Subject to Suggest to Strangely: the webcomic Questionable Content
Things I Like: Solid artwork, writing, and consistency of humor.
Things I Don’t Like: Not enough character diversity (the beliefs and motivation seems the same for everyone), plot slower that molasses in January.
Strange Suggestion: Focus Drift.
Right now the comic is focused almost exclusively on relatively new characters, having the main “plot” characters as established fixtures around which newer people revolve. I say run with it – forget about the old people and focus completely on the new. From there, once we’ve explored who these people are, introduce new people and repeat the process. After maybe five or six layers of “drift” we can return to the original cast and see what’s transpired in our absence.
This series is person-centric, with the story taking a backseat to the people and their interactions. Since there seems to be no “end-game” for the comic, it can take any character-specific direction it chooses – so leaving the current cast to chase new and more interesting people wouldn’t hurt the comic – it would expand it into a sprawling, epic-sized study into the imagination of Jeph Jacques, both in regards to character creation and social/political ideology and practice.
This includes making sympathetic characters with opposing ideology. Jeph has made very clear his tolerance-based ideas, and all his characters mirror this accepting, helpful stance. However, really interesting and engaging stories come from friction and conflict, hence the desperate need for new characters with beliefs radically different to any other cast member – ideas that may go directly against the beliefs of the cartoonist himself. Only then can the world achieve that true three-dimensionality it’s desperately been reach for.
The perfection of something is its own death. Therefore, all things seek their end.
@RonKhare There have been various Lily Allen clones launched. The most notable probably being Kate Nash... http://bit.ly/9oX7Fd - posted on 04/09/2010 16:40:24
@RonKhare i love J Leake's mixtape http://bit.ly/cKSVhr this is 1 of my fav songs from it http://bit.ly/av2AGB - posted on 04/09/2010 16:33:07
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having read all 1631 pages of this comic, i'd have to disagree. this comic works because it follows likable characters around while they hang out. i believe the whole draw of this comic is the feeling of hanging out with these characters, and liking them for being them. making a character open minded is not the same as making the character just like everyone else. the characters are all pretty different, in my opinion. conflict doesn't make a story, it makes a conflict story. this is a hang out story. rather than turning the hang out story into a conflict story, find a conflict story to scratch that itch for you while this one keeps on rockin' the "awesome people hanging out" web comic niche. also, i think the core cast are what push this comic from neat to awesome. drifting away from them to spice things up would be a bad play.
my strange suggestion to you is to try to imagine all the ways stories can be entertaining without forced conflict.
just my two cents.
Well done, sir.
I thought about this some more – since I, too, have read every single goddamn page – I think I'm just sick of hanging out with the same people all the time. By "conflict" I really mean "plot" – the stories are on par with the "hey, I said something funny today" stories you tell the people you know too well, but it's never that interesting. I really only read it now out of habit than for anything else… I can rest well assured nothing that interesting is going to happen.