But consider Mindmistress submitted to Marvel or DC—and they say, “the other identity is mentally challenged??? Too risky. Too possible to offend others”…..

They would turn Lorelei into someone who could just barely get through high school, or something.

I do superhero comics, though, because I rather like the genre, and why shouldn’t I do what I enjoy?

Which should be the motto of ANY webcomic.-

:) It was nice discussing with you, Mr. Holkan.

I guess I was asking earlier if the web is going to support people who want to tell a serious story. (Allow me to underline here, in no way do I think [nemesis] rates as serious literature… That’s not what I set out to do, and its current course definitely reflects that.) I freely admit that with that last rhetorical question, I reached a bit too hard for cutesy phrasing instead of something succinct.

At this point, I feel like I have little left to offer but a friendly shoulder shrug.

But I know that’s not what we’re arguing here. I’ve seen some not-funny-at-all superhero comics, and I lost interest in them because it takes so long for the story to have a point. I think that relates to the reason that superhero comics still work in print, it’s because you get a huge chunk right there, and you don’t have to have a cliffhanger every day, which is something I struggle with in my own comic. (Either having a cliffhanger every day or a joke every day.)

To tell a joke that’s good and quick, you need only the setup, the development, and the punchline. The characters involved need only their surface personalities, and the settting need only be basic (a zoo, for example). The entire strip is read in about 13 seconds, and the laugh is had. This isn’t to say that the humor strip is simple to do and requires no effort, or that it is cheap in any way. But I’m willing to say that overall, there is less time that needs to be spent

Drama involves a lot more elements than humor in a single story. With the characters, you have to deal with not only with surface personalities, but character history, internal monologues, character interaction and tension, etc. The setting is usually more involved, especially with time as an important factor, because drama involves a set of events that take place in a sequence (where the humor strip can be totally non-sequitor every day). Also, when you’re crafting an installment in a dramatic arc, you have to think about how each episode affects future episodes. In humor, continuity needs not be an issue.

The key difference in where the difficulties lie in Comedy and Drama, in my mind, are that Comedy is hard because you have to think of a great many individual self-contained ideas and in Drama you have to work and work and invest in a single united idea. Neither one is better than the other, just different approaches.

It’s definitely harder to support a straight drama on the internet, because of the very nature of the fast-paced internet. The average joe internet user is surfing at the speed of light, and usually wouldn’t be interested in spending that long on a comic, humor or otherwise.

And to me, if an artist wants to be taken seriously, they just need to act like a professional.

I’ve had the argument placed before me that comedy is inherently easier than drama, since comedy is afforded so many more tools with which to work than is drama. I’m not sure I buy that line though, since it sure seems that either a person is funny or they’re not. I’ve seen too many comedians say that it just seems that people can’t learn to be funny. That means that if both are true, then comedy is easier for those with the knack and impossible for the rest of us. Bleagh. Tangent.

A Superhero comic that is well-written and competently drawn should be able to build a following though, right? It can’t be that the only reason people read comics from the big houses is that the characters are recognizable, otherwise the characters could never have gotten off the ground. Although maybe there’s a kind of critical mass that has to gather before a character like that can really take off. Maybe people have to become familiar enough with the character that it can really begin to resonate with a broader spectrum of people. Was it the third Harry Potter novel where the character really began to gain public notice and waves of preteens began to wash over the bookstore with each new installment?

I think the predominance of humor in webcomics is definitely a topic worth exploring in greater depth, partly to see what else the audience might be able to support. How many webcomics are there thhat are primarily drama oriented, with little to no humor at all? How successful are they? Can the audience support something like that long term, or will it remain a “pet project” for that artist? If a webcomic artist wants to be taken seriously, does that artist necessarily have to be a joker?

And you’re right, I hadn’t thought about the fact that not everyone likes superhero comics. WHOA. I do find it surprising that so many people who clearly take inspiration from superhero comics don’t do something more along those lines, and I maintain that it’s possible that these already established artists are not interested in ‘competing’ (though you could hardly call it that) in an already flooded market. I also think that, as I (probably?) said earlier, people identify more with familiar characters than the superhero genre in particular.

I’d also like to revisit a point I see you made in an earlier post. Humor comics vastly outnumber serious ones, and there are very few webcomics that don’t have an element of humor to them, which is something that superhero comics don’t as often have. The comics that I’ve read that are clearly directly inspired by superhero comics and very serious about this don’t interest me nearly as much as the superhero comics I do read, partly because I don’t recognize their characters.

Also I don’t really know where I’m going here.

Part of the vitality the alternative comics scene from the 60’s is indeed derived from the cultural space inhabited by comics and comic strips. Part of what made those strips so subversive was the publicly held notion that comics and comic strips were the domain of children. Possibly what drove some of the artists was a response to the overabundance of superhero works, but I know that in the case of Robert Crumb, the evidence I’ve seen seems to point to that probably not being the case. It seems that the work of Robert Crumb is most probably an extension of the comics he and older brother Charles made as children. (which had more to do with Scrooge McDuck and Bugs Bunny comics than superheroes) Was it really a backlash against the comics code? Most of those people producing underground comix in that time period didn’t work at the major houses. Most of them weren’t interested either. (Well, maybe if a decent paycheck was attached. You can eat Art, but while paper provides fiber, the ink can lead to tummyaches.)

You might be able to make a case for some of the work of Harvey Kurtzman and Will Elder being a reaction to the code (See “Little Annie Fannie”), but some of that work was done for hire for specific clients. (See “Little Annie Fannie” in Playboy…)

On top of that, alternative comics icon Spain had a superheroic character that deliberately used the motifs and concepts found in supehero stories to a subversive end. I don’t think the alt comics scene of way back when was necessarily a response to superhero comics as much as it was a response to a culture war. The cultural attitude towards comics gave that work much of its power.

In the rest of the world, Superhero stories make up a much smaller percentage of the market than in the US. The genre of the Superhero is not to be confused with power fantasies or sci-fi. The latter two are very well represented abroad. I’m reasonably sure that the lack of superhero stories in the world of webcomics is less a reaction than it is a reflection of a more diverse audience’s tastes.

There are too many people doing too many different things to say that so few webcomics about superheroes is just a reaction to the over saturation of the genre in print. I mean, isn’t that kind of a disservice to the people producing work? I realize this isn’t your point, but it could be read as, “You’re not producing a superhero comic because it’s too hard to get noticed in that field.” (Which is advice some well meaning buffoon gave me once. I ignored him, obviously.)

And I too could be talking out of my rear. I am reasonably sure there’s documented evidence of my having done so in the past, and I know for certain that there is a cadre of willing witnesses ready to testify as to the extent of my offenses in the past.