It's pretty crapsack, really.

As you may or may not know, I have a comic that I occasionally draw. It's a humour-based on with no long stoylines (atleast not yet), but it is based on a setting I came up for bit more serious stuff, so there's a lot of backstory. For the most part I'm fine with leaving it out as it just complicates things unnecessarily, but there's one thing that I would like to try and incorporate, namely the nature of the world.

The story takes place in the Netherworld, which is a pretty crapsack place. Not in the fire and brimstone kind of way tho, more like a mishmash of middle ages, industrial revolution and former Soviet Union. There are modern commodities (most of it is actually Magitech), but the vast majority of populace has no access to them, as they tend to be only availeabe in large cities and/or to the wealthy. Most people have to live in poorly constructed houses with no running water, no centralised heating and no food exept potatoes (if even that). The society is quite stratified, with the wealthy living in their own parts of the town surrounded by walls. Famine is common, corruption if rife, and infrastructure is slowly crumbling as much of it was build centuries or millenias ago and has undergone only the basic repairs (if even that) since then. About the only thing doing well is the military industry, which sucks up most of the state budged, and even that is pretty stagnated.

So yeah, how the hell do I get any of that to show in a light-hearted comic that doesn't really do much exposition in-comic (I like doing exposition, but I keep it separate from the comics since it's not necessary for the plot).

edited 16th Jan '11 4:27:14 AM by Nomic

Gallows Humor. I'm sure you can ring out a lot of sarcasm from the characters.

Yeah, Gallows Humour would serve you pretty well. Little visual gags in the background too, maybe.

Link please?

When they do funny stuff, they should be interacting with the environment somehow. I'd say Romantically Apocalyptic does that well (the next several pages show the interaction more).

edited 17th Jan '11 12:02:33 AM by melloncollie

It's the same comic I bring up with wayy too much frequency. There should be a link to my deviantart page on ym contributor page.

The thing is, that Zaran is one of the relatively few people who have non-crapsack lives. All of the cast is atleast moderately off since othervise they wouldn't be there. Even the legionnaires, since they would't let just anybody hang around the Overlord's fortress (moderaely off can mean a lot of things, including living in an apartment building with no heating but atleast it has a toilet and brick walls). Infact, it's part of her character that she doesn't quite get how crappy the world is for most people. I'll probably do the obligatory "peasants are revolting (they never bathe)/let them eat cake" joke at some point, and I might do some comics focusing entirely on people living in the slums snarking about the poor living conditions. I did have an idea for a longer story where Zaran decides to run away, only to find out that the outside world kinda sucks (and then she gets mistaken for a wagrant, is made to work in a mine for effectively no pay and ends up starting a worker's rights movement) but I lack the time and skill to draw longer stories that would reguire better artwork.