
With the rise of technology, anyone can create their own comic strips, even those who don’t feel confident enough to draw (and if you feel that way, you need to read this post). There are a number of sites that make it easy to create your own comic strip without having to download software; some are better than others. Here is the Magnum Arts review of some on-line comic strip generators to try out.
The sites require you to sign up for an account, and you have the ability to share your creations with others on Facebook or e-mail. Some prevent direct downloading of your creations; I had to do a screen capture in order to show examples in this post. Most allow you to comment on and see comic strips others have created, and build up a series of strips.
Bitstrips
Bitstrips is by far among the best comic strip generators I’ve discovered. The ability to customize your characters is huge. You start out by choosing your gender, and then choose skin tones, the shape of the eyes, face, eyebrows, mouth and hair style. You can fine-tune your character by adding facial hair, blush, glasses, hats, and you get to choose from a variety of outfits as well. You can also choose what kind of body your character has. The process of creating a character takes a bit of time, because there are so many options to choose from.
Below is the interface during the creation of one of my characters, who I named Sharonda.




Pixton


Toondoo


Strip Generator
Strip Generator has a variety of simply-rendered, rudimentary characters, and you can swap out the various elements; hair, eyes, etc. The ability to customize the characters and background s is pretty limited, generating comic strips that have a very cookie-cutter, blocky appearance. You can create your own characters using mix-and-match hair, eyes, mouths and body types, and resize every element you put into the panels. The ability to change the font of the text is also severely limited. There is a small selection of background elements you can add, but the overall result is underwhelming.
Here is a sample strip I created:
Strip Creator
Strip Creator gives you more choices of backgrounds and characters, but the choices are still pretty limited. You can choose two versions of each character, either facing left or right, and you can move them around in the panel, but you don’t have the ability to change their expression or poses. The characters sit superimposed on the backgrounds in an awkward manner that prevents them from looking like part of the scene. There is a larger assortment of characters to choose from, but the artwork is uninspiring. Overall, Strip Generator doesn’t provide a knockout result.

Make Beliefs Comix
This strip generator is severely limited, and has very child-like artwork; it is designed for younger children to play with. There are only a few variations of each character, and there is no ability to change the expression, pose or outfits. Additionally, you don’t have the ability to reconfigure the shape of the word balloon, making it hard to squeeze in dialogue without taking up a huge amount of space in the panel. Overall this strip generator leaves a lot to be desired, even if it is for kids. This is an example I created but didn’t bother to write any dialogue; the options were just too limited.
