falling into the snarl

[ironymaiden]

i'm not sure i like Order of the Stick anymore.

and this is the bizarre part: one of the things that is making me unhappy is that there is way too much written content.*

the story has gotten too big to be communicated effectively in the webcomic format by someone who doesn't have the ability to crank out a page a day. i feel like it's being compensated for by jamming the panels full of word bubbles. i wish the Giant would either rethink, or write and post a few pages of text for us to read and skip the comic ahead to a point in the story that fits the medium. (and i think this problem is the big reason that Start of Darkness didn't do much for me.)

i feel guilty about complaining about the thing i get for free from a guy who is in poor health, but i don't believe any artist should get a pass on work they show in public. i don't need more punchlines; i just need more comic.

any other OotS readers feeling this? or the opposite?



*(usually i love and defend adding more words to comics. unless it's The Black Dossier which i still haven't finished because it was so densely printed that i was getting sick trying to read it on the bus.)

Comments

[mrdorbin.livejournal.com]

I like it because he still gets at least one good joke in per update ('they're the control group'), but I kind of tune out whenever the characters start talking about the overarching plot line. Though that could be because these days I lose interest whenever the fate of anything larger than a city is at stake.

[mysticalforest.livejournal.com]

I very long ago came to that conclusion and that was after reading only two or three comics, so as a result I never got into it in the first place.

I neither want nor like overarching plots in web comics. I read online comics for a yuk, not for story. I don't care. They're on my bookmark list, I'm going to read it every day as it is I don't want something to keep track of.

If there is a story, keep it down to a few strips, at most. Anything more and interest wanes.

If I wanted a long story I'd read a book.

[buhrger]

i've got two conflicting tendencies here. on the one hand, i like long, complicated plots (hello, b5?). on the other hand, i know there've been times where i've stayed on board with something far longer than it made any sense to, and only realized i was doing so in hindsight. so the fact that i'm still enjoying OotS could come from either of those two, and i'm not sure which one it is.

[boldfeather.livejournal.com]

I've stopped reading it, and a few of the reasons are similar to what you've mentioned.

[spazzychic.livejournal.com]

I am not as excited about it before. I do go there and get a chuckle now and then when I let the story go for a few weeks. The small group of comics at a time thing I prefer than trying to keep up with a plodding pace of a large story one at a time.