Slashdot Mirror

http://www.somethingpositive.net/index.html http://www.schlockmercenary.com/ http://www.gpf-comics.com/ http://www.reallifecomics.com/index.php http://www.crfh.net/ http://www.nuklearpower.com/ Random shameless plugs. Read them and enjoy.

You mean like this?

CRFH is one of the oldest webcomics still updating...last I checked anyway... Give it a shot!

Here's my favorite: College Roomies from Hell. If you thought college was Hell, wait till you meet your roommates!

Because the tentacle freak said so. :)

Luis

I've been reading several keenspot/keenspace comics for a while now. Their model, as far as I can tell, is to give free web space to online comic artists, along with some helpful stuff, like scripts to archive old comics and post new comics. The normal site seems to make revenue off of banner ads, but they have several other revenue making ideas, and presumably they share the profits with the artists. They print up and market collection books, or periodical issues, as well as offering premium no-ads service to people who want it.

I have no idea how well they are doing, but I frequent:
www.rpgworldcomic.com
www.crfh.net
www.bobbins.org

and a couple others.

-If

Obviously, the invisible hand of the market economy needs to go jump in a toxic waste pool so it can see better.

I'm not sure if this helps the terminology issue much, but hopefully it gives some directions.

Mixed metaphors often do. The shortest distance between 2 points is off the wall, I always say.

BTW, My favorites are probably: Alice!, Ozy and Millie, Clan of the Cats, Free Fall, CRFH, Lean on Me, and Okashina Okashi to name just a few. I don't see playing for webcomics any different they paying to support other online communities. I might even subscribe to Slashdot if they started charging. :)

I really enjoy CRFH. It's one of my favorites. If there were no Internet comics, I would not be able to read it; it would not exist. The Salon article has a direct quote from the author of CRFH saying just that. Mr. Groth can rant tediously all he wishes, but he won't convince me that a world without CRFH is a better world.

Even if you think micropayments will never happen the way McCloud describes them, McCloud still deserves some credit. He cares about comics, and wants to see them survive and prosper. As he wrote in his book, market forces in the printed-comics world can crush new comics: you can't get sales unless stores stock your comic, stores won't stock your comic if it's not just another X-Men ripoff. With the web, anyone can put up a new comic, and the good ones can grow by word-of-mouth.

One last note: if you think Internet comics are all quick gag-a-day strips, you might want to check out the Zot graphic novel. It's very good!

steveha

I currently read 12 online comics daily (or however often the unpaid artists can manage, and would like to think that the majority of them are really good. Apart from anything else, they are often very original and interesting.

I think that Sluggy Freelance could do with some fresh ideas, but at least Pete's trying right now, and the current story line no longer sucks the way it did at the start.

Obviously, you don't read CRFH or Avalon.
--
Luis González M.

Anyone know why so many Web comics have alien abduction themes? I've seen it in Kevin and Kell, College Roomies From Hell, Cool Cat Studio, and maybe Alice. Roomies, now known as It's Walky!, is now entirely about aliens. What gives?

I tried to convince Gav (supreme leader of Keenspot and artist of Nukees) to make a Keenspot slashbox, but he wasn't interested.

In other news, it seems when this article first got posted, Keenspot (and quite a few of its member sites, like College Roomies from Hell, got Slashdotted.

And check out Help Desk. It's awesome (done entirely on OS/2 too).
---
Zardoz has spoken!

What exactly did you intend to mod him down for? Expressing a valid opinion? I don't remember that one being on the moderation options. What you are admitting is that you were planning on abusing your moderator points to damage someone whose opinion you disagreed with.

What's this about him having to sellout to keep his people paid? I mean, cry me a river. Just look at Pete Abrams of Sluggy Freelance fame, and he does employ a staff of people to help him run the site and his business. I don't think he's having a problem getting by on banner ads, t-shirts, and book sales. The 30 or so other web cartoonist I read as part of my day don't seem to be having any trouble supporting theirselves economically. When you get as big as Pete Abrams of Sluggy Freelance, David Simpson of Ozy and Millie, Bill Holbrook of Kevin and Kell, or Scott Kurtz of PVP, book sales and ad banners seem to be more than enough to keep yourself solvent. That doesn't even count the many popular artists who don't have anything beyond banner ads to sponsor themselves, such as Zach Stroum of Etherlife, Gabriel and Tycho Brahe of Penny Arcade, and Maritza Campos of College Roomies from Hell! -- all of whom are either college students or fully employed and do their strips as hobbies.

While I still find User Friendly mostly funny and still read it regularly, I lost a lot of respect for Illiad when I came across UF Media. The image he puts for on the site is one of someone whoring themselves out to corporate sponsorship. Illiad doesn't seem content with just selling t-shirts and books directly. He is actively calling to have his characters used as logos to curry favor with his fans for companies like SuSE. He wants the airline commercial spots, the suction cup animals, and co-branded food that syndicated sell-outs like Garfield have engendered.

I think this strip from Penny Arcade illustrates the opinions that many of us have for his ethics and credibility, in spite of or along with our opinions of his work on its own. It hurts his credibility because corporate sponsorship and co-branding are often the vicious monetary cycle that keeps comics going in newspapers long after they stopped being funny or original and sometimes even long after the creator of the strip has died. It's that we object to.

P.S. Slashdot readers should hopefully get a kick out of this strip. Just a friendly reminder for when talking to people who don't read Slashdot.