Max Riffner

The Parlor

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Comics Crossing Media

For awhile, it seemed like you were either a webcartoonist or a print cartoonist, and never the tween shall meet. There were exceptions, sure, most notably with Scott McCloud, James Kochalka, and Scott Kurtz, who all have comics in the direct market you can purchase at your local comic book store. Interestingly enough, it sounds like more print artists are warming up to the web as a marketing tool for their comics.

Jay Stephens has been publishing his Jet Cat and Oddville strips on his new WebcomicsNation.com account, and apparently, there are a load of other print artists following his move.

I’ve thought this move has been coming for a long time now. There are tons of new comic fans out there, but they aren’t reading comics at the comic shop; they are reading comics online. Now, ignoring one medium for the other is becoming more of a rare attitude as the medium surges forward.

I’ve always wanted to be involved with print comics, because that is what I grew up with. Even when I became a web designer in ‘96 and watched the whole thing explode, I’ve still never really wanted to be a webcartoonist. That changed sometime between 2001 and 2004. Now I want to always be doing both. It is just too much fun to draw a page one night and post it online in a few minutes instead of laboring away in secret. I’ve done both methods now, and I prefer to do the webcomic thing first with the idea that the work will be printed later. I’m scratching both itches.

I wonder who else will be making the move? I can’t wait; print comic artists are generally (and not surprisingly, because they have to live up to editorial standards) better cartoonists. There is a mess of crap out there online, and I’d like to see them raise the bar up a notch.

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