30 July 2009

Why Webcomics? Part 4: Independence.

If you find a job in print comics, the chances are that you'll be writing or drawing new stories for an existing title. For reasons mentioned previously, print publishers generally stick to their established characters and settings, because that's what their readership wants. For a lot of comic creators that's OK - these are characters that have been around for decades, and being given the chance to present your own take on a favourite iconic character is like a dream come true, the culmination of the hard work and diligence required to get into the industry in the first place.

For others, though, it's not really what they want - rendering someone else's character doesn't appeal, and they'd much rather present their own creations to the world, establishing their own title and fleshing out their own original settings and characters. In the print comic industry that's pretty challenging - the publishers aren't going to want to take a chance on a new title unless it's mind-blowingly good, or you've already built up your reputation and credibility through years of diligent work on other people's titles - as an example, Mike Mignola drew other people's stories for fourteen years before he got the opportunity to start writing and drawing Hellboy.

There is the point that "paying your dues" by working on someone else's titles for that long means that when you finally do get to work on your own stuff you'll be able to bring all those years of experience with you - years of experience for which you'll have been paid to hone your comic-making skills. On the other hand, if you took a day job and started a webcomic in your spare time you could have been spending those years working on your own stuff and putting together a body of work that's yours, building up your readership to the point where you could leave the day job and become your own boss. It's possible. In fact, in some ways it's preferable, because it means you're in charge of your own artistic development.

Having worked in the corporate sector (not comic-related, but certain aspects of corporate culture are pervasive regardless of industry), there is one harsh truth that every would-be employee should bear in mind:

Your employer does not care about your personal success.

Whatever you do for a living, as the employee of a corporate entity your role is to act as part of a machine and the purpose of that machine is to make money for those who're running it - shareholders, directors, whoever. Your individual success is of substantially lower priority than the success of the company as a whole. If you become successful or popular, it is only of concern to your employers as long as they can tap that success to serve the company's interests. Your happiness is only considered if it significantly impacts your productivity. It's not a case of companies being staffed and run by soulless drones, mind - more that it's staffed by lots of people with their own concerns and priorities, not all of which will align with your concerns and priorities.

The main determinant in how much the person who decides whether or not you get to keep your job is likely to care about your needs is how close a working relationship you have with them, and thus how likely they are to empathise with you. It's emotionally pretty easy for the CEO of some mega-corporation to order the cost-saving layoffs of hundreds of people he's never met. It's a lot harder for the cash-strapped proprietors of a mom-and-pop store to render jobless a cashier who they've worked alongside on a daily basis for years.

As such, if you're working for a small company where the staff all know one another and regularly interact with one another as human beings with faces and voices and feelings and fears and aspirations, things can be OK. There's that personal touch, an empathic connection between considerate, compassionate human beings. However, once a manager or director is dealing with enough people that you fall outside their Monkeysphere, your personal feelings and welfare don't matter to them - you're just another name among names, a faceless blog in whom they have no emotional investment at all.

They won't care if you want to grow as an artist or whether you feel validated in your role. They only care that you make their job easier by continuing to reliably produce the content they want on-time and to an acceptable standard. If the numbers don't look good for a few months in a row they'll make cost-saving staff cuts, and while they might feel sorry in an abstract kind of way that you're suddenly bereft of an income, their concern is more with the state of the company (and thus their own income). It makes sense from their point of view, because they're running a business rather than a charity.

Ultimately, then, the only person who'll look out for your needs and work towards your success is you. This is perhaps a rather cynical attitude, but you're the person who has the biggest stake in your success or failure - if you don't pay attention to your own welfare, who will?

Working for someone else, you're effectively putting your fate in their hands. If you can strike up a rapport with your employer, things can be good. If you can't do that, though, things are a lot more risky. The idea of "a job for life" is sadly outdated, and when the economy gets shaky people on the payroll are no more secure than the independent freelancer. It's very easy to find yourself unemployed through no fault of your own.

Working for yourself, writing and drawing and promoting your own creative output, is a way of taking control of your own success in a way that's impossible when working for someone else - your fortune is entirely dependent on your own efforts, and whether you sink or swim is decided by how much you put into your work.

Taking responsibility for your own destiny is a big burden, and not for everyone. But if you're up to the challenge, it's a freedom like no other.

27 July 2009

Why webcomics? Part 3: Innovation.

From listening to commentary on the comicbook industry, the impression I get is that the majority of the existing comicbook readers are pretty conservative in their tastes. They know what they like, and they stick to it. They want Batman, Green Lantern, Spider-Man, Captain America, and all the other well-established characters that they've been following for years, and they aren't necessarily interested in exploring beyond these familiar figures.

This is quite possibly a consequence of the previously-mentioned feedback loop in which one genre proves the most popular and comicbook publishers increasingly focus their efforts on that one genre, to the detriment of variety in the comicbook marketplace. At present the readers who are into comics are predominantly fans of the superhero genre because that's what's predominantly on offer, and so readers who aren't interested in superheroes are effectively excluded from comics as a whole. Unless, that is, some kind soul directs them towards the independent comic creators.

Print publishers have overheads, payrolls, printing and distribution costs to think about; they have people whose mortgages depend on the success of the company. If they make a mistake the company loses money and employees can lose their jobs and homes. Because of the aforementioned conservative tendencies of the customer base, comicbook publishers aren't going to gamble on a newcomer unless they're very confident that newcomer's work will sell.

If the publisher invests time and money into a title that flops then they're going to be in trouble, since the comicbook industry operates on pretty narrow profit margins as it is. This makes the industry as conservative as its customers, in that for the most part they'll favour producing tried-and-true properties in which the readership is already invested, rather than taking a chance on untested characters, or stories that might push the readership out of their comfort zone.

Newspaper comic strips can be considered to be even more conservative, to the point of outright stagnation; these are strips that have been running for decades, in some cases continuing past the deaths of their original creators; the newspaper-reading audience gives the impression of being highly resistant to change, opposed to anything that takes them beyond what is familiar - or at least, the more vocal sections behave in such a way, and they're the ones who write incensed letters to editors when they take offence at a new strip that has usurped Marmaduke's place on the funny pages.

As a result, under steady evolutionary pressure from nervous editors who daren't risk offending their readership by presenting them with "edgy" humour or denying them their familiar content, newspaper comic strips have adapted to reach their current state. They're familiar, they're reassuring, they're inoffensive, they take no risks, they push no boundaries, they're safe. As a result they're also pretty bland a lot of the time.

Online, no such restrictions apply - provided the comic creator is prudent, failure need not necessarily mean disaster. A webcomic can be as safe or as edgy as the writer desires, it can address any subject matter imaginable, however controversial.

A long-form webcomic can tell setting-altering stories that are impractical in the continuity-focused shared universe settings of the major comicbook publishers. Characters can die - permanently, without necessarily having to worry about losing a chunk of the fanbase. A comic can address real-life issues that could alienate those who're only into comicbooks for the superheroes, it can be fantastical or pedestrian, it can aim for high concept, mass appeal, or anywhere in between. It can stretch boundaries and test the limits of the medium.

Short-form webcomics can employ humour that is heartwarmingly sweet or scathingly cynical; they can say things that would never get past their editor in the world of syndicated comic strips; they can be as daring and exploratory and experimental as they please. The only demographic they have to satisfy is the one they want to.

Possibly I'm waxing slightly evangelical about the giddying freedom that comes with producing your own content. But it is giddying, and invigorating, and one of the best things about creating a webcomic.

Whatever the style or flavour or topic or tone, if a webcomic is done well it can attract a following online. Even comics not done particularly well can attract a following if they stick at it for long enough. Some genres are more niche than others, of course, but the fact is that if you put in the enthusiasm and hard work it'll show in your comics, and someone out there will like it. With luck, lots of someones.

Why webcomics? Part 2: New talent.

There are loads of really creative people out there - people with talent, imagination, and a fresh take on the graphical storytelling medium - who will probably never see their work in print under the existing comic publishing model. This is a crying shame, but a regrettable reality of the way the market works - there are only so many comicbook fans out there, which means that the market can support only so many titles, which means that the comicbook companies can afford to employ only so many staff artists and writers.

The printed book/strip model sets a very high barrier to entry for newcomers to the field, as there is an extremely limited number of slots open, and competition is fierce. You can be a thoroughly competent artist or writer, but unless you're noticeably more talented (or at least marketable) than 99% of the other artists or writers out there you're probably not going to get hired as a full-time artist or writer. The situation is even worse for those who make short-form comic strips of the variety syndicated in newspapers - there's even less space on the funny pages than there is on the comicbook shelf, and the majority of the slots are taken up by "legacy" strips that have been running for decades.

Long story short: there are vastly more aspiring comic creators than there are available positions within the comicbook industry. Standards are high, competition is fierce, and very, very few would-be creators get to make comics for a living. Even fewer get to work on their own titles.

In the field of webcomics, meanwhile, the barrier to entry is much lower. If you've got even a basic level of tech-savvy and don't want to rely on webcomic hosting sites, the WordPress blogging platform has a number of useful (and customisable) add-ons like ComicPress or Webcomic & InkBlot which can help you get your site up and running in an afternoon. In fact, you don't even need to know how to set up a website as there are plenty of webcomic hosting sites like DrunkDuck, Smack Jeeves and Comic Genesis that'll do it for you.

Anyone can get their comic online - of course, the drawback is that anyone can get their comic online, and Sturgeon's Law certainly applies. It's worth remembering, however, that it applies to everything - webcomics, TV, fiction, music, movies - and thus should not be taken as a reason to dismiss webcomics out of hand.

The fact remains that webcomics give independent creators a low-cost, low-risk way to get their work out there in front of people who otherwise would never have known they existed. Additionally, since the vast majority of webcomics are made available online for free this also gives readers a similarly low-cost, low-risk way to discover independent creators, to browse their work before deciding whether or not to support their efforts.

26 July 2009

Why webcomics? Part 1: Variety.

With tens of thousands of webcomics out there (The Webcomic List follows nearly 14,000 webcomics, though admittedly not all of those are currently active), there's bound to be something for almost everyone. Some genres are more prevalent than others (college dorm sitcoms seem particularly well-represented), but for the most part if you're looking for something particular then there's a good chance that someone else is already making it.

From what I've seen, print comics haven't been able to offer anywhere near this range of choice until fairly recently. The most likely reason is because comicbook stores have a finite amount of space in which to display their wares, and will only tend to stock comics which they can be confident will sell. Stocking comics which might not sell means that those comics either stay on the shelf and take up space (irksome for the store proprietor, as such unsold books are basically wasted money), or get remaindered and sent back to the distributor - in both cases wasting valuable shelf-space which could've been used to display a more popular (and thus more saleable) title.

This works to limit the range of comicbooks available to the reader, as the most popular genre elbows out the less-popular genres. In the English-speaking world, mainly served by the American comicbook industry, the medium has been dominated by the superhero genre for fifty, sixy, seventy years - superhero comics have been the most popular with the readers, so they're the ones that comicbook stores are most willing to stock; because they're more popular with the stores, comicbook publishers focus on that genre rather than other, less-popular genres.

The situation reinforces itself as more and more shelfspace is devoted to superhero comics, and the readers who aren't interested in superheroes stop visiting the store because they can't find their preferred genre amongst all the dudes in tights punching each other. Soon only the superhero fans are left, the other potential comic readers having abandoned the medium because of a dearth of their preferred subject matter.

That's not to say that other genres are totally unrepresented in American comics, but that they've certainly taken the sidelines compared to the superheroes, and the impression I get is that the American comicbook industry has suffered as a result - the superhero fans are a pretty small subset of the total potential market, but until recently that wider market has been almost entirely neglected.

It's as if the TV networks decided only to air shows from the Star Trek franchise - all the people who would prefer to watch soap operas, documentaries, sports, drama, murder mystery and sitcoms would just switch off and go find something else to do. That's no good for anyone involved in the industry, which is why it's so important to demonstrate to non-readers that comics have something more to offer.

In terms of print publications, European comics are a good bit more diverse than on the other side of the Atlantic, but it's Japanese manga that seems to be the closest print alternative to webcomics in terms of offering range of subject matter. This is perhaps why manga is finding such an enthusiastic audience in the West - after a half-century of dudes in tights, there's a sudden influx of other kinds of story that aren't steeped in the superhero tradition, which are thus more compelling to a wider audience. Mystery, romance, fantasy, high-school drama, to name just a few - if you can find a genre in the novel section, you can probably find it in the manga section too.

This is what mainstream American comics have been lacking for so long. It's a void that the small, versatile, independent content-creators of the webcomic community are in an ideal position to fill, and that is what makes webcomics such an exciting field in which to be involved.

25 July 2009

Why webcomics? Part 0: Introduction

Webcomics, online comics, digital comics, whatever you want to call them - words and pictures in boxes that tell stories and jokes, available on the internet. I like 'em. I'm enthusiastic about the culture, and I'm excited by the medium in a way that I haven't been by print comics. Why? Why indeed

The posts that follow are an attempt to explain why I think webcomics are The Way Forward, and why I'm more interested in going down the webcomic path than trying to break into the traditional comics industry. I'll frequently be comparing webcomics with print comics, which can be a topic for heated debate. The observations I make are based upon impressions gained from a fairly general survey of the terrain - I listen to podcasts, I read articles, and my understanding is (I think) pretty broad but not necessarily very deep. I am absolutely willing to be corrected if I say something that's demonstrably wrong. The plain truth of the matter is that I don't know a huge amount about the comics industry.

It's not snobbery or elitism or an irrational hatred of spandex or whatever (though I do find some comicbook plots to be kind of, uh, silly), just that I'm vastly more interested in the techniques and tools used by comic creators to tell engaging narratives than I am in the details of specific characters, stories or settings. I'd much rather talk about the use of composition to guide the eye around the page than pick apart a given issue of The Amazing Spider-Man from 1964 - unless it's to deconstruct and understand the storytelling techniques used.

So, this blog comes from the standpoint of an interested and aspirational layman, rather than an industry insider or fanatical devotee. If there's something I've missed or misunderstood then I welcome the opportunity to be corrected.

23 July 2009

Why I like comics.

This post is provided to give a bit of insight into where I'm coming from as a reader and creator of comics - a potted history of my comic-reading background, and a brief exploration of why I think comics are worth examining in more detail.

I'll admit here and now that I don't really know much about what might be considered "mainstream" comics. I'm passingly familiar with the more prominent characters and events of the Marvel and DC universes, but have little knowledge of the ins and outs of their decades of backstory. My first introduction to comics came from reading my cousin's hand-me-down copies of Buster and, later, 2000 AD formed the backbone of my comicbook education - at least five hundred issues' worth, from Prog 500 in 1986 through to the early 1990s. Some stories I liked (most of the Judge Dredd stories, as well as Bad Company, Zenith and The Ballad of Halo Jones), others I didn't really get into at the time (Sláine, Nemesis the Warlock, A.B.C. Warriors) but should probably check out now that I'm older.

Since then I've mostly got my comicbooks in graphic novel format, with the exception of the excellent The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Favourites have included Nikolai Dante, Neil Gaiman's epic Sandman series, The Authority, Disraeli and Edgington's Scarlet Traces trilogy, and Mike Mignola's Hellboy (which has been a big influence on my own creative sensibilities).

Anyway, those're my comic-reading credentials.

So why do I like comics? I'm glad you asked!

I like the art - if a comic's well-drawn I'll forgive it many other shortcomings. Not everything, because if the storytelling's just plain awful or the characters unrepentantly unsympathetic, I probably won't like it. But even so, if the art is skilfully rendered I'll likely spend a fair chunk of time just looking at the pretty pictures.

I like the things that only comics can do, the interplay between words and pictures - a panel can contain as much information as a whole page of prose, and use composition, body-language, colour-theory, mood, environment and action that would be extremely difficult to convey with prose alone. The static-yet-sequential nature of the artform, the use of both words and pictures, allow stories to be told in a way that is not possible in other media.

A comic creator can choose from an immense range of tools, and not just brushes and pens - he can use literary techniques to improve his crafting of plot and narrative, he can incorporate influences from whichever branch of the visual arts he prefers, he can even take cues from the performing arts like cinema and theatre to help him convey the subtleties of gesture and expression to help him tell his story.

I like the versatility of the medium - it can be used to tell stories of fantastical adventures, or it can be turned to more thoughtful or serious subject matter (check out Maus and When the Wind Blows for a couple of examples).

These are the main things about comics that intrigue, delight and enthrall me, and part of why I'm aiming to turn my interest in comics into a career.

22 July 2009

Setting the scene.

The Last Panel is a place for me to put my comic- and webcomic-related musings and ramblings. 

The name comes from the last panel of a comic, which is, to my mind, the most important - in comic strips it's the panel that contains the punchline, the payoff towards which the preceding panels have been building; in comic books it's the cliffhanger panel that encourages the reader to turn the page and keep reading to see what happens next.

So, The Last Panel is about exploring the craft of making comics, and what keeps me turning the page. My interest is as both a reader and a creator of comics, and this blog will reflect that.

The views contained within are my own, and I don't claim to be any great authority on the art or business of making comics. I can't promise any recipes for success, but will do my best to share some (hopefully interesting) thoughts I have on the subject, and maybe even spark some discussion.