Come with me or the web comic gets it.

[vforge]

look around you and seriously look at the world of printed media. I and my associates have worked in the newspaper and printing industry for over 25 years. After all that time we have seen the crashing decline of circulation. Big businesses are wither going out of business or moving what operations they do have left online. From inside these businesses i have seen the management and organization of these mega printers crumble from severe cutbacks. All of this damage has happened because of the internet and the availability of free content. ALL of the current large comic book publishers are facing the same problem and are desperate to find ways to enter and dominate the online community. can you compete against spiderman, The Dark Knight or any other of a thousand mega titles? Well these will be coming your way soon and your legions of casal browsing readers will be spending those few precious moments each week on their sites and not yours. let's face it. The web is the entertainment media of the future even more so than now. How will a garage band version of a comic book artist really compete against the millions those other companies will drown the internet with to buy banner ads your sites may need? Unless you can beat the Avengers(tm) then it's time to really unite and work together to build the industry before the chance is gone. Your subscriptions will dry up, your ad revenue will go to marvel and DC and your readers will spend their time on other sites unless you act. let's form the Independent Comic Artists Association. ICAA and fight for your turf. Just ask me how.

[Ruyei]

how?

[vforge]

Well the answer to that is lots of people working in an organized effort to promote the industry. I believe that a presence at conventions that goes beyond an artists row chair is one way. I'd like to run a circuit of conventions that have booth space that can have larger examples of artwork and materials designed to display what the member artists can do. I only recently discovered web comics and noticed that most of the people producing comics are great with art but they spend most of their time creating them and have no resources or time to really get out and sell it on the streets. Larger companies will eventually blitz the online comic genre and spend lots of cash to promote their own interests while web comic artists that literally founded the industry (as it is) will be trivialized. Just like an election where money spent means votes, you need to find ways to raise awareness of the industry to help it grow. Some of the best comic talent the entire global comic industry has to offer can be found on the wen trying to sell t-shirts and often badly printed hard copies. Even if there is no hard solution on the table.. it's time to at least gather at the table and discuss how best the industry can be served. I think that is served well by forming a group of interested artists, writers and creative talent to come up with ideas and pursue a path to the future.

[Ruyei]

As you say, most of us web-comic artists and writers lack the means to do much more than create our comics and perhaps promote our own individual comics in a minor degree. I think an organization of influential web-comics is a GREAT idea, however, many creators have trouble as it is finding time for their comics alone. I also am at a loss how a group of web-comic guys and gals can help even as an organized group...as you have stated the comic corporations can easily out-muscle us once they have the interest. The only real solution I can think of is for new corporations to start up and promote worthwhile web-comics, and for web-comics themselves to find ways that work to make money and therefore acquire the means of protecting their own interests. It's a very complicated issue all in all.

The idealist in me says that as long as there's the internet there will be ways for web-comics to thrive in the background of major comics, just like underground comics have in the past. Also, the flavor of web-comics is quite different from the taste of standard comics, so DC and others may have trouble competing unless they literally buy out the more popular web-comic franchises or mimic the current styles. It's very hard to predict the future though, these are just my thoughts.