Thing to read, listen to 10/10/11

The Broadcast of Comics
Warren Ellis has a new, long think-piece about digital comics and web comics. This is relevant to my interests, of course.

Ian Fleming interviews Raymond Chanlder
Via the very fine SuperPunch.com, comes this 24-minute long interview featuring two masters of their craft.
The transcript of this talk may be found here.

Modern Horror Defined by Edgy Realism of the 1970s
FInally, from NPR.org come this nice piece about the current state of the horror genre. The article also includes a link to an excerpt of Shock Value which is a book that I think I'll have to put on my to-read list.

Talking with Richard Stevens

This is the first in a very occasional series of interviews I plan to do. These first posts will concentrate on my new-found obsession: Web comics.

DieselSweeties.com ® R Stevens

If you're reading this, that means you're on the Internet and if you're on the Internet, then you probably already know who Richard Stevens is. For those out of the loop, Stevens is the creator of the wildly popular DieselSweeties.com. And Diesel Sweeties is among the first generation of web comics. It's been in existence for eleven years now. It's stood the test of time and the fickle tastes of a media-saturated audience. And it's funny, too. Can't forget that.

Stevens was nice enough to answer some questions about how he goes about making his web comic and how he balances it with the business that it has inspired. (Short answer: He doesn't).

I'd like to thank him very much for taking the time to speak to me.

AG: What led you to pursue web comics versus print comics?

RS: I never saw any kind of divide between the two. When I started (eleven years ago!) there wasn’t much in the way of a professional web comics scene. The plan was to try out comic concepts online and get feedback before going to print. I just wound up never leaving.

AG: And what was the inspiration behind creating Diesel Sweeties?

RS: I wanted to write about relationships and thought that robots would make a good stand-in for clueless men. It spiraled out of control and into more of an ensemble cast gag strip and I was powerless to stop it.

AG: You did a syndicated version of Diesel Sweeties for a time, but then stopped. Can you talk about that experience and why you decided to cease the syndicated strip? The old paradigm of comics seems like it was you tried as hard as you could to get into syndication and then you did everything you could to maintain it.

RS: I did the syndicated version as an experiment when I was approached by an acquisitions editor for a now-dead major syndicate. I never planned to or wanted to be in newspapers, but I figured I’d be stupid to turn down those guaranteed riches! The joke was on me when I found out that newspaper comics sections were shrinking and fairly calcified. I got out of my contract as soon as legally possible, thanks to a clause about a minimum level of income that I was nowhere near earning.

AG: Can you talk, in general terms, about the merchandise you sell on the site? It seems that most web comics make money off of the things they sell. Was that part of your strategy going into the field, or was it something that developed over time?

RS: I can’t speak for other cartoonists, but I really enjoy merchandise. I’ve always bought t-shirts and books and dumb little awesome things, so offering them to people seemed like a natural fit for me. This doesn’t work for everyone. My theory is that you really have to like what you’re selling to sell it. Like everything else about my early business plan, the only plan was that there was no plan. (it didn’t hurt that I had a job at the time.)

AG: Were there strips you attempted before you tried Diesel Sweeties?

RS: Nothing major, notable or archived. I did minicomics in college, but they are long gone.

AG: While there are recurring characters and plot lines that develop over time, Diesel Sweeties feels like a gag strip. Have you ever considered doing something with more of a narrative arc?

RS: It feels like a gag strip because that’s what I’m aiming for. My goal has always been to write as close to Peanuts as I can but with characters who have sex. I’ve written and pitched some longer works. Nothing’s come to fruition yet, but it’s certainly something I see myself doing.

AG: As a follow up, It feels like most successful web comics are gag strips. Do you think it would be possible for a narrative strip to catch on in the same way as gag strips?

RS: I guess it depends on your definition of “catch on”. Story comics are harder to merchandise, but I imagine they could more easily sell books. (or sell book rights to publishers) We live in a world of apps and ebooks nowadays. There’s no reason a narrative comic couldn’t be fabulously successful.

AG: When was the moment you knew that you were going to succeed? Did you go into the web comics business with a definable end goal, or was it more organic?

RS: I started with no goal and hopefully will never feel like I’ve succeeded. Even now, I still wonder how much longer I can survive as an independent artist. Hopefully a little longer!

AG: Do you follow a routine throughout the day? If so, can you describe it?

RS: I tend to do “office work” in daylight and creative work at night. My drawing and writing time is generally from about 9pm to midnight. My days are filled with t-shirt folding and mailing and designing and every other one of the billion tasks that pay the bills. Most days, I don’t know what I’ll be doing until I’ve done it.

AG: How do you balance the creative and business aspects of Diesel Sweeties?

RS: I daresay I don’t have any balance in any aspect of my work life. I never miss deadline and never give up that window of comics time at the end of the day. That’s the closest I can think of.

AG: And how does social media fit into the mix? You seem particularly active on Twitter. Is this part of an overall strategy to drive traffic to the site, or are you just blowing off steam?

RS: Twitter feels like it was designed for me. I used to throw silly away messages on my IM and screw around on message boards. Nowadays, I get to do my goofy short writing for a large audience. I see it as a combination of communication and a second comic strip. It cracks me up when people following me have no idea I draw a comic but stick around for my puns.

AG: Do you see yourself continuing with Diesel Sweeties forever, or do you think you might end it someday to pursue other creative ventures?

RS: Couldn’t say. I think if I thought about the end, I’d lose interest. I am mentally committed to hitting 3,000 comics and will give it some thought then. That’ll be somewhere around twelve years of work!

AG: Is there any parting advice you'd give to someone considering starting up a web comic?

RS: Don’t be one of those jerks who posts an update schedule on your site only to constantly apologize for missing deadlines. Just be who you are and work at the best pace you can. Never apologize for anything. Do your work and get better every day.

Why a web comic now?

 Since 2008, all comics sales – single issue and graphic novels – have been in steady decline according to ICV2.com. The one bright spot is that for the first half of 2011, graphic novel sales are up while single-issue sales continue to fall. (An aside: DC's rebot of their universe has given single-issue comics a bump, but there's no telling how long that bump will last and, once it fades, I don't think that DC can reboot its universe again.End of aside) The decline in sales of single-issue comics is significant because comics publishers have traditionally used these as a loss leader for graphic novels, toys and other merchandise. The Weekly Standard pointed out this practice in article, “The Crash of 1993”:

This might sound like an industry marching toward oblivion, yet in 2009, Disney paid $4 billion to acquire Marvel (DC was already owned by Time-Warner). The reason for this gaudy valuation is that the comic books themselves are no longer important to the comic- book industry. They’re loss leaders. The real money is in the comic-book properties, which power toy and merchandise sales, theme parks, and above all else movie franchises. Since

1997, 26 comic book adaptations have gone on to gross more than $100 million at the box office. Twelve of these grossed more than $200 million. More—many more—are coming soon to a theater near you.

 Italics are mine in that quote, by the way.

Increasingly, publishers are interested only in titles they believe can be exploited across other media, and they are less and less likely to take a chance on unknown properties.

Publishing first to the web, and gaining a following, seems to be a way to sidestep all of this. Penny Arcade  was among the first web comics to garner enough of a fan base to warrant a print edition (Dark Horse Comics published their books starting in 2006 and Del Rey stole them away from Dark Horse in 2010), but it's not the only one to see this sort of success. Publishers are also using webcomics in place of the traditional single-issue monthlies to build an audience. Avatar Press had great success with Warren Ellis's FreakAngels. Even first second, the comics imprint of traditional publisher, Macmillan, launched a webcomic, Mark Siegel's Sailor Twain.

And if one wants to eschew traditional publishers, webcomics are a way to attract an audience and self-publish. There are many examples of artists doing just this – Richard Steven's DieselSweeties (which also enjoyed a run as a print comic in several weekly newspapers based on its success online), Steve LeCouilliard's Much the Miller'sSon, and Ben Costa's ShiLong Pang, The Wandering Shaolin Monk are recent standouts. The lesson here seems to be that an audience will follow you from one medium to the next and, more importantly, support you financially if you can gain their loyalty.

Personally, I am leaning toward self-publishing once The Lonely Spaceman is completed, and there are a few different ways to gain funding for such a project. One is to apply for a Xeric Grant. The Xeric Grants were founded in 1992 by Kevin Eastman, of Teen-Age Mutant Turtle fame, with the express goal of helping independent creators pay for the production of their self-published comics. Tens of thousands of dollars are awarded every quarter.

Another means of funding your comic is to use a crowd-sourcing website like Kickstarter.com. Kickstarter allows artists to post their projects on their site and ask complete strangers to pledge money toward their creation. Artists are only given the money of their projects are fully funded, but Kickstarter has a great track record of helping to produce comics. According to Publishers Weekly Kickstarter funds roughly as many projects as DC's Vertigo imprint. And it could be considered the third largest publisher of independent graphic novels in the US, behind only Dark Horse Comics and IDW. With the right pitch, a comics project has a decent chance of being successfully funded.

These factors, tradtional publishers embrace of webcomics and outside sources of funds for self-publishers, make me confident that a web comics project could actually be a viable commercial endevour. All one needs is a solid comics project.

Is The Lonely Spaceman such a project? I guess we're going to find out.

Something you should read, weekend edition

The Big Sexy Problem with Superheroines and Their "Liberated Sexuality."
A couple of days ago, Laura Hudson wrote a great piece over at Comics Alliance about the way mainstream comics represent female sexuality. It really deserves to be read by everyone with an interest in the comics medium


This is something I think a lot about since I like to write female characters. I don't think I'm guilty of any of the offenses mentioned in the essay -- I hope I'm now -- but it's always good to be mindful, right?

What is The Lonely Spaceman?

The basics: The Lonely Spaceman is a full-color, 128-page comic written by me and illustrated by Matt Hope. It will be published to the web at LonelySpaceman.com (site currently under construction) at the rate of 3 pages per week -- a page will publish every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. It will go live in mid-November and run for nearly a year.

So, what's the story? Well, it's sort of a SF fable. I also remember Joss Whedon mentioning about some episodes of Buffy that the metaphor was very thin. You could say that The Lonely Spaceman is a very thin metaphor It's about an astronaut who returns to Earth after a 200-year long mission to find the planet changed beyond recognition. The only way he can deal with it is to wear his pressure suit, his protective shell, everywhere he goes. The story is about how he learns to live without his protective covering. It has space pirates, romance, and a character based on Christina Hendricks in the Broken Bells music video "The Ghost Inside." So it's got that going for it.

Broken Bells "The Ghost Inside" from Jacob Gentry on Vimeo.

I found references to The Lonely Spaceman in various notebooks going back at least two years. The story hasn't changed much in that time, except that it used to be darker (and that it used to be called The Loneliest Spaceman). I decided to make it more whimsical because I thought that would be more palatable, and because I thought it would be more fun to write. I think everything I write starts out darker than it ends up in the final version. I am working on my issues, thank you very much...

As we get closer to the web site's actual go-live date, I'll be posting reminders. Many, many reminders, so you can check out the final product for yourself.

Next time: Why a web comic now?

The Lonely Spaceman

I want to write a short series of posts about the new comic series I find myself working on. I hope this will prove interesting to someone other than me. Today's installment is pretty much just setting the stage and introducing the players.

Two, maybe three years ago, I stood on the stage at a Salem Ignite event and I told the audience how much I loved the Internet as a method of distributing... well, everything. I concentrated on comics and I closed with the promise that the next comics project I did would be published to the web.

It looks like I'm keeping that promise. I just didn't expect it to take this long.

I made several half-hearted attempts at getting a web comic up and running, but there were a couple of things that slowed down the process. The first is that a lot of people still see working in web comics as less prestigious than working in print comics. The second is that not a lot of artists want to work for no money up front with no guarantee of money on the back end. And, once I put it in those terms, it's not hard to see why they aren't beating down my door to work on such a project. I would definitely need to find just the right artist for this.

About that: It always helps to know people. In this case it helped a great deal to know Devon Devereaux. Devon is sort of a nexus of cool people (Malcolm Gladwell would call him a "maven") and when I told him that I wanted to work on a web comic, he immediately thought of someone I should contact – his buddy, Matthew Hope. Matt is a designer and he does illustrations for concert posters and other things. Devon sent me the link to his web site, Poor Man's Bread, and after poking around for just a minute, I knew I wanted to work with Matt. And I know on which project I wanted us to join forces. A lot of Matt's work has a SF feel to it and I've had a SF idea kicking around for several years. One piece in particular caught my eye and it's the piece that starts this blog entry. Often when I contact an artist about working together, I send them several ideas and let them choose which one most appeals to them. This time I sent just one idea: The Lonely Spaceman.

Next: What is The Lonely Spaceman?

Eric Powell is my new hero

Visit and Like the Creators Front for Diversity in Comics on FaceBook.

For your edification

I found two very cool things on Warren Ellis's blog today. If you are at all interested in media, whether it be print, television, film or comics (which, yes, I know are printed), then you should be checking in on this blog. Ellis has an interesting take on things and the items he chooses to post are always thought-provoking. Cases in point:

Here is part one of an essay on the occult written by comics writer Alan Moore. Mr Moore, in addition to being one of the finest writers to have ever worked in comics, is a practicing magician. His insights into the subject are required reading for anyone with an interest in magic.

And here is a thread from Ellis's message board, White Chapel. I'd suggest you read the thing in it's entirety, but for those in a hurry, here's a summary: comics artist Steve Lieber found out that the entire run of one of his miniseries had been scanned and put up on 4chan's comics channel. Rather than demand that it be taken down, Lieber went on 4chan and talked with interacted with them, answered their questions and generally played nicer than I think I would have. The upshot? A big surge in sales of his books through his Etsy page. This is very interesting to me because of my new interest in publishing to the web.

Untergangsstimmung (UPDATED)

Found on Heidi MacDonald's twitter feed.

Bad news for those looking to be published in the world of comics. I'm looking online, trying to find the white paper referenced in this tweet. No luck so far. So I'm not sure if the report references single-issue comics and trade paperbacks, or just single-issues. Either way it's bad.

Let's look at the best-case scenarios, that the report is only talking about single-issues: I know thyat publishers use those floppies as loss-leaders for the trade paperback collections into which they will eventually be collected. If those monthly comics are no longer absorbing the cost of production and creative expenses, then it's going to be harder and harder to justify the cost of projects in the first place. Does that make sense?

I think this bolsters my argument that the way to go with regards to distributing comics is online. Put your comics up on the web, do it consistently, build a readership and show publishers that you have a built-in audience for a printed book. Or self-publish. Or create an electronic reader-friendly version of your material. (In that same series of tweets, Heidi MacDonald says that digital comics will make an estimated 6-8 million dollars this year.)

And all of this pertains to traditional comics publishing, ie, Marvel, DC and Dark Horse, etc. I have no clue how mainstream publishers handle things.

I still want to find that white paper. If anyone out there has an idea where it is, please let me know.

UPDATE: ICv2 gives us the lowdown on this (link via Publisher's Weekly). Apparently it sales of trade paperbacks (or, as they call them, graphic novels) that are down 20%. Sales of single-issue comics are up slightly. This is really bad news. For publishers. Trades are where publishers make their money and if they can't sell those... well, in the biz, we call that "shitty."

However, the article does note that digital sales will increase, etc. So, claim those domain names, kids, and learn how to push those pixels. Things are changing. Are you going to keep up?

Quixotic

I have been thinking a lot about digital comics. That is, making digital comics. A little more than a year ago I was gearing up to take one of two paths. I thought that I would either do what was necessary to create and sustain an online comics anthology. Four stories with four different artists. Or I would go to grad school and work toward an MFA. Well, I got accepted to one of the best creative programs in the country so I decided to put the digital comics idea on hold for a while.

But now I'm wondering if it would be possible to do something a bit more limited in scope. What about doing a single story that would update once a week. Say, four-to-six pages every week with a few skip weeks built in. I'd need to find an artist who could handle that production load. And who wouldn't mind working free for a while. The way I see it, one could post free weekly updates and then either try and attract a publisher once enough material was extant, or one could try and self publish. Or, hell, maybe even use a direct-to-print service like Lulu.

Others have done it. Warren Ellis has been writing FreakAngels for a few years now. Though, to be fair, he's fucking Warren Ellis, and I am not (it should be mentioned that it was a post on Ellis's site that made me start to once again consider this ill-considered path). Let's see, the guys over at Penny Arcade do it, R. Stevens does it with his Diesel Sweeties. And those are just the few that come to mind, I know there are others doing it, too. So why not me and whatever poor schmuch who decides to hitch his wagon to my nonexistent star?

Tempting, right? But wait, we could also share copyright and any profits this project would generate. That's something, too, right?

I know this requires more thought, but I feel like the bare bones are there. And I know that I've been threatening this for a couple of years now, but I really do feel like the next comics project I work on will be published to the web. It feels like the right thing to do.

Profit and Loss

First, let me say that Profit and Loss would be a righteous name for a super hero duo. A sort of corporate-themed vigilante team. "We're here to help investors and creditors determine the past performance of their enterprise, predict future performance, assess the capability of generating future cash flows, and clean up the streets!" It would have sort of a Watchmen/Dark Knight feel to it.

Anyway, I believe I've mentioned costing as it relates to comics before in this blog, and I thought I might go into it in some more detail. This may only be of interest to those looking to get into comics. And maybe not even them. This will be a "how the sausage is made" type entry.

At any publisher, your project is going to go through the costing process before it is given the go ahead for publication. Or more likely, your project is going to go through the costing process and there it will die an unceremonious death mourned only by you and, if you're lucky, your editor. It's not a kind process and, given the current state of publishing and the economy, I can only imagine that it's become even uglier than I remember it. For the sake of example I am going to talking about my memories of the costing process at Dark Horse Comics. 1) Because I worked there in the editorial department for a time and 2) because I've had a book go through the process there myself.

Once you have convinced your editor that your idea for a comic is a good one (no mean feat and perhaps worthy of an entry of its own), your editor will take the idea to the Costing Committee. The Costing Committee is made up of a mix of senior editors, financial people, marketing and advertising. The editor will give to the Costing Committee any relevant material that you have given him: your pitch document, art, etc. And the first thing the Costing Committee does is have a Profit and Loss sheet (P&L) made up for your project.

This part of the process is sort of like magic to me, but the individual making up the P&L plugs lots of bits of data into a spread sheet. The creative cost, the parameters of which were discussed between you and your editor; the cost of producing a book of a given page count; whether the book is color or black and white; and etc. And all of these things are broken down into print runs of various size. This tells the costing committee, for example, that a color book that is 120-pages long with a print run of 5,000 copies will likely sell X number of copies in a year and so will ear Y number of dollars. If X and Y are high enough numbers, then your book will be published. In today's publishing climate, I'm guessing that X and Y being high enough is becoming increasingly rare.

I should mention some more about the creative costs and the the discussions that go on between you and your editor. Your editor is by no means an accountant, but he has a fairly good idea (or should) of what kinds of budgets he can get approved. And that budget figure is going to be different depending on if you are just starting out (a low figure) or are an established creator who's name on a project means a guaranteed level of profit (potentially quite high. And this discussion between the two of you should be a back and forth and you have to understand that when your editor will not give in to your every request, he is doing so not because it pleases him to disappoint you (at least that's not the only reason), but because he knows what sorts of budgets are being approved by the costing committee and how much chance of success your project has of going through at a given dollar amount.

You may wonder why I'm thinking so much about the costing process. I will be honest: it's not just for your education and edification, but because I have a book currently going through the process. Writing this entry is helping to remind myself that the process takes time and that there is, ultimately, nothing I can do to speed it along. I just have to hope that the numbers my editor and I (and my co-creators) agreed upon are ones the committee will find agreeable.

I'll keep you posted as the situation develops.

The awful truth

I suspect that if you read this blog, you are either a close personal friend of mine, or you are interested in comics and, perhaps, would even like to make comics some day. If you are in the latter category, I have some advice for you: get on twitter. Then, start following the plethora of comics professionals who post there. Mixed in with the usual banal offerings -- i.e., what folks had for lunch, their opinions about the latest bit of pop culture phenomenon, etc. -- these folks will often dispense pearls of wisdom related to the business and art of comics.

To whit: Dark Horse Comics editor, and my former boss, Scott Allie, replied to someone asking how a writer can break into the comics business. I liked the advice so much, I decided to steal it.

Here's what Scott has to say on the subject:

Start with the small press or online. Comics writers can't know how to write comics until ...

... they've seen their stuff drawn, even if only badly. I wanna see your stuff drawn, and know you've seen it drawn ...

...before I take your pitches seriously. So get some comics done, learn it that way, and then you'll be ready. Then ...

...show me or Marvel or DC the best of that, and even if the art's weak, we can assess your skills. If it's great ...

...it can find an audience through the web or the small press, and put you in demand even before you're pitching to me.

Or start a hugely successful rock band.


Scott is the editor of Hellboy and Buffy and other very successful comics and he knows of what he speaks. He has a lot to teach folks who''l take the time to listen. As my former boss, he taught me that comics will break your heart, but that one should only cry if one won't be seen by anyone else.

Good times.

The not-so-Sacred Moleskine

The image at Left is from my notebook. The Sacred Moleskine, as Jim Woodring calls his. Though mine is not nearly as sacred as Mr Woodring's.

I have the artistic ability of a woodland creature -- most likely some sort of rodent; a squirrel, perhaps -- but for the last couple of years I've found it a great help to sketch out pages after they've been plotted but before I script them. I find and fix a lot of problems that way. For instance, as in the example shown, there is way too much dialog. There is always too much dialog in my initial outlines and scripts. My characters cannot shut up and I find I must cut their speeches with a ruthlessness that would make Gordon Lish proud.

Also, even at the size I draw them, I can figure out when I'm asking for something that is impossible to draw. This often means that something I want to be one panel needs to become two. And I get a good sense of the rhythm of a page with these thumbnails.

All in all, I think that scripts have become easier to write, and the scripts themselves are better, since I've started sketching. And some day, when I'm a big star, those sketches are gonna be worth something! Right?

This business we call "show"

Culled from this week's Publisher's Weekly/Comics Weekly newsletter, a quote from comics writer Greg Rucka:

"What I learned is that the checks cash just as well whether the movie is made or not. Whiteout was on and off several times since first being optioned in 2000, and I think the secret to all that not driving us [he and artist Steve Lieber] crazy is that it was never our goal to get a movie deal out of this. A lot of people are writing comics or graphic novels in the hopes of getting it made into a movie. That is a recipe for disappointment."

To which I would just like to add: Amen, sir.

Anyone who gets into comics so that they can get a movie made is going to get their damned hearts broken. Hell, anyone who gets into comics for any reason other than to make comics is destined for el corazón quebrado.

I remember a few years ago I spoke to a high school class that was studying comics (although the courses may have actually called them "graphic novels") and one of the things I said, based on a question about how quickly one can become rich as a comics artist, was, "if you get into comics to get rich, you're in for a nasty shock. The only reason to get into comics is because you love comics."

The teacher and the owner of the local comics shop both gave me dirty looks. It quickly became apparent to me that these kids had been told something other than this pessimistic view I was spouting. Maybe they had even been told, as incentive to get them to take the class, that they would become overnight sensations and that people would throw buckets of money at them where ever they went. And here I was saying that comics might have some worth beyond the ability to make you rich and attractive to the opposite sex.

But some people get their comics made into movies and earn money that way, right?" the teacher asked me. His expression said to me that I should not contradict him. And, since his statement was true, I said, "yes." But I didn't go on to say that these kids would be better served taking a class that taught them how to play the lottery than they would be learning how to make comics that got turned into movies. How many comics movies have there been in the last ten years? Twenty, thirty? And how many comics are published every month? Hundreds! Hundreds of comics a month get published and only three or four a year get turned into movies. If Vegas offered those odds, there wouldn't be any casinos still in operation.

So, please, kids, if you want to make movies, do that. Go to film school; buy a camera and go shoot something. Just, please, don't think you're going to make a comic that will be seen by Steve Spielberg and then turned into a movie. It ain't gonna happen.

And no, the recently scuttled deal for 100 Girls has nothing to do with this rant. Why would you even think that?

Takashi Miike speaks truth

Via Warren Ellis's sometimes bewildering, but always entertaining, column about comics, Do Anything, comes this quote from Japanese film director, Takashi Miike:

“We have to change the negative things into positive. In today’s Japanese film industry we always say we don’t have enough budget, that people don’t go to see the films. But we can think of it in a positive way, meaning that if audiences don’t go to the cinema we can make any movie we want. After all, no matter what kind of movie you make it’s never a hit, so we can make a really bold, daring movie. There are many talented actors and crew, but many Japanese movies aren’t interesting. Many films are made with the image of what a Japanese film should be like. Some films venture outside those expectations a little bit, but I feel we should break them.”

Substitute the term "Japanese film" with "American independant comics" and you'll get where I'm coming from.

Ignite recap

I'm sitting in a darkened hotel room right now. Melissa is off somewhere having dinner with some of her family. Oscar is asleep just a few paces from me and I have nothing but time on my hands. These are the moments I find to write in now. It's not a bad life.

Last Thursday, the 18th of June, I spoke as part of Salem's first ever Ignite event. Twelve speakers, each with five minutes to declaim on any topic of their choosing. Each also had to have a 20-slide Power Point presentation to play behind them. It was a fun and interesting night. The topics were varied and some down right intrigued me, but the best part of the night was meeting some of the other presenters.

This being the first such event in town, there were some technical glitches. I think only about half of my slides played behind me, but it was still worthwhile. I spoke about a subject I've been thinking about a lot lately, using the Internet as a content delivery system. I've written about this topic on this blog on more than one occasion. Basically, I'm trying to talk myself into it and using this public forum to state my intention is one way to do that.

I thought that my talk might be of interest to someone out there, so here it is. (And please note that I am not subjecting you to my PP slides, but I will sometimes break from the main body of the text and tell you some of the information that was on them.)

My attitudes about New versus Old Media can be summed up with this analogy:

Old Media are the Roman Empire. New Media are the Visigoths.

Which basically means that while Old Media isn’t dying, its power is waning and becoming decentralized. It also means that New Media isn’t necessarily the thing that will replace it, but it is making everything messy and interesting.

What this means ultimately is that things are in disarray and that individuals who want to create something and get it in front of an audience can use this to their advantage.

Provided they have something to say. I chose to characterize that something to say as an obsession in the title of my talk for a reason. It’s not enough to just want to make something, and it’s certainly not enough to want to make the same old things that have been under construction for the last 50 to 100 years. You have to want to make something new and personal.

Creating art of any kind may be fun, but it’s also a slog. And it can often feel like a curse, because it is something you feel compelled to do no matter what.

"All writers are vain, selfish and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives lies a mystery. Writing a book is a long, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.”

George Orwell

So, let’s say you are so compelled. You’re creating art, you’d like to have it seen by an audience. For various reason (such as how hard it is to break into established media, having to give up editorial control over your work, sometimes having to give up ownership), you decide that Old Media is not the avenue you want to pursue to get it seen. Maybe you want to give this Internet thing a try?

There are a lot of folks out there already using the Internet to broadcast their stories. But there are even more people out there who are waiting for new content. A recent study by the Harvard Business Review looked at the microblogging site, Twitter.com, and found that 90% of it’s content was generated by just 10% of its users. And it’s probably a similar story with the rest of the Internet.

There are an estimated 251 million households with Internet access in America. Using the 90/10 formula (which I realize is a gross over-generalization, but I’m going to do it anyway), that means that 2.5 million households are generating most of the content on the web and more than 240 million are consuming it. This is an amazingly large potential audience.

Of course, no one is going to attract the attention of all of those users. The most successful will only be seen by a small percentage of them, and how will they attract and keep those folks’ attention? By, again having something to say, by having an obsession.

Those entities that are already on the web attracting an audience are doing so because they have a clear, strong theme running through their work. Some examples of this are on the slides behind me.

But if these folks, or you for that matter, hope to make any money out of these endeavors, just putting your stuff up on the Internet isn’t enough. One of the advantages of Old Media is they have all these people and department in place to take your work and design, print, market and sell it. In the New Media, you get to do all of that. Seriously, keep your day job for a while.

On the screen behind me, six examples of web sites I feel succeed in the New Media model of content delivery flashed by. Those sites were:

Penny Arcade

Hark a Vagrant

Overcompensating

Diesel Sweeties

Katie West

Wondermark

All of the examples flashing behind me have found ways to monetize their work. They print or otherwise collect them and sell them, yes, but they also create merchandise, some of them are absolute monsters when it comes to publicity. They maintain presences outside of their own web sites. It sounds an awful lot like work.

“I think the growth of the business has been directly geared to my ability to take the whole endeavor more and more seriously. In other words, approaching the work like a professional has made it into a profession -- the attitude always comes first.”

David Malki!

creator of Wondermark.com

But the advantage of this method would be total ownership of what you create and total creative control(two things that are hard to come by in the world of traditional comics publishing at least). But with total control comes total responsibility.

I’m bringing this all up because I think it’s part of the obsession , too. You have something you want to say, and you want to say it so badly you’re willing to take on all of this enormous load of work to get it out there and make sure people see it. But if you can do all of this, an audience will find you. Then it’s up to your talent to keep those folks interested.

My area of interest is comics and I’ve focused most of my talk on that, but what I’m talking about can be applied to number of disciplines. There are any number of free blogging sites out there, each of which is better at certain things. You could publish fiction, poetry, memoirs, photo galleries. You can make videos and post them to youtube or vimeo. Record songs and throw put them up for everyone to see. The potential of the Internet as a means to get your work seen reminds me of ‘zine culture times about a million.

And there’s one more thing I feel compelled to mention. I decided to make this the topic on which I’d talk mostly because I’ve been thinking about taking the plunge into the world of New Media myself. Despite some success in the world of traditional comics publishing, I’ve been feeling a certain disappointment with many of the processes involved in it. I’m thinking about putting my money where my mouth is and joining the ranks of entrepreneurs on the web. All I need is to convince some artists that they need to come along with me.

All I need is to find some folks with a similar obsession.