The first thing that catches your attention on a comic is the art. The mind is constantly capturing everything your eyes see but will usually just filters it away, but when it sees something out of the ordinary, in this case, good artwork, it focuses on it. The art is way more 'catchy' than words, even though it's usually easier to express ideas by words than with art. Just think about it, why does all the advertisements have pictures?



After getting interested in a comic by its cover/artwork, I usually read the description, which is what actually decides if i wanna start reading it or not. A short catchy description is the best. A new idea, problem, or something that you can somehow relate to and/or want to find out more about - this includes your interests. For example:

A good description:

Jack Smith, ex-mafia member , is trying to live as a normal citizen but is always hunted down by criminal organizations. Will he be able to keep his identity hidden from his family?

A bad description would be:

This comic follows Jack Smith and his oblivious family through struggles he has with different criminal organizations because he used to be a mafia member, and his family doesn't know about it.

The information given is the same, but the first one challenges the reader to find out more and relates directly to the readers life (in this case: we all have secrets we don't want others to know but many times pass through situations where it's at risk to be exposed). The first description takes the reader one step into the comic directly, while the second description talks about the comic as if from a distance.



Now, moving to the actual storyline. The storyline shouldn't be too slow that the reader gets bored, too fast when the reader can't keep up with what's happening, too hard to understand, nor too easy so you always know before what is going to happen. More than that, I think the storyline is up to everyone's taste and interests. For me it doesn't really matter if it's action, adventure, thriller, mystery, comedy, drama... But it should strictly hold to its purpose. I mean, a action comic should have a lot of action where you can follow and know what is happening. If I start reading a comic where you can't see who is hitting who, or with too many things going on at the same time, I stop reading it. Thriller should really thrill you :), meaning that it shouldn't be too obvious what is going to happen. Mystery, this is my favorite and hardest to do, it should be well thought, a problem that should be hard for the reader to find out, and as the story advances and you think you finally know what the answer is, it totally flips over :O

About comedy comics (Yea I made it into a new paragraph because many people do this), I must say that I don't like most of the humor comic. They always have the same jokes and you easily get tired of them. It was funny at first, but now they are overused. In my opinion a comedy comic should have deep thought jokes and not simply characters screaming and running around, if you know what I mean. Also, comedy comics aren't the type to best fit a good storyline, so if you get tired of the jokes, or they simply aren't funny, the whole comic loses your interest, though there are some exceptions.

In short, I'm not saying that artwork (and the description) is the thing that makes your comic a good comic, but it really is the best way to catch the readers attention at first, the storyline comes in later.

Thanks for reading :spin:

There's already a stickied topic for this. You could repost this there.

Look at the sticky here then see this thread:
http://www.drunkduck.com/community/view_topic.php?tid=39168&cid=234

The answers vary but many have the same idea.