Webcomic Pet Peeves

[McDuffies]

Because this is the most active topic GD has seen in months.

Shows what we like the most: to complain.

He's in a typography class

[Nelson]Ha-ha[/Nelson]

[PatrickOfUnlifeStudios]

Hooray. The most active thread in CG and it's my thread. I shall forever be known as the guy who hates things, possibly inciting some kind of riot. I mean, we've already got stone throwing going on.

About fonts, none of them really annoy me as long as you can read them. I guess Times New Roman seems a little tacky to me, but I don't care too much.

[Yeahduff]

He's in a typography class

[Nelson]Ha-ha[/Nelson]

Heh, I'm not currently in a type class, but the classes I've taken have opened a whole new world of snobbery.

[TheSuburbanLetdown]

That's all we needed.

[Mercury Hat]

Oh oh I thought of one.

I've seen comics that open like movies do. Like, credits being shown over still images of scenery or maybe a car and this goes on for like three pages.

For the life of me I can't remember any names, but I have seen it happen.

[KWill]

Oh oh I thought of one.

I've seen comics that open like movies do. Like, credits being shown over still images of scenery or maybe a car and this goes on for like three pages.

For the life of me I can't remember any names, but I have seen it happen.

The Zombiehunters does it. But so long as its not done instead of a regular update, I really have no problem with it.

[Yeahduff]

That's pretty lame. One page is all anyone needs for credits, and even then it's pretty unnecessary on the web.

[RadPal]

Ooh, ooh, I have two to add that I didn't see here yet.

1. When people use the verb of something that is happening to a character as a sound effect instead of drawing it well enough so you can tell what's happening without being told. For example, drawing a panel where a character has a spear going through him, and he has a surprised look on his face, and above him is written: "IMPALE!" instead of drawing the body bending to the force, or whatever is necessary to visually understand it. If you draw it well enough, then you can add a more realistic sound effect instead: SCHLORK, SPLORTCH, SHLING, or whatever impalement sound you may fancy.

2. When something extraordinary happens in a webcomic (an animal suddenly starts talking to a character, the world warps around him, anything supernatural) and the character acts mildly surprised, usually including a witty response. Maybe it's just me, but if a dog started talking to me, I'd run screaming. This is okay if the character is known to be hard to impress or very laid back, but when you have your normal person character, and they see a talking dog and all they say is "Um, you're a dog, and you're definitely talking," I just think it's stupid.

[McDuffies]

That reminds me how it can be irritating in manga-influenced comics when they overuse those signs with arrows... like if there's a girl blushing, and there's a sign over her head saying "embarrased" with arrow pointing at her. I guess it wouldn't be a problem, but there are comics that are doing it in every single panel, three or four times even. One would say that they're doing it because they're not sure their storytelling is conveying it properly so they wanna be sure that the reader knows what's going on... but the thing is, usually it's very obvious what's going on without signs, and happenings are usually so simple that stick-figure comic would convey it without much problem. I imagine it's played as a joke, but every joke loses effect when it's repeated over and over and over.

That also reminds me of comics that obviously avoid actually showing any action. Like, if there's a scene of a big dinosaur, but artist can't bring himself to draw a whole dinosaur, he just draws one of characters yelling "Look, dinosaur!" while the dino is never actually shown. I've also seen comics where characters are constantly drawn from the back or in very close shots (eyes only or mouth only) because artist found it too bothersome to draw faces all the time... I remember a comic or two that were nothing but shots of backs of people's heads or random landscapes. Famous "Preacher" often had scenes like, a bunch of people sitting at the table, each one of them holding their hands under the table, and such scenes look very ridiculous because, well, when you sit at the table, you usually hold your hands on the table, and if you're not, what are the odds that the whole company is doing it? I won't say what my first impression of such scene is.

[KWill]

Famous "Preacher" often had scenes like, a bunch of people sitting at the table, each one of them holding their hands under the table, and such scenes look very ridiculous because, well, when you sit at the table, you usually hold your hands on the table, and if you're not, what are the odds that the whole company is doing it? I won't say what my first impression of such scene is.

Ooh, this was explained in the morning show segment on good manners! It's because they've got guns under the table to make sure they can shoot the cheating bastard sitting across from them!

[Tystarr]

Lol funny stuff. These last few pages has been very insightful. I will no longer state how much I don't like the art on a strip I create and I will try my hardest to update on time.

-Now for the things I hate that webcomics do..
-missed updates (vgcats, joe!, countless others
-ugly comics that are farrr from funny
-comics with horrendous websites
-slow loading pages (like really..whats up with that?)

[Bustertheclown]

He's in a typography class

[Nelson]Ha-ha[/Nelson]

Heh, I'm not currently in a type class, but the classes I've taken have opened a whole new world of snobbery.

You get over it.

[Eve Z.]

http://cats.comicgenesis.com

[Fishies]

-slow loading pages (like really..whats up with that?)

Yes! That bugs me as well. I hate when I have to wait five minutes for each new page to load because everything on the site is a giant picture. It makes reading annoying.

[Tystarr]

-slow loading pages (like really..whats up with that?)

Yes! That bugs me as well. I hate when I have to wait five minutes for each new page to load because everything on the site is a giant picture. It makes reading annoying.

Which really sucks even more since I have a cable modem and no comic should take longer than a few seconds to load.

[Jpac]

http://cats.comicgenesis.com

It burns and it stings! I couldn't look at it longer than a few seconds.

Hmm, I have to clean up my comic myself as it is guilty of a few of the things on here. I have to check the font. I know I've skipped out on animating things instead of using long winded comments to explain (I remember Sortelli getting on me for that one). Also it hasn't been updated since 06' and I really should mention that it's continuing won't be happening any time soon. I think I'll start working on fixing what's there.

My own comic peeves? Has anyone ever seen a reboot in the middle of the comic? I mean the person decided they would start over? I guess that can't be a peeve as I only saw it once. But I do remember seeing it. I guess it was like what they're doing with Incredible Hulk. But the author went back and redid the comic. Completely destroyed the storyline.
I know it's been said before but when people have strange formatting with the page that forces you to scroll left, right, up and down to see the whole comic. I think online comics 101 should teach us not to do that.

[McDuffies]

I saw it three times.

[DangerFace]

I don't know if it's been mentioned yet, but I hate well illustrated comics with poorly done speech balloons, like squares with thin lines pointing to the character, or tails nearly as wide as the balloon, going INTO a character's mouth. I really hate that one. In my opinion a speech balloon should never obscure a character's face in any way.

Fonts that come with any version of Windows should not be used in comics.

I hate when comics that have no story, but feature preposterously big-breasted women and get top ratings on hosting sites, AND they aren't even well drawn... *ahem* There is NOTHING good about this comic and yet it sits smugly amongst the 10 best Drunk Duck has to offer.

[Linkara]

I'm guilty of many things this thread describes, though less so these days as criticisms have been lobbed in my direction.

I can try to justify one or two of them, however:
-In my case, I've frequently thought about rebooting my comic if only because when I started i was completely inexperienced and my artwork sucked like nobody's business. Said crappily-drawn pages are still in the archive and as a result, I wonder if I should go back and redraw them so that new readers won't see them and say, "Jeez, I don't want to have to wade through a hundred pages of crap until I get to some decently-drawn stuff."
-In the case of pointing out that my art sucks, I do so in order to keep myself humbled. As many probably remember, I used to be proud of some really crappy stuff and while it's nice and all that I can feel proud that I worked hard to try to do something, it didn't help me improve - a swift kick in the ass told me that I needed to actually start doing things properly. As a result, anytime I said, "Yeah, I'm sorry this art sucked" it was to tell people I'm not proud of it, but it's all I've got.

These days I just wait for a bit and redraw whatever I think was offensive to the eyes to make it decent.

[McDuffies]

I hate when comics that have no story, but feature preposterously big-breasted women and get top ratings on hosting sites, AND they aren't even well drawn... *ahem* There is NOTHING good about this comic and yet it sits smugly amongst the 10 best Drunk Duck has to offer.

Man there's a few of such comics near the top of every top list.

But what really irritates me is when comics advertise themselves using sex. I wouldn't mind it if it didn't happen so often, but sometimes I have a feeling that at least 50% of webcomics have attractive female characters in their advertising material, either in suggestive poses or flimsy dresses. In most of these cases, female characters in question are really side characters who appear from time to time, so there's no logic in choosing them for ads instead of actual main characters. In many cases, comics in question are dialogue-driven, talking-heads type comics, so ad content is the most graphical you'll ever see in a comic. In most of cases, these ads do a terrible job of describing a job, so you shouldn't be surprised if you clicked an ad with a hot chick on it and wind up looking at a comic with two guys sitting on sofa and talking about videogames.
I don't mind when comics that are sexual in nature have ads with sexual content. But really, so many webcomic authors have taken some advertising stereotypes for granted and badly translated them into webcomics. Really, relationship between author and reader is much different than that of a washing powder manufacturer and buyer, so I think that it's crappy that so many artists think that it's a good idea to start that relationship by tricking readers.