Slashdot Mirror

No, thed need to talk to the Tokyo Police Cataclysm Division:

http://www.megatokyo.com/index.php?strip_id=354

(You have to go to the strip after this one to get the joke.)

Sure.. it's relatively cheap bandwidth-wise to start a comic. You can never expect when something will blow up and turn all those nice slow-growth ideas into a smoking ruin, though.

For example: I do the day-to-day work keeping megatokyo running. Last month, we did well over 1.5 terabytes of traffic. And it's not hosted for free like some other comics out there.

No one involved expected megatokyo to explode like it did. Well-timed links by Penny-Arcade and Slashdot made sure there was no room for 'slow-growth'.

I would qualify that statement to the following...

"Hardly anyone wants to read comic *books* on a monitor."

This is an important distinction, because it's worth pointing out that millions of people read comics (strips or single panels) every day through visiting websites, email, web-based syndication, etc. Also, millions of people view Flash animations, which are in many cases just another form of comics, made appropriate for the media.

The fact of the matter is that standard sized "pages" do not translate well onto the web, and people resist reading documents presented in such a manner. You'd think that PDFs would fix this problem, but unfortunately not. We can talk all day about how PDFs allow people to put up photo-quality artwork on the web, but the basic fact is that half the time, PDFs crash my browser, and even when they don't, they don't feel like a "normal" reading experience. I understand why they're used sometime, but more often than not, I just think of PDFs as "the lazy man's way to put print content on the web". I get a bit resentful that they didn't create the content for the web, thereby making it far more useful (and usable) for me.

If you want to get readers on the web, you need to make sure your content fits the media. In other words, design for the web or scale the size of your creations so that they fix in a browser better... not much compromise is needed.

A good case in point here is MegaTokyo. They are getting plenty of regular readers, feeding people a page at a time, and producing what is effectively a comic book, without the book. Of course, they also benefit by having a storyline that works very well on the Internet, too.

Also, there are creations by Scott McCloud and friends which are designed specifically for the web and make use of scrolling, etc. These are also good, and also tend to get a fair amount of readers.

Now, assuming you have a comic that is well-suited for the web, you have to deal with the issue of how you distribute it. Frankly, when it comes to the internet, the widest audience is always the audience who wants something for free... and why shouldn't they? After all, if you won't give them something for free, someone else will.

Free is actually not a bad business model, however... there are lots of people who give something away for free (Sinfest, Red Meat, Megatokyo, etc.) who get a lot of readers, a dedicated fan base, and who use that as a platform for making and selling books, merchandise, collecting donations, etc.

Sure, you can try to lock up your creations and sell them, but you have to realize that if you do that, your work will be exposed to fewer people overall. So, if you are trying to make a name for yourself, locking up your creation isn't the best way to do it.

The ultimate truth, however, is that you have to give the people what they want (or didn't know that they wanted...), in the way they want it. Do that, and you should do fine. Just don't expect fame and riches overnight, because it can take years of hard work to build an audience for anything, and once you have an audience, you have to maintain a "relationship" with them and keep them coming back.

Some people, like the Bill Wattersons and the Charles Schultzes of this world, can create that simple, humanistic bond with their audience in four panels. You, however, might have to work harder...

From the article: In summary, I see a lot of untapped potential. Assuming you could cover costs with advertising, until you could show me the online audience strongly mapped to the current retail audience, I would advocate print publishers showcasing their titles online, a few months behind the most recent issue and pushing the reader towards either a trade paperback compilation or a subscription. The hobbyists will seek out the specialty retailers on their own. As a bonus, if the advertising revenue was to pan out, at a certain level of traffic your online ad revenue is capable of exceeding the revenue of todayâ(TM)s depressed print circulation. More quickly if online subscriptions work. I guess my major question with this is why does the newest stuff have to be in print only, and have the online run stuff that's "a few months old"? Looking at something like, say, megatokyo [megatokyo.com], it seems that they opt more for the stance of having the original content posted webside, and then providing print for the people who would like to purchase it. Of course, this does tend to lean a lot more toward the free side rather than the profit side (and I can see why that would be a factor, big business in comics). I think that megatokyo is onto something, though, because the whole idea of it being free opens up (imo) a bigger audience to sell merchandise to. I imagine they wouldn't have an online store or even a demand for it if it was all about pushing people into buying if they want to stay current. I bought megatokyo vol. 1, and I thought it was worth the investment to give something back. Am I just the minority?

Obligatory MegaTokyo link

I want someone to make this a reality.

You know, it's also sad that you were modded to funny. Maybe you meant it as a joke, but there is some great truth in that statement. My college room mate was majoring in graphic design, and was very dissapointed at the strong emphasis on computers, and hardly any on hand drawing. I believe that both hand animation and cg are great mediums, but it seems that one is not used much anymore. I wish that they would both stay in heavy use. we need a hand animated MegaTokyo movie dammit!

~Jon

Too bad it didn't say anything about the number of people who sp33k l33t.

Speak L33T?

Just look here.

There's always a webcomic refrence. Always.


*honk*

No, the l33t speakers are already urgently needed in other areas.

Megatokyo has used that theme as well.

Megatokyo has used that theme as well.

I personally love the colo company we use. They are called ColoGuys I belive he is offering what you are looking for or will be very soon.
They host our server as well as several others, most notoriously Megatokyo and Aniverse.

And Megatokyo seems to have more on this story too:

GTMT

When i wake up in the morning, I crack open the daily newspapaper and.... wait that's not true. Lets start again. When I wake up in the morning I turn on my computer, and check out... webcomics.

Angst Technology, Ctrl Alt Del, Dilbert, Errant Story, Force Monkeys, Fox Trot, goats, Life of Riley, Mac Hall, Megatokyo, Misfire, Penny Arcade!, Sinfest, Something Positive, and finally Wendy.

Then, after my daily webcomic barage (not to say that these all update on a daily basis. Some are good [ like ctrl alt del, and penny arcade ] and update regularly. others... well...) I frequent other sites, for information.

Slashdot of course (not linking it...)
Gamespot
Games workshop,
and
Unconventional Conformity.

Other than that, I have a few sites i goto every so often. Or ones which i check throughout the day. But they become less important than the comics.
-Gharbad

• Machall - best..webcomic...ever (updates: "tues, thurs, sat" but more like when he gets around to it)
• Penny Arcade - a very popular, and very funny gaming comic (M W F)
• Megatokyo - a well drawn comic with a strong story mangaish (M W F)
• Ctrl-Alt-Del - cut and paste, but always funny (Daily)
• Something Positive - kinda cut and paste, but often very funny (daily)
• Real Life - cut and paste, but still a pretty funny gaming comic (mostly daily)
• Calvin and Hobbes - rereleasing C+H online, 10 years delayed...my personal fav (daily)
• Errant Story - a well drawn, story based modernish fantasy comic (updates every other day or so)
• Angst Technology - a game software firm and their antics (updates almost daily)

• (as if you need the link)Slashdot
• CBC News Canadian news from the CBC
• Debian Planet good debian news
• Footnotes GNOME news
• Ars Technica another tech site, often has interesting projects too...
• Anime News Network exactly what the name implies.
• Unconventional Conformity a blog.
• The Weather Network - for my local weather
• 
  
  And well, thats about it. That I check frequently at least. I do like webcomics and strongly suggest that you check out Machall Megatokyo and Errant Story if you don't already though! And then there's also everything2 but its not news and I can't check it daily (or else I would do nothing all day but read!) its too good at just drawing you in. And the anime turnpike to go browsing through Anime fansites...

Y'know, this isn't going to be as bad as you think it is.

Sure, it's been argued that this means anyone can find out your phone number from your IP, your IP from your phone number or something similar, and telemarket the living daylights out of you. Not true. Unsolicited telemarketing spam, as you've no doubt been reading on Slashdot, is likely to soon become illegal in all states and most of Europe - at least, that's what I see happening. The closer the internet comes to the phone system, the more quickly we'll see spam being made equally illegal.

As well as encouraging people and corporations to get the broadband into peoples' homes - and I see just about every home "having the internet" within the decade - this system could provide a way of linking a physical location or house number with an internet address, making it easier for legitimate marketers to get along with consumers. I'm already seeing banner ad servers that see from my hostname the I'm in the UK and serve me advertising for UK ISPs - expanding on this concept, we might some day find all banner ads like Slashdot's - serving us only advertising that interests us (Megatokyo shirts, web servers, ThinkGeek) and less online casinos, spyware and fake Windows dialog boxes!

Fred Ghaller Piro from MegaTokyo, just switched to a Mac himself! (read his rant)

Go see Mega Tokyo on what an animatronic companion can do :-DD

1) The professor's just hoping one of the students will figure it out so he can steal the answer and publish it.
2) See the black hole into which everything I learned in Intro to Neurosci went the minuite after the final. All I know is playing the Gundam Wing SNES game made my cousin's kid puke all over the floor.
3) Will accept: brief history of CLAMP studios, rant about roomate's inability to appreciate Ranma, questioning the sexual orientation of the Inital D character designs without coming off as homophobic, "What the fuck's with Utena?"
4) Find some orphans, some scientists, Russian or German, some unobtainium, and either harness the power of a minor diety or drug a creepy psychic kid. If nothing happens, draw more Kabalistic symbols on the walls.
5) Up the budget for the Tokyo Police Cataclysm Division.

Just pretend I came up with something funny in there somewhere.

if only Sony were that evil to kill...

What does Hayasaka think of it.

>You and William Gibson, eh?

You hack the Gibson? your 3v1l l33t!

Sorry, just had to say it ;)

Many comic artists are moving to selling dead tree versions to raise money. I'm also glad to see that more of the comics that sell t-shirts are moving away from cafe press: example MegaTokyo has gotten a store on ThinkGeek. In fact due to recent circumstances Piro is trying to make a living off being an artist. The problem is that very few webcomics are actually good, or even updated regulary.

And now the obligatatory comic plugs:
Something Positive
Errant Story

I have been following comics all my life, and web comics for a few years now. Last year I decided to take up the challenge of doing a web based comic myself... almost a year later I put my first page online.

http://particlesphere.com/ is a full color, free web comic hosted by meta4ik media, a multimedia company I work with on the side. I put a years worth of work into it before I even put a site up... so even though my traffic isn't booming yet, I fully anticipate things to take off eventually.

What am I gonna do about bandwidth/hosting costs when it gets big? Get creative... dedicate myself to delivering high quality merchandise and content and rely on the friends I have made and will make in the process. Don't try to do it alone... it's a community that you're really trying to create. That's why megatokyo.com and others like it are becoming successful, they are dedicated to building the community around their comic and being loyal to the fans.

Here's some online comics that might be worth checking out:

Sluggy - Students, aliens, ghosts, psychotic rabbits, evil kittens. One of the oldest and niftiest comics online.
User Friendly - Linux, geeks. You get the idea.
Megatokyo - An online manga following Piro and Largo whilst stranded in Tokyo.
Schlock Mercenary - Not too good art, but usually a very good and suitably sci-fi-ish plot.
Clan of the Cats - A modern-day witch cursed to change into a panther. Good artwork.
RPG World - Great art. A parody of almost any role playing game (the console variety) you'd care to play.
Ghost Cat - It's a cat! It's a ghost! It's ghost cat!
Elf Life - Elves, fairies, barbarians, time travel, romance, comedy, and very well drawn as well.
Exploitation Now! - An anime-ish comic with good art and an interesting, if sporadic, plot.
Real Life - It's real life. Except it's not. Reasonably funny.
Penny Arcade - The mother of all gaming comics. Very funny :)
Sephen - A relative newcomer, but wow! Great pencil-work!
8-bit Theater - The grandpappy of all sprite comics. I think. It's funny anyway. Go read :)
Demonology 101 - Fantastic art, fantastic plot! If only it came out more often! Ah well, the world isn't perfect.

Oh, and I can't really get away without mentioning my brother's sprite comic, Pixelated!. It really isn't bad. No, really! :)

For example, MegaTokyo.

Hell, you've probably even seen His banner add here on slashdot.

Piro Recently made the decision to got 100% FT on making His webcomic work, and has a dead tree version coming out this december. It seems to Me that He's doing reasonably well with making a free comic pay for itself, and possibly even put some money in His pocket....

Not to piss on rocketbox, but Piro's doing good, and I dont see anything but vaporware promises from rocketbox yet...

Dont get Me wrong, I read some of their comics daily, But this also means that I've been hearing about rocketBox for three months....

This is cool, but what online comics really need is hosting that doesn't whack them into oblivion with bandwith charges when they get popular. Preferably hosting that doesn't also put restrictions on them or make them charge for access to the archives.

My favorite online comics are User Friendly, Megatokyo and Circle Weave. At least two of these have a huge audience and equally huge bandwidth usage. For all I know the third one will also now that I gave its URL here on /. Oh well...

Jack William Bell

Imagine a robot like this in 20odd years time stronger and faster than any guard dog and able to call the police once the burglar has been taken down.

Imagine a robotic servant which can clean your house, make the tea and which you can later plug a joypad into to play GTA12 on the Playstation 19.

Or this one? F33R!

Well, for starters, read about these poor souls who got stranded over there. I don't think they've managed to get home yet...

They have a pretty extensive journal, I suggest starting at the beginning.

-Jeff

Once these kids graduate and are living on their own, think of the language gap!

Ever since that strip came out, I can't walk by a DDR machine without thinking about how much better it could be...

I didn't even think of web-comics until I saw...possibly Megatokyo...or maybe little gamers...I think...there's lots of links between the good ones. Lots of links to the up-and-comings, too.

I've seen lots of comments on /. slating them for either the infrequency of new comics, or the topics of their rants or lack of continuous story, or lack of one-off giggles, or whatever.

Fact is, they're free, and it costs you nothing but the effort it takes to click the link/type the url, and at the and of the day, there's just someone (like you) out there putting them up 'cos they want to.

Personally, I usually turn up to work, and go thru my daily ritual of checking megatokyo, little gamers, pvponline, penny-arcade, slashdot and bbc news, and then my mail. It bugs me that people keep bitching about the content, rants, update frequency etc - they're FREE (as in beer). Lighten up guys! So what if Piro doesn't get the 3 comics he says he'll do up a week? Who cares if you don't like the artwork? So what if you don't think Userfriendly isn't funny today? There's no end of comics out there.

For me, the web is about what YOU like. If it bugs you that there isn't a comic every day, or your don't like the story, don't follow that comic This is the the web. There's lots of other stuff out there.

UF might, as I've seen some posts comment, use some second-hand jokes, but they're still funny - I'm thinking User:ID=10t. Made me giggle :)

btw, if you haven't seen it, check out When I am King - possibly the funniest thing I've seen on the web yet...

Rent-A-Zilla!

This comes to mind, although it'd probably be closer to this.

japanese girly comics. Like Love Hina. Which have plots VERY like Megatokyo.

Excuse me but the reason Love Hina was a success is because of the humor and not just the Shoujo part. At least Love Hina had some life and the storyline actually moved beyond the pace of "does... she... love... me? Why... am... I... so... shy? Why... do... people... think... I'm... a... pedophile?".

My point is that Fred Gallagher tells a story like William Shatner. Slow, horrid, boring... I love the way he draws, and the early megatokyos were extremely cool because they had a little bit of humor in them, but lately I only catch up with the comic twice a month or so, while others like sluggy freelance get more of my attention.

I'm so dogtired of hearing yet another fanboy exclaim that Megatokyo is the ultimate comic online. I... used... to... think... webcomics... were... supposed... to... be... a... little... more... content... rich... and not just about how well drawn art is.

I'm a nerd/geek, and I like all sorts of anime, from I'm so depressed and I wish I was dead evangelion to look at me titties Mahoromatic, but when I read slashdot and I see yet again how Megatokyo is raised as an icon in webcomics because it's manga, and because it's supposed to be the mother of all webcomics... Face it, this isn't nerdnews, this has no place here. Which occasional reader of slashdot is going to order the book, if they haven't franticly reread every single comic online?

I'm not dissing this mans work (except... for... the... pace... in... the... storyline...), nor his opinions, nor his dead art days (which I love too by the way), but I think that if slashdot links this because it's the mother of all webcomics (so to speak) we should start linking each and every webcomic ranging from Machall (which is btw, a lot more geek-oriented), to Tuesday. (which is completely ungeeky) And what about userfriendly? Or sluggy? Or Bad boys of computer science? Or... (the list goes on and on and on).

To summarise what has happened so far in Megatokyo:

• Piro and Largo go to E3
• Piro takes Largo to Japan
• Piro and Largo are stuck in Japan
• Piro and Largo shack up with Tsubasa
• They both stay there leeching Tsubasa
• The stay there leeching some more of Tsubasa
• Piro gives a railcard to Kimiko
• Piro loses his bookbag in a bookshop
• Yuki (a 15 yo girl) finds Piros bookbag
• Yuki returns Piros bookbag and turns him into a pedophile in the publics eye
• Tsubasa brings back ping, and leaves Japan away from the leeching Piro and Largo
• Piro goes on a guilt-trip
• Piro gets a job and meets Erika (who still hasn't kicked his you know whats)
• Piro does more guilt-tripping
• Largo goes even more insane when he meets a Zombie queen named Tohya
• Piro is guilt-tripping over spaghetti and makes Kimiko think he's a pedophile
• more undead driveling on Largos mental front lawn
• Yuki wants drawing lessons, but Piro doesn't want to be a pedophile
• Piro takes a long trip to a town called Guilt
• Largo turns out to be mentally unstable (a trait often found in comic characters)
• Piro turns out to be shy (well duh)
• Kimiko thinks Piro's a pedophile (how long does it take to explain that you're living with a bloody robot???)
• Dom and Ed arrive in Japan, get beat up by a droid named Ping
• rabid squirrels take over Japan in attempt to stop Piro from actually becoming Lord of all fanboys

Now, most people (even shoujo-mangaka) take about a month or three worth of comics to sum up these events. Considdering Mr Gallagher has a busy job, family life, etc I'd say about six or seven months. But Piro takes up 70% of these comics either feeling sorry from himself, talking to his conscience (who's no longer funny btw), or banging his head against a counter for being called a pedophile by everyone in the comic except for Largo.

In the meantime however, in sluggy freelance (not shoujo btw), everything turned upside down in only three months, and now the pieces are falling together. This comic is (compared to MT) a little more vintage, and never lost it's pace (except with the elves... no more elves... I beg of you), and suffers less Dead Artist days than Megatokyo. OK, so it doesn't have the artistic manga look, but it's a comic that's going somewhere (really insane)... Summarizing sluggy the way I did with MT would be madmans work.

Can we now please stop with posting every rant Mr Gallagher has made on his site to slashdot? I'll surf to megatokyo.com if I want to read those.

• Dilbert
• User Friendly
• Sinfest
• Penny Arcade
• MegaTokyo
• Real Life
• PvP

ah they would get slashdotted during a filler comic. Here's one of my favorites that the slashdot crowd should appreciate
#9 - speak l33t

The Web has the potential to make a meaningful buzz but search engines don't friggin cut it. The web will have to be ORGANIZED, INDEXED and cross-referenced the same way that libraries have been since the Great Library of Alexandria. The days of "Cowboy Content Creation" are over. Creatrion of web content will have to be via XML with precise industry standard DTDs. Otherwise you just get lost in the noise.

That all depends on what you're trying to generate buzz for. If you're one of those same Big Media corporations trying harness the Internet to generate artificial buzz, then you're right.

However, if you're an independent creator who just throws his stuff out there for everyone to enjoy, with no obsessions about profit margins or ROI, then you're wrong. The buzz will happen all on it's own.

A perfect example is Sluggy Freelance. It does almost no appreciable advertising -- and certainly less than MegaTokyo or Penny Arcade -- yet it is arguably one of the most popular and longest running comics on the Web.

How did it happen? Strictly word of mouth.

I think the corporate-driven hyperconsumerism of the last few decades has perverted our fundamental notions of just how the free market is supposed to work. The Internet is simply restoring the universality and equality that we used to enjoy in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, when anyone could buy an old printing press and call themselves a newspaper.

However, the trade-off is that we're now facing some devastating economic contraction. The dot.com bust, the slump in the media and advertising industries, the current financial scandals... they're all just symptoms of a larger problem: as the artificiality of hyperconsumerism is increasingly exposed and rejected, many modern corporations are discovering that they have no real reason to exist. They don't fulfill any real human needs. Their only products are novelty and convenience. Without a captive and ignorant audience, they're doomed.

The guy does seem to be a favourite target for piss taking with many comic writers/drawers...

Personally, I like this idea a lot better. Not that I like or dislike punk music, but it just seems so right.

As a form of serialization, web comics do okay if they are done well. Witness Megatokyo, Penny Arcade, PvP, and I guess to some extend Mac Hall, although I've only been reading the last for a few months.

The business model for these comics is interesting. The comic itself has no value; with so much competition in free entertainment there is no way they could make people pay for it. But they can sell merchandise and they can solicit fan endorsement. Kurtz sells comic books that are along the lines of the webcomic but not quite. Mac Hall and Megatokyo sell merchandise ala Cafe Press. Penny Arcade...well...I'm not exactly sure what they do, but it has something to do with wallpapers and Paypal.

And let's not forget ads.

What I would like to see, as a consumer, is a lot of these comics brought together under one web publication. In Japan, manga is distributed in a big monthly magazine containing works by many authors. The magazine sells, the ads sell, and the publication passes some of that along to the artists (I would hope). If something like this appeared online, say like Keenspot but more organized, more selective, and with much much much higher bandwidth, I would definitely pay for it, ads and all, simply for the convenience of a daily/weekly/monthly strip on a high availability server.

Will Largo go into the Ever-Promised Hibernation? Largo has been ranting and raving about NWN since it was announced, it seems. And Before. I wonder. We shall see, we shall see.

This site has some: J-List. I did think that they had more shirt than I could find now however. Most likely it's on the site somewhere, it's just not very organized. (But there are a lot of crazy stuff there, so it's fun to browse around.)

If that doesn't help you might be able to find more places from Japan referense altough that is more of a link site to a lot of Japan oriented sites.

Also places like MegaTokyo has some fun shirts as well. (Like the b4k4^2 in kanji shirt.)

[This comment for MT readers only! :) ]

I'd rather have a better PS2 pherpherial myself.

[This comment for MT readers only! :) ]

I'd rather have a better PS2 pherpherial myself.

• The Slashdot Crew: I think they had a series of stories about that.
• Political radicals: Send 'em to Alpha Centauri and let 'em duke it out!
• Evil Geniuses for a Better Tomorrow: Dogbert once deduced that the smartest people eventually escape gravity anyway. Also, how else are they going to get those death-ray sats in orbit?
• The Megatokyo Crew: It could be a special. "Dom in space" or something like that.
• Big Media Copyright Lawyers: preferably without a return.

Relax: we understand j00

Well, only if Megatokyo doesn't mind, that is. :P