I haven't gotten a lot of hatemail about my comic so far. However, I sometimes hear of other adult comics artists getting lots of them. I always thought that my disclaimer was what was keeping the hatemail out, but those other adult comics also have disclaimers on them.

Once in a while I will get hatemail, and it can get pretty bad. All the flaming, the insults, the religious comments, etc... It's pretty saddening sometimes. This is after I made sure my disclaimer was in very large letters, and I also made sure the comic can't be seen (in the normal screen resolution of 1024x768) unless you scroll down.

So do they work? Do they really keep everyone who doesn't like reading "adult" comics from reading them?

Since no true adult would ever send hate mail, this question answers itself.

I have to admit, I really dislike getting hate mail.

I think the disclaimer probably encourages kids to read adult material. I remember being 12 or 13 and telling my mom to never buy me a cd that didn't have the parental guidance logo on it.

Let's see... It's categorized as "A" and therefore only people logged in and of a certain age can view it. People who are adults and choose to look at "A" rated comics should simply expect graphic stuff. You add the disclaimer on top of that (which is actually unnecessary, IMO), and no one has any right to complain. If kids are looking at it, they lied about their age when signing up and so probably just want to look at "naughty stuff" to begin with.

course it doesn't work, im sure there's plenty of 12 year olds out there who come here just for the adult comicsss. people are gonna hate regardless of how many disclaimers you have.

I'd say they don't work, simply because I would be checking out the adult comics if I was 12. :-)

It's true there's no way to keep underage readers out. I guess it's also true that no adult who sees the disclaimer would proceed to read the comic if they're offended by the content. So I guess the people who send hate mail because they are offended are not of the age to read it but still do it anyway?

People who send hatemail have too much time on their hands. If there's a disclaimer up, they have no excuse for reading a comic with potentially offensive content and are clearly morons who just like to complain. I don't generally want to read comics with heavy explicit content...so I don't click on them! It's not rocket science.
The only circumstance in which it'd be okay to complain would be if the comic was rated too young for its content and/or lacked any content warning, or was advertised in a way that appeared to be being aimed at kids. If you're not doing any of these, then don't worry, you're not doing anything wrong, some people are just idiots.

Harassing users at DD because of the content of their comics or for any other reason is unacceptable. If this happens to you and you know who did it, (especially if it was through a PQ), send a separate PQ to either myself or one of the other admins detailing the harassment and we will deal with it.

We take a VERY dim view of personal attacks on users here at DD.