RPGMemes

I have worked with writers before to write comics, and let me tell you, they tend to write about 10x as much text as you can fit into a panel. I once had a professional writer script out a 24-page graphic novel for me, they wrote 10,000 words. Most "writers" are not "comic writers", and it's a completely different discipline - there are very very few "professional comic writers" out there, and those that are, are employed full time.

Trust me. I script comics out first, then I go through several revisions to "punch up the dialogue", and make it as short as possible. My format is incredibly restrictive, because I'm hand-drawing and hand-lettering everything. Worse, I draw relatively small, this comic fits into an A5 page.

Lettering is a different skill to writing and drawing in the comics industry, I'm doing all three here. Lettering legibly means that this specific comic sits at the upper end of the wordcount that I can provide. Most of the major webcomics that you're used to (say xkcd) tend to sit at around 2-5x the number of words per strip as I'm using. OotS tends to sit at about 10-20x the wordcount.

If you're talking about story content - I also have a restriction that every comic has to stand alone. People repost my stuff, they see one on twitter or on tumblr, and don't see the full context of a plot. Some people visit my site once a month, or once a year, and read some of it. This means I have to set up the gag, and deliver it within 4-6 panels. There's very little room to "write a story" with this gag-a-day format, so therefore actual narrative has to take a backseat to satisfy the medium. While sometimes I'd like it to be, this isn't a graphic novel, I'm not delivering 500 pages of prose, it's a webcomic. OotS solves this problem by using 20 panels per comic. I can't hand-draw that much and post once comic per week, my process is slow

While I'm not under any illusions that I'm the greatest writer in the universe, I do have a lot of experience with this format, and the majority of people I could "hire" would do a worse job.

Additionally, out of the three skills you need to make these styles of comics, I know for sure that my art is the weakest of the three - by quite a wide margin. I get far far more abuse and hate-messages about my art than anything else, so telling me that the writing sucks is pretty refreshing.

Also, I focus-test my scripts with a group of people before I draw them. It takes a LONG time to make these comics in this art-style, it's a massive time-loss to draw something that isn't funny or doesn't make sense, or is confusing. When I make a comic, I storyboard it first, roughly sketch it out, and then show it to a close circle of my friends for suggestions, often if the dialogue is confused or meandering, I rework it.

All of this is before the fact that I'm generating these stories out of a campaign with my friends, so the content tends to be jokes that happened in a session, or events from those sessions. I'm making it for free, and I'm not selling it as a professional product. "Hiring a writer" and paying them fairly would be prohibitively expensive for something that isn't intended to generate revenue, if it were even possible to find one who'd be interested.

I highly disagree. You can't expect every comic to be top shelf, especially if you're getting it for free. OP has been improving with every post - because they're gaining experience with practice. Hiring a writer (with what money?) would undermine their own growth. You're welcome to read more polished comics (like The Weekly Roll), but remember that people dont magically spring up with skill in art and writing right out of the gate. Not to mention that once someone starts making "professional level" work it's either paywalled or lower priority than paying work.

Constructive criticism also isn't "just stop doing that". You need to give actionable advice. For example, I always recommend new comic creators pick up the Understanding Comics/Making Comics/Reinventing Comics trilogy by Scott McCloud. They're textbooks that cover all sorts of writing and illustration techniques.

I like this story, and it's certainly better than something I could write or draw. The frequency of updates has been amazing. I'm excited to see where things go.

I know you’re trying to help, but do you understand how much negative comments like this tend to stick in a person’s brain? They’re doing their best, and although you intended to be helpful, your intention doesn’t matter much if the outcome is that they feel crappy.