Whether you call it the cast page, the character profile page, the “who’s who” page, I don’t care. Second to the archive page, the cast page is the next important secondary webpage on your webcomic website.  Off the top of my head, the only comic I know of who doesn’t need a cast page is Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, because information about the characters is not important, only the jokes that make fun of near strangers (the characters are often the same from comic to comic, but WHO they are isn’t as important as the situational humor, which changes every comic).

Again, like the archive page, many people know they NEED a cast page, but have no idea how to present all that information. This article is going to go through the different ways it can be done, and the pros and cons of each.

Let’s start with the most common way: picture and short blurb.  For example, again, Phoenix Requiem.  We have a portrait image, followed by a very short, concise, paragraph about the “important” aspects of the character: who they are, what they want (motive), and how they got where they are.  At PR, the main cast has images, and the “supporting cast” does not–only the blurb–those other comics choose to provide profile images for all semi-important characters. Providing images for the supporting cast is perfectly acceptable, Ellerton has simply decided not to.

• The pros of this method are many. For first time readers, it lets them in on who your characters are without revealing a lot of plot or spoilers.  It provides all important details as a refresher to long-time readers. It is quick to read, presented in a tight SINGLE page, is fast-loading and has a lot of text (for search engines to see! Whoo!)

• The cons are that it does not provide an up-to-date history on the characters for what has happened through-out the story. It is “intro-level” only.  With only portrait images, if your art is such that faces look alike either due to artistic inexperience or stylistic choice, the cast page can be more confusing than not having one at all. For example, “why do Sarah, Jenn and Jesse all look like the same girl with different colored hair? Oh wait, I can tell them apart by their clothes, but the clothes aren’t in the profile picture!”

The second popular method is a full body profile shot with a small amount of information on the side or beneath. A second facet of this method that makes it different from the others is how the information is presented: on it’s own page. So, you’ll click to go to the cast page, and then click again on separate profile links.  Here are a couple examples: Giderah, Kukuburi and Talismen. You click an image, and you are taken to a separate page.

• Pro’s: there is a lot more emphasis on the art, and WHO the character is as represented BY that art, instead of a focus on text.  It can also be a great promotional tool, especially if you have attractive art. A new reader goes your cast page, sees these “splash” pages, and immediately wants to read IF YOU DO IT RIGHT.  I’m not going to link bad examples here, only good ones.
• Cons: more clicking is the big one. Remember KEZ’s #1 webcomic website rule! Make it as easy for the reader as possible to get the information. If your cast is small, then the amount of clicking is also small. If your cast is big…that’s a lot of clicking around.  A second con is that there is not a lot of information presented. It’s more like…a baseball card than an actual profile.  Long-time readers find little value in going back to this page except to look at the art.

A third way to make a cast page is a mixture of choices 1 and 2, for example Sorcery 101. Usually, this is a very large image, “cut” in half, with a full-body/large picture of a character on one half, and a large blurb on the other half.  This is my least favorite way to see the information presented.

• Pro’s: there’s a lot of room to work with, both with an image and with the text.  More often than not, I consider this method to be a personal pro for the webcomic creator, as an organizational tool. As for how it is received by the webcomic reader, I admit to being unsure.  Those who use this method in my experience seem to be those uncomfortable with coding, and use the image to compensate for a table or div set up. It is, after all, far easier to insert a single image into a page than code a page to insert all pertinent information.
• Cons: large file size, unnecessary clicking, NO TEXT to be read by search engines or context-based advertisers.  Harder to update than a webpage if desired.

The last way I’m going to discuss, is how I’ve done it myself, which is taking choice 1 past the intro level.  Checking around, I see some of my favorite comics have done the same: Juathuur: GateCrash and Garanos, to mention a few.  Here you can see the there is images and blurbs, and the blurbs contain up-to-date information on what has happened through out the story.  Each of us has different information available: age, first appearance, scroll-over definitions, and other interesting stats.

• Pro’s: interesting to both new and long-time readers. Lots of text for search engines and context-based advertisers. All the information is on one page.
• Cons: well, spoilers. I’ve heard on comic forums that sometimes, people go straight to the cast page, and if that is sufficient for them, just right to the most recent page without reading the archives. You may have gained a new reader, but you lost all those pageviews. Some people also just hate spoilers! Another con is that this page must be continually updated as new events occur in the comic.  You will come to point where you may think about switching to choice 1, and making it into-only, especially if your comic is an epic.

The moral of this post is that there is no “right” way to do this, but there are definite wrong ways. Again, look at the cast pages of popular comics that you read, and use that to start. It’s been tried and found true, and it works.  There are some definite wrong ways to make cast pages though, and the biggest wrong is NOT TO HAVE ONE AT ALL. It doesn’t matter if you’ve got a story-based or humor comic. If you have re-occuring characters, and plot/jokes depend on who those characters are, you need this page!