Quest to Nowhere

I want to start off by saying that the point of this is not to bash webcomics, or say they are a bad thing, or anything like that. But rather try and address some problems/trends I’ve begun to notice that are detracting from the medium. My hope is that those reading this will get webcomic creators to think about their comics in perhaps a way they haven’t, or possibly find solutions or ideas they can use in their comics to improve them.

The idea for this whole thing was born out of a conversation I had with Asuka (Ruby Thursday,) talking about her comic, and webcomics sort of generally. Mostly it revolved around why certain webcomics are able to succeed and other webcomics fail, especially concerning good webcomics that don’t do well or fail, and bad webcomics that succeed or are popular.

Now I’ve written/drawn/written and drawn webcomics, I’ve even hosted small webcomic communities, and run message boards. Suffice to say I’ve been in and around webcomics for a long time, and I have a lot of experience with them. I’ve also put a lot of thought into why things are as they are with webcomics, and how things could be better, which are things I hope to explore here.

There are a number of different aspects to webcomics: story, art, marketing, business, website design, etc. Any of these could be a jumping off point for this conversation. My hope is to cover most of these aspects at some point, but for now I’m going to talk about webcomics in sort of more general terms, and probably dip into story/narrative a little as well. Since the writing in a webcomic is the most important part of the comic. It doesn’t matter how good the art is if the story is crap I’m not going to read it.

But I digress…

The Different Types of Webcomics:

There are basically two main varieties of webcomics, from which a number of other more specific varieties branch off of: gag-a-day (or gag-a-comic,) and story arc comics. Gag-a-day, or gag-a-comic, are comics in which each page or strip of the comic centers around telling a joke of some sort. Each individual comic is self contained, although there can be reoccurring characters. Story arc comics, on the other hand, contain a narrative the runs over the course of a few comics or over the course of the entire comic.

Those are of course very general definitions, there are single comics that are self contained story comic, or story comics that have a joke on each page. But these are all different varieties that branch from these two initial types.

Now due to the nature of webcomics the gag-a-day type is more cohesive to the nature of the webcomic medium (at least as it is now.) This is not so much because of the strength of the this type of comic, but rather due to the weaknesses of the narrative comic within the medium.

Because of the nature of webcomics as they are now, the comic’s creators are updating their comic between one and seven times a week. More likely closer to one then to seven at the start of a comic since making a webcomic is very time intensive, thus you don’t tend to see narrative comics updating close to seven times a week unless they have a large enough audience to support the creators to some extent, (more on this later.)

Typically you tend to see comics update one, two, or three times a week at the start. With a story comic that means over the course of a year you are making about 52 to 156 pages of comics. Which really isn’t that many compared to other forms of comics. Western monthly comic books are about 20 pages, and Japanese manga is usually 10 to 20 pages a week. Truth be told these mediums of comicing are far better for telling a story because of this. Thus with a webcomic, unless the comic updates frequently, it can be difficult to tell a story (especially a longer form story,) and it can also be difficult to work out the pacing of the story even with frequent updates.

Quantity vs Quality:

The problem most comics have when they start is deciding how often to update, heck it can be a problem even for comics that have been running a while. When someone starts a webcomic, especially when they’ve never done it before, they tend to be a little overly ambitious. As much as every webcomic creator would love to update daily, its just not possible in most cases, the reason for this is merely because of time.

One only has so much time in the day, or the week, in order to get everything done. So a webcomic artist has to figure out how long they take to do a comic, and then decide a schedule based on that. Then of course there are those artist that are very good, and are able to rather quickly turn out a comic, in their case the question is more a question of how long they want to spend on a comic as opposed to how long will it take them.

Thus updating comes down to a question of quantity vs. quality. You might be able to make beautiful fuller colored masterpieces of cg art for your comic, but only able to update once a week. Or you could draw just the comic in a really sketchy pencil style and update seven times a week. In other words, quantity and quality are very much inversely proportional. The more time you spend on one comic, means less time you have to work on others.

So how does one decide what is the best balance? That’s sort of tricky to answer, since the answer is going to be different for each person. But basically it comes down to two factors you need to consider, one is that you need to decide what kind of look you really want the comic to have. This is an important aspect I think that a lot of webcomic makers don’t necessarily consider.

Just because you can have color in your comic doesn’t mean you have to have color in your comic. Coloring can be a very time intensive process, I mean there is a reason that weekly manga tend to be black and white. But choosing to use, or not use, color shouldn’t merely be based on time, but also on the appropriateness it is to the comic. By which I mean would your comic be better suited to be in black and white, or some other style. Something like a noir type comic would likely be better served in black and white, or a comic where subtle details or facial expressions are more important, since in those cases those details stand out better in black and white, while in color they can sometimes get ignored or passed over by the reader. In which case you are hurting the comic, rather then helping it.

Three last things about the update schedule, which are think are probably the three most important things to remember.

1. Don’t be afraid to throw away a comic at the last minute because you don’t like it. This is especially true for gag-a-day comics. It’s ok to not update, or postpone the update because you don’t like something in the comic, just make sure you let the readers know. They’ll understand.
2. You need to update consistently. People are creatures of habit, so if you get used to updating and working on the comic consistently on specific days it’ll make doing the comic easier for you to do. Updating consistently also makes it easier on the readers, because then they get in a habit of reading your comic on those days. Now this doesn’t mean you can’t change your updating schedule, it just means don’t do it frequently. And this doesn’t supersede number 1, meaning that you can miss updates, just have something ready to post on the site instead to at least let the readers know what’s going on.
3. Don’t become a slave to the update schedule. What I mean is that a webcomic is something you are supposed to enjoy doing, when it stops being enjoyable and becomes about just churnning out the next comic for the next update. That’s when you should maybe start thinking about ways to make the comic fresh for you, or possibly even moving onto a new project.

Next Time….

That’s probably enough for this one. I’d like to hear what people think about this so leave a comment below, or email me at onegamersopinion [at] gmail [dot] com, with your questions/comments/feedback.

Some of the topics I have planned in future installments are delving into why good comics can fail while bad comics can succeed, why the never ending Act 2 is not your friend, do’s and don’ts of acquiring readership, you’re comic are bad and u showd feel bad (aka how you can come to love the troll, or learn to take criticism,) and many more (well more… maybe not many.)