A week or so ago, my students gave presentations on the webcomics they have been following throughout the semester.  The aim of the presentation was to test their chosen webcomics against two of the tenets from the framework we developed at the beginning of class and to develop one new tenet about webcomics based on their observations and scholarly readings.  They were to use their observation of the webcomic alongside those tenets to make a case for whether their peers should include the webcomic in the final exhibition.

As might be expected, xkcd was a clear darling amongst the group, with two presentations that recommended its inclusion because of its popularity, creativity, community, and use of digital affordances.  One of the two students even developed an animation (above) that showed how Randall Munroe uses the infinite canvas.  I was particularly excited to see my students capture webcomics’ global reach, with one student looking at the Korean Webtoon Cheese in the Trap and another looking at Dragon Ball Multiverse as a web-based community of fans.  We also had three presentations on The Loneliest Astronaut, which I had not heard of before the class, with the three presenters managing to vary their presentations considerably.  Two who went on the same day gave different recommendations, with one suggesting peers should not include it because it failed to reach broad audiences and the other claiming they should include for the same reason, as a way of examining what doesn’t work in capturing attention.  This same student also tracked the development of the comic over time from non-continuous narrative, to more continuous storyline, pointing out how the earlier approach allowed for collaboration amongst many guest artists, while the latter told a compelling story, but likely wasn’t as shareable for casual viewing on social media.

The element of webcomics that seemed to stand out most clearly was the success developed by posting on a regular schedule.  Given my scholarly interests in seriality, you can imagine I’d gravitate to this topic, though I don’t think I did anything specific that encouraged so many students to choose this particular tenet from our framework.  As some of my students noted, being able to get in the habit of returning to the same space at regular intervals helps maintain investment, and the idea of regular posting is a cornerstone of social media management.  While I take these points, I want to spend my post today using Hyperbole and a Half as a way to complicate the assumption of success with regular posting.

While Brosh’s comic started in 2009, it wasn’t until 2010 that she gained a large following.  Her breakout post from April 2010, “The Alot is Better Than You at Everything,” has 784 comments compared to the previous record of 132 comments.  The attention may stem from the fact that she posted 78 times in 2010, one to three times a month.  After the Alot post, number of comments remains high, with each getting at least 300 and quite a few reaching into the thousands.  This evidence suggests that regular posting in 2010 helped Brosh build her audience, as my students have suggested most webcomics authors do.

However, the post that has the most comments, “Depression Part Two,” with 5,000 appeared after an absence so long that Brosh wrote an announcement post before it.  The second most commented on post, “Adventures in Depression” with 4,624 comments, came after a five month gap.  Many of the comments on each of these welcome Brosh back, with community members saying they have missed her and have been waiting for her to post.  I suppose, in some ways, once Brosh had helped her readers develop a certain set of habits and then disappeared, the gap between posts built tension and suspense. Moreover, because HH is an autobiographical comic, readers feel like the posts help them get to know Brosh as a person, and the fact that she left after posting about dealing with depression caused concern in the community.  Of course, there are likely other factors at play in helping Brosh build audience, such as her engagement with followers on Reddit, and there are other ways of judging “success” other than comments, especially because not every reader comments, but while a regular schedule might contribute to audience engagement, it is not the only factor at play.