Greetings. I wanted to share with you, in case you find it useful, the result of my personal investigation on what LLM is best, in my opinion, for comic generation. Now first some disclaimers.
First I’m not getting paid for this from anyone, and as I’m not getting paid I only check the LLMs using their free trial processes. Nearly all had a window for testing and free use. If the LLM didn’t then is not here to begin with. Another thing is that all of them allow you to login using your Google account and as I have more than one for different reasons, and every account gets the same amount of free trial disregarding of if is from the same person, I was able to check them for much longer than usual. Yet, as I didn’t check any of their paid options (only finally paid one, the one I decided for and I’m using it for my comics) is possible there were things I’m missing of their paid versions.
No to give some context. I was using till recently and for many months, Perchance. Particularly on its Stable Difussion sublink. Perchance is free and is good in many ways, is also virtually unrestricted on content. Other than grossly illegal stuff like CP (which I’m happy they have it), it allows you to do basically everything with no restriction. Is not my place to judge you so if you ever need to generate whatever that’s the best option, if you heard about NovelAI for example and its genetation of stories, well Perchance is basically NovelAI for image. I might someday published a guy on how to maximize it but would not be here today.
And I mention Perchance because although I’m not doing p0rn, I am targeting very mature topics, if my comics were a movie will be no doubt rated “R”. Not PG. But Perchance do have some limits. I’m happy it exist and grateful is free, but it has problems. One of them is that is nearly impossible to add speech bubbles, it gets confused and writes incoherencies or scribbles. It also struggles a lot with certain body positions, camera angles, and certain words and objects. For example something as simple as a queue of people it doesn’t get it, or showing bruises like a swollen eye or a Black eye. But I digress. Point is, to make truly marvelous comics is not the one. It also has the problem that doesn’t keep anything, so you have to manually download every image you generate if you want to keep it, whilst the other LLMs allow you to keep a file of them and download them when you need them/want.
Now let see the rest:
I’ll add the lowest price so that I don’t have to add multiple prices for each one, if you’re interest in their different pricing would have to research it yourself.
CRITERIA:
My perfect LLM for comic generation should have preferably most of this four characteristics:
- Monthly payment with unlimited generation.
- Characters’ template.
- Good generating speech bubbles.
- Preferable that allows to generate whole multi-panel pages.
ANALYSIS
Adobe
$9, includes 3000 credits
Pros
Is very much design for comics, works very well regarding the panels and speech bubbles.
Seems not to have issues with graphic violence.
It generates different comic pages if you give him the script.
Cons
Fails very often, probably a servers’ issue.
Very restricted on content, particular NSFW.
Although it is the model that comes closest to what is sought, it has several issues. The generated images remain stiff and artificial, the poses are not quite right, and—due to the cost—they cannot be corrected. The images still look distinctly like AI-generated content, but even if one were willing to overlook that, the investment required per image would be very high. It could work for generating comics based on non-NSFW ideas, though it would still be obvious that they are AI-generated; in any case, they would need to be created only after the script was fully finished and refined to avoid wasting money.
ComicInk
$9.99 per 1800 credits. This is not monthly if you expend your credits in two days you’ll have to pay again.
Pros
Good on depicting mature topic, has restrictions but not too rigid.
Very much design for comics, it generates whole pages of panels in different types of frames.
Generate scripts pretty well, you send the prompt and generates the script, you can edit the script of course, but once the script is ready you can generate the whole page with it.
Characters templates.
Interactive chats
Very intuitive, doesn’t require too complex prompts.
Cons
Their pricing and business models is not cost effective for the artist. As a comic book maker I’m a perfectionist, and I take very, very long time making and remaking the same frame until it gets perfect. With this model of paying for 1800 credits flat I’ll have to be paying every 3 days.
Has restrictions tho can be tricked.
The style is not that good. More flowed than Adobe’s, but is still not the best, of course I didn’t had much time to check if it could be improved.
Comicsai
$15 monthy and 1500 panels free.
Pros
Quick.
Has characters’ templates.
I liked the overall style.
Small restrictions.
Cons
Has no whole page generator (you have to make it panel by panel).
The flow and movements of the characters again feels very Perchance-like, so the problem here is that comicsai gives you little that Perchance don’t give you for free.
Comicsmaker
$10 monthly plus 3000 credits.
Pros
Quick
Like the stylle
Cons
Doesn’t allow for whole page generation, has to make frame by frame.
Like the one above doesn’t give you much that Perchance don’t already give you for free and with less restrictions.
Mage
$10 monthly with unlimited generation and 3000 “gems”.
Pro
Is unlimited, only one I found filling this criteria.
Handles mature topics including sex and violence. Tho once your “gems” (equivalent of credits) the generation is more restricted.
Allows for characters templates.
Cons
Requires very detailed prompts for them to be good.
Doesnt has whole pages generator, has to be done frame by frame.
This was the winner. I did subscribe to Mage at the end and has been testing it since and works very well, I’m very please, even tho it didn’t had all the criterions.
Discarded/had not many pros:
Frameo (use to be Dashtoon): very expensive, minimum membership is $100/month.
Llamagen seems reasonable price and had apparently many of the criterions but doesn’t allow free trials.
Comicai $9 for 250 credits that goes very very fast. Very restrictive on content.
Elser: Good price and seems to have other criterions but only allow for yearly subscription.
CONCLUSION
At the end neither had all four criterions I was looking for. Closet one was Mage as it had; character template, unlimited generation (only one to my knowledge) and little to none restrictions. I could live with it not having whole page multi-panel generation. I mean, it can do it if in the prompt but is not like Adobe or Comicink that seem to be designed to make it so it can get a little clumsy with it. So I prefer to do it frame by frame and then paste them.
Some advice with it tho won’t go into much details with it. Save your “Gems” for really important stuff, choose one of the Gem-free models it has before starting generating after you pay and use the Gems wisely, especially for things the unlimited models don’t make. I personally use Chatgpt at the moment to create very detailed prompts, the more the prompts are detailed the better it makes the image, Chatgpt knows how to work with Mage so the combination of both functions very well.
That’s it, thanks for reading.
