Pros & Cons of Comics + Comic Discussions

[DiegoPalacios]

Sadly i almost never read mangas, so i can`t give a proper example. Just heard stories of those situations

Maybe @Shanny8 can list some examples.

[Rhonder]

I don't know a ton that do (but I also don't read a ton of the manga for anime that I've watched so I probably wouldn't know) but one example that comes to mind is Soul Eater.

I can't remember the reasoning but the anime wasn't going to get renewed or continued after the 2nd season so they ended up having to pick a point somewhere within the second season and started deviating away to create an anime-original ending that ties everything up after that arc, because the manga continues for quite some time after said arc.

[M.ComicFan]

Thanks for the info, but since your here. Do you mind if we discuss your pros and cons about comics as well?

[Rhonder]

Would love to,but I'll have to return on a work break

Edit:

I'm back!

I think my favorite Pros of comics are:

• That they're easy to make! I think it's cool that comics are something that basically anyone can make and use as a story telling device. You don't even have to have good art, necessarily. Stickmen comics are somewhat popular (and especially back in like middle school I remember a lot of people drawing those!) and like even in Elementary school I drew a comic strip about a rabbit character that my mom taught me to draw from simple shapes. Literally just gotta grab a pencil and go at it~

• The huge variety of content. Granted this is true of most entertainment mediums, but it's no less so here. When I was little I remember not really reading that many comics tbh. I would read the newspaper strips and the occasional Sonic the Hedgehog comic (those were my favorite! still really love them haha) but like DC & Marvel superheroes never did it for me and I thought that was just what comics were mostly, so I kinda avoided them. Discovering Manga in middle school busted open the concept of what comics could be though- there are so many different types, not just super heroes and newspaper strips! Now that I've discovered webcomics in the last several years the possibilities just keep expanding.

• It could definitely be a con for some people, but I kinda like that they're fast to consume. Granted a whole series can get to be very long, but you can sit down a bust through a comic issue in like 20 minutes. Or a Webtoons episode in like 5 minutes. Or a manga volume in like an hour. But like if it's paced well and hit a good stopping point you get a complete chunk of story in that time and it's pretty cool, especially when you don't have a lot of free time. For example I watch a fair amount of anime and you're pretty much committed to the 20-30 mins when you sit down to watch an episode as stopping partway through is awkwards, and I also like videogames and RPGs but a chapter of those can take hours and hours to reach (even though that's usually not in a single session... but they take me forever to get through anymore because I don't like sitting down to play those genres unless I can do at least like an hour playtime lol. If I have less time I'll just play something less time-intensive and arcade-y).

and then Cons:

• They're fun to make and an accessible story telling medium as mentioned above, but they take so SO long to make relative to how long they take to consume ;u; it appeals to "reader" me, but makes "creator" me groan a little bit lol. Drawing a page takes hours to do and yet it gets consumed in like 30 seconds.

• Related to the above, it makes following ongoing comics a drag. My Pro point about being able to consume a complete chunk of story quickly only rings true if there's a whole chunk to consume... I relate because I was one of those authors as well, but it makes "page a week" style webcomics take forever to get anywhere, which makes it difficult to hold interest. There are alternative publishing styles that can get around this but then those have other issues like taking longer between episodes & etc.

• It's a hard medium to get random people invested in, especially for story-driven comics. Strip-style comics at least have the advantage of being shareable easily since they don't require context to enjoy. Appealing to the social media masses and trying to get people to care about "page 36 of my 70 page short story" is a massive feat haha. They have an advantage over purely written media in at least having a visual element to draw people in, but these days videos (& images that don't require context to understand/be funny, i.e. memes) are super dominant.

[Shanny8]

@M.ComicFan for example, the first Fullmetal Alchemist anime from what I heard, heavily deviated from the manga(due to the manga not being finished)...the Brotherhood anime stuck closer to the source material. Weirdly though, I liked both versions- but I (kinda)hated that they had to make Shamballa; I liked the first series ending the way that it did.

Manga that I invested in: Silent Mobius, Battle Angel Alita, You're Under Arrest, Oh My Goddess, Gunsmith Cats, Dark Angel, and Steam Detectives...I was a big Asamiya, Fujishima, Kishiro, and Sonada fan.

[M.ComicFan]

Thanks for the info, especially about Full Metal Alchemist. I tried watching the original Full Metal Alchemist (I only watched the first 2 episodes), but since Brotherhood's a better version, I guess I'll watch that.

[M.ComicFan]

I love how invested in comics you seem to be, and that's something you really enjoy. I can kinda relate to the point about having the story take forever to get anywhere. I'm working on a comic right now, and I'm kinda doing the somewhat unprofessional thing of trying to establish the setup for the characters and plot in the first 2 chapters so that way if I end up publishing a page per week, at least readers will understand what's going on without having to wait to long. Anyways, thanks for your input.

[Rhonder]

Yeahhh I'm looking to take a middle ground with my upcoming series. I'm thinking about like... drawing each chapter to completion before starting to post said chapter, and then just have small-to-medium breaks beteween each one while I finish the next. That way each chapter won't take that long to post and I can have beefier episodes, but the trade off is that it won't be seamless and there will be downtime. After trying the page-to-page thing for my one shot though I'm looking forward to trying the new approach! Page-to-page life wasn't my jam... for pacing, or producing

[M.ComicFan]

Interesting approach. I could try that too, but I want to see how many pages I can make in a week first. But before that, I want to finish the first 2 chapters so I can publish them right away without any delay.

[Rhonder]

Ah yeah! Posting them right away makes sense if they're setting up important points for the story That's the thing that disgruntles me the most is when a weekly webcomic has things introduced even in Ch 1... but Ch 1 comes out so slowly that it might be months into posting that the hook actually gets revealed xD Even if the pace slows down afterwards I think it's nice to have a little bit of bulk content up-front like that to get the ball rolling.

[Rowain]

Cons: Story comics take a long time to get anywhere. Updating 1 page a week only nets 52 pages a year. You'll have something in a few years if you don't move on to something else in the meantime. It's something I think about a lot. If you can update more than once or multiple pages at a time it's not so bad.

Pros: I like visual narratives and comics can be the most time efficient way to display that as a team of one. I would love do animation but the time investment wouldn't be worth it for me.

Also I just like doing them. Been doing them since 5th grade on stapled together lined paper. Reading manga is what got me started drawing in the first place. They're just awesome, seeing a world come together.

[M.ComicFan]

Story comics take a long time to get anywhere. Updating 1 page a week only nets 52 pages a year.

This is also something I also have a problem with as well, but at the same time some people put a lot of effort into their pages and depending on who's drawing it, it could take a few days to make a page.

[DiscountedArtist]

I have some pros and cons for comics in general

Also, my favorite "professional" comic series is either "Spider-Man Blue" or "The Ultimate Spider-Man" (I don't read that many comics besides Spider-Man)
My favorite "not professional" comic series are "Loading Artist," "Doodle Demon," "Safely Endangered," and "Raphcomic"

PROS:
They can look really good
They leave certain things to your imagination, like how the characters sound
Most of the time they focus more on storytelling than movies
CONS:
No music (obviously)

[M.ComicFan]

CONS:
No music (obviously)

You do know that on Tapas if you have Soundcloud, you can add whatever music track you want to any episodes of your comics right? 'Cause if you didn't, well, you do now.

[DiscountedArtist]

I didn't know that before. But now I know.

[gmaximin]

Pros:
- Visual but not too immersive, leaving a lot of space for imagination.
Cons:
- Mainly visual... I'd love a comics with smell...

[M.ComicFan]

Okay, what would you want your comics to smell like?

[gmaximin]

depends on the comics scene... just a comics with the ability to add a smell component. You open the page, have a beach setting, and smell the salty freshness of wave. Next page, small house, breakfast, the smell of coffee... Or the smell of dragon fume when battling to save the princess... just a comics with smell added...
So cons is just to say that comics lack the support of other senses, especially ones that would support the imagination of my pro...

[M.ComicFan]

Maybe some day we'll have "immersive comics". No idea how the technology would work, but that doesn't sound like a bad idea.

[Rowain]

That's very true. Quality sometimes comes at the cost of time.