Fleen: The Awkward Christmas Dinner Of Our Obligation To Existence » I’m Gonna Hold Some Of What I Got For Tomorrow

‘Cause — you know, sometimes things happen all at once, and sometimes I’m scrambling for stories.

SPX roundups are available from the usual suspects, with notes from exhibitors ranging (paraphrasing slightly here) from It rocked to It really rocked and I sold all the stuff I brought. Sorry to have missed it — will do my best to attend next year (although apparently, I was there in spirit).
A’ course, one of the highlights of SPX would be the Ignatz Awards, and Fleen congratulates all of the winners, but particularly Cat Garza for his Outstanding Online Comic, Year of the Rat. Video here if you like, but it appears that there was no gorilla — I’m not sure that I can ever love the Ignatz Awards again without a guy in a gorilla suit !
Along with the Ignatzen, the Shuster Awards (for outstanding work by Canadian creators — anybody calling them “The Eisners, eh?” will be beaten) happened over the weekend as well; congratulations to the very talented Cameron Stewart for taking the presitigious Webcomics/Bandes Dessinées Web award for Sin Titulo (which you should be reading if you’re not, but if you’re not, don’t start with the latest installment, which will melt your face off), and the very talented Kean Soo for taking the just as prestigious Comics for Kids/Bandes Dessinées pour Enfants award for Jellaby (leaving open the possibility of a followup win next year for the second volume of Jellaby’s adventures).
Lastly, this weekend saw a confab in Las Vagrus, Nevadruh (organized by Chad Carpenter of Tundra and Bill Kellogg, a marketer) on the topic of success in cartooning. Alan Gardner posted summaries of the presentations, of which one stands out for readers of this blog:

Howard Tayler, the creator of The [viz.] Schlock Mercenary was the last speaker and the lone representative of the webcomic free model. [emphasis original]

By my count, there were nine speakers, which means that webcomics achieved a record high representation at this gathering, but still — one? Of all the people that have started strips and found success in the past decade, how many have quit their day jobs and gone full-time in print as opposed to web?

I’m not saying, Print sucks, web is the only model to success! — I am decidedly not saying that — but I think that if you’re going to talk about how to find/keep success in a world where print is rapidly receding, it would be helpful to find more than one person from the (let’s be kind and call it) non-traditional world, for surely many of them have followed different paths and would have different lessons to impart. Particularly because the first sentence in the announcement of said seminar read-and-I-quote:

Have you ever wanted to know how to succeed in the world of newspaper and/or web comics?

Just sayin’.

…

If anyone actually wants the print-ready art for that Official Fleen Moustache On A Stick… just send a note to Gary and he’ll bother me. I’m happy to supply an SVG or PDF or etc. as needed.

Wait, what?

So very, very much I could talk about. So little space.

I’ll suffice with this: I was not the only one of the nine presenters doing non-traditional things to make money. And I’m not talking about self-syndication — that’s still pretty traditional.

While we in webcomics often pat ourselves on the back for proving the “1000 True Fans” model I think we do ourselves a disservice with our hubris. I learned an awful lot at this show.

Gary, if you’d like to do an interview of some sort, I’m game.

[…] “I’m not saying, Print sucks, web is the only model to success! — I am decidedly not saying that — but I think that if you’re going to talk about how to find/keep success in a world where print is rapidly receding, it would be helpful to find more than one person from the (let’s be kind and call it) non-traditional world, for surely many of them have followed different paths and would have different lessons to impart.” – Gary Tyrrell […]

[…] case you missed the comments thread from yesterday, Howard Tayler came back from the Success in Cartooning seminar (conference? meeting?) with a head […]

I was another of the speakers at the Vegas event, and although I’m probably not what you consider a webcomic, I would say that my web-based cartoon business model is outside the norm. So maybe we can say one-and-a-half webcomics were represented?

Mark,

Your stuff was EXTREMELY compelling as a business model. I see no need for the traditional “webcomics” definition when what we’re really talking about is alternatives to the traditional syndication revenue.

In that same vein I saw similar non-traditional approaches from five of the nine presenters. Six if you count me. That’s 2/3rds.

Re-counting… there were only eight presentations, which takes us to 3/4ths. In my estimation only Amy and Cam were strict traditionalists among the bunch, and even their stuff was worth learning from.

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