Olafs teikneserieblogg

Today’s exercise for all of you webcomic creators out there: Open a new tab in your browser, and go to your comic’s homepage. Yes, the website you update every day.

Now, imagine that you are a new reader, and that you have never seen this comic before.

Would you stay?

I get the impression that many webcomics, especially story-based comics (it’s not that big a problem in gag-a-day comics) tend to scare away new readers. They come, they’re overwhelmed, they leave. While I personally like use of in medias res in stories, I would never open up a novel on page 54 and read it from there. If you make a webcomic in graphic novel format and the first thing you present to me is page 54, you’re not really giving me a choice, and I probably wouldn’t understand what the comic was about.

The first fix to this problem is the standard “link to first strip”. Giving the reader the opportunity to read everything from the beginning is a must-have for story-based comics. But many comics have this link featured only as a small text link under the current page.¹ That’s not really optimal for a link you want all your new readers to see. How about making an image link, a little bigger (say, the size of a half-banner? That’s 234×60 pixels, I think²), and putting this above the current comic? Yes, above: If you want people to read from the beginning, they shouldn’t have to scroll through page 54 and accidentally discover that amazing revelation you didn’t reveal until page 52.

Of course, you could also avoid the whole problem by making a splash page with links to a) the first page, b) the first page of the current chapter and c) the current page. Dr. McNinja is the champion of this. Just remember to add a fancy cover or something — splash pages are way too often boring to look at, and that makes them feel really useless (though in this case one could argue they’re not).

So then, the question is: What can you do to keep on to those of your readers who want to give your comic a chance, but don’t have time to read fifteen hundred pages to catch up on what is going on?

Here’s my suggestion. The first part is easy to do with a bit of coding, the second part requires perhaps rethinking the way you write comics:

1. Add a link to the beginning of the current chapter on the frontpage. Remember that whenever you start a new chapter, you must change this link, unless you get a script to do it for you automatically.
2. When writing comics, make sure that whenever something is introduced that hasn’t been mentioned before in this chapter, it is explained. I believe the word I’m looking for is “recap”. An example: If the entire purpose of this chapter is that your character, which is a hobbit, has to throw a magical ring he got in chapter one into a volcano, let him talk to his friends about it: “Gee, I can see the volcano now — I’m glad I’m finally getting a chance to get rid of this magical ring!”. If the effects of the ring matter, let one of his friends ask him about it. “Seriously, what really happened when you put on the ring?” Don’t overdo it, just make sure that everything that happens in this chapter makes sense to new readers, and you’ve come very, very far. Actually, Henrik Ibsen was a master of this: How many of his plays open with a new character arriving, and someone who’s stayed there for a while sits down to explain the new guy everything that’s happened for the past couple of years? That way, Ibsen managed to squeeze years or decades of events into two minutes of play time. You can sum up the most important events of your past chapters in the same way.
3. Optionally, if you don’t think you can manage to squeeze this information into your comics, there’s another way: Make recap pages. Yes — a page or two where you explain for new readers what the story so far is about. Of course, it’s okay to re-use existing art for this purpose.

Don’t worry about your readers missing the chapters you spent so much time working on and you’re really satisfied with. If they like the comic, they will at one point go back to the beginning and read it from there. Or, even better: They’ll read those chapters when you make them available in a book, and they’ll happily pay you for it. But right now, they just want to get started on reading your comic.

There’s no reason to scare them away with a thick plot there is absolutely no way of getting into without reading five hundred pages.

1. Yes, I’m fully aware that this is also the case on the webcomics portal I’m webmaster of. It will be improved in the next version. [back]
2. Just don’t make it look too much like an ad, then people will ignore it! [back]