Sunday, April 05, 2009

Doppelpost

I have updated the 'about' page (including a handsome new self-portrait) and in doing so started thinking about a better introduction to the comic than the current cast page. Writing a cast page that somehow synopsises more than 1600 comics worth of appearances for new readers is hard to write and impossible to maintain. Surely all anyone needs to know is that Shelley is sweet but dangerously mad, Ryan is a sort of gentle savant and Amy is brilliant but slowed down by a thick crust of expensive hair wax? It's hard to write more than a couple of meaningless lines without making spoilers. I welcome your suggestions.

4 comments:

rs said...

I know that the estimable Jeffrey Rowland wrote a story-by-story synopsis for Wigu to help it become less impenetrable. Something similar would probably help, especially if it consists of links! It would also probably be very time-consuming.

Oh also: perhaps you can emphasize that you don't need to read the old stories by moving some of the older ones to a special archival section? The old links should redirect to the new ones so you aren't losing any hits or links. I don't know what this will accomplish or if it will just make everyone furious but it was a thought I had, and sometimes I write my thoughts down because other people can transform them into something too glorious and terrible to imagine.

Ricco Swave said...

Just let wikipedia do it. There's already a good start on the comic's wiki page. Just get some of the internet's main nerds to expand it to Achewood like levels

Cadwell said...

Hello John, Adam Cadwell here, leaving a comment.

For the Cast page I don't think it's necessary to have description for some of the older characters who have aren't used any longer (or have gone to Hades). If I was reading an older story arc and encountered a new character I wouldn't click straight to the cast page to find out who they were, the story tells you enough about them. I'd suggest maybe some fresh portraits of Shelly, Amy, Ryan, Des and the teens with some witty descriptions of their personas should suffice. If you bring back an older character for a significant amount of time, they can then be added to the page.

2goldfish said...

Cadwell's right.

Also, it might be a lot of work, but doing that very short introduction to the very basics of SGR in comics form could be useful. You could do a quick sketchy black & whitey kinda comics, you know, it's just that people might be more inclined to read it than just some texts. People come to SGR for comics. Give the people what they want.