Saturday, March 04, 2006
Plot, Humor, and the Balance Between Them
When I'm reading a Webcomic's archive I tend to notice whether the comic focuses almost exclusively on it's plot and disregards humor (i.e. sometimes the way Megatokyo reads), or if they never bothered with a continuity and just go crazy with the jokes (i.e. Penny-Arcade). Now depending on the style of the comic either of these extremes can either be a good thing or a bad thing, for instance, with a comic that tends to base their jokes around the latest news in the gaming industry. This is illustrated in the issue of Penny Arcade when they poked fun at EA's deal with the NFL for the exclusive rights to all Video Games based on the NFL for 5 years. Gabe and Tycho, the good guys that run this comic spread the idea that they had purchased the exclusive rights to comics about video games, the joke went beyond the strip by getting fellow gaming comic artist Tim Abasath of Ctrl-Alt-Del to post in his newspost that he was following Gabe and Tycho's purported purchase, which in turn brought comics readers to anger, only to laugh their heads off when they found out that it was a massive practical joke. This is a prime example of a comic that takes it's jokes to be the primary focus of their comic.
On the other end of the spectrum we have comics that focus entirely on their plotlines with little humor. The popular comic Megatokyo at it's inception read like a comic strip and not the webmanga it has become. Now for many long time readers of the strip that frequent the almost self-moderated fourms continually cried out "where's t3h funny?" even as artist Fred Gallager concieved an extremely high quality plot that whenever you finished reading the day's strip you would have the urge to go and discuss it on the fourms. Fred was able to maintain this high quality plot without sacrificing the quality of the art, but a lowered quality of art is a rare occurence among comic artists. Megatokyo may not have the "laugh your head off" humor of comics like Penny Arcade or Ctrl Alt Del, but even with the high end plot there is always some humor to be found which keeps the comic a comic and not an illustrated Tolstoy novel.
Then there are the comics that fall in the middle of this spectrum are the comics that while they have a good plot they have a greater focus on humor than the more plot-focused comics like Megatokyo or some of the more serious comics around. Examples of this type of comic include Dominic Deegan: Oracle for Hire and General Protection Fault. In Dominic Deegan for instance, even during the highly dramatic Storm of Souls saga, the artist still works in some of the serries' trademark alliteration and purposefully horrible puns. Or in GPF, the last panel of a strip involving two of the female protagonists locked in a deadly brawl, they still find the utterly lightharted side of things.
In conclusion, comics fall all over the spectrum between pure plot and pure comedy, it doesn't really matter where on the path they fall, so long as they take what they focus on and do it well, while still keeping the audience entertained.
On the other end of the spectrum we have comics that focus entirely on their plotlines with little humor. The popular comic Megatokyo at it's inception read like a comic strip and not the webmanga it has become. Now for many long time readers of the strip that frequent the almost self-moderated fourms continually cried out "where's t3h funny?" even as artist Fred Gallager concieved an extremely high quality plot that whenever you finished reading the day's strip you would have the urge to go and discuss it on the fourms. Fred was able to maintain this high quality plot without sacrificing the quality of the art, but a lowered quality of art is a rare occurence among comic artists. Megatokyo may not have the "laugh your head off" humor of comics like Penny Arcade or Ctrl Alt Del, but even with the high end plot there is always some humor to be found which keeps the comic a comic and not an illustrated Tolstoy novel.
Then there are the comics that fall in the middle of this spectrum are the comics that while they have a good plot they have a greater focus on humor than the more plot-focused comics like Megatokyo or some of the more serious comics around. Examples of this type of comic include Dominic Deegan: Oracle for Hire and General Protection Fault. In Dominic Deegan for instance, even during the highly dramatic Storm of Souls saga, the artist still works in some of the serries' trademark alliteration and purposefully horrible puns. Or in GPF, the last panel of a strip involving two of the female protagonists locked in a deadly brawl, they still find the utterly lightharted side of things.
In conclusion, comics fall all over the spectrum between pure plot and pure comedy, it doesn't really matter where on the path they fall, so long as they take what they focus on and do it well, while still keeping the audience entertained.
# posted by Darth Miho @ 4:45 PM 
