What Everybody Ought to Know About Comic Buffers

I should really know better than to respond to anything written by Scott Kurtz.

For those who actually care about what the rest of the webcomic blogs (all four of them) are saying, Kurtz has a diatribe that doesn't really get to the heart of why cartoonists need buffers. Or rather, he talks about it but glosses over the reasons why, boiling them down to "Other people will think less of me".

I'll be the first to admit, having a buffer quickly becomes the best and the worst thing about your comic if you're not careful. It's good to have because it means you can relax and not have to worry about deadlines past a certain point. It's bad because if something about the comic ever gets received poorly, you're at a loss to do anything about it until your buffer runs out (especially if your plot continues on this hated portion for the next few strips)!

My main list of reasons for a buffer?

1. Having a professional comic means I respect deadlines -- because I've already told my readers to come check for the comic then.
2. Maintaining a constantly increasing archive / buffer makes the comic appear more "stable" and healthy.
   
3. Working on the buffer NOW means I'm not working on it during the school year -- or at least not as hard as I would over the summer.
   
4. I worry less about deadlines -- I have a hard enough time remembering what day to update the comic just to do the minor task of uploading it to the site, let alone if I had to work the week before to finish a comic in time!
5. Even if vacations are working vacations, I can relax on the weekends -- which are when I'd have to be working like mad to get the next comic ready for an update if I didn't work at least that far in advance!
   
6. Knowing what happens in future comics (and not just what I think will happen) gives me a sense of security -- because I'm following and reading along with my comic the same as everyone else, with the exception that I'm expected to figure out what happens next based off of these strips.
7. Maintaining a buffer and reducing the stress to pop out a comic rapidly gives me more opportunity to experiment with new ideas -- not just for saleable materials but also for advertising and general growth of the comic.
   

If you're comparing my list to Kurtz's, you'll notice that only the first two are "worrying about what other people think" -- and it's not even thinking about Joe Random, but about the perception of the comic as a whole. The rest are either somewhat selfish (work now to goof off later), or otherwise useful to the growth of the comic. Even if I sacrifice being able to react immediately to problems within the comic, I make up for it by having more time to tinker to be able to respond to those problems properly.

I'm not saying Kurtz's list is "bad" or even ill-informed, but he's working from the perspective of a mature comic -- PvP isn't struggling for acceptance and awareness now, except against those who don't read comics. He doesn't have to work at advertising his comic to say that it's different from other comics, or struggle for legitimacy, or even deal with the fact that his comic appeals to a certain audience like it was somehow a bad thing. He has a whole different set of problems to worry about, not the least of which is that the time he could spend on advertising PvP is having to be spent just advertising webcomics in general because being a big fish in a small pond does you no good if the entire pond exists inside of a water cooler.

Penny Arcade can't afford a large buffer because they're building off of pop culture, but there's no reason they can't build up a few PA-oriented strips that they can intersperse with the gaming-focused comics so at least they have something to throw on the fire when the news is slow or that next idea just isn't coming. If your comic isn't oriented on popular culture at all, there's little reason to NOT build up a buffer. In my case, having an insane buffer makes sense, especially while I'm still in school (I'm currently freaking out right now because I'm still two strips shy of having enough for the semester!), and because I want to be able to produce more pages for the comic -- having a buffer allows me to do that without having to stress over deadlines, at least!

You're going to have your own reasons for keeping a buffer, depending on what kind of comic you're doing, how much effort it takes you, and what length of a buffer you feel comfortable with. Regardless of which path you go, keeping at least "the next update" in your buffer is just good sense; if nothing else, it's insurance.

Sweet! Last Resort's on Fleen!

Better late than never to post good press: Last Resort finally received some coverage on Fleen thanks to hitting the 100-strip mark!

If you're too lazy to click:

Finally, here’s a plot that makes you think Why didn’t anybody come up with this before?: reality show in space with alien critters. Last Resort is just about to hit 100 installments, so there’s enough story there to decide if you’re going to get sucked in or not, and not so much that you have to spend all day pretending to work when the boss walks by.

Thanks Fleen! Here's hoping more good webcomics press is coming our way.

Road Crew Review!

Just a quick acknowledgment: it appears Tommie of Road Crew took some time out to feature Last Resort!

His own comic's a little young but you can still pop over there to look at the nice things he had to say about the comic. Thanks, Tommie!

The One Lesson Every Webcomic Creator Must Learn

First off, a confession: Webcomics make me sick.

Actually, let me rephrase that. I like having a webcomic, drawing a webcomic, starting a fandom for it, bringing my characters to life . . . so in actuality, my webcomic keeps me healthy. It's the way other people treat their webcomics that makes me sick, makes me want to stop reading, makes me furious for ever liking their comic to begin with... and believe it or not, it makes me even MORE upset than the average reader of such a comic, because it makes my job that much more difficult.

So, please, if you have a comic . . . for my sake and everyone else's, learn this:

Respect.
Your.
Readers.

This is not optional. If you want to stand ANY chance of going anywhere in webcomics -- and I don't care if anywhere is becoming DC/Marvel's lapdog, or printing your book, or even just making a little money on the side -- you need to learn this.

Ask any fan of webcomics, and they all have a story about how they were "burned" by less scrupulous artists: either their idols were a little too rude to a fan or three at a convention, online drama erupted that somehow managed to become part of the folklore of the site, they slowed down to the point nobody knew when the story was going to pick up again, or even (God Forbid!) they stopped working on the comic just before the story was about to end.

Yes, creating content about your stories, crafting beautiful panels and imagery, organizing your website for appropriate content . . . this is all important, perhaps even necessary. In spite of this, so many people seem to forget that starting a comic (especially one that contains a story) is supposed to be a general contract between an artist that they will do what they can to tell the story, and in turn readers will reward the artist for this with patronage and profits. Stop the story before it's done (or before you can at least bring it to a satisfying conclusion), you break the contract. Give people what they wanted all along, and you'll be a hero for it.

Difficult? Sure . . . but at the same time, for every person who makes a great-looking comic they can't continue, there's an artist struggling against this stereotype that webcomics are not "serious" ventures -- that they're made to be abandoned as soon as the artist lands a real job / turns sixteen / loses their virginity. I can't tell you how many times people have told me they're so shocked that a once-a-week comic could actually captivate and keep them panting for the next page just like a daily comic . . .

. . . and this is without including the fact my father told me over lunch at MomoCon how impressed he was with what I was doing, since most comics that fail tend to crap out around the hundred-strip point.

Yes, I know I'm only up to 80 pages right now, but it only underscores how ridiculously low the bar is set for webcomics.

(EDIT: As of July 8, 2008, I'm about to reach the hundred-strip point, and I'm starting to see WHY folks crap out. Yeesh.)

It's not my fault that people have these expectations about webcomics and are shocked to find a comic where, somehow, it manages to do simple things like help the reader find all the information they want, updates when it says it does, and god forbid, doesn't insult the reader's intelligence. And as much as I would be justified naming a few especially bad examples of this, even among popular, "successful" webcomics . . . if there's one thing I actually find relevant from reading about people like Judith Butler in class, it's that expectations like this come from only one thing: sedimentation.

(And yes, I'm as shocked as you are that I somehow managed to relate a feminist philosopher to a rant about webcomics. My apologies. I'll try harder in the future not to drag my schoolwork into the blog.)

One thing stacks on top of everything else and continues ad infinitum until it becomes accepted. Every Dead Piro Day, every Guest Comic, every Filler update, every "I swear I'll update in a few weeks!" post . . . it all adds up to this expectation that webcomics are unreliable, and damn it, sooner or later everyone decides this is just how webcomics work.

The only way to fix it is to start becoming reliable, and realizing that if you expect to survive off the generosity of others, you damn well better give them something for it. Maybe not necessarily what they want (though it helps), but at least what you say you'll give 'em. Of course, there's more than reliability involved, but it's far and away the most obvious show of respect. The next trick, of course, is how to make it clear to new readers that you have their best interests at heart too.

If you're willing to do what you can to help, I don't have all the answers up yet (though here are some steps in the right direction), but that's easily fixed with a little bit of time... and a subscription to the RSS feed, if you're not already on it.

You owe it to yourself. You owe it to your readers. You don't have to put them before your own health or anything crazy; but you do have to remember that they're here for you because you offer them something special.

Don't blow it.

9 Ways to Max out your EntreCard

Did you know there's a quick, cheap way to double or even triple your blog's traffic overnight? It sounds too good to be true -- and to hear it from some people, it is. But that doesn't mean it still doesn't work.

The idea of a huge traffic spike for almost no effort seems weird, but for all the complaints that "big" bloggers have about EntreCard, it actually improved my general statistics in the first week by leaps and bounds compared to some nearly ALL of my other attempts. 50% more subscribers practically overnight (even if most of them did disappear the next day), a ridiculous number of hits (which could only HELP with Project Wonderful), and a better bounce rate than what I'd been enjoying otherwise - and considering that most other bloggers find those same rates horrific, I assume one of the following:

• Entrecard really IS that good for blogs, at least for smaller ones that could use the traffic.
  
• The "Newbie Bonus" coming into the site is amazingly inflated compared to what it's worth in the long run.
  
• My previous efforts promoting the blog really were that amazingly awful. (given that I consider an 80% bounce rate an improvement, this may deserve more weight than I'm giving it.)
  

So what is it? Entrecard involves putting a little widget (not much bigger than a 125x125 ad) on your site. Other users can click the widget and drop off their cards, generating virtual credits for you (for recieving the card) and for them (for giving you their card). You can then use these credits to advertise in other people's widgets, or receive even more credits for letting people advertise in yours. Put Simply, it's Link Karma.

So far, I've used the site for about a week, and since so much of Entrecard's success depends on the sites and people that use it... here's what you need to know to get the most out of Entrecard:

1. Get an Image Card. A GOOD image card. Seriously, most of these bloggers don't know a raster from a Rastafarian. A good-looking card gets you more traffic, plain and simple. (and if you're clever, SELL some of these guys your image-making skills.) If that's not enough incentive, keep in mind that a lot of folks (like me) aren't going to give advertising space to a text ad so readily as they will a slick image.
   
2. Effort in == Effort out. Drop Cards regularly, and it comes back to you; link karma at its purest. This is probably why people who 'naturally' get 100+ hits a day or more complain about Entrecard: it's too much work to run around dropping cards when other methods deliver better returns!
   
3. If you're complaining about a high bounce rate... maybe it's not Entrecard's fault, y'know? Sturgeon's Law applies to just about everything, and in a place where you're bound to be exposed to all of it, that 90% is going to look bloody awful. If your site has ANY sense of aesthetics to it, you'll come out on top. If you honestly need to purchase a sense of aesthetics, there's plenty of people around who can help, and some of 'em will even do it for more free credits!
   
4. Never use the "Slim Widget"! It's not rocket science, it's Fitts's Law. For those who don't speak programmer, here's a rough translation: The bigger the target is, the easier a time people have to hit it. In a sea of 125 x 125 ads, that means the only way I can spot someone with a slim widget is if I see the little, yellow Entrecard bar! If you want droppers, you need to make sure people can tell where your widget is.
5. In fact, use the 200x127 "Medium Widget". It's just the right odd size that it's easily recognizable as an Entrecard widget, and not merely two 125x125 ads stuck together. And for those using Blogger, it's just the right width for your sidebars! (No, really, it's the perfect size. I'm using it now, even.)
   
6. Don't put your Widget at the top, but don't bury it among six Project Wonderful ads either. Chaindroppers (people who just follow chains of widget ads to drop their cards) click in, drop, click onto the next blog, and so on. While forcing them to henpeck for the ad is bad, at least make them go below the fold so they have to at least look at the rest of your stuff. Speaking from experience, sites like SiteHoppin' make it way too easy to just click, hop, and run . . . experiment a little to find the balance between making it too easy and frustrating the end-user.
   
7. Speaking of Project Wonderful . . . their square ads are the exact same size as the widgets -- 125x125 pixels. This means if an Entrecarder wants space on your page but isn't about to gain a free ad from you, they can pay for it! Just make sure you keep your square ads separated enough from the Entrecard Widget not to confuse people.
   
8. Start aligning yourself with other Entrecarders. Most (but not all) of the sites using Entrecard are also using other Web 2.0 sites and tools like Twitter, StumbleUpon, Facebook... *cough* or writing articles designed to target other Entrecarders who happen to be rushing past your site in the hopes of attracting a quick boost.
   
9. Write me a recommendation! Okay, this tip won't necessarily help YOU with Entrecard, but it does highlight that there's more to this site than clicks and card drops. Recommendations, Favorites, and other useful details of the site make you look more respectable, and since (at least from a site-side perspective) recommendations are key to building a reputation, they're worth seeking out. Recieiving them isn't easy, though, so if you're willing to help me, I'll find a way to return the favor. (Might be a few extra drops, might be a recommendation back... depends how good I find your site in return.)

There's finer points to all of this, and a few other things that can be done as well -- contests, hanging out in the forums, using the Project Wonderful ads on the Entrecard site -- but all of these fixes are simple, free, and stuff you need to be doing anyway, not just for a special segment. Catering exclusively to Entrecarders is a recipe for disaster, sure, but with a few tweaks to the formula, you'll find your rates skyrocketing (and your credit count rising!) in no time.

10 Things Every Webcomic Creator Should Know (About Getting Rich)

1. The odds of making money off Webcomic X are against you. Do the math: there's approximately 11,000 webcomics out there, according to thewebcomiclist. Maybe 100 of those are making a decent amount of cash. That's less than 1% of all the comics out there.
2. The good news is, the same odds apply to almost any business field out there, Restaurants, Magazines, Bakeries... almost 90% of businesses fail in the first year, PERIOD. Consider yourself lucky that you're trying in a field that doesn't require significant financial outlays.
   
3. Making a webcomic doesn't have to be expensive, but it's not free either. If nothing else, your time and the money you could be making for that amount of time is the cost involved.
   
4. Don't think you can get away with doing less for your comic and still doing well. Yes, webcomics are a great place for artistic shortcuts, but people STILL give Tim Buckley about how much copypaste he does in Ctrl+Alt+Del.
   
5. The less work you do, the more you should have to show for it. People are far more forgiving if a beautifully done piece of work only shows up once a week. Likewise, if it's stick figures, you ought to have plenty of new material up often (unless you're Xkcd, in which case your writing better be what holds you up)
   
6. Some people will always be attracted to your work. Others won't. Not everyone likes manga, or furry, or superheroes, or hell, naturists. Deal with it and run from there.
   
7. As soon as you find the ones willing to help you out, keep them nearby as long as you can. Everyone needs a couple die-hards, groupies, whatever you want to call 'em, and if they're friends in high places, so much the better.
   
8. Nothing you do will result in a get-rich-quick scheme. This is the internet, after all. If we knew of one, everybody would be doing it.
   
9. A lot of things you do, on the other hand, will each net a little money. THIS is how you support yourself; a little here, a little there, and so on. In my case, we're talking a donations button, some Project Wonderful ads, and (coming soon) a little supplementary income from conventions. It's not even enough to cover tuition at this point, but for what's effectively eight month's worth of work, it ain't bad either.
   
10. The minute you stop looking for new ideas is the minute you start losing money. We're not saying you have to try a new hairbrained scheme each day, but paying attention to what you're doing and tweaking it to get rid of what doesn't work while capitalizing on what DOES work, will net you more in the long run.
    

So . . . if you're reading this, you probably haven't been paying attention to at least one of these details before now. Mind posting a comment to tell me which one? Curious minds want to know!

Like this Post? Lots of other people do, too! You should subscribe to my RSS Feed to make sure you can get more like it, along with all the other great posts on this blog!

An Admission

Somewhere in between trying to glean some sort of clue from CopyBlogger, following GapingVoid, combing my stats on Google Analytics and trying to figure out how to make more than a few pennies a day on Project Wonderful, it hits me that I have no clue what I'm doing. This is a little more significant than it sounds, especially considering that I'm admitting it on a blog where I claim to talk about how to make a comic bigger, better, and God forbid, profitable.

The truth is, whether I care to admit it or not, is that if I had a clue what I was doing and wasn't merely just parroting what I've heard several times over from Blog A and Convention B, I might be doing a little better than I am now. The keyword is "might", as I have a better understanding for the amount of time one has to invest in a webcomic before people actually start reading, but at the same time I know this is a certain level of arrogance. It takes time, sure, but that doesn't mean there aren't short-circuits to the process. However naive I may be about my own chances of success, I know that merely "doing it for myself first" and other suicide notes of the starving artist are not enough.

The approach of the blog has been a little different than that of the comic, and perhaps that's a mistake. Reading my random thoughts aimed for someone who knows less than I do isn't interesting to the average reader of Last Resort, and believe me, I can tell. Just because I can figure out how to somehow make my blog read more like something I find on one of those "how to blog" blogs because I somehow think that because I like reading the things, that regurgitating it with a focus on webcomics somehow makes it more special doesn't necessarily mean it WORKS.

Sure, the idea is pretty straightforward — show how to run a webcomic with some of the tricks that bloggers have used for a while, sound halfway intelligent, and get some ancillary karma out of the deal — but the truth is that while I'm still learning a lot of this, anyone who already wants to think like this is either already going to the source or doing it better, and anyone who doesn't know better probably doesn't even know where to find this.

So . . . maybe it's time to change things up a little. I don't think I'll totally hold my tongue about stuff that sounds like good ideas, but I might hold my tongue on some of it, at least until I get the blogger-jargon taste out of my mouth for a couple days first.

5 Reasons you need to Leave Free Webcomic Hosting.

We know the sites thatget thrown in our faces week after week: ComicGenesis, SmackJeeves, DrunkDuck, WebcomicsNation... and yes, they have a place in the webcomics world, to encourage new people to post comics.

But if you're here, you're probably doing this seriously to begin with. That means it's time to ditch the womb.

1. It looks lame. Webcomics get knocked enough as is. If you want to be given any respect, you need your comic not to scream "Geocities Hosting". Sure, it's possible for your stuff to still look classy on free hosting, but not on those sites. Every tweenager is using those sites to impress the girl they're trying to get to second base with, and if you're not a tweenager, you don't need to be there. (And even if you are a tweenager, have a little class, okay?)
   
2. The URLs are ugly. A domain name is 'only' $10 a year. If you have any talent or desire to make your comic awesome, you should get one for the ego boost. And even if it's just a hobby, $10 a year isn't that much to spend; if you're like me, you'll waste far more on "How to draw better" books. I speak from experience on this; you can't expect people to take "lastresort.xepher.net" as seriously as they do "lastres0rt.com". They've already been conditioned into .com worship, so take advantage of that.
   
3. You should be doing this seriously. If you're not, just leave now. There's no reason to try and make your "I just draw on the weekends and post whatever looks good up" comic sound like it deserves the same respect Penny Arcade does. You want the respect, you put in the effort that deserves it, and that means finding hosting that doesn't suck. Deal?
   
4. Real business requires risk. No pain, no gain, as they say. Besides, spending money forces you to work harder at it in order to justify the money spent — it's called "World of Warcraft Syndrome". For something you're supposed to be working on like your webcomic, it's not a bad idea.
   
5. Don't, and you can kiss your Wikipedia notability goodbye. Comic conglomerates aren't powerful, let alone notable, and pretending that your comic will somehow 'elevate' the entire hosting system is ridiculous. I've seen it happen time and again where because the entire webcomic hosting site is only #X in the Alexa rankings, that your comic is also worse than #X (and thus worth deleting from Wikipedia), and quite frankly that's not going to get you respectability anytime soon.

Business has always required some type of expense involved in order to make profit; that's how business works. That your medium is the internet doesn't mean you can get away with 'no' expense; just significantly reduced expense. It's one thing to start on free hosting while you're just starting, but after a year (if not sooner), it's time to cut the cord.

Take some responsibility for your work, and it'll pay off later. Big time.

In Defense of Giving your Work Away:

(a.k.a. "The edge Cartoonists have over the RIAA")

This post is a glorified response to an interview over at kottke with Cory Doctorow, who apparently has some fairly strong opinions about giving away your work. Naturally, there're a few hecklers in the comments who don't "get it". This would be a fine argument to sit on the fence of, except I know of at least one stable business model that basically thrives on 'Giving Work Away', and since I'm reposting my remarks (more or less), you can take a guess what I'm referring to: Comics, comics, and more comics.

For years, people only paid for their newspaper comics as an incidental part of the newspaper; to children and adults alike, such work was essentially 'free' for them, because newspapers were a given and the news content of the paper was what was truly 'paid for', and not the comics, except when they bought the books and merchandise. The system had hiccups, the way any general monopoly does, but for several decades this model worked out fairly well for cartoonists (at least the ones that "made it", anyway).

The internet equivalent is in webcomics, with several key differences; no editorial process, no risk of a risque strip being yanked, no pre-payment from newspapers to publish and carry the work. One would expect that, if comics worked the way books and music work, they would charge people just to see the pages.

Yet they don't. All their work is free to view, and in most cases, so are the archives, making it harder to justify book sales. And yet there are probably just as many (if not more) people profiting off of webcomics, even if these profits are not as big (yet) as the average person appearing in newspapers. These cartoonists are just as niche, just as specialized, have just as much to lose, and yet they thrive, even when the majority of their work is just 'given' away.

Why? Because cartoonists work constantly. There is always 'another day' to cover, another page in the story, another advancement of the tale, and thus each individual page is cheap and worthless without the rest of the story. That commitment to the work's creator (and NOT their work itself) is the most important vector for profit. Nobody 'cares' about DMFA; they like it, sure, maybe even love it, but they care about Amber far more. Schlock Mercenary is good, but Howard Tayler is better.

The comics are an elaborate lure designed to make you want more, and recognize the hand that feeds; the person behind the comics becomes center stage. And it's not just comics; the whole "2.0" revolution is based around this idea. Jonathan Coulton's songs and Hugh MacLeod's cartoons are proof that stable models can be built around people, and not just items. The work is worthless without the creator, and so giving away the work is exactly what they WANT to happen, because as long as people can follow the lure back to the hook, everyone gets what they want.

The way songs (and other media) are done now, though, there's no lure past the song itself; the song IS the hook, so to speak. So . . . perhaps the reason big, foreboding, faceless companies are afraid of giving away their work is because they know that there's no person behind the work, and so they're subconsciously afraid that once people have it, they won't want anything more from their 'creators'.

No wonder they're scared of file-sharing; it actually forces people to care about something other than material items for a change.

Stay Away from the "Real Artists"

When I'd first started the blog, I had a huge diatribe written out about DeviantArt and how while the site had useful features, the DeviantArt community itself was poisonous and essentially the MySpace of art sites, with the exception that you have to pay good money to DeviantArt to properly assault people's eyeballs. I deleted it for (among other reasons) believing that I was being heavy-handed to blast the place just because they made it too easy for everyone to get a page there; after all, making things easier is something any person starting out in a new field wants to encourage.

After roughly a week's worth of sitting on this, I realized the problem wasn't Sturgeon's Law; it was the presence of the "Professional Internet Artist", which falls in the same vein as the "Internet Tough Guy" but with minimally more marketable drawing skills. They might be big people in a certain corner of the community, or they might actually be pretty decent artists, but the main distinction is that they either:

• Still hang out too much online in certain communites, especially if they work in a digital medium. To be anything worthwhile, yes, becoming known in communities is important to becoming well-known, but at the same time, if you're there too much it's an admission that you've got nothing better to do (which, if you're starting out, is at least partly true) or you're a lazy artist. Being a Lazy Hacker is cool; being a lazy artist isn't.
• Seem to think they know exactly what's wrong with your attitude and your work, but at the same time aren't willing to help you do anything about it. The reason is that they have no incentive to give you any advice other than "go away and come back when you're better", but we'll get to that in a moment.
  

While it'd be all too easy to say they're just assholes for the sake of being assholes, we'll have better luck actually getting to the heart of the difference why (at least if you're going into a niche part of the art market like comics) it's best to just avoid these folk. Most of the rationale can be traced back to a key difference between a 'Professional' Artist versus a 'Professional' Blogger (and let's face it, I keep saying your comic's a blog for a reason): Professional Artists work on individual commission. Professional Bloggers work on collective effort.

As to why this makes a difference, look up to where I mentioned "having no incentive" to be nice to you and give you appropriate criticism. Artists work for money just like everyone else, but they work for only one person's money at a time. Until the artist gets to a level where more people are willing to pay than he's willing to work for, he has to make himself stand out as above the 90% crap line; there's a lot of ways to do this, but the favored method seems to be making everyone else look like crap through criticism.

Criticism can be a subtle form of trolling, in that any sort of response to it tends to make you look like an asshole for questioning it (unless it's really obvious they've overstepped a boundary), while for the person giving the crticism it gives them twofold benefit in making them look better than you are and either forcing you to accept the insult (thus proving them right) or reject it (which gives them an opportunity to label you with a bad attitude, giving them the high road). This isn't to say all criticism is bad, but "You forgot to draw Sonic's ears in" is far less likely to get a bad response than "Your anatomy is awful, I'd never commission someone of such low skill."

Depending on collective effort, meanwhile, is a necessity for comic artists and bloggers alike because there is far more strength banding together for them then there is in standing apart the way freelance artists do. The reasons are obvious: Bloggers depend on collective authority and the connections of the internet to maintain their positions of power, and likewise, comic artists working together can leverage conventions and other money-making opportunities that would otherwise be inaccessible singly.

Comic artists won't have nearly the same level of arrogance regarding their work because they realize that beyond the general skill involved in 'making art', comics require the ability to tell a story as well: this means skill in paneling, lettering, and other comic-specific traits that have to be balanced in along with the ability to make good artwork. Having 'great' artwork is now relative because it has to be balanced in with producing lots of it in a way that is interesting for the reader to follow, and of course, the more you work with other comic artists, the more likely they will draw new fans to you as well; some of the best artists work as parts of a comic collective that assist and support each other by association.

Ergo, comic artists have incentive to be as helpful as possible; a rising tide floats all boats, after all, and anyone who can get new readers into their comic can also bring new readers into everyone else's comic as well as their own. Since comic artists only require a little from everyone instead of depending on one person's commissions, working to get lots of new readers (of which a few will hopefully pay more to get something special!) is a key goal of their work.

So support your local comic artist. You'll be supporting everyone else's too.

Stop Starving Yourself, Stop Starving Yourself...

Starving yourself is bad, mmkay? And the cutting. And the booze. I realize that whatever a man, a woman, two dwarves and a parakeet get up into the privacy of their own home is their business, but for God's sake, man, making yourself feel like crap makes your work feel like crap too.

Whether you really want to admit it or not, your work is an extension of your well-being on top of everything else. Happy artists get work done. Not-so happy artists get work done too, but it probably won't be their best stuff. There's being able to convey certain emotions in your work, and then there's dragging yourself into these deep dark pits where you can't seem to do anything but sit in front of the TV watching The Price is Right and sucking down cheese. Or maybe that's the point in the creative process where you decide to get your character captured and raped by some psychopath. Either way it's not the place to be.

Sure, there's times where pain is acceptable, necessary, and even beneficial. Self-destructive behavior is none of the above. Don't fool yourself into thinking that this is limited to physical actions either: DeviantArt pissing you off because you're not getting enough hits/comments? Stop visiting. E-mail making you mad? Check it less. Troll getting on your case? Block his ass.

The simple matter is that drama, whining, bitching, and moaning in general are turn-offs. Sure, you can still be successful AND be completely emo, but don't expect it to get you further than the ones who look unflappable and know where to cut their losses. It's a reputation thing, and it's not that people won't sympathize with you... it's that if you bitch over everything they'll wonder when you'll start bitching about them instead.

If you don't want to look back on your posts and cringe, stop writing the posts in the first place and spend more time doing something about it.

About Me

Welcome! I'm Rachel Keslensky, and I write Blog of Last Resort, a blog about making webcomics successful, from gathering audiences and finding new tools to widen your reach to making money off your hard labor.

I created the science-fiction webcomic Last Resort (Think Running Man done in the distant future, with a little Disney magic in the mix) and have drawn it for about a year so far, though the story's been in my head at least twice as long.

The blog has several functions, almost all of which should serve as a way to help other bloggers (particularly those that like drawing pretty pictures):

• Talking about advertising systems available for you, such as Project Wonderful (or free advertising systems, like Entrecard) and Web 2.0 gadgets you might find useful either for the traffic boost or for your own purposes, like Skribit, StumbleUpon, and Squidoo!
  
• Sometimes talking specifically about comics, like this article about break panels (or drawing pin-ups that are both flattering and feminist-friendly)
  
• And a few posts about my own comic, both to talk about my comic and to give an example of how pushing a comic brand gets done.
  

I can be reached a number of ways, depending on how you plan on getting a hold of me: the easiest is to email me at rach@lid.cc in order to get my ear best. I'm also using plenty of nifty social sites that you can friend me on:

• StumbleUpon
• Digg
• Twitter
• Squidoo
  

Other than that, consider using the Skribit widget on the sidebar to suggest new article topics, or hanging out in the Last Resort forums to comment on the comic or otherwise suggest something interesting for it.

And if you really like the blog? Subscribe to it!