The webcomics blog about webcomics

Self-Sustaining

Coupla things happened yesterday, after I’d done my story-collecting for the day. My pardon if you’ve seen either of these stories already, but they’re worth mentioning again.

  • It’s not every day that webcomickers decide to go full time, and even less common when they take the opportunity to branch out into other media at the same time. But Curt Franklin and Chris Haley of Let’s Be Friends Again have done just that. With respect to the first, yesterday they announced that comics will be their full-time gig, having been working at laying the groundwork for more than two years.

    To throw a multimedia spanner in the works, LBFA will be a three-person endeavor, as Franklin and Haley are joining forces with rappeur nerdique Eugene Ahn, aka Adam War Rock. Mr Rock, of course, has plenty of connections to webcomickry, having released songs in honor of webcomics¹ as diverse as Nedroid, Johnny Wander, and earlier today, Dresden Codak.

    Weirdly for one who spends so much time on webcomics, I first became aware of Rock because of his tribute to/adaptation of the theme song for The Sound of Young America; then again, TSOYA and the rest of the Maximum Fun empire have their merchandise distributed by TopatoCo, so it all comes full circle.

  • You know what else rarely makes the transition to sustained support? Museums. Even the most established have to be creative about funding their collections and exhibitions, but I think that the Cartoon Art Museum may have just set a new standard. In conjunction with the just-launched Berke Breathed exhibit, CAM are looking to fund the print run of exhibition catalog via Kickstarter. With one day down and 29 to go, From Bloom County to Mars: The Art of Berkeley Breathed is, as of this writing, a little more than a third of the way towards its $3000 goal.

    Among the first wave of webcomickers, Breathed’s Bloom County stands as one of the Holy Trinity of Cited Inspirations (along with Bill Watterson’s Calvin & Hobbes, and Gary Larson’s The Far Side); I can see a lot of old Breathed fans (not to mention those just learning about his work for the first time via the IDW reprint collection) wanting to get their hands on this.

    Adding to the webcomics appeal, the catalog will contain contributions from Bill Amend and Keith Knight, who may work with syndicates, but “get it” when the discussion turns to webcomics. There’s even a lengthy interview with Breathed by Nexus of All Webcomics Realities (non-Canadian division) Shaenon Garrity; okay, so she’s married to CAM curator Andrew Farago, but Garrity does a hell of a job at interviewing, and so does Breathed when you give him the right person or situation to bounce off of.

    As a bonus, being funded directly by the purchasers means a balanced look at Breathed’s entire career. Disney are getting ready to release a movie based on Breathed’s Mars Needs Moms and I’m sure they could have found three grand in the couch cushions to fund this project, but how much of the catalog would then have have to focus on one not-yet-released movie?

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¹ Said songs may be found at the following locations; this list is not meant to be comprehensive, it was just what I recalled off the top of my head.

[…] chants. So, when the Let’s Be Friends Again guys say that they’re forming an alliance with nerd rapper Adam War Rock, it sorta makes sense once you overcome the initial […]

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