So Where Do You Get Your Ideas?

nice. complex and well versed.
personally i'm told my ideas come from a hole in my head to a different world,
so you got me beat in spades. good luck and fun with the work.

Music, random strokes of genius.

I'm gonna have to start reading your stuff, now I'm curious about this Grayhound bus trip :) 
Nightmares must make for such an interesting channel in comic writing, and a challenge at that. 
 
I've had a few fuel some crazy creativity here and there, they work well. 
 
Thanks for such a good answer and the chance to ask.

I always liked Robert E. Howard’s explanation for the creation of Conan. Basically, he said that he felt the Cimmerian’s dark presence materialize behind him one night while he was at his typewriter. Conan commanded him to chronicle his story, lest he chop his head off, and Howard wrote until collapsing at dawn.  Thus, the first Conan story, "The Phoenix on the Sword," was written.  

  While I don’t go so far as to believe that stories are inspired by actually existent spirits or powers (though I am rather opposed to flatly denying anything) I have sometimes wondered if it were possible that unrecognized forces of the past or present   or even the future   work through the thoughts and actions of living men. This occurred to me when I was writing the first stories of the Conan series especially. I know that for months I had been absolutely barren of ideas, completely unable to work up anything sellable. Then the man Conan seemed suddenly to grow up in my mind without much labor on my part and immediately a stream of stories flowed off my pen   or rather, off my typewriter   almost without effort on my part. I did not seem to be creating, but rather relating events that had occurred. Episode crowded on episode so fast that I could scarcely keep up with them. For weeks I did nothing but write of the adventures of Conan. The character took complete possession of my mind and crowded out everything else in the way of storywriting. When I deliberately tried to write something else, I couldn’t do it. I do not attempt to explain this by esoteric or occult means, but the facts remain. I still write of Conan more powerfully and with more understanding than any of my other characters. But the time will probably come when I will suddenly find myself unable to write convincingly of him at all. That has happened in the past with nearly all my rather numerous characters; suddenly I would find myself out of contact with the conception, as if the man hiniself had been standing at my shoulder directing my efforts, and had suddenly turned and gone away, leaving me to search for another character.

great article!  I really enjoyed reading that
 
on a side note...Greyhound bus trips can be amazingly fun or horrifyingly terrible...I've experienced both

I don't exactly remember where I read a preview of hybrid bastards, but I really enjoyed the wacky art style. 

I have talked about this with a teacher friend of mine, also a comic artist.  He brought up the idea that we get ideas from all around us, from everything.  Things we like, don't like, don't care about, everything, and we filter it and merge it and what not and come up with ideas.  We absorb our surroundings and put out our ideas, I guess like a meat grinder.
My ideas sometimes come out in complete ideas at random moments, I am ADHD by the way with many thoughts bouncing around my mind, and sometimes just as a copy of another idea or a slightly different version of something I saw, and sometimes it feels like the  Robert E. Howard said.  I story and its characters already existed and i am chipping and carving away all the thoughts and ideas that aren't part of it, until I bring the real story and the real characters to life. 

It would be hard to conceive that something from Hybrid Bastards comes from a personal experience... Of course... I don't know that... :)

great read, thanks for that.

Very cool knowing how you get your ideas. 
 
My ways of coming up with stories/characters are mostly inspired in car rides. When driving no matter how short the distance is my mind wanders. Probably not the safest thing in the world but it happens, alot of my characters are created from just driving and then sitting on the ideas of the stories or characters until they boil over and go into typing them out.

Nice insight.
 
Quite an accurate descriptor for how tales grow from an initial concept or idea.

Nice feature^^
Original question you asked there G-man!

Occasional strokes of imagination, grabbing madly to transient nodes of thought

" @danhimself: They really need to advertise on the ticket that you're guaranteed at least three weirdos per trip. "

" @tonis: They're both available on Amaaaaaaaazon....  Keep the questions coming. This is fun. I want to make this a regular feature. "

This is one of the better articles to appear on this site in some time.  With that said taking everything from a variety of sources holds weight.  I think Jim Jarmusch said something to the effect of "steal from everywhere."  It's so difficult to write a story currently and feel fresh, though.  Has every story structure been done and every ending or trick ending in the book been copied and pasted for decades now?