Aquanomics, Comics and Canada

i'm in mourning for Demon-Vincent. and it has occured to me after observing the behaviour of both Angel-Aziraphale and Ariel i have crowned myself "Friend of Fish". All five of my fish to date have had their own unique personalities, as you would expect from a dog or cat or ferret. Raphael (and the "Bijoux series" of bottom cleaners) was a little show-offy, quick tempered, curious and vain. He never flaired after he figured out the mirror trick. Lucifer, may he rest in peace, only lived two weeks but he was a real beauty and the feistiest fish ever. He BIT my FINGER while i was feeding him. he loved attention and was always doing the fish-dance when he noticed me. Demon was an absolute curmudgeon, he hated attention and was so high strung he'd flair at the drop of a pin. Angel (real name Aziraphale) is friendly and affectionate and always swims to my side of the tank when he sees me. he's also very patient, Demon never out-flaired him, nor has Ariel now. And Ariel is a curious but skittish little mite. he chases his food to the bottom when it sinks.
It also occures to me that this blog is going to turn into a semi-rant about the woes of getting a comic published.
I have many woes to recount at present, since i seem to have left my muse in Italy. that isn't nearly as worrying as the fact that i have to do a serious retro-fit and timeline-compression on an ENTIRE ARC of the script. then i have to resolve myself to the fact that one of my favourite characters DIED, and since i believe that good writers don't Deus Ex Machina everything, he's very likely going to remain dead and cremated.
and of course this entire sprawling, untidy, overgrown in some parts, just plain epic story doesn't even have a working title yet. my only title is the highly-creative Untitled, although in my head i've been referring to the opus minoris as Deamonologos, or for those who are Greek-impaired, Demonologica, or for those who can't read my pseudo-latin, Demonlogic. which isn't a very grabbing title at all. it was all fine and shiny when the durn thing comprised three arcs and one simple title; Arial versus Lotus. but of course while i love Arial dearly she wasn't compelling enough a main character and although i promised myself i would give the whole monstrosity up after 3 arcs...well that didn't work because i had to tie those dangling plot threads, and i was so tempted to continue exploring certain characters, and then i needed a grand finale but was unwilling to stay comitted to that "THE END" moment so i left it open for a sequel, which then became more absorbing than the original premise, so i also had to scrap the out-moded Arial versus Lotus title, but then what to call it? what was IT even about?! when it was just about Arial fighting Lotus...but Lotus being a far more complex and compelling character...in short the story blew-up until it became about everything. seriously, politics, sex, war and peace, good and evil somewhere in the mix....and i couldn't think of a damn title because everything and nothing fit. of course now that i've finally agreed to make the story about Lotus and his struggles for autonomy versus, well it seems the entire Heavenly universe, i can't call the thing "The Continuing Adventures of A Diva-devil named Lotus"... Daemonologos has a nice etymology for anyone into that sort of armchair demonology. but it's a stupid title from the angle of "how on earth am i going to get an audience with a title so pretentious and unmarketable?" in short, i won't, because the general comic-buyer is still an adolescent teen looking for sex, violence and fairly Hollywood plots rife with drama and angst. I don't deny that Lotus has a dramatic and angsty existence. However, as even I can't take him seriously, i treat him with the thickly sardonic tone the little scrap deserves. and with Magnus just having to die in order to forward the plot...i'm hoping with the rise of my newly-christened heroine i'll have a better title. Sheme makes for an interesting enough character.
that's the other big nasty to a writer, how do you know which characters will be likeable once the audience has gotten past the silly title? Lotus isn't likeable. he's difficult as all hell (pun intended) and making his struggles real and sympathetic is a touchy issue in a world where someone will always be offended by something. nevermind that Lotus' backstory is rife with war, incest, physical and mental abuse, same-sex love affairs, murder-by-contract, slavery... Sheme herself is a breath of fresh air for me, but for the audience? and who are they? i only hope whoever They are, they treat Sheme and my rising feminist characters with less contempt than what Lotus can attract. Sheme's pretty special for me at least. She's a rape-victim, her mother was a freed-slave, she's half-blind, half-deaf, smarter than the average comic female and she's black. yep, black. i still have trouble finding empowered females of any race, age or creed in mainstream comics, so Sheme should make a nice big splash.