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I was born in Nottingham, England in 1986 and went to university in Stirling, Scotland from 2005 through 2009. In 2011, I moved to Edinburgh, where I live to this day. What Drew Me to Creating Comics? I’ve been a fan of Sonic the Hedgehog since I was seven years old; I grew up playing the games and reading the comics (both the Fleetway and the Archie ones), and since I had always enjoyed drawing and telling stories, of course I ended up creating my own Sonic fan comics. Sadly, these early efforts often ended up being abandoned before I could finish them and I don’t think I still have any of them now, unless they’re hidden away in a box of old artwork somewhere, so very few people have seen them other than me. But around 2001, I got involved in online Sonic fandoms and soon discovered the quirky medium of sprite comics. So during the summer holidays of 2002, when I had just finished my GCSE’s and had a lot of free time on my hands, I decided to have a go at making a sprite comic of my own. It wasn’t great, to tell you the truth, as I was still very new to making art in a digital medium and still had a lot to learn. But I enjoyed it. More importantly, I finished it and shared it others. By this time, I was already reading webcomics like Ozzie and Millie and I’d raed a handful of contemporary sprite comics, too. So I decided I wanted to make an ongoing sprite comic of my own. And in October, 2002, Eon’s Comic began. Why “Eon’s Comic”? Well, my online handle at the time was Eon (after the character of the same name) and I couldn’t think of a really good name for this new comic. It was mostly a Sonic fancomic, but other franchises were included in its early days, like Mega Man and Mario (basically any games I could get sprites from were fair game), and I don’t think I ever wanted to attach a specific brand like Sonic to it. If I recall, I flirted briefly with the name “Spritescape”, but didn’t go for it in the end and settled on a simple descriptive name that said what it was. I was Eon and it was my comic, hence Eon’s Comic. What Came Before: A Brief History of Eon’s Comic
Eon’s Comic started out as a fairly light-hearted, silly story, but I quickly realised I’d rather tell a serious story than try to be funny. Characters from Mega Man and Mario were relegated to the background and eventually written out altogether, making Eon’s Comic essentially a Sonic fancomic, but with a sizeable cast of original characters, some of them loaned by friends, most of them created by me. And over time, these OC’s would come to eclipse the Sonic characters themselves as my childhood interest in Sonic began to wane after 2005. Instead, the OC’s took centre stage and Eon’s Comic became a Star Wars and Star Fox fancomic, with just a dash of influence from Star Trek. I got rid of Doctor Eggman and his Badniks, moved the remaining Sonic cast to a supporting role, and began telling stories about war, politics, revolution, and space exploration. Eon’s Comic moved far away from its roots and there was a time when I doubted very much that it would ever return to them. By 2010 I had become pretty talented with sprites -- editing character sprites to make news ones, using different background elements to make new settings, and even creating sprites of my own wholly from scratch. But now I was running up against the limits of what I thought I could do with this medium and getting pretty frustrated by it, and it didn’t help that I’d encountered folks online who said they simply wouldn’t read a sprite comic, no matter how good its writing was, because it wasn’t a “real” comic to them, whatever that means. But I also started to believe Eon’s Comic wasn’t a “real” comic and I felt an urge to try and make the switch from a sprite comic to whatever a “real” comic might be. I read a book that summer called ‘Making Comics’ by Scott McCloud, which is an excellent book and one I’d highly recommend to anyone interested in making comics of their own; and even though McCloud presents sprite comics in that book as a legitimate medium, I felt emboldened to finally make that switch. And so, early in 2011, Eon’s Comic ended with its 843rd page, just a little over eight years after it began. But it wasn’t the end. What Came After: The Beginning of Eon’s World I spent the next couple of years practicing my art, learning to make 3D models, and writing in preparation to re-launch Eon’s Comic, now called Eon’s World, as a “real” comic, using proper hand drawn art. And in April, 2013, Eon’s World Vol. 2, Chapter 1: ‘Brave New World’ began. At first, I’d intended for Eon’s World Vol. 2 to be a direct continuation of Eon’s Comic. But even in preproduction, I’d started to make serious changes to the history and setting, to the point I was calling it a “loose sequel”, in the same sense that Superman Returns is a “loose sequel” to Superman: The Movie and Superman 2, but ignores Superman 3 and Superman 4: The Quest for Peace. I also began to feel embarrassed by some of my earlier works, so I quietly removed the original Eon’s Comic from this site until I could figure out what to do about it. In 2016, I started writing retrospective commentaries for the old comic and uploading it as it was for readers who were interested in seeing it, but I never finished that. The fact is I just didn’t want Eon’s Comic as it was online anymore. I wrote it between the ages of 16 and 24; I was younger and less worldly than I am now and there were some ideals expressed by the old comic that just do not jive with who I have become. It was an important work of art for me, but not one I could still stand by. But still I felt the general story of the classic Eon’s Comic needed to exist online in some form, or Eon’s World Vol. 2 had no foundation. Why should readers care about all these Sonic/Star Wars/Star Fox fan characters without knowing any of their history? So in 2018, I began a project, an attempt to give the classic Eon’s Comic the George Lucas treatment and create a remaster consistent with Vol. 2. I got pretty far with it, until I reached a point where I realised I wasn’t remastering pages of Eon’s Comic anymore, but completely re-creating them or replacing them with wholly new content. Here’s a sample of what I mean:
But quite apart from this, I began to feel deep discomfort in creating something that was essentially new using fan characters whose creators I’d long since lost touch with. To me, it felt unethical to do this without at least trying to obtain their permission. Moreover, if I were willing to wholly re-create or even replace entire pages of Eon’s Comic with something new and this was now what I was going to be doing anyway, why not just go all in? So I gave up on remastering Eon’s Comic and settled on a complete remake. I’d flirted with this idea several years earlier, but at that time, I’d planned to remake Eon’s Comic in the same style as Eon’s World Vol. 2, an unreasonably monumental task I doubt I’d have ever completed; but this time, the plan was simpler. I would remake the story of the classic Eon’s Comic as a new sprite comic, but following the chapter structure of Eon’s World Vol. 2. This gave me the freedom to expand on some stories, merge others or parts of others into new ones, and nix some altogether. This time, I would never include characters from Mario or Mega Man, and focus more tightly on telling stories based on Sonic the Hedgehog, Star Wars, and Star Fox, with the new addition of Freedom Planet. I would keep the most prominent of original characters I’d obtained permission to include in Eon’s World Vol. 2, but only them, and I would replace the guest OC’s from the early days of Eon’s Comic with new characters of my own. And so I began writing up plans for multiple seasons to carry the story of Eon’s Comic from before its original beginning even to its conclusion, at which point the story would be picked in Chapter 1 of Vol. 2. And finally, on April 13, 2019, Eon’s World Vol. 1 began. TL;DR If you didn’t feel like reading all the above, fair enough. All you need to know is there are two ongoing comics on this website; Eon’s World Vol. 1 and Eon’s World Vol. 2. They are both part of the same continuity, but Vol. 1 is set before Vol. 2 (even though it started six years later). It doesn’t really matter which comic you start with. Vol. 1 isn’t finished yet and there will always be gaps in Vol. 2’s backstory until it is. But personally, I’d recommend starting at the very beginning of Vol. 1. Vol. 1 is a sprite comic, with a healthy dose of 3D modelling thrown in, whereas Vol. 2 uses a more traditional art style between Chapters 1 and 11. The Future of Eon’s World At the time of writing this, I haven’t yet decided whether or not Chapter 12 of Vol. 2 will be in the same style as the previous chapters, but I do know that from Chapter 13 onwards, Vol. 2 will be a sprite comic, like Vol. 1. The reason for this is fairly simple. It is much quicker for me to make a sprite comic and I can make a sprite look consistently good from page to page far more easily than one that requires me to spend hours or days even drawing characters and backgrounds from scratch every single time. Mad respect to webcomics artists who can pull that off, but it turns out I’m not one of them. Fortunately, since beginning Vol. 1 in 2019, I’d found ways to push past what I had thought were the limits of sprite comics as a medium a decade earlier and I think Vol. 2 will be just fine carrying on as a sprite comic. Who knows? That way, I may even reach the end of Eon’s World one day. |
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Eon's World is a fan comic created by Bethany Turner. All characters are copyright
©
to their respective creators. The contents of this site are not
public domain material and should not be edited, distributed, or
otherwise used without first obtaining permission from
Bethany Turner. |
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Hi
there! I’m Bethany Turner, also known as Delta Starfire. My pronouns
are she/her and 
