How can we save web-comics?

In terms of media, web-comics are a generally fledgling form of entertainment, just about a little more than a decade. And yet, it feels like we've all-ready reached the tipping point in terms of quality. Most web-comics nowadays start out as okay pop-culture comice, but then turn into basic soap-operas witha few references to geek culture thrown in. And I don't mean like "Brent and Miranda" level drama, I mean real straight up depressing ass drama. Do you know how many rape-story-lines I've read in web-comics? Two. That is two too many for comics that make fun of pop-culture.

Some refer to this as an instance of Cerebus syndrome, but I have READ Cerebus the Aardvark. When Cerebus got serious, it became a kick-ass satire on numerous subjects. When web-comics get serious, they turn into All my General Days of our lives....with video game references. Anyone whose read a web-comic knows how Satan-damned dramatic they can get and it's rediculous.

And so, the question at the top of this blog entry asks, what can we do to save web-comics? Well pretty much nothing with web-comics that are still in circulation. Famous web-comic authors are complete divas who never listen to their audience*COUGH-PvP-COUGH*. But for those of us who plan on making web-comics of our own, here's a short list of dos and do-nots:

1.) No break-up story-lines between recurring protagonists: It's depressing, nobody likes it, and it's completely pointless seeing how any idiot knows that they're going to get back together within a freaking year. The only comic that could pull this off was PvP, and even then it felt superfluos. A certain addendum to this, don't make characters in your comic be love-interests based on your girl-friend. The break-up get's twice as awkard when you realize this really happened.

2.)Good transition: If your comic ever has an epic adventure style story-arc, don't just instantly go back to normal stuff after that story is finished. It never transitions well, once you start with an awesome adventure style story you can't go back. Like how Walky followed "It's Walky" an amazing sci-fi epic with "Shortpacked" which is basically Multiplex but with a gay main-character(because that makes up for being completely borin). And don't get me STARTED on GPF. Remember GPF? Of couse you don't, and for good reason! After that awesome cross dimensional story-line, it instantly went back to silly office humor. NOooooooooooooooo. NO! You do not go from kick-ass sci-fi adventure to office humor! I want more alien fights! Another example of bad transition would be Dominic Deegan: Oracle for hire. Dramatic story-lines,puns,dramatic story-lines, puns-DO YOU SEE WHAT I'M GETTING AT HERE! You can't just go instantly back into humor after having a dramatic story, it's just annoying and makes the audience feel like you don't take them seriously.

3.) NO REBOOTS: They are a complete cock-tease to your audience, & most of the time they don't even need a reboot. Reboots show uncertainty in a writer and the audience loses faith in them after-words. Remember how much controversy Crisis on Infinite Earths caused? THEN DON'T REBOOT!

4.) Humor trumps relevancy: This applys to most pop-culture comics. Don't worry about how relevant the comic is in terms of pop-culture, just make sure that it is funny. The best example of this would be Penny-arcade, whose jokes knowadays are really fifty-fifty. They end up making a lot of jokes that don't bring that much laughs. Most of the punc-lines are way too obvious and not funny at all:


Did you get the punch-line? It's a happy ending! It's not so much laugh out loud joke more as much as an "Oh, I get it" joke that you don't laugh at. Not that funny, but because it's making fun of a viddeo game people will like it on face-book anyway. I don't mean to insult Tycho and Gabe, but their substance relies more on pop-culture rather than basic joke-telling.

5.) Strong female characters who aren't emotionally scarred: In the scope of fiction, strong female characters are hard to come by. In Doug Walker the Nostalgia Critic's review of Patch Adams he told how the nineties had a way of writing women. They would usually be tough on the out-side but on the inside turn out to be soft vulnerable messes who only act strong and tough because a man made them that way; and this has translated into modern media today. The comic "Questionable Content" comes to mind. The character Faye for the most part seems to be a strong independent female character at first who seems generally all-right. However the only reason she acts this way is to cover up her depression from her father shot himself in the face in front of her. What-the-FUCK! This is beyond sexist, this is just terrible writing all together. This also happens in the web-comic Dominic Deegan with the character Melna the orc. In her first appearance, she is seen as kick-ass feminist who hates sexism. As it turns out, she's an alcoholic emotionally scarred rape victim. I fucking hate web-comics some-times. It's not even her tragic past that bothers me, but the fact that this and many other media implies that feminist are just girls who got screwed over by some guy and only act this way out of a psychological defense mechanism! Whether your writing a web-comic, or anything else, don't do this cliche.

6.) No filler: Nobody likes filler in web-comics. This includes pages of female characters in swim-suits or lingerie, comics explaining why the comic hasn't updated in forever, and copy-pasta. Guest-comics are okay though. If this were a professional grade comic than maybe it'd be okay but seeing as how the average update schedule for web-comics is only three times a week, it's best you don't keep you damn audience waiting. And don't you DARE even say "Well I'm not being payed for this, so I can post whatever I want!" Fuck, you. Fuck you times infinity. When you make a product, you give people standards as to what to bring out. If you think that when your not meeting those standards the right thing to do is to insult your audience than you are an idiot. If you want people to buy your stupid product, then don't waster our time.

Well, that's all my opinions on web-comics in general that I can think of right now. Agree or disagree as much as you want. Thanks for readin' anyway.