I Love Stupid: the only sarcastic humor comic ever

Thursday, January 31, 2008

Know thine audience

notes: nerding it out

Ned: Rob.  Greetings.

Rob: ... Ned.
notes: minimal response

notes: why are you here
notes: smug
Ned: So... a "Web comic", eh?  Is it about...
Ned: Video games?
Rob: Not really.
Ned: Superheroes?
Rob: Nah.
Ned: Giant robots?
Rob: Nope.
Ned: Mutant powers?
Rob: 'Fraid not.
Ned: Ninjas?
Rob: Negatory.
Ned: Aliens?
Rob: Wrong-a-ding-dong.
Ned: Elves, wizards, dragons?
Rob: No way.
Ned: Huge-eyed, pink-haired, schoolgirls?
Rob: Not... yet.
notes: add to bookmarks
Ned: Haha!

Rob: What's so funny?
notes: like I care

Ned: NO ONE will read it.
notes: grimface, tooth show is over = no joke

So who reads webcomics? People who (1) enjoy comics and (2) spend a lot of time surfing the Web. In a word... nerds.*

* Note that I use the term to indicate a stereotype of behavior, sans connotation. Something tells me insulting my entire audience (and myself) would be questionable strategy.

I've often noted the commonly found grouping of "nerdy/geeky" interests, those being comic books, anime, video games, computers, sci-fi (anything with "Star" in its name), fantasy (D&D, LOTR), and martial arts (Lee/Chan/Li movies, UFC, various possibly-homemade weapons of dubious legality).

The point: As I was planning to start this webcomic, this bundling of nerd hobbies came to mind. If I'm paying for a domain name and webspace, and putting in the time and work to create comic strips and a Web site, I certainly hope I can attract some kind of audience to make it worthwhile (creatively, if not financially). So I wondered, who's going to read my webcomic? Some webcomics fall right into this set of topics, which would seem to give them a big advantage. I have nothing against these comics--some have been done very well--but it's just not what I want to do. So will I be able to develop a broad enough appeal to keep the interest of the webcomic-reading subset of the general public?

In other news, this strip introduces Ned, Rob's dark-nerd rival. I also decided to add small notes/captions throughout the comic, which gives me a way to throw in extra humor, explanation, or just bizarre commentary. I think these will be fun for me to write and hopefully liven up the strip a bit.

One year ago

Wednesday, March 13, 2019

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Saturday, January 23, 2010

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