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Question: Story vs Strip

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Luke C:
A b it of both is best in this case.

QC is good for this. Theres lots of jokes which you could read and find funny but also the recurring plot-based jokes also.

Turn Signals on a Land Raider (Warhammer 40k comic, http://tsoalr.com/) is similar but Daily Dilbert is the best of them all for this balance.

tasteslikeevil:

--- Quote ---Definately the biggest problem I see with story based comics is the necessity for rapid delivery of content. Transitional episodes leave a lot to be desired and it's really hard to accrue an audience unless you pump out that content like a mad bastard.
--- End quote ---


Wow, thanks Vlishgnath! Now you've got me all crazy-paranoid that if I don't update regularly, I'll lose my readership.

Jerk.  ;)

Rone:
I think updating regularly is important, but frequency is not so important as reliability.  If I had to do my comic on a daily basis I would never post at all.  MWF would make my posting erratic and would result in a lot of "I'm sorry but..." updates.  Twice a week just seems odd to me, so once a week it is.  Granted, I update with enough pages for a 2 or 3 times a week comic, but sometimes those pages are created over the week, and sometimes all the day before, meaning it wouldn't work for a MWF schedule.  

Many story comics have worked at once a week.  In fact, I'd say a good portion of them do.  If anyone ever read Demonology101, or are currently reading Zebra Girl, than you're already used to a once-a-week story that still keeps you coming back.

In the end, the most important schedule is one that you can keep, not one that you think your fans and potential readers want.

Sideways:
If looking at the 'competition' on Buzzcomix, Topwebcomix, etc, is any indication... I have to say that there is an audience out there for the story-driven comics.  I wouldn't say that this audience is as abundant, comics like Penny Arcade - which use the same characters/setting to tell the joke, but don't follow a particular 'story' - show that the one-off humour comics are typically the more popular.

But look at QC, PVPOnline, CtrlAltDelete, Least I Could Do... all comics that do have a story/setting, but still manage to get tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of unique hits a day.

I think if your comic is meant to be more of an online graphic novel... that you're /just/ telling a story, and not giving people a daily punchline, then you are pretty much relegating yourself to a limited audience.

People want to laugh, that's why they are called comics.

Our comic doesn't follow a story... in fact we recently made fun of continuity in a pretty obscure way (mostly it was a comic that makes /us/ laugh, and if the audience doesn't 'get' it, there will be something new on Thursday anyway!).

JLM:
But the problem with humor comics in general (and with Penny Arcade specifically) is that the jokes need to be universal and feel natural, not forced.  I think for the most part the P-A guys do a heckuva job, but I've noticed on more than one occassion (i.e. the recent strip regarding Jack Thompson calling them) that the strip itself requires reading the newsposts/archives that accompany them for context.  I hadn't checked the site in a week or so (or heard about his ridiculous "proposal") when that comic came up and so part of it was lost on me.  Hardcore fans may have known about it, but the casual reader loses somthing.  To their credit, they don't actually do the explanations "in" the comic, which I've seen both on the web and in the daily news syndicates (seriously, if you have to spend panel 3 or 6 or whatever having your characters make sarcastic hit-you-over-the-head explanations to point out the funny, it probably wasn't funny to begin with), but it's still somewhat poor workmanship if they're using an in-joke as the primary joke.

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