Comic Genesis Forums

Time and again when I make up a joke, it's in the form of obscure references to childhood icons that I knew and loved. To me, they're pure gold, but I figured I'm limiting the heck out of my audience each time. As it turns out, those comics keep getting the best reactions. I used one in the WebcomicBattle, and wound up doing ridiculously well.
So I want to know: who else uses these kinds of jokes, and which childhood characters have been living in YOUR head since your underoos matched your bedspread?

Here are some of mine:
-The Neverending Story -- Waldo
-Captain Planet -- The Ghostbusters
-Mr. Yuck -- and Batman & Superman (a frequent conflict)
... above all I come back to MUPPETS time and time again, like
Animal, The Count, and poor, modernized Cookie Monster

So who or what do you drag back out of your time capsule to amuse the masses?

I make random movie reference to the confusion of all.

Old video games work the best for me it seems (though that isn't saying much). Super Mario 3 tends to yeild the best results.

Huh...I just went looking for my comic that I posted last year. It was up for five days, then the comic that beat me was up for three days before Neko's comic beat it, then Neko's was beaten by a Superman comic that was up for a long time, then that comic was beaten by...yours!

Thatguy...those comics ARE gold. Thank you for making them. Captain Planet and ghostbuster jokes...there are never enough of them.

Where to start...

Um... Mister Squiggle.

Ginger Meggs.

Songs... Constantinople, Men At Work, Helen Reddy, Mental As Anything...

Banjo Paterson ballads.

Rocky (okay, this one isn't Australian...)

Australian explorers...

I'll finish there for now.

I love putting little references in throughout the archive, even if most of them go unnoticed by most of the readers.

I wrote a strip about The Incredible Hulk... But I can't link to it.

i've referenced some pretty obscure things from my childhood and some pretty obscure things from my adulthood in my comic, actually.

I made a Soul Train reference once.

warofwinds wrote:Thatguy...those comics ARE gold. Thank you for making them. Captain Planet and ghostbuster jokes...there are never enough of them.

Hee, thanks!

Shishio wrote:I wrote a strip about The Incredible Hulk... But I can't link to it.

I remember that one. O.o
That poor, poor woman... and fair enough.

That guy wrote:I remember that one.
That poor, poor woman... and fair enough.

Did you notice the sound effects? I thought that was a nice touch.

Also, I think the reason the types of strips you're talking about do so well is because a lot of young people that are familiar with those icons use the internet. This is why I don't think the "If you build it they will come" analogy is quite correct. There is some truth to it, but it also has to do with demographics, how well you promote yourself, etc. I mean, the two most popular comics right now are Penny Arcade and XKCD. And while I haven't read very much of either, I have utmost confidence that I could find dozens of comics that are vastly superior.[/derail]

Penny Arcade is well written, and the artwork has gotten pretty darn good, but I think you're right - it's vast success rests largely on an enormous audience of gamers and nerds who all go online on a regular basis. I had never read XKCD - (is it really one of the top 2 most popular comics right now?) It's stick-figure art but it's really well written. It's humor is also geek-based, but in a very different way. P.A. hits on the mainstream, popular things: games, iStuff, retro classics, while XKCD almost revels in the unpopular. He makes obscure intellectual jokes and promotes Linux. It's a very different approach, but it's totally neat to see how they might work in similar ways.

That guy wrote:I had never read XKCD - (is it really one of the top 2 most popular comics right now?)

That's what I've heard.

I think dismissing Penny Arcade's success as being solely due to its gaming roots is selling it a bit short, and ignores its strengths. Also it reeks of bitterness.

As for childhood icons I've mentioned... there's quite a few.

Trix Rabbit
Santa Claus
Bananas in Pajamas
Marmaduke
Family Circus
Rainbow Brite
Sesame Street
Care Bears
Easter Bunny
Teletubbies
Oscar the Grouch
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Pokémon
Buzz the Honeybee
Barbie & Ken
Toothfairy
The Flintstones
G.I. Joe
Spongebob Squarepants
Winnie the Pooh

And many, many geekdom sacred cows.

The Neko wrote:I think dismissing Penny Arcade's success as being solely due to its gaming roots is selling it a bit short, and ignores its strengths.

I agree, so it's a good thing I didn't do that. The fact is that there are multiple reasons for Penny Arcade's success. I'm sure it is well-written, as I've never heard anything bad said of the writing, and having flipped through the books, I agree that the art has improved dramatically, and it is now very polished. I was only saying that quality alone will not guarantee success, as the number of gamers on the internet, the fact that they've been online since 1998, and Robert Khoo are significant factors in their success as well. And there's the fact that there are many comics that are of a higher quality, but have not achieved a fraction of success that Penny Arcade has.

The Neko wrote:Also it reeks of bitterness.

Goodness! You see right through me, good sir! Damn you and your discerning eye!

(By the way, another thing that reeks of bitterness is obsessing with finding fault in, and attempting to make yourself look better than others.)

Limiting your audience isn't necessarily a bad thing--if you want a comic that's striving to appeal to as many people as possible, go read Garfield. Most comics which are regarded as 'good' have at least some semblance of a target audience. In our cases, since we are talking about comics being hosted on the internet, the 15-30 yr old nerd set is going to comprise a large section of our audience, so things which appeal to them (like jokes about stuff from our childhoods) are going to go over pretty well.

And frankly, I think people like it when they get a reference--it makes them feel clever.

Apropos Penny Arcade, I liked their earlier comics better than their more recent ones... I don't mean that in some sort of 'oh now they're popular blah blah,' way, they've been popular as long as I've been reading them. But the earlier comics seemed to focus more on Gabe and Tycho as <i>gamers</i>, whereas the later comics tend to focus more on the games themselves. The early comics, I'd read them and be like, 'That is soooo my boyfriend and his roommate..." and get a good laugh, but when the comics are about a game I've never heard of (and which I suspect isn't even out in stores yet,) then it's just not as much fun.

Either way, is being a gaming comic where almost every strip requires some sort of specialized knowledge limiting PA's audience? Hell yeah, but I don't think they'd be as popular as they are if they didn't.


XKCD: No idea how popular it is. It just... feels like home.

Shishio wrote:Blah blah blah. Sarcasm. Blah blah blah. UR CONCEITED blah blah

Good thing I wasn't talking about you, but of a general trend. Otherwise, I might have quoted and responded to a specific passage. UH OH!

The Neko wrote:Good thing I wasn't talking about you, but of a general trend. Otherwise, I might have quoted and responded to a specific passage. UH OH!

Well, given how judgemental you can be sometimes, I couldn't help but assume you were insulting me. In any case, I apologize for misinterpreting your comment.

NakedElf wrote:Limiting your audience isn't necessarily a bad thing--if you want a comic that's striving to appeal to as many people as possible, go read Garfield. Most comics which are regarded as 'good' have at least some semblance of a target audience. In our cases, since we are talking about comics being hosted on the internet, the 15-30 yr old nerd set is going to comprise a large section of our audience, so things which appeal to them (like jokes about stuff from our childhoods) are going to go over pretty well.

I'm not really trying to reach a target audience. "People who can read" is my target audience, I guess. I do think it's possible to try to reach as varied an audience as you reasonably can without turning into Garfield. I know there are people who won't like my comic, because no comic can appeal to everybody, but I'm striving to make sure the reason somebody doesn't like my comic isn't "I didn't get all the obscure references."

Maybe my real target audience is "people who don't read webcomics." I don't think I'm getting through to them for some reason.

Personally, my goal is to have more 'things people can identify with from their own lives' than 'specific references to our own lives'. I.E. the feeling of frustration when the person you're trying to hit on has a very different default 'hitting on people' style than you do and it's just confusing, rather than, say, I don't know, referencing When Harry Met Sally. But that's just me.