I, like so many other probably starry eyed author wannabes, am considering making a webcomic. However, I am mortally afraid of being "that guy" who thinks he's the next Tolkien and then creates something vomit-inducing. Thus, I'm gathering help as best I can rather than trip over self-confidence. I'm slightly tempted to name it "I have no clue what I'm doing", but will probably stick with "Deep Forest".

Sorry, I digress.

Anyhow, I have a setting I'm interested in, lots of character ideas, and a few story ideas, but I'm not sure where to go from here. This isn't like writing a story where you have a beginning, middle, and end. A comic is supposed to be open ended, or at least not reach its conclusion two months after it starts.

So how do you do it? What I have in mind is something of a dramady, so I can't really go with stand alone arcs. Do you just stick arcs together like Legos? Or do I just make it up as I go along? I'm not sure. In another side question, is there any rough (and I mean rough) way to estimate how many strips you can get out of X pages of text?

Thanks for any help you can give!