Creative people really need to develop thick skins. There is always going to be someone complaining, sometimes rudely, about your work, or giving poor ratings. Even the greatest artists of our time in film, novels, books, comics, etc., have to put up with this.
I have a relatively big following and over the course of 4 or 5 years drawing my comics full time I’ve only ever had a couple of trolls. They want engagement so I just don’t engage with them and then they go away.
It’s gotten a little harder recently because my audience is getting bigger and skewing a little younger than I’m used to because of doing stuff for webtoons. So what ends up happening is a troll will comment and I’ll ignore it but my followers end up jumping in trying to defend me from a troll I’m trying to ignore. But I still don’t engage with it because it’s not worth the energy and I’ve got work to do.
Yeah I feel the same as ben on this one, the best way to deal with those comments is to not engage. They get a thrill out of any reaction--so you can block, downvote, or you can ignore. Other readers responding to those comments does the creator little favors and just brings more attention to one weird guy who might be making other readers feel uncomfortable. If there is someone in particular that is really making you feel uncomfortable (because you do get commenters going off about race and uncomfortable sexual stuff), maybe discreetly message the author and let them know how it makes you feel. It could be that the author feels like they aren't allowed to block because they're worried about what other people would think, but if they knew someone's comments are bothering their other readers, then they would do it.
But, this isn't a social media site. They don't have a team as large as Twitter or Facebook to cover all those reports, which is why we don't have the same abilities to report people.
I agree that most of what OP talks about can suck, but doesn't fall under 'abuse' for me, but I do think a method to report could be helpful for legitimate abuse.
If comments are to the point of threats, slurs, and campaigns of harassment, ignoring it or talking it through is no longer practical. It's one thing to ignore 'wow, this sucks. you should hire an artist or give up', another to ignore somebody sending that message every day, or sending 'hey, i know where you wife lives and I'm going to kill her'.
And for real harassment, nobody's going to listen to a 'hey, this may surprise you, but telling me people of my sexuality should be killed made me feel bad. could you not do that anymore?' because those people want to hurt you.
Also, most popular artists can take critique and handle some abuse, but they also have social media teams to protect them from the worst of it. The people who get hit the hardest are people with large following, but not actual fame (like many youtube stars), and the results or harassment can be truly traumatic, even on 'tough' people.
The best thing for your friends to do is ignore and not give them the satisfaction of a response because a response is what the haters truly want like some of the others stated.
The more popular someone gets the more supporters and haters they get as well that's just a part of life.
Also sometimes people find something to nitpick about and be mean because they are jealous of their popularity it's not always just because they really don't like that comic.
I don't actually think all the things you mention are abusive. Abuse tends to be a pattern of malignant behavior rather than a one-off thing.
That said, I do think there should be the ability to report actual abusive comments. I've seen creators nearly (and once outright) driven off of Tapas and comic-making from the way fans engage with (or more accurately, at) them.
I've seen Disable Comments keep some artists with anxiety or even outright harassers in the business. It sucks that that and the delete button are the extent of the tools to keep a sane space. Pretty sure most of us are not getting therapist or even pie-in-the-face rates to be some stranger's verbal punching bag.
Do any of you just delete comments that bother you? Or does that sort of count as a reaction? I only had one comment that bothered me and I just deleted it because it was a really pointless comment anyway.
Oh snap maybe I’m getting this mixed up with my webtoons account!
That would be a nice feature in tapas.
I personally would say it's up to the creator on that end since it's their comment section. Maybe they could also implement a system where the creator can give permission to specific people to delete comments on their stuff (like chat mods). Reporting works too.
(and on a side note, can't get abusive comments if you don't get comments in the first place ^_^).
I wouldn't delete negative comments myself because I want to welcome all opinions good or bad. I actually had a commenter who would just bash on my main character whenever they posted. I didn't tell them to knock it off, just responded along the lines of "Haha, that's great" and then they suddenly changed their tune and became a lot nicer.
I dunno if they were testing me or something but hey, it worked out for me in the end. 
I'm usually pretty lenient with the rude comments I get.
I'll generally try to ignore them, and will only delete them if they are
Dude. You make me want a comment about global warming is fake on my novel so I can tell them how my world has weirdly placed arctic areas just to F with them XD
That`s some high level trolling XD
If you wanna mess with people further, you can also make the world on your novel flat. "everyone knows the earth is flat".
But i must warn you, you may accidentally attract flat earthers and global warming deniers.....
Hey everyone!
Really sorry to hear that there have been issues related to negative, abusive or unsavory comments. It's our goal to create a safe space for readers and creators to interact. We have implemented more reactionary tools to help protect creators against these types of comments - but we are looking towards how to be more proactive and filtering out these types of comments before they ever reach the creator in the first place.
That being said, if you feel that a particular reader or creator has been harassing you, please take screenshots and send me their profile link at:
michaelson@tapasmedia.co
We operate off of a zero tolerance policy when it comes to bullying and can remove their account or outright IP ban them.
