Fleen: The Awkward Christmas Dinner Of Our Obligation To Existence

It will probably surprise nobody that I started in my geekly tendencies early, and a fair amount of my current reading habits can be laid squarely at the feet of three people: Wendy & Richard Pini and Phil Foglio; heck, my manga and anime habits can probably be blamed on Wendy Pini tossing out a stray reference to Tezuka somewhere around 1986 or ’87.

And while Foglio has made a wholesale jump to the web (cf: here and here), what of the Pinis, pioneers of the self-publishing movement? From Johanna Draper Carlson:

None of this means that Elfquest is going away, at least not yet. Pini has scripted the final arc, and she promises it will be a surpriseâ€¦

Pini and her husband Richard recently ended their agreement with DC Comics, which published Elfquest for the past four years. They will now be handling the Elfquest properties through their own company, Warp Graphics, and Pini said the last arc may appear as a Web comic or a print comic. [emphasis mine]

Thoroughly intriguing, particularly as I met Mr Pini at the New York Comic Con in February, when he came by the Dumbrella booth specifically to meet Rich Stevens and talk about webcomics. If they decide to go that route, they will hopefully find the same success as Foglio (with Girl Genius as a current project, and reviving the long-lost Buck Godot and What’s New? properties)and Carla Speed McNeil (with Finder).

While all three of these creators had self-published ventures, it makes me wonder if marginal (but well-beloved) comics in danger of cancellation from the big publishers might find a home online. Foglio’s proven that giving away the pages and charging for the reprint is economically viable (indeed, advantageous to a large degree over printing individual pamphlets). What about it? Any print comics you’d like to see make the leap?

The All-New Atom. The character, his powers and the writing style seem like they’d work well online.

Strangers in Paradise– oops, too late.

I’m 100% with you on the Pini/Foglio connection. Pini because Elfquest was the fist comic book that my mother would let my sister and me read because it was “safe for girls” (thank God she never bothered to read the things); Foglio because my school library had all of Robert Aspen’s Myth Inc. books, including the 2-volume graphic novel illustrated by the Fogilos. You know, the one with the Elfquest cameo appearance.

RE: Print-to-digital (-to-print) … I went looking for recommendations and was suprised to see that some of them are already doing it.

[…] Gary Tyrrell discusses the increasing numder of strips making the jump from print to the Web. […]

I still think a web/print synergy is the best way for anyone not doing Corporate Comics to publish. It may be a trickle now, but now that there are a few success stories the gates will soon open.

As much as I like the immediacy of reading comics on the web, I still like to have that print version for all of it’s conveniences. I think a lot of people are finding out they compliment each other well. We’re a long way off from digital paper still.

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