Is something wrong with my DAMN KAREN?

[abbastudios]

I read Cretin. The art is good.

A new storyline would seem to be a good place to introduce the characters to the readers. This doesn't happen. The reader is never made to feel to like the characters in any way. The subject of adultery doesn't help. Who wants to like people that cheat? And these are the main characters! Why would a reader root for them in any situation? We don't see any other characters to balance them.

There is rarely any. Incentive to turn the page. The characters are bland. No plot is apparent for quite a lot of pages. If I was not reading this to answer your question, i would already have stopped.

When the conflict is introduced, it's not resolved and she moves from the conflict of if she is doing right or wrong to is he going to cheat on me? She just made herself even more unlikable to the reader. The reader has no one to root for here.

The wife finally appears and she gets beaten up. The reader doesn't get to know her and the fact that she gets beaten up has no emotional impact.

On a smaller note, there are some grammar issues.

The second story should have been a great jumping on point for new readers. It's not.

I feel that most readers are not interested in selfish characters.

These are what I feel are the problems with your comic based on the second story, which did not make me want to read anything else. I hope this is helpful to you.

[francisangelos]

Man, that was a harsh one!

thank you for reading and for taking the time to answer this.

I think some of your criticism happen because you started from the second story. Yet I recognize that I should have tried to better introduce the elements and characters already established.

The only thing that I can not agree with is your point of view of morally questionable characters not being good protagonists.

The world of comics is super saturated with quite perfect characters (or characters with only cute defects) in idealized relationships. I may have failed to show this kind of situation in an interesting way, but I'm sure the "wrong people" can give us the best of the stories.

[DragonPena]

@francisangelos I agree with you, morally questionable characters make for great protagonists.. Hell the 2 most popular series from recent times have had morally questionable charactrers (Breaking bad and Game of thrones)

[YoungAdventurer]

I only read the first story #Insensitive so I apologise for anything I mention that has already been fixed.

First things first the art style is well done, but the constant grammar errors can be distracting from the story. I realise this has already been said but I found this quite annoying when I had to read speech bubbles twice to understand the story.

Secondly, I agree that 'wrong people' make a better story, but they need to be balanced, part good, part bad. (Even if they're only a tiny bit good or a tiny bit bad) The only side I've seen to Karen (I assume this is the main character's name) is an insecure, defensive side that uses smart comments to protect itself. She needs another trait to balance this side of her out, not necessarily making her 'good' but making her more balanced, while keeping her as a very flawed character. This makes her flawed but believable.

And I just have to say I really like your colouring.

I can't say I really liked the storyline, it felt as though it was being made up as it was drawn, instead of being planned beforehand. Also the dialog doesn't always flow well.

Apart from what I've pointed out I think your comic has a great potential but it really needs to be promoted to an audience that'll enjoy it, instead of the vague public. What I mean by this is most people who read your comic may be offended or hurt by the way you interpret touchy subjects. I don't know if you have a target audience in mind but maybe you could start a forum for other comics like yours that are more unafraid and daring to explore these subjects.

I hope this was the type of information you were looking for, I'm new to forums so I'm open to any tips on how to improve my feedback.

[DragonPena]

As @Sarah said I thought the same, its not hard to see the most popular comics here (hedk the most popular comics\mangas) are usually the simpliest, the ones that deal with more adult themes usually have more niche audiences..

Here in tapastic the most popular comics are gag-a-day, slice or life if you have good art it's always a plus, but not to disrespect those genres but simplistic stuff is what most readers here want I think, just a quick laugh or something instead of complicated stories.

[L4213]

I feel that most readers are not interested in selfish characters.

thats not true. how you portray them matters. selfish characters are interesting because they are relateable (because there have been moments in our lives where we have been selfish as well) but if they don't have any character development. they become a one trick pony who's appeal will fade over time (think of the law of diminishing returns)

personally, i think your comic is great! the but you haven't found your audience yet. or at least, your audience hasn't found you. what you need is more promotion. just posting and waiting for the money to come in is always a pitfall people always fall into.

how to promote? simple, socialize! get active on forums, other webcomics! hype it up on your FB or other media sites that you can use. collab with other artists. get them to bat eyes on you! i noticed that your webcomic only has been viewed 8k times. compare that with other webcomics with big numbers and you'll notice that getting eyes on your work is really important, especially in finding your audience.

also, be patient. i've worked on my webcomic for 4 years already and my boom only started a year ago. promotion also has a big say on that~

[francisangelos]

Thanks to everyone who read and commented.

As for grammar: I'm trying to improve. My native language is Brazilian Portuguese, and so far I have not had the opportunity to live in a country with English as mother language, which complicates a little (not trying to justify, just explaining).

Regarding the sensitive topics. I really understand that this is a factor. But it's part of what I want to do. I will rethink if I'm doing it right, but I prefer to keep this series as non-poplular than losing its identity.

As for promoting it, I'll keep that in mind!

Thanks again.

[MylCreates]

Yeah, I'll agree with @UzukiCheverie and @AnnaLandin that I haven't seen you around that much. To be honest I didn't know your comic existed until you posted this topic. Have you been commenting much on other comics (I see you only follow 16)? There's a few remarkable users that are pretty popular amongst the community (and they don't even have a series) simply because you see their name/avatar everywhere (forums, other comics, personally talking to other users on their walls). It's a lot of work, but participation is like an ad campaign in itself.

Also building as much of a personal connection to your audience will make them more dedicated to you and spread the word about your comic. Talk to them outside of your comic, attend their streams, do streams yourself, advertise your comic through other social medias (webcomicunderdogs.com and on their FB page, Twitter has an online #webcomicchat meeting every Saturday 8:30pm PST), or integrate your audience's interaction into the comic somehow (reward them for their participation), remember who they are and what's special about individual readers, (keep an Excel sheet if you must ). There's even a Skype group for users just to chat and network with each other (Hobbes/Dehaha1 is in charge of that, you can talk to him if you're interested).

Remember that you are part of the brand/product that you are advocating/advertising for.

You and your comic are linked.

[UzukiCheverie]

So I took the time to sit down and read some of your comic, and I think I can see where some of the main problems lie with the comic (although what I said already about taking part in the community is still important!).

First off - you don't provide any build-up as to what's happening. It seems that stuff just sorta happens . . . just because you want it to. You need to create more foreshadowing, more build-up, more insight, so people actually understand what they're reading. When I read Cretin, all I understood at the end of it was that the main character is just generally unpleasant, does stupid shit, and everyone just ends up sad and depressed at the end. There's no point to it. It doesn't have any resolution, or build up, or anything, and what could be considered the climax is just silly.

I mean, my characters are assholes; I'm guilty of that as well. Asshole characters are fun to write about, but they're only fun to read when what they're doing makes sense and is justified. Uzuki is mean. She beats the crap out of people a lot. She insults people. She doesn't understand the concept of "consequences". But she's not mean just for the sake of being mean - she only gets aggressive when she feels the need to protect herself/her friends, or when she really, REALLY feels the need to get a point across. As it's been discovered by some of her companions already, she still has a soft spot and at least a CONSCIENCE, and she doesn't just try to act the "badass cold hearted character" for the sake of doing so.

You need to give your characters more credit than that. Give them motives, give them some kind of backstory that will at least explain - if only a little - why they are the way they are. Don't just take those characters and throw them into random situations for the sake of "plot" - because then it ends up broken and there's no incentive to keep reading.

Second - while this is something that's been pointed out already and is hard to control, you need to work on your grammar. It's very difficult to read your comic as it is because at least 8/10 sentences are broken/choppy/just don't make sense. It really pulls you out of the experience and distracts you, and forces you to read something twice, maybe 3 times before you can even get the gist of what they're trying to say. I know this one is a bit more difficult, but it's a big part of the reading experience nonetheless.

Third - who is this story for? People who don't have any feelings at all, or motives? Because no one can relate to that. You can convince yourself to relate to it, but naturally, people don't. Even the biggest of baddies have their motives and feelings and aren't just bad because "the plot told them to be". This ties in to a lot of what I mentioned in my first point. It also seems weird that they just so happen to live in a world that's set in a modern period, but has dinosaurs and magic and crazy stuff. I'm not saying you can't do that, because it's been done a lot before, but you can't just chuck it in there because you couldn't decide between a modern setting and a fantastical setting - you need to explain these things. You don't need walls of text or pages of exposition, but just offer some kind of ground for these stories to be built on, and be prepare to explain it in a simple and sensible way that your readers can understand and won't find it silly or pointless.

Fourth - and this is the last major point I'm going to make, but what kind of genre are you going for? Are you going for serious, or funny? You can definitely have both - but you're trying too hard to have a joke in every episode and make it comedic, when some situations (especially in Cretin) are just . . . not funny. It doesn't matter how many punchlines you put in there or how many gags you set up, Cretin was CLEARLY meant to be a dark type story and you stuck so many jokes in there that by the end of it, I was just exhausted.

You can have both, but trying to force them together is like trying to force two magnets with the same ends together. Nothing gets done. Nothing gets established. No mood is set. Put in humor where it's appropriate/where it works, but don't try and make jokes where it's not due.

So, characters, plot, genre, grammar. This is what you need to work on. Art is great, but art only goes so far, and no matter how good it is, the story fails it. Your storytelling methods need a lot of work; same as your character development, and the mood you're trying to build. Grammar is choppy and makes the story even harder to follow than it already is. Start paying more attention to how you build your stories and don't make all your characters just end up sad and depressed, or be sad and depressed throughout the whole thing for no apparent reason or because for some reason, plot demands it. That's just annoying to read, because we went through all that reading to end up with what was basically nothing.

That's pretty much it > <

[sundanceann]

Sorry to comment again. I agree with Uzuki. Her third point was the most important. There's a popular saying when it comes to writing that "every character wants something.. even if it's just a glass of water." I read insensitive and cretin, and both felt like a few characters wandering around aimlessly without motivation.

I don't want to come across as harsh, but I feel that if you want readers to connect to your characters you should give them more ambition or something to work towards. There's a million people who don't have amazing adventures but I don't want to read about them.

[zelkats]

(SPOILERS for those who haven't read the comic yet)

While I agree that having flawed characters is totally okay and also recommended, I don't think this comic has given me as a reader enough to want to support the characters (except maybe the talking spark thing and Vivi). Neither has it really given me the want to turn the page except to see the outcome of the spark attack and the affair, which are episodes away in each arc. I can't stress enough that the first few pages or episodes are important because they're what people usually read before they decide to commit to reading the rest of the comic.

I can understand why some can be ticked off by Karen in Cretin. In shows like Mistresses and Betrayal, they at least try to show some backstory and a reason as to why the main characters would be in an affair (unhappy marriage, fell in love but didn't know the other is married, harsh experiences that brought them together, etc.), which makes them relatable in some way. In Damn Karen, all we know about Karen is that she loves red, video games and says inappropriate but ironically funny things (the funny is subjective because personally, the jokes didn't work well for me. A few seemed distasteful, even). Her traits would have worked if this is a simple gag comic but it isn't, is it? Her affair looks like it's just for the luls and it didn't help that she likes Vivi too because it just makes Karen's logic all the more exasperating. The spark reprimanding her was a narrow save for me otherwise I would have stopped. Also, weren't Vivi and her husband sort of mourning and wanting to see their dead unborn child in the previous arc? The affair was a huge, unexplained disconnection from that and it just made me feel incredibly sorry for Vivi and care much less about the rest. Though, the doubt in Karen's mind planted by the talking spark, is sort of a saving grace and it gives me hope in Karen to develop her personality.

Finding a niche audience isn't really the problem, I feel. It's the portrayal of the characters and the universe they're in that probably needs work. Trust me, people enjoy watching and reading scandalous and insensitive characters involved in sensitive topics (Game of Thrones, House, Scandal, etc.). Sure, GoT has some pretty hateful and flawed characters (that some actually enjoy, like Joffrey), but the story has more than ten characters that you can choose to support based on your own taste and principles, and each of them are complex. Damn Karen has only 3 (4, if you include the spark) characters. You have to take better care in writing them and give readers a reason to stay and read their story.

I hope this helps in some way, as harsh as this review sounds

[Jelw]

I looked at your comic on my phone and while the text is readable (good) because of how short your pages are, there's a lot of blank space beneath the comic. This makes it seem kind of empty so I suggest you making your actual pages longer length-wise, or posting two pages in an update to fill up the space.

[ratique]

Hi Francis,

You have already gotten some really great feedback here. So I will try to keep it short without repeating too much of what has been said.

I would like to go back to your first question: Is something wrong with Damn Karen?

Let's look at the numbers: You uploaded consistently for over a year, have over 9k views but only 77 subscribers. That means the ratio is off – after working on it for so long and having this many views you should have more than 77 subscribers.

This means, without even reading your comic I am able to say: Yes, something must be wrong.

The art is not the problem. You are a good illustrator. So the story is at fault.

Now you have a couple of options. You can keep going with what you have been doing. That is fine, in the end all of us are making comics for themselves.

Or you finish your current storyline and then go talk to someone who likes to write or is a writer. Show them your comic. See if they have some ideas of what could work better. Continue a storyline with your characters or make something completely new. Then go out and be successful. You can be true to yourself and your story by working with someone who fixes the pacing issues - collaboration is key.

See, not many people get this many responses, especially this in depth, here on the forums. That tells you something - there is something there. You have artistic talent. You have the commitment. You work hard and you obviously love your comic. You deserve to have success. And I think you don't have to change much to get it.

[francisangelos]

Thanks to every one who awensered, especially those ho took a time to read DAMN KAREN an write a in depth analysis of what may be happening.

Back, wen I started this series I wanted to do something a little more cynic. Not to be critical of the reader, but to help spread a little cynicism. I felt (and i still feel) that the world is overly romanticized by comics, movies and media over all, and a little cynicism is something good to have to counterweight that. I know one single comic series cannot do that by itself, I was just trying to do my part.

This why I took Karen, a character from Cosmopolia my previous web-comic site (is only in Brazilian Portuguease so i will not bother you all with it) to have a series of her own (back them every story had its own protagonist). She was in that part of the life were she didn’t hold to the childish dreams anymore but still haven't found a new passion and was going life in inertia. To me that was the perfect point to have a character just seeing the world in a damn critical way (i may have lost a little of this objective on the second story, but i didn’t want to simply repeat the formula). And also, she was far from being a perfect person, and that was great because a supposedly perfect character being critical of the world wold be very pretentious.

Reading all your feed back I think that, probably, I have overdone it. I must have made the series a little too cynical, to the point of being exclusive to people ho are not already pretty good damn cynical themselves.

Not trying to justify myself, just telling what was my process…

Also, some of you told me about narrative. Yeah, maybe this happened because i tried to made short pages that link the story together but with each and every one o them having a little fun in itself. Not saying it can’t be done, but maybe the way i did it didn’t worked. Back in the Cosmoplia days i used to do long vertical pages. I really liked that format and on those pages i had more space to build ambience foreshadow and mood. But i wanted to do a regular weekly series and it was impossible to me to keep one in that format.

Again, I’m not trying to justify my mistakes, just making an hypothesis.

I have 2 more pages of the current story of DAMN KAREN, so i will publish them the way I had planed, This will give some time to rethink everything, consider everything thats have discussed here and decide if I will do a next story.

Once again thank you guys for all the feed back. It was really appreciated.

[abbastudios]

Hopefully, you can see now my comments were not harsh. When you ask “What’s wrong” you have to expect negative answers.

Harsh is “You’re a hack!” Instead, like the others here who gave very thoughtful critiques, you were presented with the issues and solutions (or implied solutions).

I never implied that morally questionable characters do not make good protagonists. @L4213

My first statement about your characters was:

The reader is never made to feel to like the characters in any way.

There is no qualifier about the type of characters.

All of my comments are in the context of talking about your characters and your writing.

I’m a big fan of Breaking Bad, GOT and Dexter. Your writing does not begin to approach that depth of characterization or motivation.

I even co-created a character that appears to have no redeeming values http://tapastic.com/series/Grace-Fallen-Angel

In a perfect world, everyone would start with your first page. However, just like in a comic book store, the creator no longer controls how it is read. Looking at my own comics - the views show people have started in the middle, at the end and everywhere in between.

Observation 1: Looking at what you have posted in this forum, practically all of them have been motivated purely by self-interest as in; questions abut your comic or promoting it. I echo that you do need to participate more, however. in a more selfless way.

Observation 2: Your avatar is of you drawing yourself.

Observation 3: When asking for a critique, you should resist the impulse to defend your point of view. Thinking other people will all see how you intended things is something you can’t control. (aside: I thought it was a dragon when I first saw it. They were right to ask you to change it. Your storytelling must communicate clearly.)

I checked your Deviant Art page. You are a very talented artist. If you bring your writing up that talent level, you would have a dynamite strip.

[sundanceann]

Good luck! I know criticism can be hard, but I'm hoping it helps you to come back with something amazing.

[francisangelos]

@abbastudios Man, I totally agreed with most of the thing you sayed... I only disagree whit one statement and even in that statement I admitted that you may be right in the sense that I may have not been able to do that very well. So, YES, I'm very thankful you took your time to read and give me some feed back and I WILL take everything you said in in consideration. Sorry if my response made the impression I didn't appreciated.

And try to forgive me on the "not being on the forums" thing. A lot of people never entered the forums, is not a mandatory thing that everybody do. I entered in the forum to get some hep. Yes I did. But I bet a lot of people enter forums to get something and eventually stick up, if the ambient is nice.

[DragonPena]

For what's worth I read the first chapter and part of the second chapters and I think the art is very VERY good, and I'm just gonna say that in general the most popular comics are usually the most simple, here in Tapastic a good looking cómic with a gag-a-day structure will get more subs than an obscure cómic, even if the art and plot are good, is the same with manga , shonen manga (which usually uses the same formulas and is more simple) is the overall best sello genre.

That being said, perhaps if you introduced more characters you could get more readers... But at this point it would be kind of difficult, is like game of thrones I really think Daenerys is boring, the storyline imo is boring and I really like Arya, but some people might have the opposite view from mine, because there are 2 (well way more) characters with different characteristics in the series.

[abbastudios]

You're welcome.

No one is hating on you for not being on the forums. It's not mandatory. It is a suggestion as one way you can increase readership is by hanging out on the forums and interacting with others. And to your other comments, as my Mom used to say "Just because everybody else does it, doesn't make it right". For instance: A lot of other people plagiarize, so get off my case. You don't have to defend everything and that excuse is lame.

On a different track, yet related. I have been in therapy for my own issues. In my last session I mentioned I felt like an imposter. That led to me finding out that not only creative people doubt themselves.

There is something called the Imposter Syndrome and Impostorism. It is a disconnect between perceived and actual performance, which results in a host of negative feelings. I encourage every creative person to find out more about it.

[ratique]

Good Luck, Francis!

Let us know when you are back with your next project, whatever it may be!