Conclusions

Most popular webcomics have one thing in common.

No, but close

Each update has a sense of completion to it. I mean this in the sense that there’s a satisfying conclusion to what’s presented in the update, and I’m not just talking about a punch line to a comic strip. Even story based comics tend to finish each update with some sense of completion. There’s a big reason for this: in a web comic, you’re only going to see 1 page a day at best, sometimes as little as 1 a week (actually, with some people you’re lucky to get a page a month…) With that in mind, you want each update to be satisfying. In print, you also want every page to be somewhat self-contained within the larger narrative, but you don’t want to push it too far or it makes the reader feel like they’re moving between disjointed vignettes in the characters’ lives, whereas with the web you basically are showing disjointed vignettes in the characters’ lives.

There are a lot of good times in a comic where a writer might want to have a sentence run from one page to the next: the best example being to set things up for a reveal. Let me paint a picture for you: Superman’s been fighting all his greatest villains, one after another, for the past two hours. He’s traced them from one planet to the next, finally finding his way to Pluto (which is still a planet dammit I didn’t learn that freaking “My Very Educated garlaglg

Science’d!

Er, sorry. Anyway, he makes his way to Pluto, and all those villains are there waiting for him! Shock and awe! Worse than that, there seems to be more of the villains, even the ones he already defeated. How could this be? Well, he finally breaks into what turns out to be a cloning facility, with clones of not just his enemies, but the enemies of his friends as well… maybe a couple of the dudes from Mortal Kombat just for the goofy reference (Or “referenke as the MK boys put it). Finally he fights his way to the center of the facility, and he can see the ringleader of this whole debacle in silhouette. “I should have known it was you…” he says

*page turn*

Bam. Splash page. “Krypto the Superdog!”

Just look at him, plotting...

Or, you know, whoever.

The important part is, though, that there’s suspense built up. The audience has been with Superman through this whole adventure, and the mysteries are piling on top of each other. They finally get to the big reveal, and you stretch it just a second longer. Now, imagine if you had to wait a week between those pages.
… Okay, well, you probably don’t really need to imagine that, because that’s what’s commonly called a “cliffhanger”, and it’s a good way to get people to come back next week. But! That was just an extreme example. What if it’s not a big reveal? What if it’s just a voice shouting, “Hey” while pair of friends are chatting. They turn in surprise, and it reveals in the next page that it’s their mutual friend, Bud the Chiropractor. You could split that into a second page and people would be perfectly content. But that’s not the kind of thing you want to be wondering about for the next three days only to have their chiropractor buddy ask them if he can borrow a couple dollars for a burrito. That kinda crap can get on a reader’s nerves after a while. If you want to see a good example of this, just watch a movie aired on network TV. You ever notice that the commercial breaks just feel kind of jammed in whenever there’s a transition between scenes? That’s basically what I’m talking about.

To see what I’m talking about, let’s look at one of my favorite web comics, Girl Genius (girlgeniusonline.com).

Bizarre Faces Aside, a Solid Read

Now, Girl Genius is a comic series written and drawn by the Foglio spouses (spice? Spoose? Meh.) It’s basically a steam-punk fantasy, where being a mad scientist is apparently genetic. The important part, though, is that it started out as a print comic, and you can see that in the earlier strips (and not just because it’s presented in cost-saving black and white). It reads like a print comic as well, particularly in the pacing. During the funny sequences punch lines can arrive pages after their setup, action sequences are allowed to stretch over multiple pages without breaks for plot to catch up, etc. Then skip ahead, oh… about 500 or so pages (it’s worth the effort, don’t worry), and you’ll catch up with when the pages started being made for the web, and if you’re paying attention you’ll notice that the writing has changed a bit. The coveted sense of conclusion begins to show up, the most obvious of which is that most of the updates end with a punch line (even the dramatic ones, just to keep you on your toes). There are still signs that the comic is being written with the mindset of a print comic, the most egregious example being the two-page spreads. For some reason, these are often actually split into two separate updates (I’ll assume for the Foglios’ sake that this is just to keep from screwing up the site code).

People have certain expectations from things on the internet that they don’t expect from other forms of media. The biggest difference is one thing: instant gratification. How many viral videos have you seen that last more than 5 minutes? Hell, if this article was about three or four paragraphs longer I’m willing to bet a few of you would have just skipped it. Some of you might have already. The important part is that people want their comics to be “finished” with an update, with the promise of another update the next day. It’s the same as individual issues of a comic, or episodes of a television series. Each is often simply one part of a larger narrative, but has a complete story by the end. The hard part for web comic artists is that people come to each and every page of their comics with that same mindset. Not exactly fair, but what is, these days? The popular comics learn this at some, often without even realizing it: it’s just the natural way to write for this medium. That’s not to say that not writing this way is bad, just that it’s an extra step in the way of popularity. Now, I’m of the mind that popularity isn’t a sign of quality (in fact, after a certain level of popularity actual “quality” can start to drop pretty dramatically). But there’s nothing wrong with giving people what they want if you can make what you want to make at the same time.