Irregular Webcomic today features a punchline that anybody will get on first glance. But then David Morgan-Mar launches into a beautifully-explained, nigh-on elegaic explanation of Maxwell’s Laws and what they mean.

Reading along, I’m flashing back damn near twenty years to my first class in electromagnetic fields; I’m remembering how learning something so fundamental to reality for the first time is a special kind of thrill; in my head, Morgan-Mar sounds like Richard Feynman. Quite simply, this comic & commentary made my day.

• Official Goal for Child’s Play 2006 (at launch), in US dollars: $600,000
• Total one week ago: $495,000
• Total as of today, which presumably includes the proceeds from the dinner/auction held two days ago: $760,000
• Days until Christmas: 10
• Degree, expressed as a percentage, to which the offical goal has already been exceeded: 26.67
• Likelihood, expressed as a percentage, of exceeding a total of $800,000 for the year, thus allowing Child’s Play to have reached a total (since 2003) of $2 million: 95
• Likelihood, expressed as a percentage, of exceeding a total of $1,00,000 for the year: 80
• Intrinsic worth of those involved in the conception, organization, and execution of Child’s Play 2006, including all donors, on a scale of 1 to 10: awesome beyond all measure

Via Xaviar at Comixpedia, a discussion by Steven Crowley of Magellan (and other works) on measuring webcomics by the volume of their readers. He breaks it down thusly:

There are probably five levels of readership numbers:

• Stellar: so many you can’t really count them; 100,000+ readers per day; eg Penny Arcade, PvP
• Super: high to very high; 10,000-100,000 per day; examples? I don’t know!
• Maintaining altitude: medium to high; 1,000-10,000 per day
• Limping along: low to medium; 250-1,000 per day; eg my comics go here!
• Hello? Hellooo? Anyone?: nothing to low; 0-250 per day; eg many webcomics

This brings to mind a recurring conversation I’ve had with various creators (normally beer is involved) about readership numbers and who is actually seeing what kind of audience. The question is especially interesting because Kris Straub adds a comment to the effect that he once thought that 10,000 uniques/day was:

the magic number where you could honestly monetize your whole site and draw a (meager) living.

But, with the explosion of webcomics, 10,000/day just isn’t the number it used to be. So what is the number that lets you live off your comics? Crowley’s talking about daily readers here, but given that not all webcomics update daily, monthly uniques might be a better measure (and I have one hard number along those lines available: 3.5 million for PA, as cited by Robert Khoo in San Diego this summer).

For every other webcomic in existence, we have but speculation, approximation, (perhaps involving Project Wonderful), and not a lot of reliable data. One way to find out. If you’re a creator and you’re willing to answer some questions concerning readership numbers and being able to financially support yourself, drop me (that would be gary) an email at this website (that would be fleen.com). If I get a large enough sample size, I’ll send out questions, gather answers, and break out my old stochastics textbooks to do some analysis on it. Results (if any) will be published here in the aggregate (i.e.: I don’t mention your comic/numbers by name, but only as part of a larger population).

This will probably work best if we get a majority of those creators who actually have a webcomic (and its immediate offshoots) as a primary source of income, but I’d also like to see information on as many creators who are “semi-pro” or thinking about becoming pros — I’m extremely curious about where the tipping point between “this is my hobby” and “this can pay my rent and feed my family” sits these days. My interest in this is academic, but for you creators out there, think of this as like census data — a common dataset that you may use as you wish to whatever benefit you can. So whaddaya say? Willing to answer a few questions?

Somewhere in the Encyclopaedia Blogitanica, there’s a rule that says that you have to talk about yourself every once in a while; while we at Fleen try to restrict ourselves to webcomics (at least tangentially), I suppose that an event as significant as an anniversary deserves stepping back from the main topic of conversation.

We got our launch announcement/manifesto/flaming poo-bag from Jon on the 22nd of December last year, and one short-lived shitstorm later, we started registering hits. But unbeknownst to most we’d been writing since the early days of the month, and had actually gone live a week before (an event marked by chirping crickets and the odd yawning dog).

All of which is a roundabout way of saying, “Today is the last day of Fleen’s first year.” Tomorrow the tally rolls over and we’re officially a year old. According to the WordPress™ stats, we’re up to 604 posts (including this one) and 2993 comments as of press time. This is my 336th post in 364 days, which I guess means I didn’t read the once a day, five days a week thing closely enough.

We’ve added and lost and regained writers; we inspired people to start their own webcomics-themed blogs; we’ve made some good friends; we got namechecked in Wired by Scott McCloud and I was personally referred to as NUTTY CRACKERS by the nexus of all webcomics reality. By any objective measure, that makes for a pretty damn good year.

Thanks for reading as we found our footing, and we at Fleen will do our best in the coming year to deserve our spot in your bookmarks.

Apparently in need of cash to continue his puppy-kicking and America-hating activities (per the Project Wonderful ads), Jon Rosenberg is auctioning off his first Goats strip. As of press time, the top bid is by one rstevens606g (a suspicously-familiar moniker), and the bid history also shows interest by one wigujeff (likewise). Since selling Goats #1 to a fellow Dumbrellite would likely result in the art being used to torment Mr Rosenberg, won’t you consider giving it a loving home?

Alternately, if you’re one of Rosenberg’s legion of enemies, consider this your opportunity to torment him yourself, at the (currently) low, low price of $128 (priority shipping included). In my daydream, T Campbell buys it, defaces it, and uses it for the cover of AHOW 2.0. The auction runs for just under two more days.

Speaking of Project Wonderful (and we were, right up there), internet marketing solution gurus ClickZ Network take a close look at the auction-based ad service (link via Journalista) and seem to find the business model sufficiently intriguing to include glowing quotes like:

“I’m looking at $1000 a month after Project Wonderful takes its cut, if current levels hold,” said Josh Roberts, creator of Comicspace.com. “I expect to make a lot more money than with the standard ad network like ValueClick or Tribal Fusion. I’ll make easily three times as much money with Project Wonderful.” [emphasis mine]

and to include analysis like:

Project Wonderful is ramping up to support increasing demand, but North acknowledges that his system is more targeted towards small businesses and individuals, and so isn’t a threat to large advertising networks yet. [emphasis mine]

What I find even intriguinger (perhaps even intriugingest) is that the article describes Ryan North as CEO and co-founder, which you must admit is an intriguing mental image. If anybody wants to do a visual interpretation of the Toronto Man-Mountain: CEO (perhaps a mash-up with Rich Uncle Pennybags), we’ll be glad to share the images here.

ComicSpace, of course. For the five of you that haven’t gone to take a look in the week since launch, it’s a comics-themed MySpace with (for now, at least) a low incidence of blaring music, hideous color combinations, whiney teen attention whores, and Rupert Murdoch.

What it does have is a bemused creator who can’t quite believe that more than 4200 people have taken out accounts so far (it was supposed to be a limited release), or that he racked up more than 100,000 hits in the first 24 hours (pretty impressive, considering that he hasn’t implemented the key These Are The Comics I Like feature, and didn’t figure he’d need dedicated hosting or bandwidth-cost-offsetting revenue quite this soon).

Still, I wonder if a social-networking site devoted to comics fans is going to be long-term viable … let’s be honest with ourselves … how often do you use the words “social networking” and “comics fans” in the same sentence? Aaaand the time to the first angry comment starts — NOW!

This week, I speak with David Berner, the guiding voice behind Broken Voice Comics.

Next week, Ambush Journalism!
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It’s Anniversary Monday in webcomics, apparently. Today, Stuff Sucks hits 100 strips, Byrobot hits 250, and FODI hits 400.

In other news, Pet Professional is updating every day this week to finish up its current story arc, and the ranks of those experimenting with doing a webcomic continue to expand.

In the you always knew there was something about that guy, didn’t you? section of today’s news, check out the two Project Wonderful ads in the centerthe meme has spread! at Goats today. I’m not sayin’ it’s true … I’m just sayin’ that Jeff Rowland might be in a position to spill some secrets.

In the homage section of today’s news, facial hair combat continues to spread. Careful who you homage there, Chris Crosby. Just sayin’.

In the evil beaten back section of today’s news, webcomics continue to convert away from ActiveX.

And in the but did you get Kris Straub? section of today’s news, Grumps now has a theme song. Happy listening, peoples!

Hey, check this out.

Mauled by hooved animals? Robot armada invasions? Wha? Looks like the weird story of Vault Distribution is being revived.

(Okay, I lied. That was a teensy little bit of comment.)

Well, I asked for volunteers for interviews, and Boy Howdy did I get a Crop O’ Goodness.

Given that I only do one interview a week, I’m going to put a qualifier on my previous statement of “I want to talk to YOU!”. I do, just … not soon. Of course, we at Fleen in general are always glad to hear from anyone involved in the webcomics ‘verse, and we do want to hear what you have to say.

But my schedule for the next few months is now booked. On the subject of schedule, I’m going to take two weeks off around the turn of the year. I’ll publish my last interview of 2006 on the 19th, and then pick up again on January 9th.

Here’s the list of people I’ll be talking to in 2007, in no guaranteed order:

• David C. Simon
• Chad Diez
• Ben Stirling
• Lisa Fary and artist
• Chris Hallbeck
• Fred Grisolm
• Paul “The Prettiest Girl In School” Southworth
• Alice Hunt

That looks like an amazing start to 2007, so I hope you’ll join me in not being able to wait.