I couldn’t agree more! As they say in Star Wars revenge isn’t the Jedi way. This applies to the decent human being way. I do like it if you’re going for that for your villain but honestly I feel like it’s used a lot we just need a fresh twist on this trope.
When the villain’s only motive for doing bad things is “I was bored.” I guess that could be a believable motive, and it’s a bit scary if the villain is evil for the sake of being evil and can’t be reasoned with, but I’ve seen it too many times.
Whenever I see intros like this, I skip the first 1-3 chapters and only go back if I like the rest of the story 🤷🏽♀️
Since you asked. Here are the sins I see in the professional stuff;
Big anime tiddies. I don't how you did it, but congrats on making boobs boring.
Ultraviolence with no wider world consequences.
Sexual assault with no consequences beyond a pratfall and a "baka!"
Either the artists are sex pests with a taste for kids or they're cynically selling their stuff to sex pests with a taste for kids. With that in mind...
Teenage protagonists
Copaganda
Comics that exist as proof of concept for scripts they're trying to sell to Hollywood.
Webtoons that exist as proof of concept for scripts they're trying to sell to Korean Netflix
Resetting to the fights-n-tights status quo no matter how many decades the X-Men have been the next step in human evolution.
Watchmen spin-offs
Evil Superman and Evil Superman expys. Though this one seems to be dying out thankfully.
Fucking Venom and Carnage or anything from the 90s creators keep dragging back into the light
Re-fried Simpsons/ Family Guy pop culture humor.
There's a tonne more but I'm already mentally exhausted from diving into the comic sewers.
As for the amateurs and indy artists on Tapas and Webtoon. Ehn. It's obvious most are in the learning stage and their comics will either improve or die out.
The main flaws I see in comics are mostly on the shoulders of the audience who keeps throwing money at the list above. But pick any medium and Strugeon's Law holds true.
Edgy stuff. Like random horrible violence where the author clearly does not have the emotional maturity to understand, on both an intellectual AND emotional level, what exactly they're depicting. They're just doing it because that's what other people do and they want to do it even more gooder. People often mistakenly assume that I don't like violence in stories at all, but that is not true. I enjoy violent stories IF the creator approaches is from an empathetic and intelligent perspective.
In action-driven stories, when solutions to ALL problems is violence (superhero stories are the worst for this). Yeah it's not funny or intelligent. Challenge yourself to build smarter narratives. Do better.
In character-driven stories, when conflicts arise only because of character's stupidity and inability to use their words to say very simple things. Like if you carefully set up a central conflict where a character has suffered a trauma and doesn't trust people, and therefore there is a communication breakdown, and the character must wrestle with their mental health to resolve the conflict - that's cool. I'm down for that. But so often it's just dumb DUMB characters who have no good reasons for not using their words like a human people, and we're somehow supposed to find that relatable and engaging. Uh, no. If your story is about adult characters, I will close the comic and never return to it the moment I encounter something like this.
For visuals - the thing where women are sexy, and men are gross and look like those women's dads/grandpas. Look, I like sexy women, but I expect the men to be equally as young and hot as the women. Scraggly men need not apply unless the women are permitted a similar amount of facial wrinkles.
Isn't a found family just a tight-knit friend group? Maybe with one or two mentor characters. It's not that uncommon, although some stories don't sell the bonding process that well.
@TheLemmaLlama thanks for your reply.
Do you have an example of this one in mind ?
Ah right, that reminds me of something I saw in a previous topic:
This! This is another thing I'm kinda tired of seeing. I feel like this is related to the 'unrealistic found family' thing: everyone overcames their flaws and get along with each other and live happily ever after. And if they are still flawed, they conveniently happen to be flawed in a way that makes them mutually compatible as their own 'messed up little family'.
I want to see a found family that, through the process of bonding, maybe some characters find themselves incompatible with each other, and it's not really portrayed as a 'flaw', they just have mutually incompatible needs and that's just kind of how things are and not everyone can get along.
I want to see characters agree to disagree on actually contentious topics.
I want to see other character struggle with how to deal with the conflict between two incompatible parties in their midst, which is not as simple as talking things through or 'fixing' either of them or kicking one of them out because the narrative isn't painting either of them as 'flawed' or 'evil'. I want the characters to feel like taking sides; to have opinions on who's right or who's wrong, but nevertheless can't completely denounce the party they think is 'wrong', because they're 'family', and they don't want to give up on them.
I want to see times where the differences really are just too great and it's not healthy for everyone to stick together. If 5 characters are introduced as the main cast, it feels unrealistic for all 5 of them to still be sticking together harmoniously by the end because it's a hell of a coincidence for all 5 of those people to be mutually compatible. Give me a 2+3 or a 4+1 or something; let the splintered groups go out and find new people they're actually compatible with. Human compatibility is messy and chaotic; show that!
I want to see the bonds being actually tested; not by outside forces or temporary flaws the characters can overcome but by the inevitable conflicts that arise from who they are fundamentally as people. Conflicts that can't be eliminated without the characters ceasing to be themselves. That's the kind of stuff that sells me on a found family dynamic ^_^
that feel when the historical lore prologue plays a huge part in your story but people will drop off because its historical lore prologue <_<
Tragic backstory characters. Where entire plot points revolve around their backstory but we never actually get to see it depicted aside from a minor flashback. It's like telling your friends about a totally awesome thing that happened but they weren't there so the best they can do is nod and awkwardly smile as they listen.
I'd much rather like to actually see the events taking place in comics become part of the backstory of said characters. If we as the audience are there when said events happen it has much more impact, we were there with the characters we follow and feel for them, as opposed to just being told something happened.
Tl,dr: show backstories, don't tell (if possible)
Found families are super common in the LGBTQ community due to people being disowned by their family when they come out. I have also known people who had neglectful, abusive, or missing parental figures who benefited from found families. I knew this one church lady who people called mom because they lacked a supportive mother and they liked having someone there who cared for them. So I am not sure why you would think that is dumb or unrealistic.
Never really thought about this, but you bring up an insightful point. Found families are often depicted as a be-all and end-all which I'm completely fine with in a story about an individual protagonist finding communal solidarity where it's missing in, say bio family or current social circle.
However, if the found family plays an important role in the plot beyond the end, then it would feel more realistic to give the characters emotional stakes that serve as a serious threat to the current character dynamics (depending on the story's overall tone, of course).
You gave me something to ponder over if I start writing those kinds of plots.
True.
From my own perspective, the people you love can be capable of terrible things, abhorrent things. When people struggle to maintain these bonds in spite of weaknesses and detrimental flaws, that's what feels real to me. Personally i'm not a fan of the mushy gushy let's all slobber over eachother and conveniently ignore extreme misgivings character writing. I have seen real world examples and they aren't what they're cracked up to be, but that's just how it is. It feeds back into what we're talking about here with person to person compatibility. True love is based in overcoming incompatibility, which can even happen to a detriment.
I'm mostly considering this from the standpoint of trying to write vampires, in which I find the ability to keep a found family together to be mostly implausible if we're leaning more towards chaotic, monsterish vampires and not your run of the mill man who happens to have some teeth longer than the other bit.
Taking a look at this thread does make me consider about the flaws in my own comic, tbh.
Such as the "lore intro" things people mentioned above; I admit it's a fault of mine doing such an extended intro to showcase the state of that universe before the main story kicks in, especially since the comic I'm posting is a direct revamp of an older version I had with similarly long intro.
Although I'm proud of having worked on the lore, maybe in the future I could do some alterations so it doesn't take much space and give more focus to the main narrative itself.
So in a weird way, this thread might help me in developing my comic as time goes, so I must give it my thanks for existing.
As for my 50 cents on the convo... I'd argue going the "subvert all expectations at the end" is detrimental to the whole story if the explanations contradict what was previously established - unless given a reason that makes sense in-universe, I'd advise to not go this route for the sake of making everything a complex matter that can't always be solved.
Sometimes simple explanations, regardless of being predictable, can be better than subverting expectations in favor of complexity.
all of you who commented above...
for years now i have kept silent... i have bit my lip...
I AM TIRED OF...
ALL THESE COMIC ARTISTS IN TAPAS...
NOT getting the LIKES, SUBS, attention and admiration they deserve for their hard work!
all of you who shed sweat, blood and tears making comics for nothing!
the sacrifices you make, like only eating noodles everyday for a month just to save money to buy art materials!
I salute you... HEART OF THE MANGAKA!
I think evil superman expys actually "died out" a bit ago... the two biggest examples, the boys and invincible are adaptations of comics that came out almost two decades ago.. so I think you're very right when you say that it seems to be dying out
I used to be huge anti prologue/exposition years back, and initially I did one but later chose to scrap it... until I realized I needed it again. Sometimes the worldbuilding is too big not to have something. I think the thing is, if you're using it to set the stage, then you should be able to effortlessly internalize the information instead of fighting to remember it. You've got about 3 pages to hook a reader. If you're using it to set the theme, maybe the tone and general setting of the story I think that can work great. But given the chance I prefer to start stories without them.
Yeah in my case my character Eric Stanford had a rough background but he leaves some parts out. In the story he is In present day experiencing something way more tragic, he is basically a slave in a sense but he was manipulated to stay in England. He doesn’t explain it like an explanation dump. I don’t want to give any spoilers.
Anyway on your topic I fell for that cliche. I had a character with a very traumatic childhood but it never built up to anything at all. I learned what NOT to do from that story. I learned to show not tell but also don’t share every single detail otherwise it adds more questions and sort of wastes time for me as a writer as well as the reader. So there’s my thoughts on that. I think these tropes don’t just to comics but television shows and movies and novels as well.
