The myth of the low effort super popular webcomic

[kambreapratt]

You have to remember only a couple sites are like Tapastic where you have "subs" and it's more of a recent thing--in the last couple of years. You can buy subs. Go to a place like Fiverr and you can get facebook, youtube, etc. It's not out of the realm of possibility that you can buy subs for any site.
I do think there is cheating going on with subs too. I haven't figured it out yet, but on Webtoons, when a see a comic with 1 update, and like 900 views but 600 subs, it's a bit questionable. Statistically, very unlikely. So yes, I do think there is cheating going on there too. I only recently took notice of this, so I haven't had the time to look into it more.

As far as cheating webcomics in general, it's been going on for years. You can buy pretty much anything...alexa, page views, upvotes, fb followers, tumblr followers, twitter followers, subscribers, etc.

[miseryhunting]

But it is still subjective.You can point at how influential and how highly regarded something is, but if you don't like it, to you it is still terrible.Ever read The Divine Comedy? It's fucking ridiculous! Sure, I know it is an important work of literature, but fuck me if it wasn't annoying!

And look at tv. Thousands of series every season. Which ones people remember? Sopranos, Breaking Bad, Mad Men... works that can be discussed and decoded and analyzed because they are objectively better and more sophisticated than the rest

I agree with Simon_M! I has the opportunity to edit a friends dissertation on this exact topic (with focus on Mad Men) and while there is a subjective factor, there are standards which absolutely deservedly identify the quality works - those with best quality of production, writing and message. Quality, however, doesn't necessarily mean entertaining. You should remember that not all that is entertaining is quality and things, which are quality might not appeal to the mass. They are not created for mass consumption - they are there to represent a message/change/innovation and appeal to a niche audience. This is is like Fifty Shades of Grey and The Idiot - one is more popular than the other, it doesn't mean it has better quality.
I also loved the Divine Comedy, but I guess it's not for everyone.

This however, doesn't mean anything when determining how much effort has been put in a comic.

[Pandastrophic]

Thank you for saying this!
I've been seeing so many posts on the forum about how some of the popular comics are 'low effort' and it's really frustrating because no one really knows how much time and effort is put into someone's work.
(Especially for the slice of life/gag a day comics, t sometimes might not show in the simple art but it shows in the writing. )

[Simon_M]

Yeah, I don't know about tapastic, but I tried to advertise through facebook and boy it's been a long learning experience, and a very counterintuitive one. There's so much "fake" likes that if you advertise the facebook page the site gets bloated with fake subscribers who don't participate... To the point that now my advertising there is designed to discourage mindless clicks, only advertising posts that announce when a new episode's up, never the facebook page itself, so that all the fake likes only affects posts and not the number of followers.

[indagold]

you have yet to go on badwebcomics wiki and see what type of stuff get a million plus views and a shit ton of subscribers yet is trash. Look at ctl alt del, it is utter copy and paste shit and has a massive fanbase lol

Popular does not equal good and you're kinda implying that.

[Kura]

I'm not sure about tapastic, but other webhosting websites tend to have those 'wtf why...?' series that would do mysteriously well and have oddly high numbers. (not super popular, just had oddly high wtf numbers and you couldn't figure out how they got them)

I remember years ago (again this was years ago, the comic is most likely dead and didn't make it over 5 pages) there was one on smackjeeves that was drawn very badly (not anything to do with style, it was beginner tier art the 'Chris Hart taught me everything I know, I discovered the line tool i will use it to draw the VERY long legs, eyes are different sizes, hide the hands behind the back because they are hard to draw, fill bucket everything on the same layer with really bright colours that clash with one another tier art), had dialogue written in MS paint that was almost impossible to read, 2 pages (a title page and an intro page that only said 'yaoi manga this comic has gay sex, do not read if you are homophone') had a description that read '18+ erotic shota comic master and slave' and had around 300+ something subscribers.

At that point your half laughing half scratching your head like ".... how am I REALLY doing worse than this? Really what the hell am I doing wrong?" Regardless of how confusing the numbers where, as well as the fact it beginner tier and bad as the comic was, I can't really say that no effort was put into that on the artists part. The artist was just incredibly inexperienced at art and likely was drawn by someone very young (even though it's an 18+ comic, which is honestly not uncommon online cause even horrible 18+ fanfics are written by kids under 14), and it's very likely that they indeed put all their effort into that work.

That being said, there's not really a genuinely low effort 'super popular' series that I've seen. Maybe 'are those numbers real?' or 'wtf reallly??' but not 'super popular' tier. Sure there are series with simplistic style choices and very noticeable art short cuts, and a heck of a lot of average series that do better than average because they're using a well selling gimmic 'like throwing copy write characters in for a joke' or genre 'and these exist everywhere not just in the webcomic world, take romance for novels and superhero comics for American comics' but even just throwing these things into your series isn't going to make it an automatic sell, and who are you to say that what that artist is personally capable of creating is 'low effort' what may equal low effort to you could equal high effort to them.

As frustrating it is to see a comic genre or style type do better than your own (BL and Gag-a-days in concern to tapastic come to mind here, it's honestly what I see getting complained about the most by artists from this site when it comes to the 'super popular doing well just because it's _____' raging) it's not specifically the comics or the comic creators fault that it fits in or caters to the market readers are looking for. Nor is it a low effort on the artists behalf issue (as subjective as one's opinion on that mater might be) It's just the reader market and demand.

[Simon_M]

As frustrating it is to see a comic genre or style type do better than your own (BL and Gag-a-days in concern to tapastic come to mind here, it's honestly what I see getting complained about the most by artists from this site when it comes to the 'super popular doing well just because it's _____' raging) it's not specifically the comics or the comic creators fault that it fits in or caters to the market readers are looking for. Nor is it a low effort on the artists behalf issue (as subjective as one's opinion on that mater might be) It's just the reader market and demand.

But that's the thing. Just because this is basically driven by inmediate reader demand doesn't mean it's any good, even for tapastic, in the long run. You create an environment, and modes of consumption, that goes against other type of stuff. I still think it's a travesty they don't allow the two page display. The scrolling down is not a better reading system, there's been professional authors trying to make it work since the early 2000's, and never catches on. It eliminates part of the essential grammar of a comic. Panels get subtextual and visual meaning in relation to others, and classifying it into pages gives the reader a sense of progression. I seriously get bored at vertical comics even if they're well-done because the page seems to never end. Yet tapastic doesn't allow the two-page side by side because they want mobile friendly stuff. The end result of that is that the one-page punch, the short comic strip dominates, because that one doesn't loose visual power in vertical scroll, sometimes works even better that way. That's great for tapastic, they make money through that. But that associates your brand with a type of comics that goes against other type of comics, and acting as if success in this environment is an absolute proof of anything is a little shortsighted, I think, especially because the traditional type of comic that has achived success seems to be almost the opposite to what gets popular on the Internet in general, not only here.

[donathinfrye]

I definitely agree with @Simon_M, even though it's a slight tangent from the discussion of popularity. It's very easy to draw parallels to television in this regard. After all, what is Keeping Up With the Kardashians if not an autobiopic slice-of-life tv show? Look how popular it is compared to a television show like The Americans or The Leftovers, which critics tend to think might have ground to stand on as being as good/better than The Wire, Breaking Bad, etc. The Americans and The Leftovers portray deep cultural significance, a fight for the soul of what it means to be a person living in this world, dealing with tragedy and conflict and difficult decisions. Kardashians, meanwhile, waters life down, doesn't challenge the viewers to think, re-enforces shallow values, doesn't value intelligence, etc.

One is objectively better than the other, and the other is objectively more popular. Things tend to work like that. Is Kardashians low effort, though? Absolutely not. They have to live with a television crew following them around all the time, have to be very purposeful in how they portray their lives as their lives = their branding, have to constantly be moving and busy. They also don't have to be thoughtful (or thought-provoking) towards writing, literature, directing, acting, philosophy, symbolism, etc. If future generations look back at Kardashians as the benchmark of our era, they will believe that we were a time of anti-intellectualism and shallow consumerism ... but that's not really the (full) truth. If future generations look back at The Americans, they will understand that we lived in a complicated time with a lot of conflict where the problems and people of the world weren't black and white -- they were just people, doing their best to protect the things they believe in.

TL;DR In terms of comics ... no, not every comic needs to try to be saying something big and important. Humor is important. Slice-of-life can be important if it helps (particularly young) people learn how to accept themselves. There are reasons why some genres are more popular with the younger demographic that makes up a majority of online content readership. But I do wish that more folks cared to be challenged and forced to think by the things that they read, much in the same way that I wish The Leftovers was watched by more people than the Kardashians. That's just my perspective, though, and while I do believe quality can be objective, my perspective is certainly subjective.

[alaingrey]

dude, traditional publishing success stories are determined by a lot more than the fact they're not made for mobile. like no offense, but it's equally short sighted to think that success in 'the real world' is completely democratic and determined by talent alone.

That said, bless this post! Comics rise to the top for a reason, and that's because people like them, and it takes effort to get people to like them. A lot of comics here are popular because they appeal to teens, and its great there's so much content being made for teenagers- and by teenagers- these days. A lot of comics are also popular because they appeal to girls, which is awesome, because there's not a lot of comics made with the teen girl audience in mind.

[Simon_M]

@alaingrey: I didn't say that and I don't think what has success in the "real world" has gone through "democratic" success. Don't jump so fast, dude. Not allowing the two-page display to be mobile friendly is only one symptom, not the whole case. Edit: now that I've read @donathinfrye answer, what he says. He puts it in better words than I would

[glennsong]

@carloswebcomic I was talking about this with my friend last week. A lot of people tend to see the effortlessness in the final product and just think it's instant success. They don't see the years of toil and practice to get there. I'm sure shows like American Idol and The Voice don't help either because it skews our idea of how people rise to the top. I like to show all of the behind the scenes material and talk about the process and peel away the layers hidden underneath my work.

[Kura]

You mistook me for saying 'popular series are good' I was only talking about the theoretical 'effort on the artist's part' involved in the creation process and catering to supply and demand (and sometimes that demand is not for good stuff)

[Simon_M]

No, I get it, I just think the point of the thread is a little... diffuse (meaning, ok, every comic takes effort, so what?) and there's an implicit conflation of the point that people may have about comics that lack effort. But yeah, I basically agree with you.

[boundtimemedia]

Thanks so much for the post, I think anyone who has seriously started a comic has had a taste of how difficult it is! Just keep on doing what your doing and learning all that you can!

[Aspie_Gamer]

Great post Carlos.

Yes, once in a blue moon, shit like Fifty Shades of Grey or Five Nights at Freddy's gets ridiculously popular in a very short span of time, but even those god awful creations were still made with their respective creators not sure if even a small amount of people would give their creation the time of day. The woman who wrote Fifty Shades of Grey (which for the record began life as a shitty Twilight fan fic) simply got lucky because of how many women around the world consume literotica (no matter how poorly written it is) like they do bread and water.

In the FNAF guy's case, he got lucky that popular youtuber's like PewdiePie decided to do a Let's Play of his game and thus that guy doesn't have to work a day in his life now. Bottom line is, unless some well known celebrity decides to show the world your webcomic or Hollywood is knocking on your door to offer you a three picture deal for your unremarkable writings, the best any of you reading this who are budding web cartoonists can do is promote the hell out of your comic. Socialize with other budding web cartoonists and of course be consistent in your updates as much as you can.

[CelestialNavigator]

Quality, however, doesn't necessarily mean entertaining.

Oddly enough, it's also true in webcomics. I mean take, for example, Lackadaisy. At the first glance it has everything: amazing art, author also have chosen an interesting historical period (prohibition era in the USA), main characters are cute anthro cats, facial expression are great, details are great, there is clever humour...But somehow it's boring.

It makes my mind boil - are people reading it only for art or is it because I'm from a different country and thus I don't get it ? Some other popular comics give me the same feeling.

[JustRigo]

To be fair, that was during the infancy of webcomics. It popped up at the right time and right place, but if something like this were to pop up today it would likely be ignored. The reason people still read it nowadays must be due to brand recognition, kinda like how people still watch Family Guy.

[carloswebcomic]

Yeah, but every bloody comic is in the Bad Webcomics Wiki. I'm pretty sure all my comics are in there too (I know for a fact some of them are).
You say it's CTRL ALT DEL is crap because it's copy and paste. Have you ever considered that maybe this guy worked pretty hard to be able to maintain consistency?
This guy has an audience for a reason and maybe you are just missing the point.
It's very easy to point your finger at something and claim it's crap. You can do that with literally with everything. It's just an easy, cheap way to make yourself feel better.
Hell, I've done it too! But I know that my opinion is just that, my opinion, and that in the scheme of things it's no more important than someone else's.

[heterodont]

I agree on the point that sometimes people are a little too quick to judge on how much effort an artist truly puts into their work based on how refined their webcomic is, as well as CTRL ALT DEL popping up when webcomics were in their infancy and the only notable gaming webcomics were only VG cats and Penny Arcade. I think also, maybe ignoring the audience that has been there from the start and/or are legitimately interested in the story he had to tell, a lot of people were only following him because of the 'meme' status his comic achieved with one of his pages (the infamous loss.png).

But in the case of Tim Buckley, the creator for CTRL ALT DEL - there's a video/gif of him copy & pasting premade assets such as eyes and mouths onto his characters. Granted this was from a while ago, so it's always a possibility he's changed! but regardless, he's still pretty notorious for doing that.

Though, I guess there is credit to be given - that he figured out how to efficiently update his webcomic daily...

[carloswebcomic]

To tell you the truth, I've been accused of copying and pasting too. So sorry for being consistent.
If I were to lack consistency, I would be accused of not knowing how to draw my own characters. There are people that will find anything to point their finger at an call it out as cheating/fraud/laziness.

You know, even if the CTRL ALT DEL guy does copy and paste, it works for him. More power to him I say.
I'm not going to stand on an elite artist podium and look down upon him. There are no right ways of doing comics, there are only results.
I draw everything from scratch, but if someone else has pre-made assets, I'm not going to point my finger and pretend that I'm a superior artist because of the way I chose to make my comic.