Why Comics? Part 2

Welcome back, Meat-Heads!

Ok so I covered the more abstract reasons to do comics, and that's all well and good, but in terms of practicality, why comics? Well basically what it comes down to is the two things that make this whole world go around: money and control. Creative arts have this sort of unfortunate crutch in order to get any success (and we're talking success in the broadest sense of the term--i.e. being well paid for what you do and having many people see it--not some sort of "personal" definition of success), in that you have to get your stuff seen/published/whatever by the biggest names in the business, but the biggest names want proven talent--stuff they can bank on--so are many times not super willing to take any chances. They have the money, therefore they control who sees your work. Along with that, many times, comes control of the content and almost certainly editorial control, etc etc.

Now, up until about 10 years or so ago, this is how comics worked: the major companies would solicit books through a major distributor, who would then sell the books to comic book stores, leaving any book that was published by an independent company or person to try incredibly hard to get their books picked up by the distributor, or to fend for themselves, going store to store hoping to get dedicated sellers. For anyone looking to self publish, what you had to look forward to was dollar after dollar sunk into printing costs, after putting so much work in, only to end up with 100 copies of your first issue sitting in a box somewhere in your basement because you went broke trying to get the book off the ground. In this case, you kept your control, but blew all your money.

But then came the internet.

The internet has revolutionized the way an independent, self publisher can go about getting his or her product out there. Now, with web comics, you can instantly make your comic available to millions of people with the click of a button. Though getting a website and stuff like that can cost money, there ARE ways (through blogs very much like this one) that you can publish your book independently, online, for zero dollars out of your pocket, other than what it costs to produce the art! In this case, you control the money, because you're not spending any, and you also get to maintain all the creative control of the project, and you get to reap all the benefits down the line when millions of people discover your book and become loyal, merchandise-buying minions--er....uh....fans. Getting the people out there to find, read, and stick with your book is another beast all together, though.

Until next time,

Eat Dead Meat!