They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot/Web Comics
Examples of They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot in Web Comics include:
- The webcomic Mortifer has the following premise: The president of an all-vampire mercenary company retires, and Magnificent Bastard Joey Krauss lands the president job after a few suspicious deaths. He then creates a fake boss named Mortifer who supposedly runs the company, while he runs it from the shadows. This would be a really interesting plot, but pretty much every important character is in the know about the fake president thing, and it's only been addressed once.
- 8-Bit Theater keeps doing this intentionally, because, according to Word of God , the best joke is on the reader.
- PvP recently[when?] ran an arc about Robbie's childhood dream to become a brewmaster. Having revealed this dream, he spends a couple of strips moving the characters into a building to be renovated into a brewery (a process that never takes place on panel), complete with poorly-handled Ghostbusters reference (he even namedrops the movie just to make sure you get the joke). Then he skips straight to pouring the inaugural beer, which has turned out other than expected; completely ignoring the fact that commercial beer-brewing a months-long process rife with opportunities for Robbie to screw up. Then they spend a couple strips test-marketing the result before Robbie bitches that he wants to make high-class brews, not some fad hooch, and gives up entirely. The entire arc gives the impression that Kurtz had the idea and was dead set on it, forged ahead even though he knew nothing about the source material, then chickened out when he realized how poorly he was doing.
- Basic Instructions, fortunately, offers a meta-example.
 |
"How did he make that story boring?" |
 |
- In Sluggy Freelance, the author has stated feeling this way a couple of times. He decided to wrap up the story "Oceans Unmoving" without writing the final chapter that would have brought answers to some questions and concluded the stories of the new characters introduced in OU. Shocked from the negative responses to that story's length, he then rushed through the parody "Torg Potter and the President from Arkansas" without explaining the plot properly (not unlike the movie) and afterwards expressed his regret over that, along with his belief that fans would have liked it more if he had done it properly, and deciding not to let anyone's opinions get in the way of his doing his stories as he feels they should be done anymore.
- Ctrl+Alt+Del and the infamous miscarriage story arc. Okay it was seen as a serious case of the webcomic taking a turn for the worse, heavy Mood Whiplash which had no build up or indication, but it was still an opportunity for some serious character development, to allow a new status quo and to add a lot of depth and meaning as we dealt with the idea of life and death and how people cope with seeing strong bonds tested. Instead we get a returning antagonist whose plot basically revolves around buying the video game store just so he can run off with Lilah and concludes with Ethan once again getting whatever he wants for no effort and Lilah apologizing to him for everything she did even though she did nothing wrong, she also doesn't get arrested for filing false charges. Basically it's typical CAD again. Lucas doesn't even play a part in this either.
- The above summation is very YMMV, considering that Ethan worked his ass off trying to save the store from the recurring antagonist while trying to give Lilah the space she seemed to want/need; Lilah pushed Ethan away rather than deal with her own feelings, called off their wedding, and ran off with her dirtbag ex-boyfriend when he presented her with circumstantial evidence Ethan was cheating (without even speaking to Ethan first). Lucas wasn't just absent from the plot for no reason, he was engaged in his own story-line dealing with his own romantic issues (which specifically kept him unaware and uninvolved in what was going on with Ethan and Lilah's relationship)
- Cheer wastes quite a significant bit of plot potential just because of the fact that it's a spinoff of The Wotch. The origin of the main characters, that could've been the biggest plot twist that's basically foreshadowed and hinted at throughout the entire length of the comic, is instead made into the premise of the story before it would even begin, and we all start reading the comic, knowing that the girls are not involved in the conspiracy. They were just turned into girls by a witch with zero concern for gender identity.
- There could have been a surprising amount of pathos in the plot of Vampire Cheerleaders, but these moments are abandoned as quickly as they are found to keep the central comedy plot rolling smoothly.
- It had a lot done, but via Show, Don't Tell and subtlety rather than "cut it, chew it and accurately put into hatchlings' beaks". The problem is that the authors eventually got both tired and annoyed by monotonous whining of vocal Hatedom at the same time, so it was reduced to gags in Aoi House style - as in, the Battle Royale II arc appeared only as script pages and the time travel "arc" was thrown in instead.