That experience meant that I had a base core of self created heroes and villains from India and the heroes appeared in Return of the Gods: Twilight of the Super Heroes and will appear in The Green Skies again.
Another rather negative experience came in dealing with 'comic creators' in Singapore. I learnt fairly early on that comics were looked on as childish and that, despite all the big talk on comic forums, no one was really producing any actual local comics to offer an alternative to mainstream Manga on sale there. A Singaporean friend told me: "No one in Singapore is going to do all the hard work it takes to produce a comic -its just seen as a hobby with a few fan clubs of sorts scattered around" -this friend had been a member of one of those comic clubs.
Me, I'm dumb. What I did was go on the main forum and offer creators the opportunity to produce 3-5 page strips for inclusion in a Singapore Comic Creators showcase book. The deadline was six months from the announcement. One after another came the excuses that "this is a lot of work to do in six months" and "We'd need to come up with a concept, story and then go through the process of drawing 3-5 pages!"
It hit me that these people had no idea about how to put a comic strip together let alone a whole comic. But I'm a persistent old sod. I offered to write the scripts so that all they had to concentrate on was the art...."We can't just churn it out like a Honkers sweat-shop" said one. Now I had seen the term "Honkers" used a lot and found out that it was a very derogatory term used to describe citizens of Hong Kong. I raised this matter as it did not exactly sit well -especially as there were two Hong Kongers that were group members. Ignored.
So I tried pushing the comic idea further. Nine months from then deadline? Not enough time. An artist should be able to do 3-5 pages in a week at the absolute minimum. One day I was posting on the forum and saw that a year had passed since the original announcement. I gave up.
That was a pity as Singapore is a lovely setting for a comic or comic strip but by this time I had developed my own characters for Singapore who appeared in...guess what? Return of the Gods: Twilight of the Super Heroes and will also appear in The Green Skies.
Indian and Singapore comic forums are for fans who like to talk but do not draw or put comics together. I learnt that the hard way.
Hong Kong produces its own comics through methods that Westerners would get very confused over but they still produce them -I wanted to find out more about Hong Kong characters but would never dare try to compete with HK comics!
Taiwan tends to concentrate on Manga and some of the people at companies can be quite demanding...and quite rude!
The idea that "I only read British comics" or "I read only Marvel/DC" is a very limiting one. There are European comics -Franco-Belgian, German, Dutch as well as those from central and Eastern Europe (that I really would like to see more of), Australia -it goes on. I love comics (I've wasted my life on them!) and seeing the different formats and characters even if I do not understand the language: comics are a visual medium and if done correctly you should be able to follow what is going on.
I am probably wasting my time here but if YOU or a friend produces home grown comics send a copy to me along with a few details and I'll mention it on CBO. Either a small press or pro style comic -it does not matter just let people see what you are doing and you might even get some sales out of the publicity.
If you are in the UK or US you are not excluded so don't feel left out.
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