Fleen: The Awkward Christmas Dinner Of Our Obligation To Existence

Edited to fix missing link the second item.

Heya. Some good comments coming out of yesterday’s musings on angels; I was particularly glad of Chris Baldwin‘s story of his experience with capital-raising. I hope that with the current credit crunch, such bank loans are still available for deserving creators. Several more items related to webcomics bid’ness today:

Von Allan wrote an extensive analysis of his readership growth over the first three months of the road to god knows. New strip creators, pay attention.
Dawn Douglass writes with an appeal; her comic-aggregation venture is looking for VC backing, and she’s looking for input. For the record (and I told her this), I think she’s got a logical flaw in her argument that free “alienates creators from their art” (for views that nicely parallel my own, see Kevin Kelly again: free is a means to an end). But the point is, she’s looking for cartoonists — specifically editorial cartoonists — to take a look at her ideas.
And now that I’ve typed out the words “editorial cartoonists”, I think that I see the source of the disconnect between her ideas and mine; most cartoonists (and with the arguable exception of maybe Penny Arcade pretty much all webcartoonists) are not editorial cartoonists. They’ve got their own concerns that can contrast deeply with the average (aspiring?) webcomicker.

Announcements!

Darren J. Gendron writes to let you know that The Expertâ€™s Guide on How to Kill Things That Go Bump in the Night recently wrapped its first major story arc. It started with an army of vampire cheerleaders, took on The Shat, and wrapped with the help of the Dozen Dead Elvises and Dead Monkey Elvis. It that doesn’t get you to read the damn thing, I don’t know what will.
Quick two-fer from Wes Molebash:
Boxcar Comics is redesigning its site, launching creator-hosted podcasts, building up the jam comics, and going to be hitting the conventions with vigor previously unknown to western science. And Molebash’s The Litterbox Chronicles has scratched out (see, it’s about cats, so that joke is funny) a number one position on the Zuda hit parade, but needs your love to stay there. Like Tinkerbelle.
And finally, Rick Marshall informs me that a new interview with Fleen Fave Rene Engstrom is due to go live at ComicMix in about … now-ish. Get clicking.

Gary, thanks for the link, but I’d like to point out that you didn’t read my post real carefully, which is understandable, because it’s quite long.

Yes, I would like editorial cartoonists to participate, but as I said in the post: “These comics donâ€™t have to be traditional editorial cartoons. [I even underlined that part! SMILE] If you do a web comic, they can be in the same format as usual, using your existing characters. You just need to have them talking about the election.”

This is just yet another way that cartoonists who have adopted a free strategy can attempt to earn some money if they choose to.

…and get exposed to new readers, too.

For the record, I agree that free can be a good means to an end for some artists who have the skills and desire to take that strategy on, but why can’t comics be an end in themselves?

I’m all about freedom, including the freedom to be paid directly for your time and talent should you choose to not add marketer to your list of hats or layers of contorted monetization schemes between you and your art.

… I’ve always considered myself an editorial cartoonist.

That said, my opposition to Dawn’s plan is that I categorically oppose DRM, and I can’t think of any way to limit the number of copies of cartoon on the net without using DRM.

No, it’s not DRM. I hate that, too.

Look at http://www.attributor.com/ That’s part of the solution.

Dawn, I read your proposal an I give kudos to you for exploring new ways to market cartoons in the web 2.0 world.

I feel the web is still a new and ever changing world. Sure, the FREE strategy/model seems to have taken hold (yeah, I read the WIRED article, too) but who knows, maybe there are other ways to market our goods. I look forward to seeing your approach in action.

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