Rank what's most important to you as a reader: Story, Character or Art?

[wonpei]

Art is what draws me in, but character/story is what makes me stay.

1) ART - I tend to follow a series where I can observe the art in order to learn something from it (eg: anatomy, colouring/shading, expression, composition, layout, etc), or I'm just into the style. Simple doodles with a nice palette always have a place in my heart haha. It's also easier to get attached to a character quickly if I like how they look or they have a nice design.

2) CHARACTER - Same as OP, I need to care about the character in order to be interested in what happens to them. If they're just blank pawns and plot devices used to move the story forward then I don't last very long, even if the concept is fresh and the plot is well-written. Characters that are interesting, funny, cute, relatable, or provide an enlightening POV are great !

3) STORY - Character-driven plots are easier for me to consume than plot-driven ones, just because heavy lore and world-building can be hard to digest sometimes. I can follow a plot-less comic for a pretty long time as long as the character interactions (dialogue/chemistry) are consistently enjoyable. But as soon as it feels repetitive and there's no meaningful development, I start to fall behind on updates.

[J.Lovelace]

1. Characters
2. Story
3. Art

@joannekwan summed it up pretty well why we like it in this order.

[mpiradarada]

Very well put! I feel exactly the same!

[akemikae]

My order is definitely

1.Characters
2.Story
3. Art

Honestly, I have so many comics/manga/series in general that I stick around JUST because I love the characters so much. The rest is just a lovely plus side.

[cleo_san]

1) Story
2) Characters
3) Art

I know many artists who really have a horrible art style but put so much passion into the story and the character development so bad art doesn't necessarily bother me as long as I can read the text =)
I had a friend who started off with pretty crappy pencil drawings and has drawn one page almost every day and now she has a pretty and neat ink style, so, I think the development of art is a natural process of drawing

However, the story has to be good or intriguing for me - I have read stories with an awesome art which were so tedious and boring I gave up after a few chapters - or after constantly wanting to smack the main characters into a wall repeatedly for being such annoying wannabe-cool pricks x_x

In the end it's a good balance of these three aspecs which makes the most successful type of story, but if I had to chose, I'd vote for story and characters over art =)

[joe_galindez]

May we know who this friend is? I do like me some art evolution.

[cleo_san]

Sure thing, @joe_galindez If you don't mind the stories being German, please check out her online manga collection =)
"Spasibo" is one of her first ones, her current one is "Male Girl"

Also this artist here, although I've noticed that she deleted the really old story "Kyel"... however, during "The Laughing Death" she improved pretty much, too =)

Both of them started with anatomy problems, handwritten texts and so many more stuff and have now developed their own pretty solid art styles which improve from page to page imho =)

More examples? =) Another one has started out with pretty "okayish" pages too, now she draws professionally for Carlsen Manga (Martina Peters, artist of "KAE", "TEN" and other stuff =) )

Also, I'd like to add that I've drawn pretty crappy too a few years ago XD With what I'm doing now I am actually quite content since there is a visible improvement =)

[joe_galindez]

They look good. And you've improved a lot. I can't read German though.

[cleo_san]

Thank you, @joe_galindez <3 I hope I can keep on improving X3
Too bad, some of those stories are pretty fun to read, however the artists are not planning to translate them any time soon =(

[collegeaccount2015]

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The promised Neverland is a great example of story>characters>art. The story is amazing

[modrawmanga]

Is promised neverland the shonen jump manga drawn by demizu posuka?

[collegeaccount2015]

sorry it took so long to respond college up all my day but
Yes, yes it is and its great the first time I ever felt real fear that made me heart race and fear what would happen next

[modrawmanga]

No worries! I'm offline several days at a time too.
I'll definitely check this one out, I follow Demizu Posuka on twitter and I first found him/her awesome art floating around on pinterests, I was surprised to found out that he/she is a real manga artist.