Here are the rules for doing a cruciverbacomic, in case you’d like to try this exercise yourself.
1. Start with a filled-in crossword grid. You can make your own like I did, or take one from another source, as long as you give credit. The grid should follow the standard New York Times rules: no uncrossed squares, no two-letter words, and no horribly obscure words or words you just made up. Rotational symmetry’s also desirable but not an absolute requirement. (Note: you can rework this grid later if you need to, but it should continue to obey these rules.)
2. Your comics story should consist of square panels, each of them corresponding to one square within the grid.
3. Panels that correspond to black squares should be silent, meaning no dialogue balloons, thought balloons, sound effects or “commentary effects” like “EPIC FAIL.” (I’ve borrowed “commentary effects” from Internet imagery like I Can Has Cheezburger?, though they also have some antecedent in the Japanese tradition of making “sound effects” for things that aren’t actually sounds, and I’m far from the only American comics person to use them.)
Depicting letters in a silent panel is acceptable if the letters would be visible in a film, like a stop sign or a signature on a check. The black-square panels should also be darkened in some way that makes their status clear when the comics grid is completed. (I opted for heavy borders.)
4. In the other panels, the first letter of a dialogue balloon, thought balloon, sound effect or commentary effect should correspond to the letter inside the corresponding square.
5. Each word in the crossword, whether entered across or down, should be a part of the dialogue balloons, thought balloons, sound effects or commentary effects in a comics panel that corresponds to one of the word’s squares.
6. The comic should be able to “pass” as a regular comics story with a narrative thread, not just an assortment of unconnected occurrences.
There are no other restrictions on size, genre or content. Have fun!
Color me impressed! …not literally. Not that you have the power to color me. (OR DO YOU?)
Seriously, that’s amazingly impressive!
Wow.
holy…crap…
There isn’t words for this. I’m blown away.
That might just be the geekiest thing I’ve ever seen.
…I like it.
I missed your explanation and went straight to x.png . . . and I was looking, looking, looking for what connection the comics might have with the grid.
When it finally clicked, I was blown away. That was super-super awesome. Thanks for making this.
Wow T that’s pretty awesome
This explains a lot of the confusing references, I was wondering why the writing style had changed so much… lol.
Verrah clever.
Wow, this is pretty awesome. I like that we were “told” what this was in 6 of 12.
Wow. T. “This is impressive” or “that blew me away” doesn’t quite cut it. I’m not sure I have any other words than half sentences and stuttering amazement, though.
I am quite extremely curious how this idea came about and was executed. Did you start out the the crossword or the story or what in mind to end up with this? with this in mind or how did this come up. Very original and great.
Also really good to see Hilda return to old form and then some. Great arc.
@EarlofSandwich, first I blocked out the *general idea* of the story, and subdivided the plot into page units as usual. At this point I knew how it would start, the silent sequence in the middle, and how it would end. I knew it’d be a Hilda-focused story, naturally, and her chance to confront demons both literal and metaphorical. Plus, I’d been meaning to do a Wordplay riff in Fans since introducing her character.
Then I made the crossword grid. I wasn’t totally sure what words would be useful where, so I filled it with geek references that are often entertaining for the Fans to use, character names, and things I thought *might* work even if I wasn’t sure quite how. I did have to change the “southeast wing” of the grid later, but just a little.
And then I dialogued. You got to let the characters drive the dialogue, but you can “massage” what they’re saying somewhat, and it wasn’t TOO hard to find ways to keep the right letter at the beginning of each panel. I started out by doing some free-association about the words that needed to be in the story, and came up with connections like Wheaton’s Law.
The toughest word to fit in there was definitely “ado,” which isn’t really a word that’s natural conversation for any of the Fans. “Much ado about” gets a little more play, but it took me forever to think of a clever-sounding variation on that. Probably the second-hardest was “Lion-O,” which had seemed like a good bet at the time.
Great idea! For people who want to take a crack at making a cruciverbicomic but are having trouble coming up with a filled crossword grid, I’ve written an automatic crossword generator, available at http://eptcomic.com/eptcross.htm
The page also includes 600 randomly generated crosswords for people who don’t want to download the program.
Thanks for coming up with this, and congratulations on the sweet execution.