T Campbell's Blog

that most of "what I said" (see previous post) was "@#$%! @#$%&!" as my Web access went down. Typing this with my emergency backup access. Ah, Kinko's. Just like the cybercafes of old, only without coffee or ambience.

Still, plugging ahead into subscriptions today, leaving some blanks for the Web and e-mail to confirm later. And I'm reading this blog when I can, so feel free to jump into the conversation.

another installment of "what am I missing?"

By the way, my thanks and mad props to everyone who's written in about this in times past. I simply don't have time to respond to everyone, but I'm taking everyone's suggestions eagerly. Bryan C., I'll reply soon enough.

I'm into "the money chapter" now, and covering the revenue streams I kind of skimmed over last time: advertising, merchandising, print and subscriptions.

Here's what I have:

Brief notes about the anti-capitalist and "lazy capitalist" strain in many webcartoonists

The four phases of the Internet economy so far: pure research, irrational exuberance, dot-com crash, and recovery.

Advertising:

• Google Ads
• Rich Media
• Character Endorsements
• Cartoonist-Drawn Advertisements
• Tooncasting, with and without "embedded" advertising (a la Astounding Space Thrills)

In addition to the piece I linked before, I found this Doubleclick study very helpful.

Merchandising and print start today. I don't really know what I'll say about either one yet...

Monday, July 11: Arrived in San Francisco without incident, got to see the thoroughly charming Shaenon Garrity and Andrew Farago. Shaenon took me and Greg Eatroff on a tour of the Cartoon Art Museum where Andrew works, and then we ran around like chickens with our heads cut off trying to figure out which Kinko's the Modern Tales banner got sent to. A frantic call to Chris Shadoian and some jogging later, we'd secured the banner design and are on our way to dinner. Shaenon was "on" for most of the evening, as smart and funny as you'd expect Helen Narbon's true mother to be. Still, it was a productive conversation. Good day.

Tuesday: I sneaked onto the Google and Yahoo campuses as research for Search Engine Funnies and discovered, among other things, that it's way, way too easy to sneak into the Google and Yahoo campuses. I mean, I'm sure they've got the important stuff locked up tight and backed up by satellite, but really guys-- think like a terrorist, huh? (Of course, if I had been turned away, I probably would have wondered aloud just what they were hiding. No, you can't win with me, guys, too much power always makes me suspicious.)

Greg got along well-- really, really well-- with our hosts, a lesbian couple, one of whom, well, apparently isn't as lesbian as I thought going in. It wouldn't be the last surprise I had about our sleeping arrangements, but I had no problem with it and I don't think Greg had any complaints. We finished up the day by getting some exotic Asian food (I've already forgotten which country it came from) and driving up a mountain where the Berkeley professors live and getting a breathtaking view of the Golden Gate bridge and the whole city that my camera phone totally failed to capture.

Wednesday: An early departure, and we met up with Dave Belmore in time to take in the San Diego Zoo. This was a great experience-- I'll never forget the sight of a full-sized tiger playing with what looked like a medicine ball, just as if he were a common housecat. Unfortunately, I was beginning to feel sick and going through tissue paper like a campfire. We arrived at the convention for Preview Night and spend two solid hours in line with a CBR reporter. It could've been even longer if we hadn't been press (Dave and I are the Meanwhile guys, and Greg was officially Helping Us Out). And hey, free access!

Thursday: I spent the day fraternizing at the booths and attending a boatload o' panels. The highlight was probably Scott McCloud's three-panels-in-one panel which moved by at such blinding speed that it feels less like a slideshow and more like an animated movie. Yeah, ironic, huh?

Friday: Despite my rapidly deteriorating health, the Modern Tales panel seemed modestly successful. Modestly, because we don't have any really Big Announcements this year, and, well, WCN's still in beta. I think I even turned losing my voice into an advantage, directing the focus onto the other panelists where it belongs (moderators cannot be participators-- learned that lesson last year, thanks).

Dave and Greg were starting to look pretty well-worn, and I was probably worse off than either of them, but I stuck it out through dinner with David Willis and the better part of the Eisner ceremony. The latter was a social thing-- if Steve Bryant won Best Digital Comic, I wanted to be on hand to congratulate him-- but the fringe benefit was I got to hear a lot of great Will Eisner stories. The awards moved along at a pretty good clip, I thought, and bear in mind that I really, really wanted them to hurry up so that I could get home and in bed.

Bed, however, was to be denied me.

We had entrusted a friend of Dave's to give us lodging. However, this friend had neglected to mention certain details-- he was 90 minutes from the convention, he had roommates, his roommates weren't thrilled about putting us up, he couldn't get us a spare key for that reason, and he had a tendency to stay out late nights.

Just as my cold was reaching the level that I actually feared for my continued ability to breathe, we ended up having to spend an extra 40 minutes trying to sleep in the car. When he finally got back to let us in, it was after midnight and I was shivering violently.

Saturday: All three of us were exhausted-- Dave had a cold too, and asthma on top of it-- and since I had no actual commitments we opted to skip a day. Considering I woke up at 10 AM, made a brief food run and then slept from about 12 PM to 4 PM, I'd have to say that was the right call. There were few surprises at the convention, few things that you just had to be there for, so I had few regrets about that-- but I would have liked to make a few more face-to-face contacts snd conversations, especially without losing my voice. Next year.

Sunday: Poor Greg. As the most able-bodied of us, he was the most bored on Saturday, and come Sunday, we had to get up early and could barely grab a few hours at the con. Plus, Greg had left his camera behind and I was too late to retrieve it. Plus, Greg had to carry the box o' comics while I got the car. Plus, I had to make three U-turns in front of the gridlocked Convention Center before spotting him. Plus, Greg almost missed his flight back to San Fran. Plus, he would have missed his flight if he hadn't questioned my misinformation-- somehow my online research led me to conclude we were flying with US Air, not United. Even Greg snapped at me about that, and Greg's one of the sweetest-tempered guys I know.

Meanwhile, I turned the car back in to Avis, realized it wasn't rented from Avis, turned it in to Enterprise, missed my flight, put up with the flight attendants who rescheduled me for a later flight but clearly thought that US Air-United flub was the funniest thing EVER, got on the plane, attempted a last bit of networking with art directors from Lucasfilm who quickly fell asleep, got off the plane, realized I forgot my phone, waited twenty minutes for them to bring it out, then discovered my box o' comics was missing.

However, I did get to see Greg in San Fran before starting the flight to Wilmington, and he was looking a lot mellower. Of course, he had another date with our erstwhile hostess, which would probably have helped my mood, too, were I him. He said he had a good week, but probably won't be back next year. I know what he means: some things are worth the hassle once, but only once.

Monday-Friday: Touched down in Wilmington, North Carolina, a little to the west of Figure Eight Island, where my family was staying. Immediately got pulled over by a cop who couldn't figure out why my license registration wasn't coming up-- until he realized his whole system was down.

Drove out to the Island for four glorious days of swimming, sunburning, Trivial Pursuit and Scrabble, and recreational reading. I love spending time with my extended family. I'll post more about them later, but this is already running long, and, well, I need to get back to the book!

Researching ad models today, I came across a Princeton research paper. I almost want to hoard the wealth here, because it contains some of the best advice I've seen for the aspiring professional webtoonist-- but you'll probably find it anyway, so better that I should get the credit. :-)

Here it be.

Wondering why this "manga boom" isn't really hitting your local comic book shop?

Dirk Deppey pretty much hits the nail on the head here, though I thought Mary Jane was at least a nice try. I'm slowly coming to share his opinion of mainstream American comic books-- I still like that shiny superhero sheen, but not so much that I'm willing to bury my head in the sand.

I'm on vacation from the Internet, for the most part, effective tomorrow at noon.

The last few days've made it clear that this couldn't have come at a better time: I've been needing to get away from the book for a little while now. While I'm away, those of you who want to help out can tell me what's missing in the article "">Money Matters and the Modern Webcomic," which will be revised and updated into the book's last heavy-duty chapter (conclusions, foreword and afterword are relatively light work).

Next week, I'll be spending a couple of days in San Francisco, then heading down to San Diego in time to kick off Comic-Con. If you'd like to see me, your best single chance is the Modern Tales panel, but if you miss that, I'll be spending a lot of time and all of Sunday morning at the MT booth, #1334.

Early Sunday afternoon, I'll leave to spend some long-overdue time with my family at Figure Eight Island.

Rip and Teri and Search Engine Funnies will continue in my absence, though the latter will run some filler material for its first week.

See you all on the 25th!

AKA R.K. Milholland, or Randy Milholland. In case anyone reads this on Technorati who can put him in touch...

This is getting desperate, dude. We need those three strips. The first three were great... please send!

The comments on this blog have freakin' rocked lately-- I only wish there were more of them-- so as I step out for the latest Washington Webtoonists meetup, I'm going to ask for more input.

Do you know of any specific cases where the interaction between audience and cartoonist (e-mails, forum posts, et cetera) has changed the content of the webcomic?

Outside my own stories, the best example I can think of is the fact that Dave from College Roomies from Hell became The Boy Who Lived. That's right, the original version of Satan's first appearance was supposed to be EVEN DARKER than what we got... :-) Readers wouldn't have it, and Maritza caved... with a warning that the next time Satan showed up, she'd plot things out so far in advance, there'd be no stopping her again.

...I'm involved with two 192-page books about webcomics scheduled to come out this year.

You've heard a thing or two about The History of Webcomics, but I also contributed a four-page section to
Webcomics: Tools and Techniques for Digital Cartooning, by Steven Withrow and John Barber. This is largely a how-to book whereas mine is largely a what-happened book, so I don't really have any reservations about telling you to buy both. :-) Steven and John know their way around a photon.

I'm running into sites with increasing regularity that treat me like I'm an idiot for using Internet Explorer. I suppose they feel desperate measures are needed, but I have a good reason: I'm a webcomics guy and I need to know how my comic looks to 90% of all users.

Just in case you're considering it, hijacking my Web experience and redirecting me to a page I don't want about browsers that I prefer not to use will not convert me to your cause. It's almost Microsoftian in its arrogance, and you don't want that, do you?

These are some of my thoughts as I try to compose The History of Webcomics Chapter 7, "The Screen Scene."

I'd like to hear yours in response.

Who is reading webcomics?

The easy answer is "people like Tycho and Gabe," but that's an assumption with no hard evidence to back it up. The last demographic studies I can find are a Keenspot survey in 2001 and an extremely informal Richard Stevens estimate in 2002. We can extrapolate some data from surveys of Web users as a whole, but only some.

Education: First off, the webcomics community seems to be pretty well-educated, with "undergraduate student" and "college graduate" the most frequent answers. This causes few immediate problems. Smarts are good. The only danger is that if you only spend time with people with college educations, you tend to marginalize people who don't have them.

Easy liberalism: Under-representation of certain groups like blacks and Russians doesn't mean the webcomics community's prejudiced against them-- usually, quite the contrary; they eagerly accept almost everyone (they're a little wary of groups with a reputation for intolerance, like certain strains of Christianity). But accepting another group is not the same as hearing from that group, hearing its concerns. Erika Moen's excellent Examining My Racism captures some of the problem, to my mind... if you don't have contact with other groups, how "understanding" can you really be?

Nationality, Language: My impression is that webcomics-- an American invention-- have mostly been practiced by English-speaking nations: USA, Canada, England, Australia. I know of exceptions like Maritza Campos, Reinder Dijkhuis and Mikael Oskarsson, but not too many, and all of them speak English. Foreign-language webcomics might as well not exist to hear us talk. What's really surprising is that Japan, hailed as Comics Heaven and with a rich tradition of doujinshi, does not appear to have produced many online works that are popular with English-speaking audiences.

Could I be ignorant? Could a webcomics culture exist in Japan or elsewhere, as isolated from ours as a parallel universe?

Race: Speaking of Japan, something that's always struck me as odd about manga is how white most of its characters look-- the big eyes, the pale skin, the height. I get the same feeling when I think about the all-white cast of College Roomies from Hell and the largely white cast of RPG World and Sinfest (ignoring the non-human characters for now). I'm not urging some kind of "affirmative action" here, but I think there has to be some significance to the fact that white creators tend to pick protagonists that look like themselves, and creators of other races tend to pick protagonists that look like white creators. Also, not all non-white races have equal voices, either. Asians in America have almost as much Web access per capita as whites, but blacks and Hispanics have considerably less-- and when I think of non-white characters in webcomics, most of the really big ones seem to be Asian: Aubrey, Peejee, Zoe (half-Asian). There is It's Walky, but race seems largely incidental to its mixed-race Walky and Sal; if not for one joke about dancing, I might have thought their skin tone was a coloring quirk. The Asian Diana has a more plausible experience, having to deal with the stereotype of being a "brain" on top of her own serious emotional problems. I'm only impressed by three-dimensional characters-- tokenism is far from dead.

I'm not really sure what this means yet. I'd appreciate any particularly perceptive studies of race in art and culture. And refutations, as with all of these.

Sex: When Keenspot did its survey, it had almost as high a percentage of female readers as that of the entire Web. That is truly astonishing when you think about it. Even if the proportions have changed a bit since then, there's no denyin' that the Web is way more friendly to female readers and female creators than either the American comic book industry or newspaper strips (though comic books are finally starting to wake the fuck up about this). I consider it a sign of health for webcomics in general. You need two genders to breed.

Outside of a few moronic forum posts which I won't dignify with a link and one questionable storyline by somebody who's usually better (so I won't embarrass him), I haven't really encountered much sexism in either webcomics readers or creators. Have I missed something here? Feel free to depress me.

Orientation: Not that the Web's breeder-only-- at least, not any more. Justine Shaw shattered a lot of preconceptions, even among us "enlightened liberals," and reached an audience that had never really had a voice before. She described herself as "not a comics person," and I think the webcomics depictions of gay people before she came on board (including, um, mine) lacked the authenticity of first-hand experience.

Correct me if I'm wrong about this.

Age: Webcomics are a youth movement, relatively speaking: the average age seems to be younger than that of the average Web user, comic book fan and newspaper reader. Yeah. No real surprises here. As you get up to retirement age, the percentage of Web users seems to decline pretty steeply.

I would like to hear how youth-oriented strips like Ozy and Millie deal with a "webcomics culture" that features PG-13 sex and violence regularly. And I'd like to hear if there are any webcomics aimed at a significantly older crowd, and how they're doin'.

Class: This is the big one, I think. Fantastically rich people aren't spending a lot of time reading webcomics, and neither are those who can't afford Internet access, or a computer, or power. This sort of puts webcomics into a set tax bracket. Scott McCloud's "Whose Mind Is It Anyway?" is the exception that proves the rule: couldn't webcomics spend a bit more time capturing diverse human experiences, and less in Starbuck's and at the video game console?

How many characters in webcomics are not middle-class? Are there any webcomics being created by those who are poor (and I mean on-the-street poor, not student-loan poor) or really well-off?

Religion: We hear a lot from the atheist, agnostic and secular humanist sections, with minority voices from various Christian sects, Judaism and paganism. Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism... nnnnnnot so much.

Or am I missing something?

In conclusion, the webcomics audience seems way less factionalized and cliquish than the audiences for comic strips and American comic books... though the graphic novel/manga market comes close in many respects, and may be ahead of webcomics when it comes to depictions of orientation. That is something to be proud of. But webcomics fandom still doesn't represent the whole world, or even the English-speaking world, or America, and the way we talk to each other sometimes, I'm not sure we realize that.

If we did represent America, you can bet Bush wouldn't be President.

I'm not much for making money off my comics.

The History of Webcomics, Rip and Teri, Penny and Aggie... all of these have the prospect of making me some money, but I'm essentially living off my savings right now (and crossing my fingers about the ghostwriting deal). Fans was an especially expensive project-- I think the only way I could make my money back on that one is if Hollywood bought it and did well with it. (And I wouldn't say no to the right terms, but I wouldn't let them cast Pauly Shore as Rikk either.)

The irony is that I'm learning a hell of a lot about making money from webcomics and am set to learn even more once I get to that chapter of the book. I see all kinds of moneymaking opportunities I'm watching pass me by, and I could say it's because I don't have the time...

But really, it's because I don't make the time.

I'm hardly unique in this. Cartoonist after cartoonist, the hobbyists, the hopefuls and the hockers, so many of us just do the work and assume the money will follow. If you just love it a little more...

Well, I need better. And other cartoonists need better, too. But I know myself too well now to think I'm going to become a businessman's businessman. Some of you may remember I resolved to re-take Accounting 100... well, that didn't happen. The History of Webcomics consumed all my available resources, but again, that's because I chose for it to do so. I haven't made the time.

So now I'm starting to seek out a partner. Someone who likes to work with creative types, and who wants to break into a new and exciting field. The medium of webcomics may be twelve years old, but the business is still in its infancy.

There is money to be made here... advertising alone is doing well and projected to explode in the next four years, the graphic novel market is not going away, donation drives have potential if the cause is worthy. Even the much-maligned micropayment may have its role. But I need a fresh pair of eyes, eyes adjusted to the bottom line, to help me focus on that. If said manager does well with me, I imagine he or she will soon get others to manage. A lot of us could use help with this. A lot of us.

Long-term, I think a percentage compensation is the way to go, but I'm willing to put some cash up front.

I don't know if anyone reading this is a likely candidate, but it never hurts to put it out there.

Edited: Changeover to the new blog format will be delayed, because Wordpress doesn't seem to be working so well on this system and I refuse to spend four hours on something that with proper tech support can take ten minutes. I will be traveling for two weeks beginning July 11th, so I'll probably orchestrate the changeover then.

Yesterday, I got into the car for the last time until Tuesday. I live near Washington DC, and I just have noooo incentive to wade out into the traffic madhouse that is DC on the 4th of July weekend. Grabbed some more popcorn and cider from Catoctin Kettle Corn. Bit of a drive. Okay, it was three hours there and back in temperatures ranging from 94-104 degrees, and my air conditioning isn't the greatest under those conditions. So, yeah, I'm good. We got a pool here, and a gym and grocer's within walking distance.

Progress on "Eagles' Endgames," light at the end of the tunnel there. Fired off a couple of manga pages for Gisele.

Production on History has slowed. I'm going to use this blog to set up another roundtable discussion or two; that seemed to work well the last time...

Or is the OED food-crazy? Look at how many of their latest words have something to do with gourmet. It's not 50% or anything, but it's a lot.

One of the few pleasures I have left from the newspaper page is Luann. It's not Calvin and Hobbes or anything, but its consistently well-drawn characters and impatience with cliches puts it leaps and bounds over anything Archie's done lately. It makes Penny and Aggie better by existing.

So imagine my surprise to learn that two of its characters have their designs upon Comic-Con.

I'm wondering how far Greg Evans is going to take this. Is he going to reference actual happenings at the convention? Will I see Gunther and Knute impersonators there? Because I totally should.

I know the last interesting thing about this blog for some of you was the convention map, so I guess it falls to me to report that Scott McCloud has bowed out (scroll down to 6/17).

New format for the blog a-comin' later today or tonight.