Thread: Webcomic help
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Strato

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Joined: Jan 2002

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Strato is doing well so far

Oct 12, 2006, 01:42 PM
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What's your angle for this comic? It sounds like you have a lot of ideas, but you lack a specific selling point.

For starters, is this going to be a gag-a-day strip, or a plot-driven comic? Each have their advantages. Gag-a-day strips tend to sell easier and make more money, but plot-driven comics appeal to keeping fan bases. Of course, there are always strips which aim for the middle ground, such as Calvin and Hobbes.

Gag-a-day strips make for less developed characters, but who fit in almost any scenerio and can make it funny. They can also be one-panelers. Unfortunantly, it's hard to keep something going, because that defeats the purpose of a gag-a-day strip. A plot-driven one is harder, and sounds more like what you want. The characters are developed, but that limits the situations they can be in. Less topics can be covered in this setting. One-panel strips, though not uncommon, become major cop-outs that everyone feels cheated by. Writing has to be more solid, and they're harder to sell unless in graphic novel form. Even still, it's difficult to fit in a graphic novel if you have abstract paneling.

Aside from Calvin and Hobbes which has story arcs as well as simple 4 panel gags, Dominic Deegan has long stories which can last for many months. They tend to go on for too long though, and Mookie experiences fluctuating interest in his comic, noticeable on the forums. However, the mechanics of his comic, especially his mastery of cliff-hangers, are very solid and note worthy. Plus, each strip operates like a scene in a play. Set-up, rising actions, small climax, and then lead-in to the next thing. Each week starts out slowly on Monday, with the strips getting more intense until Friday when it reaches a peak and delivers a cliff-hanger to get people to come back and read on Mondays. So each story has a rising plot, each week developes a rising section of the plot, and each strip developes it's own small section. Too bad Dominic Deegan sucks now, cause it had some great bits.

That was a tangent point though. Now to get back on subject, focus. The ideas you have seem to be only "eh" to me. What defines a manga? Sounds like mostly all the other comics out there. You want REAL influence, try "What defines a webcomic?" Your idea about fictional language, an expression of story without words sounds more abstract, but also sounds gimmicky. A truely ground-breaking webcomic to me would totally reshape every aspect of the medium, not just one aspect but keep the rest the same.