What puts you off a gag comic?

[Rhombik]

So this question gets asked a lot but mostly about the episodic, long form comics. What puts you off a gag comic specifically? And what do you like maybe?

Personally, I find many of the popular, slice of life ones are too similar lately. There are a lot of cutely drawn panel comics about a young, introverted artist dealing with social situations. Don't get me wrong: these can be great! But you don't want to read the same thing over and over again. And they even up, accidentally or not, copying each other's jokes.

Also, some of the jokes are a bit lazy. I think I must have read the "what others girls look like at x versus what I look like at x" joke fifty times now.

On a positive note, a lot of the less well known Tapas comics are a bit braver about doing something a bit different. I've seen some good stuff going around.

So what about you folks?

[Kura]

Pretty much as you mentioned, jokes that have been done to death. Usually the 'relatable' ones

"6am, I am going to get things done today. later at 12pm nothing is done. I'll try again tomorrow."

"I have a week to finish this project. I have all the time in the world. netflix and twitter later *person now rushing against 2 hour deadline"

"Artist is drawing a picture with a pencil, moves hand to try and 'ctrl alt delete' remembers they are not working on the computer. Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo"

In addition to that. Comics that incorporate/recreate memes, such as.

"Character sitting in a house that's on fire with smile on their face. 'This is fine."

I mean those are fun in their own way but keep those on your twitter or something cause redrawn memes 75% of the time feel like fakeouts or wasted updates when I'm subbed to gag comics on tapastic

Inside jokes are also pretty bad. Why... just... WHY bother making a comic public if only your close friends are going to get the joke and the rest of the world is going to be confused?

Cross overs into licenced universes. Don't get me wrong, sometimes these can be pretty gold, I'm talking more about the ones that just start to feel like a fanfic to the point you're wondering where the jokes in the gag comic disappeared to (I don't know why but Harry Potter is one that has happened a few times, where they'll do a strip with a Harry Potter themed joke and then the next 20 episodes will all be Harry Potter jokes... and not even jokes, just characters doing stupid obvious shit that you know is stupid obvious mistakes if you know that series so it's not funny because you know how this will turn out. Another sin is just... inserting a licence character... as a permanent character???

[Busalonium]

When the joke is about not having a joke.

It's especially bad when that's in the first few strips.

[J.Lovelace]

For me it's:
The same jokes repeating in 10 different comics.
When the jokes are predictable.
Jokes that are confusing, and you have to spend a while/look online to understand them (or give up trying).
When the style is really simple and characters look like white blobs/stick figures.

[joe_galindez]

It's really hard to maintain a consistent quality with gag-a-day comics. Do cartoonists even buy jokes anymore?

I only ever look up The Perry Bible Fellowship, and that one updates whenever.

[zigmenthotep]

What really cooks my goose is when all (or just a large number) of the jokes rely on the same basic premise. Like let's just say for example if there were a comic about clowns and the punchline to every joke was people are scared of clowns. Even worse when the "jokes" are literally just pointing out how "wacky" the premise is.

[KimaAndJeorge]

introverted artist dealing with social situations

I can't even deny that's what my series is about but i try to stay away from all the basic stuff we've seen over and over. Not tootin my own horn. As @Kura mentioned, I try to find other stuff, so most of it is random based humor. It's kind of filler and put to the side while I work on my main other series.

[Rhombik]

Even worse when the "jokes" are literally just pointing out how "wacky" the premise is.

I've forgotten about this one. Nothing worse than a gag comic that has to keep telling you how weird it is. It seems like the artist might have gotten a little wrapped up in themselves or thinks that they are super out there.

That's actually why I subscribed to yours: It was un-apologetically strange. Everything was just slugs.

Sounds like everybody is on a similar page to me. That's good to know. I wondered if I was just being a bitter old hag.

[UzukiCheverie]

The only comic with the same predictable outcome and redone jokes I'm willing to accept is the stuff over at webcomicname.com ... because you know it's dumb and it can't say it's "trying too hard" because it's not trying at all really, so it can't get away with trying to be more "profound" or "funnier" than it is - it just is, and the comics are fun to stumble across on Facebook or Twitter or wherever you may see them.

Some of them are pretty cut and dry:

But others are pretty clever and chuckleworthy:

This one is my personal favorite:

Other than that, I really hate it when gag creators turn their work into a soapbox. There are creators out there who are super popular because of this (which is astounding, but considering 2/3rds of the Internet exists on a soapbox, it makes sense) but I've unsubscribed/stopped reading most of these that fall into this category by this point (even the ones that I used to love and had to stop following because it got boring/annoying from their "woe is me" attitude and writing)

If all you've been writing about for the past month is how "ururr life is hard, why does my life suck sooo muuuch" I will probably stop following you, unless your story is genuinely interesting (and even then I'll probably still get bored because seriously, I hate reading about other people's lives - I read comics because I enjoy escaping from reality and reading about larger than life characters, not because I want to be reminded of how boring reality and most IRL people are). I'm sorry, but your having such a vulnerable and "difficult" life is not interesting to me. It's just using your comic as a soapbox for your special snowflake bunion.

I. Do. Not. Care.

[joannekwan]

I love webcomicname but I don't know if I could read a whole book of it. For stuff like that it's best to stumble upon a strip every so often to get the full impact of the "joke" I think. If I were to read it one after another it would get old. I still enjoy it though.

But yeah, number one turn-off are jokes I've seen a thousand times before.
Another one are jokes that seem too … sydicated newspaper-y? Like you can easily see this in a comic strip in the Sunday paper, spouted by Beetle Bailey for example, but I feel those are past their prime? I dunno, whenever I see jokes like those I feel they're just … old, and kinda cheesy.
Then art style I guess, I'm not a big fan of chibis and super cute stuff.

[insomniascrawl]

Basically, the same as you said, you can only see the same jokes and situations so many times before you lose complete and total interest. The jokes become predictable and that's not fun.

[indagold]

I think it's extremely difficult to keep a gag a day comic fresh, let alone any comedic medium. It gets stale after a while, sometimes even faster than some. I think comedic story based comics work better than gag comics because you have a plot and something to go on, even an ending in mind then "haha someone did something and it was akward/weird/self deprecating. lets repeat that 500 times"

I have never found any gag comics online worth reading past a few pages. It's a medium fraught with problems just as much as how easily newspaper comics suffer the same.

[NickRowler]

The stuff I don't like...

Easy, common, meme jokes that everyone does
The worse one is that damn one where someone wakes up, groans about being tired, then goes back to sleep. I get that people are trying to "pull from real life" but hell, everyone does this joke and it is not funny.

Trying way to hard to be "relatable" and using "adulting" jokes
Similar to my issue with the waking up joke. Also, I'm sick of dumb jokes where someone doesn't want to "adult" they just want to play Pokemon.

Snobbiness and strawmen
The whole "popular/typical people are stupid but I am different (and better), I [insert geeky thing here]". Sort of like this one (which later was memed).

It makes the artist come off as obnoxious.

Kawaii
This is more of personal taste but I hate gag comics with cutesy anime girls who do cutesy things. There are no jokes, it's just cute. Sometimes it's not always anime girls, I've also seen it in comics with animals or one's about two people in a relationship. "Love is..." is extremely guilty of this.

[UzukiCheverie]

I love webcomicname but I don't know if I could read a whole book of it. For stuff like that it's best to stumble upon a strip every so often to get the full impact of the "joke" I think. If I were to read it one after another it would get old. I still enjoy it though.

oh god no if I had a physical copy of it in book form, it would be as like, a gag gift or just as a conversation starter on my bookshelf. I'm a book collector more than a book reader, so I'd buy a physical copy of it, but like... not to read it front to back lol

[Rhombik]

I think you've summed up a lot of the stuff I have a problem with. The introvert / geek/ over-grown child thing is a massive problem for me because, as I think your doodle showed quite well, it side steps into slut shaming a bit too easily.

Some of the best ones are where the main character is flawed in a real way sometimes in the gags - not just in a lovably lazy, introverted and obsessive compulsive way. Or where everything is just completely surreal. I think it's best if comic artists see their gag comic characters as not completely them so it's easier to rip into them once in a while.

[dawgofdawgness]

I'm a little sick of self deprecating jokes myself, and it's hard to find a gag comic that brings something new to the table.

However I just found a really hilarious one https://tapas.io/series/Thors-Thundershac

[Rai]

Same reason why I don't really read 4 komas, same jokes told over and over but in slightly different situations. Most gag comics I see these days are the same, 'oh no I'm socially anxious fuck my life' variety and it's been done to death thanks to the internet.
99% of the time I just skip over gag comics unless it's focused on something very specific.

Webcomicname and Genji Cat are the only ones to get a laugh out of me these days.

[shaylafarley5]

This is why I don't sub to gag a day comics. Some days they're funny other days seems like I've seen it done before.

[69Michi]

Typically I don't sub to any gag comics at all, not just because their jokes are stale or they stop being funny or repetitive. My sub list is something that I will definitely come back to read when a new chapter comes up, and I only come back when there is a story worthwhile for me to follow. Gag comis don't have any story for me to look forward to the next update, they are just those random things I came across on the internet, have a good laugh at and move on, forgetting about it.

[scythe]

Jokes with no set up or punchline, as in the OMG THAT'S SO ME kind of "jokes".

Ones where the art gets spotty, inconsistent or just turns bad. Just coz it's a gag thing doesn't mean it should look like a meme.

And political jokes that are overtly partisan. If you want to be a political cartoonist, do that on the side.