I'm posting this because, well, I'd like to see people take my advice and make strips that I'd want to read (and because I like hearing myself type.)
Most of this is notes to myself while planning my strip. No-one has yet to ask me for advice on how to start a comic strip.
1) Exposure:
Make sure that people know that your site is out there.
Be sure that some of those "Lists of all comic strips" include your
strip. Offer to trade links with other cartoonists. Post decent
articles (or at least discontented mumblings about Marmaduke or
Andy
Capp) to rec.arts.comic.strips and make sure your site is in your sig.
Join a webring (and only one. Being on three webrings makes you look
like you're trying too hard.).
2) Archives:
Have at least 15 of your strips on your site when you put it up.
It takes exposure for people to form an impression. If you only have today's strip, unless it's a doozy, people won't come back because they just don't think much about your strip. If you have archives (and you should), include a forwards/back button.
3) Panel or strip
I strongly recommend that budding cartoonists shy away from the panel format. Situation-based1 panel strips are, in my opinion, the bane of cartooning. I've never seen one that I even remotely liked (any of you are welcome to point me in the direction of good ones). If you write one, you are depriving yourself of any chance to develop your characters or tell any but the shortest jokes (usually insults, puns and absurdities). There are some good non-situation-based ones out there. If you start one of these, though, the best description you can get is "Kinda like 'The Far Side'".
Of course, strip format isn't a road to success either.
1: Situation-based series' are the ones with recurring characters in more-or-less the same situation each time. "For Better or for Worse", "Doonesbury", "Beetle Bailey" and "Family Circus" are situational. "Frank and Ernest", "Mr. Boffo" and "Herman" aren't. If there's a better word for this, let me know. Some strips, like "Mother Goose and Grimm" or "Outland" switch from one to the other periodically.
4) The strip:
Make sure that the lettering is easily readable. A fair number of users are still at 14.4 kilobaud or slower. This is about 1k/sec. If there is a notable delay in loading your strip, be sure that it's worth it. I find that 80k for a daily strip is about my tolerance level and that I'll spend time reading most anything under 20k.
If you're going to have large pictures, make sure it's worth it. If it's over 100k, you've no excuse for anything other than clear lettering, sharp colour and clean lines.
5) The website:
Make sure all the links work.
Most people care more about the comic strip than the website.
Most people don't care about little animated gifs or java applets.
I dislike those sort of things because they slow my computer down.
You're better off putting in a nice biographies or links page. Remember
that not everyone has javascript and not everyone has frames.
5a) Java-animated cartoons:
I've seen a few sites do this.
I dislike it. I can't see any real point to it; at best it makes
sure that the reader sees all the panels in order. Most readers can
be trusted to do that on their own. The problems are that these cartoons
move at their own pace, not the readers' and were the reader to switch
windows, they have a fair chance of coming back at the wrong panel and
ruining the joke.
All-in-all, it seems like a showy use of technology and not a way of adding value to your product.
5b) MIDI:
MIDI bugs me.
I play and record old-time radio programs through my sound-card.
Nothing bugs me like having to record a tape over because some guy
decided to play "Louie, Louie" over my computer.
6) Delivery:
The comic strip is a different medium than radio or television. There are a lot of things you can do in other media that you cannot do in comic strips. Remember this. There are also a lot of things that you can do in comic strips which you cannot do in other media. Use these to your advantage. There are a lot of things in comic strips that can't be transcribed to other mediums. Use these to your advantage.
Delivery is what makes the worst web strips mostly unreadable and the good ones so good.
Art is also an important part of delivery. Were "Herman" and "Mr. Boffo" to do the same joke, I'd find the "Mr. Boffo" version more amusing because the characters look better. Likewise with, say, "Blondie" and "Bloom County".
7) Jokes:
The real test of a strip is how good it is without a joke. Some of the best "Peanuts" strips aren't remotely funny. You'd be hard-pressed to find a real punchline in most "Little Nemo" or "Krazy Kat" strips.
8) Plot:
A good comic strip needs to be able to sustain a plot (Single-panel cartoons are an exception. I don't deal with single-panel cartoons when I can help it). It may be a coincidence, but I think that the numbers out there support me.
The draw of "Thimble Theatre" wasn't the jokes. The draw of "The Family Upstairs/The Dingbat Family" wasn't the jokes. The draw of "For Better or For Worse" isn't the jokes. The draw of "Little Nemo" wasn't the jokes. They all had enthralling plots. People wondered what would happen tomorrow/next week.
"Blondie" started out with a plot and has become a gag strip. It was a national event with Dagwood and Blondie got married. The only thing that's happened in that strip during my lifetime is Blondie getting a job.
"Luann" started out as a mediocre gag strip and developed a plot. It looks a lot better than it did ten years ago.
Way I see, it's like the difference between, say, a Henny Youngman routine and a Bob Newhart routine. People like Youngman or Walker or Browne or Young and Lebrun put in twice the effort for half the effect. I'd wager that most of you can remember a good Doonesbury series much more readily than you can remember any Beetle Bailey or Blondie from the last week.
Caveats: Plot isn't enough, mind you. There's a difference between 'ability to sustain a plot' and 'continuous use of only plots'. Most strips switch between gags and plot, and they're good like that.
9) Background:
This is a theory, but I think that the numbers back me up on this.
Syndicates want cartoons with jokes that can be understood by someone with no foreknowledge of the series. Peanuts, Beetle Bailey, Garfield and Cathy are good examples of this. All of the background that you need to understand an individual cartoon is contained in the cartoon.
Problem is, there's no real correlation between this and the quality of a cartoon. This can be a drawback at times. "Pogo" didn't have this, for instance. Some of my favourite online strips, like "Sluggy Online" or "Newshounds" don't always have this.
10) Syndicates:
You don't deserve to be syndicated.
Each year, more jobs open in the NBA than in major syndicates.
Despite what you hear, syndicates do not usually choose strips based on how many spin-off products they can sell. Only the most popular strips can successfully launch products on a large scale. The syndicates are overlooking the possibility of successful products on a small scale, though.
The rumours that syndicates will pressure you to make changes to your series appear to be just that. While they might suggest things, if these don't work out, they won't force you to use them.
If your goal is to try to beat the odds and make a lot of money, you ought to look for a syndicated job.
If your goal is to get exposure for your strip, then you should look into alternate means of delivery. The internet is one. Alternate print media is another.
If you do find an alternate means of delivery, remember what has been said about media. A book of comic strips is a different medium than the newspaper page. An internet site is a different medium than either of these.
In a four-year period, twenty times more Olympic medals are awarded than cartoonists are signed to major syndicates. (And that's not even counting the Winter Olypmics.)
Approximately twice as many people hit the jackpot in your local state lottery.
It appears that what syndicates want are poorly-drawn poorly-written interchangeable gag strips.
11) Methods of Distribution:
a) The Internet:
The internet has no marginal distribution cost and a relatively small
setup cost. You can easily set up an internet distribution site by
yourself.
Those are both advantages and disadvantages. Due to the mindblowingly huge amount of content, it is difficult to set your site apart from others. There are very few effective ways to inform people of your presence or, indeed, the presence of comic strips on the internet in general.
The internet has a large number of people on it, but these people do not appear to be concentrated.
Mr. Holbrook's cartoon, Kevin and Kell received a quarter million hits in February. With 5 strips/week, that averages to about 12,500 hits per day. Assuming that each hit represents a different reader, this is comparable to a medium-sized college paper. These are all voluntary readers, and there is a difference between people who read a strip voluntarily and people who read it because it happens to be there. I presently have no desire to explore this difference.
It does not seem possible at this moment for cartoonists to make any great deal of money from this medium.
Cartoon distribution via the internet can be a useful tool, but should not be considered an end in and of itself.
b) Newspapers:
I believe, though I haven't bothered researching it, that newspapers
are dying. This wouldn't be necessarily be reflected through a lowering
of circulation rates, but through a loss of quality and social relevance.
The closest analogue would be the decline of radio due to the invention
of television. Radio ownership didn't drop drastically. Radio
use dropped, but more important was the decline of radio to a medium dedicated
almost entirely to pre-recorded music. Radio became background noise.
I think that newspapers are doing much the same.
The most certain way to get your strip into a newspaper is to buy advertising space, put in your strip, and resell the remainder of the space. It is impossible to make money doing this.
12) Characters:
If you're going to have characters, make them appealing in some way. Give them personalities. That's a problem that a lot of strips face. There's a difference between character traits and personality. If you've got a large number of lines that could be delivered by more than one character, you've probably got a problem. The best way to show personality is through plots. This is the biggest problem that professional strips have.
Another problem I see is lack of character differentiation. A reader should instantly be able to tell any two characters apart, in terms of appearance, unless you've got two identical characters for a very good reason. Many amateur cartoonists don't go far enough in giving characters different personalities and wind up with a main cast of three clones-of-the-writer. This is acceptable in gag strips like B.C. or Frank & Ernest, but not in any strip where the cartoonist needs to create interest in the characters.
13) Switching:
Switching is what you call it when you take someone else's jokes, modify them and use them. There's a line between switching and plagiarism. Some gags and plots are more switchable than others.
Never, EVER switch a joke from Reader's Digest or Boys' Life.
14) Scale:
Making events happen on a really big scale doesn't make the series better. Comic strips can be small or large. "Saving the world" doesn't necessarily make a more exciting sequence than "trying to light a fire".
15) Tributes:
Doing a tribute/guest appearance/reference to another comic strip on
the internet is nice, but in my experience, it's usually done poorly.
I recommend that you make sure you've got a good joke to go along with
it, rather than just a mention of another strip, before you run it.
This page © 1999 Terrence Marks