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.