Advices on comedy-drama

I'm writing an unorthodox superhero graphic novel, and I think I could use humor to make the story less dark as I don't want to end it similar to the dark age of comic books. For example the title (he's also the protagonist) chracter is the Deconstruction of The Ace (Broken Ace). But he's a Pyromaniac too (a rare "heroic" example) but I want to play it for laughts (eg. he has a DVD collection of his arsons). Except when he has a Heroic B So D moment when he has to kill one of his friend. A harder thing to pull out is the deuteragonist character. She's very lustful, promisculous until she crushes on the protagonist, then she only wants to have sex with him (this is played for laughts). But actually she's a Broken Bird, having self image issues, having called as a slut because she willingfully lost her virginity at 14, even if she was exploited (wasn't raped, just the boy lied to her). And this is the reason of her behaviour. At the villain side we have a parody of The Cape (Captain America with a cape, different colors, a shield that can turn into a bow), and a group of Super Sentai, both with Wrong Genre Savvy. While in Shounens, the authors usually pulls these things out very well IMO, some video blogger in my country pointed out that these can be written very bad, one really dislikes when comedy is broken with dramatic moments or vice versa.

Some good and bad examples on this? I really like to learn from bad examples too especially when they're So Bad, It's Good. I'm open to most genre, especially comic books, anime/manga, as my work basically Super Hero comic meets with Shounen (especially Death Note) meets with Revulotionary Girl Utena (except my work deconstructs both gender's role).

Sorry if I can't say anything too useful but I want to find any way to help. One advice I can give is to focus more on comedy early on. It can be done off the bat while drama usually needs time to build to be effective. Start introducing characters by their quirks, that way you can move on to their hidden depths. Good luck!

Comedy moving to drama usually works better than the other way around.

Which isn't to say that it necessarily works well. I've always felt that even when Cerebus Syndrome is good for the story as a whole, the actual process of transition tends to be messy and slipshod. It's the main reason why I intend to try doing both from the start.

edited 6th Aug '13 2:29:09 PM by nrjxll

Well, I think things can get dramatic rather than dark, per se. Dragon Ball, for example, started out as a comedy and went more to action as time went on, but even as the stakes got high and characters were dying, the tone was serious and non-comedic, but not grimdark and stone-faced.