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Comic Books And The Internet, Continued
A number of readers have
written in about the Salon story talking with Gary Groth's recation to Scott McCloud's pieces on the intersection of the comic and the Internet. Groth's feelings are much different then McCloud. I love the comic book format (am currently reading Cerebus, The Dreaming and Bone amongst others) and think is an interesting issue - 'specially considered within the greater question of "art" and digital media.
Hi, this Anonymous Coward is actually Jeff the artist on Mystic For Hire. The advantages to using Flash even for a static image are NOT in fact "Kapow, Bam, Sock" or whatever was posted, they are: 1. Much higher art and type quality than bitmapped formats. No jaggies, the lettering stays crisp, and the viewer can zoom in if they want and it still looks good. 2. File Size. MFH is published on our homepage at 640x480. If I did it as a JPEG or GIF it would be 120-190 kilobytes - too damn big, too long a download, too much bandwidth. The Flash files are mostly between 40-60K, a much more palatable download for modem folks, and will allow us to have more readers before our server bill increases. Very important. Draw Once, Publish Many. MFH is also published at http://www.toonorama.com in a smaller format, 500x375. Using Flash, I can use the exact same file for both formats, I don't have to generate two different bitmaps. Saves time, and again, bandwidth and server space. Also, since I use Illustrator to create the art, I can use it to actually print paper books, should we decide to do that, and I don't need a monster hard drive to hold all the 20MB Photoshop files I'd need to do it in print format. It just works better. Plus almost everyone's got the Flash Player. And we can do neat stuff like today's (8/10) comic. Jeff Zugale, artboy www.pagancity.com
Jeff Z. again.
:)
Okay, your point is a good one. However, we did a fairly exhaustive study of what it takes to effectively self-publish a comic like MFH, and the minimum financial investment comes out to about $50,000 per year. As you say, not out of the realm of possibility, but certainly not cheap. And that's not counting the time investment, which is essentially ALL of your time. We did give the print version a shot... and it nearly bankrupted me personally because I was working on the comic the whole time (didn't have a day job, was working freelance on top of the comic) and we didn't see any money from the print version because we couldn't get it into the distribution system (a whole topic in itself).
You're right, we're not AT THIS TIME going to be able to make a living from MFH in terms of getting direct payment for access to the comic online. We do hope that EVENTUALLY there will be an effective infrastructure in place to support that. In the meantime we will use all the various indirect methods, mostly merchandising and such, to try to generate some income. And, once we have enough material, we WILL collect it in print and enter the book market. No reason not to.
The big advantage to doing this on the Web is that I can keep a good day job with good pay and benefits while turning out the comic at a reasonable pace - and still have time to myself to enjoy some life. Plus, we can get the story told and hopefully get people interested. It seems to be working so far.
Yes, a bigger budget would allow us to market MFH more effectively. Big budgets are necessary if you want to make a big splash as rapidly as possible. However, to get a big budget like that, you usually have to sign a contract with a big media corp - which almost always involves signing away your copyrights to your work. Chris (my writer) and I are ADAMANT that we will NOT do this with MFH (tho we have other ideas that we would) unless and until MFH is no longer fun or interesting for us to do. Plus, since we are both gainfully employed elsewhere, we're not starving to try to cash in big on MFH overnight. We are in a situation where we are comfortable with putting MFH up on the Web and using much lower-intensity promotion methods to grow our audience more organically, via word-of-mouth and some very carefully targeted advertising and partnerships. We're not in a hurry.
By the way, do NOT underestimate the power of word-of-mouth on the web. Because of boboroshi's link in his initial post, 50 people have visited http://www.pagancity.com in the last 5 hours. Hopefully some of them will like the story and keep coming back. Thanks, boboroshi!
This wouldn't make sense for everyone, but it makes sense for us. If MFH gets tired for us, we'll figure something else out. If we are able to generate enough interest that big media companies come around looking to buy MFH, we'll consider that as well. Meanwhile, we'll tell our story and see what happens.
Jeff Zugale, artboy
www.pagancity.com
If that aspect of the game was removed and used as a foundation for eComicBooks, along with the ability to get good voice actors to help with voicing, they could really take off, knowing full well that they will be expensive too.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
So rely on personal recommendations and pick up the comics in collected graphic novel format rather than on a monthly basis.
Some series that I'd recommend:
++ Say to Elrond "Hello.".
Elrond says "No.". Elrond gives you some lunch.
But the problem is, for every little strip, you have to wait for at least a day. When you but a book, you get hundreds of strips in one step.
Preacher. Ugh. I had that series recommended to me by someone who I thought had decent taste in comics. It is the bloody worst piece of infantile tripe I've ever had the misfortune to read. It was like reading a role-playing campaign run by 14 year old boys with ADD. Maybe it was just the series I read ("Gone to Texas"), but I wouldn't get anywhere near another series by these clowns after that experience. I feel dumber for having read it.
Avoid Preacher. But definitely read anything by Frank Miller, especially "Sin City" and "That Yellow Bastard".
Sandman is good too.
/bluesninja
Too Much Coffee Man is good, well known small press comic which can be read online through scanned comic book pages. The site also has quite a few good cartoons as well.
Groth's essay which appeared in The Comics Journal #232 and #234 has a rebuttal from Scott McCloud which is very eloquent. It can be found here The Salon page didn't seem to mention it.