Chapter 5 of my superhero sci-fi comic The Vanguard is now underway, presently at Page 3. So if you like superhero team stories, and sci-fi space opera, check out my humble comic-I think you’ll like it.

Rumiko (Inuyasha, Ranma 1/2) Takahashi’s new manga series will be released in weekly installments simultaneously in the US and Japan. And the US version? It will be available as a free webcomic.

Instantaneous release of the manga in both English and Japanese is all by itself pretty big news.

That the business model for the English version looks a lot like the business model behind every successful grassroots webcomic in existence (read it for free online right now, maybe buy the books later) is also pretty interesting to me. Viz, and Takahashi, are big enough names to have played this a lot more carefully — they could have put up a subscription wall, for example, or they could have created some kind of DRM-heavy downloadable package for iTunes or whatever … or they could have just not done this at all, and published the English version at their own traditional pace. Big comics publishers usually don’t put out important, much-anticipated work by their most famous talents out there on the Internet for free. So yeah. This is huge.

That VIZ has seemingly adopted the model pioneered by the webcomics community isn’t exactly proof that, um, “webcomics thinking,” or whatever you want to call it, is taking over the industry. But it’s definitely a step in that direction.

I signed up for email notifications. Didn’t see an RSS feed. Once the comics are live (April 22, according to the homepage of the site), we’ll all find out just how cool (or not cool) their presentation of the material actually turns out to be. For example: I hope they don’t use some weird proprietary Flash interface.

Via Good Comics for Kids, but the press release itself has much more info.

A lot of people who read comics also make them. Maybe even most people.

This isn’t true of other forms of art. I mean, when I was a teenager, I used to daydream about being a cool New Wave singer (I know, I’m old, I’m old) like that guy from A Flock of Seagulls, but I never bothered putting together a band or even learning how to read music. And there are definitely people who get hooked on, say, movies at an early age, and then dedicate their lives to learning that craft — but they’re a tiny percentage of the overall movie-going audience. Every novelist was a reader first, and so on. I guess every art form draws its next generation of creators from its current generation of fans. But this phenomenon seems to be more concentrated in the comics world. Am I right? What does your experience tell you? Almost everybody I’ve ever met who reads comics has, at some point or another, actually made one, even if he or she never showed it to anybody. I don’t know why, but have a lot of thoughts.

On my more cynical days, I decide that comics has a higher concentration of budding creators in its audience because the only people who bother to read comics anymore are the ones who want to make them. You know, like contemporary poetry. Ha! But my cynical days are few.

On my optimistic days, I am convinced that comics is leading the way for all forms of media, where the audience and the creator are one and the same, and that anybody with a voice and some talent can reach for the stars, or can be a star. Historically, comics has been the breeding ground for some amazing self-published successes: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Penny-Arcade, American Splendor, and so on. This isn’t to say that every self-published comic is successful — god no. There are way more failures than successes (there are also way more failed corporate comics than successful ones, way more failed big-budget movies than successful ones, way more failed television series than successful ones, etc). But here’s what counts, at least to me: no other entertainment form I can think of allows people to scale the ladder from complete obscurity to fame and fortune, all by themselves, without a corporate paycheck. Or to put it another way: no other entertainment form is as open as comics to the self-published and the creator-owned. The web has accelerated this dynamic, but in comics, the self-publishing trend predates the web by a couple of decades. Now the rest of media is catching on.

And then there are also people who make comics just for fun. Which is also valid. Comics are fun to make. Maybe that’s the reason so many people make them.

Yeah, probably. That’s probably all it is.

What do you think?

[Update: I won't be attending after all. Ah well. Maybe I'll get something organized here in NYC soon.]

Knowing some of the people behind it personally, I was in on some of the early conversations about the New England Webcomics Weekend. It originally sounded like a small little thing, a quick little get-together, and I figured I wouldn’t bother. I had seen all those people recently at NYCC and all. Now, with panels, exhibitors, etc., etc., it’s starting to look like a convention. And that’s a good thing, for the most part. Except that it means I’m having to change my mind. I’m gonna go after all. Anybody else from the NYC area taking off to go up there? Maybe we can caravan.

This is how all the cool stuff starts, by the way: by accident.

Tea Fougner sat down with webcomics writer T Campbell (Penny and Aggie, Fans, etc) during SPX 2008 — and here are the results.

Download the MP3 or Subscribe to the feed!

Crime Comic Book Creator Signing at Geppi’s Entertainment Museum

Friday, October 10, 2008, from 1:00 PM to 3:30 PM, a number of crime comics creators will be at a special signing event at Geppi’s Entertainment Museum, 301 West Camden Street in Baltimore.
The event, coinciding with the big mystery convention Bouchercon, includes
- Max Allan Collins (Road to Perdition)
- Brian Azzarello (100 Bullets)
- Greg Rucka (The Complete Whiteout)
- Jill Thompson (Scary Godmother)
- Tim Broderick (Cash and Carry)
- Duane Swierczynski (The Immortal Iron Fist)
- Gary Phillips (Darker Mask)

For more information, visit the museum’s website at http://www.geppismuseum.com/

I recap my experiences at Wizard World Chicago and Printer’s Row book fair over at Crimespree Magazine’s Blog. There’s a ton of links there to authors and comics creators. Jon and Ruth Jordan have a few comments as well.

I’ve been trying to reply to Chris Wright regarding his guest column over at Fleen, but there’s an overactive spam filter suddenly keeping me from posting.

So Chris, here’s my latest reply:

Chris said: “Tim, what I’m saying is that the web is designed in a way that works against for-profit publishing.”

And again, I point you to all kinds of blogs who are making a living doing just that, and to talkingpointsmemo.com who actually has a staff and enough to even fund an internship.

The web in the past wasn’t designed with anything in mind other than to share information between academics. Hell, they didn’t even have webpages in the beginning.

Obviously, it’s now way beyond that original purpose and people are making money on the web and some by being publishers. So, I’m not going to address this anymore.

However, that it’s difficult is besides the point. Most new brick-and-mortar stores fail the first year – going into a new business is hard, and that’s not peculiar to the web. That it’s difficult for an individual cartoonist to make money from their product isn’t new either. It has ALWAYS been difficult.

Actually, I would venture a guess that MORE cartoonists are making cartoons now thanks to the internet, and many of those cartoonists are making some amount of money than before, because now they can just post their work on the web instead of making minis and paying to schlep them to conventions. The web has expanded their potential audience and things like ProjectWonderful has given them the opportunity to earn money from the audience they have.

I think we’re in agreement about this.

What I don’t think we’re going to agree on is your statement about “justcartoonists” vs “professional webcartoonists” vs “amateur webcartoonists.” I don’t believe webcartoonists who are trying to make money think that they’re being undermined by webcartoonists who aren’t trying to.

There may be someone out there who actually thinks that, but I don’t think it’s out there in sufficient numbers to give any credence to the idea.

And any print cartoonist who casts a jaded eye toward the web is doing so not because of webcartoonists, it’s because they’re at a point in their life where they need a business model that will pay their bills. Giving it away for free is not practical. But that just means they haven’t found a way to enter the internet market – and they will.

Seriously, I think the worm has turned and if a new webcartoonist gets past their first year of posting online, those webcartoonists are going to think about ways to profit from their hard work.

The rise of things like ProjectWonderful shows that.

I understand that you think the entire essay is only about publishing, but it’s not. While you discuss how the internet has opened up avenues for individuals to find an audience (which, really, is old news), you’ve also set up what I think is a false tension between people who feel their work is more than a hobby and those who wish to keep it a hobby. Plus you’ve lumped every print cartoonist together into one group – one that is suspicious and hostile to the opportunities provided by the web.

That’s not the attitude I’ve encountered.

The web has upset traditional comics publishing. It has broken up the bottleneck of corporate comics and allowed more people to reach potential readers than ever before.

But it doesn’t automatically follow that the internet is also a barrier to earning a living for these individuals. Some are finding business models that are successful and making money, and others are continuing to pursue their goals.

Those are just the facts, and it’s not my fault that the facts are running counter to your premise.

Thanks for reading.

Here’s a note from James Kochalka:

——–

I have just massively expanded the archives of my daily diary comic strip here at American Elf.

In May 2002 I started posting my daily diary comic strip online. However, the strip actually began several years earlier than that, in October 1998. The early years were collected in book form by Top Shelf, but they were never included in the online version of American Elf… until now!

The archives at American Elf now go all the way back to October 26, 1998.

The early strips are black & white, and then when I began putting them online I decided to try a 2-tone color system. However, that two-tone system very quickly expanded into a full and vibrant exploration of color. I’ve tried to use it to enhance the emotional power of the work. But the early black & white strips do have a special power of their own. Both are good, powerful in their own way. Now the readers can see the full evolution of my grand diary experiment, which is really turning into my “life’s work” it seems.

The first color strip appears May 12, 2002.

www.americanelf.com