Content you want to see in comics

I’m an amateur writer and artist leading a small group of aspiring creators. We want to know what kinds of stories (as well as themes, art styles, genre, etc) users of Sup Forums want to see in comics.
I’d like to survey what a possible audience would want to read about and would be willing to invest time and/or money in.

Do you like art styles that are simple and cartoony, or more detailed and realistic?
What genres do you prefer (eg fantasy, sci-fi, romance, comedy, drama, slice of life)?
Do you like stories that are relaxing escapism, or stuff that really jogs the noggin?
Do you prefer a male or female protagonist?

Questions like that.

Even if we don’t manage to get any projects off the ground, I’d love to know what the average reader wants more of in their comics.

I want something good.

I'll read anything as long as it's creative and not just dumb "fun". But I always wanted an epic journey adventure comic.

If you want to get people's attention, you can never go wrong with /ss/.

Boyhood adventuring with broader, coming-of-age crushing-on-girls-and-older-women, ho!

Any journey or trip really. Kinda like twenty thousand leagues or explorer's guild.

Ive always wanted to see a 2operator4u story like tears of the sun or strike back with more depth set in modern day africa in ultimate xmen style art.

You'll never get anywhere regurgitating ideas. Use your creativity and make something unique instead of the inevitable dullness that will come from design by committee stories.

A qoute from Henry Ford comes to mind -"If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses."

Very general overview of an idea that id like to see:

Really dark cult stuff like cult of cthtullu or Order of the Nine Angles inspired.

>paranormal and strong horror elements
>gory
>male or female protagonists
>very few victories for the good

good animation fights

General rule is that people don't know what they want and neither do you. If you want to make something good then make something YOU like and hopefully it will resonate with people of similar tastes.

/thread

something g that is good and isn't e political statement by over privileged kids bitching about other people's privileges.

Character-driven drama dealing with depression and such, with really sad parts and really happy parts both, mixed with pulp action and a dash of weird horror.

Basically read Hellboy, Transmetropolitan, and Hellblazer, read the Spider pulp magazines and Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, and watch the original 1954 Godzilla, Samurai Flamenco, and BoJack Horseman.

Now mix them all together into something that doesn't suck. That's what I've always wanted to read.

Recommend me a comic, Sup Forums.

Aside from the last point, where it's about 20% good ends, 20% bad ends, and 60% mixed, you just described Hellblazer pretty well.

I like military history, dark adult themes, I like alpha men like Captain America, love characters like Bucky Barnes, and I absolutely fucking hate any kind of forced political correctness, tokenism, history revisionism to fit an agenda, SJW bullshit, it's insulting and divisive to all concerned and is what is harming the quality of entertainment across the board.

this. anything good.
I'm only deterred by terrible content.
just make a good comic

1. NO POLITICS
2. genres: not slice of life. if I wanted slice of life, I would go hang out with my friends.
3. NO POLITICS
4. more detailed, realistic art. It doesn't have to be insanely detailed. A good example is most of DC's current output.
5. NO POLITICS
6. you're going to get weird answers from Sup Forums, the people who hang out here aren't normal.
7. there's one thing that normies will agree on, though. NO FUCKING POLITICS

I want to read about morally good superpowered people using their powers to thwart the aims of morally bad superpowered people.

>NO POLITICS
>NO POLITICS
>NO POLITICS
>NO FUCKING POLITICS
Green Lantern/Green Arrow had politics and was fucking fantastic.

Surveys are a terrible way to gauge interest. People don't know what they want.

>NO POLITICS

You can find a political message in most stories.

>more detailed, realistic art. It doesn't have to be insanely detailed. A good example is most of DC's current output.
This is a faggoty personal preference. I like Hitch, but I also like Wes Craig. For superhero comics I'd prefer more abstracted/cartoony rendering than photorealistic. Jorge Jimenez is just about perfect.

I haven't read it, but my point stands.\

Green Lantern had politics and was good. Ok, cool. How many books, total, have had politics in them lately? Green Lantern, and most of Marvel's entire output. How many of those books were good? Green Lantern. So, if you put politics in your book, the chances are very high that it will suck. Is it worth the risk? Not in my opinion.

>You can find a political message in most stories.
you can find anything if you look hard enough, idiot. I'm talking about what Marvel's doing now. That's why I say "NO POLITICS"

>2. genres: not slice of life. if I wanted slice of life, I would go hang out with my friends.

This. I have no idea why people like that trash so much, it's boring as hell. Fresh Prince was good though, so I have to give the genre that.

Why not just read DC then?

Green Lantern/Green Arrow was a comic in the bronze age of comics, man.

Also, the reason most politics in comics sucks is because the writers doing it just aren't that good. Their comics would suck regardless.

This is all super true. If you want inspiration on how to do something good, turn to a diverse range of good things. Check out Hellboy, Life & Times of Scrooge McDuck, earlier Cerebus, Sandman, just various things that you find immense acclaim for.

But do your own thing. Look at good things, but do your own thing. Survey isn't going to help you be more good just by servicing general interest in minor facets of story.

No capeshit
Better art for god's sake
More genres like SoL without it being just another shitty comedy
Better artstyles
If you can't color for shit start doing black and white comics
No capeshit

superheros, everybody likes superheros

Hahaha

so you cherry-picked a comic from decades ago to tell me how politics belongs in comics? Great. One comic, once, had politics and was good. Therefore it's fine to throw politics in comics all you like. Never mind that Marvel's destroying their entire business by ramming race + gender politics everywhere. Never mind that Faith had Hillary Clinton on the cover and promptly got canceled.

dolt.

Marvel is shit right now because it's shit right now. It has bad writers writing bad comics, and bad editors making it hard for good comics to succeed. Shitty injection of politics is a symptom, not the cause.

I just gave an example of a comic that had politics and was great. Hellblazer has tackled politics. Transmetropolitan. Preacher. Lots of stuff from the indies. And some of it has been really good, while other comics have been really bad. Want to know what the deciding factor was?

Whether the comic itself was good, not whether politics were present at all.

I think Sup Forums will get behind anything with a really strong concept. The board really likes simple ideas taken very very far. Simple characters with a lot of depth and thought put into them. Simple premises taken to their logical conclusions.

Oh, and character dynamics. Whether it's SOL or action adventure you need the characters to bounce off each other well. Safe characters are lame, give your characters strong leanings, even if that leaning is "agressively peaceful" or "agressively stable". Lukewarm characters are a cancer on fiction.

Also a strong aesthetic will take you far. For all its faults Steven Universe has a very distinctive aesthetic (artstyle, themes, feel, music especially) that distinguish it from other Tumblr-y anime inspired cheesy friendship sol bullshit works.

As for what in particular... i dunno. Write what you know, what you love. I want the creators to sell me on whatever bullshit they're peddling, and you can't do that without beliving it yourself. This applies for characters as well, if I don't want to stay following their story for 100s of pages then there's no point. What exactly that translates to, well it isn't my place to decide.

Oh and consistency. Evolution happens, it's natural, but understand that the more you change something the easier it is to kill what made your work good to begin with, or at least alienate the fans that liked it earlier. If you're so bored with a concept that you feel the need to completely shift tracks in your work, that's a sign that it's time to jump ship and start a new project rather than try and work within the constraints of your existing projects. Brevity is a virtue few creatirs show these days. Splitting your work into numerous loosely connected ventures is a good way around this issue, see: Jojo.

Re: The rest: Honestly you could sell Sup Forums on anything if you did it well enough. Romance, sol cute crap, grrrl power, anything and everything will work if pitched correctly.

Sword and sorcery
I'd love stories featuring bran mak morn
I generally prefer female protags but I'm sick of red sonja rip offs

Some flashsman comics would be fucking stellar too

>art style
I wouldn't say 'cartoony' but realistic art tends to be more boring. More to the point, I think that in comics the colorist just might be more important than the line artist. Too any comics are afraid to really experiment with color.

>genres
I like most genres, but I'm sick of post-apocalyptic wasteland settings. I'd like to see more scifi, but creative scifi. Keep it weird. I'd like to see more romances in comics that focuses on how the relationship is actually good for them, and not just will-they/won't-they for the majority of their 'relationship' and a breakup right after they hook up because the the writer doesn't know any other way of using a relationship to introduce drama
>Do you like
jogs the noggin. My favorite comics are Shade, the Changing Man, Sandman, and The Invisibles. I prefer fiction that excites me, not relaxes me
>male or female protagonist
that's generally dependent on if I think a man or woman better fit with the comic's themes, but I'm more likely to go out on a limb if the protagonist happens to be a woman.

I may as well toss in my 2c about politics. The appeal of political stories is how complex and mutable the network of allies, enemies, and unknowns is. Struggling to accomplish your goal while appeasing everyone you've entered into an agreement with, and knowing when the best course of action really is just to backstab someone, shit like that. A good political story requires the narrative to sooner or later abandon any pretense of good vs evil and embrace that its about following a compelling leader figure as they wrap as much of the world around their finger as it takes to secure their goals.

Champions fails to tell political stories because it acts like things are just done and dusted. The Rightclops saga works much better because its essentially about a lord trying to ensure his clan survives and flourishes

I will check that out

Isn't every comic which isn't just grey squares and markov-chain generated dialog bound to be political? Surely when Sup Forums says "no politics" anons must mean, "no current events", right?

all they mean is 'no political opinions I disagree with being treated as valid or relevant'

I want Cable and Deadpool back together.

Nah but seriously, I'll answer your questions;

>Do you like art styles that are simple and cartoony, or more detailed and realistic?

Depends on the tone of writing, with stuff that's more comedic I can take a vaguely cartoony style, like in Young Justice Todd Nauck's art is fitting, in Impulse Ramos' art was fine but Ramos' art in anything else more serious like X Men is usually fucking abhorrent. Overly realistic same face-y 80s art is also boring though. Stylised art can be really really cool if the artist is actually competent, see; Kenneth Rocafort (his RHATO art is the shit), Todd McFarlane most of the time too I guess.

>What genres do you prefer (eg fantasy, sci-fi, romance, comedy, drama, slice of life)?

I like comedy stuff with heart to it, like Young Justice and Impulse as aforementioned, Kelly's first Deadpool run, Guy Gardner Reborn/Guy Gardner, etc., sci fi is cool too, fuck romance and SOL though.

>Do you like stories that are relaxing escapism, or stuff that really jogs the noggin?

Escapism is GOAT but both are good.

>Do you prefer a male or female protagonist?

I'm fine with either but I prefer male, also male and female protagonist hooking up is a shit trope so for the love of God please avoid it.

Also yeah, fuck politics. Comics with messages about social issues like X Men that aren't done in a (usually) overly hamfisted way are fine, but kinda redundant in 2017. If you want to add minorities and gays go ahead, comic fans don't give a shit just make them like Midnighter and don't be all preachy about it.

All I ever wanted was a superhero universe where the only tropes that are defied are that the aging process and character development is allowed to happen.

Heroes have no-kill rules and wear spandex. They don't die gimmicky shock deaths. They look and act like classic Marvel and DC.

But they get to grow old and have kids and retire. Like if DC's old Earth-2 stories had actually been published continuously and happened in realtime instead of all kinds of off-screen fast-forwarding.

Also, the kids are never aged super-fast. I know why writers do it, a baby is dead weight narratively, you want to get to the point where it can walk and say dialogue and behave like a real character in the story...but god dammit rapid aging is the dumbest plot device. Logically, a rapidly-aged person would have no maturing experiences and have never learned anything, so they'd still ACT like a baby but in a much larger body.

Also, I prefer "cartoony" art. Or rather, art with very clean linework, like a Karl Kerschl.

/thread

Just watch Beasts of No Nation

> steampunk
> virgin waifus
> hobbit-style protagonist who journey through a story as chaos unfolds around them