While forging bravely through the wild and dangerous world of webcomics, one is sometimes called upon to create characters. While this is a daunting - some might say impossible - task, we writers and artists leap into the fray with deranged abandon, laying about us with the twin cudgels of creativity and inspiration until all of our foes lie broken before our majesty. It is a great burden to be asked to create a character, for we must call upon dark and terrible arts to uncover this, the most jealously guarded secret of the webcomic lords.

Creating a character is like creating life. Do not take this task lightly, for when you dream up a new character to put to use in your story, you are a god, creating new life to populate your creation. Just as the Bible says that God created Adam and Eve, you must first craft a Protagonist around whom your world will be constructed. Then, as Lucifer was cast from Heaven, you shall create an Antagonist. Finally, you will create a bunch of other characters that nobody really cares about, much like most of that other stuff in the Bible.

The Protagonist

Every good story has a single, primary protagonist on whom the reader’s attention rests. It’s okay for the story to occasionally center on other characters, but this protagonist in particular is the Main Character, and should therefore be the main focus of the story. Some stories boast multiple Main Characters, attempting to weave different plotlines together into a beautiful tapestry of drama and intrigue. This is a mistake! Any attempt to divide your efforts among multiple, equally-important protagonists will always end in a disastrous failure. Your story will be terrible and everyone will hate you.

The Main Character should be unique and exceptional, because nobody is going to bother with a story in which a fat baker makes bread or an unremarkable Russian noblewoman has an affair or something. He needs a special gimmick that’s never been done before, the better to grab the reader’s attention. Perhaps he is a master of his style of swordsmanship? Can he use mystical arts to perform amazing feats of speed and strength? Is he a plucky underdog who prevails through guts, determination, and fiery courage? The best answer, of course, is, “all of these.” The more special your protagonist is, the more special your story is! Always remember this helpful tip.

Your readers will identify with the protagonist. They will envision themselves in his shoes, doing whatever it is that he does. For this reason, you must ensure that he possesses qualities that some of your readers are likely to have. You could try making him somewhat shy in social situations, or perhaps he loves reading webcomics and dreams of making his own some day. Remember, though: the Main Character must be unique and exceptional! He should serve as a stand-in for the readers, allowing them to experience adventures and excitement in the guise of a devastatingly attractive renegade with a strong sense of justice.

The Antagonist

Once your Protagonist has been created, you need an Antagonist for him to face! You will note that “antagonist” sounds a little like “Anti-Protagonist,” which is fortunate, as that is exactly what an antagonist is. The Antagonist’s purpose is to rival the Protagonist at every turn, providing a “bad guy” for the readers to hate. He should either be driven by a need for revenge over some terrible injustice inflicted upon him, or caught in a moral dilemma which forces him to carry out his evil deeds. This forces the readers to reconsider their shallow ideas of morality, transfiguring them into much more intellectually flexible people through the healing power of webcomics.

The Antagonist can be approached in one of two ways. The easiest and best way is to make him a very simple character, since he exists mainly as an enemy for the Protagonist to defeat. It is okay if many of his decisions go completely unexplained, as he is a Bad Guy and Bad Guys do evil stuff just because they are so very bad (or driven by a lust for revenge, as noted above). The other option is to make him a very deep and complex character. This is a poor idea, as it takes attention away from your Protagonist. Nobody actually likes learning about a villain’s complex and intricate motivations, and whenever someone writes about them it’s just because he is a pretentious jerk.

The Supporting Cast

Now that the Protagonist and Antagonist have been created, you need other, lesser characters to populate the world around them. The main character needs a love interest and a motley gang of misfits to run around with, while the villain needs faceless goons and a traitorous lieutenant.

When designing a supporting character, simply think of what the character “is.” For example, the main character’s love interest is just that: “love interest.” You can think up his or her name later! For now, you know that a love interest should be lovely and interesting, so you decide that the character should be devastatingly attractive and also royalty from an exotic land. Hot damn, you’re halfway done already! See how easy this is? As another example, a villain’s “faceless goon” should be intimidating but featureless. For this reason, you decide that the villain employs a private army of ninjas, because ninjas are scary and wear masks. This method is used by all the pro writers, and the sooner you master it, the sooner you will be on your way to character-building greatness!

Details: Appearance

Once you’ve established the storyline characteristics of each character, it’s time to move on to their appearances. A character’s appearance is hugely important, since the reader will be looking at or imagining the character all the time.

Obviously the protagonist should be attractive, because nobody cares about a fantastically ugly man defeating evil with his inner beauty and finding acceptance. However, there are various other elements of physical appearance to consider, such as hair and eye colour, hair style, the character’s style of dress, his or her height and build.

If your protagonist is female and has an unusually large bosom, you should cleverly avoid making your female readers feel inadequate by occasionally posting links to comics with even bustier protagonists and then going off on rants about how demeaning and childish their creators are. If she is fairly flat, you should go to great lengths to have other characters compliment her on her sexy and petite figure, proving that small girls are beautiful too. Your readers will appreciate this kind of intellectual honesty, and will respect your wisdom in holding up society’s silly foibles to be examined in the noble medium of webcomics.

There is one exception to this advice: it is considered very forward-thinking and high-minded to make the protagonist very busty as a symbol of female empowerment and the liberation of the fairer sex. If you choose to do this, anyone who makes derogatory comments like, “why does every female character in your comic have DD breasts?” or, “that is not how boobs work, have you ever actually seen a woman?” is a sexist bigot.

The Antagonist should be either alluring or intimidating, depending on the qualities you want the Protagonist to show while fighting him. He can either be attractive and dangerous, so that the main character proves his strength of will by overcoming him, or huge and mighty, so that the main character proves how powerful he is by defeating him. Any other kind of appearance is to be avoided like the plague, as it complicates the moment, detracting from the sense of triumph that the reader feels when the Protagonist prevails against the evil Antagonist.

As a note, it is always okay to give a female Antagonist an extremely large bosom, because then she represents the excesses of our image-obsessed culture, and her defeat at the Protagonist’s hands symbolizes the triumph of individuality and inner beauty. If anyone comments negatively on the Antagonist’s bust size, you are within your rights to condescendingly explain that it’s ignorant to criticize something when you just don’t understand the symbolism.

When it comes to the supporting cast, simply use the same method that you used to create them! The words, “traitorous lieutenant” are very nasty-sounding and have a military ring, so make the lieutenant a tall, muscular, heavily-scarred man in a military uniform. If you can’t come up with anything using this method, just assign a single distinguishing characteristic, such as “has an ugly moustache” or “is fat” to each supporting character. It’s not a good idea to spend more than five minutes coming up with a single supporting character’s appearance. You have better things to do with your time!

Details: Personality

A good writer knows that a character’s personality is invisible, and therefore doesn’t need to be described in detail. It’s always best to keep things simple: just write a short list of a character’s most interesting personality traits. The Protagonist should have the most detailed and interesting personality, while the Antagonist’s should be simple and easy to understand. The supporting cast doesn’t really need any kind of personality, because they’re just in the story to give the Protagonist people to interact with and be better than.

To show you that I mean business, here are two example characters:

Sir Magnus Lightbeard (Protagonist)

- seems like an outcast but is actually a nice guy when you get to know him
- will never hit a woman
- has a fierce sense of justice and will never back down in the face of evil
- never breaks his word
- is a badass

Lord Jerkhammer (Antagonist)

- executes his minions when they fail him, and also sometimes when they don’t
- hits everyone he ever meets, just so they know who’s boss
- has a fierce sense of injustice and will never back down from a chance to be a dick to someone
- makes lots of promises just so that he can break them later and then laugh
- is bad, and an ass

As you can see, Sir Magnus Lightbeard and Lord Jerkhammer both have very rich and interesting personalities without being boring, stuffy, overly-philosophical weenies. Writing up a summary like this takes no longer than ten minutes, leaving you free to do important things, like describing the intricate engravings on the Protagonist’s sword in excruciating detail.

In Closing

That’s everything you need to know! You now have the experience required to create truly fascinating heroes and villains. Armed with this knowledge, it is only a matter of time before you take the webcomics community by storm. Your daring protagonists will trounce their way into the hearts of your readers, while your evil antagonists go down in infamy. If you follow the advice provided here, you will have people clamouring for updates year round, desperate to know what happens next in the gripping saga of Jimmy Sprogan, Swordfighting IT Specialist.