Hi guys;

I started a webcomic (woaaahh ) lol and I figured I could ask you guys to check it out and let me know your opinions/feedback.

Here's the link (also in sig)

Shakespeare's Comics

The writing could be more legible but other than that it's not bad.

Do you have a feed set up? I would like that, because that is how I normally read web comics. I won't remember to visit the site, so if you want more readership, you should set up a feed.

I'd say about half of them are rather excellent and the other half seem to be inside jokes. Was worth my last few minutes of reading, though.

Thanks guys. I'm only starting to learn the intricacies of web dev (I learned the php and mysql needed to set this up in a few days). How could I go about setting up a feed?

Ashbad: you are right, some of the older ones are inside jokes since I was writing them for the school newspaper LOL but there probably won't be many of those in the future.

Also I am working on my handwriting. I decided that drawing the comics at publication resolution makes everything far easier to deal with and this way I can hopefully write more clearly. Or I might just give in and use a font..

I must say, they almost all made me chuckle, which isn't generally the case for just-started webcomics. I agree that the lettering could use some work, but I like that the drawing style doesn't seem to be particularly derivative of anything. Keep up the good work, and keep us abreast of your updates! You'll have to keep bumping this a few times before I remember to add it to my regular list of webcomics that I check out.

Googling "How to make an RSS feed php" would probably find it, you might want to add "Webcomic" or something to the search. That said, I thought a couple were pretty funny, but I had to struggle to read the hand writing. It would also be nice to know what page/comic we were on from the top (Like 555/1234), since I sat for a minute trying to figure out why the "next" button wouldn't work when I first followed the link (though that might have been more of my fault since I've fallen out of my webcomic routine).

Making a feed is actually pretty simple, if you know some xml, which isn't very hard. Basically what it does, is tell your RSS reader where to look for new posts, and what to call the feed, what version do you use, and soon. The rest of the document has items that are part of the feed. Wikipidia has a sample .rss file that is pretty self-explanatory. The <link> element references where the content of the feed is. The <description> tag is equivalent to an email subject. Here's the RSS 2.0 specification, which should clear up an questions you may have.

As you can imagine, there are also many programs to automate this task. Look for one that you like for your OS. I hope this helps you with your comic.

Ah, ok, I'll see if I can get it to work...

New comic going up tomorrow

You're doing some things right, since TWO of the comics were amusing, being Non-Sequitur and High Five.

But you need to work on your lettering. It's atrocious and sometimes illegible. I would recommend a larger canvas so you could pay more careful attention to detail, if you really think you need it. Otherwise, unless the detail is absolutely critical, don't use it on such a small image. That carpet in New Carpet is distracting, ugly, and unnecessary.

For the most part, your school strips seem to have a very narrow audience for appreciation. Even when you make a direct joke, the humor is very juvenile, and it's predictable. The "no punchline" gag is a total cliche. And real humor for a strip should NEVER rely on memes. The occasional meme can work, but it should complement the joke, not be the joke, as seen in Third Party Cantidate.

What I do like is the general art style. It could use a little refinement but it does work, and changing the style occasionally is welcome too. Bubblewrap #1 was not too humorous based on reasons I said before, but the change in art style was unexpected, and it wasn't bad!

It's a miss, however, with I Like Cats, which had a terrible script and it was obvious you were adopting Cyanide and Happiness, unfortunately not in a funny way. Sometimes art can rescue a bad joke, and sometimes it can BE the joke. That's why I liked Non-Sequitur and High Five.

Out of all of them, I think Non-Sequitur was your best, even if it was pretty obvious.

Another thing that can make a successful webcomic is reader interaction. Participating in forums, updating regularly, hosting guest strips, featuring a blog and overall not being an insufferable prick are great ways to accomplish this. I've even seem some excellent interactive strips that were either animated or reacted to mouse clicks and other stimuli.

I did kinda want to rip you a new one but your comic isn't bad at all! It just suffers from being in its infancy. Take care of it for a while and post regularly while building on your strengths and improving on your weaknesses and you could be pretty moderately successful.

Haha, no, I'll totally take any and all helpful criticism. It was all helpful advice, so thanks for that.

In terms of updates and stuff, I'm a few strips ahead of update schedule so it'll be a little while before you'll actually be able to see any change =/ I'll probably just accept that my handwriting sucks and that it doesn't get better on a pentablet, and just type the dialogue -_-

On the other hand, update today check it out.

Phew, finally added an RSS feed. That took way more time than it should've XD

The RSS has no pics, just the alt text.

Fixed. I realized it right after I made that post...-_-

Umm... Now it just has The title of the comic...

Crap, what am I doing wrong?


Code:


edit: wait i misspelled my own domain name what a fail fixed now hopefully it works =/

*bump*

I see that you have updated some since the last time you posted in this topic Are you still going strong with this?

I hope so! I think there might be a problem with the "rand" function, though; it gave me the same comic three times in a row. Thanks for reminding me that I needed to check up on this, Catherine!

Hmm, that seems to be an odd way to do random comics... The (I presume) PHP page just generates static links to a random page. So, on each page load, the server picks a random number and puts it as the href for the <a>rand</a> tag. Maybe, he could find a way to keep track of the most recent ones picked, and give people ones besides those, but I don't know how great of an idea that'd be.

Nice. This has really progressed since I last read it (comedy= comedy+1 I really liked Stereotypes. I never saw the punchline coming. My main problem is legibility: I can't read some of it... Maybe you could consider using a different pen to do the lettering.

For your rss feed: I have no I dea =what's wrong, if that is in fact what it look like.