Poll results
From 5 September 2013 to 1 May 2014, the following eight polls ran on Sandra and Woo. All but one of them got over 2,000 votes and it’s time to present the results.
Poll from 5 September 2013:
Although many casual readers may not have participated in the poll, those are some great numbers with 50% of our readers placing Sandra and Woo in their personal top 3 of all comics they read.
Poll from 5 September 2013:
Compared to the same poll from 10 December 2011, the number of Sandra and Woo readers who also read Gaia has decreased by 3%. That’s not a drop that I’d find alarming.
Poll from 5 September 2013:
Compared to the same poll from 6 April 2010, the most notable change is the significant drop of people who particularly enjoy reading comics featuring animals. In contrast, more people are fond of fantasy and action comics. I suspect that many of them first found Gaia and then started to read Sandra and Woo as well. School comics are still surprisingly unpopular.
Poll from 5 September 2013:
The readership is dominated by readers who found Sandra and Woo just recently. I wonder why so few of the people who joint us in 2009 are still sticking around.
Poll from 24 November 2013:
Compared to the same poll from 4 September 2010, Larisa’s popularity has grown massively, in expense of Woo’s. I’m a little sad that my favorite character Sandra is once again on the last position. Because I think that girl really ties the comic together. 😉
Poll from 24 November 2013:
Compared to the same poll from 13 November 2009, longer story arcs have become even more popular. I’m a bit puzzled by that since single strips usually get more comments and page views than strips that are part of a story arc.
Poll from 24 November 2013:
It’s official: Sandra and Woo readers are hardcore gamers who play at least one new game per week! Only 17%, including me, are filthy casuals who only play a few games per year. 😉
Poll from 24 November 2013:
Yeah, I’m not surprised. Zoey x Michelle was our most popular story arc so far, there’s no doubt about it. My personal favorite was Woo’s first meeting with Seeoahtlahmakaskay. I still have to use copy&paste for her name all the time. 😉
Just my 2 pfennigs’ worth… 🙂
“Favorite character”: I agree with you 100%; Sandra ties the comic’s world together! 🙂 (I did vote her my favorite.)
“Arc vs Short”: Just my personal opinion… Single or short arcs get more comments because they are easier to comment on without having to know too much about what happened earlier in the arc. You probably don’t even have to know as much detail about the characters’ backstory since it’s usually short, quick, and more obvious humor. (I like the balance between short and long arcs.)
Hmm… Any chance you could put an “other” option in favorite gaming console? Game Boy is hardly an apt descriptor for the slew of DS consoles in the past few years, and the PSP and Vita aren’t on there. I can see you had the foresight to put smartphone and tablet, but there’s a significant amount of people that love their various dedicated portable systems, though.
I’ll abstain from this poll, my answer would be Vita.
Re the preponderance of new readers: perhaps the long-time readers didn’t bother voting in the poll.
“The readership is dominated by readers who found Sandra and Woo just recently. I wonder why so few of the people who joint us in 2009 are still sticking around.”
If the readership has been growing, it makes sense that the longer-term readers would be a smaller percent. I’m wondering how many readers there are now versus in 2009. I’m also wondering how long people typically stick with a comic.
One of the new polls asks how often we go to the cinema. Quite a difference between “a few times per year” and “never”. Tricky question for me since I just got a decent job and can finally afford to go to the theater, and have seen Guardians of the Galaxy twice already. Previously it was “once every 3-5 years”. Though it might change, I chose “never”. I don’t expect it to be more than 3 times per year.
I wonder how many theater workers answered/will answer that poll, heh.
Also, wasn’t there a poll about religion in the last batch of polls? Maybe risky to provide commentary on that.
I didn’t happen to take this particular poll, but if I had I think I would have bailed at question 3.
I think it might be of benefit to you to understand why.
First, I don’t generally think of comics I read in terms of “genre”. There are the ones I like and the ones I don’t like, and that distinction is based upon so many factors that “genre” is probably irrelevant. I am more likely to red a well written comic about a subject I don’t care about than a poorly written one about a subject I do care about.
Though I will admit comics I like have an odd tendency to center on mad scientists.
Now let’s look at those generes:
Comedy.
Well, most webcomics (like the newspaper comics that inspired them) usually end with a punch line. If Comedy is a genre, probably every comic I read is in it.
Oh, and Calvin and Hobbes was more about philosophy than comedy. And hasn’t been made in almost 20 years, so a lot of folks taking this poll are probably unfamiliar with it.
The next 3 genres use examples I have never heard of.
XKCD is about “computers and the internet”? Really? I mean, it is rife with jokes about programming languages, but also jokes about physics. And cynicism. And nearly always has a joke.
Penny Arcade IS about gaming, I’ll give you that.
The next four again use examples I’ve never heard of.
Wait: Watchmen? Are we including graphic novels in “comics” for this poll? Are we including comic [i]books[/i] in comics for this poll? Because my preference in comic [i]books[/i] runs heavily superhero, but I also haven’t bought a comic book in close to a decade.
I have enjoyed a couple of webcomics about superheroes, like Evil Inc, and my current top ten includes PS238 and Super Stupor.
On the other hand, the Spider Man that runs in newspapers has always seemed tedious.
Never read The Sandman, don’t know what it’s like.
Zits is about a teenager, not about “school”. While some of the strips take place in school, they almost never deal with school subjects or even school social relations. They more often deal with his cluttered room or decrepit car. School is just a place he is late to, or where his short walk with his girlfriend takes place.
Frazz, on the other hand, is about the janitor at an elementary school, and the kids who attend there (and some of the faculty). While it often will feature Frazz riding his bike or somesuch, it ties back to him talking about it with someone he knows from the school. Frazz is in my top two for comics in print.
Never heard of Gone With the Blastwave. Does Beetle Bailey count as a “military comic”?
I’ll give you Dilbert is a workplace comic. But it is also about engineering, and almost always ends with a joke. What are “comedy” comics if Dilbert isn’t one of them?
Dilbert is in my top two for print comics.
And the last three use examples I’ve never heard of.
So, what are my three favorite generes? I can’t tell, because I don’t even understand what most of these generes are. I don’t understand what you mean when you say “action adventure”, so I can’t be sure what I’d put in that pile is the same thing that you’d put in that pile, so my attempts to communicate would most likely mislead.
But mostly I don’t really think about genre at all. I like Dilbert because it is consistently funny, and uses jokes that I get.
I like Sandra and Woo because it is consistently funny and uses jokes that I get.
I like Something Positive because it is consistently funny and uses jokes that I get.
Does the fact that I like both Sandra and Woo and Girl Genius mean that I like stories that have animal who walk upright and talk? Or does it just mean that both stories are good?
And speaking of Girl Genius: Action/Adventure? The storyline runs heavy on action and adventure. I think it even calls itself that. However, it has won Hugo Awards, and they give those for Science Fiction, so maybe it’s that.
Or maybe Science Fiction isn’t a genre, but a broader classification which overlaps with multiple genres. Is Alien a science fiction film or a horror film or both?
Sorry to get all ranty, but you can see why asking me to rate my favorite genres is worst than meaningless, it is misleading. We don’t even agree on what is or isn’t a genre, much less which genre my favorite stuff falls into, and your examples offer no help. Any answer I might give you would just lead you to false conclusions, so it is better to remain silent.
As for the main character poll – I’m not the sightest bit surprised that Sandra came in last. She may tie everything together, but she’s the generic one in the group.
A similar case is the show How I Met Your Mother – you can’t tell the story without Ted, but no one would choose him as a favorite character.
I think a good webcomic is a balance of story arcs plus one a time panels. All of one or the other gets boring. You do look forward to coming back when there’s a continuance involved : ) but sometimes it’s nice to have a break in between with some funnies. I enjoy this comic and how vast it is covering everything from Woo to Sandra and all her friends, Cloud, Larissa and their lives. Good comic, fun read!
Heheh, I put Sandra and Woo on my Opera’s speed dial with other 7 webcomics. I read dozens of webcomics but only 8 (and soon to be 9, thanks to Broodhollow) that received positions on my Opera speed dial.
Sadly, I stopped reading Gaia weekly because I prefer to read it in lump sum. Since story heavy webcomic can be tiresome to follow weekly. Don’t be sad, I also treat Wapsi Square and Spinnerette like this.
For genres, I read everything, from slice of life to horror. I like good writing more.
I’m one of the few who read S&W from the beginning. Maybe people just dropped webcomics because they forget to check for updates or found another thing to do or simply busy IRL. I am guilty in dropping several webcomics too. Edmund Finney for example. Dude’s rarely updated. Also Alien love Predator. But then he went to hiatus in 2011. Webcomic is the wild west of illustrated stories now. Also don’t forget people who visited the site to read the comic and don’t bother to comment and/or vote the polls. I almost skipped the newest polls because I’m too busy.
Regarding Larissa’s popularity, it’s the Donald Duck Syndrome. People love Larissa’s attitude and they think Sandra is boring. This is like what happened with Donald Duck’s popularity over Mickey Mouse because Mickey is “Too clean” so it’s hard to relate to him.