Anyone read the webcomic looking for group? Been reason it for years and always found it entertaining. They even made music videos for it.
I stopped reading Looking for Group years ago. Webcomics come, Webcomics go, never stay on my reading list, except for one... Girl Genius by the Foglio's. They've told a good story from day one to today. I really think it should be a must study for the handling of a serial story by anyone thinking of creating one.
There's a lot of debate about the best way to approach creating webcomics among the people who do that. One side says that you either need to do daily strips that can be enjoyed without understanding continuity (or, at the very most have very short story arcs) and the other side says just to tell an on-going story. People who want to enjoy the story can go through the archives. Given that most of the creators are trying to make a living at it, the decision is important to them. Most of them choose the little to no continuity because it is more welcoming to new people. The downside to this (that I'd never before considered until I read your post) is that since the comics can be enjoyed without previous exposure, it's also easy to drop them because you have very little invested. That has been my personal experience with the 15 or so webcomics I used to read on a daily basis. They were all the ones with no continuity and I've dropped them all. That's interesting.
Exactly. If it's easy to jump in, it's easy to jump out. Also, I meant everyone creating serial stories, not just webcomics. The Foglio's have been doing this game for years, and, I remember picking up their first comic, a black and white comic book at the comic store and thinking, "These guys got it all over on Marvel". With the serial nature of writing novels nowadays, I think examing how good serial stories and fiction is told can be a good idea. Most of the books I've read in the series fiction have generally died out storywise in book two or three.
