The Most Discussed Webcomics on the Forums: Thread IV
Introduction
Back in March 2018, I attempted to figure out which webcomics had generated the most discussion on this subforum. Shortly after that, I decided I would update my list twice a year. I have stuck to that schedule, but I have not actually posted every update. I figured that most people probably don't want to see me make a new thread just to say "this list is basically the same as the previous one." This is the 13th version of the list I have made, but it is only the 4th I have posted publicly.
Previous Threads:
Thread 1: List 1, March 2018
Thread 2: List 2, November 2018
Thread 3: List 6, November 2020
Methodology
It is not possible to determine the exact number of posts about a given comic, because discussions of a particular comic can crop up anywhere, including on threads whose topics are unrelated to comics. A slightly easier quantity to compare is the total number of posts in all threads on this subforum that are devoted to a particular comic. For example, one could in principle estimate the popularity of Gunnerkrigg Court on the forum by adding up the number of posts on all Gunnerkrigg Court threads. However, this number is still infeasible to calculate. The threads on this forum do not have a uniform naming scheme, so someone would have to go through every thread on the board and manually determine which comic is associated with each thread. With more than 2400 threads on this board, this task is not practical.
One somewhat crude estimate for the number of posts on a particular webcomic is the number of threads devoted to that webcomic which are "full"--i.e., at or close to 50 pages. There are numerous shortcomings to this method. For example, a comic for which there are 10 threads, each with 10 pages, would be overlooked in this count. Nonetheless, I think the number of full threads is a decent approximation for how much discussion a comic gets on this forum. It's also much easier to obtain, thanks to the forum software's ability to sort threads by number of replies.
The following list is my best effort to catalogue the number of threads with at least 45 pages devoted to each comic on this board. I chose 45 as an arbitrary cutoff point for when a thread is "nearly full." There are only 14 threads with between 45 and 49 pages, so the exact cutoff point isn't terribly important. Most threads with 45 pages or more have exactly 50 pages. As of March 1 2024, there are exactly 196 threads with 45 pages or more on this board, and there are 23 distinct comics among the 196 threads. The most significant change from List 6 (the last version I posted publicly) is that Questionable Content has now passed Goblins as the 3rd most-discussed comic.
I do not claim that the list is free of errors: if you notice that I made a mistake, please point it out to me (see also the "missing information" section for stuff I could use help with).
Each entry in the list is formatted in four lines:
1)The title of the comic
2)The comic's URL
3)The number of threads for the comic with at least 45 pages
4)A link to the most recent thread with at least 45 pages. Note, in many cases this will be the next-to-most-recent thread for a comic. If there are seven threads with 50 pages each, then there is probably an eight thread somewhere.
Okay, enough preliminaries. Onward to the actual list!
The List
Dominic Deegan: Oracle for Hire
dominic-deegan.com
52
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showt...-Found-My-Keys!
Girl Genius
girlgeniusonline.com
30
https://forums.giantitp.com/showthre...m-farther-away!
Questionable Content
questionablecontent.net
19
https://forums.giantitp.com/showthre...e*-Credit-Here
Goblins
goblinscomic.com
18
https://forums.giantitp.com/showthre...n-be-dangerous
Erfworld
erfworld.com
10
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showt...e-Cliffhangers
MS Paint Adventures
mspaintadventures.com
7
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showt...ce-of-Oblivion
Gunnerkrigg Court
gunnerkrigg.com
7
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showt...d-Circumstance
Schlock Mercenary
schlockmercenary.com
7
https://forums.giantitp.com/showthre...the-mAInfrAIme
Grrl Power
grrlpowercomic.com
7
https://forums.giantitp.com/showthre...-Thirty-Comics!
El Goonish Shive
egscomics.com
6
https://forums.giantitp.com/showthre...st-is-Still-18
Star Power
starpowercomic.com
6
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showt...ORP-VORP-VORP)
Darths and Droids
darthsanddroids.net
5
https://forums.giantitp.com/showthre...umerical-Order
Keychains of Creation
keychain.patternspider.net
5
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showt...-for-a-Century
Dr. McNinja
drmcninja.com
4
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showt...What-The-Chuck
Menage a 3
menagea3.net
4
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showt...ming-to-a-Head
Bibliography
[No longer online?]
3
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showt...bliography-III
CTRL+ALT+DELETE
cad-comic.com
1
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showt...f-Ctrl-Alt-Del
Drow Tales
drowtales.com
1
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showt...-The-Info-Dump
Kill Six Billion Demons
killsixbilliondemons.com
1
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showt...onsummate-liar
Legacy of Dominic Deegan
www.dominic-deegan.com/comic/july-2-2019/
1
https://forums.giantitp.com/showthre...Unending-Snark
Unsounded
casualvillain.com/Unsounded/comic+index/
1
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showt...ic-I-have-seen
Will Save World for Gold
willsaveworldforgold.com
1
https://forums.giantitp.com/showthre...World-for-Gold
Yet Another Fantasy Gamer Comic
yafgc.net
1
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showt...-comic-discuss
Here is some other information that the above list ignores:
a)You may have noticed that the thread number on the Girl Genius threads suggests that there are 31 completed threads, not 30 as the list claims. However, the Girl Genius Thread III did not make it to 45 pages: it was locked at 42 pages.
b)A similar thing happened to Schlock Mercenary. Schlock Mercenary thread 2 does not seem to exist, or if it does it is under 45 pages.
c)Most threads which make it to 45 pages end up with exactly 50 pages. A handful cross over to 51 pages. Currently, there are only four thread with more than 51 pages. These are the first three Dominic Deegan threads (which have 301, 77, and 63 pages, respectively), and the first Girl Genius thread (57 pages). If these extra posts are taken into account, then Dominic Deegan and Girl Genius are even further ahead of their competition then the list indicates.
d)Prior to the first Erfworld thread, there was an Erfworld board. The board had no threads with 45 pages, but all the posts in that board added together would have several full threads worth of posts. I do not see a way to quickly get the total number of posts on the Erfworld board, since it is not visible from its parent forum. Does anyone know how to do this? It would be nice to know exactly how much Erfworld is being under-counted by the list.
e)Of course, there is also a separate board for The Order of the Stick, which has more posts than this entire subforum.
Missing information
--As noted above, is there a way to see the total post count in the now-locked Erfworld board, without writing a web scraper to go through and get the post count of each thread individually?
--There are three full threads on a webcomic called Bibliography. The most recent thread for the comic is here. The link given on that thread no longer works. Is the comic still available to read anywhere? If not, can anyone find an archive.org link to the comic from after the last update but before it went offline?
--And finally, if you notice any mistakes in this post, please tell me.
Re: The Most Discussed Webcomics on the Forums: Thread IV
Interesting information, thank you! It seems this subforum isn't inclined towards metadiscussion, though. :smalltongue:
Re: The Most Discussed Webcomics on the Forums: Thread IV
That's a fun analysis, Dominic Deegan stay winning.
Re: The Most Discussed Webcomics on the Forums: Thread IV
It does seem to be the snark-filled threads that dominate this list.
Re: The Most Discussed Webcomics on the Forums: Thread IV
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Anarchic Fox
It does seem to be the snark-filled threads that dominate this list.
I don't participate in every discussion/don't know every comic listed, would you be able to point out which ones are definite snark threads? I'm curious.
Re: The Most Discussed Webcomics on the Forums: Thread IV
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Neoriceisgood
I don't participate in every discussion/don't know every comic listed, would you be able to point out which ones are definite snark threads? I'm curious.
Mainly, I suspect, Questionable Content. These days that guy gets it as bad as Mookie used to, I'm not sure why.
Re: The Most Discussed Webcomics on the Forums: Thread IV
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Neoriceisgood
That's a fun analysis, Dominic Deegan stay winning.
Not surprising really. We spent so much time on that silly, stupid comic that the snark threads developed their own lore :smalltongue:
Re: The Most Discussed Webcomics on the Forums: Thread IV
Quote:
Originally Posted by
halfeye
Mainly, I suspect, Questionable Content. These days that guy gets it as bad as Mookie used to, I'm not sure why.
His writing style changed drastically, so there's a large portion of the fanbase that tears into him for that. He's also slowed down the pace of the plot (as much as QC has ever had one), covering roughly a week in comic-book-time over the course of a year real-time when the compression used to be far less. There was a change in focus as well, with almost the entire original cast fading into the background (two characters got engaged nearly 5 years ago real time and still haven't gotten married) and the new cast is generally perceived as unlikeable or at best a weaker copy of an older character who was written out. And finally there's a perceived lack of effort on JJ's part, with the character artstyle regressing significantly into simpler forms, plain or no backgrounds, and with regular art errors (the current comic has a character's freckles disappear in the final panel, for example).
So basically the quality of the comic went from an A to a generous C while simultaneously moving away from the type of humour and plots that kept people reading for years. This has made the older fans a teensy bit upset, as after 20 years of reading a comic it's hard to give it up. So you get 50 pages of snark.
Re: The Most Discussed Webcomics on the Forums: Thread IV
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Neoriceisgood
I don't participate in every discussion/don't know every comic listed, would you be able to point out which ones are definite snark threads? I'm curious.
Dominic Deegan, Questionable Content, Goblins, and Erfworld. Maybe Schlock Mercenary, too. They're not exclusively snark, but every time I dipped into one of them the snark seemed to predominate.
Re: The Most Discussed Webcomics on the Forums: Thread IV
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Anarchic Fox
Dominic Deegan, Questionable Content, Goblins, and Erfworld. Maybe Schlock Mercenary, too. They're not exclusively snark, but every time I dipped into one of them the snark seemed to predominate.
Ohh interesting, I wasn't aware Schlock Mercenary was a snark thread, it's the only one I never really looked at at all xD
Re: The Most Discussed Webcomics on the Forums: Thread IV
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Neoriceisgood
Ohh interesting, I wasn't aware Schlock Mercenary was a snark thread, it's the only one I never really looked at at all xD
Toward like the last.. year, two years? or so of Schlock it kinda went from the Episodic Action-Adventures of Space Mercenaries to a really slow meandering high-concept meditation about What Is Consciousness Really. This was not a favorable change of direction for much of the prior readership.
Re: The Most Discussed Webcomics on the Forums: Thread IV
Quote:
Originally Posted by
tyckspoon
Toward like the last.. year, two years? or so of Schlock it kinda went from the Episodic Action-Adventures of Space Mercenaries to a really slow meandering high-concept meditation about What Is Consciousness Really. This was not a favorable change of direction for much of the prior readership.
Oh wow that's quite a strange change ... ah, still no Sinfest though.
