Hari's Corner

I read quite a lot of webcomics these days; not least because I create comics regularly myself and I like to study others' creations: artistic techniques, characterization and storytelling. The webcomics I read vary a lot in theme, content as well as skill level of the artist - but most of them have one thing in common: humour.

I get bored quickly of story-based webcomics because the long story comic format is not ideally suited for the online medium. A 60-page comic book can be read in about an hour (or less if you're a quick reader). The same 60-page comic posted in a website can be tough to navigate (and incredibly tedious to follow if it is not updated frequently enough.)

With that in mind, I wanted to collect a list of my personal likes and dislikes on the topic of webcomics. I am well aware that I myself cannot achieve these ideals so easily in my own creations, but I set tough parameters for others, so sue me.

First, the likes:

Like

• Wacky but lovable and easily identifiable characters (think characters like Daffy Duck, Bugs Bunny and Yosemite Sam of Warner Bros' fame).
• Strong but not excessive use of bright primary colours and tones.
• Visual as well as verbal humour. Reliance on character expressions and actions in building the humour.
• Less reliance on punch lines or finish dialogs and more emphasis on humour distributed throughout all the panels.
• Consistent, but not excessively predictable situations.

Dislike

• Flat characters or characters that are too perfect or ordinary.
• Lengthy inordinate dialogues between characters.
• Arbitrary characterization: for instance where two characters can easily swap positions and the situation still makes sense.
• Excessive reliance on breaking the fourth wall or using cliched punch lines or endings.
• Complex scene composition: heavy use of background artwork which confuses the reader and creates a lot of "noise".

I feel that webcomics are the perfect medium for creative expression. There are so many types and varieties of them around; it never ceases to amaze me what ideas people come up with for writing a comic. Great artistic ability is almost never necessary or sufficient to create a good comic. When drawing a comic, what matters is the unique and distinctive touch of the creator.

This is why I am not much interested in anime/manga style illustrations: they all end up looking like they came out of a factory assembly line. Unfortunately a lot of artists pay too much attention to these technicalities and forget about the creativity bit. End result is that their work looks more or less similar to a hundred others. Ugly or beautiful, what makes a webcomic special is the author's unique style and storytelling ability.