What makes a great webcomic?

[Rockphed]

Secret and Misho are from Keychain of Creation, an Exalted-based webcomic a lot like OOTS.

Quentyn is from Tales of the Questor.
...No, just get through the first five pages. It gets better. Honest.

I agree with RedScholar, and will now express it properly:

RAAAAAAAAAZ_FOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOX!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!

[cdrcjsn]

Writing is also what hooks me into a comic.

Pretty pictures might attract someone, but it's the writing that makes someone into a fan.

Strangely enough, if you ask this same question among other webcomic creators, I've found that most will say "writing, of course" but turn around and secretly judge each other's work based on the art.

Another big one for me is ease of accessibility. If a comic doesn't have an RSS feed, then the chance of me following it drops down to almost zero. I think the only strip that I follow that doesn't have an RSS feed is Girls With Slingshots, and even then I tend to only visit the site once every few weeks to catch up on what I've missed.

[Glass Mouse]

Personally, I don't demand much from the artwork. It can lift a comic from good to great (seriously, a comic like Phoenix Requiem is just... stunning), but it's the characters that hook me.
How? Hmm...

Characters shouldn't:
...be kliché or stereotypical (can be okay for gag-a-day but gets old really really fast).
...be too pathetic or angsty (angst is good, wangst is... just plain annoying).
...all be stunningly beautiful (pet peeve of mine, feel free to disagree).

Characters should:
...have more-or-less detailed personal histories.
...have likes and dislikes, convictions and personal beliefs.
...in the same vein; act consistently.
...have details or quirks (makes them non-generic).
...relate to their surroundings realistically.
...have both qualities and drawbacks (*cough*Mary Sue*cough*).
...evolve throughout the story.

There are probably more. But what do I know, anyway? My own comic isn't near good enough to even have a readership

Edit: To you who said that, and out of curiousity - what do you mean by "writing"? Story, pacing, dialogue, setting, other? And in that case, what is "good writing"? Just curious

[Horst]

• Cleverness. It has to be different and different in an thought provoking way.
• Humility. Nothing kills my enthusiasm faster than comics that have "I AM MAKING A POINT" stamped on them.
• Interesting characters. Not nessicerily deep, well rounded or even sane but Interesting.
• Well written. Present in all my fav comics.

I totally second this.

But I like to add a few points.

Very important:
Readability. Some Comics have a so over-exaggerated art-style and tiny or extravagant fonts in their Speechbubbles, that it is hard to follow the Story and to not overlook some words.

Another thing are annoying self-referenzes. If a comic is well-known and over 200 strips, you could start to make self-references. But some do so in their first pages.

Characters shouldn't:
...be kliché or stereotypical (can be okay for gag-a-day but gets old really really fast).

I would like to veto. Most of the good web comics characters are strongly stereotypical. I mean, all of the main characters of Oots are kliché. That doesn't mean that they are flat or onesided, but I am pretty sure that they all are stereotypes of their classes. Same goes for 8-bit theatre. You can not say, that these got old really fast.

[Jigsaw Forte]

In order of what I think makes a good webcomic (because I try to do this stuff with my own webcomic):

1. Reliable Updates - There's a comic I read that's gathered a small hatedom, Suicide for Hire (Basically, the SAW movies, but with furries in it), which, in spite of its heavy-handedness and everything else, I continued to read until:
   
   • the schedule dropped to once a week,
   • couldn't even seem to decide which DAY of the week it updated save that it updated at some point that week,
   • and every now and then instead of precious, precious plot, it included one of the main characters bitching about Michael Jackson or the Health Care town halls or whatever political outrage du jour was involved this week. I'm sorry, that's the last damned straw. It's one thing to hit me over the head with your very important opinions, it's another to do so as a goddamn non-sequitur in place of a real update!
   
   Lesson Learned: I can handle walls of text, I can handle slow updates, I can't handle not being able to set my damned morning coffee plugin to tell me when to read your comic. I may only post once a week, sure, but I have Wordpress to buffer out and schedule my updates, so at least everyone involved knows what damn day of the week to come see the new comic.
2. An RSS Feed with the Comic inside the Feed - Especially needed if you can't keep a proper schedule. This isn't hard, Wordpress/ComicPress can do it for you, but it's part of that whole "Being considerate to your readers" thing.
3. Consistant Writing - Again, this isn't saying you need a storyline, but if you're going to be a gag a day, you need to make sure your gags are all up to a certain standard.
4. Clear, Readable Text - Don't make it too tiny, don't make it impossible to read, and don't make it Comic Sans. Is that too much to ask?
5. Clear, Readable Artwork - Same idea. I don't care what you draw, save that when you draw a steampunk badger having a spot of tea, I can TELL it's a steampunk badger having a spot of tea.
6. Humor - Not always necessary, but if there's no payoff to reading each page, it's going to be a hard sell.
7. A Domain Name - This is just part and parcel of taking yourself seriously. Come on, guys, they're ten bucks a year. TEN BUCKS. You'd spend more money taking yourself and a friend to the movies. Isn't a year's worth of credibility and professionalism worth ten bucks to you? And if hosting is a concern, that's only $60 a year. You spend more on an XBox360 game! Come on, buy some dignity!
8. A Navigable Web Site - If I can't get to your latest comic and/or its archives, you suck. Unless the point of the site is that you're supposed to refresh and get a new comic (which really only works if it's meant to be a randomizer or a computer-generated comic like Mezzacotta in the first place), if I can't see older comics, you have failed on so many levels it's not funny.

This is not difficult, and yet you'd be amazed how many people fail at this...

[Jahkaivah]

Humility. Nothing kills my enthusiasm faster than comics that have "I AM MAKING A POINT" stamped on them.

Particularly strawmen comics... which fail to even make a point

[t_catt11]

One thing that I need is a creator who understands that they are doing a COMIC - something that should be pretty light-hearted. Not a UN-sanctioned re-education mission. Sanctimonious webcomics creators grate on me, and I will not return to their strips.

I agree with the point above that many comic creators claim to judge on writing, but seem to look down their noses at one another's art.

I'm in the camp of "if it's funny and/or well written, I only need passable art". And honestly, if it's neither funny *nor* well-written, beautiful art wears thin rather quickly.

[T-O-E]

A Domain Name - This is just part and parcel of taking yourself seriously. Come on, guys, they're ten bucks a year. TEN BUCKS. You'd spend more money taking yourself and a friend to the movies. Isn't a year's worth of credibility and professionalism worth ten bucks to you? And if hosting is a concern, that's only $60 a year. You spend more on an XBox360 game! Come on, buy some dignity!

I don't really see the problem with using a free host.

[Trazoi]

I don't really see the problem with using a free host.

I agree with Jigsaw Forte that having your own domain name gives your comic an extra level of respectability. It gives the webcomic a short, memorable home of it's own if its address is billed as webcomicname.com instead of webcomicname.freecomichost.com. Plus it's a small sign that this is a somewhat serious hobby for the creator. And from a practical side, it allows the creator to move hosts without causing all their links to break.

Obviously there are plenty of exceptions on both sides, but it's something I'd add to the checklist. It's a bit like using Comic Sans in a webcomic - it can work (example: OotS uses it to mostly good effect), but in general most Comic Sans webcomics use it because they didn't put much thought into the font choice - which is why it now has a reputation as the "crappy webcomic font".

(Oh, and don't use Arial either. Or, god forbid, Times New Roman ).

[T-O-E]

Urgh, comic sans.

I'm working on a webcomic and I'd like your opinion:
Is verdana okay? Or should I just download a font from Blambot? I like verdana.

[Trazoi]

I'm working on a webcomic and I'd like your opinion:
Is verdana okay? Or should I just download a font from Blambot? I like verdana.

It depends on the comic. If you try a few fonts out, maybe get a few outside opinions, and you find that Verdana just happens to give the perfect look for your particular comic, then I'd say go with it. The only property a font absolutely requires is that it is readable (i.e. never, ever use a decorative font for dialog if you can't read it clearly at small sizes!).

The biggest issue I'd have with a comic using Verdana is that it's the standard vanilla web font used virtually everywhere online. I don't think you can escape the "this feel like a web page" vibe if you use Verdana. That might just be what you want, depending on your webcomic - but usually it isn't.

Familiarity is one reason why I'd think twice about using any font that's usually installed on a PC - basically, any of the core fonts for the web that everyone uses over and over again. They're good fonts (or mostly if you hate Comic Sans ), but they're used everywhere so they now seem very generic.

[Surrealistik]

Non-sequitur humour.

[artistInTheCode]

I would have to say that a commonality in most all of these posts is that the web comic creator has to have made his/her webcomic a priority. From what I can tell from every web comic that I read regularly, the creators go out of their way to update their comic, make improvements to the site, or otherwise contribute to their community to make it an environment readers want to come back to.

This contribution can come in witty scripts resulting in laughs, beautiful art that keeps people coming back for more, hard work and dedication to add features their users want, etc. Whatever form this devotion comes in, it's always apparent that the good webcomic creators actually care enough to make their comic an important part of their life. I think that's the most important part of a webcomic.

[Harr]

For me it's the same things that make a TV show worth watching: Plot, Characters, Dialogue, Humor. That's it. I don't watch TV or movies for the effects, and I don't read webcomics for the art. It's all about the writing for me.

When I think about a comic and a show that both exemplify what I mean by those four things I think of OOTS and Gunnerkrigg for the comic and Dr Horrible's Sing-Along Blog for the show (even though it was web-based, I still consider better than pretty much anything else on TV... if I had to choose a literal TV show I would choose Chuck, I guess).

[YHuntressE]

I think the creator needs to separate themselves from their main character, because I've seen far too many that have made their comic their own personal masterbation session or bases a character who is someone who wronged them and turns that character into the author's personal punching bag. You Damn Kid did a good job even though the story was based off his life because he wasn't afraid to make himself have bad moments and didn't knock down others.

[Atronach]

What I think makes a great webcomic is good plots, decent dialogue, and if it is humorous, all the more reason to read.

[Turcano]

I don't really see the problem with using a free host.

Let me put it this way: what's the first thought that comes to mind when you see "comicgenesis.com" or "drunkduck.com?" If that first thought isn't "steaming turd," either you haven't had any experience with comics on said sites or there may be something wrong with you and you should have that checked.

[T-O-E]

Oh, I have seen the worst of the worst on those sites. And the rare decent strip.
I just don't group comics together by the site they're hosted on.

[PhantomFox]

I think he's saying it's easier to find a gem when it's in a jeweler's shop then in the dump.

[Trazoi]

It's more the negative impression potential readers may get if they see you're using a free host. If you're promoting your webcomic on a forum and I see it's from a free host, the first thing that goes through my mind is "probably less that four strips in the archive, and is unsure if they'll be continuing next month". In the vast majority of cases, it appears that the reason for going for the free host is that the creator hasn't put much thought or work into their product. That impression rubs off on anyone else who uses the host.

[Kurald Galain]

Just to post a counterargument, a great webcomic is one that doesn't fall for the Seven Sins of Webcomics. Yeah, I took that from YWIBAYSFB, but I like it anyway.

What are those sins? Well...
(1) Lust: the comic exists only or primarily as a vehicle for fanservice
(2) Gluttony: the comic exists only or primarily because the author wants attention and compliments
(3) Greed: the comic's creator does excessive donation runs and so forth so that quality comes after making a cheap buck or two
(4) Sloth: copy/paste art, google image search backgrounds, cliche plots, lack of character depth, and other signs of a lazy creator
(5) Wrath: the creator gets into flame wars with other comics and/or people who dare express criticism of his comic
(6) Envy: I've never actually seen that one, and YWIB only has a vague description
(7) Pride, of course: the creator thinks he's god and flaunts this at every opportunity.

Okay, so missing all those might not make a comic great - but too many comics fall into several of those sins, and that's a sure sign that they're not great.