Are there any things you're tired of seeing in comics?

[Jelw]

Two of the stories I'm in the process of writing have highschool protagonists and the reason?… well I had to think about it.
I think highschoolsettings are common because of the whole "write what you know" standpoint for starters. People know what high school is like so it's a setting you can throw onto your audience without a lot of explaining. Additionally, high school is a community of sorts so you can throw in a lot of varrying types of people. You can throw aspiring musicians, engineers, and artists all together and have it make sense. This is a little tougher when you have an adult out-of-school story, and you need reasons for the architect to hang out with the astro physist on their free time. (Obviously they didn't meet at work… but maybe they're high school friends!)
Also, one of the reasons I write young highschool/college aged protagonistsgenerally, is because they're just more accessable to an audience, generally.It's hard for me to truly understand the struggles of a group of post-apocolyptic survivors, and that's alright! However the struggles of putting together the school play? Super boring English lectures and scary psychology teachers? I've been there, and it can be fun to read and sympathize.

[scythe]

Again, tropes and stereotypes are not bad things in and of themselves, and are not automatically cliches. For instance, having a wise old man who teaches the hero skills doesn't have to be boring or predictable.

Look at tropes like words in a language. Yes, everyone's familiar with them, but it's the way you use them that makes all the difference. Don't feel bad if you've got things mentioned in this thread in your own story. I certainly do have some and it's not a problem as long as it makes sense within the story.

Problems creep in when you start to twist the story to fit the trope and not the other way around. Like having lovers who hate each other when they first meet. That's a trope that can work really well, but if your protagonist is someone who is really likeable and not generally prone to confrontation, then the reader will start seeing it as a forced cliche rather than a natural progression of the story.

[SuperRazz]

I don't mind comics that are set in school as long as it is realistic. Just please don't merge every genre available to it. I don't get why a zombie apocalypse, an alien invasion, or a murder mystery would best fit a school setting. If I ever see another shinigami in a school setting again...ugh, idk.

[zelkats]

Now that you mention it...

If I see another shinigami or a Maou (demon lord) again, I swear.

[noctuidae]

i know someone's said something like this earlier in the thread but i would like to say it again because i have like five volumes of Vampire Knight from middle school -- as much as I love gloomy characters, I get really annoyed by wide-eyed optimistic love interests/peers who unfalteringly put up with their moodiness with cheers and smiles and almost never confront the char about it. Even the nicest person will be emotionally drained by a walking black hole of angst. At least show the repercussions of their behavior.

And I've only seen this in manga but I get really suspicious when a feisty female character is supposed to be badass but never actually does anything, or ends up a damsel in distress, when the opportunity arises.

Also subplots where a huge fight or drama arises from a misunderstanding that could have been cleared up with 5 minutes of communication. I get that there are characters out there who may not have it in them to confront problems directly, so then that subplot would be justified, but in most cases I've seen, the characters involved really should have been able to talk to each other about it...

Also I guess this is more of a personal preference thing and i dont feel as strongly about it as i do about the above things, but I'm not really into protags whose main interests are drawing/writing.... I kind of want some level of escapism when I read..

[r0ckrabbi7]

I have yet to drop a title, because of cliches. That being said, of course they still make me wrinkle in disapproval.

I hate it when characters become incredibly stupid because of love. And I get it - if your crush is around you might be disoriented & clumsy, but there's a limit to that which once crossed make your character just look like an idiot.
I also hate clueless protagonists who are basically showered in love by their love interest, yet they are dense as a brick and can't get things figured out, until they are officially confessed to.
And let's not forget the denial of feelings! "I do not love that person"... I mean, I know people like that irl, but according to fiction, every 2 out of 3 people seems to be like that...and...well...they're not!
Crybabies. I get it, some people are overly sensitive. But I too am overly sensitive and you don't see ME crying 3 times a day.

..I guess I should lay off the shoujo for a while

[L4213]

i hate comics that have too much narration and exposition. (which is weird because i loved death note) comics should really be more of a "show don't tell" sort of spectacle. i mean, not all narration and exposition is bad. sometimes its required. but i always felt like its what seperates the good comic writers from the great comic writers.

an example would be like this.
you have X character. in the first few pages you narrate who he is and what he does. thats okay i guess.

but a better way to tell it would be just by showing it. how he interacts with the setting will define who he is and what he does.

although this does not apply all the time. its just my two cents on the topic

oh yeah! one more thing, i hate it when somebody is suddenly faced with something they've never seen before (like a monster or something) and they're like "yup, thats perfectly normal" unless of course, thats their character archetype, but most of the time its not

[elixiadragmire]

so
much
hate.

Hmmmmm what do i hate .... well, if I'm totally honest? missed opportunities. High school setting, superheroes stories and a few others aren't my thing and while I may give them a shot and something will annoy me I'll normally try and overlook it or decided its not for me and move on.

What normally get me is something i read that had promise and bottled it, research wasn't done, plot happens cause reasons, sticky dialogue, Tangents, the GRIMDARK, romanticised love. Dont get me wrong I like a love story, infact i have one but i like it to feel nature, feel the chemistry rather than .... reasons. Again this is all just writing a narrative.

Am I perfect? NOPE! Is anyone perfect? NOOOOOOOOOOOOPE. But all we can do is hope to continuing learning and improve.

thou ... there is somthing that get my blood boiling, repeated panels. the same panel, same art, changed dialogue (maybe even the mouth changes shapes or the eye closes) that makes me rage! yeah if its a moment to moment panel i can see they're been similar BUT REDRAW IT! alter more than the necessaries! You could give a feeling of real 'animation' in the artwork! and DONT reuse it 4 or 6 panels later, i'll see it! you can bet on that!

[bmacbride]

Also subplots where a huge fight or drama arises from a misunderstanding that could have been cleared up with 5 minutes of communication.

Is this the end of Naruto...

and DONT reuse it 4 or 6 panels later, i'll see it! you can bet on that!

GUILTY. I have a few different "crowds" or random background characters or objects drawn up that I just reuse over and over lmao

[elixiadragmire]

Ooooooh crowd scene are tough, but i really mean the full on copy+paste a whole panels with VERY LITTLE alterations ... I'd draw up examples but I'd feel mean ....

[JigokuNeko]

This can be fine to use as long as you at least explain why they're able to live that long, how they're able to stay preserved that long, etc. and allow the civilization around them to grow, either in a negative or positive manner (it either ends up destroyed or in war or something, or ends up becoming a prosperous civilization).

Don't just be like "because magic". People aren't that dumb.

Yep. Most of the time, I've found it's just a random big number the author dreamed up. When you deal in so much time, there is immense change in society and technology. For example, 10k years is double the recorded human history. And yet, in some fantasy stories everything stays in the same faux-medieval state for thousands and thousands of years. Like, how? Do people never invent things? Even in magic societies, do people never experiment, never want to further knowledge?

And this is why a lot of mainstream comic book artists turn me off. People praise Michael Turner as an art god, yet all of his faces are the same. For that matter, so are his bodies.

I see your Turner and raise you a Liefield, who was all over the place when I was a teen. The man was a bonafide Picasso. He must have put muscles on dudes that did not exist in any dimension of reality and the women...well, we don't talk about the Liefield women lest their ghosts rise up and throttle us in our sleep. But hey, any time I feel bad about my anatomy, I look at this...
http://www.progressiveboink.com/2012/4/21/2960508/worst-rob-liefeld-drawings

[eagle1]

@JigokuNeko, I agree, but that's part of my problem with the whole Image 'revolution'. Several of the things that I have mentioned in this thread apply to that whole school of comics as much as they do to webcomics. The sad part is, it was mostly artists that had gotten bigger than they had any right to be, and decided they were getting the dirty end of the stick and it was time to grab the glory they deserved.

Art trumped story. I hate the fact that we have a whole portion of comic creators today who were raised on that and believe it. That the art is the most important thing in the comic, and that writing is an evil that they have to put up with. Then again, this whole thread shows what happens when that attitude becomes a significant part of the comics culture.

So, let me pull this back on topic. I am tired of seeing comics where the art is put above the story. If you can draw, but can't write (and if you haven't studied writing, you probably can't write well), team up with someone who can. I'm more forgiving of bad art than I am of bad writing, but the same goes in reverse. Team up, put out a better product. Almost everything in this thread is the result of bad writing, not bad art.

Eagle
(and I LIKE pretty art)

[abbastudios]

Nipples that show through every type of clothing, including leather.

[L4213]

So, let me pull this back on topic. I am tired of seeing comics where the art is put above the story. If you can draw, but can't write (and if you haven't studied writing, you probably can't write well), team up with someone who can. I'm more forgiving of bad art than I am of bad writing, but the same goes in reverse. Team up, put out a better product. Almost everything in this thread is the result of bad writing, not bad art.

ditto, i knew this one artist who drew really well but his storytelling was cringeworthy (especially dialogue wise) the main point of making comics is to tell a story. its the best of both worlds so using both properly is a tricky, yet rewarding thing to master. but its easier to save bad art with good storytelling.

but if there's one art peeve i have for comics (or art in general), it would be the same face syndrome. but i forgive it since its easily fixed by character personality and appearance. it becomes a big problem once a huge cast is introduced with the syndrome in tact

[jessiepolfliet]

Ugh I hate that too, like females can't be badass without looking sexy, that is bs.:(

[VermillionWorks]

People say, "quality over quantity", and I usually say "quantity is underrated". If your story has great writing, chances are I won't really care how it looks, or care all that much if it's not as freakin' incredible looking as a piece of art you took months on. Like you said, having great art is wonderful, but to me, writing is just a bit more important. I've stopped reading beautiful looking comics just because I found the plot dull.

Also agree on the whole thing with female casts - particularly female fighters of some kind - having to be walking fanservice. Sometimes I find it surprisingly difficult to find comics with an all female cast of badasses that isn't fanservicey in some way.

[elixiadragmire]

i still say quality over quantity, I'd rather have a few pages of well designed, well written pages with strong dialogue over a 100 pages of get to the point. Quality goes for writing as well as art.

I actual see both are as important as each other, especially for comics. A blinding story that needs no art is best suited for a book, Awesome artwork that only show a scene with no text, that's illustration. Comics are a perfect mix of writing and artwork that work together to tell their story, the ratio varies from creator to creator but the principal is the same

[r0ckrabbi7]

@eagle1, @L4213
I hope you mean story in general and not just "text"
Because you don't really need text to tell a story. But you DO need decent art to show such story in the best way possible.

[L4213]

of course, as i always believed. comics is more "show don't tell" in terms of storytelling.

[UzukiCheverie]

Regarding the whole "art triumphs over writing" thing, it's basically what I tell everyone who says they can't do a comic because they "can't draw".

I'm pretty sure the folks at XKCD, Cyanide and Happiness, and Homestuck can't draw either. What makes these comics/web series so great (objectively speaking; I'm not a fan of Homestuck in the slightest bit but a lot of other people love it lol) is the content that keeps people coming back - the content they read the series for in the first place.

As I've said many times before . . .

People come for the art, and stay for the story.

It doesn't matter how good your art is. If your story sucks, then no one's going to read it, clear as that. There are certain things you should look out for in your art to make it more visually pleasing and easier to understand (ex. perspective, depth, color choice, consistency, etc.), but as for making it look like "the best art anyone's ever seen"? At that point, if your story/content is no good, then the art isn't going to keep people. It's just pretty art. In that case, just open a Tumblr page for your artwork or a DA portfolio. Ruining people's experience with your comic by totally neglecting your content and slapping in a story for the sake of making it a comic in the first place is just no good. Both the art and story are important. In the comic world, you can't dismiss one for the other - if you just want to draw, go on DA; if you just want to write, write a novel.