I posted this rant over at the Smackjeeves forums in one of the threads. It started off being about Sonic Sprite comics getting old and kinda trailed off into the distance...still, I decided to post it here as well:

Getting old? Sonic Comics are old. People only like them because they have so many sprites available already it means they just have to recolour the life out of them to make new characters. <_<

I mean, my Mario comic (I feel deep shame whenever I think of the fact I'm making a sprite comic) features a sprite of Mario actually holding his arm to the side and building up a fireball (it's just not appeared yet). I had to edit the Mario sprite myself to make it, it took a small amount of effort beyond just copying and pasting. I plan on editing sprites slightly MORE when needed! *shock, horror*

Effort is something people seem to be afraid of, even if it's simply the effort required to type coherent sentences and use words longer than four letters.

Then again, maybe I'm used to not being able to shout "Go Go Gadget [insert command here]" to do things. Learning programming installs that kind of "It takes effort" mentality into you I guess...

I appreciate coming up with original story lines and characters takes effort...oh wait, most of them seem to like that. Okay, I admit at the moment my comic lacks one because it is essentially a parody of the Super Mario Bros Story, it's on it's way there with many things planned in my head and on paper.

Another thing: Your characters need a soul. They need a background. "Hey guyz I'm liek the chozen one and sh!t so I gotta go and kill some robotnik dude and save teh world" is not a soul or a background, it's generic crap a two year-old could have come up with. Okay, Luigi = stupid and Mario = sadistic may not be the most original of ideas, but from what I've seen it has never been really done before with these two characters.

Mario actually has a reason behind his murderous nature, which is explained slightly later on. Characters also need a reason beyond "Hey I'm evil and like to kill stuff", it could be as simple as they were a hero but their own heroic actions rendered the people they protect so reliant on them the people couldn't take care of themselves, which caused the hero to just stop caring about them and start looking out entirely for himself. It's still better than "I'm a soulless beast who likes to kill everything I see", not that that idea can't work (I point you to Richard from Looking for Group as proof the mindless murdering machine (as he puts it, "I. Like. To. Kill. Things. How is that not clear by now?") can work if handled correctly, though recent events in the story have shown even the walking skeleton has a 'soul'. And look at Black Mage from 8-Bit Theatre! He's trapped in a world where everyone is a complete imbecile! If I was like that, I'd want to kill everyone I saw as well. As Brain wrote in the forums (written from memory), "I think we've all heard something which made us want to bring about the end of times.", well if you ask me Black Mage lives in a world where everything he sees, hears and smells should have that effect on him. We also see a deeper side to him at times, a trace element of a soul which gives him so much more appeal as a character.

Now this part is aimed at readers as well as writers/comic-makers (whatever you call them):
Story's and plots do NOT happen overnight. They can last a very long time, and not only should the reader not expect them to be wrapped up in a matter of two 'pages', but the writer should not try to cram everything into those two pages. You can introduce a character in the tenth comic, and they can vanish from existence until the fiftieth comic, as long as it makes sense in the plot this is tolerable and could even be a very good move. Again I will use the extremely popular 8-Bit Theatre. How many comics was it until they actually started the 'quest' to save the princess and effectively 'started the story'? A lot. Did it work? Yes, it worked like (if you ask me) a charm.

I'm not even going to get into the need for good grammar and punctuation, because quite frankly if you don't understand that now I have no interest in explaining it to you.

Oh well, now I'm off to end this rant and bid you farewell. And, by the way, I didn't write all of this just by shouting 'Go Go Gadget Rant' ;).