The Whiteboard, a webcomic and a question!

[DocsMachine]

I have an odd question, one that came up in a real-world conversation.

Why are you not reading TWB?



That's a serious question, and I'd like to hear from people are reading it (what do you like about it?) people who have read it but don't anymore (why'd you stop?) and people who have never heard about it 'til just now. (What do you or do you not like about it?)

Honest answers, please, either way. You don't like it? Feel free to say so! If there's something specific, let me know what that is.

It's a webcomic, not Shakespeare, I know it's not for everyone, not everyone likes comics, not everyone has time to read comics, etc. I would like to know what people do and don't like about it. Content, art, subject? The site isn't optimized for viewing on a phone? Not enough paintball stuff?

Can't hurt my feelings, I genuinely want to know!

Doc.

[BrickHaus]

I can say I don't give the whiteboard enough attention.

I do respect the fact that you are putting yourself into the comics. Its a genuine piece of your expression of art.

I find them kind of boring in the fact that they want to be humorous, but the humor is a dry humor. Some of the jokes are also over my head with some of your pop culture references.

I still enjoy the comics when I land on them, but they aren't on my mind actively to spur the desire to go see if a new comic was published.



A few things to potentially help its success.

1. Out of sight out of mind. You expecting people to remember to actively go look for twb is a bit unrealistic. But if you pushed emails to every customer email address you have on file, it gives you visibility.

Say you publish a new comic. Then when published, your website would send an email to all people on your mailing list saying " A new episode of the whiteboard is up! Check it out here!!"

That alone would get your viewer count up.

2. What about a whiteboard calendar? Like make up 12 single frame comics, and publish a calendar that again gives you visibility, and seeing a white board calendar on a daily basis would keep the whiteboard as a whole more in my short term memory.

[flyweightnate]

I read daily... if he started spamming me, I'd be unsubscribed ASAP. Monthly might be better.

[BrickHaus]

Does a new comic get published daily though? I read them occasionally, so I wouldn't know, but ai assume it takes him a few weeks to make each episode at least.

[Fubarius]

Right now it's 5 times a week

[Grendel]

I go from not reading it to reading everything that is new to me. Going to TWB is not a "standard work" in my day to day life [nor any other on-line comic I read] but instead my going to TWB is based on the thoughts like, "hey I have some time to burn I wonder how many more panels/new stories Doc has created". Reading things like TWB on-line is more around me being bored or having to wait for something else and is used to fill down time.

[XEMON]

Personally I like it, I really enjoy seeing the evolution of the style over time.
A Lot of paintball references are from way back when there were less structure to the field, which I find hilarious because that's how it was when I started. All the pop culture reference go over my head, but I know a lot of people like that (I never get any pop culture references because I didn't grow up in the us ...)
overall I find it fun, I don't think you should change the content because of others, it's your way of expression, it's you on a page, don't change that!

I agree about visibility, I am not a regular reader, every few months I go through and read a bunch, have a good lough and a good time for an hour or two an forget about it till next time ... A voluntary news letter is a good idea (please don't flood email ...) Or post here? Maybe we could ask the mods to make a TWB section?

Ho, and BrickHaus calendar idea is awesome!
There are website that make custom calendar with your pictures, so it may not be a ton of work to add that to your offerings.

[flyweightnate]

I very much appreciate that it's a reprieve from the politics. I've stopped reading over half of my webcomics since 2010 because they think their view is the only morally allowable one. TWB was never at risk.

It's quirky. It's not so predictable as something like "Blondie" but not too weird, and the characters are just flat enough to be characters without being boring.

That said, webcomics are off the beaten path. People who haven't bookmarked it don't trip over it.

[Trbo323]

So I read everything, but I do it in vibes
Binges, so I wait a few months and then read everything I need to catch up on in a day or two

My thoughts

1) optimized for phone would be nice, the last few months I've been having issues with the comics loading, it's super slow to the point that my phone thinks the page has timed out, then it loads the whole page at once. It didn't used to be this way, it wasn't the fastest site but didn't take 10 seconds waiting before by any means

2) wheres the paintball? For someone like me who doesn't really read web comics, the paintball aspect is the only thing that really keeps me around. When whole story lines are dedicated to other things it just starts losing some interest for me.

3) (I am at least a month behind right now so maybe this has changed) where's the characters? It seems like everyone except doc, Roger and......docs gf.... Spacing on her name at the moment are really the only characters that are active. Hell when was the last time bandit or rain showed up? I love them because they represent paintball players, doc and Roger are just... People

4) I really enjoyed the strips that are more like one liners over whole stories. The ones that are in the shop or on the field and the ones where sandy and pirta are learning to play paintball. Those ones are all relatable to paintball players, and hell, sometimes new players do some funny things, ever seen a player roll toa different bunker? Literally roll on the ground? I have

One of my favorite strips of all time is just one window, when bandit is telling doc that it's cool but he doesn't think he needs a belt drive force feed 10rd tube. It speaks to so much of the industry, the crazy inventions companies try to push, the aspect of a stock class player not needing something the shop trying to make a sale etc etc. And that's all with just 1 window not any kind of huge story line.

Got to go, time for work

Sent from my motorola edge 5G UW (2021) using Tapatalk

[blitz121]

I've been busy but attempt to binge from time to time. honestly it's just one of those things that slips my mind. If I see a comment or a screenshot I usually run back to read through.

[martix_agent]

Honestly, I usually forget about it for a year or so, then go back and binge what I've missed.
I do enjoy reading it, though. Not every single panel is a hit, and that's ok; I don't know anyone who has been able to do that.

[Magoo]

I love webcomics, and The Whiteboard is one I've kept up with start to finish. Your art has come a long way, so props.

My biggest critique is the Sunday Paper three-panel layout doesn't lend itself to longer arcs. A lot of the times the pacing can get slow. I know you've got a lot on your plate, so expanding the three-panel layout to a full-page style layout may not be in the cards, but surface level, that's what I'd recommend if you were trying to get away from gag-of-the-day comics.

[Walker]

I read it daily...... And like it that way....

I like the varied story lines, the character traits, the lack of politics, the way time is compressed...

I don't need a phone optimized version....


Walker

[spikeball]

I go a while without reading, and then when I have a substantial amount of downtime, or I can't sleep, I'll wander back to reading it. At first it was part of my web-comic rotation I would visit many years ago. Now I don't really enjoy web comics, except for The Whiteboard. Mostly because I enjoy the style of humor in it, the fact that it's somewhat paintball related, and all the characters are fun. Oh, and I really get a kick out of the Mountain Dew bits, as a fellow Mountain Dew drinker 😎

[Magmoormaster]

It seems like you're specifically asking me. I stopped reading maybe a year or two ago after having read it consistently for a decade. I started reading back in 2010 or 2011, and spent most of the first week binging through all the old comics and followed it ever day after that. Every so often, I would go back and binge read it form the beginning again. I must have done that at least 3-4 times.

The whiteboard is one of 2 webcomics I've ever read, and by far the only one read for a real length of time. What I liked about it was that the jokes were very relatable, as I was also working as a tech in a pro shop. I enjoyed the hijinks that the group would get up to, but ultimately I was there for the paintball jokes. I liked that they went out and played every so often.

I actually stopped reading it twice, once right as Doc met Cara. I picked it back up a few months later, read it for maybe another year or so, and stopped again.

I think there were two reasons why I stopped. First, I think I just outgrew the genre and the subject. While I still play paintball, still regular the forum here, and so on, paintball in general is a smaller part of my life than it used to be, and as I've grown older (30 now, was ~18 when I started), I think I'm just less interested in reading a webcomic in general. That said, I think I stopped really enjoying it as it got more serialized, and the stories became so long. That one time when the game of paintball went on for about a year and a half, got kinda old. I don't hate the idea of there being a general narrative, but I appreciated it more when maybe we'd get a week or a month long narrative, and then it kinda went back to "normal." I feel like the comic used to be such that you could go back to any random comic from 10 years ago, and maybe you'd find yourself in a short serialized narrative, but you likely wouldn't feel lost. If I tried to do that now, and picked an episode from maybe 2-3 years ago, I'd have no idea what's going on, and who some characters are.

It also ventured much further from paintball tech jokes, and even from paintball itself more than I preferred. My favorite bits were when Doc is telling people to convert beer kegs to low pressure using the Shocker parts not parts from other guns, and stuff like that. I understand that that's a shallow well to pull from, but that's what I was really there for.

I know how much you hate social media, but if you wanted to expand your audience, posting your comics on facebook or instagram would help reach a lot of people who otherwise wouldn't read it.

[Nish]

Life got crazy for a while some time back and I got out of the habit of visiting the 3-5 web comics that I used to visit.
IN part because of inconsistent updates, partly lack of time, partly lack of motivation.

[MrBarraclough]

I'll usually pop over and catch up on it whenever I have occasion to browse your shop or look at one of your custom work photo threads, but that may mean months in between readings.

I suppose the main reason for the infrequency is something of a compliment, in a weird way. Your page in general, and TWB especially, are on one of my self-maintained block/limit lists. I have severe ADHD, and the nature of my work and the software tools I use require an active internet connection for most of my work. Working offline simply isn't an option for 90% of what I do. Not the best combination. So I use a browser extension that blocks or limits access to certain pages during work hours, and I am always adding to the lists as I find myself too engrossed in various pages. TWB is an enormous rabbit hole that I would absolutely love to get lost in, hence I had to add it to one of my browser extension lists to keep myself from spending hours reading it. If it weren't fun to read, I wouldn't have a need to restrict or block it.

If there isn't one already, I would suggest creating a subreddit for TWB and posting links to new strips there as they go live. Lots of webcomics do that. It's a way for readers to subscribe without having adding clutter to their email inboxes, and it would provide a forum for discussing the comic. I would be remiss not to note that in some cases, the reddit community around a webcomic can develop a weird love/hate relationship with it. See r/questionablecontent for a prime example. I think that's more of a function of the nature of that particular comic and its audience than it is a general webcomics on reddit thing. Or at least I hope so. QC seems to have an oddly strong following of people who think its author is a hack who can't write [blank] characters worth a damn. Fill in the blank with your marginalized demographic of choice.

[Seajay]

Not enough advertisement... so I forgot about it. A little banner or something on MCB would go far in reminding me of its existence.