Photo Comic

A creative option for people who can't draw (or who just want to 'draw' with a camera?) the Photo Comic involves taking pictures of things — either posed inanimate objects, or actual people — and making a comic out of them. In the Webcomics world, toys are popular for this. Also became popular in British comics (particularly girls' comics) in the late 1970s and early 1980s; however, it proved unpopular and the ones that didn't shut down (as many were at the time) reverted to drawn strips. Nowadays the best-remembered photo strips seem to be the parodies of photo strips from Viz. Arguably, Photocomics can be done cheaper and with less time consumption than the other popular choice: Machinomics. This is because photos lend themselves well to settings where realistic lighting is in high demand, requiring a lot fewer tweaks than would screenshots from a video game.

A variation is the fumetti, which takes the frames of a film or TV show and puts them into comic-book form: See Film Comic. Another variant involves creating scenes in Poser or DAZ Studio and importing them into Comic Life. Not to be confused with GIS Syndrome, where photographs are incorporated into the background.

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Examples

Comic Books

• Dorothy, a fumetti-like adaptation of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz which mixed photos of human models with illustrated creatures and environments.
• Alison Bechdel (who also writes the webcomic Dykes to Watch Out For) illustrated her autobiographical graphic novel Fun Home by taking pictures of herself in costume to use as source images, which she then based her illustrations off of.
• Some comic strips, especially in the annuals, in both The Beano and The Dandy make use of this trope. Usually only in one story, not the whole comic, and involving cartoon characters interacting with the photographs.
• The sci-fi story Doomlord had its first story arcs as a fumetti (1982-?); then changed to a traditionally-drawn comic-book when relaunched in 1991.
• Urbanus: The album "De Hete Urbanus" was done in style of a photo comic.
• When Eagle was relaunched in 1982 all of the strips (apart from Dan Dare) were photo comics as Fleetway attempted to cash in on the success it had had with girls comics in this format. The book later reverted to traditional drawn strips.
• IDW Publishing's 2013 Star Trek Annual, "Strange New Worlds" by John Byrne, was created in a photonovel style, in homage to the Star Trek Fotonovels (adaptations of several episodes of the Original Series published by Bantam Books in The '70s). In this case Byrne creatively arranged and edited existing stills to create a new story. This led to an ongoing bi-monthly (roughly) series, Star Trek: New Visions (under which "Strange New Worlds" was reprinted as issue #0). There was also a special that adapted the first pilot, "The Cage". The ongoing series came to an end with #22 in 2018.

Magazines

• The UK girl's magazine Girl Talk would do short photo-comics in most issues in the late 90s/early 00s, featuring a Celebrity Star - naturally, these were usually flash-in-the-pan stars completely unremembered nowadays, like Peter Andre (although he's now a famous reality star) or Lolly.
• Mizz, another UK magazine for girls used this near the advice pages. They were often single page stories featuring common pre-teen problems, such as late blooming, peer pressure, family conflicts or bullying. The following page would offer three possible ways to resolve the problem suggested by a celebrity, a parent, a member of the magazine's staff or a random teenager.
• The roman-photo used to be popular in France in the 50s and 60s; it survived to the present day in the magazine Nous Deux which still regularly publishes some.

Webcomics

• My Milk Toof
• Terror Island has each character represented by a playing piece from a board game, except for the cat, who is played by an actual cat.
• Irregular Webcomic! uses LEGO bricks to act out a surprising variety of storylines.
• Brick Comic Network is Exactly What It Says on the Tin for the authors (and fans) of photo comics made using (mainly) LEGO bricks. The comics of active members include:
  • Legostar Galactica
  • Reasonably Clever's Brick House
  • Tranquility Base
  • Genuine Draft
  • Brickworld Saga
  • Glomshire Knights
  • Ye Olde Lego-Time Theatre
  • Block Tales
  • Bricks of the Dead
  • The Brick Side
  • Cafe Gruesome
  • Other webcomics related to the project:
    • Majestic 7
    • The aforementioned Irregular Webcomic!
    • Adventures of the S-Team
    • Tabletown Online
    • Harry Potter Comics
    • Legoville
• Fabuland Housewives is yet another LEGO webcomic, but this time with characters from the Lego Fabuland theme.
• LEGO Space: The Comic, giving Lego's popular Space toy line a story of its own.
• Insecticomics has Transformers toys portraying actual Transformers... that happen to be 6 inches tall and live in the author's house.
• Leisure Town seems to be the Photo Comic equivalent to the Black Comedy.
• Ask Dr. Eldritch
• Alien Loves Predator... really explains itself by the title, so.
• A Softer World is a comic with an absurdist and dark style of humour and a large stash of old Polaroid pictures.
• Union of Heroes is a webcomic from Germany whose authors imagine superheroes in the Ruhr area.
• Twisted Kaiju Theater features a lot of Godzilla toys, in all shapes and forms, and other monster and superhero action figures. And occasional soft porn. Not always work-safe.
• Out of the Dead Land is a photocomic about the end of the Transformers war, using only toys from the Transformers Alternators line. Lots of Nightmare Fuel and Crowning Moments of Awesome lies within.
• Sinister Bedfellows uses landscape photos for a surreal experience.
• The following webcomics use images made with Poser or DAZ Studio:
  • The Easy Breather
  • Android: The Graphic Novel
  • The Catpack
  • Sunset Grill
  • Nikki Sprite
  • Adventures in ASCII (uses Imagine)
  • The Adventures of Karina Baxter (uses 3D Studio Max)
  • The Challenges of Zona
  • Liberty: The American Girl
• Zuperiority Complex by Scott D.M. Simmons is the first Photo Comic to feature Jenny Everywhere.
• DM of the Rings and Darths & Droids are retellings of The Lord of the Rings and the Star Wars series, respectively, as Tabletop RPG campaigns, and both comprise screen captures from their respective films strung together in sequence.
  • Benders and Brawlers is a comic directly inspired by these using screenshots from Avatar: The Last Airbender.
  • Nanoha GamerS is another Fan Webcomic inspired by DM of the Rings, this time using screenshots from Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS.
• Similarly, Demons and Damsels is a photo comic parody of Dawn of the Dead, re-worked as an MMO.
• This is in this section only because it is a comic that is technically on the Web, but the annual Playmobil/LEGO Advent Calendar adventures from X-Entertainment (don't worry, totally safe for work... mostly) is pictures of the said gifts from the titular calendars.
• Caution Man: Safety Knight! is a hilarious superhero-based Photo Comic acted out by author Martin Skarzynski and his pals.
  • They called it a Fully Live-Action Webcomic.
• Top to Bottom was an LGBT(BDSM?!)-themed comic about rival night clubs.
• Kimonos Townhouse is a webcomic about a little pony named Kimono and her quirky roommate, Minty.
• Attercap.Net uses a variety of minifig toys (notably Mini-Mates and PALz) in an office comedy.
• YU+ME: dream had a section of the comic where the author used photographs instead of drawing to separate the Dream Land and Real Life
• Minions At Work features action figures (and Mook tropes).
• Scale Wars: An action figure photo webcomic featuring GI Joe, Star Wars, Marvel, DC, Indiana Jones, and the ever popular much, much more.
• Action Figure Diary is a photocomic set in an alternate universe where living action figures are sold as pets. The strip creator owns two figures, and marries a man who also owns two figures. Strips involve the interactions of the four, and occasionally their human owners/'parents'.
• Abe and Kroenen: Two girls, a camera and a lot of action figures. Remarkable for their use of body language, considering one of the main characters dosen't really have a face (most of the time).
• MADH Vinyl is a photo comic using ball-jointed dolls.
• Night Zero uses photos for all of its pages. However, these pictures are done as if frames in an action movie.
• Flying Man and Friends uses a series of photographs for this strip. However, it isn't usually a photo comic.
• POPSTAR 5 is a photo comic based on Kirby.
• The Brick Testament is a photo comic of The Bible, made with LEGO. It doesn't skimp on the less savory parts of that book, either.
• Operation: Extermination, yet another Transformers webcomic.
• The Las Vegas Tsunami from The Dugs- Baseball Webcomics began as a photo comic before switching media midstrip in this comic.
• Monstar is a partial example; the backgrounds are photographs, but the characters themselves are hand-drawn.
• Little Worlds takes this premise to its extreme, calling itself a "photographic novel." The comic features actors who play the role of the characters, and uses three different photographers to capture scenes. The photos are heavily post-processed.
  • Rock, Paper, Cynic, by the same author, frequently features photos and photo-manipulations.
• tiny ghosts Weekly photo-comic filled with robots, rag dolls, ballerinas, and melancholy humor.
• The Gallery of Freaks is a gag-per-day comic that uses heavily manipulated photographs as the art.
• The New Adventures of Queen Victoria is a daily webcomic by Pab Sungenis.
• Tales from the Pit
• Many HALO webcomics used a variation of this by presenting screenshots in comic form. Most notably the webcomic Reclaimer which may be the only one still updating regularly.
• Surviving The World does this, with the creator standing in front of a chalkboard with his comic for the day written on it.
• RealityStuck of MSPA Forum Adventures.
• Even In The Deepest Heart Of Chaos A Glimmer Of Order Can Be Found is a variant: The author takes random photos from Flickr, then writes captions that tell a story which links the photos.
• Blurry Robot Theater uses photos of action figures, as well as drawn artwork. It has a lot of robots, but it isn't very blurry.
• Pegwarmers is a photo comic using primarily Marvel and DC characters, though it occasionally uses Doctor Who characters, Godzilla characters, My Little Pony, or whatever the author happens to have lying around...but mostly superheroes. (Despite its name, very few of the characters used in the comic are considered pegwarmers.)
• The Last Great Bzpower webcomic is just that, made of photo comics.
• Defensores de Carapachay is a webcomic illustrated with photographs of bootleg action figures of Marvel comics characters.
• Good Tickle Brain has a series where the Rude Mechanicals from A Midsummer Night's Dream (and later their in-universe audience as well) are portrayed by Star Wars action figures.

Other

• Terry Gilliam and John Cleese first met while doing a fumetti feature, laying the foundation for what would eventually become Monty Python's Flying Circus.

Video Games

• The graphic novel cutscenes of Max Payne use edited, filtered photographs as frames.

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