At the risk of sticking my neck out and getting it chopped off again (I am not 'univeral' when it comes to voicing ideas in the forums--mine tend to come back and bite me where I least expect it--or totally get ignored...which is a defining characteristic of lack of 'universality'!!!) I am going to ask a question. What gives a story (ie: comic) universal appeal? Here on DD I have a plethora of comic story choices...many of which are outstanding in art and or story--yet fail to grab my attention. Others have wierd or amaturish artwork or story, yet they appear to catch huge numbers of comments and or popularity and even my own attention!

I myself, tend to enjoy my own work (I wouldn't create it if I didn't) yet either I or my work appears to lack some universality. I am not complaining because the readers I have have become friends I enjoy, but I just wonder how I could improve what I do to make it more universal.

What things stand out in certain comics (story and or art) that are intangible but so necessary or notice-worthy. I'm just passing the hat here, because I'd like to improve my work and maybe help some other crafters as well.

I don't believe the content or style of a comic has anythng to do with it having a "universal" appeal. There are certain comics that seem to tap into a ready-made audience (manga-styled yuri/yaoi comics, for example) but, whilst they seem to predominate elsewhere (notably at SmackJeeves) I wouldn't say their appeal is particularly "universal" here at DD. One of the nice things about this site is the variety of comics that people seem to enjoy.

There have been a number of threads here about how best to promote your comic/build an audience (and I'm sure some public-spirited DD-er will post a link to one eventually!) In general, however, having a great story, sympathetic characters and great art will help, as will heavy promotion of your comic. But nothing is fool-proof and luck still plays a huge part in determining which comics gain huge audiences and which languish in relative obscurity.

The best thing is to make the comic you want to make. If others happen to like it, too, consider that a bonus. If they don't, at least you'll have had the satisfaction of making something you like, rather than something someone else might like.

DAJB pretty much said what I was going to, so yeah, I totally agree there.

@DAJB--

Perhaps my posulation was faulty...I guess what I was refering to by 'appeal' was more intangible than style or promotion. Case in point; the pre/post Claremont X-Men. Nothing changed. The style, even the artist stayed the same...but the comic changed totally. The stories before Chris Claremont took over were the basic comic fare, and to some point were desultory and uninteresting. The very issue Chris took the helm--even though the story line was a continuing one--the story had flash and spark and was appealing. What did he do? Same with Frank Miller on Daredevil...and others!
What is that 'spark'? How can mere words of text in a balloon convey such a huge change? How can I develop that as a writer? Or am I doomed to be a mediocre comic creator forever reaching for greatness!?! LOL.

The reason I ask is, I've written and self published a novel--which I have reread a dozen times because the story really 'appeals' to ME. Sadly, no one else seems to find it engaging. I'm just trying to figure out what makes a book appealling and readible. Incidently, the book was professionally edited and proofed--so it's not that!

If this is the path you're following, you're not "doomed" to anything. Just be persistent on your goal, and if you ever feel like you've reached what you were going for, set the bar a bit higher.

Reading your post, I think you've just reached the point where you've been traveling the road without seeing any fruits of your labor, and you're just getting frustrated and wondering if maybe all this time, you've just been doing something wrong - maybe there really IS a "secret to success" all of those stupid Hollywood documentaries and interviews write about, and if you could just find it you'll attain instant success. And don't worry, this also doesn't mean you're getting lazy or anything, this is just a dilemma we all face. At times like this, I find it helpful to look back at the progress I've made so far - the friends I've made, my progress, any critical acclaim I may have reached, even if it's just from some random stranger instead of, say, Wizard or Time Magazine - and to sometimes do other things to rest my mind up and come back to it later, charged up and ready to do it, once again, simply because I want to.

Trust me, though, so long as you keep at it, progress is progress and it can't be undone by anyone but yourself.

@HAPOPPO

I'm far from discouraged. I love the comic book work that I do...I have a lot of fun doing it. I truly enjoy the people who read and comment on my book--they have become friends in a real sense. But in that relationship between creator and reader there is this 'responsibility' that I feel upon myself to get better, to provide a more engaging environment--and frankly--I really do WANT to write as good as Chris Claremont, or David Weber, or Lois McMaster Bujold.

This is why I am frustrated with platitudes as opposed to hard assessments. In Art one can define the 'spark' that set Botticelli from lesser talents. Your eye can see it and assess it. In writing this 'spark' is somehow defined as a 'quality' but there seems to be no way to quantify it. We sense it is there, which is why some comic books here can shoot to the top of the list in a few pages and others do not. I simply wish to define and perhaps quantify this 'quality' so I can seek to use it with my own writing...

I WANT to please my readers, and grow in my art. Don't you?

It's called advertising. Try all you want to improve your comic, stay up till' 3a.m., bookmarks hundreds of art sites, take a writing course, etc none of it matters if they can't find your comic. Your readers will not come to you, nobody is special like that. So Ipokino if your problem is low recognition then yeah you're doing something wrong you're not getting your comic in places for people to see. Having a popular comic doesn't mean it's got to have good art or story.

Don't get me wrong though wanting to improve your art/writing is wonderful; it keeps readers in the long run. But if popularity is what your after then realize the 'work hard and they'd come to u sugoi ^_^' is a myth.

I completely agree with Skullbie.
I don't think your problem has anything to with lacking something in story or art.
To me your comic looks really cool and I look forward to reading it, but only because you brought it to my attention.
See how that works?

If no one knows of your comic, no one is going to come and find it.
So put it out there, make some noise and get some attention.

If you still think you have a problem with story, then get some great books on writting and character development.

Trust me Skullbie--I wrote chapter and verse on the requirements for advancing in a closed ranking system. But thats not really me--I'm not that mercenary or out for personal recognition--I just want to write and create stories people really take a shine to...

I'm thinking this is going to be a personal search...but I was hoping someone else might have taken the journey a bit and had a few pointers I hadn't thought of...

I'm afraid we're probably all on different roads. If you write the kind of story *you* like, then you will have a good story. Your audience will come if they can find you and will stay if they enjoy the same kind of story you like.

Btw, I actually have a good audience myself, oddly enough. I couldn't say why because I really have no talent for art. I've been told I have interesting/dynamic characters and good twists, so I guess a story can carry itself. I did make sure I got on lists and links pages, because I wanted people to be able to find it. But I couldn't tell you why they stay. I guess you have to just write (and/or draw) in a way that makes people always want to read more. (So, maybe a bit of unpredictability and mystery helps?)

You know, I've pondered this a hundred times times a hundred times over in the many years that I've been working on comics (going on like.. ten now.) And the success vs such threshold as to what appeals and what doesn't.

I know for a fact you can have EVERYTHING going in your favor, but if you are missing that.. special spark, that special something that seems to create a 'hit', you'll never quite get there and sometimes it takes a really hard, critical and analytical look at your stuff to see 'what the heck is wrong with it?'

After taking a lot of lumps and enduring a lot of critical beatings, here's what I've concluded.

1)Considering your audience vs subject matter and how to maximize 'hooks'.
Depending on your genre, there will be more of an 'audience' present than others. Some genres just don't have HUGE built-in appeal. Some people just don't care for some genres. Hard Science fiction for example tends to have a less broad base than high fantasy. There are some that are just a very very hard sell, no matter how you put it out there. Success can be had, but degree of success compared to other genres may vary. You can build an audience, but you have to really look at the story for how many 'hooks' its got to bring in people who might not be interested in the overall basis of the book/comic. The genre might determine how much work advertising you have to do to get people to come and read it, but ultimately if the story is accessible enough, the genre shouldn't matter, which brings me to the next point.

2)Make your story accessible
For people to enjoy your story, they have to understand several aspects of it immediately. People tend to gravitate towards stuff they are familiar with which is why people tend to enjoy certain genres and really don't like when people botch them up too much from their expectations. People enjoy novelty as well, but to a point. When its REALLY whacked out or has insufficient context that has been presented, they don't like it. Your story has to be both easy to grasp immediately for the 'less astute' readers, and have enough depth to capture the imagination of those who like the 'deeper story'. As much as this sounds bad, people don't really like to think. They like to be entertained. Thus, a story that is to have a broad appeal has to be both entertaining and relatively simple to comprehend, while still having a message. You should be able to summarize your story concept in a single word or short sentence. This helps keep on track. Its also very important to keep a tight focus on your plot to keep the story as accessible as possible, and if necessary break the main plot into several sub plots or short stories to ensure that people don't get bored waiting for you to get to the point. Pacing is also very important to make sure you provide a balance of story/action ratio.

In existing stories this can really be hard, given that they are already written, but this is where some tough editor love comes in to pull out the boring pointless parts (that you might really like, but other people feel are boring and pointless), look for confusing parts and reworking them, tightening up action sequences, pointing out continuity problems and generally smoothing out the pace to the proper curve for the type of story.

Also in the lines of accessibility, language you use shouldn't require a thesaurus to read it. Most people, honestly, don't speak English very well. To communicate with these people, you need to keep your language as accessible as possible. Keep your dialogue short and punchy, and in a comic's case SHOW as much as you can via the visual medium. Don't have your characters describe things. Show, don't tell. Info dumping or long ass explanations, should be avoided as much as possible

3)Engaging through character design
One of the main ways you connect to your readers is through the characters of the story. People like to identify with the main or supporting characters. They want to see aspects of themselves in them, they want to be able to identify with their problems, their hopes, their dreams. Its important that you take the time to REALLY flesh out your characters into people. They need to have problems, they need to be flawed, they need to suffer, they need to grow, and they need to triumph. There are character archetypes that people tend to click into better than others, but ultimately the character has to start out flawed, and work towards overcoming the flaw. If you find that people aren't rooting for your main character, then you might need to really look at your character design. If your character is too plain, too powerful, too perfect, too bland, or too much outside the realm of believable, people will dislike him and thus lose interest.

For comics, this takes on an especially visual twist as they character not only has to be personality appealing, but now visually appealing as well. Great care should be taken in the design of a main character. A good way to tell if your character is 'unique' enough as a main charater is to put the design through the 'cosplay' challenge. If someone dressed up as your main character at a convention, would you be able to tell them apart? Even in a shitty costume? What are the KEY visual elements of your character?

4)Hooking, satisfaction, and re-hooking
A lot of moving people through a story involves hooking their interest, satisfying their curiosity and re-hooking them. A good story is a page turner, with new gratification and frustration on every page. These hooks are very simple, they are questions and answers. You get the reader to ask a question such as "is he going to succeed?" or "Who's this guy?" or "Did they get through the trap?" They are very simple, immediate questions that people want to know the burning answer to. The trick is in the order and way you ask them. For comics, to be a page turner, you want it to go "answer, question". You provide an answer at the top of a page, and ask a question, which will be answered.. on the next page! This keeps people engaged and reading. Now the questions get bigger the more you 'zoom out' on the over all plot, and you should answer all the questions you pose for a story by the end of it, but you should always keep a big open ended question for the overplot to keep people engaged. Like a little reminder 'oh hey this is part of a bigger picture', but never overwhelm people with the epicness of a story, its a sure fire way to lose interest fast.

5)Plot and Pacing
Even the greatest stories ever told could probably have been ruined by bad pacing, and without a plot even the most wonderful pace would become very boring after a time. The plot is really a very simple thing. Take a problem a character has, and work them through to its ultimate resolution. That's what a plot is in a nutshell. What's the hard part is sorting out the information that needs to be presented and what doesn't need to be presented and in what order to make it easy for the reader to understand the resolution the character will ultimately come to. Even if you think you have a pretty good balance of action vs infodump vs conflict vs romance or whatever elements you have chosen to incorporate, there is always the chance you might have gone too fast over some elements or spent too much time over others, or maybe you turned a corner in the plot without giving enough context before it happened. Perhaps a battle drug out too long? We've all seen a move or two with pacing problems, and its much the same thing in a story or comic. Sometimes reworking the pacing or order of resolution can really help make the story more readable, which is ultimately what garners attention.

6)Conflict
People like a solid, black and white conflict for the most part. They want to know who they should be rooting for and who they should be booing. There has to be good, strong conflict in a story for the 'most' people to grasp who's 'good' and who's 'bad. Without this conflict is hard for people to orient on the different factions. Even if the writer doesn't want to do a good vs bad thing, there has to be clear who is the main character and what is his antagonistic force. Who is opposing the main character, and this has to be pretty dead obvious right from the beginning. People don't tend like it well when the big baddies are really vague and never directly addressed (unless they are like.. gods or something). If you have to work through agents of the 'big bad', then make them very strong villains, and focus on them until they are dead or no longer an antagonist and only hint at their master. Don't focus on the big bad until you are really ready to use it. Otherwise, people are like 'so.. where is he/she/it?' through the whole story, waiting for you to get to the point. If people don't see a strong conflict they can get into, they will probably get bored and leave.

7)Action
This is a big part of your 'entertainment' value comes in. The story will keep people coming back, but this makes people excited to see visually someone get their face stomped in, and gives you a real venue to showcase your character's special abilities. Talking and doing regular things gets really boring after a while, but on the same token fighting and constantly blowing stuff up gets boring after a while. You can't neglect action, but if people are finding that things are just too story heavy, perhaps you don't have enough action conflict and should examine where you could use an action conflict to convey a story idea as opposed to talking about it or working in through.

8)Humor & references
Most stories need some kind of humor. Be it a dark humor or a campy humor or a situational humor. There needs to be comedic relief. Even if a person isn't very good at writing them. The most popular stories are ones people can laugh at and have a good time reading. People like feeling good in general, and its one of the widest, broadest things you can do to appeal to a larger audience. Make with the funny. Of course it has to be appropriately done in the context of a story, but its important. Its important to note that using genre based or 'injoke' humor has a very limited appeal, and should try to be avoided unless that is the sort of comic you are running. Too many references and injokes to things like popular culture may actually alienate readers who are not familiar with them. If they are included, its important to package them with more generic humor that could be understood by people unfamiliar with the reference. A story that is too dark or too devoid of any sort of humor will generally draw less of an audience than those that do include it.

9)Romance
People like to see people fall in love or have relationships of some kind, even platonic ones. Relationships is something people highly identify with, and provide a lot of character tension, and interplay that is important to intriguing readers who look for this sort of action in a story. Most characters have a love interest or potential love interests that people like to watch the interplay between. This is a very easy to add element in a story that really does appeal to a broad audience. However, at the same time, its like a spice. You need to use it carefully and sparingly at times when you need a little more kick and ease off. Too much, and it can become overpowering and turn things to crap quickly.

10)Remember who you are writing for and what medium
Writing for yourself and writing for a commercial audience are two different things. Very different things. If you happen to hit upon something doing stuff for yourself that everyone likes, power to you, but chances are, that's not going to happen. As well as the medium for your storytelling is going to make a big difference in who that audience is, their age, their literacy, their attention span, and their expectations. Writing a novel is very different than writing for a comic, and you are expecting very different things. Its like trying to adapt a book to a screenplay. Its like two totally different kettles of fish. You can't tell the same story in the same depth with a comic, you simply don't have the space so the editing has to be such that its really punchy and every single panel is completely relevant to the plot and forwarding of the plot. Details are sacrificed for the sake of clarity and pacing. Sometimes things that may not have been in the original novel have to be added to aid the audience in understanding areas that may have required more detail but are extremely relevant to the overall plot. Its quite a challenge to adapt things to different mediums.


I personally had to go through this process with my comic Shifters. I had a lot of things going for me when I started. It was at the beginning of webcomics, I did, at one time, update regularly, I wasn't the greatest artist, but I was acceptable for the time, and I got hooked in with the communities and mediums of advertising and yet.. I could still only get so far. And after a lot of hard knocks, bitch slapping and general self analysis, I realized a lot of my problems in the story were related to the writing, the characters, the numbers of characters, the pacing and presentation of the plot. Also, context was lacking in the visuals as well as the story. There were larger jerky parts that actually pulled the story so far out of the realm of the believable that it was too much for people to swallow.
The idea of the story itself even needed a little refinement, and as I took a deeper look and got the feedback from various sources, I could see the problems. I went and did a ton of research on writing plots, and how to follow through and character development, especially villains. I realized I had to really go back and focus on the main character, her problems and her character. I had to rework her to be more interesting of a person, a better visual design, and design the story to really support her conflict and streamline it, making it easy to follow and understand, and then work on massaging in subplots and extra elements to add interest. But I couldn't save what I had, I had to re-write from scratch to make it work it was so damaged.

I took what I had learned about writing and applied it to the beginning to Brymstone. I also used a genre that's more appealing (fantasy), and got a really strong personality for the main character, created the love interest and conflict in the same blow, and began to write it as a narrative, so people could easily follow and identify the main character. Although he's something of an anti-hero, people love his extreme personality. He's powerful, but he's a cocky bastard, he's got his problems. I started the story in an interesting place that gave enough context and background that set readers up for the story portion with enough to have hooked and rehooked them a couple of times to be interested enough to keep coming back. I'd say, over all, my second attempt was way better than my first because I REALLY looked at what I was doing in a commercial context as well as in what I wanted to write, so I could please both my audience and myself.

I hope that helps you, I'm sure I haven't hit on the golden goose yet, but going through the process of really looking at what makes something more successful than others helped me improve on my next attempt and salvage my previous one.

While ShadowsMyst said alot of valid points, I don't think that there is such a thing as a "universal" comic.

Everyone has different interests. There are those who will always like your comic and those who will always hate it.

For example, there are people who will always gravitate to angst (I'm one of such people. If you read my comics angst is the cliche in all of them). To them it is entertaining watching some guy (or gal) stumble around as they monologue about how bad life is, whether it is illusory or a "reality" as far as the character is concerned. To others, it is damn annoying.

Aside from the topic of the comic, I believe art style is also a factor. No matter how good or bad your story is, people tend to get turned off by the art style. Some people prefer manga, some prefer realistic, some prefer sprite, etc.

Honestly, I think this is pretty much the same question. The "spark" is going to be different for every reader. Some people consider Dickens one of the greatest novelists of all time. Others find his work dreary and a chore to plough through. Some people like the Harry Potter books and consider Rowling's story-lines sophisticated enough to engage even adult readers. Others find them nothing more than mildly entertaining children's books.

If mass appeal is your main reason for writing, you might as well ignore what you want to write, look at what's selling today and try your hand at some trite, formulaic fiction. However, if you're looking to write something you can feel proud of (and it seems you are), then you need to ignore what seems to be "sparking" with mass audiences at the moment and write to please yourself.

In either case, there's still no guarantee that you'll find the kind of huge readership enjoyed by the best sellers. Luck will always play a major part in the success of any artistic endeavour, including comics and novels. The Da Vinci Code, for example, has an intriguing premise but is very poorly written. Dan Brown just struck lucky and, despite its shortcomings, the book became an international phenomenon. Conversely, there are any number of beautifully written novels out there which never make it beyond the publishers' slush piles.

I'd still say, therefore, you should continue writing to please yourself. If you strike lucky, that's a bonus. And - if you don't - at least you'll have work that you enjoy, rather than a failed attempt to find someone else's audience.

@ShadowsMyst---Excellent! Exactly what I was looking for--a well thought out breakdown.

I'm fairly intelligent (I think--but then, everyone says that right?) but when it comes to analysis, I tend to not be able to see the forest for the trees. I hope you don't mind, but I copied out your thesis and am hanging on to it. I saw right away several points that I can use immediately!

Thank you. This is going to be a big help!

ShadowsMyst had some good suggestions.

Aside from that, I have to concur that getting folks to know about your comic is probably the best way to gain an audience.

And you have to figure NOTHING is for everybody. Not matter what you do, there will always be a percentage of folks who just aren't interested. Keep the comic in peoples eyes, and focus on the people that ARE interested.

If someone comes and reads my comic, and says "Thats not my bag," there's really not much I can do for them. But if someone reads my comic and DOES like it.... well, there's a lot I can do for them. Its like fishing... throw out your line... you'll get a lot of nibbles, but when you get a bite, you need to reel it in! Just remember two things, nibbles are part of the game, and you can't catch any fish without throwing out your line.

Shadowsmyst that was frickkin' awesome.

Eh, it's hard to say. Personally, I don't really think there is such a thing. Every comic has it's enemies and there's always going to be a group of people who find it either insulting or bad.

But, heck, I don't really know much about such a subject.

As far as making a comic more popular... umm... I would just say work with it and wait until the audience you're looking for (or even not looking for) finds it.

Two words: Sex. Violence.
These two things are what makes stories universal. All good stories have them. In fact, almost all story or plot elements derive from them. A little list to show the example:
Violence
Betrayal
Revenge
Murder mystery
Execution or karmic justice
War
Assassination
Violent redemption
Sex
Romance
Romantic comedy
Lust
Love lost
Cursed or doomed love
Porn

It'd be hard to name a story that didn't have at least one of these.
Well, children's stories sure, but non-children stories? I'm telling you, sex and violence.