Please consider, if you are a new reader checking out this AWESOME-LOOKING comic and you go straight to the first page….and it’s some sort of “hey I’m new at this and I’m talking to you and aren’t comics great these are my scribbles but I thought you’d like to see them anyway.” What would you think? A: “LAME.”

Your first pages in your archive are a make-or-break experience for a lot of readers. Many new visitors will just LEAVE if they have to click through 5 or 6 diatribes of your “experience.” Never, ever, interrupt the reading experience for sketches or “page is late” or “page in process” announcements. Once that “page in process” is finished, that notice had damn well VANISH completely.

Fan art is no different! If I’m reading this intense action scene that is interrupted quite suddenly with fan arts due to “unplanned hiatus” from a year prior, do you think I’m going to be happy? NO! It’s the equivalent of a commercial in the middle of a movie. Does anyone here LIKE watching movies on a TV channel with commercials every 15 minutes? Are those interruptions not the most annoying thing on earth at that moment? YES JUST ADMIT IT.

Okay, okay, I’m a bit incensed about this, I admit. So, when IS it acceptable to have filler in a webcomic archive? Never, unless it’s the most recent update(s). Yes, if you have fan art, I’m all about showing that off. I personally really love to send people to the sites of those who spend the time making me a gift. But does that fan art stay in the archive? No! Never more than a week or two, tops. Then it is taken out of the archive and given an appropriate place on a gallery page.

What about “announcement” filler? Again, only your most recent update(s)! If your page is late, do indeed inform your readers that you haven’t shirked your responsibility, you haven’t died in a car crash, and a page is on the way. But once that page is up, that filler comes out of the archive! And even better, this notice should be in the “news” area of your site, not in the archive at all!

And finally, the case of “I’m so excited to make my first webcomic that my first pages in my archive are about my excitement and NOT my story”? Such a thing is done right <0.1% of the time. Breaking the fourth wall is something to do so very rarely it’s probably best not done at all except by expert, much like a demolition.

This same rule applies to side-stories in archives as well. Two separate stories should NEVER be in the same archive. If page 1 is “Amish Space Conquerors,”  page 2 is suddenly the side-story introducing the adventures of “Penny the Penguin, Best Friend of Amish Conqueror,” and these two stories go back and forth in the same archive…how is anyone supposed to enjoy or even follow either story (disregarding the absurdity of the stories used as examples here). Archive each story separately, with again, the only exception being the most RECENT update. Please note, this power should be used rarely.

If you are guilty of polluting your archive with commercials/filler, please, go clean it out now. There won’t be a single reader who will complain…except the one whose fan art you have just moved to the gallery. ;)