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How Not To Introduce Your Characters #1
Contributed by Srdjan of 
Phalanx says:
In those real life roomie comics, there only seem to be only 3 types of roomies: the perpetually drunk womanizer, the sensitive timid yet cute guy, and the hot goth girl (sometimes a guy, but goth girls are more common)
I wonder why are the characteristics so limited? mcDuffies says:
Allow me to insert a longer quote from Ghastly here:
"A Guide for the Beginning Webcomic Artist
Things to Avoid for Plot.
Comics where a bunch of roommates sit around and make sarcastic quips should be avoided.
Comics where a bunch of roommates sit around and play videogames and make sarcastic quips should be avoided.
Comics where a bunch of roommates all go to the same school and sit around and make sarcastic quips should be avoided.
Comics where roommates all work at the same place and sit around and make sarcastic quips should be avoided.
Comics where roommates are magically transported to a fantasy dimension and sit around making sarcastic quips should be avoided.
Comics where the roommates are furries who sit around making sarcastic quips should be avoided.
Comics where room mates are furries who all go to the same school and work at the same place who are transported to a fantasy dimension where they sit around and play videogames and make sarcastic quips should be avoided.
The whole roommate thing started getting old around the time "Three's Company" got cancelled. There are better and more interesting ways to bring a diverse group of characters together than making them all roommates. There are already too many roommate comics. Judging from webcomics you'd think that nobody in the world has an apartment of their own."
Precisely.
Most of these comics start just like this one: A guy is coming at the door of his new apartment, maybe even saying the exact same thing as John guy in this comic, and in the very next panel meet his roommate who is likely to get him lots of troubles (read: quirky plots) in future. This syndrome of "new guy in city" seems to be picked from TV-shows like "Beverly hills", and now people think every comic must be started from a blank slate.
Next: Attributes like "Normal", "Weird", "Goth", are not a characterization! No man can be described with only one word, so comic characters shouldn't either. There's million kinds of "normal", as well as million kinds of "weird". After all, noone of us is completely normal or totally weird. We all have predispositions to be both, depending on situation. So, when inventing characters, try to be more concise, imaginative, original.
Third: Avoid punchlines where character says: "Well, at least it can't be any worse" and then something worse happens. In fact, avoid any kind of joke that features these words in it. They never were funny and never will be! And I never heard someone saying "At least it can't be any worse" in real life, did you?
Fourth: These characters are mostly drawn from profile, but their mouth are still drawn from front. Amazingly lots of webartists do this. Learning to draw mouth from profile is not an easy thing so that's probably the reason. Now, if this is the case in caricature comic, it suits fine and doesn't hurt. But if you have a realistically drawn comic (or even semi-realistic) and still use this, it looks grotesque. Like if every time your characters turns profile, their mouth moves over to the middle of the cheek. Ugh.
Other things are minor but I'll still mention them:
Nobody throws up by saying "*throws up*". You'd better make sure that reader can recognize what's happening in the picture so additions like this are useless.
John, Mike and Steve are the probably the most common Anglo-American names. If your first language is not English, or even if it is, put a little thought into giving names, otherwise it won't sound very convincing.
"Beer" is written with two "e"'.
Line is monotone; it makes drawing a bit dull and boring.
Terotrous says:
I actually find this strip quite hilarious.
The line "Ugh I'm gonna be sick *throws up*" kills me.
I also like how he had to write down the number "9".
If this was a real comic, I'd probably read it.
