Longform comics and the intimidating archive problem

keii4ii 2016-10-03 17:24:39 UTC #1

You find a brand new series with only maybe 3-4 pages. The art looks good. You read all of what's available; the story, while too early to know for sure, looks promising. You subscribe and keep up with the updates. Great!

But then you discover a series that has 100+, maybe 300+ or even 500+ pages. UH OH. You have a lot of catching up to do! What do you do?

In the second situation, a lot of people will give up right away and not subscribe. Some people will subscribe but never actually catch up. Some people will catch up eventually... maybe months after they subscribe (which is okay). Few will start reading right away.

How do you deal with this as a creator? This isn't really an issue for gag a days, where you can jump in at any point and not have to know all of the context to enjoy the jokes. But with longform stories, that's not really an option.

Do you provide recaps? (I've hated recaps as a reader, but maybe it's lesser of two evils here?)
Do you try to write your story in a way that makes it possible to pick up from, say, book 3? (The Harry Potter books kiiiind of did this; you would miss out a lot of context, but you would not get hopelessly lost.)
Are there other options -- other than Not Giving a Damn?

AnnaLandin 2016-10-03 17:32:17 UTC #2

I tend to make my home mostly in the "not giving a damn"-camp - mostly because when I as a reader find a new, interesting-looking comic with a couple of hundred pages, I read them.

I realise not everyone is like me, though. I tend to do little "oh hey, remember this guy? It's been since chapter so-and-so since we saw him!"-things in the author's notes - and on Grassblades' main site, I've got an "About" page and a cast-page for new readers to poke around a bit in, read some descriptions and get an idea of what they're in for without trawling through all 150+ posted pages.

spadesart 2016-10-03 17:38:32 UTC #3

I usually just go in for it and read the whole thing (I binged More Than Meets The Eye all the way through issue 44 and caught up (roughtly 1,042 pages) and all of Avas Demon which is over 1,000 pages as well) so I guess I'm part of not giving a damn? I really love longform stories and usually the stuff that's already up still isn't enough for me (when I was reading Patrik The Vampire I got genuinely sad there were only 80 pages left to go at one point)

I guess as a creator it's just something you'd have to accept? Personally I'm never intimidated by an immense number of pages unless it's super boring.

Michelle 2016-10-03 17:39:02 UTC #4

I don't have much of a solution for the story itself, but recently I collapsed chapter 1 of my comic into multi-page updates to help with that archive burn-out. I really really don't like losing all the nice comments, but it did shrink my page count quite a bit. I'll probably do the same once chapter 2 is fully posted.

When it comes to keeping people in the loop, I fall into the Not Giving a Damn camp |D My story isn't some multi-story epic trilogy though, so I don't think there's too much risk of getting lost if you're paying attention.

shazzbaa 2016-10-03 17:39:19 UTC #5

On Tapastic there's not really anything you can do, I feel like, other than collapsing multiple pages into a single episode so it looks less intimidating.

On a personal website you can control how your archive is presented; display it by chapter, for instance, and then expand a chapter to see individual pages -- same basic deal; it looks less intimidating. You can also have a "new reader? start here!" button to try to keep people from going to the archive page and getting overwhelmed.

But for me, the only real "strategy" I have is to talk about my characters really openly on social media. Like, the reason you don't want to read a 300 page comic is because you have no real motivation to do so other than "looks neat" or "premise sounds interesting" and 300 pages is a lot to commit to something you don't know if you want or not. But if there's someone interesting you really want to meet, it's a lot easier to imagine digging in to get to know that person.
And I agree with @AnnaLandin -- I think the cast page/about page serves a really similar purpose, and that's definitely a reason those pages are important to me (and why I keep campaigning for Tapastic to add an about page) -- it potentially gives you a motivation to explore an intimidating archive.

Pandastrophic 2016-10-03 17:59:34 UTC #6

As a reader I do kinda avoid super long comics especially on tapastic, I think other webcomic sites have episodes that can be split into chapters so it's actually not that intimidating when you start reading but on tapastic...you see that tiny scroll bar and you just know it'll be a long read.
I think if we could just collapse multiple pages into chapters it would make the reading experience so much better (we've been talking about a feature like this for a while now but idk if it will ever be added)

shaneoid77 2016-10-03 18:00:06 UTC #7

I've always thought that readers who like my characters enough will want to go back and read their origins. But yeah I go with recap pages. I also think (hope) making 'issues' of comics helps as you can definite jumping on and off points. Also you get to do front covers (just me who likes doing that?)

Gag comics are ok but I would rather read random ones on my FB feed than go hunting for them on host sites.

joannekwan 2016-10-03 18:25:15 UTC #8

Haha, I'm kind of the opposite. I prefer 200+ individual pages than large chapter episodes. I think I'm more intimidated by so much scrolling on the far right of my screen than the little box with all the episodes in. It's like okay, I have 200+ episodes to go through but each ep is a page or two, that's doable. Compare that to: I've been scrolling a while, when will this episode end? Oh god, there are 20 more of these, I don't think I can scroll through them all like this. Also I like that Tap remembers which episode I left off at.

I haven't reached the 100 episode mark for any of my series yet, but maybe when I do I'll do a quick recap? I think for Demon House at least you can pick up anywhere, since it is essentially a sitcom.

AnnaLandin 2016-10-03 18:31:19 UTC #9

Same!

In my case, I think it's because I grew up reading comics on the internet loooong before this newfangled vertical scrolling layout became a thing. I'm USED to plowing through 300+-page archives in single pages. I enjoy it, even. It feels like turning the pages in a print-comic.

MissMagicGirl 2016-10-03 18:39:23 UTC #10

If the comic is good I only enjoy that fact that there is a lot of it that I can read. I don't get caught up in one night but if I enjoy it I have a lot of great reading material for many nights to come

zetina 2016-10-03 18:55:12 UTC #11

Being a One Piece fan who has tried to get others to read it, I should be familiar and much more concerned with this very real matter of "tl;dr" in longform comics. I think @shazzbaa has the right idea - talking about the cast. There have been many times where I pick up a series based on character design alone, and have heard of my friends picking up a series because of what they know about a cast member. It serves as a driving force to get through that endless list of episodes, haha~

punkarsenic 2016-10-03 18:57:47 UTC #12

i tend to not care, but maybe that's because this never crossed my mind; as a reader i'll knuckle down and read a comic on one or two sittings if i want to subscribe. i cant imagine what solution would be viable, because the people who wouldnt want to read through it all likely wouldnt know to check for recap pages anyway (i sure wouldnt)

agentfink 2016-10-03 18:58:21 UTC #13

I was experimenting with condensing on Webtoon to see if I would like this approach.

Webtoons audience is different (in terms that they prefer reading larger updates) but I liked presenting the pages with the natural breaks in the story that made for easy reading. I updated anywhere from 2-4 pages and my chapter 1 on Webtoons came out to 12 episodes, compared to 31 on Tapastic. Personally, I think it reads better on Webtoons but I don't have a large enough buffer to sustain multi-page updates like that.

We're just starting up chapter 2 and I find myself considering multi-page updates for chapter 3. It's not just that I don't want my readers to get lost with one page updates (I don't think they do) but also I just think the multi-page chapters read better (almost like mini issues).

I don't know... at the moment, I Don't Give A Damn... but I'm only 38 episodes in...

Ah! See this is why I think my mind set is changing in regards to multi-page episodes here. I'm considering doing a recap too, maybe at the start of new chapters? Some printed comics I read do this every issue. Most of the time I skip it, because I am binge reading, but I can imagine it being very helpful when reading it as a monthly.

That is comforting to hear!

R.n.P 2016-10-03 19:09:21 UTC #14

I always have that thought in my mind that my comic has gone pretty far so subscribers that are new might not read em
As a creator I'm working on getting my early episodes to look very appealing in order to get subscribers that are new to read them, I'm still an amateur at the coloring though
THE LAST SAMURAI

SynergyEclipse 2016-10-03 19:32:29 UTC #15

I'm used to reading one webcomic page at a time, and have binge-read some webcomics from the beginning if they interested me enough. Including supplemental material suited to new readers may be helpful, because if it's interesting enough, it could compel a new reader who'd otherwise be intimidated by the large archives, to binge-read through the comic.

My comic has a set length for chapters, but I can't preserve the chapter format here, but I break them down into small episodes. I haven't done recap pages, but I've done recaps in the comments of some episodes or pages.

indagold 2016-10-03 20:01:18 UTC #16

Whelp i'm in the category of not giving a damn as I am currently updating a 600+ page comic I completed over the course of 5 years haha...

Devika 2016-10-03 20:07:39 UTC #17

I can only comment as a reader, but I've never felt intimidated by having a lot to read... That's a bit weird to me, because I read something if I enjoy it, and if there's more to enjoy that's a good thing. If it's not good, I quit.

Okay, there's one thing that I'm intimidated by, and that's the marvel and dc universes. But that's because there's no one canon storyline, and it's been going on for decades and has had so many different writers doing their own thing. So yeah. I've only read a bit of Nightwing, that's it...

maximumthemokona 2016-10-03 21:04:06 UTC #18

I wonder if I'm the only one who just starts reading from the latest updates... Haha. I'm aware that it's spoiling the story, but I can't help it (when I buy a new book the first thing I do is read the very last page). If I get really confused it usually motivates me enough to go back and read what I missed (I'm usually quite invested in the story by then), but I've never really had a problem picking up a new story from the middle.

Personally my favorite approach (which I'm not sure is very compatible with my own comic... but I'll try) is to make sure that each chapter has a definite beginning/middle/end arc and is enjoyable by itself, while still developing a horizontal plot. Kinda like how TV series do it (or used to do before Netflix and binge watching came along)... or like picking up a random comic issue at the store, without worrying too much about the underlying mythology.

vongcw 2016-10-03 21:22:27 UTC #19

I really like that! I know once I'm a even a little invested into the characters I'll keep reading.

UzukiCheverie 2016-10-03 22:47:27 UTC #20

When I post a new volume, I give a brief recap of what happened in the previous volume, with a small hint as to what's going to happen in the new volume. I also have cast pages which outline the main characters on one page and the characters that are prominent/playing a role in the volume on the other page. That's pretty much all I do lol If someone really likes my story they'll read it.