HOW TO MAKE A COMIC: PART 1

I've never made a comic before. MVNDY is my first attempt. It seems kind of crazy that I went all in with this project, but that's how I do things, I guess.

MVNDY was born out of a book I was writing about an adolescent girl with psychonautic powers and a group of wizards from the south of Chile who unearthed corpses. But I could never connect the two things together.

Why were these wizards unearthing corpses? What was their purpose?

I could never answer that question.

Also, since I've mostly written essays and very short stories, my prose was basically all description. It wasn't good at all.

This year I started attending different techno events and underground parties, and something clicked after I saw Delia, a Chilean DJ, play.

What if the protagonist was a DJ instead?

What if these wizards kidnapped kids instead of unearthing corpses?

What if it was a comic and not a book?

So I grabbed a pencil and some letter-size sheets and started drawing and writing notes.

It all came out naturally.

First, the protagonist: Mandy.

Why Mandy? I really liked The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy when I was a kid, and I also loved Panos Cosmatos' Mandy from 2018. Then I thought the comic could just be called MVNDY, like what some DJs do with their names.

So I sketched Mandy, then a member of the Tribunal, and then some other characters. All very quickly.

It's funny because that first sketch of the main "villain" looks like a mix of Pinochet, Doctor Eggman and Doctor Doom.

Then I wrote some short stuff about the story and the world.

More drawings. More notes.

I even imagined some scenes that I found funny.

And that's how you start making a comic...

I guess.