Building A Mythology In Webcomics

When I think of 'From Death Til Now' and what it is that particularly excited me about the project, I think of how it provided me a way to build a mythology. It gives me a place to totally geek out and be myself. And what I like is a good epic mystery. So what became so very important to me early on when I was writing this story was that I presented it in such a way that it revealed itself as a mythology story from the beginning. Knowing that the webcomics world is largely a place where you are lucky if you get one page out a week regular from your favorite comics creator it became a bit of a challenge for me. What's difficult is trying to communicate in a fairly fast way enough mythology information so that it works somewhat on a week to week basis. If I were to, say, not reveal much at all of the mythology of this comic, or if i didn't have the first four pages as they are, I think you the reader would be left wondering why these two old guys are important for a very long time. As it stands I think I am finding very easy balance between revealing information and holding things back. The web actually helps me in this regard because if you just had the first book in your hands and could read all two hundred pages of it I think the build up a mystery wouldn't be as satisfying. I could, however, be wrong.

In outlining this story I have spend a lot of time making sure only certain pieces of information are revealed in a timely order. So the first book will operate very much as the set-up. You'll get bits and pieces here and there so that when the mystery is revealed later you'll be able to look back and see that I was building to that all along. I hope that it feels very natural in the end. Something that drives me crazy about some mythology type stories is that they just kinda throw crap in there that hasn't been supported at all and try to act like they had been building to it all along. I think the Harry Potter books do this a bit more than I like. That being said, I love me some Harry Potter.

So what am I setting up right now? Well, it is most obviously what is inside of that box. That's gotta be a pretty daunting thing for someone to say to you in telling you that your destiny is inside of a box. Much less that the fate of the world is in your hands because of it. Like Virgil needs more things to occupy his time! He doesn't have much of it left, poor guy.

So I hope the mythology of the comic is intriguing so far and I hope its building up well for you the reader. Please let me know what you think of it.