First off I’d like to apologize for not updating as frequently as I wanted to. This is a side project so normally my life and work would get in the way.

With that out of the way I’m going to talk about writing a universe for my comic. Like most comics they are usually set in an alternative universe to our own. I decided to do the same thing drawing from experiences of my own life.

Marie vs the Monsters is set in a normal quiet town. However I wanted this town to feel alive even if it’s not the main character of the comic. It is the background after all and I want it to at least make it exciting without it being distracting. I wanted readers to pick up small things in the background or what characters say to get a feel about what this town and it’s citizens are like.

To start off it’s got it’s own morning radio show that most of the youth enjoy.
                      
The Ferr Zone is named after a DJ named Ferr, based upon a good friend of mine, who does nothing but riff on current events and newspaper articles. He’s often known as faceless because nobody knows what he looks like, not even the crew at the radio station. I’ve made it a running gag while at the same time a mystery. What does he look like after all?

In this universe kids can look forward to Saturday mornings when their favourite diabetic super hero comes to their screens.
                            
Captain Insulin swoops into action as he battles diabolical sugar based villains and teaches the kids through educational PSAs about diabetes. I drew inspirations from cartoon shows of the 80s and 90s. As a kid I actually loved watching Captain Planet not understanding at the time that it was one giant PSA telling us to save the environment. The name of the hero himself came from a little Nintendo game called Captain Novolin.
Once again I based this character around another good friend of mine who is in fact diabetic himself.  We often made jokes about him either being a secret agent or a superhero so in the end I made him into one.

For news of the latest surrounding the strange events people tune into The Midnight Star.
                        
Lead reporter, Eileen Heather, is normally on the scene when something peculiar happens to this normal town. Originally the news station was going to be ‘Cool News for Teens’ with a totally different character as the lead reporter where she often tries to find weird, bizarre and interesting scoops in this normal city.
I changed it to The Midnight Star to make it a more general news station so everyone in the town can see for themselves the odd events occurring. I transferred some of the characteristics of the old reporter character to Eileen. She still tries to get the scoop on the weird stuff but acts a bit more up tight and professional. I will get more in depth about Eileen’s character later.

The main characters often hang out in the same certain places. The Fortess Cafe, St.Ashely’s College and Merton Apartments. It’s usually good to have a place for both the characters and readers to feel comfortable, in which sometimes gives a little break in the pacing of the plot. It’s during those places where it’s a good time for readers to know a bit more of the characters and the universe they live in through talk and banter.
I will also go a little bit more in depth about those places in a later post.

Hopefully this will let you know a bit more about the universe of Marie vs the Monsters.

Next Time: Creating the main protagonist.