How did you name your comic??

BeefotronX · Post by **BeefotronX** » Thu Oct 28, 2004 11:11 am

Thinginess of Chaos: The most evil character in the comic is the Chaos Monkey, and 'Thinginess' is a sort of made-up word that means the sum of distinctive characteristics, and it is sort of about the distinctive characteristics of random destruction... maybe.

Uhh, just wait until next week.

Patrick_Shannon · Post by **Patrick_Shannon** » Thu Oct 28, 2004 12:22 pm

Ooh, good question....I had a lot of trouble coming up with a title before I started out. I had gone through a lot of name ideas, but wasn't liking any of them. The rules was that the name had to be catchy, descriptive, and have a domain available for registration. Since the comic was about my position of putting up with modern culture and making fun of it, I thought about "Aniculture," as in "Animated Culture." Problem was that this was a still-image comic, not animated, not to mention the title didn't really tell much. I then came up with the title "My War With Culture" which describes it perfectly, and the name has stuck, even shortened to "MWWC" to those speaking of it.

Glambourine · Post by **Glambourine** » Thu Oct 28, 2004 1:54 pm

My philosophy on titles: a title used to be a straight-up description of the content of a given thing. When you read Don Quixote, you're reading it to find out the history of Don Quixote. When you read Bleak House, you want to know what happens at Bleak House. Bloom County is about the doings of Bloom County. On this model, when some reader or another peruses a list of titles, said reader is looking for specific information about some aspect of a fascinating imaginary world. Herman Melville is and always will be the foremost authority on Moby Dick. JRR Tolkien is and always will be the person you talk to about the War of the Ring.

It even works with the way history books used to be written. You used to have books like "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire". I mean there you have it! There's no mystery in going into a book like that; you're here to see how the Roman Empire declines and falls.

An alternate philosophy of titles would be making some kind of poetic, enigmatic statement, and then hoping it's mysterious, beautiful or otherwise compelling enough to draw people in. Drawing people in is the goal of any title, obviously, but when your title is something enigmatic, it usually means that the content doesn't have any real pressure to be enigmatic. Imagine you're doing a comic about the life of a mid-level manager or something. You name the comic "Ivan Gorsh, Mid-Level Manager." Man, who cares (besides mid-level managers)? So you have to name the comic something like "Wasting in Triplicate". Nobody knows what the hell that means, so they follow the link, find out that it's just about some lame memo-writing person, and maybe they stay, maybe they don't.

Obviously that's a workable strategy for titles, but I like the former option since it actually puts the burden on you, the author, to make the content deserve a very simple title. You're not able to rely on mid-level managers as a type or a stereotype; you have to create a mid-level manager who stands out enough to deserve an entire comic devoted to him. Since strong characters usually make for more interesting comics (or more interesting anything: who do you want to hang out with, the mid-level manager or the deranged thief who's picking his fingernails with a coping saw?), I like going for the title that requires a strong character from the outset.

A simple, content-describing title also, paradoxically, has the advantage of making aspects of your content seem cooler than they otherwise would. The big example for this is "The Great Gatsby", which Fitzgerald wanted to call "Under the Red, White and Blue". How lame, I ask, is that? If he had used the evocative and enigmatic title, you'd sort of remember Gatsby as a neat character. But The Great Gatsby! You remember that instantly, because the entire book becomes about this fascinating character.

A good analogy for this may be camera focus: with a content-describing title, you're focusing the camera on one person in a crowd, and only gradually do you learn about the crowd. With an evocative title, you're focusing on some vague atmosphere exuded by the crowd, and maybe you find your one fascinating character, maybe you don't.

(Hopefully this is interesting to someone, to anyone)

Adaz · Post by **Adaz** » Thu Oct 28, 2004 3:24 pm

I usually name my stories after either the protagonist, or something really important that happens In the story.

Zodiac Blues is kind of the exception of the rule, because originally I was going to name it... well, it was a toss up between "No Clue" and "That New Comic" (Namely, I was out of ideas), then, sketching the characters I came up with the idea that the first strip would be prefaced by Elin's horoscope, and, since I was listening to the Blues Brothers, Zodiac Blues was choosen.

(As an addendum, all the names of the charactes are names of writers and screenwriters I admire. But that's another story)

Joel Fagin · Post by **Joel Fagin** » Thu Oct 28, 2004 3:41 pm

Mercury_Hat wrote:Gunmetal Annie is a type of shoe!

As for what it actually is in the comic, it's a mystery!

I'm expecting it to be a spaceship, myself.

- Joel Fagin

SilverDistortioN · Post by **SilverDistortioN** » Thu Oct 28, 2004 4:06 pm

i named my comic "scribble." because that's how i draw it.

...actually, it's a subtle metaphor for mortal futility. >.>
yeah, that's right... it's poetic, not sucky.

Sippan · Post by **Sippan** » Fri Oct 29, 2004 2:04 pm

The Great Gatsby always made me very curious, because I didn't know what a gatsby was. But then I read somewhere what it was about, and lost all interest in reading it.

Paul.Power · Post by **Paul.Power** » Fri Oct 29, 2004 2:35 pm

My webcomic's about the computer game Worms.

Hogs of War, a game not dissimilar to Worms (okay, fair dos, it was a rip-off. But it was an amusing and fairly well done rip-off), has a training mode called Boot Camp. This is basically where the concept stemmed from.

There you have it.

(Slightly odd thing to post as your first post, but there y'go).

Glambourine · Post by **Glambourine** » Fri Oct 29, 2004 3:54 pm

Oh man, it's like so necessary to read Gatsby at least once in your life. It's fairly short and it has one of the best final pages imaginable. Also it has a giant billboard advertising hokey medicine--a giant billboard that somehow represents GOD. This cannot be resisted.

NotoriousMEQ · Post by **NotoriousMEQ** » Sat Oct 30, 2004 9:45 am

I nearly named my comic 'The Big Ass Gun', because that was the movie script I wrote in highschool it's based on. Luckily, I went with the emotional theme of 'eat the roses before they eat you' and came up with a title that intrigues people.

I still can't believe my incredibly smart and witty husband came up with 'Framed', though. I mean, if he hadn't, someone else would have. And who wants a title like that?

I most recently went through the naming business with John Troutman over our comic 'Vigilante, Ho!' which I ultimately came up with. We ran the gamut of cheesey western title parodies and were settled on 'Girl From Infinite Drought', which aptly described the protagonist, but our editor, T Campell didn't really like. So on a long car trip, I did the typical brainstorming thing where I just wrote down a bunch of words to do with the comic. The two main characters are a vigilante and a whore, so the title came easily. What was astonishing to me was how well it went over with my partners in crime. It's very western (say- Yukon, ho!) and describes what the comic includes, with a wry nod to the 'ho'.

The two comics still in the planning stages I'm doing accidently came into their names and now I can't get rid of them. 'Parsley' is the main character in the comic, so the title. It's a cute title, because people may think it's more herb related than it really is. I may subtitle it 'A Rapunzel Story' just to make it more interesting, though I already did that with 'More Than This: A Cinderella Story' More Than This was the working title - it doesn't mean much, it's just a Peter Gabriel song I adore, but it STUCK and now it works as I've developed the story. I know other people, like Faith Hicks, have also given comics working titles that just stick, even if she'd been planning on developing another one. So be very careful what you even tHINK of naming your comic, because you may not be able to get rid of it!

-Megs

The Zebu · Post by **The Zebu** » Sat Oct 30, 2004 10:20 am

I named my comic "Khaos" after the bibical Link between Hell and Earth.

Collapse · Post by **Collapse** » Sat Oct 30, 2004 10:53 am

Notorious, so you're a professional comicker?

Vorticus · Post by **Vorticus** » Sat Oct 30, 2004 11:01 am

glambourine wrote:Oh man, it's like so necessary to read Gatsby at least once in your life. It's fairly short and it has one of the best final pages imaginable. Also it has a giant billboard advertising hokey medicine--a giant billboard that somehow represents GOD. This cannot be resisted.

I resist such things like this. I find that the fine literature that profs don't recommend is usually the stuff to read.

NotoriousMEQ · Post by **NotoriousMEQ** » Sat Oct 30, 2004 11:28 am

collapse wrote:Notorious, so you're a professional comicker?

I make a little money off it, though not enough to you, know, make a living. I prefer to call myself a resourceful hobbyist. 8)

-Megs

Superlance · Post by **Superlance** » Sat Oct 30, 2004 9:50 pm

FireBird wasn't officially named until the actual release; and is named for the ship, FireBird.

Turnsky · Post by **Turnsky** » Sun Oct 31, 2004 3:52 am

jeeze, foxfire chronicles.. it came from the old working title for it "project foxfire" foxfire chronicles fit better in with it..

Ti-Phil · Post by **Ti-Phil** » Sun Oct 31, 2004 4:16 am

Actually.. I remembered why I called my comic the Volet not long ago. It was because the original one (well... the one I was doing for fun in high school) had many parts, or in french (well, I am a french canadian) :many "volets". And I lended the first one to a friend and I kept telling him to not forget to give me back "le volet" and that is how I chose the name for my comic exactly three years ago when I posted the first episode on geocities. Ah memories....

Evil Jamie! · Post by **Evil Jamie!** » Sun Oct 31, 2004 4:55 am

NotoriousMEQ wrote: The two main characters are a vigilante and a whore, so the title came easily. What was astonishing to me was how well it went over with my partners in crime. It's very western (say- Yukon, ho!) and describes what the comic includes, with a wry nod to the 'ho'.

Hah! That's awesome.

Phalanx · Post by **Phalanx** » Sun Oct 31, 2004 6:00 am

Evil Jamie! wrote:
NotoriousMEQ wrote: The two main characters are a vigilante and a whore, so the title came easily. What was astonishing to me was how well it went over with my partners in crime. It's very western (say- Yukon, ho!) and describes what the comic includes, with a wry nod to the 'ho'.
Hah! That's awesome.

I agree with Jamie. That is awesome!

ZorroandEster · Post by **ZorroandEster** » Sun Oct 31, 2004 8:29 am

Zorro and Ester. I was quite proud of this one. I drew a random image of the two protagonists around 3 years ago and wrote "Zorro and Ester" under them, not thinking yet that Zorro Ester = Zoroaster. When I did realize that, I was quite happy. (I'm how you say a religion major so that word is used quite often in my vocabulary. If you don't know what Zoroasterianism is, go here: http://zorroandester.keenspace.com/d/20020408.html
(Shameless self indulgence) - (Which would be a good title, anyone can steal that one.)

Comic Genesis Forums

How did you name your comic??

Grim analysis, title philosophy

Gatsby

Re: Gatsby