Genres That are a Hard Sell for Comics

[silacinnamon]

I think the more "realistic" genres are less popular in comics, except for romance... I have a friend who successfully published a good handful of horror and sci-fi comics, but his least popular comic is probably the one that's a biography of a historical figure.

[Lucca_Vendramel]

Maybe it's just the reading. People probably don't wanna invest into reading something unless it has something special about it

[gempompadour]

Are we talking about sailor moon/tokyo mew mew and that kind of thing? Isn't stuff like that super popular though? Super cutesy, bubbly, girly power comics with light hearted, easy to get into story and romance.

I'd think horror is something that's super hard to sell because horror is very audio/visually linked. You need to really know how to work the comic form a la Junji Ito to make people feel tension and fear.

[KoreanTacos]

In a webcomic environment its kind of hard to really promote it without an immediate comparison.

At least with horror its less likely you will hear, oh so its like "blank". With magical girl unless you do something completely unique or have a good enough gimmick it will always be, "so its basically "blank""

[AilyneGouveia]

Crime/noir is not that easy to make popular, even if the genre fascinates me ^.^

I guess it's a lot due to the fact that you find serious and very mature themes in them. Drama often unfolds in a gray world where a lot of moral issues arise. Many readers just want to escape into a completely different world, more simplistic who the nice guy and the bad guy are clearly indentifiable. A realistic story (which can or could have taken place in the real world) must not be very seductive for them.

I also like a good fantasy story from time to time ^^

[spadedigsbutts]

Definitely biographical and just any general gritty realistic story with no fantastical elements or gimmicks. I fell like there isn’t a ton of popularity for the straight up procedural or serious stories because there was just so many of them in the 90’s and we’ve moved onto to having fantastical be the more popular trend. I remember in the early 2000’s it was almost impossible to have heard of a Good” super hero story or fantasy until the Lord for the Rings movies popularized fantasy and the MCU changed the standard for superhero movies? I think it’s just changing trends and the ones we don’t see now that are “hard sells” will return again maybe?

[AVXP]

This is just weird to see us/you/y'all discussing what's tough to illustrate as a comic and start to name things that remove the "comic" from its essence.

COMIC is comic. An exaggeration of something.
What does a [stand up] COMIC do to punch or be funny?
Exaggerate the frequency or intensity of something.

That's what a COMIC IS.
An exaggeration of a idea.

Even the "comics" that have almost nothing happen exaggerate how important all that nothing is.
Great drama over no drama fits this mold.

[Shanny8]

THIS. I find it really hard to read horror comics because I feel it's really hard to capture the element of fear and hit right cues to scare readers. It might be just me...

[rmdooley]

I enjoy your comic specifically because of the genre. It's got a 'Road to Perdition' vibe that is just delicious

[AilyneGouveia]

Oh ! Thank you so much for that ! I loved the comic and the film (The darkest role that Tom Hanks played so far if i'm not wrong, even draker than "The Green Mile").
It's a great source of inspiration for me, i'm happy to read that i was able to catch a bit of the vibes and put it in my story ! ^.^

[darthmongoose]

I think one thing to add to the conversation is that being a poor fit for comics or being a poor fit for webcomics aren't always the same thing.
A lot of the serious dramatic genres being discussed here as a "hard sell" are the bread and butter of print publishers like Self Made Hero, which pretty much specialises in literary adaptations, biographies and serious drama, and then you have a lot of the best selling "graphic novels" that wouldn't generally be associated with the term "comics" being some of the few that break into bestseller lists and the like, transcending the usual specialist comics market.

But of course, the problems with trying to do a comic like that as a webcomic are:
1. You can't put it on a place like Tapas or Webtoons and rely on the kind of audience the's already regularly hanging out on and browsing on Tapas to read it. The readerbase are largely here specifically to read pulpy stuff and romance. Wherever you host it, your audience will likely come from communities that are into that kind of thing.
2. You can pace waaaaay slower for print. In print, a page where nothing happens is suspenseful and atmospheric. In webcomics, a page where nothing happens is an update where the reader got excited to see it pop up in their inbox then goes... "Oh, he walked up some stairs. Okay, waiting for next week now...". Print comics are in books, the ultimate page binge medium. Comfortable to read, pages load instantly because they all are in front of you in a physical form, and you get the entire book at once. Webcomics have different pacing, based more around something interesting, funny, emotional or exciting happening every update, so thoughtful, slow burning suspense is hard to work with. Yes, you could break this rule and just go slow paced, but when in order to trend you ideally need to get likes and comments every page... it's gonna be hard to gain visibility.

[lacoticus]

there's audience for anything, you just have to find it. if you look at the books there are people who do very niche specific things and make a nice living out of it. most people just assume you need a lot of people to like your thing, but in truth some of these people like it because it touches some parts of what they like but not specifically what they like.
For example humor, a comic may be funny, but there are different types of humor - childish humor, dark humor etc.

[Eightfish]

Really? Some of the most popular comics I follow are autobiographical, of the journal / slice of life variety, like Johnny Wander. They're also some of the most popular ones on webtoons. I've also seen a few that are more serious, like DAR, which actually ended up having a very good story arc for being about a real person's life

[vfinnigan]

Funny, because noir was hugely popular in the early Golden Age of comics.

[Swamp]

Biographical comics aren’t big online, but they’re huge in indie print. Fun Home, Persepolis, Stitches, Blankets, Maus, They Called Us Enemy. You might not see many on tapas or webtoon, but they’re a huge part of the print market.

Partially because auto bio tends to either be the funny/relatable type that does well online or are about truly unusual and remarkable lives, which, considering the writers here skew pretty young, it makes sense that they aren’t ready to tell a life story.

[SilentHamster102]

I'm actually agree with OP. Because I'm on my own a fan of the genre, but adding not only a police, but a criminal too. And I don't see many comics in the genre, and even less are popular.
I'm making a such comic on my own, but not too realistic drama (some of my future plans including that genre, anyway) more action-oriented stuff, but anyway, it's close.
My first comic ended with 22 subs for almost the year of making. Current one is 11 for about 3 months, which is better, but anyway a small number. If I didn't had fun doing this, I'd quit already.

[nekoyasha]

I guess scientific stuff should be hard to sell as a comic. And I mean real science not "wow here is this crazy super brain and it wants to rule the world!" or so. Normally you have 1 topic where you go very deep and most of the time you are staring at a pc, wondering what these data you got there could mean. Doesn't sound like an inetresting thing to read xD
But maybe it would be nice if nature or science would do like a comic version for some articles xD "and here this particle changes its spin!" - "whoa.. puke" or something like that

[abcde]

Tbh any and all genres have potential.

Whether it sells or not depends on marketing and promotion.

That, and if it's executed well. But bad stuff will still sell if you have a big promotion boost. Twilight was invisible before the movie came out. Now vampire romance is an easy way to rake in audience. Not that it wasn't before, but the standard then didn't require centuries-old vamps attached to boring schoolgirls as interesting as a tofu block.

[sarrowsmith10]

slice of life variety

oh gosh, I wasn't even thinking about slice of life being autobiographical. Now I just feel silly.

[nixxusnibelheim]

It's all about how you present the genre and for which audience.
I think Police Dramas can work well since the storyline gets you hook quick and as a reader, you play the game and try to figure things out. If the tension and mystery are there and it's well-paced, you are pretty much good to go (easier said than done tho' )

I feel like it's hard to pull off real-life stories, historical events or pure drama the same way movies/series do but like others have mentioned, outside of the mainstream bubble some publishers do well in those areas.
Comics (at least in the mainstream world) rely a lot on getting you excited every time the story has a chance which goes against some genre and tone.

There is this rule in manga (especially for shonen), I don't remember exactly but it goes like "you have to hype people every 3 pages" or something like that which is crazy
Webtoon have a similar mindset, it makes it hard to write sometime.

Horror can be hard to pull off if you don't go the route of body horror.
I try to do horror and it's a pain in the ass Horror relies on ambiances and to set those well you need frame by frame movements and audio which is what comic lacks so you need to do extra steps to get the visual and composition right to translate a similar feeling.

Pacing is hard because the reader is ultimately in control (how fast or slow they want to read) almost like in literature, you need to create rhythm with the number of panels, the amount of text etc to really let the story sink in (which I believe is necessary in all genre but may be critical for horror?).

Have yet to see a horror comic that doesn't show to much of the "monster" or the "source of evil".