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Okay, right off, asking me how you can break into comics might seem a bit silly. For one thing, I’ve never worked on comic books professionally. That right there is the number one reason that I shouldn’t be your first source for information. But wait! Regardless of that specific and seemingly obvious barrier, I have picked up a thing or two by spending the better part of a decade wondering about this same question. In that time, I’ve read and listened to a lot of interviews and talked to more than my fair share of comic book pros, both artists and writers about this very subject. As I can’t draw, I’ll likely focus more on getting into writing comics, but artists can probably pick up a thing or two. Since I’m on the same road as so many other people, I thought I’d share some of the knowledge I’ve picked up along the way. Granted, as others are trying to break in and get published at the same time as me, you’re technically competition, so all my advice should be suspect. Your funeral. No, I’m totally kidding.

I’m not.

Anyway.

First things first, you have to decide what kind of comics you want to make. Do you want to work for Marvel or DC? Do you want to make simple autobiographical comics? Figure it out, and learn how to get noticed by the people you need to notice you. Find a pro who has a career like the one you want, and study it. What did they do? Once you think you have a handle on that, let it go, because if I’ve learned nothing else, no one has broken in to comics in the same way as someone else. There’s no right way. However, as a rule, you’re not going to get any work at the big 2 without having been published somewhere else first.

The quickest way to fail is to talk about making comics, but never actually do it. Do you want to create comics? Good news! There’s nothing stopping you. Do it. In fact, no matter what kind of comics you want to do, you should go ahead and start making them now. Get them made, and post them on the web, and get as many people as you can to look at them. But the fact is this, if you want to make comics, start making them. The longer you put it off, the harder and longer it’s going to be. Make any excuse you want, but if you’re not working towards producing comics, you’re not going to get anywhere. If you want to make superhero comics, come up with your own, and start crafting interesting and unique stories. Your first efforts will most likely be terrible. If you don’t think they are, wait ten years, go back and read them. You will cringe with terror. If that sounds awful or too hard, give it up right now. It’s going to get a lot harder. I realize this sounds harsh, but if you’re talking about getting paid for, and making a living from comic books, you need to get started. No one who wants to be in a band talks about learning to play guitar and doesn’t do it.

If you can’t draw, you’ve got to find someone who can and will. This part is tedious, awful, and could take years. It might even be faster to learn how to draw yourself. I’m not going to lie. Unless you have a fat wallet, finding a collaborator with skill, and with whom you get along is really incredibly hard. Do you realize how lucky Robert Kirkman is to have had Tony Moore as a friend when he was young?

But the best thing to be learned from Robert Kirkman, like his comics or not, is that he made his success happen. He knew what he wanted to do when he was very young, and he just started making comics. He made Battle Pope, to this day the only comic book I’ve ever bought based on the title alone. I literally went to the store the next day and asked for the book. The retailer had no idea what I was talking about, and it took him 2 months to get it, but Kirkman got me that easy. He was still a teenager at the time, and he self published his book, which lead to further opportunities, and now he’s a partner at Image and has the best-selling independent comic books on the market. Brian Michael Bendis worked for 10 years on money-losing independent comics before becoming the biggest name at Marvel Comics. Even indie guys do their time in the trenches, making mini-comics, and web-publishing waiting for someone to notice them and connect with the work. You have to be tenacious at whatever you want to do. The longer you don’t do anything, the longer nothing will happen.

I truly believe that there are people out there who have, inside them, the greatest novels, comic book story, or screenplay, but we’ll never know it, because they never took the time or made the effort to actually write it. At the same time, there are many people who don’t have as much talent, but they’ve got drive and ambition. So, while talent is all well and good, it doesn’t mean anything if you don’t work hard. Also, it’s nearly impossible to judge oneself, so if you want to create, but don’t think you have the talent, that’s just fear stopping you from succeeding. I don’t think I’m the world’s greatest writer (maybe #3-4. Top 10 definitely), but when I read other people’s work, I very often think, “oh, there’s no way I can do that.” At the same time, that person is looking at someone else’s work, and thinking “oh, there’s no way I can do that,” unless of course it’s the megalomaniacal Joe Casey, who doesn’t think there’s anyone better than him. Learn from other people’s work, but don’t let the success of others stop you from going forward.  If you look at other work and say “I can’t do that!” it becomes instantly true.

Now that you’re built up, and have your affirmations all set, you’re ready to make comics. Because it turns out I have more good advice than I can fit into one column, come back next week for part 2. I’ll get into more specifics I’ve learned, as well as the ugly importance of networking, both virtually and in the grimy, hellish real world.

 

 

 

Okay, I will admit it. I told Ron I was going to do a review of Watchmen: Justice is Coming (iTunes link) and I really believed I was going to write such a thing, but, my friends, in that regard, I am going to fail you. I can’t give you a review of the game because by the time I would be able to provide a thoughtful analysis and commentary on this game, it would be 2011.  What I will do, however, is give you my experience with the game so far and tell you what works and what does not.

(Can I just tell you that I haven’t bought new books in three weeks and I am scared to death of my pull box, yet at the same time, can’t wait to get back into things? Well, I am, on both accounts. Next week, I will be back to discussing actual comic books, I promise.)

So, yes. Watchmen: Justice is Coming is a game for the iPhone and iPod touch. Right now, it is being offered for 99¢ as a kind of introductory promotion. The big feature with this game is that it’s apparently an MMO (massively multiplayer online) game, yet when I played it last night, I bumped into exactly one other “real” person. If and when you do bump into that person, you can chat and fight with him or her, just like in real life. The game features “rich real time 3D graphics”, which means, I guess that the graphics are mildly immersive and move around as you move around (real time). I work in a software company so I understand the allure of using buzzwords to describe your product, but come on–the graphics look okay, they pixelate like mad depending on what you are viewing, and, yes, of course they are in real time because your little character moves around in them but, in the end, they are pretty basic. (Super Monkey Ball is much more immersive, if I have to give you something to compare it to). It also features a music sample that is repeated, over and over and over again… more on that later.

The game itself wants to be a little like Grand Theft Auto — you basically appear in the middle of New York City and are left to your own (mobile) devices to figure out what you are supposed to do. I guess there was a plague because I played this game and I bumped into a total of 7 other characters — one real player and six “Knot Top” enemies. The game features lots of vehicles that you cannot drive and lots and lots of shops, theaters and other locations that you cannot walk into. In fact, in the tutorial, the first thing that is discussed is that you can look inside of dumpsters to find items. It should be called Watchmen: You are Homeless.

Now, when you do bump into another character, you are supposed to fight them, because, I guess, you are some kind of vigilante (no one told me, at any point, what I am supposed to do in this game). Fighting is turned based, meaning that you have a turn then you have another turn and then you have another turn. The game moves away from the 3/4 view into a sort of Street Fighter view and then, while a clock winds down, you can click on one of three fighting/blocking actions. Now, you can add new actions as you get more experience, but you only have three at any given time (as far as I can tell). I think that some moves are more useful if you hit the attack button towards the beginning or the end of the countdown, but the clock that counts down kept skipping backwards in time, so I just hit the kick attack immediately and I won every fight (okay, I did an elbow strike too). But as far I could tell, timing had nothing to do with anything. When you defeat the other character you get experience, which I guess lets you go up levels, which I guess lets you get new attack/block moves. During the fight itself, the same music plays  — there are no sound effects during the fight itself (even a grunt or a wheeze would have been nice), but, like the rest of the game, it’s all eerily quiet. I suppose that perhaps the timing might make a difference when playing a real person, but, like I said, I haven’t seen more than one person since I started playing two days ago. But the game is still new, so that might change.

Now, the reason why a full review of this game won’t come out until 2011: every time you start a game session, after every single fight and after every time you go to a new map, the game has to load the level, which involves hearing the same music that you play to and a full on fly-through of the whole level, which can take anywhere from 60-90 seconds, at least. Like, maybe longer, depending on the level. This does not sound like a lot, perhaps, when you read it now, but like, it drove me crazy, especially since the maps I was on kept ended with a tight zoom onto some graffiti that said “The End is Nigh” — which, I get it, it’s in the book and it’s the end of the flyby, but, I mean, it takes away any kind of spontaneity and just kind of ticked me off. The first few times I kept hitting the screen to see if i could skip it, but no… you must fly through!!

This loading screen is significant because it’s grabbing data from a server. You see, since it’s an MMO, you make a character with a name and a password (stored, oddly in plain view, so you can see it, which is… different), so you have to log in each time to play it — the game requires a constant online connection to play. I did not notice a difference better playing it on the normal (non 3G) Edge network and my regular wireless connection, which was surprising. I guess people are irritated that you need to be online, which makes sense if you are an iPod touch user since you would have to be near a wifi spot to play the game.  

The game suffers that same fate that all applications on the iPhone do — if a phone call comes in, the game quits so you can take the call. After you are done with the call, the game automatically launches again so you can play — but you still have to suffer through the fly-through sequence.

The graphics are okay. I didn’t find them especially rich, even when I looked really closely, but the shimmery reflections and everything all look pretty good, but nothing jaw dropping. You can customize your character with various clothes and hairstyles, which I guess keeps things fresh, but you only really see the clothing differences when you are fighting. The environment is distressingly static. Except for you and the other players and enemies, there are no other people walking or driving around — it’s a total ghost town. There are no ambient sounds so although the game’s graphics are mildly immersive (especially if you put the device right in front of your eyes), there is no sound to make it more interesting. Just the same music clip. Over and over again.

The controls are extremely basic. You use your finger to aim the character in a direction to stroll (I haven’t been able to make my guy run) and that’s about the only interactivity in the game. Tilting and moving the device does nothing. The sound is almost non existent, except for the endlessly looping music. The game does not vibrate when you get hit during combat or anything cool like that. In addition to walking around, you can walk into a subway and be transported to a different game area, which you get to see much of during the fly-through when you arrive at your stop. I was not able to enter any vehicles and drive around, which is a shame because there are a lot of them parked around.  

Finally, the game is pretty buggy. I was booted off the server a few times when I first started playing, and there was one character that when I tried to fight would disconnect from the server. Every time you disconnect from the server, you have to go through the fly-through again, of course. The graphics were extremely buggy, especially during the fighting, with considerable clipping and skipping around. I assume much of this can be fixed, but overall, this really felt more like a late beta than a real release.

As you can probably tell, I do not really like the game. I appreciate that it’s only 99¢, since it’s a pretty easy thing to check out, but I doubt I will be interested in the game even if I start meeting more real people and, uhm, getting better clothing. It’s just that there was no hook to make me feel like I was part of a story, I literally was just this guy walking around, beating up people. There are apparently story points that I can collect, but, seriously, it takes so long to go between levels that I just couldn’t stomach going to more than a few of them. Gathering experience points by fighting was not attractive, either, because of the fly-throughs. So, I didn’t want to explore and I didn’t want to fight. Not a good thing for a game that is all about walking around and fighting people.

The game deserves some credit, though. The graphics are pretty solid, considering that it’s running on a mobile device and the idea of an MMO on a mobile device is pretty exciting. It would be fun to have a local network aspect to the game, where you could get a group of people to explore the game together, but, again, the loading fly-through portion of the game just makes the game impossible to sit through. You just lose any kind of momentum and drive to get through the story, and we all know that a successful plot is all about momentum. What if you had to sit through the opening credits of a TV show after every commercial — and couldn’t fast forward through either? You would just give up, which is what I did last night.  

Watchmen: Justice is Coming is an interesting attempt to do something different, but in the end, the actual implementation just does not work. You can’t waste people’s time when they are actively wasting time playing a game, you know? The loading screen between each and every significant event kills the game and until the fix that issue (highly unlikely), I cannot recommend you paying even the 99¢ for it. I like that they took an aspect of the story and made that into the game and although I guess it might be possible that we see other characters and plot points of the book in the game, I doubt anyone will be able to play it long enough to see them. Save your money, put down your phone, and go read a comic.

Up late, prowling the streets of Hollywood, looking for a Mexican restaurant I’m not sure exists. I’m surly and jacked up from drinking five vending machine Caribou Coffees. Hunger mixes with irritation and gradually gives way to paranoia. It’s four days until the inauguration. What if there’s a disaster? And what if it takes out both the outgoing President and the President-Elect? And furthermore, what if Vice President Cheney, who slimes into the oval office at the last minute and then declares martial law, has clandestinely orchestrated it all? And then… and then, what if he starts selling China prime pieces of America like Yellowstone and the Wisconsin Dells? And the reason he gives is that we must pump money into the government to make up for the bailouts to the banks and big corporations — that he secretly controls. My God, it’s brilliant! And then, pockets bulging with untold billions, the loathsome Surinam toad skips the US for his recently purchased island stronghold – Australia – just like Lex Luthor in Superman II. Yes, yes, it all makes sense. I finally reach the Mexican restaurant – it’s closed. Curse you, Cheney. Curse you, Caribou Coffee. I limp home to not sleep.

 

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Paul Dini is the Emmy and Eisner Award winning writer of Batman: The Animated Series, Superman: The Animated Series, Detective Comics, Countdown among many, many other things. You can find him online at either kingofbreakfast.livejournal.com or http://www.jinglebelle.com/.

 

In my previous article, I celebrated the things in comics that made me happy and were good. I had to work to limit that article to just 5 things which was a wonderful problem to have. This week, we take the good with the bad as I want to take a moment to look at the 5 worst things about comic books. It may seem negative, but how else will we be able to make sure we don’t make the same mistakes in 2009 unless we’re up front about the things that frustrated us about comics last year?

The 5 Worst Things About Comics in 2008
(in no particular order)

The Prices of Comics
The topic of the price of comics was one that began quietly in early 2008 that built up to a fervor towards the end of the year. I believe Augie DeBlick Jr. of the Pipeline Commentary and Review was the first person I heard mention that the $3.99 price point would be gaining traction in 2008. Month in and month out, we noted that the prices were slowly moving up across the publishers. There was some excellent discussion on this very site about the price of comics that led to things like Top Cow’s pledge to keep books priced at $2.99. The reality of the situation is that prices go up. They’ve always gone up. I remember when comics went from $1.00 to $1.25. I was livid. But that’s life and inflation. But at $3.99, the question becomes, is the price worth it month in and month out? That question leads to the thought that there are better solutions, like $1.99 shorter comics like Fell and Casanova… but when was the last time you saw an issue of either of those series? The cold hard facts is that prices will go up and there’s really nothing we can do about it other that be more discerning with our purchases.

 

Fatigue #1 – Event Fatigue
Who’s sick of hearing the term “Event Fatigue”? I sure am. And yet that seems like all anyone could talk about in 2008, as Marvel and DC Comics rolled their huge, comic line changing events: Secret Invasion and Final Crisis. The argument to this is that comics have always been event based going back at least 20 years, if not more. But for some reason the build up of the recent 5 years or so of Civil Wars and World War Hulks and 52s and Countdowns have worn us down as readers. I don’t know anyone who giggles with glee when they see that checklist page at the back of a book, outlining the 20+ issues you need to buy to read everything for the latest event. Of course the publishers tell us that we don’t need to buy every title associated with the event, but that comes off as double speak to me. If we didn’t, then why even put them under the event banner at all? Marvel and DC seem to want to have it both ways, and unfortunately in 2008, readers exhaled and yelled “I’m tired!”

 

Fatigue #2 – Creator Owned vs. Company Work
Remember Robert Kirkman’s missive about how more creators should be doing creator owned work? And remember when Bendis reacted, very uncharactistically personally, on Word Balloon? And then remember when Bendis and Kirkman faced off at the Baltimore Comic-Con? Those were some exciting times and admittedly we were right there for a couple of months talking about this issue and even brought you the only video coverage of the Baltimore Comic-Con panel, as well as interviews with Bendis and Kirkman. Now while this was a great topic to discuss and one the industry needed to hear, in my opinion, I have to admit that by October even I was a little tired of it.  At some point the conversation turned a corner and no one was listening to each other anymore and my thought was “okay enough, go make good comics!” Although I still believe the moment Kirkman whipped out those sales graphs at the panel was a highlight of the year.

 

 

Great Comic Books Can’t Make It
Two of the things I celebrated in the 5 Best Things About Comics was the great new crop of talent as well as the existence and success of super-hero comics.  It’s with a heavy heart that I write about this topic. Sadly, the way things are going, there are really good books by great creators that just aren’t going to make it. Rick Remender posted on Twitter a few weeks ago that the next Fear Agent arc would be the last (he later amended it to, “The last for a while“). Phonogram: The Singles Club‘s shipping schedule is delayed because the book isn’t making any money in issues. The list goes on and on. And it’s not just independent books, but awesome comics from Marvel, DC and Vertigo are constantly on the precipice of cancellation. I love Paul Cornell’s Captain Britain and the MI:13 series, but a part of me wonders how long until the axe drops on that? We saw The Exterminators, one of the cleverest books at Vertigo get canceled, and it seems that as great as Scalped is, everyone is waiting for the cancelation shoe to drop. I hope I’m wrong about this, but as I look at the sales charts I see title after title that I want to read on an ongoing basis barely selling 6,000 copies monthly. And yet Avengers and Batman roll on, selling hundreds of thousand copies. I don’t know what the answer is to this one. The price of comics issue probably affects these books the most, but hopefully in 2009 people will continue to try new titles and we can see a new batch of comics establish success. We’ve seen Robert Kirkman do it with The Walking Dead and Invincible, so we know it’s possible.

 

The Walls Are Breaking Down
Comics has a long lasting tradition of interaction between creators and fans. Starting out in the letters pages, leading to amazing experiences at conventions to where we are today with the Internet connecting creator and fan in ways never heard of before. Have a question for Bendis or Geoff Johns? Go post in their forums, there’s a good chance you’ll get a response. Do you like Brian K. Vaughan?You can be his MySpace friend. Curious what kind of mood Bryan Lee O’Malley or Brian Wood is in? Just follow them on Twitter. I have to wonder, is this a good thing? Can there be too much interaction between fan and creator? Don’t get me wrong, I love the fact that the world has gotten more social and now we can interact with the companies and people who make the comics we love and I have built a portion of my career based on that. But in the past year I’ve seen message board flame wars, Twitter bickering and all other sorts of digital based negativity that makes me wonder about whether we’re too transparent now? I hope that’s not the case, rather I hope that everyone is just getting used to the new world of communication and 2009 will show people settling down which hopefully involved knowing when to walk away from the keyboard. It’s a tough lesson but one that I think both creators and fans could stand to learn. I’m also curious to see what the conventions are like this year as more people will walk up for an autograph or a sketch and  awkwardly tell a creator “I follow you on Twitter” or “Why won’t you be my Facebook friend?” Awkward times indeed when the digital life crosses over to the real world.

 

And so that wraps up my little dance of negativity around the grave of comic books in 2008. What do you think? Am I full of crap? What did I forget? Tell everyone what you thought the worst things about comics in 2008 were in the comments below.

Here’s to a better year in 2009! Cheers!

 

A second quicker, and the lady might well have slapped my hand.

I was over by electronics when the Blu-ray edition of The Dark Knight caught my eye. I don’t have a Blu-Ray player, but that fact has started to gnaw at the pettiest corners of me. I’m not mad with avarice and desire or anything, but when I pop in my Netflix and they’re just a little bit dark, just a little bit grainier than they could be, I can hear my Mastercard plaintively crying out to me like a siren from the other side of the house.

“They’re getting cheaper!” it says. “You’ll probably still have a job long enough to pay it off!”

I’m ignoring its song for now. I keep waiting for an irresistible disc to come along, though, a disc that will make a convert out of me. Looking back on the year in movies (that I actually saw, which reduces the list of competitors sig-nif-i-cant-ly) The Dark Knight might very well be that disc. I didn’t see any movie– I didn’t see any thing— that I enjoyed more in 2008. Sometimes, when I am in a bad mood, I think, “I could now sit down and watch The Dark Knight any time I wanted,” and I instantly feel a little better. I am cheered up by the potential to watch it.

That’s why, even with no chance of buying the movie, I wandered over towards the shelf to see what special features it had. If there were any deleted Joker scenes included, I might have gone home with a new gadget and some explaining to do. But obviously it had been a good week for The Dark Knight, because the store I was in had only one copy left on the shelf, and as I approached it a middle-aged woman who looked like she needed it as bait to lure children into her gingerbread house saw me eyeballing it and immediately dove for it. She took one look and me and jumped on it like it was the last canned good in the bunker before scuttling off down the Housewares aisle, possibly cradling it and muttering “my preciousssss.”

And I thought, “Ah, now! Now it feels like Christmas.”

While I’m sure it would bring a hot tear to the eye of every priest whose droning about the True Meaning of Christmas ever kept me from getting home to open my presents, I’ve come to realize in recent years that Christmas just doesn’t feel like Christmas for me without the shopping. I know, it’s about family and friends and gathering together in a spirit of kindness and brotherhood and blah blah blah yes fine absolutely but, BUT, if you’re anything like me (I feel bad for you, and) you’ve got to admit that the gathering is that much more special when you’ve found that perfect present for your friend or loved one and gotten to see the look on her face when she opens it, that look that says, “Thank God it’s not another KISS solo album this year.”

I had a stretch of recent years when Christmas never seemed to spark for me; I found myself on the 24th scrunching up my face like Hiro, saying, “Oops, it’s here already. Get in the Christmas spirit… now! Cram a month’s worth of childlike anticipation and warm feelings into the next half hour! Go! Here we go. Any… any minute now. Oh, hey, it’s over. Never mind.” I realized that I had married an organizational titan who planned all of the family gift buying online in October like a military campaign. She was the present-buying equivalent of Danny Ocean; by the time I was even at the point of starting to think, “What should we get Dad?” her second-story man and explosives expert had already absconded from the Bellagio with a tasteful watch or something for him. Nothing was forcing me to think about Christmas, so I didn’t think about it. Now, I always make a point of braving the department stores myself at least a couple of times to force myself to think about how much I love my family, or at least how much more I love them than those parking spot-stealing a-holes at the mall.

I was on one of those adventures in commerce at a Target the other day when the crone saved her kid’s Christmas by stealing The Dark Knight from a guy who didn’t want it. Seeing a twisted harridan clutching at Batman in the name of Baby Jesus made me smile in spite of myself. For one thing, it was yet another product I’d noticed that had a comic as its daddy. I can’t walk into a store like that without noticing; it’s like I have those little Terminator readouts in my eyes as I walk down the aisles. “BOY’S IRON MAN BATHROBE. ADI GRANOV ART…. SPIDER-MAN BACKPACK. MARK BAGLEY ART…. GREY HULK ACTION FIGURE. ARTIST UNKNOWN…. SUPERMAN LOGO BOXERS. SUPERMAN LOGO CAR AIR FRESHENER. SUPERMAN LOGO GARDENING SHEARS. SUPERMAN LOGO NONSTICK COOKWARE…..”

And that’s before you even get near the DVDs. Spend half an hour wandering the aisles in a Target, and it looks like comic book superheroes are the most dominant force driving the popular culture. As long as you don’t go down the Book aisle.

I can never resist a stroll past the action figures, and this time I noticed some Marvel figures that were created with more care than some of the children they were bought for. I don’t know if it’s a wonderful life, but I do know that if I were ten again right now it would be like Christmas every day. I saw a Union Jack action figure (!!!) with more points of articulation than my actual arm. When I was ten years old, I would have burned a Target down with the sun and a magnifying glass to get Marvel superhero figures like these. Just a decent Cyclops or Colossus would have blown my mind. Now, a ten year old could get a figure of the Silver Surfer as he appeared in one random Hulk comic in 2005… if any ten year old ever laid eyes on that comic.

Sometimes I worry about the future of the medium, and some years I have let that worry seep into my gift buying. Brian K. Vaughan has bought some nice gifts of his own with all the money I’ve sent his way trying to get people hooked on Y: The Last Man at Christmastime, but I don’t know how many of those people ever cracked the spines of those books. Any time you buy a book that isn’t on someone’s wish list, you run the risk of giving someone homework for Christmas. You walk a fine line when you do this kind of gift giving: “Merry Christmas! I got you what I’m into!” It could come off as a genuine attempt to introduce them to something you know they’d love. It could come off as an attempt to have one more thing in common, one more thing to share with a loved one. On the other hand, you could come across like one of those guys handing out the Baghvad-Gita at the airport. “Please accept this copy of the Astonishing X-Men hardcover. Won’t you join us? It’s the friendliest cult you’ll ever love. We have conventions! All the ladies dress like sexy Leia!”

Of course, it does sometimes pay off. Everyone I’ve ever given Scott Pilgrim to has ended up ravenously addicted to Scott Pilgrim. That doesn’t mean my Bush-voting mom is getting a copy of DMZ or Persepolis this year. If it’s not too late for your own shopping excursion (and I sort of hope it is; you’ve got three days!) you might want to take a moment to consider your audience. Maybe start with the Superman cookware and build from there.

Happy holidays!

 

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Jim Mroczkowski is convinced, now that the DVD is out, that Warner Brothers Photoshopped those promotional stills to make Heath Ledger’s hair look green, and nothing you say will convince him otherwise. The undaunted may give it a try at Twitter or Jimski.com.

Imagine, if you will, that every time you went to the comic store, everything was just free. The store was open 24 hours a day, too. And you could actually be in your bed, sitting up, all comfy-like, and have some invisible helpers roll your bed into the comic store and other helpers, also invisible, would bring the comics that you asked for to your bed, and then you could read them. That, dear reader, is how I choose to describe how my morning has been when trying to get a handle on the ramifications of my “best web comics” search a few hours ago. Except that I am not in my bed — but I could be (I’d rather be, actually — I totally have another cold). But still, you spend about 10 minutes checking around for good web comics and, well, it’s a whole new way to burn a few hours, let me tell you.

Web comics have been around a long time (Penny Arcade just celebrated 10 years) but I have never really gotten into them. I mean, read a few (I’ll go over them below), but I even then I don’t read them regularly; I queue them up for a few weeks, or even months, before I go to the website, mostly because the comics tend to be in “strip” form. However, I like idea of web comics for a variety of reasons I will go into starting with the next paragraph.

First off, there’s a certain honesty to them. I mean, compared to a getting your comic published on actual paper or getting a newspaper to add them to the funny pages, web comics are pretty easy to create once you have an idea and some modicum of artistic skill. It doesn’t cost a lot so basically lowers the price of entry to the point that, not unlike in The Matrix, there is no bar. You have a point of view and feel like drawing and typing? Then make a web comic! The flip side? It’s like being a comedian, if your comic sucks, then you suck (or, at least, that’s what you’ll be telling your shrink).

I also like the timeliness. You get a lot of comics that hinge on current events, so some of the web comics carry forth the classic newspaper editorial cartoon just a step further. This goes hand in hand with how focused these strips can be. Check out The Joy of Tech. If you’re a Mac user, you’re probably familiar with it and may even think it’s funny. If you are not, then you probably are incredibly unimpressed and/or it just reinforces the “Mac fanboys are, like, total geeks, jeez” stereotype you have.

Which is what makes this web comics thing so interesting. On the one hand, it’s fun to have a comic where people like you are telling stories that you probably find entertaining, and you can rad these strips with other like-minded folk. On the other hand, it can entrench you so deep in your comfort zone that you find yourself not checking out other comics. I think this actually happened to me. Like, I am a big fan of Penny Arcade. I don’t have any shirts (perhaps the ultimate sign you grok a website), but whenever I go, I tend to laugh out loud at the jokes; I mean, these are jokes that speak to geeks like me like, and since I queue Penny Arcade up for awhile (the aforementioned weeks and even months), I can spend a good amount of time just shuttling through them. It’s actually something I look forward to and it scratches some kind of itch so effectively that I have long stopped even looking for other web comics. Thankfully, I have other friends with more open minds, I guess, who send me links to other comics that, to be honest, I would never have the patience to check out. Take xkcd, for example. Remember when I mentioned a “modicum of skill”? Like this strip is that. It’s the absolute distillation of sequential art and I can barely stand it. Like, I a looking at a page now, but my eye just… it just wants to leave the page and go somewhere else, far far away. But when my friends forward me a particularly good episode/chapter, I really appreciate it and enjoy it.

Which brings me to another point — portability. Being able to forward a comic to another person is awesome. Beyond just comics, there’s just so much stuff out there (books, movies, games, music, etc, etc) that I find myself relying much more on my friends to tell me what’s good. I mean, almost every pick of the week makes me want to pick up a new comic because I trust the guys’ opinion. Same thing with the iFanbase — we’ll talk about different books and invariably someone will chime in, “Hey, you like that, then check this out!” It’s the unexpected “social” aspect of the web — who knew you could spend so much time interacting with so many people when you were by yourself? 

Interlude: My friend Oliver is very much into webcomics — he’s got the RSS Feeds, he’s read a ton, and he knows his stuff. Earlier this year he forwards me Freak Angels by Warren Ellis and Paul Duffield. He had no real idea (nor would he have cared) that Ellis is a “physical” comic book writer — he just thought I would like this cool new (at the time) web comic. It was a funny collision of our interests — I was like, “Oh, you like Warren Ellis?! Then, dude you have to read…” and he wasn’t interested at all, of course, in the regular comics — no time, no money, etc.

So, there are web comics for everyone and yes, this is good and yes this means that we get a dizzying variety of quality, but I have been noticing some of the traits of the more popular ones (as culled together from checking out the many, many “best web comics of/for/with ____” pages out there):

• They are short. Most of the time these are full on 3 and 4 panel strips. Setup, setup, punch! It’s fun to see how creative people can be with this format — I was surprised.

• It seems like a lot of these are for/about/by nerdy men. I don’t have any figures on it, but jeez, a lot of them seem to be this way, since the stories often revolve around:

– videogames

 – girls

– lack of girls

– sex

– lack of sex

– computers

– technology

– work, which often involves computers and a lack of sex and/or girls

• They are loaded with snarky quips, usually deriding whatever is cool to “regular ” people or with some kind of winking at the audience to let you know that they’re being clever

So, nothing wrong with any of these — these strips are serving their audience, right? I definitely found a few that I think I will try to visit more often.

2nd Interlude that actually backs up the rest of the article: This Penny Arcade strip kind of sums it all up for me. It’s got the timeliness (Obama), it’s got the snarky dig at tech that cool people dislike (Zune) and then it makes fun of the very same people my mocking what they like (iPods, Coldplay, The Killers) and how those very same cool people would be pissed (or, at least a little disappointed) if they found out Obama used a Zune, even if for a second and then, surprise — it’s funny, because, you know, what does owning Zune have to do with being able to govern and wouldn’t it be funny (and yet, somehow imaginable) for a a politician’s crew wanting to make statement about the whole thing? Love it, but then again, I’m feel like I’m right in the middle of their target audience…

Obviously, I am excited to have the opportunity to discover new artists and writers.. I am not sure if I would buy a comic of Questionable Content or Ctrl+Alt+Del but I like the art enough to keep visiting (perhaps because I went through a manga phase when I was in high school). It’s fun to see different creators and it’s nice, honestly, not to pay $3-$4 to check out new talent. Another cool feature that these web comics have is the ability to go all the way back to the very first strip — it’s great to see how the writing and the art have changed over the run of the story (the first Penny Arcade strip is virtually indistinguishable from its current form.

I am interested in seeing these kinds of web comics move to mobile devices. I have an iPhone (big surprise) and there are plenty of comics book apps there, which I will have to check out (it looks like they rely on the iVerse Comic Reader Software, which CBR talked about. I like the idea of getting Penny Arcade and other strips sent to my phone automatically — the screen is a perfect size for that particular type of comic, but I guess I will take one for the iFanbase and try to read a regular comic book on it and get back to you. 

So, yay, right? Web comics are a hopeful sign of things to come? Web comics show that an all digital future for comics is something we should be excited about?

Nah, not really. I mean, for the most part, to me, these are separate beasts. I am not convinced, based on my own experience with them, that just because you enjoy printed comics that you’ll necessarily be satisfied with online comics. I am not even sure how to explain it well but it just seems to me that while I think a a year’s worth of web comics collected into a trade is just more satisfying than reading, say, Guardians of the Galaxy or Jonah Hex in thrice-daily chunks. But who knows, maybe you could adjust it. It would definitely change how you related with the story, that’s for sure. You have a different relationship with characters you read about every few days as opposed to once a month.

Still, it’s a big world out there and I can’t help but me inspired by the quality of some of the web comics out there. I wasn’t sure what I was going to find when I ventured outside of my Penny Arcade bubble, and I am glad I did.

How about you? Do you read these things? Which ones? Are there comic books that you buy right now that you think could be effective web comics?

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Mike Romo is an actor in LA. His eyes are still burning from a few of the NSFW web comics his friends sent him. He can be reached at mike@ifanboy.com, followed on Twitter, and if you have an Xbox, his handle is zensen.