Thoughts on an outline for the first chapter of a Magical Girl comic

Hey guys. Long time no see.

Anyway, I've got this story I'm working on for a magical girl webcomic type thing. I'm struggling with the pacing on the first issue, and I feel like I'm having trouble building tension while still giving readers a feel for the setting and characters in the first issue. So if you guys could weigh in on this outline and make some suggestions about how I can tweak it to make the whole rising-and-falling-tension thing work better, I'd appreciate it.

Despite the seeming-seriousness of the outline, this is actually intended mostly a comedic series, so I don't need Shakespeare here. I just want it to be able to work fairly well as the skeleton on which the Meat of Comedy can be hung.

Please forgive the wall of text, but this is an outline rather than a beat sheet. It's also possible I'm overestimating how much I should be trying to fit in to a chapter of a comic, in which case please let me know if you think that's the case.

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Scene 1

The story opens with a girl (Ally) and a boy (Simon) in a park. Ally is working up the nerve to tell Simon how she feels about him and he's oblivious. We can tell she's nervous because she's talking way too much and way too fast. When he finally starts to suspect what's going on, Simon starts making really bad jokes to cover his own nervousness. Right as the confession is about to be made, they're interrupted by a cherubic creature plopping down between them.

Simon makes some offhand remarks about Cupid or something and Ally freaks out, saying it's a monster. Simon tells her she's being silly, it's a Messenger of Love, then the thing attacks him with a neurotoxin that leaves him on the ground, twitching in pain.

Ally gets mad and smacks the monster. It gets back up and it's angry at her, and goes to attack. Before she suffers the same fate as the boy, an older Magical Girl (Heart) appears and beats the stuffing out of the thing. The girl starts fangirling over Heart, explaining to the boy that she's a famous hero, going on at length. Simon gurgles in pain. Heart defeats the beast and Ally begins fawning over her. Heart preens a little when the monster revives, attacks her, killing her  ^*

Ally, heartbroken over her idol being killing. When the monster turns to take her down, she runs, tears in her eyes. Then the thing turns to attack Simon. She realizes it's going after her fallen friend and goes ballistic, attacking the thing, and ultimately defeating it using some Magical Girl Powers of her own.

Scene 2

This is where I feel the tension drops and the story starts to flounder.

A few days have passed. We go to a local news broadcast announcing that Heart has fallen, leaving the city defenseless against monster. We pull back from the news broadcast and see that Ally is in Simon's room, delivering his homework as he's still out of class. He's lucid again but acting like he's on death's door. Between exaggerated moans of pain he asks her how they survived and she goes quiet, then asks him if he thinks that crisis can bring out the best in people. He says "Nope." She asks if he'd like to think about it some more. "Nuh-uh."

Scene 3

This scene will consist of Ally's train of thoughts as she goes about her day to day life, also introducing her mother and the school she goes to. We also see during the course of this montage that she is alone and silent during all of her classes until she gets to one that Simon's in, when she stops thinking and starts talking to him, and only him. Until the end of the day, when she runs into her arch nemesis (Vi).

Vi and Ally get start shooting dagger at one another (given the sort of comic this is, I should probably note that this is not meant literally), and have the kind of conversation where their words are clearly dripping with contempt but sound civil if taken at face value. This doesn't last long because Vi is slightly theatrical.

Vi notices that Ally has been deep in thought all day and over the course of their conversation, she realizes that Ally has developed Magical Girl powers. She immediately decides that Ally must be planning to take Heart's place, and says she could never be competent at it. Ally hasn't even decided if she wants to pursue anything, but spurred on by Vi's challenge, shouts that she'll do it, and Vi says that she'll become a Magical Girl first, and be better at it. Ally points out that Vi doesn't even know if she can become a Magical Girl. Jump Cut to the two of them standing on a field, preparing for a duel.

—

And that's where I see the issue ending.

So that's what I've got right now. I actually already have an outline for the whole series that I'm actually mostly satisfied with, but it's not important right now—readers wouldn't know what's coming either, so if I can get you guys' advice based on this, it'll give me a better idea of how readers might react. Anyway, there's more than enough text to bore you guys to tears already.

Thanks in advance for any advice you can offer.

edited 8th Mar '11 12:00:02 PM by Shadowtext

Sounds pretty good. Are you planning on writing and drawing this, or just writing?

Writing and drawing, yes. Point of fact the writing's just an excuse to draw.

It is? I'm a writer in search of a thing to write, you know...