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How Not To Introduce Your Characters #6
Contributed by Jops of 
Phalanx says:
Ah. The typical mistake of jamming the entire introduction into a single speech bubble.
It's a good idea to break a speech up into several speech bubbles, dividing them into when you this the character is pausing for breath.
On the other hand, this works rather well to convey that this gal in particular currently has more sugar in her system than a school kid on Halloween night.
mcDuffies goes on and on and on:
Jops made a fair kick at comics with good art. With this girl all over the panel, noone will be interested in reading text. There are just... more... distracting things... *scrolls down*
But one interesting question raises. It's difficult to present reader with information and sometimes it's harder to start a comic than to finish it. It may take a lot of space to do that and then introduction in the comic can drag along a year or two. Then again, cramming all information into reader's face all at once, like here, isn't good idea either. Cause noone is running around repeating his biography and life trivia to complete strangers.
I'd like to try and figure out how these information might be presented in a more subtle way:
-"I must secure this floppy disc for a secret mission" - no need to give this info at all, actually: whether she secures the damn floppy disc or fails and gets caught by the opposite side, eventually it will be obvious that it was a secret mission and what the mission was.
-"Then I'll go back to searching for a new house" - Same thing. When that part of comic comes, it will be obvious that she is searching for a new house.
-"Mine burned down when I tried to cook an omelette" - While searching for a new house, someone asks her: "What happened to your old house" and then she shortly explains it.
-"Yeah I'm that bad at cooking" - When she finds a new house, she'll try to cook something and her incompetence at cooking will be shown.
-"But I rock at pong" - See above. Anyway, I get a feeling that bad cooking and pong will be mentioned, like, a hundred times through a comic.
-"Jazz music, horror movies, cats, chicken chow, walking in the woods" - In between missions, a nice interlude is to show fragments of her personal like. Just show her listening to jazz, watching movies, petting cats etc. Show, don't talk!
-"I had a trauma caused by a German Shepard" - Let's see... Somewhere during some mission, she'll get scared. Her companion will ask her about it and then she will explain the whole trauma thing.
-"I'm very aggressive" - If she really is aggressive character, that will be needless to say. It'll be obvious during the comic.
Well there. Of course, it's easier to cram it all up in one balloon, but this sucks.
Terotrous says:
Most of the time, single-panel comics use as little
text as possible, conveying the message through images.
Not in this case. This is more of a elaborate cast page.
