Comments on: Responding to Brigid Alverson’s 8-page rule

By: Unbound: The year in webcomics | Robot 6 @ Comic Book Resources – Covering Comic Book News and Entertainment

Tue, 22 Dec 2009 21:02:25 +0000

[...] the Zuda test—at the end of eight pages, do I know what the comic is about?—generated some lively conversations as [...]

By: The Webcomic Overlook #93: Ulysses Seen « The Webcomic Overlook

The Webcomic Overlook #93: Ulysses Seen « The Webcomic Overlook — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 23:36:04 +0000

[...] Alverson once said it was important to hook a reader in the first eight pages. Now, I took her to task on that assumption, but I now realize her point when Ulysses Seen makes me want to read that comic about the exploding [...]

By: HEY KIDS! « Om Namaha Ganesha

HEY KIDS! « Om Namaha Ganesha — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 13:44:18 +0000

[...] Webcomic Overlook finds El Santo in controversial mode. It’s no good disagreeing with everyone else! [...]

By: John

John — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 11:51:38 +0000

The Zuda format is despicable (I’ve never managed to get into any Zuda comic for that reason) but I think that Alverson makes an important point. Many webcomics, on Zuda and otherwise, rely too much on the concept of “plunging the reader into the world.” This approach has been popular as long as SF has been around, but it’s not always the best approach. It’s hard to keep reading something that makes no sense at all, and the carrot at the end of the stick, the thought that eventually it will make sense if you read enough, is not always a strong enough motivator.

While I partially agree with Alverson that explanatory content should be incorporated into the comic, I think that supplementary materials are an acceptable tool as well. A typical webcomic has its “New Readers” reference pages, and they can and should contain a few passages of explanatory material. If you must jump right into your story, at least put a helpful guide somewhere on the site. That goes for Zuda and others.

By: Christopher

Christopher — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 05:16:22 +0000

Huh, I’ve always felt that webcomics actually need to be MORE conscious of that 8 page rule then print ones.

Yeah, if you first start reading a web-comic sometime mid-run when they already have 80 pages you can skip around. But remember, at some point those first 8 pages were the only ones on the site.

It seems to me most webcomics artists post a page at a time, and it could take anywhere from 2 weeks to 2 months to get 8 pages up.

If your comic goes for weeks or months without story development or anything at all to pull readers in, something has gone wrong. And, really, it’s just as bad if you do it in the middle of the run. If I’m dying to see whether the space alien got Marcy pregnant, I don’t want to have to wait a damn month to find out while the author screws around with manga-esque establishing shots.

By: Irrevenant

Irrevenant — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 22:49:51 +0000

Like Brigid, even if I wander across a new web comic in media res, I immediately go back to the start and read it linearly. Presumably start-to-finish is the order in which it’ll make most sense – that’s why almost all webcomics have a ‘<< First' button. However, access to the archive does mean that readers can DISCOVER a quality webcomic in media res (or via word of mouth) and jump on board at any time. So it's a lot easier for a webcomic to become a 'sleeper hit' than it is for a print comic (which is probably axed by issue 2 if no-one's buying it).

To hook a new reader, it's probably best if a webcomic is INTERESTING within the first 8 pages – probably more like 1-3 given the vast amount of competition. Even Brigid admitted that Gulch won Zuda despite violating the "8 page rule" – presumably because people went "An exploding dog?! I need to see where this is going…". ie. it was interesting.

Honestly, I think the amount of slack a reader will give a webcomic depends on its format. "Gag-a-day" style comics generally need to deliver their premise up-front very quickly. The natural unit for Zuda is 8 pages, because 8 pages is the length of a Zuda installment. In print comics, readers expect it to take the end of issue #1 before they know what's going on, and I figure they generally give issue-format web comics the same slack.

Of course that means that webcomic authors with issue-style comics would probably do best to 'hit the ground running' by posting the entire first issue at launch time.

By: Brigid

Brigid — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 21:38:57 +0000

That’s an interesting take. Maybe it has to do with the way people read and process information. When I discover a new webcomic, I look at whatever is up that day, and if it interests me, I go straight to the first page. In fact, I have had conversations with webcomics creators who prefer that I link to the first page of their comic rather than the main page.

As I mentioned in comments at Robot 6, this may have to do with the type of comic we are used to reading. My preference for print comics is manga and graphic novels, which are pretty linear—they start on page 1 and the story arc usually continues to the end of the book. Sometimes manga have a second story arc, but that’s it. Superhero comics, on the other hand, are all over the place. When I was a kid (long ago!) you got two or three complete stories in a single comic; now you get a small fragment of a much larger saga, and I find it disorienting.

I quit reading superheroes in the mid-80s, after a stereotypically bad experience with my local comics store, and I never went back, so I have never learned to read comics that way. I’m a linear sort of a girl, I guess.