About Focal Comics
What is Focal Comics?
Focal Comics is an
independent, not-for-profit comics & creator-collaboration community — an uncensored, creator-first comics universe built to platform artists and writers. Our motto is
Art without Agenda. Beyond the comics themselves, we're also building
Ludos —
Multiversal: TCG and the in-development beat-’em-up
The War for Primus.
What does “non-profit” mean here — are you a registered charity?
No. “Not-for-profit” describes how we operate, not a tax status. We’re mission-driven: we monetize to
support, employ, and promote artists and to replace AI with real creators wherever we can. We’re actively working to become a registered non-profit, but we aren’t there yet — so we’re not a registered charity and contributions aren’t tax-deductible. See our
Terms for the full wording.
What’s the goal?
To give creatives a platform — and a springboard into their careers — without needing big studios or millionaire backing. We also want to make comics people actually connect with: cool characters and relatable stories, told
without forcing our beliefs — religious, political, or social — on anyone. That’s what
Art without Agenda means. It runs alongside
Art without Apology: we don’t water down the stories or characters we want to make real. Read both in full under
No Agenda and
No Apologies. Whatever we earn goes back into people and their work.
Does “No Apologies” mean anything goes?
No. It means we won’t water down a story or a character just to make them easier to sit with — but it isn’t a free pass. Villains don’t get a sympathetic monologue to soften what they’ve done, mature work is marked as mature and kept behind an age gate, and none of our characters are self-inserts — they’re us at our best or our worst, never a mirror. See
No Apologies for the full explanation.
On our use of AI
Where AI is used here — and where it never will be
We want to be fully transparent about our AI use. No part of the creative work at Focal Comics is written or authored by AI. Not a story, not a comic, not a line of a character’s background. Those are hand-written and human-made, and that is not going to change.
Where we do use it
- Programming the site. The code this runs on — built by MarrowMyth on their Materia creative technology platform, which includes developmental AI coding in the programming.
- Course structure. Organising lessons and building the testing around them — never the teaching itself, which is written by the course creator in their own words.
- Art placeholders. Human-designed, presented through ethically trained AI, and made to be replaced by a paid artist.
Where we never will
- Writing a story, a script, or a comic
- Creating a character, their background, or their voice
- Writing the substance of a course or a lesson
- Standing in for an artist we could be paying instead
Our use of AI is restricted to structure and programming. The point is to keep our team and our collaborators as creatively active as possible by taking the menial work off them — the scaffolding that comes with building a community of this size.
We use AI as a time-saving measure, not a cost-saving one — so that more of our hours go into participating in, involving, and growing this community and our non-profit foundation with human hands and human experience.
Why is there AI art on the site?
Where we don’t yet have an artist, we use AI as a placeholder — a seat-warmer that holds the space until a paid artist takes over. Every piece of AI imagery here was made to be replaced by a paid artist.
So are you replacing artists with AI?
The opposite. Companies replace artists with AI; we use it to open seats
for artists. As we bring creators on, their work replaces the placeholders — that’s the whole point of
Artists Replacing AI.
How do I know artists are actually getting paid?
Check the ledger yourself — you don’t have to take our word for it. Every placeholder that gets replaced is logged in public on
Artists Replacing AI, tagged
Paid (the artist was compensated) or
Donated (they chose to give the work and asked not to be paid — credited either way). No entries yet just means no placeholder has been swapped out yet; the page updates the moment one is.
Is the AI trained on other people’s work? Is it bad for the environment?
No on both. When we use AI it’s kept fully in-house — generated and trained locally, only on our own hand-created material. It runs on our own machine through Comfy Console (built by MarrowMyth): no data centers, no water consumption, no environmental fallout. Just a GPU, a laptop fan, and a whole lot of concept art.
Do you use AI anywhere other than art placeholders?
Yes, and only in two places: the programming of this site, and the structure of our courses — organising lessons and building the tests around them. The programming of this website is done by MarrowMyth on their Materia creative technology platform, which includes developmental AI coding in the programming. The teaching itself is written by the course creator in their own words. Nothing creative is authored by AI: no story, no comic, no character, no lesson. We treat it as a time-saving measure, never a cost-saving one, so more of our hours go to people rather than admin.
Membership (Focal Point)
What is Focal Point?
Focal Point is our optional paid membership, run through
Patreon, with four tiers.
Orbital ($3/mo) is the reading tier — every comic we publish, free, paid and hosted, plus the Creative Collab
Discord.
Galactic ($5/mo) adds the full
course library, a listed profile on the
Member’s Roster, and eligibility for the
Spotlight rotation.
Universal ($15/mo) adds done-for-you promotion.
Multiversal ($30/mo) adds your own comics or stories hosted here for as long as the membership runs. Full tier details are on the
Join page.
Do the courses ever contradict each other?
Yes, on purpose. Different creators have different ways of doing things.
You are not learning from Focal, and not everything in every course is what Focal believes — you are learning one working creator’s way of doing it, from somebody who has actually done it. The clearest example is our AI course, which teaches using AI for the work
around the work, sitting on the same shelf as writing courses that tell beginners to be wary of it. What works for one person may not work for another, and that is exactly why we give you every perspective we can. See
Courses.
Do I need to be working on the comic to join Focal Point?
No. Membership isn’t limited to people drawing pages of the comic itself — it’s for any artist, writer, or creative who wants the Discord, the courses, and a real shot at getting seen, whether or not your work has anything to do with Focal’s universe. See
For Creators for the full picture.
Is membership a donation?
No — it’s a paid membership for the perks of your tier, and one of the main ways you help fund the mission.
Can I cancel?
Anytime, through your Patreon account. Billing, renewals, and any refunds are handled by Patreon under its own policies.
Fans & creators
Can I make fan art or fan fiction of your characters?
Yes, please. Your fan work is
yours — we claim no ownership of your drawing or writing. If we feature it you’re credited, and you can ask us to take it down at any time. (Full terms under
Fan Art & Fan Fiction.)
How do I become a contributing or paid artist?
Reach out through
Contact and choose “Collaboration & Contribution.” Contributions are handled case by case under a written agreement — a small piece gets a simple one, a larger contribution a fuller one.
Are my ideas or pitches protected if I send them to you?
Only once they’re covered by a signed contributor agreement. A casual pitch or idea sent through Contact or Discord isn’t treated as confidential — we may already be developing something similar, and sending it gives you no claim over what we make. If you want real protection, that’s exactly what the written agreement is for once we start actually working together. Full wording is in
Terms.
Who owns the characters?
Focal Comics — always. Fan work and paid contributions never transfer ownership of our characters, worlds, or stories to anyone else.
Content & getting in touch
Is there mature content or nudity?
Some of our comics and character art include nudity — drawn as art, not as sexual content. This site hosts nothing sexually explicit. Our explicit and NSFW work lives on third-party platforms we link to (like DeviantArt), age-gated 18+. If that’s not for you, it’s easy to avoid.
Where can I find you, and how do I get in touch?
Didn’t find your answer? Get in touch.
That chapter's coming soon.