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

[AffectedMind]

Happy endings, apocalypse is on the way but at the end you know everyone will be safe =A= And last moment rescue.

[Zanreo]

That being said, I'm tired of seeing sexual harassment played off as a joke, or worse, as flattery. If I never see another panty shot again, I'll be happy.

Oh god, yes... can't stand that. On that note, can we please kill off the joke where "girl is worried she might get harassed/groped/ect, nothing happens, at first she's relieved but then starts getting self-conscious about if she isn't "good enough" for that" ugggh

As for what I'm tired of seeing... I can't think of a lot of stuff, really. Some stuff might be a bit overdone but it's all about whether it's written good or bad.

[eagle1]

Been binge reading a few comics today. Please, when you post filler art, such as "On vacation", Guest art that is not part of the continuity, or "Thank you 100th subscriber", please move it after you get the next page or so up. It breaks up the story, and throws me smack out of it.

Eagle
(Ran into that at least a half a dozen times in 15 minutes)

[asheskyler]

"This comic is on indefinite hiatus."

How I so hate seeing that line. But I guess it's better than the comic suddenly not updating any more with no indication of what's going on.

[anakarenina]

I don't like to see on comics:

-Fanservice: characters dressed with sexualized costumes, or exagerating body parts to sexualize the characters

[apocryphagraphics]

The hyper-sexualization of female characters in the comics world in general gets on my nerves. One of my favorite comic artists of all time was Arthur Adams and I can't even look at most of his recent work because it just looks like porn stars in superhero costumes. Sad, and juvenile. As for the Splash page thing, I use a lot of them and I also have a pretty low panel count per page. Why? Because a webcomic is NOT a 22 page traditional American comic, it has an infinite "page count" and you can do comics very differently in this medium without those traditional restrictions. I love the pretty art! To each his own!

[scottwuming]

I'll go with something simple to say. Uh... nipple-less men.
It may be to lessen "maturity" so they had to lessen details but an outline should be safe enough. It just gets to me when even in a closer view, men are missing their nipples. This applies to manga, anime, etc. too.

[Kamikaze]

Written in stone. Put to print. Sent into space for the benefit of the universe. THIS. THIS. THIS.

[Kamikaze]

I needed that laugh!

[Kamikaze]

One of the things that drives me nuts personally is hamhanded exposition. You know the stuff. Where the writer feels like you have to know every single detail of a character past as they talk with someone they just met, or you see the vingette of their flashback as voice over comes in. Or worse, it's just the character themselves talking, and talking, and talking, about how they feel that moment, or how this happened or that. Case in point: Attack on Titan.

How do you fix this?
1. Hold back.
2. Listen to conversations and think about the times people have told you about their past.
3. UNDERSTAND WHAT PEOPLE DON'T SAY HAS MORE WEIGHT THAN SPELLING IT OUT.

Outside of that...hyper-sexualization OR the blatant excuses people use for hypersexualizing characters. I read a comic recently that had one female character defending another's distaste for any clothing at all as a "Well clothes make it harder for her to fight in..." NO. No. No. I'm sorry but gymnastics without a bra on hurts, and prolonged running in heels will screw up your back and feet beyond repair.

[DeadAccount]

I just wanted to add a bit to the art vs writing debate (sorry)
Some of you brought up XKCD and Homestuck as an example where story trumps art. And it's true! But, neither XKCD or SMBC or Homestuck art looks offensive. Simple art =/= bad art. These guys either know their artistic limits or just know how to simplify stuff so it still works and doesn't distract from the story. (Also while not a Homestuck fan, art gets progressively more impressive and I do love a lot of background work) So, if you're a writer that wants to do a comic by themselves, it can work, but you do need to study design and have an eye for things. Comics like A Softer World just use photos, but they work with the writing well. Really bad anatomy/perspective gets progressively more distracting the more realism you bring into your artwork.
I agree with those of you how treats art and writing equally It's all important, in the end. I admit, I own some comics purely for the eyecandy, but the ones I truly love are well-written, too.

[eagle1]

I see too many examples where the pretty art and the extreme decompressed writing get in the way of telling the story. There are a lot of examples in good comics of several pages in a row without words, or even extreme decompression to drive home an emotional point. I can even think of one mainstream published comic that had 6 splash pages in a row to drive home a very emotional scene.

But most of the time, small numbers of panels and lots of splash pages are interfering with the story, not advancing it.

Eagle
(And Hyper-sexualization has very few defenders. Thankfully)

[apocryphagraphics]

Few defenders but endless practitioners, sadly. As for panel count( at the risk of being repetitive) I think that kind of critique is a bit stuck in the print/22 pages a month modality. There aren't any pages in webcomics so how can there be too few panels per page? One can complain about the amount of content-per-update for sure and my comic will suffer for that due to the time-consuming nature of my artistic process, but it's a bit odd to complain about the number of panels-per-page when there aren't any pages at all.

[scythe]

I'm happy to come out in defence of hyper-sexualisation. I don't see why overemphasising sexiness should be looked down on when there are countless other traits that receive similar treatment in all kinds of stories without similar fuss. As always, context is hugely relevant, but in general, there's been a slowly creeping rise in sex-negativity of late that I just can't get behind. I just don't see what's wrong with characters that are purposely and unashamedly titilating. There are enough creators out there making characters of every stripe imaginable, and thusly, there's enough room for all of their stories to be told. I guess what I'm saying is we should all be encouraged to tell the stories we want to tell, however we want to tell them.

[eagle1]

Ok, let me break it down.

Comics have a visual language. Comic panel counts are part of that visual language. They control time, space, urgency, emotion, and pacing. Even if you are not doing traditional style 'pages' (and most webcomics are), you are still working within a two dimensional space that is still subject to the same restrictions in story telling as the normal page.
In a comic, each panel is supposed to advance the story. Each panel is not a moment of time, but rather a variable amount of time determined by the panels content. You can show a tenth of a second in a panel, or you can show hours. The point is, there is a visual language and an expectation of the reader.
If you have a highly decompressed story with lots of splash pages, you are changing that language in a way that has a large chance of not conveying your story to your audience. You see this with a lot of the disconnect between the American, European, and Manga fans. Part of their problem is that each of those styles has a different visual language that goes far beyond art style.
So no, this has nothing to do with 22 pages a month. It has to do with the extreme decompressed style (and I prefer decompressed over compressed, but the extreme version takes it to far) drawing things out until the story is negatively affected by the lack of advancement and the over-dependence on the art to try to save a weak story.
When writing, the first thing that one learns is that if it does not advance the story, take it out. In story telling for comics, the same thing applies. If that panel does not advance the story, lose it.
When writing, you learn that you have to watch the emotional highs and lows of your writing, that you have to pace them so that you do not cause your reader to lose interest as a result of emotional exhaustion. Things such as huge panels and splash pages should be reserved for emotional highs for the same reason.
Writers are cautioned to not draw out a story beyond what it needs to be. Don't try to stretch a short story into a novel. Comics are the same way. Tell the story, don't draw it out, or the only thing you have left are pretty pictures.

Eagle
(And not one bit of that has anything to do with print/22 pages a month)

[eagle1]

hehehe...And more power to you. I know that I prefer looking at an Alex Ross Wonder Woman than an Adam Hughes. I like sexy pictures, but the difference between those two is that the Ross version is simply sexy, no matter what pose she is in, and that is rarely the point of the art. The Hughes is deliberately sexy, and that just doesn't do much for me.
But as you pointed out, the freedom to buy those, and enjoy them is absolute. I simply choose not to, but you won't see me favouring them being banned or boycotted.

Eagle
(I paint sexy, but I don't paint cheesecake)

[apocryphagraphics]

I think your argument is about the quality of one's storytelling. The argument you make is true of a comic that uses tons of small panels or a smaller number of larger ones. If a bunch of larger drawings tell the story well then that's totally fine. "Panel count" is irrelevant in web comics. For example I go out of my way to make my comic look and read like a traditional print book, so you could complain that there's a low panel count per page. Does that affect the story? The timing? The urgency? What if I go back and remove the spacers so that the "space" between "pages" becomes just another gutter? Now there's 95 panels on the page. Is that better or worse? Or is it the same? No one has to turn a page so it boils down to the quality of storytelling completely irrespective of the "panels per page". Some webcomics are an "endless" series of single frame images. You scroll up till the next "frame" fills the monitor and read it then repeat. Is that a poor way to tell a graphic story or is it the evolution of the rules of creating comics for print to the rules of creating comics for the infinite canvas of the web? Remember, one has to understand the rules to effectively break them, but they can and should be broken. Otherwise our comics all look the same and where is the artistry in that?

[eagle1]

I think your argument is about the quality of one's storytelling.

Always. I have very few arguments besides that one. That, in fact, is the theme of my on-line presence.

I have not looked at your comic, so I can't answer any questions on it. However, my original post was that I am tired of seeing the over use of large panels and splash pages. That I want story, not pretty art. You and I are not talking about that anymore, we are now talking expanding how comics work in a web medium. Scott McCloud already pushed this topic in his books, and I tend to agree with most of what he said about limitless pages (though it requires a touch screen to do properly).
If you wish to qualify my complaint with "when it affects the story", please do so, but honestly, I have not seen any webcomic that used multiple splash pages or extreme decompression to an advantage (and every one I have noted suffered for it in story-telling). I am sure there are some out there, but with at least 50,000 webcomics up and running, it will take a while before I find them.

Eagle
(And Comics are for stories)

[apocryphagraphics]

Fair enough. I think we both made our arguments clear enough and every creator out there will have to decide for themselves how to approach sequential art and storytelling. I just think it's important to remember that there is more that one way to do it successfully.

[ratique]

The "I'm late I'm late I'm late!" openings.

You immediately reminded me of a comic I started drawing when I was 13... XD