Comic Fury Webcomic Hosting - What gets you to read a comic?

I always appreciate any visitors I get. Even if they don't like my comic and leave, at least it was given a shot for a page or two. I even offer links to better comics to compensate!

For me, it seems to be pretty much everything except the subs.

I've been hooked to comics for completely different reasons. I suppose one of the main factors is that when doing reading, I need to have a laugh or two by the first five or so pages--if the comic isn't at least chuckleworthy in that timeframe, it's probably going to lose me.

Yeah, I know, not all webcomics are humorous, but how many webcomics do you know of are serious and don't often have humor in them?

...Okay, bad phrasing:
How many popular webcomics do you know of that are serious and always were (aka, no Cerebrus Syndrome), having little humor in them at all?

...There might be one or two, but the simple fact is, most readers when reading a webcomic expect to have humor. Not necessarily on every page (in fact, it's probably best that it's NOT on every page), but on enough pages that the series still has plenty of funny moments.

5 or so pages? That could be difficult, cause the first 5ish pages would be setting the story up? So might be a tad more serious.

hmm - art first and formost , then story - i dont care much for gag-days unless they are "really" good or involve things i like , such as warhammer 40k or games or some such - futrureistic , sci fi , pretty much anything by Giz - the old rehashes or "lets jump on the "bad"wagon crap , ( again unless its REALLY amusing. ) poke whatever - sprites , and stick figures ugh.. the art doesnt have to be "perfect" just GOOD or "improving" nothing that flashes or makes me want to reach for brain bleach.

i prefer realistic styles of art or animations style , like can of beans , looking for group ect . fools stuff os pretty damn awesome - same with Mushroomislands comic - I like female leads or a very interesting male lead. .

Not necessarily. But you get my point. Humor hooks me better than setting up the story would. (Although those two are not mutually exclusive... :P)

If there's a character I like. Either someone I find interesting, or someone I find attractive. I'll want to see what happens to them. Art is important, but it doesn't have to be more than "not bad".

Awww, I hope subscription number isn't too big of a factor... For some reason my comic, FrankenRod, is having a harder time getting started than my other comics have had; I already have almost 4 comics up, but it's been a slow start.

For me, it's usually the avatar, whether or not it has like 157 comics and 17 subscriptions, and for me it's also WHETHER OR NOT THE AVATAR LOOKS EXTREMELY FAKE. Like, some anime character I've seen on TV, lol. I know you didn't write that shlizz, yo! I seen cartoon network, foo'! (;

But anyway, so that's me.

TVTropes... mostly.
Also I did once ask people at the Sluggy Freelance boards for webcomic inspiration... and added a few of those to my collection.
And sometimes I just follow links from one webcomic to another...

My standards for a webcomic are usually based around sheer magnitude (I'm an archive-binger) and most of the rest is just whimsy. I'll either like it after reading it for a bit... or I won't.
There aren't too many webcomics that I just outright reject from the get-go... I'm ok with comics starting out crappy and getting better, though I'm more likely to reject those that just stay shite... (e.g. anything by Tiffany Ross).






Perhaps I should clarify that I haven't read anyone else's comics here. That is to say none of the webcomics I read are on comicfury... Sorry.

Story first. Art TENDS to attract me, but it's not my primary.
What I do is click straight to the summary to see if it catches my fancy or skim through what's up so far to see if the characters and story are engaging enough to me.
Art comes second. Yes, I said it. I don't care about the art as long as the story draws me in. Unless the art really detracts from it, then we've got a problem.

I tend to seriously lean towards "High fantasy Adventure" or adventure at all. What can I say? Travel excites me.

For comics off of ComicFury, this is a necessity.

NECESSITY.

I pretty much won't read anything off-site which I didn't find through TVTropes. Granted, that's pretty much one of the best ways TO find out about webcomics. :P

I'm not sure what hooks me when it comes to TVTropes-browsing. Sometimes, I'll see it listed on a trope with a link to a page, check the page out, and think it looks good.
If I decide to click the 'next' button on the link, there's a good 50% chance that I've already accidentally gotten myself hooked onto that comic. :P

But if not, then I'll check out the TVTropes page for that comic. (If it doesn't have one, probably not going to read.) And if this happens, again, chances go up, from 50 to 75%. :P

If I see something which interests me...I'm going to read it.

I am guilty of this too. Also plays a huge part in making comics because the biggest motivation behind developing highly experimental was working with the types of characters I liked.

So you'll only read comics that admit to being bundles of cliches culled from other media. A comic that is not so crass to admit how it blatantly steals from other media because the creator has no original ideas except what he has been spoon fed by all his sycophants has no interest to you at all.

Well if a prospective audience is that insipid maybe I'm better off not having any readers.

I'm not saying anyone is inane but reading things because they admit to copying other things isn't exactly a sign of depth, intelligence or good taste.

But then I have never claimed to possess any of those things myself as my body of work will attest. What I do is so derivative it's ridiculous.

If you find stuff to read through TVTropes, that's cool, I guess. I can understand that TVTropes-level categorization can help you find works that are similar to your tastes, or you're interested in a certain theme/trope and want to find more things like it. But if that's the only way you're finding webcomics, well...

Well, how would YOU find webcomics not on ComicFury?

Hear people talking? (Okay, so that one's actually pretty viable due to the internet, I suppose, but it requires you to have people [probably people you are at least familiar with, though I suppose a complete stranger writing REALLY well can do the trick] who give it a high recommendation and convince you that it could be interesting--their voice has to stand out among the others as well, and even then, it might or might not do the trick. YMMV, I guess.)

Googling "good webcomic" or something like that? (I'm sure it COULD be done, but really, this is just taking a shot in the dark.)
Wikipedia? (Where there is the whole "notability" thing, which TVTropes specifically does not have.)

Yeah. TVTropes really is a pretty effective tool for finding webcomics. Just browsing around, most pages have a webcomics folder/section. (In fact...I dare someone to find a non-media-specific trope which has folders/sections that DOESN'T have a webcomics folder/section. I'm sure it'd exist, but it's so rare that I'd never be able to think of a trope like that.) And if you were to be looking for webcomics, specifically, they have webcomic-specific tropes to browse around in.

And, really. Everything has tropes. Tropes apply to real-life as well. You can't make something which doesn't have tropes, because the very act of defying one trope is another trope itself. (Well, in most cases, anyway.) You'd be surprised just how many tropes can apply to a work. (Example--I have the longest TVTropes page out of all ComicFury webcomics which have TVTropes pages the last time I checked. That's simply because I know more tropes than the average casual troper would, and know how they apply to my world. Tropes are not bad.)

And it's not so much which tropes a work has which are important. Quite frankly, I don't really care what tropes are used. It's HOW they're used which is the important part. The description of their usage (or lack of usage, or subverted usage...you get the idea) is the important part. (Note: this is why one of my pet peeves is to see a trope listed without a description, and why I'm not so happy with how the ComicFury Werewolf/Mafia page is progressing, because--while cutting out unnecessary details is good and all--leaving too few details is exactly the kind of thing which kills interest for people browsing TVTropes!*)

Again, most of the webcomics I read I found through a link on TVTropes, describing a specific Trope. (For instance, I found Shadownova [which unfortunately appears to be gone forever] through it having once been the page quote for "Killed to Uphold the Masquerade". I was intrigued, and I read the webcomic to satisfy my curiosity.) Sometimes it's not just a single page, but appearing on multiple pages I'm browsing, with me eventually declaring, "I give up! I'm just too curious NOT to read it!" Because--again--it's not the trope which matters. It's not how many tropes are invoked in the work. (Though--for obvious reasons--the more tropes a work has, the more likely I am to find multiple links to it when browsing, which means an increased likelihood of my curiosity sparking me to read it.) It's how the trope is used.

*Disclaimer: To elaborate, if a trope is described in detail, without a link, interest will be sparked and I might check out the TVTropes page. If a trope is given a link to the relevant spot (say, the comic page most strongly showing that trope), but there's no (or such minimum that there might as well not be any) description other than that link, then I'll read the link, but I won't continue reading the webcomic, since I have no interest. If a trope is given a link to the relevant spot, and has a decent description (not long, just decent), then my interest is REALLY sparked.
Basically,
Long description, no link-->Medium interest.
Short description, no link-->No interest.
Medium description, no link-->Low interest.
Long description, link-->My Milage Definitely Varies.
Short description, link-->Low-medium interest.
Medium description, link-->HIGH INTEREST.

What's happening to the Werewolf page is mostly turning it into the "short description, no link" type, and that is exactly the kind of thing which I as a person browsing TVTropes will stay away from reading.

Wall of text, my arch-nemesis, we meet again.

I have a group of friends who either actively making comics or are just avid webcomic readers, online and offline. I recommend comics to them, they recommend comics to me. If I'm feeling extra adventurous, I'll check out comic listings and their descriptions. Simple.

I think I wrote about my distaste for TVTropes in the past. I don't necessarily hate it, but I'm not a fan of the nit-picky categorization that goes on in that site. I don't see the point in breaking down any creative work into itty bitty pieces. Recognizing trends is one thing, but extracting every little detail and comparing it to every other work that works with this trope is insanity. It's fun for the OCD fans, but TVTropes is otherwise contrived.

Of course, just because I've never found a purpose for TVTropes doesn't mean I'm right either. I'm sure that, in the right hands, someone can craft something amazing by knowing every little trope in existence. Anyway, if that's what floats your boat, then cool. If you have a criteria for TVTropes listings to help you figure out what to read, then that's cool too. Just don't expect me to be sailing with that ship.

A decent story, good artwork, a respectable number of subscribers.

I kind of agree with him. Any comic that spends more than 3 pages with a prologue about the setting or the history of the area or something usually loses my interest very quickly. One or two pages is nice, but I find that backstory stuff much more interesting when I've already been introduced to the characters and the setting and am more invested in them. Without that, it feels a bit disconnected.

I don't think my first 5 pages are overly funny, so I wasn't sure? I didn't mean like, prologue wise, just like... things happening but it's not overly funny yet because, yeah.

I do get that though, because, I do the same I guess. It really all depends. I think I just don't like the idea of it almost being a rule, "If I haven't laughed at anything within the first 2-5 pages I will stop reading", cause generalisation. And stuff.

art + story + sig.
Dang, I have to get to work on my sig. And a banner thingie.:P

"beware of avatars created in much higher quality than the comic."
Pffft, like mine. xD My avatar's actually from when I used to suck and that was like my best drawing. -.-

Anywho, I have to be pulled into the story and like the characters... It has to be interesting enough for me to wonder what will happen next. I'm more into storyline comics than gag-a-day ones. The story also has to make sense.. If I don't get what's going on, or don't care what's going on, I just exit. :/
The number of subscribers don't really affect my decision to check them. o.0 Sometimes I'll intentionally look, based on their having a low/high number of subscribers.