Monthly Archives: January 2010

Captain Nihilist Storms the Paywalls, or the controversial rebirth of Webcomics.com

Posted on
16

Pay for online content? Ridiculous!

That’s what I would say if I haven’t, in the past, been guilty of such a thing. I was once a subscriber to the Wall Street Journal Online, an essential resource to surviving business school.

There were other cases as well.

One time, a fantasy novelist came up with the brilliant and risky idea to put his in-work novel online piece by piece. If you wanted to see the story progress, you could do so by signing up to a low one-time fee. I and several other loyal readers ponied the cash to get exclusive story updates, special access to message board forums, and artwork — some painted by the novelist himself. This novelist was an early adopter, putting his book online before Stephen King made it cool.

The project folded. The author finished up his novel and the subsequent sequels the old fashioned way: sending his work to the publishers and having it released in book form. Still, I wonder if that system may have been like that online book I paid for may have seemed utterly silly back in the day, but with things like iTunes and digital readers in the market nowadays, a paid subscription seems less ridiculous now.

Now webcomics.com is putting their content behind a paywall, and folks are hopping mad. Some are understandably upset that Brad Guigar seemed to thrust this onto readers all of the sudden and without warning. Some aren’t happy that they wrote articles for what seemed like an all-access blog, and they’re now commodities for a pay system. Others are miffed Scott Kurtz, who should probably be on his best behavior to win people over to this new business model, is still acting like Scott Kurtz. I’ve read a few articles on the matter. The best assessment, I think, comes from longtime webcomic blogger Eric Burns-White at his Websnark blog.

A loyal Webcomic Overlook reader twittered me recently and asked what I thought about the webcomics.com situation. Now my opinions on the matter are fairly poor, since I was only a casual reader of webcomics.com when it was free. Plus, I’m not a webcomic artist. I like to think of myself as more of a writer. In other words, I’m way more likely to pony up cash if Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips went under a paywall.

But anyway, here’s my thoughts, however worthless they may be.

Charging for online may be counter-intuitive based on evidence in the last ten years. However, the fundamentals of economy changed, and things that worked in the past might not work now. Unemployment is up. People are being frugal. Ad revenue just ain’t what it used to be. And premiums for exclusive members don’t seem quite so ridiculous. The model of free information that was once so deliciously alluring now seems like a lost opportunity.

Welcome to the 2010′s.

Do I have doubts that the new webcomics.com model will succeed? Hell yes I do! I give this pay model the same odds of success as the New York Jets reaching the Super Bowl.

The PR around putting webcomics.com under a paywall could have been much, much better. But… I will give Guigar and pals the benefit of the doubt. Robert Khoo is helping out with this endeavor. You know, the guy primarily responsible for transforming Penny Arcade from a simple webcomic into a brand that competes with the E3 gaming expo for gamers’ attention. Pretty damn impressive. I don’t know how much input he had into the subscription model, but I’m sure he has a better finger on the pulse of business better than any webcomic cartoonist out there. (Also, I may be biased, since he and I are fellow grads of the UW School of Business. Go Huskies.)

So I got no fight with the business model. Yet.
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The Webcomic Overlook #102: The SuperFogeys

Posted on
9

The Webcomic Overlook is back for 2010!

First of all, apologies to everyone for the long wait. A tip for you single people: after you get married, Christmases get ten times busier. You have a whole second family with which to party and to buy gifts for. And it gets even more complicated when your own family is clear across the other side of the country. So Christmas for me was a hectic time of shopping, traveling (to, like, three different states), and partying (which I hate). Like the Arizona Cardinals and Green Bay Packers from last week’s wild card game, I am pooped.

Yet, I have returned. If you had wild fantasies that The Webcomic Overlook had died and gone away forever, then I’m sorry to spoil your dreams. Also, what a horrible thing to say! What would your mother think?

But anyway, onto the review that I’ve apparently been working on for a month now.

Superheroes never age. They just get rebooted. Superman will always be your mild-mannered boy scout permanently stuck in his late 20′s to early 30′s. He’ll always have a similarly aged alter ego in Clark Kent, who will always be an anachronistic reporter at the local newspaper. It can’t be helped. It’s in his DNA. I imagine he’ll stay a newspaper reporter even when papers themselves are a forgotten remnant of the past, driven to obsolescence by visual media and the Internet.

Or witness the tragic case of Peter Parker, the world’s oldest college student. Few know that, in current continuity (before Brand New Day, anyway), Peter and Mary Jane had a daughter named May Parker. Hey, sorta makes sense with Peter’s progression from a teenager to a college student to a married adult, doesn’t it? Except the Marvel editorial staff thought it made Peter too old, so they had Peter’s daughter kidnapped and never referred to again (unless you count the out-of-continuity Spider-Girl books). Later and more notoriously, Peter had his marriage to Mary Jane taken away via devil magic (i.e., editorial fiat), turning him into a struggling single guy once again to appeal to Marvel’s theoretical target audience of teenage boys.

Spider-Man’s greatest enemy isn’t The Green Goblin. It’s aging.

I think this explains the popularity of comics that portray elderly superheroes. It’s a portrayal we don’t see too often. Part of the joy of reading Kingdom Come was seeing Superman with streaks of gray in his hair, Bruce Wayne in a neck support, and Wonder Woman … well, she really doesn’t age, what with our double standard of letting men have gray hair and wrinkles yet women must look pleasingly young. However, Kingdom Come and other comics of its ilk don’t really deal with the ramifications of growing older beyond the dilemma of passing on your legacy to the next generation. Heck, even the old dudes of the Justice Society comic hardly are drawn to look a day over forty.

How about when superheroes have to deal with the less savory aspects of growing old? Fortunately, that’s why the world gave us Brock Heasley. The SuperFogeys is a comedic yet somewhat melancholy look at aging.


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