Is it doomed? (How does long form story survive?)

[unknown_user]

Would also like to add to Kazsup's comment, as a huge Jojo fan, one of the things that actually inspired me with Araki's work is how much he's grown as an artist, and how much flexibility he allowed himself as a writer.

Heh, can say the same about the Berserk manga. It was really the pleasure to see how the author have grown during his long trip from his first chapters to the last ones. By the way, there is the funny story how I've started to read it and was catched in the trap of waiting for the continuation of the more-than-20-years-ongoing saga (despite usually I tend to avoid such an inconvenient situations )
I had heard about this manga a lot, but hesitated to start reading cause it is too long and still unfinished. So I decided to watch anime instead (that one which is 1998 year dated) cause it is just 26 episodes long and had a good reviews, too. But... uh oh! the anime has stopped at the most interesting point!!! So I had nothing to do besides reading the manga from the point, where anime had stopped. And when I've read to the current end of the manga, I had nothing to do besides rereading it from the beginning.

Here's some positives as well aside from reader numbers: despite not having gotten a huge audience, I've been able to successfully kickstart a printing of my first 400 pages, I've made a lot of friends in the comics community, and my skills have improved enough that I'm seriously looking into pitching other projects to publishers. From the start I wanted to see my work in print, I do my best to not let numbers discourage me from getting results.

That sounds great! Its always nice to hear that patience and persistence were rewarded

[Jenny-Toons]

The long story format has been around for a good minute -- it's not gonna die out anytime soon.

Look at a lot of the mangas you've might've read that have lasted 10, 20, even 30 years. They're still popular, still have their fandoms, and they're passed down generations.

Even outside of that, you have western styles comics that have lasted decades. If not the superheros genres, then it's other comics like the newspaper comics (like Peanuts, Boondocks, Otis, etc.)

One reason now readers more or less become less frequent is that sometimes, those stories can drag on with the same plots over and over -- the key is just keeping the story fresh and exploring new things.

Another reason is that some just wait until the story's finished and then they read it all. Either that, or people just get busy and can't focus too much time on a long series. It happens -- they come and go and then they'll come back to it.

So I wouldn't say the long-story format is doomed. People still adore it and will still keep coming back to it. In any case, if your story's a long format, and you WANT to tell it, why should this stop you?

There's always gonna be possible reasons to not do our stories. If it's not this format, it's the genre, or the topics, or the artstyle. It's just up to US to choose to keep creating despite those things.

[DiegoPalacios]

The tricky part is to balance accesibility and continuity.

Accesibility makes it easier to reach new readers and Continuity increase the attachment of the readers.

For some comics, you can just watch any page and enjoy it without needing to see the older pages, but for most longforms, more context may be needed to understand/enjoy what`s going on.

A good trick for longforms may be to make each update able to sustain itself, either because it makes newcomers curious about what`s going on or because there is no need to understand everything to make it enjoyable. Of course the viability of the second point will depend of how complex is the story.

A story can have more than one layer that makes it enjoyable for casual readers and hardcore fans.
For example: a gag-a-day may have stand alone jokes which can be enjoyed without the need to read previous pages, but may have a strong continuity fans may notice in some details. Maybe in this episode the main character is in jail because he was arrested as part of a punchline on the previous page.

[HGohwell]

I like to think of it like books being split up. But one of the best examples of self contained is crime dramas. Each episode is self contained and you could watch any of them, but they have a series long arc. 1st episode someone on the team retires/is killed off/is corrupt and the season then spends time getting to know the replacement/solving the crime/dealing with the issue, and then next series, it might be mentioned, but it's not so important to the plot that you have to have seen it. There's also a high chance of a series long hunt for a serial killer. Obviously it depends how complex your plot is, but that's what I consider the pinnacle of self contained but still a series.