Character Limit in Comic Strips?

[ToxicRamen]

I was wondering how many characters can you put in a comic strip? I know that regular newspaper comic strips usually are comedic and have less than 10 characters but one of my webcomics is a sci-fi webcomic strip and as of right now I have at least 15 characters created (And I'm probably to come up some more later on). But I don't know if it's ok to have over 10 characters in a comic strip.

[NickRowler]

I know that Peanuts had a large cast and I think the downside is that over time, some characters just suddenly stop being used in favor of new ones. Like Patty and Shermy, tho being OG do not really appear in the later strips.

The cast of Doonesbury is also huge. Wow someone made a chart

[BoomerZ]

The more characters you have the less you can use them. Games of Thrones, which was famous for having lots of characters and plot lines, had this problem. If you have 25+ characters, and your show is 55 minutes just do the math. Each character gets about 2-5 minutes per episode. Same with a comic. If you have 20-30 panels per episode and 15 characters, each gets 1-2 panels per episode. Now lets say you publish once a week (most don't), some characters will go weeks without being seen or have really any development. At that point why have them. It's a all a math problem of time vs space. I wouldn't suggest more than 5-6 mains.

[darthmongoose]

Yeah BoomerZ nailed it. The more characters you have, the harder it'll be to give them all the time they deserve and then to tie it all off at the end.

Homestuck is a big example of this, where while the ending was really epic, tons of characters had arcs or mysteries set up and never resolved, the fate of some characters was never really clarified and everyone was generally left feeling a little dissatisfied. Hussie did a great job setting up this huge cast of loveable characters, because they treated it like there was no pressing time limit and just rambled around setting up fun stuff with them, but it would have been nearly impossible to finish that story in a way that resolved every character's arc without probably extending the story by months or years, so late on, when Hussie was getting tired and distracted by other projects and wanted Homestuck over, the ending came out rushed and frustrating. Very few people felt like their favourite character/s got a satisfying ending (and don't even get me started on the Epilogues that opened more threads than they closed.... or the awful sequel... ).

Bleach did the same thing, which Kubo Tight even admitted that whenever he felt stuck with the story, he'd introduce a bunch of new characters. This led to the cast just ballooning over time, and interesting characters established early on (like Ichigo's classmates) being sidelined in favour of all the shiny new people. Ultimately a lot of people who'd become really invested in characters from the early volumes and the Soul Society arc, got bored and frustrated because they didn't want these new characters, they wanted more of the characters they already liked, so the reader interest plummeted.

Personally, I try to have the mantras of "Every character might be somebody's favourite character." and "don't invent a new character for a role an existing character could do just fine."
So if I need a character to craft a gadget in Errant, I could introduce a new, wacky "mad scientist" character and that'd be fun, OR I could have the established main cast member, Jules, do it, because we've established that they know about tech. Using Jules is clearly the more economical option here, because I don't need to introduce anyone, and I don't run the risk of having a whole other character the audience wants to see more of to work into other scenes adding a ton of work for myself and bloating the story in a way that could ruin the pacing and make the comic drag on for years. Plus, lots of readers already really like Jules and won't complain about seeing more of them.
I make two pages a week, and I'd rather spend them moving the story and characters I have forward than introducing unnecessary throwaway characters.

[Awesomeness_Studios]

Personally, I try to have the mantras of "Every character might be somebody's favourite character." and "don't invent a new character for a role an existing character could do just fine."

This is really smart. I have a pretty large main cast (20+ characters) and I've been wondering how I'm gonna touch on everyone before the series ends. Not to mention that I have a few more important side-characters that I'd love to introduce over time. I guess I should try my best to recycle everyone as much as possible though so that it balloons as little as possible.

Anyway, to add on to the conversation as a whole, I'd like ask why you want to include new characters. For me, I have 20 characters because basically the scenario of my comic causes the MC to pretty much know every one of them personally and barely anyone else. Because a recurring theme in this series is (non-romantic) relationships, everyone in his social circle is important to the story.

Now, I will say that maybe I could've shaved off a few characters (but I didn't because I loved the characters I made too much )

So @ToxicRamen, why do you want to add more characters?

[Fafnir]

Above comments have very good points.
The only thing I have to say is, please don't load up your early chapters with characters. Introduce them slowly. Nothing like a massive info drop immediately to make me quit a story. There's a reason why the boy on the farm trope works, (luke skywalker, etc.) and the massive cast of a galactic senate right at the top of the movie failed... IMO anyway...

[TheLemmaLlama]

Hm, I'd say limit your text to below 100 characters per panel, otherwise it'll get hard to read

[ToxicRamen]

So @ToxicRamen, why do you want to add more characters?

To be honest, I have problem of creating a bunch of characters and try to give them stories for them. It's part of my problem of having my ideas constantly changing. Right now, I'm trying to figure out how to use a smaller cast for my comics.

[system]

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