't Fit Everything Into

When I first started creating my comic, I assumed that drawing it would be the most challenging part.

However, this wasn't true. One of the most challenging obstacles I encountered was something I hadn’t initially thought about.

It was that I had an overwhelming number of ideas for the limited comic space that was available.

Superhero Movies and Saturday Morning Cartoons Influenced My Storytelling Perspective

I didn't really grow up with comics much. I grew up watching many of the beloved TV shows and classic action and superhero movies that many of us love. This exposure shaped my understanding of storytelling.

Characters spoke at length during deep emotional monologues, articulating their feelings in detail. Dramatic scenes would unfold over several minutes. In the realm of film and television, this pacing is effective. You can allow a character to speak for an extended time and have them say what you really want them to say.

When I had my idea, a comic series was the only way I could realistically have a tangible, visual story since I couldn't produce an entire animation by myself. So naturally, when I began creating my comic, I adopted the same pacing approach as the screen. I made scenes as I envisioned them happening on a TV show.

Then I attempted to put those scenes onto a comic page and that’s when reality hit.

Comics Are A Different Medium

In comics, words occupy physical space. Speech bubbles may obscure artwork. Every additional line makes the bubbles a bit larger. After a while, I came to realize if I wrote dialogue as I would for a film or TV show, the entire page would be filled with word balloons.

This not only appears cluttered, but it also slows down the reader in a manner that can feel heavy rather than cinematic. While long dialogue in comics can work depending on the story, and I still use it occasionally when necessary, I've learned that comics, especially in the modern day, often require more brevity.

So this is the direction I usually try to go in for the most part in my series especially after Issue 2. While older comics used more dialogue, modern comics often thrive on concise and clearer sentence exchanges and let the visual storytelling do a lot of the heavy lifting. This realization compelled me to rethink how I conveyed ideas in a comic book.

Learning to Prioritize What Truly Matters

One of the toughest lessons was accepting that not every idea I had fit within the comic story, even if it was a good idea that I loved. If it doesn’t serve the plot effectively, it must be cut or saved for another time. That shift transformed my writing approach.

Instead of trying to fit everything in that I wanted a character to say, I began prioritizing the most crucial thing a scene needed. If I wanted to show a character’s anger or establish a mystery, then I didn’t need to delve into the entire backstory on a single page.

Art Is More Than Just Decoration

Another realization for me was that in comics, art serves a purpose beyond just aesthetics. It helps convey the story. The saying says, "A picture is worth a thousand words". This is exponentially true in comics.

If drawn correctly, a character’s posture or facial expression can sometimes replace long dialogue or a monologue. The composition of a panel can express what feelings I want to convey whether that's power, tension or fear.

Once I began to trust the visuals more, I found that I needed fewer words. Initially, that felt uncomfortable because I wasn't fully having the characters say what I wanted them to say. It seemed like I was underwriting. However, in reality, I was finally writing for the comic book medium.

Republishing Issue 2

While Issue 1 has some heavy dialogue in a few areas of the book, it's not a repetitive occurrence and the heavy dialogue is a bit more spread out throughout the book when it happens.

On top of that, Issue 1 was written as a black comic more for black audiences because it has black history and addresses racism and I feel like the few heavy dialogue areas are justified since it touches on a heavy subject.

The issue also won a Black Author's Matter award. Because of this, I decided to leave Issue 1 as is and because it's the very first one in the series, I like to look back on it as a learning experience especially when I compare it to more recent issues like Issue 3.

However, in Issue 2 there was a lot of unnecessary dialogue in areas where it wasn't needed. While this would've probably worked better in a movie, for a comic it was too overwhelming especially since it was constantly reoccurring even in areas where there was no heavy subject matter.

This actually led me to republish Issue 2 after the completion of Issue 4 and it's actually a lot more like Issue 1 now where it has heavy dialogue in a few valid areas but not covering the entire book.

Not everything needs an extensive explanation. Readers are more perceptive than we often assume and leaving small gaps invites readers to engage.

My Personal Lesson

For me, comics revolve around intentional restraint and this was a personal lesson. It’s not about how much you can cram in, but how well you can choose what's important to the story. You don’t have to convey everything to the reader. You just need to provide them with enough.

Continuing to Learn

I’m still on this learning journey. Each issue reveals something new about pacing, dialogue, and art when it comes to comics. However, I’m thankful I encountered this early on in the series and it's compelled me to stop trying to write movies on paper and start learning how to genuinely write comics. It helped tremendously with Issues 3 and 4 and will help Issue 5 as well.