The Webcomic Overlook

For those of you who tuned in for the discussion on Joey Manley and his views on webcomics getting leapfrogged by publishers on adopting key iPad app technology, Brigid Alverson at Robot 6 has weighed in on the matter herself. Her response includes observations coming from some small publishers and the folks at Comixology, who posted at Manley’s original article:

Manley gets right away that these devices are a digital newsstand bringing DC and Marvel comics to a new audience, and he thinks the publishers could be doing a better job of repackaging them, but his main point is that the big, clumsy comics companies of yesteryear are doing the best job of exploiting this new platform. Of course, that’s because they have ComiXology to do the tech work for them; DC and Marvel are really just supplying content, and in this case, it’s mostly content that has already been published in other forms.

In the comments, SLG’s Dan Vado complains that indy comics are getting swept aside:

This is pretty much dead on. Comixology has all but stopped converting SLG titles in favor of, their words, “higher volume” sellers.

UPDATE: ComXology’s David Steinberger responds to Vado and the others in the same comment thread, saying that they remain committed to indie publishers:

To be clear, we’re dedicated to the indie market, and are investing a ton of our resources to make the access to our platform more equitable. We took the opportunities that we created with this platform, and now we’re catching up to being able to continue to get great books from all publishers.

In the end, Alverson advocates a sort of “guerilla movement” of webcomic creators working in the iPad/Android environment. (I imagine the controversial Webcomic App would hopefully be the first of many salvos).

In that context, Adams’s suggestion that creators use the web as a portal to the iPad is an interesting one; the problem with having all your content come through a single corporate gateway is that it tends to be pretty bland and commercialized. I’d love to see some guerilla webcomickers create an underground indy comics scene for the iPad and Android, using ComicZeal to bypass the iTunes store. The problem is the eternal one: Money for freedom, as monetizing a PDF is a lot harder than collecting a check from Apple for your iTunes app. Still, comics people are creative people, and I’m hoping that when I finally spring for an iPad, I’ll be able to read more than repackaged Batman comics on its big, beautiful screen.

Valerie D’Orazio of Occasional Superheroine ponders the question on her blog as well, which leads to a very lively discussion in the comments section.

Chris: Seems like the same thing happened with underground Comix, back in the day. The big companies are able to work like a machine–and not only a machine, but an organic machine, sort of like the Borg, which can adapt new technologies relatively quickly to continue their domination. Webcomic artists haven’t necessarily been able to adapt to the business side of making a living off their art… some, like Erik Shoenek, weren’t even able to shoulder the demands of crafting a narrative strip day after day, week after week. The big WCs that really WORK, too, seem to have become more and more like businesses, little cottage comic industries all their own. I wonder if they’ll just become a part of the bigger comics community, with another revolution in the future?

Jamie Noguchi: Webcomics are far from dead. First Second and Tor are two great examples of dead tree publishers who are experimenting fairly successfully with web delivered comics. Kickstarter is providing new tools for webcomics to monetize. Dark Horse is still dipping their toes in the webcomics waters (go AXE COP). The fact that ComicCon has a webcomic alley is fairly significant.

There’s a lot of innovation still out there. It may be small. It may not be in the forefront. But webcomics continue to evolve.

(Full disclosure: The Webcomic Overlook blog is mentioned in both the Robot 6 and Occasional Superheroine posts.)

UNRELATED PENNY ARCADE SHOUT-OUT: I somehow missed this article earlier this week, but I just noticed that the Penny Arcade guys (including Robert Khoo) got a bit of a shout-out at Wall Street Journal’s Speakeasy blog during the week of Comic Con. It’s short and a bit of a puff piece, but it’s still a good read:

The partners were sitting at their table on Sunday afternoon, signing autographs for a seemingly endless stream of fans. They regarded our old media press badge warily and pointed to their business manager as their speaking representative. Holkins and Krahulik prefer to deal with their art and fans, and they leave the marketing and business functions to Robert Khoo, who signed on eight years ago. It’s a harmonious relationship.

Khoo began life as a market strategist. He was also a fan of comic books, so he offered to quit his job and work for Penny Arcade gratis. He was absolutely confident that he could increase Penny Arcade’s popularity across different spectrums of readers, and he was successful. He changed the revenue model from donations to an ad-driven one and was able to land Microsoft as their first advertiser. Things started to fall into place after that he said, and for other webcomic artists as well. “We’ve helped pave the way to legitimize the medium,” said Khoo.

Three months ago, Joey Manley — founder and publisher of Modern Tales webcomic site — wrote a piece on his blog called “The Death of Webcomics?” His take: nothing great is coming out of the webcomics field anymore:

I have been thinking about webcomics, though. I’ve been thinking about how less interesting to me the field is now than it was when I started working in it, almost ten years ago. This is not to say that the webcomics themselves are less interesting: far from it. Generally, there are far more great webcomics — and the great ones have raised their game to a far higher level — than was the case ten years ago. No question. When it comes to quality, availability, usability, and awesomeness, webcomics today, the actual webcomics, are much better than they were ten years ago.

But when it comes to the field as a whole, the excitement I used to feel about webcomics-as-a-movement? Eh. I dunno. Things have started to settle down. I don’t see the crazy innovative risk-taking, the sense that anything might happen, and would happen, and if you blinked you might miss it. That feeling that we could go strange new places with this medium, and invent unthinkable new things, just isn’t there. Webcomics have become solid, professional, well-written, beautifully drawn, and, um, well, normal.

That’s what we wanted. Right?

Right?

Then why do I find it so hard to remember to read them with any regularity these days?

Now, he comes back with a new post: “Leapfrog: Direct Market Giants Dominate the New Digital Comics Scene.” This time, he’s saying that webcomics are the outdated formula, and the future is the iPad.

Ten years ago (give or take a few), webcomics were taking maximum advantage of the new comics distribution opportunities afforded by the web, while Marvel, DC, Dark Horse and all the others completely missed the boat. The only decent comics reading experience, in the early days of the web, came from small, scrappy artists and entrepreneurs. The big companies gave us nothing. What happened as a result? A few huge successes, plus a thousand earnest, often talented creators with dayjobs, have come to define the webcomics scene. The entrenched players stayed away, so new voices had a chance to thrive.

On my iPad, the best comics reading experience, bar none, is not from small, scrappy innovators. It’s from the big companies, via Comixology’s apps (the “Comics” one, which includes DC and a lot of other familiar publishers, and the “Marvel” one, which is exactly the same application, but limited in content to Marvel comics only). The deal is this: you buy “issues” of printed comic books, which have been repurposed and re-engineered to be read more easily on the device. Comixology has done a better job than most in the re-engineering department, with intuitive navigation, a “guided view” that puts other comics readers to shame, and a smart and savvy editorial vibe.

…

The point I want to underline, though, is that the big publishers, and the old-school properties, are where all the action is in the iPad digital comics scene. Webcomic entrepreneurs have been as clumsy in taking advantage of this new platform, have seemed (to this observer, anyway) to be as stuck in their ways, as entrenched and established and slow-moving, as print comics publishers were back in the early days of webcomics. That’s something I never would have expected. That’s leapfrog.

Honestly, I’d be the first to yell “Hogwash!” at all this, but there is a very big point in Manley’s favor: Zuda Comics disappearing from the online world entirely. You’d think that if DC Comics and the parent Time Warner Company thought there was any future in webcomics, they’d be in it for the long run … but, nope, they decided that the iPad was the future. Maybe the whole AOL merger left a bitter taste in Time Warner’s mouth, after all.

So what do you, the viewers at home, think? Is the era of the webcomic over?