Comments on: When reading a comic, I dislike…

By: Tony McGurk

Tony McGurk — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 04:00:08 +0000

These are all great & helpful points. I am a text centering person. Maybe I shouldn’t. I must say that I don’t get the Hiatus thing. To me a hiatus is a type of hernia. I agree that break is better.
Replying to comments is I feel important. This is a regular irritation for me. If I regularly visit a site & they never respond to their reader’s comments they eventually lose their spot in my RSS Reader. I think just as important is visiting & commenting on the sites of those who visit & comment on yours. I visit lots of comics & leave comments but many of them never repay the visit. Even if I really like a comic no visits from them to my site after a few weeks usually means an RSS deletion. If someone can’t make the effort to respond with comment replies & visits to their visitors sites then they shouldn’t expect commenters to make the effort either. I often come across many sites with 0 comments for every comic. Probably due to their non-participation on other’s sites.

By: Carl

Carl — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 18:52:01 +0000

Very true!
When designing Dumb Nudge for Leen (with your great help), I tried to follow the rules in “How to Make Webcomics”. Seem to be quite the same as your criteria. Thanks!

By: Ming

Ming — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 10:39:13 +0000

Guilty as charged, sitting quietly in a corner avoiding eye contact….

By: Phil (Frumph)

Phil (Frumph) — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 01:02:58 +0000

100% agreement with this, .. it’s all about the momentum.. keep it constant

By: phinmagic

phinmagic — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 00:39:05 +0000

Well, the solution to Hiatus, is don’t take one. Post sketches, art, 1 page instead of 3, what ever. You need to hold onto the few readers we get. Give em what they came for!

By: Puddlecub

Puddlecub — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 23:30:39 +0000

I go on “break”, but I usually prepare several filler comics that auto-post while I’m gone. Most of these breaks are week-long conventions or moving or I forgot to pay the Comcast bill. So, I always have a store of fillers.

Honestly, before I did the migration to ComicPress, I hated the cluttered feel of my Blogger page. It was really annoying, and Blogger provided no support for navigation, so my comic was at a loss.

I don’t get many comments, but I do respond when I do. I love talking to people, whether they’re trolling my site or genuinely providing some sort of feedback.

I do agree about sites that look like they were built on the MySpace principle of graphic design thrown out the window. Can’t focus if your site hurts my eyes or has a dancing penguin or the footer is riddled with 50+ button ads. I have two ads at the top, one focused on my internal projects (store and Adam Rarnar’s site) and one open to the public. That’s it. The rest are hidden in the Links menu.

I know there’s some of the bigger comics out there that I read that insist on hiding their navigation well below the blog entry, and that’s just really annoying for me. I’ve toyed with navigation placement, but I like the way its laid out right now, so I’m not going to change it. I don’t even know if I have readers, really. I mostly don’t care. I draw for me, mostly.

By: shaggy

shaggy — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 18:00:55 +0000

Despite possible being guilty of one or two things on that list, I agree with you 100%.

By: Taversia

Taversia — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 02:22:20 +0000

Amen to that~! =)

You have a very good list here. And I also completely agree with what Joenis had to add; I cannot *stand* poorly designed, overly cluttered websites. Sometimes it’s enough to detract so much that, even if the comic is decent enough that I’d come back every now and then, I would still find myself pretty discouraged from being a frequent visitor

And that bit about Hiatus was spot-on. The webcomic community, as a whole, is constantly changing and growing; always moving forward. If you get off the bandwagon to pop a squat in the bushes, even for just a minute, you’re bound to be left behind~! 8D (ie; readership will dramatically decrease)

I’m glad you included that.

Though I DO have to wonder… In terms of the actual content of a comic, what are some of your dislikes where this is concerned? I mean like, plot-wise, artistically, etc. etc. =)

By: Joenis

Joenis — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 09:23:28 +0000

I’m gonna have to agree with pretty much all of what you said.

For me the absolute worse thing are absolutely horribly put together websites that don’t make it 100% clear that they are a comic website, its hard to find navs, theres so much freaking clutter that its near impossible to find ANYTHING, and there no strong sense of anything. I often think the web comic community has become rather trashy but its understandable that not everyone is a web designer, so its good that we have the ComicPress theme for wordpress to make things better (sometimes).

By: tracy brady cartoons

tracy brady cartoons — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 12:47:35 +0000

Check, check, check and check! Yes! – DJC passed the Frumph test. Very relieved.