What draws you or turns you away from a comic/story?

@darthmongoose Kate Holden
Sun, 16 Jul 2023 11:25:25 +0000

@darthmongoose wrote:

Turn-offs:

Opens with a long monologue about world history, "Long ago, the humans and the dragons lived in peace, but that peace was shattered when blah blah blah and now the world awaits a new hero to awaken..." bonus points if the next thing that happens is the main character wakes up from a dream, or we see this tale is being told to the main character as a child. These are almost never good, and especially when they're accompanied by rough, scribbly art, because the creator has no idea how to make old-looking or simple story-book looking art and uses it as an excuse to just make lazy art with sloppy silhouettes or vague stick-people and often bad stock fire effects and things. It's so often a red flag that screams, "this creator didn't have a plan for how best to tell this story." and the bad art suggests the creator really didn't think about their work's first impression.

It's literally just someone's OCs hanging out and there's no plot established and it starts with the main character just getting out of bed and talking to their mum or housemate and then everyone just stands around and talks for a while and then there's another scene of everyone standing around talking and maybe a funny/cute conversation or one vaguely dramatic moment as though the creator just thought of a bunch of cute scenes, wrote them out largely for their own entertainment, didn't curate the experience for an audience by adding a story structure or cutting out superfluous stuff, but still thinks I ought to read it and give it attention because they worked hard drawing it all and it's of their precious OCs who I ought to love because they love them. I want to be entertained, dammit! Tell me a freakin' STORY!

No banner, lazy cover, series title/logo written in default Windows fonts or scruffy handwriting, and a vague blurb that says things like "Who knows what will happen...?. If you don't care about presenting your work, how do you expect me to care about your work? If's like having a table at a convention and not having a tablecloth, just dumping all your stuff on there in random piles and wearing grubby old sweatpants and not brushing your hair.

Terrible spelling, punctuation and grammar. I know a lot of people aren't native English speakers, so I'm forgiving of occasional slip-ups, typos and the like, but when the dialogue is just totally incomprehensible, I'm sorry, I can't read that. I'm a native speaker with fluency in a second language, so I totally get how hard it is, and I'm pretty lenient and used to trying to work out the intended meaning, but it will have a negative effect on my ability to just get lost in a comic's story if characters keep saying things like "Ohno! is he is running away now fast we must stopped him"...because even though I can understand that what the creator meant was something like "Oh no! He's running away! We'd better stop him, and fast!" I'm taken out of the action for a moment working that out, and reading the words in a character voice in my imagination it's unintentionally comedic.

Turn-ons:

Cover has nice, big, clear typography and shows the main character/s in a way that gets across something about the artstyle, vibe and concept. There is a banner that matches the look of the cover. There's a blurb and it explains, concisely, what the story is about.

Within the first ~10 pages or 50 panels, we have established: A main character, an interesting scenario they are in that promises excitement, and a source of tension that makes me concerned about how that scenario may play out.

The art is easy to read and well-presented; characters stand out clearly from backgrounds, I can tell what their expressions are meant to be, and what is happening in action panels. Panel borders are consistent and it's easy to tell where a panel ends and another starts. Lettering is large enough to comfortably read on a tablet, or ideally, a phone and in nice, neat bubbles and a font that fits the feel of the comic. Extra credit if the art is a really good match for the tone, and also if the art uses varied and appealing panel compositions.

The vast majority of speech bubbles have no more than 1-2 sentences. Writing is never used to convey something that could be shown with art. If you have to write "stands up" or "really angry" like it's a sound effect next to a character, or have a narration box saying "Jim stood up", "I was furious"...ugh... not a fan. If you can effectively get across that a person stands up or is really angry with just the art, that's some good comicking!