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Independent Cartoonists Band Together for Success
Brad Guigar writes "Six cartoonists, previously hosted at Keenspot, are banding together in a new approach to self-publishing.
They have formed Blank Label Comics, a cooperative group of cartoonists who are helping one another succeed as independents. Each is using his proficiency in a particular aspect of the cartooning business to help the others -- who are doing the same in return.
Scott Kurtz, creator of the daily comic strip PVP, applauded the move. 'The forming of Blank Label Comics is a big story in the webcomics community,' he said in a statement on his Web site, insisting that the 'real story ... is that a bunch of really talented guys are taking a chance, putting their necks out and trying to do this on their own.'"
It is encouraging to see any independent label for cartoons come into existance. Like music, film, or any other artistic medium it is better to have more outlets than fewer. I enjoyed, during my early teen and, later, my college years, a variety of "underground" comics (e.g. R. Crumb, Gilbert Shelton) that would have *never* existed at established publishing houses. Some probably shouldn't have existed, but there you are.
The only concern I have with independent labels is their ability to fight off incorporation or extinction. Some independent music and film outlets have consolidated leaving these media under the control of only a few companies. We have all seen the result of that outcome.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
Google search for "Image comics"
If you aren't good enough to get syndicated, keep at it until you are. Alternatively you can find your niche audience, but that road is fraught with peril and many nights of eating nothing but instant ramen and tap water.
Where does User Friendly fit in the scheme of things?
If only they could create something to rival archie... :)
Is anyone not an "independant online cartoonist" these days? The only thing there's more of are "internet models" and "blog journalists".
This is a great thing to hear. I've been waiting to see a bunch of artists compleatly buck the traditional system, band together and have a go at it on their own in any media. I'm sure there are quite a few in the music recording field who have tried this, but the recording industry is so entrenched right now that success would be difficult.
The comics industry (as I understand it) still harbors an envrionment where guys like this actually have a chance. I wish them good luck.
The Internet is generally stupid
We slahdot their server. Go figure.
In the beginning the universe was created. This made a lot of people very angry and is widely considered as a bad move.
I have not seen any consistantly funny web comics. Most are painfully UNFUNNY. What does "unfunny" mean? That means they are the opposite of funny. They suck the funniness out of other things.
Unfunny web comics killed my inner child.
Humor from a Genetically Molested Mind
While I applaud their efforts, isn't this how the RIAA/MPAA got started for music and movies?
I wonder how Wiley will mock them this time? He sure didn't seem to think much of Scott Kurtz when he offered his strips to newspapers for free.
I regularly report MSN spam to the Hotmail admins.
taking a chance, putting their necks out
Umm... does this really take guts, forming a co-op?
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
I saw this a few days ago on Scott Kurtz' site, definately nice to hear that some guys are making it out of Keenspots wretched clutches. I realize that keenspot has it's place, but I have to yet to hear anything good about it.
As an avid webcomic reader I'm always glad to see more good artists out there. In fact after reading through just a few of their comics I discovered that I really didn't have time to read them all! Arghh there are too many good comics for me to read.
http://www.overwhelmedblue.blogspot.com/
Sounds like they also created a new team of superheroes... I give you the Blank Comic 6! Cartoonist during the day and upholder of the first amendment on the Internet by night.
EvilCON - Made Famous by
I hear that "starving artists" outnumber them.
And as a true test of your preperations to strike out alone, we'll slashdot your server(s) and drive you bankrupt from the resulting bandwidth fees. No no, I insist, there is no need to thank us!
DRM = Digitally Restricted Media. This is a viral sig, pass it on.
Look, I've even done all the work for you: the first Achewood. Use the red arrow pointing to the right to go to the next.
Do you love freedom??? Do you love freedom!!! DO YOU LOVE FREEDOM!!!!!!!!
...for independent bands to cartoon together.
/ suck it, RIAA
Personally, I find Alien Loves Predator to be pretty funny most of the time. Even being funny "most of the time" is still good. I can't imagine how hard it would be trying to find comic filler for every day of the year. Some people do a fantastic job, and even if you only get a laugh from the material once in a while, it's still making you feel good. I hope these guys succeed at this.
Try actually thinking for yourself. It's quite refreshing.
my favorite indy comic
Guess I was spoiled by Larson. Since Far Side I've yet to find any consistently funny comic stips. Sometimes they'll come up with a refreshing view of things but then completely butcher the art of subtlety by overdoing the punchline.
One exception, though, is FreshMeat which has done a good job of not falling for those trappings... especially the Milkman Dan scenes which always get me genuinely laughing.
If we can dream for a moment that David Willis won't turn Shortpacked! into another infinite loop of "I can't have sex w/ you because I love you" like his other comics, then Blank Label might actually have a decent comic. 1 out of 10 ain't that bad...
Modern Tales has American Born Chinese, Ice, Narbonic, No Stereotypes, Odd Jobs, Paradigm Shift and Wahoo Moris. 7 out of 63.
Graphic Smash has Aces High, Ascent, Digger, Fans, Gun Street Girl, Johnny Saturn, Life's a Croc, Little White Knight, Magellan, Rip & Teri, The Jaded, The Replacements and Vigil. 13 out of 31.
Girlamatic has Jupiter, L'il Mell, Sevenplains and The Stiff. 4 out of 23.
YMMV.
[o]_O
Going independent is a good move for these people who look like they are looking to turn their cartooning into their primary job. However, for most internet cartoonists, I think Keenspot is still the best option for those who make 1-2 comics a week and don't want to deal with the hassle of having to maintain a server, deal with bandwidth issues, etc. The downside of working with Keenspot is that they take a big chunk of the advertising revenue that a site generates. A few weeks back, Tycho at PA had a comment about someone he knew who left Keenspot and went independent and started making triple what he used to make from advertising. For its flaws though, it seems that Keenspot (Or Keenspace rather for those undiscovered comics) is still the best place for a new cartoonist to start.
... is consistently funny. Not intellectually stimulating, but funny!
--- Attorneys Assisting Citizen-Soldiers & Families -
This kind of alliance between creatives has a good history of working in the comics industry. Malibu was that kind of a cooperative at first, started by a bunch of creatives who turned to someone with passion for comics and business sense. In the end they sold to Marvel, which didn't end well, but it could quite clearly be considered a success for the people who founded the group.
Right now the founder is doing this: http://platinumstudios.com/, and that seems to be going quite well. While they don't make much on the comics themselves, they leverage the best of their materials to go to mass market and to Hollywood. It's a good business strategy, and they seem to have tremedous respect for their creative people.
Watch spacetree the spacetree in space (http://www.spacetree.com/ Kurtz linked to at some point on pvponline.com.
A wacky keentoon featuring the escapades of space tree and his buddies.
watch until episode 3 at least - it's pretty funny.
- Mad, ingenous - they've both left you puzzled -
The webcomic review & criticism blog Websnark.com has some interesting entries looking at Blank Label's creation, its choice of tagline, and the webcomic syndicate from which its members departed.
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
Here is the link: http://hobbes.ncsa.uiuc.edu/comics.html
A cooperative of independents? Now I've seen everything...
Try yahoo, you'll get a search result without the "Cruise liner" offtopic stuff and with a proper description for the Wikipedia listing:
i mage+comics
http://search.yahoo.com/search?ei=UTF-8&fr=sfp&p=
Isn't this sort of what the Dumbrella guys do for each other as well?
***
Groups like this are all over the place.
Just in terms of webcomics, fleen was one of the earlier "networks"... and there's also dayfree press. The bit of Major News, as it were, is that it's a bunch of comics that were previously keenspace "titles" peeling off- ugly hill is the only newcomer to the batch. Keen isn't the Mount Awesome some people have made it out to be - if anything, it is to webcomics what livejournal is to drama... and these guys have all apparently realized it's time to move on.
Personally, it's nice to see shortpacked free of keenspace advertising feces- bullshit reduction is something I can always get behind. Joining a network looks like it's a good thing for all parties concerned, if it's something you're comfortable doing.
My own comic is going into its third year without being a member of a network, without having run a single ad. I might get shit for traffic but I know exactly what I'm displaying on my site- display and control of presentation is a huge concern of mine, at least for the time being. I'm sure one of these days I'll get sick of obscurity and spend more effort on increasing project awareness than I currently am on project production. Maybe eventually, like these guys, I'll find some like-minded media creators who want to conjoin into some sort of co-prosperity sphere.
I read many Keenspot comics (maybe around 10) religiously; it's a nice central place to read a bunch of stories on a regular basis. A long time ago it was slow and unstable, but lately it's been great, and has a few comics that are very professionally done.
:)
My big gripe is that a few of the comics that moved off are the ones I read. Now they're not in one area anymore, I probably won't read them regularly. That is of course selfish -- but I imagine other readers don't like the move for the same reason. I'd expect an initial loss of readership for these authors, except for very dedicated fans.
On the other hand, it's a logical move for the cartoonists. Keenspace and Keenspot are great ways to jumpstart a budding talent or hobby and watch it grow. From what I can tell, the Blank Label starters quite liked Keenspot and regretted leaving it -- but now that their work has matured, they'd like to take it in a direction they can't do under Keenspot. So good for them
If you say "here goes my karma" I will bite you!!!
- Real life
- Phd (perhaps not as funny to non grad students)
- Applegeeks
I would include megatokyo, but it has on average been more serious and less funny lately (though I still enjoy it, and you can browse the archives for older, funnier content)."And, as I understand it, Keenspot webcartoonists don't get paid as well as they could. Keenspot is a for-profit venture. It's the same as with any label you might sign with ... some of the money that would otherwise rightfully be yours is going to go to the umbrella organization that's sponsoring you. Going independent might make you more money, if you're willing to deal with the financials yourself. (Ideally, you wouldn't care because you'd be doing it for the love of your craft ... but when you become more popular, the bandwidth and hosting costs more money.)"
The two nitpicks with your argument is "rightfully". If two or more people enter in an honest reciprocal agreement? Then both are "rightfully" getting what they want.
Also "ideally" has nothing to do with "love of your craft". Or to put it another way. Very few accept "love" as legal tender for payment of bills.
Perry Bible Fellowship, the best webcomic in "publication" today.
http://cheston.com/pbf/archive.html
It is encouraging to see any independent label for cartoons come into existance. Like music, film, or any other artistic medium it is better to have more outlets than fewer.
Yes indeed. But not just in artistic areas like this. It also applies in computing!
I've never been able to figure out is why US techies don't let this same excellent logic apply to themselves as well. In Europe, going freelance and doing computer contracting is extremely common, both with or without an umbrella co-op. It not only provides far far greater financial rewards, but also an immense feeling of independence and greater self-worth. I've been contracting for 15 years, and would never go back.
Why do techies in the US do this only very rarely, and instead always want to be bog-standard employees, and hance always small cogs in large corporate machines? I've never understood it.
I'm glad to see artists making the move and trying to redefine their status quo, but it's sad that most techies don't even see the corporate rut that they're in and only very rarely want to escape it.
>> Each is using his proficiency in a particular aspect of the cartooning business...
... and yes, it creates something very much like a band of super-heroes. :-)
> Sounds like they also created a new team of superheroes...
Techies banding together into umbrella computer contracting organizations are very common in Europe
It actually works extremely well, being able to call on the services of colleagues with specialist skills.
The clients love it, the contract agencies that find us work love it, and we love it because the contracting rates are huge compared to being a crappy old employee working for the clients directly. I have no doubt that it'll work out for those artists too.
I love being a super-hero!
(Why is being a freelance computer contractor so rare among techies in the US?)
I don't see that this is taking a chance. From what I've heard, Keenspot isn't the greatest place to be, but when you're a web comic drawer person, where is? You're almost certain to have limited appeal (I used to be someone with limited appeal, myself - remember Trevor the Cat - no? there's a surprise) and need a place where new readers can find you, or you have a good established audience, such as PVP or Penny Arcade, that will continually grow.
These guys obviously thought they were big enough, and popular enough that they didn't need Keenspot anymore, and in webcomic terms that doesn't need to be big by any means, so they ditched them to do their own thing. I wish them well, but this is not the same as taking a change in paper publishing terms.
http://www.little-gamers.com/index.php?id=1106 Little-gamers take on this whole deal :)
You are absolutely right, but TBH I was more encouraged by the fact that the article had "independent" spelled correctly (not "independant").
There is still hope in the world. Perhaps I should mark this day in my calendar (not calender) as "independence day".
I'm sorry if I haven't offended anyone
They've got Waspi Square, so there's no doubt in MY mind that they've got at LEAST one excellent comic.
no comment
He's right.. Warlocks ARE a support class!
And they said zombies weren't real!
Funny and NOT trying to be userfriendly:
Jendini.com
I wish more cartoonists would do "realistic" storylines without the sci-fi/fantasy copout of not being required to make any sense. I also like that the animals don't talk. :-)
Disclaimer the author is a friend, and I am actively attempting to spread the word about this new comic
A few very talented cartoonists have also banded at Dumbrella many years ago.
Counting "Fans" really isn't quite fair, as it's reached the end of its long and excellent run. Similarly, I wouldn't count "Calvin and Hobbes" to the credit of the UComics syndicate, because while excellent, it's reruns.
Or are you a Chicago Democrat? =)
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
Whether a comic is about tech support (as already said by others the vast majority of comics are _not_ about tech support), and whether the artist and the writer have any talent are two completely unrelated things. They're completely orthogonal.
There is stuff that did (briefly) touch tech support issues or work in a tech company, but is most of the time funny. E.g., Angst Technology. No, it doesn't whine either, it's not a bitter "management sucks" Dilbert clone, and it has quite a funny take on a lot of games.
And conversely there is plenty of stuff that has nothing to do with tech support, and it still sucks because those folks really have no talent whatsoever.
And some folks just simply are whiners, and that's that. I've seen "comics" whining about tabletop gamers, whining about a boss in retail (totally not tech-related), or whining about their own life and patting themselves on the back in the most pathetic verbal-masturbation way possible. Again, it doesn't have to be about tech support, or even vaguely related.
The bottom line is that there's a _lot_ of stuff on the internet. There's just too much and too diverse of it to squeeze into a neat "everyone is in category X" (e.g., UF-clones, whiners, whatever) generalization.
That's just part of the internet, I guess. The good part is that anyone can post anything, but the bad part is also just that. You _will_ get to wade through tons of crap to find anything you're actually looking for.
But still, from there to claiming that basically there's _nothing_ on the web that isn't a whine or a clone of User Friendly, that's quite the blatantly false extrapolation.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Honestly, I don't see why this is news. This is virtually how ALL comic artists and companies came into exsistence. The great thing about comics is that they are relatively cheap to produce (not including the time required to write and draw them). Almost ALL comic book companies started as small independent publishers "bucking the system." What makes these companies big is the quality of their content. And certainly, there are a LOT of crappy comics out there. But there are a good number of small, quality comics publishers out there, and new ones are created every day. Popular indie favorites are Top Shelf, Monkeysuit, Dark Horse, and Fantagraphics, among others. In June, check out the MoCCA show in NYC, or the SPX show in September, for two big conventions celebrating indie comic publishers. The overall level of quality never ceases to amaze me.
I swear to God, I pray every night for a zombie outbreak, because it's the only way Democrats are evar gonna take back the White House!
[o]_O
"Each is using his proficiency in a particular aspect of the cartooning business to help the others who are doing the same in return."
Department of Redundancy Department here, how can I help you?
yet another creative split on the web. so? dandy. web=a Wasteland of creatives literates watching one another, all waiting for golbal success. you make money or watch the group an ugly death (with writers, usually 6 months) .. cartooning? I'm area163. Did the web thing when search engines had only two cartoons. (95/96) didn't float to the top. didn't get spamed. (Hint being popular is JUST like having a lot of spam fans.) life goes on. watch where the money goes.
packrat ; writer-informer. http://packrat.comicgenesis.com http://www.youtube.com/area163 https://www.smashwords.com/
It's ironic that you're posting as Anonymous Coward. We got a Peter Parker/Spiderman thing going here?
EvilCON - Made Famous by
Considering that he's getting laid regularly by his girlfriend, I think he may have moved past that particular hangup.
And you forgot "Rogues of Clwyd-Rhan" on Modern Tales and "Killroy and Tina" on Graphic Smash.
The Blank Label guys are ex-Keenspot. Most were never on Keenspace.
Oper on the Nightstar
If they have banded together, they're not independent any more.
So the title should read, "Independent Cartoonists Give Up Independence for Success."
Not really. Did the original thirteen states banding together as the United States lessen their independence from England?--Al
MINDMISTRESS ---the greatest super