'C' is for Childhood icons, that's good enough for me...

[That guy]

Good thing I wasn't talking about you, but of a general trend. Otherwise, I might have quoted and responded to a specific passage. UH OH!

Well, given how judgemental you can be sometimes, I couldn't help but assume you were insulting me. In any case, I apologize for misinterpreting your comment.

Wow. So thinly veiled, both of you. I'd hardly realized you were catting at each other at all. Now, either put up in vaudevillian fisticuffs or knock it off.

Personally, my goal is to have more 'things people can identify with from their own lives' than 'specific references to our own lives'. I.E. the feeling of frustration when the person you're trying to hit on has a very different default 'hitting on people' style than you do and it's just confusing, rather than, say, I don't know, referencing When Harry Met Sally. But that's just me.

I guess that's fair - and I definitely try to bring out emotions and situations people can can be empathetic to, but some times the feeling you want is that childlike pulse you got when you had a full bowl of fruit-loops and 2-hours worth of cartoons to eat it in.
[OBNOXIOUS INTELLECTUAL ANALYSIS OF SIMPLE COMEDY]
Muppets, for me, can be symbolic of the innocence and sillyness of youth. When portrayed in a more real-life situation, there's a juxtaposition of subject and attitude. It's a way to reflect the conflict between the way you used to or want to see the world and the way it really seems to you now.
[/OBNOXIOUS INTELLECTUAL ANALYSIS OF SIMPLE COMEDY]

[RobertBlake]

While you sometimes have to really look for pop culture references in my comic, some are blatantly obvious, and usually visual. Some references I've made:

Batman
Transformers
Teen Titans
FoxTrot
Star Wars
Sonic the Hedgehog
Rocky Horror Picture Show
Caddyshack
Harry Potter
Super Smash Bros. Melee

[Rock_dash]

Good thing I wasn't talking about you, but of a general trend. Otherwise, I might have quoted and responded to a specific passage. UH OH!

Well, given how judgemental you can be sometimes, I couldn't help but assume you were insulting me. In any case, I apologize for misinterpreting your comment.

Wow. So thinly veiled, both of you. I'd hardly realized you were catting at each other at all. Now, either put up in vaudevillian fisticuffs or knock it off.

You sir, just earned one new reader when I get around to it.

[Shishio]

Wow. So thinly veiled, both of you. I'd hardly realized you were catting at each other at all. Now, either put up in vaudevillian fisticuffs or knock it off.

Believe it or not, my last comment was simply an explanation and a sincere apology.

[Sorcery101]

Penny Arcade is successful for far more than just art, writing, and gamers.

They may be "limiting" their audenience to just gamers, but because if that they know what people come there to see. Everything about Penny Arcade relates back to video games some how. The name, their comic, their advertise, even Child's Play relates back to video games. So when people go to Penny Arcade they know EXACTLY what they are getting. So even people who are mildly interested in videogames will go there. They might not get the comics joke, but it still revolves around videogames. And if you look at other "gaming comic" a lot of them don't to that. CAD you get that dumb story sometimes, Applegeeks is now about a robot and the roommates, PVP has it's Soap Opera, but Penny Arcade very rarely strays too far from video games. And that ladies and gentlemen is a Brand and strong one at that. Makes they very easy to market and understand. They are beat Scott Krutz at his own game of being professional.

As to whether or not you should limit your audience, it might be a good plan because with the supposed limited audience you are actually much more focused and people will know what to expect.

[Rkolter]

I wrote a strip about The Incredible Hulk... But I can't link to it.

I mentioned I'd buy merchandise from you; THIS is the comic I want on a coffee mug. Preferably printed on the inside, so that as they're drinking the coffee, they can read it and snort it out their nose.

[Shishio]

In regards to limiting your audience, don't we all, as storytellers, need to limit our audinces? You can't make a story that will satisfy everyone, and I feel that if a story is not charged with passion from the storyteller(s) involved, it will be a soulless husk that will appeal to noone.

I mentioned I'd buy merchandise from you; THIS is the comic I want on a coffee mug. Preferably printed on the inside, so that as they're drinking the coffee, they can read it and snort it out their nose.

It would have to be a pretty big fucking mug to be legible.

And hey, if you liked that strip, make sure you don't miss August 17th's strip. (Strip 66.)

[Rcmonroe]

In regards to limiting your audience, don't we all, as storytellers, need to limit our audinces?You can't make a story that will satisfy everyone, and I feel that if a story is not charged with passion from the storyteller(s) involved, it will be a soulless husk that will appeal to noone.

It's not a matter of trying to please everybody; that's impossible. It's a matter of trying not to alienate anybody (within reason; some people are going to feel alienated no matter what because it's in their nature to do so).

There are a lot of "things" I'm passionate about, and in fact some of these things do pop up occasionally in my strip. But if I focused on those "things," rather than just occasionally referencing them, I would only be appealing to people who are also passionate about them. Instead, my focus is on human interaction and relationships; which is something nearly everybody can relate to. And I am, in fact, somewhat passionate about understanding human behavior, so in a sense I am writing about what I'm passionate about.

Whether or not my comic is a soulless husk is a matter of opinion, my point is that I think it is possible to go for an extremely general audience without sacrificing the passion or the soul. Many of the great newspaper strips did it in the past; I don't see why a webcomic can't do it now.

[NakedElf]

I guess that's fair - and I definitely try to bring out emotions and situations people can can be empathetic to, but some times the feeling you want is that childlike pulse you got when you had a full bowl of fruit-loops and 2-hours worth of cartoons to eat it in.

Maybe I'm just waaay over-generalizing my own experiences to the rest of the planet, but that seems like such a *common* experience that I'd wager most of our potential audience has at least some passing familiarity with both Froot Loops and Saturday Morning cartoons. And even if we have some readers from some random other country where Froot Loops weren't the norm, they probably had some other sugary cereal which had the exact same function...

Or to put it another way, I wouldn't really call that a potentially audience-limiting pop culture reference the way, say, a storyline based on a nuanced memory of Froot Loop and Trix commercials from the early 80s would be. Instead you're referencing a <i>feeling</i>, and on some level feelings are pretty universal. Sure, not everyone has eaten Froot Loops, but the majority of your audience has felt that...

Whether or not my comic is a soulless husk is a matter of opinion, my point is that I think it is possible to go for an extremely general audience without sacrificing the passion or the soul. Many of the great newspaper strips did it in the past; I don't see why a webcomic can't do it now.

I would counter that there do not exist "many" great newspaper comics. Of the hundreds out there, very few have ever made it past mediocrity...

Calvin and Hobbes (today we'd call this a 'furry comic')
The Farside (No continuity! The jokes don't make sense! The characters are all ugly!)
Non Sequitor (Liberal bias)
Peanuts (boring*, black character got it dropped from southern newspapers)

And probably a few more here and there we could all argue over (not that the ones I listed are definitive or anything,) like Get Fuzzy and early Dilbert (limited to nerds!)

Actually, I'd call Dilbert a perfect example here... Early Dilbert catered to a smaller audience of nerdy engineering professional types, and became extremely popular. Later Dilbert became more of a generalized 'work' comic. It now appeals to a broader audience, but just isn't as good.



Pure human interaction can get boring after a while... Otherwise I'd go out and have more of it :P

*I like Peanuts. I'm just pointing out common objections people have to these comics which would limit their audiences.

[Rcmonroe]

Whether or not my comic is a soulless husk is a matter of opinion, my point is that I think it is possible to go for an extremely general audience without sacrificing the passion or the soul. Many of the great newspaper strips did it in the past; I don't see why a webcomic can't do it now.

I would counter that there do not exist "many" great newspaper comics.Of the hundreds out there, very few have ever made it past mediocrity...

Well, I did say "in the past," and meant it. Great comics of the past include comics that were around before your parents met (probably before your grandparents met). Krazy Kat, Li'l Abner, Pogo, Little Orphan Annie, Peanuts, and literally dozens of others made it well past "mediocrity," and they did it without being homogenized and packaged to be palatable to a specific demographic like most of the crap comics you see in the last 20 years or so. The strips you named (Peanuts being the exception) were all from an era that happened well after "the past" that I was referring to.

Pure human interaction can get boring after a while... Otherwise I'd go out and have more of it.

What doesn't get boring after awhile?

I like Peanuts. I'm just pointing out common objections people have to these comics which would limit their audiences.

Peanuts was a lot better in the 50's, 60s and early 70's than it would be later. I don't think many people were saying it was "boring" then. All comics eventually get tired and old. The best ones though, take decades to do this.

[Dutch!]

Some take one strip.

[Rcmonroe]

Some take one panel.

[NakedElf]

Actually, I know plenty of people who think 1950s Peanuts was boring as hell.

"Little kids running around being little kids" does not appeal to everyone.

[Dutch!]

Buggrit.

[Rcmonroe]

Actually, I know plenty of people who think 1950s Peanuts was boring as hell.

"Little kids running around being little kids" does not appeal to everyone.

Nothing appeals to everyone. And "Little kids running around being little kids" makes it sound like you've never seen 1950's Peanuts. "Little kids hardly doing anything that little kids do while speaking like adults" is a much better description. And it's been done to death since then. But back then it was fresh.

Anyway, what I said was people back then didn't think it was boring. Some people today think Shakespeare is boring. Some things don't translate well outside of the era in which they were created. And some people are too narrow in their scope to appreciate something that doesn't have enough similarity with what they're accustomed to (I'm not saying you, just "people").

[Kels]

Is it just me, or does a lot of this discussion boil down to "do what you do and do it well, don't compromise and you'll have quality, compromise and you'll have an audience"?

[Rcmonroe]

Is it just me, or does a lot of this discussion boil down to "do what you do and do it well, don't compromise and you'll have quality, compromise and you'll have an audience"?

That's not what I'm saying; I don't think you have to compromise to find an audience. Finding a way to appeal to people doesn't have to be a compromise.

Anyway, it's been a fun discussion, but I gotta leave it now. I'm off to the Comic-Con.

[Kels]

How about if I amend that to "a wide audience"?

[That guy]

Actually, I know plenty of people who think 1950s Peanuts was boring as hell.

"Little kids running around being little kids" does not appeal to everyone.

Buggrit.

HAHAHA! Aw, we love you, Dutch. For the record, I actually had several very old peanuts books that I kiped from my grandmother. I loved those when I was younger - they had a heart and spirit that I think faded as they grew more famous.

RCMunroe has a stellar list of comics, though. Pogo is one of my favorite titles (a quirky strip about a possum and friends in the bayou). Krazy Kat, Lil' Abner... these are all comics that did something NEW. They took a budding genre and expressed something genuinely unique. It's a bit like stepping into the Superhero Genre now versus doing so in Stan Lee's time. It's not that everything has already been done - it's just that you need to take a real leap into new territory with the material if you hope to imbue your work with the same kind of innovative spirit. Peanuts, boring as you may find it, pioneered the way for comics like Calvin & Hobbes. Bill Watterson, in turn, made his own innovations with C&H (largely hinged on personal attitudes toward artistic integrity), which made that comic new and special in its own right.

I think Calvin & Hobbes has a fantastic balance between calling back to the past (he even makes direct visual references to Krazy Kat in a few strips) and leaping forward to the unexplored. The internet is an excellent place to experiment in such a way - because you CAN. You can mix vintage childlike themes with tentacle rape, or important current issues with 1980's cereal commercials... not to mention you can make strips any size/shape you want and even add animation or sound. There may not be much money in it, but the canvas is wide open.

[NakedElf]

Honestly, there's never been much money in comics... just now there's wider distribution, so we can at least get something (readers). ^_^