One of the things that’s always bugged me about television shows where the plot doesn’t advance from week to week, is how after every episode the slate is wiped clean and they start again.

There are advantages to this approach, ie easier to throw random ideas together that don’t follow a specific story arc to form that episode’s focus, or making the show easier to pick up for a new viewer without having to watch through a bunch of back episodes.

But you also sacrifice things such as character development and long-term consequences of character’s actions, which can be quite interesting, and lead to unexpected outcomes.

Some shows take the opposite extreme, such as Babylon 5, where (to the best of my knowledge) many seasons were plotted out in advance, with specific exit-scenarios written up for each character in case the actor playing them wanted to leave early.

I’ve tried to take some sort of middle ground between the two with the comic. I have long term story ideas I’m usually working towards, with unrelated random craziness popping up inbetween.

I’ve also tried to keep the comic world dynamic, ie, for the most part, things that happen that affect characters or the world are still evident many strips later. Of course, it’s a bitch to draw new stuff all the time, and it would be a hell of lot easier to just have everything be static and just post unrelated jokes week after week with no character development, but where’s the fun in that?

Tags: Biff, Intervention, Postie, Simon, Trent

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 17th, 2009 at 12:00 am and is filed under Comics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.