Max Riffner

The Parlor

My weblog work journal.  »Archives  »Links

Back to the Webcomics

As I stated yesterday, a longform webcomic has been on my mind, and today I’ve been thinking about if I were to do it – how would I be compensated for it?

Weirdly, I’ve been reading about Terry Moore and Jeff Smith while thinking quite a bit about Dave Lapham – all of them self-published indy heroes of the early 90s. Today, it isn’t possible to recreate that sort of success; the market conditions just aren’t there anymore for someone to try to build an audience in that fashion. However, I think webcomics now are the equivalent of the self-pub boom of the early 90s. There is so much great work online right now; I’m having a wonderful time reading and plopping down some cash to those who have really won me over. Here’s the thing though: these good comics are few and far between compared to the glut of total crap out there. My god. For every one good Achewood, there is 100 terrible webcomics, either poor story, poor art, poor storytelling, or in most cases, all of the above.

This is good and bad. Good, because under these conditions, my work can really shine since I have at least baseline competency in these required areas. Bad, because how the hell does anyone find you in the aforementioned sea of crap? And if they do find you, will they be willing to plunk down some money for reading it online?

I’ve obviously been trying this out with Golden Boy, but I keep coming back to the webcomics I read and how they are financially successful. Diesel Sweeties, Achewood, Scary Go Round, etc. – they all offer their content for free and make money on the merchandise, enough so their strips are their full time jobs. Personally, I’m reluctant to go there; spending time on merchandise is less time spent on making comics. However, I bet they could release a special BitPass comic and get a better return on it now because they all have a giant audience – garnered from their free work.

One of my guiding principles is that my time is always worth something. It is too easy as an artist or designer to do work for free, to get taken advantage of and not get fairly compensated for your work because of the overwhelming desire to create. So even to this day, if I do work for a client at a reduced rate, it is because I’m getting something out of the deal, either on trade or for a nice portfolio piece.

So, the question really boils down to this: am I willing to sacrifice hard financial gain (and by hard, I mean cash) in order to gain an audience? By gaining an audience, can I then try the sort of micropayment comics I want to do? Because, in order for me to do this, this webcomic is going to have ads and tip jars and merch – I’m going to be shilling up a storm. Maybe not. Maybe I just give the daily update away for free and the archives are accessible with a small micropayment, say around 25 cents for a month of access?

Just ideas I’m tossing around at this point. I don’t think that people realize how much talent is out there, waiting on the sidelines until it becomes really financially feasible to be on the web. Right now we’re seeing a lot of free shit (and by shit, well, yes you know what I mean) with a few diamonds out there. If more people supported paying for comics with micropayments – I think the quality of webcomics would explode, and I think that day is coming; it just isn’t here quite yet.

So what does one do in the meantime?

You can also browse through the Parlor archives.