But, I think I’m going to quit while we’re a head.

Scott you had the last word.

-Alan

I was an official guest of the show, as I have a foot both in webcomics and traditional print comics. Image reprints my strips traditionally in a monthly comic book format and distributes those monthlies and larger collections via Diamond Distributions.

One of the perks of being a guest of the Baltimore Comicon is a wonderful VIP room in the back of the convention center where you can take a break from the crowd and get some sodas and snacks. This year they even had a masseuse. It was pretty posh. But the real value of the VIP room is getting to rub elbows with giants in the comic book industry. Getting to talk quietly, one-on-one, with the people who wrote the funnybooks you grew up on, or who currently inspire you month to month.

This weekend, I had long and interesting conversations with: Darwyn Cooke, Brian Michael Bendis, David Mack, Mike Oeming, Jimmy Palmiotti, and Walter Simonson. I had some friendly handshakes and “how are you doing, Scott?” moments with DC Comic’s Dan Didio, as well as Howard Chaykin, Adam Hughes, and Brian Stelfreeze.

This, my friends, is rarefied air. This is talent beyond mine. These people have no business giving two farts about me or my stupid comic strip. But guess what? They all love PvP. They all asked about it. They all respect what I’m doing and most importantly, NONE of them questioned whether or not I had a valid reason to be there. Not one of these GIANTS asked for a tax return, or a resume. None of them demanded that I produce proof that webcomics work or that people can sustain themselves online.

I was asked to present the Harvey Award for best online and syndicated comic strips this year. Kyle Baker introduced me by saying that his kids prefer my work to his. He said it with sincerity and kindness and he meant it as a compliment. I’ve spoken to his wife and drawn pictures with his children.

My point is this: clearly there are print cartoonists that exist in this world, with not only an open mind towards webcomics, but a clear and sincere interest in what we do and how we do it. They are eager to discuss, explore, correct, help and discover with us. More importantly, they have a kind heart towards other cartoonists.

At the Harvey Awards this year, Nick Cardy got a lifetime achievement award. The guy is in his 70s. And he thanked everyone for the night of his life. Because the award was from his peers, the people he respected. And they were acknowledging his work and saying “You are one of us, and you are really talented and we respect you.”

I implore everyone here in webcomic to take a step back, and look at the bigger picture. There is a small group of very bitter and hateful men here who are parading as the whole of print cartoonists. And they are trying to get us pretty down about what we do.

There are thousands of other print cartoonists out there, giants in this industry, who not only respect what we do, but are curious to learn about it and start up a dialogue with us about it. And that is just about the most encouraging thing I can imagine. Because I still have so much to learn and it’s rare you get to lock heads and look at the future of cartooning with people like Kyle Baker.

Seriously, guys. Once John Romita walks up to you and says “PvP. My grandson reads that.” You suddenly cease to give a flying f— about what Ted Rall thinks.

I’m going to chase that feeling.

Editor’s note: Scott’s F-bomb has been “—” out, other than that, it remains untouched.

My point is just, within this new business model, the relationship between syndicate and cartoonist is not yet set in stone. It is not established yet how a contract should be, or if the established print syndicates are the best solution for handling web syndication. When trying to figure out how two business models can merge to better serve the artist, I think we all agree that the artists would like to be artists, and business people should handle the business. But, how much overhead are artists paying for within the large syndicates. Can a smaller syndicate handle quality strips online by streamlining the syndicate process. Can a shared warehouse cut down on cost for shipping and storage for 5-10 successful webcartoonist. Can one IT person keep 5-10 sites up and running smoothly. There is a benefit to having a business backing the art, but the smaller the business, the more efficient it can be, and the bigger the cuts for everyone involved. My example of Halfpixel taking on this model is, how much time do all four artists save if they have one person managing their sites, and all of their shipping coming out of one location. If they have one person managing their ad sales. There is an opportunity for quality strips to create their own business team that functions as a syndicate, but under their own terms. For print, syndication is the only good way to get into papers. for the web, the best path to success is not yet owned by anyone.

What is happening here online as a result of this wonderful found freedom without controls (trust me I love it too!!!) for our comics to be shown; is a large influx of utter trash amongst the diamonds! At some point it will be hard to sort through the mire while we spend time looking for the new high quality strips. Trust me,..if the webcomic industry continues to grow at the speed in which everyone here is so certain of,…we will have the need for a new way of delivery. Maybe today this makes no sense, but we’ll see about this down the road.

It will have to change or just become a discombobulated mess
that nobody will enjoy sifting through and eventually move away from altogether. There is a risk here whether we like it or not.

Frank — clearly you need to broaden your repertoire on editorial cartooning and what its function is.

Keeping with the movie theme, editorial cartoonists are Siskel and Ebert — giving their opinion on the political drama that unfolds in front of them.

I paid a small amount for a year to comics.com to get some comics in my e-mail, but I ended up canceling it – it just wasn’t worth it, and they didn’t offer enough comics that I liked at a low enough price.

Not sure how well Go comics does – $11.95 a year is fairly cheap but again, it’s a limited field. And how much of that trickles down to the creators after all is said and done? Can’t be but a penny or two.

It’s an interesting space to watch and see what happens. Personally I think the Patron model mentioned above is about as innovative idea as I have heard in a while.

Imagine if someone comes along and builds a model of pay comics and they want your comic in. You’ve been going along for 5 years and have an established fan base. Suddenly they want to put your comic behind a pay wall, and you have to stop posting comics to web and tell all your fans, hey you now have to go to this service and pay for it – just to get my comic – and pay for a bunch of other stuff you may not want. Heck, or even just pay a small amount for my comic.

Imagine the response… would you be willing to do that? It could effectively kill your comic. I don’t know how you get the horse back in the barn.

It is important to keep working on a web model so that cartooning can continue to grow. What if, for instance, the halfpixel group hired a two people to run the website and shipping of their product? would it take three people? Ok. They split the ad revenue from all sites into equal shares and everyone gets a cut. My suggestion is this, if the cartoonists hire the “syndicate” as opposed to begging for their acceptance, the cartoonist could get the bigger cuts of profit, and also, and more importantly, retain the freedom to create without restraint. We should not mock the efforts of the Halfpixel guys for presenting a business model, more discussion needs to happen and that model needs to grow. But now we all at least have a point in which to begin.

“I always fear though that merchandising will do harm to the purity, if you will, of the comic. But that’s another discussion altogether.”

YES,..I see it going that way and it is indeed scary. This may be a problem. BUT,….I think there can be both in harmony if done so with balance and if we CHARGE money for the comic.

I’m sorry,..I just don’t like the prospect of not charging for the strips. I just can’t get my big fat head around how to do this at this stage of the game unless syndicates get their head out of the sand and get involved here to work “WITH” the web!

I often wonder this,…I often wonder perhaps if the money for comic model for the online medium lies in WHERE it’s delivered moreso than how. What I see here is as the old bulky desktops start to die off and we migrate to razor thin “all in ones” with shiny buttons, phone capabilities and high tech screens and as we as people become even more mobile and continue on the go with our new found attention deficit disorders (based on the pre-conditioning of instant feedback) we will indeed pay for media to reach our pockets. It’s happening now a bit, but I mean in a major way,..and the syndicates can offer comics ala cart or based on packages that they offer for the comics that they represent.

It works for TV. We all scream about Cable costs and Satellite costs,..but we still pay it. I see this perhaps in the future if the syndicates wake up or maybe the syndicates miss the boat and the phone services take this over. They provide the package deals. The creators can still promote their goods on their respective sites (links will be available) and the readers can choose what they want to pay to see every day.

Maybe people will see this as different and be willing to pay. I know this model has already begun with today’s crop of cell phones and all in ones, (I have no idea how successful it is) but it would grow immensely as the hardware begins to advance as well.

I posit that this is not a permanent pairing.

Webcartooning is new. Nascent, even. It is likely that within the next decade we will see web delivery of content embrace the syndication model, in which content creators are recruited by businesspeople.

Of course it’s been tried before. Keenspot and Modern Tales were both, for lack of a better term, webcartoonist syndicates. Both failed in that regard — no webtoonist I’m aware of was able to work full-time as a Keenspot-syndicated or MT-syndicated creator. Most full-timers either left these web-syndicates to run their own businesses (and keep all the profits themselves) or joined after they were already full-timing in order to boost traffic.

But those failures are not indicative of anything inherently “broken” about webcartooning. They illustrate that the market is still too small to support a corporate approach to supporting creators.

If I had to lay money on somebody with a corporate approach to webcartooning, I’d bet on Joey Manley and ComicSpace. I’m not saying he’ll save us all when print finally dies, but if you’re concerned about the health of the syndicates and their ability (or willingness ((or both!)) ) to adapt to the web, keep an eye on what Joey’s doing.

For now, though, I’m my own businessman because I have to be. I may grow the business enough to hire someone to take care of that for me, but that day is a ways out still.