Why I like webcomics, a NEWW recap

I don't write much, it's not my greatest skill. I feel that is a necessary precursor to my attempt to convey an important idea through the written word. Maybe I'll audio record my ideas and attach that at the end.

I just got back from New England Webcomics Weekend. I really like webcomics. A lot. I read 63 different comics online. Ugly Hill ended, bringing that number temporarily down until I added FreakAngels. I will certainly be going through the promotional materials from NEWW and adding a few more to that number. While at NEWW, I had some great conversations with creators, conversations that led me to realize why webcomics are so important to me. Here's my thoughts from two, each with their own insight.

First, in talking with Brad Guigar about the spiraling death of the newspaper industry, I wondered if any other creative art has used the internet to such success as webcomics. iTunes works, yes, but creators didn't come up with that, and there is still a corporate barrier to entry for any new musician. Webcomics creators and the community have been having the conversation about how to make money off of this for over a decade now. There are so many webcomics creators, and between them, they have tried every method of money making that I've heard conceived. So, if any industry is going to give up the analog ghost and join the digital world, they would do very well to look at what various webcomics have done. The Webcomics Weekly crew have talked about this, I'm not coming up with anything new in this insight. It hit me pretty hard though, now having all these creators in the same room, that when talking about what someone has done, you could find them, ask them, and have them tell you that micropayments didn't work for them or that working with a syndicate was a dead end or whatever their experience was. NEWW was infinitely valuable for this, and I hope we do it again.

My second insight, and the one that is more about my personal values, is a specific relationship I see between webcomics and capitalism. Many many people before me have talked about the relationship between art and capitalism, and the full history of art for money. In talking with Chris Yates, I realized that I like that webcomics are free. Not just because everybody likes free stuff, but because the focus and creation of the comic is mostly separate from the question of how to make money off of it. To restate: as far as I can tell, the question of how to make money from webcomics comes AFTER and is secondary to the question of how to make a good comic, how to make good art. I like this. I wish that all art was mostly like that, that creators were able to focus on making something beautiful or funny or touching or sad or whatever first, and then figure out how to survive doing it in a capitalist economy. There are many artists of all mediums doing this, but in webcomics, it appears to me to be the norm. I think that's why I want to be part of the webcomics community, and I hope that doesn't change.

Audio recording:
http://tr.im/ccnewwmp3