watchthelightfade replied to your post: I’m going to go to bed soon, so I’m kind of just...
The concepts, characters, and aesthetics were enough to jump off of for fanworks, perhaps. hinabn was one of the first paranormal comics I can think of? Ghost hunters and vampires and zombies in a normal town. Now, there’s a decent few, and I can bet they were inspired by hinabn somewhere along the line. Also, the comic layout was unusual. Fonts and weird paneling, lots of artistic liberty with what a comic looked like.
watchthelightfade replied to your post: I’m going to go to bed soon, so I’m kind of just...
Compare with Homestuck and it’s very similar. Panels and formatting that push the boundary of what a comic looks like and means, cool concepts and aesthetics such as kids becoming gods and sweet outfits/customisation and the art style (think the red crosses and fonts themes through hinabn). Lots of music associated with the two. Intriguing characters with hidden backstory. A feeling of something bigger than yourself? They were popular because they pushed the boundaries.
I don’t know if genre elements had anything to do with why they became popular. Paranormal stories that take place in modern times existed before HINABN, and Homestuck isn’t unique in it’s “kids being more important that the average person” premise. However, I think the way in which they told those stories might’ve been it’s selling point, like you said.
When I first came across HINABN and Homestuck, I never saw comics that looked quite like that. HINABN was especially visually striking and only improved on it’s visuals as the series went on. As I mentioned before, I haven’t read Homestuck, but I’ve seen screenshots and the artwork looks fairly distinct too. As far as the writing is concerned, though I can’t speak for Homestuck, HINABN was very well written, entertaining, and fun. And as you mentioned, it had characters with backstories that were only hinted at, which made you want to learn more about them.
Still, despite all of this, I can’t help but feel like there was something more that made them popular. Maybe it’s just a matter of posting their stories in a time where their stories would’ve interest the most people. So if they had created their series a few years sooner or later, it wouldn’t have had the impact that it did. Maybe it was the specific demographic that they appealed to. Maybe it was all the word-of-mouth advertisement that they got.
I don’t know. I just feel like if it was only a matter of having a good story with good art that pushed boundaries, more webcomics would have the massive following that Homestuck and HINABN achieved.** The only other webcomic I can think of that has a massive following is One Punch Man, but I have to wonder if it would’ve gotten as popular if it hadn’t been turned into a manga and anime.
**I will admit that I don’t go out of my way to read/look for new webcomics, so it’s possible that the majority are lackluster and badly made, which would explain why most of them don’t have a large following. But even if that is true, why don’t the good ones get more attention?
