Why aren't comics as big as the movies?

[studiomik]

Thanks everybody for your thoughts on this. Awesome!

My thoughts:

There is indeed a learning curve to reading comics. And when people can choose they will obviously choose for the easy way of storytelling; a movie.

But is that all? Going to the movies is more than an easy way of getting a story.

Hop on this train of thought with me if you like:

So i guess reading comics is more like a 'sport'. A hobby.
You have to put some effort in it to read a comic. You have to learn it to be good at it. To like it. To appreciate a comic.

And with all things that are hard to learn, there is some kind a reward.
If i learn to walk i can get to someone for a hug.
If i learn to ride a bike i can get to friends and play.
If i like to act and am good at it, i can get into a play and get applause.
If i'm good at playing computer games i can get into competitions with friends and win respect.
If i like movies i can go with my friend to a cinema. Share the same experience.
If i'm good at ...you'll get the idea. There's always some kind of interaction between people.

The problem with books is. It's a lonely activity. You can't read a comic together at the same time.

But if i'm good at / like reading a comic? What's my reward? A cool story for sure! But there's no direct interaction with someone.
You can't directly connect with some one. He/she must have read the same book. And when we meet on a comic-con it's often months in between.

So the question is;
Can we give people a reward for reading a comic? Can we give people direct interaction when reading a comic?

And that's where Tapastic gets in the picture.

I think HERE we can make a difference.
At Tapastic we can reward people for reading a comic and come into direct contact with the reader.
Share the story and share the experience! I think it's awesome to see all the reactions when a comic gets online and there are comments like 'know that feel, bro'

If we can get Tapastic to grow as big as Facebook ( i like to dream big, after all i am a comic artist ) there will indeed be much more demand for comics. More interesting for companies. More artist can make comics, the medium will be taken more seriously and then meaby comic artist can stand in the spotlight and say; yes, i make comics for a living!

*- Hops of the train of thought.- *

Well, meaby i got carried away a bit there (HA! train. carried.) but, that's the reason i like it here. And i think it's a great place to promote not only your own comic, but comics in general. It's a good place to start discovering comics and getting to know the artist and built a connection with the readers. Comics are indeed young and i think a lot of nice things are about to happen.

Pfff, that's a lot of text. glad i got that all out of my system

Have a good evening everyone!

[MoiAri]

Ah this a very insightful thread we got here, congrats people of the forum ^_^

I constantly question the existence of comics in all honesty. Like when there is so many "easily consumed" terms of entertainment and stories, why comics?

Thats a good question to ask ourselves as creators and writers as well. "Why. Why are comics read innthe first place?"

My personal answer to that is simply, "cuz"

Its all a personal preference that not many people have, unfortunately. I mean comic/visual-novels are truly an oddball in the collection of entertainment or literature means, But maybe with a successful site like Tapastic growing even larger will give Comics as an industry the shout it needs, and let more Readers know we exist...yo. 0-0

[L4213]

i read an article before that the comic industry suffered greatly due to a legal case back in the 199-somethings. consequently, it gave label to comics as a thing for young people

that label is still persistent today. whenever you ask your average person to give an example of a comic. they would probably give a superhero comic (batman superman ) to a weekly sunday strip like comic (garfield calvin hobbes)

i think its the notion of comics are for young people is the biggest hurdle that bars a big portion of the readerbase. many people just think that comics can't be as deep as a novel or as engaging as a movie.

Comics are young.Compared to movies and books, comics have only been declared as an art form for a couple of decades, which is similar to what video games have been going through today. Even motion pictures had to go through this process a long while ago. As we see it, comics are getting more and more ground as years go on, with better story, better art, better execution, and easier ways to find them. Soon enough this issue will no longer be one.

ironically though, video games have become a more accepted form of art faster than comics. i think it probably has to do with the time their popularity peaked. comics became popular at a time where a lot of human issues still happened wheras video games boomed at a time of more open minds.

Dedication.Comics, lets face it, take a lot more dedication to consume than movies, T.V. shows, video games and books. Other than books, the other three mediums are very passive when it comes to consuming them. (Video games a little less, but still)Books however have a notifiable quantity to them. If there's a series, you get to read an entire story from beginning to end, for the most part. Comics however take lots of patience to get to the end of a story arc, chapter by chapter, much more than T.V. since it relies on the singular creator's ability to portray it on a page.

same can be said for animation media. but i'd disagree. and comics are usually read faster than most novels when compared by page count. it was more of how slow the time it took for a new chapter of the series or a new book to come out. since quality novels take considerably less time to make compared to quality graphic novels.

i would also suggest though that how the US and western influenced countries sold their comics made reading comics tedious. because of how comic books where made an sold. whereas it was one chapter per book which was also filled with ads that just made going through pages a chore (japanese comics sold their stuff anthology style, making a single purchase more worth)

[keii4ii]

consequently, it gave label to comics as a thing for young people

that label is still persistent today.

The sad truth is, comics aren't that mainstream even among the young people, at least in the USA. D:

[abbastudios]

It's only in America that comics are looked down upon. Although that is changing. Comics are very well respected in the rest of the world.

[aspiderjonny]

Someone mentioned it before, but I think it might be because people feel overwhelmed by the story lengths. Most comics are ongoing where the overarching stories can end but most side stories and character arcs continue for years. Movies (even comic based like Avengers) and novels begin and end there stories. I personally prefer comics because it feels more like a person's life when the "story" doesn't really end, but others might not feel this way.

[keii4ii]

Most comics are ongoing where the overarching stories can end but most side stories and character arcs continue for years. Movies (even comic based like Avengers) and novels begin and end there stories.

That doesn't explain why comics aren't as big as TV shows, though.

But it's definitely a factor with SOME comics, at least. Superhero comics in particular have a terribly high barrier of entry because of all the different continuities. With manga, all you need to do in order to start following a specific series is to find the first volume. With a superhero comic, it gets a whole lot more complicated.

[aspiderjonny]

I feel like the concept of continuity scares people more that the actual thing. I, and lot of my friends, pick up series' all the time that are well into the double digit issues. With superhero comics all need to do is find a story arc that's just started, don't pay heavy attention to the issue number. If the writng's good you should be caught up in no time. (BTW a lot of comics now have a quick recap on the first page which is REALLY helpful for new comers)
Companies keep trying to do big events to "eliminate" continuity. Ironically I think theses kinds of stories add to continuity confusion (just look at what happened with DC's New 52). They really should just let the status quo settle for two or more years, then I think people would be more willing to pick up new books.
As for manga. I must admit, I don't read a lot of mangas but from what little I know mangas come out in 100 page volumes as opposed to 24 page issues. They keep the major story condensed in one volume and have character arcs go throughout the next volumes. New readers who see a volume 5 of a manga would probably feel easy reading it then seeing an issue 25 which actually is a part 4 of a story arc. ( it's that same thing with people who exclusively wait for the trade paperback instead of buying the individual issues)
I'm not saying the volume or issue approach are better then the other. Really it comes down to the fact that when you want to try a new series you just want a complete story to know whether or not you'd continue. Sadly, this is something I think movies and tv do a little better than comics. Though comics do ongoing stories better, so it's a little balanced in that regard.

[AnnaLandin]

Part of it is that comics have lead a sort of underground, partly-ignored existence. They began life as something used to sell newspapers (editorial cartoons, Sunday-funnies, etc., etc.) and have been fighting to get rid of that brand ever since - not that there's anything wrong with doing gag-a-day strips, or comics for children! Those are both great! But there's a pervasive attitude of dismissing things that are funny as non-serious (best example I can think of off the top of my head; people dismiss Calvin and Hobbes as a gag-a-day strip, when Watterson used it to discuss things like the meaningless of existence, the corruption of political systems and the wonder of the universe. It's just that he managed to be funny at the same time), and that definitely dismisses media aimed at children as something not worthy of respect.

Which is, erm, entirely stupid. The media we consume as children help shape our perception of the world, so it kind of really matters. But this lack of respect means that comics aren't given the same attention as other mediums. Imagine if comics were discussed and reviewed and cared about by the newspapers and tv-news the same way, say, movies are; we'd get a LOT more mainstream acceptance, because we'd be normal. We'd be like the rest of them; everywhere.

And when you're everywhere, people care about you because they kind of have to.

There's also the problem that comics, to an unfortunate extent, are divided into two target demographics - small children and adults. There's very little in between. So you can start reading comics as a child, but eventually you hit a point where there are no comics aimed at your age-group - and you're too young to start reading the comics aimed at adults*. So what do you do? Well, you drift away and stop reading comics, because they're not for you any more anyway - and so the reader-base for adult-aimed comics shrinks. You only get the people who managed to stick around - or who, by some magic, decided to start reading comics as adults. If there was a bridge between children's comics and comics for adult readers, we wouldn't see that same kind of shrinkage.

And then there's the fact that reading comics is like reading a new language. You're not just reading the words - you're reading the pictures, and you're reading them at the same time. In a well-crafted comic, things like the size of panels matter, because they indicate the rhythm of the story. Small panels are read faster - big panels are slower, because you stop to take in the scenery. The reader has to follow the path of the word balloons/speech bubbles across the page, and at the same time keep track of the visuals without getting lost, AND they have to get used to "hearing" a comic; that is, they have to process visual representations of sound - and it's hard. I've been reading comics since I was old enough to read, and my mom read Asterix to me before I could read them myself, so you could say I speak comics as a native language. A lot of other people don't - so there's that threshold to get over.

Also, comics-readership varies from country to country - the same way comics-creation does. The Japanese comics-market is a lot bigger, percentage-wise, than it is in almost any other country. The American comics-market is - to my Swedish eyes - weirdly divided into "mainstream" (superhero-comics, with their 1930s-40s pulp origins) and "indie" (literally everything else). The Swedish comics-market is tiny, and the ones that "make it" (ie: the ones who can make a living off of it) are either gag-strips or autobiographical comics - that is, if it's original content. A LOT of the Swedish comics-market consists of people working on one of the long-running franchises (Bamse, Kronblom, 91:an Karlsson - or The Phantom, an old American pulp-hero that the Swedes have pretty much adopted as their own).

In short - comics are an artform that produces ASTONISHING works, but they just don't get the attention they deserve until they're translated into another medium, like movies.

*) This is not a reflection on what individual people are capable of reading; I'm just saying that there's a big jump in content and tone between, say, Asterix and Watchmen.

@getsuart Wait, wait - you're French, so... she declared that at Angoulême? Seriously? D: Goodness me.

[keii4ii]

that definitely dismisses media aimed at children as something not worthy of respect.

People think Disney movies are aimed at children, but that doesn't stop them from enjoying them. There's something more specific about comics that makes people think "oh, they're not for me."

And the weird thing is, even though a lot of people say "comics are for kids" when they dismiss the medium... comics aren't that mainstream even among children over here in the US. What a depressing country I live in. XD

The reader has to follow the path of the word balloons/speech bubbles across the page, and at the same time keep track of the visuals without getting lost, AND they have to get used to "hearing" a comic; that is, they have to process visual representations of sound - and it's hard.

IMO, it's the creator's job to make it easy to read. A comic should not be prohibitively difficult to read even to a newcomer of the medium. My bro (a non-comic reader) sometimes glances at the comics I click on and makes comments about the readability: some comics, he can get a gist of what's happening just by looking at a few panels over my shoulder, whereas others, he's like "wtf is going on over there."

I personally try to make it as easily readable as possible -- not just because I'm trying to convert non-readers, but because my own threshold for readability isn't that much higher than that of a non-reader. If I find a comic difficult to read, I give up.

If there was a bridge between children's comics and comics for adult readers, we wouldn't see that same kind of shrinkage.

I see TONS of manga aimed at teenagers, at least. I don't know if that's the case for non-manga comics...

[AnnaLandin]

@keii4ii Re: Disney movies - movies are a more widely accepted medium than comics, and Disney has a devastating marketing machine. And the point isn't that people don't enjoy stories intended for children - it's that people who aren't directly involved in those stories somehow (readers, creators, etc.) take it less seriously. It's not that they don't think it can/should be enjoyable - it's that they seem to think that since it's for children, the quality and importance of it is inherently lesser than things marketed towards older readers. "It's just for kids" is something I see thrown around a lot, and it irks me.

Re: readability of comics. Yes! Of course it's the creator's job to make things readable and easy to follow - but that only works up to a point. It's still a visual language and a usage of symbols that non-comics-readers aren't used to. Take manga, for example - if I see someone with a big sweat-drop drawn by their head, I know what that means without having to think about it, because I've read a bunch of manga and the symbol is familiar to me. Someone who hasn't will have to stop and think about what they're seeing, thus slowing down their reading-process. The same goes for a lot of other things - it's not that it's impossible to understand for someone who hasn't read comics before - it's just that their approach to the material is different, non-native, and it will slow down and complicate their comprehension of the material. And if things get too slow, they might lose interest.

On the bright side, comics might be a good way for dyslexic people to read - the use of pictures might actually ease their reading experience, as it provides not only a visual cue for how to understand the text, but also provides "breathing room" for them to pause and process the text.

And re: reading material for teenagers - I'm using Sweden as an example here, because that's the area I'm most familiar with. We have comics for younger readers (Bamse, the world's strongest bear!), and then we have comics for adult readers (Galago, etc., Kronblom, etc.) - and very little in between. That space used to be filled by translated manga (Swedish publishers released One Piece, Naruto and Dragonball, as well as a bunch of others), but the manga-boom has long since collapsed and the space they occupied in the market is now a vacuum. We're losing readers in that void, and that's bad. I'm not saying it's the same in other countries (I know the American market has stuff like Raina Teigelmeier, which is great!) but we can't just expect manga to fill that gap everywhere. We need homegrown stuff as well - because, again, manga comes out of a different cultural context and visual language than the readers might be used to.

[studiomik]

Thanks! Great to see all this response everybody. And we are all on the same page. That's awesome!

It was mentioned but what i wanted to add is;

We are single artists. I mean. Most of the time we're not a band. Nor a team of directors, actors, cameramen, producers and so on. A team of people can motivate each other, inspire each one of the team, making it more likely to succeed.

But a comic creator often works alone.

Has to learn to draw, learn to act, learn about camera angles, etc. And that's not all, he has to produce it, market it and even more important; has to keep digging' to find motivation and the drive to learn all of these things. A comic creator has to believe and motivate himself. It takes a lot of personal dedication! And it takes balls to throw your most personal home-made stuff out there. The world can be a harsh and cruel place to start this adventure...

All these things can be easily overlook by people who "just see a picture for kids".

Guess i'm saying; comic creators are all awesome and wonderfully weird in their own special way!

So, now that we established the problems, let me turn the question around:
HOW CAN WE GET COMICS TO BE AS BIG AS MOVIES ?

[studiomik]

Some ideas to push thing just a little bit in the right direction:

• Friends of me never knew there where comics, bigger than, say Donald Duck. I showed them something i think they might like. For a journalist friend i introduced here to Craig Thompson's and lended her Blankets. For a fantasy lovin' dude, i offered him Bone. They loved it!
  Now, when i need a gift, i think of a comic wich might interest them and give it as a present. These days there are plenty comics in all kind of genres. Not gonna force-read them, but you know... sometimes you gotta push a little

• On a Dutch TV-show i saw every night; young inspiring singer-song writers, new book-authors, actors, new artist made there debut. And some animators as a quick side-dish. But never anything, comic, graphic novel or comic creator related. So i mailed them. Introduced them to some good known comics, asked them if they would like to do something with this. Never got a reaction. BUT the next week there was a graphic novel in this monthly book discussion panel. And the next week a children illustrated book. Guess they don't have to reply, but they read their emails. TV-people are always looking for new angles and new stuff to discuss on TV. Why not comics?

• i made a pledge to myself. i will never judge a comic badly. I know how hard it is. I will only try to motivate other comic creators. We need more people to love this stuff, not hate it.

• Yesterday i Live-streamed my drawing work. (thanks to you guys i figured out how to do this, so thanks!) Did some requests and got a lot of positive response. I think it's also a great way to show people how much work a pictures takes in the making.

So meaby it's not much but it's something.

[yvettegustafsson]

I've thought a lot about this and here's my take

1. It requires more attention than TV. I can't read comics at the same time that I'm at the computer, playing a mobile game or talking to someone. It's as "hard" as reading books, and books has also declining in popularity compared to TV and movies in recent years. Text books are still popular and maybe the choice for most people compared to comics. Which brings us to number
2. Why do people choose text books over comic books?
   There are more factors to weigh in - except for reading text you're also choosing the artwork. If you like the story but have a problem with the artwork you'd might turn it down just because the story and the artwork isn't what you expect or want to look at.

People think choosing is hard, so we choose the thing with less number of choices. But if you put a comic in someones hands, they will probably like it - because it's fun and easy to read - it was just hard to choose and act! I see it all the time at cons - the artist sit down on a chair, waiting for people to come up to them and choose something from their table. So... it's a marketing problem, really. Put comics in peoples hands and they will read <3 hopefully they will be back for more <3 <3

[keii4ii]

"It's just for kids" is something I see thrown around a lot, and it irks me.

I think when people say that, that's not what they truly mean, even if they don't realize it. It's something that they say to dismiss something that they believe 1) was made for kids, AND 2) they aren't going to enjoy. While they may or may not have the same level of esteem for Disney movies and their favorite mature novel, they won't just dismiss the former outright. Not the same way they dismiss comics.

Disney does, very obviously, have monster marketing. XD But what about simple games on the phone? One could easily argue they're for kids, but people of all ages play them. Again, they might not respect them as much as a more complex game for the PC/console, but it doesn't stop them from playing them.

But that changes when it comes to books, comics and prose alike. I'll admit I never buy anything from the children's section at the bookstore. Doesn't mean I think they're bad or less worthy of respect (I honestly don't know how to write for a younger audience; it's a skill I do not possess). I could explain why I still don't buy any children's books, but it might be more interesting to examine -- rather than explain -- this situation. Why is it different for books? The lack of marketing is certainly a factor, and the other thing Disney movies and phone games have in common is that they both "move," a quality that books lack. Could it be that simple?

We need homegrown stuff as well - because, again, manga comes out of a different cultural context and visual language than the readers might be used to.

Agreed. Not just the commonly used cues like the giant sweatdrop, but also the entire writing of a comic. (I've heard some people say we need to find a way to break into the Korean webcomic market (which is thriving), but thaaaat's not the solution we need. You'd be competing against Korean webcomics written by Korean creators for Korean readers, against a very specific cultural backdrop. Success would be a very case-by-case thing. Not to mention the English-speaking side of the world has a much larger POTENTIAL audience...)

[ck_tapastic]

Another problem is some comics are HARDER TO READ THAN STRAIGHT UP PROSE, at least to me. This problem is highly prevalent in "compressed" comics, i.e. comics with lots of text.

Agreed. It's a big problem for me as a reader.

[ck_tapastic]

It's only in America that comics are looked down upon. Although that is changing. Comics are very well respected in the rest of the world.

Yes, France, Japan, Korea, etc.

We're losing readers in that void, and that's bad. I'm not saying it's the same in other countries (I know the American market has stuff like Raina Teigelmeier, which is great!) but we can't just expect manga to fill that gap everywhere. We need homegrown stuff as well - because, again, manga comes out of a different cultural context and visual language than the readers might be used to.

That's a very good point and something that we here at Tapastic are thinking a lot about...

[eagle1]

This is a topic near and dear to my heart.

Sorry about the oncoming Wall of Text, but once I start typing on this, I'm likely to go for a few moments. 'll try to make it interesting.

First, there have been a lot of well-thought out answers here, and I haven't seen anything silly, which is unusual. Most of what I am going to add here are thoughts I have had over the last few years.

The first problem is that Comics as a rule have a series of ingrained tropes that come across to non-comics fans as cliches. When I first decided that I wanted to do my comics as a separate world, I sat down with my support network and we made a list of the things we hated about comics, and the way they were presented, and the things that kept people from enjoying them. One of them is a life long friend who is also a comic geek. Two others are non-comics people, one of them is a tech writer and editor, and the other is a college professor with a degree in English Lit. All of them are fiction writers, 2 of them published. For that matter, I am a published author (I come by my feelings on writing honestly and through hard work). The end result was that I decided that I was not going to write traditional comic stories, and eventually, I chose "Comics for people who don't read comics" as the tagline for the NO-Earth.com site for the reasons listed in this paragraph. So the takeaway from this paragraph is; consider not writing comics following comics tropes/cliches and start writing stories that have an audience outside of comics. I see a lot of webcomics writers doing that, but when I see a comic that is full of in-jokes for comics fans my feelings are mixed. One one hand, I am enjoying it, but on the other, it's not one I can show my non-comics friends.

The super-hero genre is not a problem in and of itself. For proof of that, one only needs to see the success of said genre in movies, video games, and TV shows. No, the problem lies in the presentation of comics themselves.

@keii4ii touches on this with the readability issue. I have stated this before, and will continue to do so, but anyone can learn (rather quickly) to place captions and word balloons. Anyone can learn (again, rather quickly) the proper techniques for placing panels, and how to lead the eye. It's harder to learn how to make the art contents of the panel work with this, but a lot easier than learning to do the art in the first place was. These, by the way, are one of the first things that I touch on when doing a critique of a comic. @AnnaLandin goes further and discusses the visual language that is comics (See Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics for a very good breakdown on this) and that leads to another problem, in that we have several languages being spoken. American, European, and Asian comics all have their individual languages and dialects, and the webcomic community is seeing these langauges blended in ways that are sometimes jarring. This is a self-correcting problem, as it's simply a case of Evolution in Action, and will sort itself out, but in the meantime, that visual language is jumbled, adding to the readability problem. Take away: Learn the language of the medium, and the tricks needed to make your panels, captions, and balloons easier to read for the average person, not just the comics fan.

Finally, we have a problem in that comics used to snare an entire generation at a time, and that just doesn't happen anymore. Comics were part of my learning to read, as it gave me something to figure out, looking at pictures and words. As I grew up, I discovered at each stage of my life, there were comics that would give me what I wanted in reading material. Sadly, there are whole classes of comics missing now, since so much seems either aimed at adults, or children. I am guilty of this myself, since my comics are aimed at mature audiences for the complexity, but it's still something I identify as a problem. In the end, the last 20 years have seen a lot of branching in American comics, catching up to the wide range of subjects and genres that have been prevalent in other parts of the world for far longer. I am hoping it continues as more creators step outside the accepted genres, and write new stories in new settings. Things that allow new ideas and concepts to be explored in the unique way that only comics can.

Eagle
(And maybe the sales of a comic will equal the sales of the movie based on it one day)

[daronakira]

Great points @eagle1 (along with everyone else)!

A lot has been covered (and probably more by the time I finish typing this), but I figured I throw an additional perspective into the mix.

In terms of my peers (mid/late-twenties to early thirties) I don't think being perceived as childish or immature is really much of a factor. As others have noted above, they're proud to enjoy Disney and other animated movies, YA fiction in print or on the screen, and a ton of other things primarily targeted at or otherwise intended for a younger audience.

Similarly, the quality or complexity of the art (or lack there of) may initially turn some people off, but I'd argue the writing can more than make up for that. Some of the most popular, long running webcomics or animated shows are quite simple (or even crude) and may superficially appear childish, but enjoy a massive adult following due to clever writing, mature references, or otherwise tackling complex themes that belie their true depth.

Gaming has certainly become increasingly mainstream lately, but is still somewhat more polarizing than the previous examples, and seems to depend more on whether or not they played games growing up.

Comics, on the other hand, definitely continue to carry a "nerdy" / "dorky" / "geeky" stigma (not as in smart or complex, but in the classic, unfairly stereotypical sense of awkward, introverted, alternative, obsessive, unpopular, exclusionary, or otherwise "different"), rather than something that is mainstream, popular, or "cool." Despite the continued, growing success of big-budget movies, games, and other media based on comics/graphic novels, along with the shift in attendance at Comic-Con and other events... I think the associations with Comic Book Guy and the "kids who chose the library over the playground at recess" persist, at least in the US (full disclosure: I spent plenty of afternoons reading, drawing, or playing Magic indoors, so I'm not ragging on anyone).

On the consumption side, many people have rightly pointed out that reading a comic (or reading anything longer than a tweet or FB post, really) takes more effort and attention than TV, streams, music or many mobile games. It also often requires more active, sustained attention, and is more difficult to multitask. I'm not sure I agree that comics are more difficult to consume than standard books... if done well I think they might actually be easier and convey the same (or greater) density of information with fewer words (because, hey, pictures). Truly appreciating them takes more practice than simply "reading," but you don't necessarily have to deeply understand paneling to enjoy the flow of a well made comic, just as you don't need to appreciate nuances in cinematography to enjoy the style of a well made movie. If you do, you may enjoy it on a different level... but it could be argued that the goal should be for you to enjoy the experience without noticing and focusing on why you're enjoying it. @eagle1 is right that the onus is largely on creators to determine how accessible their content is to readers... which I'd argue doesn't necessarily have to translate into watering things down, but rather distilling them. The hardest things to design are usually the things that end up appearing super simple.

On the creation side, however, there's definitely a certain barrier to entry, coupled with a lack of widely-recognized incentives. For example, practically anyone can press record on their iPhone, GoPro, or webcam and start creating video... and then get millions of views because they're cute, have an accent, or jumped off of something high and hurt themselves. Of course, consistently creating great video content, building an audience of loyal fans, and sustaining all that takes creativity and hard work, but getting started probably feels easier and more accessible than writing or drawing (let alone both). I'm not saying one is easier/harder or better/worse than the other, as it's certainly possible to put more or less time, effort, and skill in to any artistic medium... only that the ROI (at least the perceived ROI, if not real) seems to be lower. Hopefully we can help change that!

Whoa, what happened? I blacked out for a minute and suddenly had written way too much

[ck_tapastic]

Take away: Learn the language of the medium, and the tricks needed to make your panels, captions, and balloons easier to read for the average person, not just the comics fan.

the onus is largely on creators to determine how accessible their content is to readers... which I'd argue doesn't necessarily have to translate into watering things down, but rather distilling them. The hardest things to design are usually the things that end up appearing super simple.

Agreed with both. As they say, the best user interface is the one that goes away; in similar vein, the best comics, at least from the mass audience adoption perspective, could be the ones that average readers (including or especially non-comics fans) can enjoy without realizing they're comics.