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-->September 18, 2004
Eric Burns-White: An acknowledgement, both of an event and of a point.
This is a quote from the author of Comanche, from the Comixpedia thread.
You are completely right, and I have conceded to that before - in its current incarnation, Comanche (as every other comic viewer of the many that are available), is using bandwidth from artists websites without paying for them by displaying the ads! We need a new business model that allows the web artists to get their money when people use the alternative viewers they prefer. This model is nowhere to be seen (and not too many seem to be looking for it).
I have, therefore, made a decision: Until a viable solution is found, I will pull the program from the web! As of now, Comanche isn't available anymore!Yet I don't think you have any reason to be happy about that! There are other comic readers out there, and there will be new ones in the future! Eventually webartists (as well as providers like Keenspot) will have to find a way to incorporate alternative viewing methods into their business model.
(The emphasis was his.)
First off... cool. He recognized the points being raised and he acted. While pandora's box is still well and truly open (and was open before Comanche), he's acted with responsibility and I think he deserves credit for that. It's not easy to do.
Secondly... in the rest of his point....
Well, he's right.
This is something webcomics are going to have to deal with. If not Comanche, than with something else. Some have taken drastic steps already to ensure that rippers have a hard time ripping (I know Something Positive's files have all been renamed to non-sequential things, to prevent automated scarfing).
Pandora's Box is open, and it won't be closed again. And people who deliver content over the web -- and who want to make money doing it, in particular -- are going to have to deal with the result.
He went on to quote Jack Valenti -- as I said in my last snark on the subject, there's been an attempt to conflate Comanche with file sharing and things like the betamax decision. While I don't think the situations are equivalent, there is something to be learned by looking to the past: you can't uninvent technology, and you wouldn't want to try.
So.
How do we do this? How do webcomics creators get to continue their creating and explore new business models without having them circumvented by people who want to read the strips in new ways? Do we have to begin incorporating the advertisements and business models into the structure of the strips themselves? How do we avoid overwhelming bandwidth with larger graphics files then? And there won't be any links involved, then. And people will hate it.
I don't know. I honestly don't have any answers here. And Comanche's author has been right about one thing: the questions have been asked, now.
On the other hand -- this is the internet. No doubt we can find some way to use porn to solve these problems. Porn: is there anything it can't do?
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 3:33 PM | Comments (10)
-->Eric Burns-White: Updates on travels in the (moderately small) city
Ithaca is beautiful today -- the sun is shining and the air is crisp without being cold. I'm wandering the Ithaca Commons looking at things, sipping caffeinated beverages, and stopping off in various places where I can legally connect through the magic of wireless internet access, to tappa tappa tappa on the keys.
At the moment, I'm in the new public library. Its building used to be a Woolworth's, though that went out of business a long time ago. They've essentially rebuilt the building from scratch. It's gorgeous, well stocked and well laid out. This library is fantastic. And of course, wireless internet access and a place to plug my nearly-drained-powerbook in. This is a sizable bonus.
Around four, I'm going to crawl back into my car and drive back out to Frank's house, meeting up with his wife. We'll then drive (in her car -- I'm way exhausted when it comes to driving, right now) to pick Frank up at Cornell where he is working today, and then we'll drive up to see other friends up in Syracuse. We plan on celebrating Talk Like A Pirate Weekend by going to the Carousel Center Mall by riding on the aforementioned carousel. While, naturally, talking like pirates.
Tomorrow is the wedding I'm here to attend, and our second attempt to see Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (I was too tired to go to see it on Friday, as we'd originally planned). And tomorrow should be a restful day for me, as I'm not doing any of that driving. And then Monday I head back to New Hampshire.
This is all going by too fast. I'm remembering how much I love Ithaca with every passing second. I'm taking lots of pictures, too -- including at least one pertinent to Websnark.
In the meantime, please enjoy the hors d'oeuvres.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 3:06 PM | Comments (0)
-->Eric Burns-White: It's been a little while. We're due to look in on Something Positive again. Right? Right?
(From Something Positive. Click on the thumbnail for full sized slashfic wrongness!)
Randy Milholland is guilty! Guilty of having built up a sizable cast, that is. He's good at making them distinctive and giving them depth, while still bringing the Funny even when he brings the Story. This is a good thing. I've really loved the evolution of Monette, started as a one-note joke idiot pseudo-Lesbian character and now one of the sweetest, if still stupid, characters, slowly crawling into the light of full evolution. I've liked how he's been gradually doing the same with Mike. If we reach a point where Jesus Mickey becomes a well fleshed out character, I'll be forced to pay Milholland's beer bills for a month.
But the cost of that is the gradual loss of the core relationships -- namely, the friendship between Davan and Aubrey and Peejee. Each has had their own plots, and each has their own supporting casts, which often don't cross over at all (Wednesday White's latest Comixpedia Article touches on webcomics that have the same core cast involved in all things, from saving the world to sleeping with each other to going to movies, and her love of /usr/bin/w00t/ for giving Sarah a life where her coworkers != her romantic interests != her gaming partners. And I agree. And Something Positive has delivered in that department. Every major character (and most minor characters) has developed a supporting cast of their own, plotlines of their own, interests of their own and relationships of their own.
But there is a cost to that. When Aubrey was feeling the pain of Branwen and Davan's soon-to-end relationship, there was something evocative involved... as well as a sense of gulf. Aubrey didn't know what was going on, and she added stress to Davan's life, and it made her pretty old depressed. And we the reader could empathize. It makes sense that Aubrey isn't plugged into Davan's life and moods right now -- there's a lot of other stuff going on in both of their lives. And now, we see Davan and Peejee today, with Peejee being drawn into the play Davan is directing.
There is that sense of gulf, again -- two years ago, Jason and Aubrey and Peejee would have been involved with the Shock Treatment production from the beginning. As with Nailed the extended cast would have been involved in all aspects, there would have been several injuries, and Claire would be both in the play and almost naked by now. Now... it's not a given that Peejee will be involved... but it's nice to see this connection being reopened.
And if you look at the progression, the pacing, and every step Millholland has taken to get from there to here, you won't see any sudden moment of now we are sophisticated. He's let it grow, naturally... and let this reconnection occur just as naturally.
Millholland gets a biscuit. A tasty, tasty biscuit.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 2:30 PM | Comments (0)
-->Eric Burns-White: If I ever become this selfish, shoot me, okay?
The author of Comanche, the webcomics ripper I talked about in an earlier snark, has beed defending himself over on Comixpedia. I and several Webcartoonists, including luminaries like Boxjam and Graphic Smash editor T. Campbell, have all been debating with him.
I didn't think it was possible for me to lose respect for this thing. I mean, I used the word "contempt" in my last snark. "Contempt" isn't a word you pull out when you're trying to be openminded and fair and see all sides. "Contempt" comes out when you look at something, realize that in either concept or execution it's wholly irredeemable, and you close the door on it. "Contempt" means "I am yielding the right to later on say that I gave this a chance," and if you turn out to be wrong, the egg is on your face.
Today, having seen the author of the program justify and argue with it, I realize "contempt" was too mild a reaction.
I encourage folks reading this to have a look at his arguments for themselves, because quite honestly I don't expect anyone to be convinced by them. I'll sum them up here, but please realize, I'm trying to find a stronger word than "contempt" to describe how I feel about this guy and his software, so don't expect me to have any kind of objectivity.
In no particular order:
- If all webcartoonists provided RSS feeds for their cartoons, I wouldn't need Comanche to rip their strips from their sites. Because, after all, if someone doesn't choose to provide alternate methods of reading their strip, you're justified to force it on them.
- I want Webcartoonists to be paid. If they can come up with a way to change Comanche so they get paid, I'll change Comanche. Because the burden of correcting this rape is on the webartists, not on the author of the program, obviously.
- Artists want readers. This will increase their readership. Which is of course why newspapers don't mind if you photocopy their pages and pass the copies around to all your friends, because they want readers, right? Oh wait, they do mind. Especially when you're stealing the photocopy paper from the newspaper publisher.
- If the artists don't want Comanche to be used, they can block its user agent. Officer, if that lingerie model didn't want me walking into her house and stealing her panties, she should have locked her door. It's not my fault she didn't. Besides, the lingerie model should have been psychic and known I was doing this while it was happening.
- The artists are publishing on the internet, and therefore should expect this will happen. Officer, she clearly wanted it. Look how she was dressed. And besides, she shouldn't have been walking down the street and she should have been on the pill.
- You people hate 'pirates,' but its what the readers want! And here's my favorite -- the innate conflation of Comanche with the Kazaa/filesharing debate. Kids, I don't know how each of you feels about file sharing. You don't know how I feel about it. But Comanche isn't Kazaa. In Kazaa, the person who puts his entire MP3 collection up for free sharing is doing so from his server on his bandwidth. Comanche steals the artist's bandwidth, making them pay for unintended use of their artwork.
When I suggested that, if he really wanted to do right by artists, he let them choose to opt into the program instead of requiring them to block it if they don't like it. This seems to be non-negotiable on his part -- after all, people might not opt-in, and he WANTS IT! DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND! HE WANTS IT!
I'm accepting suggestions for words that incorporate "contempt" but at a higher order of magnitude.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 1:41 PM | Comments (2)
-->September 17, 2004
Eric Burns-White: And! I survived the trip!
I am typing this entry from a Wifi hotspot in the internationally known Moosewood Restaurant, in Ithaca, New York. I survived, and except for a screwup on the Penny and Aggie snark, everything distributed.
Ithaca is rainy today, but Ithaca is always rainy. I lived in Ithaca and I lived in Seattle. Seattle had an omnipresent mist from November to March. Ithaca has big-ass drops of rain from the moment the Cornell students arrive to the moment they leave.
It felt nice. Like a baptism. Like a homecoming.
Okay, it felt wet. What do you want -- I'm exhausted.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 3:53 PM | Comments (1)
-->Eric Burns-White: Hey, does J. Jacques pay John Allison royalties? I'm just wondering.
(From Questionable Content. Click on the thumbnail for full sized orifices. Wait, that came out wrong.)
You know. I love this strip. I really do. It pings my Scary Go Round and Bobbins! senses, and that's a hardcore good thing. And Jacques is an expert and balancing the Story he wants to bring with the Funny he always, always brings. And that's good bringing, any way you look at it. I still have some trouble with Faye's lack of contractions -- it seems clumsy, sometimes -- but I can deal.
And if you're going to go to the Moonlighting well, it's best to go way overboard -- not only are Faye and Marten not yet having sex, but pretty much everyone in the strip is demanding that they do. It's the old comedy rule -- you can do a joke once, you can do a joke three times, or you can do a joke a million times, but four is deadly. Jacques is going for the million and to date he's pulling it off.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 1:13 PM | Comments (0)
-->Eric Burns-White: You know, it's nice to see teenagers act like teenagers in a comic strip
(From Penny and Aggie. Click on the thumbnail for full sized movie star smiles! (subscription required after today))
I got a smile from Penny and Aggie today, which is nice. I'm trying, on this strip. I really am.
I'm trying because I like T. Campbell, and back in the day I was a serious Gisèle Lagacé fanboy. I love her expressive, yet clean artwork. And I like Fans! and other projects Campbell has done -- he brings the Story well, and he's brought the Funny before, too.
But I haven't fallen in love with Penny and Aggie yet. I'm hoping to, but it's not there yet.
Maybe it's because I'm shallow. Or maybe it's because I'm secretly yearning for Campbell and Lagacé to do some more L'Agencie VADO -- I reread that sequence of Cool Cat Studio a couple of days ago, and it was just really, really good -- there was chemistry, and the characters were compelling, and it was funny and it brought the Story in a big way....
I understand if they don't feel the yearn to do more VADO. And I think the art in Penny and Aggie is beautiful, and the pacing of the story is good. And....
And I'm hopeful. Today gave me a smile. It wasn't my first smile for Penny and Aggie. That's a good sign.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:32 AM | Comments (0)
-->Eric Burns-White: Wait. What the Hell does 'Fert' even mean?
(from For Better or For Worse. Click on the thumbnail for full sized ferting!)
Beyond the fact that we're having kind of a fun 'seniors aren't dead yet' sequence in For Better or For Worse, I think I should point out any time one of the more beloved of family friendly strips includes a clear reference to farting on the comics page. Because even substituting an E for the A doesn't change the fact that when a Fart becomes Old, he becomes an Old Fart.
Besides, kids need something to snicker about for twenty minutes.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 10:14 AM | Comments (1)
-->Eric Burns-White: Because I can't live a lie any more... you deserve... you deserve to know the TRUTH!
I get asked one question that's hard for me to answer, these days.
Oh, I get asked a lot of questions. I'm kind of surprised at how many questions show up, in fact. But there's one that just crops up over and over again. And the most interesting aspect of that question is just how mean spirited it is.
"Hey," it typically opens. "Why don't you snark [Various comic strips]? They really, really suck! It'd be funny to read your snarking about them."
Well, like I've said before, I don't stick with strips I don't like -- especially when I'd be reading them just to get material for insulting them. "Websnark" or not, that's not why we're here. I like the art form too much to denigrate it just for the sake of denigrating it. So no. I won't read [various comic strips] just to insult them. Sorry.
"Oh," they say. "Well, okay -- but why not just mention how hideous the artwork is? That wouldn't take long! And the art on [Various Comic Strips] sucks! I mean, really really sucks! I mean, a retarded vole could do better than this!"
And I answer, in a somewhat small voice, that I never make fun of other peoples' artwork. If I don't like a strip, or don't like the execution of a strip, I'll say so. I'll even try to be funny, and fail. If I really like either the overall art or an artistic choice of a strip, I'll say so. But I won't trash someone's art. I just won't.
"But... why not?" they ask.
The answer is simple. And terrible. And you need to know it.
I don't insult other peoples' art, because I wasn't always just a smartass with a Movable Type installation. Once... for one brief, shining moment, from April 8, 2002 to May 1, 2002, I was a webcartoonist. I was yet another black and white line art strip creator, parked on Keenspace.
And I sucked, really, really hard.
The strip was called Unfettered by Talent. That's right. I was going for ironic -- because I was so bad at drawing, I thought to make that the hook of the strip. The strip starred Deke, who looked like a character out of the old "Sunday Funnies" kid's activity section of the Maine Sunday Telegram (starring Mighty Funny, a super hero with 'mighty funny' written on his shirt, who would always say "that's Mighty Funny!" after a bad joke), Rhoda, who looked like a particularly bad puppet from Mister Rogers's Neighborhood of Make Believe, and the Demiurge, who created them both.
That's right. An avatar for the cartoonist appeared in the strip. In other words... you know how I say using the cartoonist as a character in the strip almost never works? I know from what I speak. I did it. And you know what? Didn't work. Even with Gnostic overtones and a funky font for the speech patterns.
I started the strip for a perfectly valid reason: I wanted to. I always wanted to do it, and it hit me that I could. Oh, I had no illusions about being able to draw, but I had seen -- sometimes many times over -- that a lack of talent or skill was no barrier to putting a comic strip on the web. And besides, the more I did it, the better I would become. Sure, I'd be embarrassed by my first few months' worth of strips, but so were most webcartoonists. I'd get over it.
And I deserve some points for effort. In the four weeks of strips I actually produced I never missed a day (I was a Monday, Wednesday, Friday updater). Sure, that's just twelve strips, but hey -- it's twelve strips. I only resorted to the 'cut and paste panel' tricks for the last two strips, when my time had already been consumed. I did experimentation. I tried to do backgrounds. Even on 'talking heads' strips I would change the camera angle in each panel. I was trying to evolve as an artist, and I was trying to make it at least fun.
A few people read the strip. A couple even still ask me if I'm ever going to update it again. After all, I didn't quit it, per se. See, It was right in this area that I got two larger projects as an RPG writer -- Sidewinder: Wild West Adventures and a supplement for Star Trek: The Role Playing Game that ended up never getting published when Decipher dropped their RPG line. I had a full time day job plus several tens of thousands of words to write that I was being paid for; something had to give.
That something was Unfettered by Talent. And I never went back to it. A forlorn hiatus notice remains on ufbt.keenspace.com, declaring my overall personal suckiness, and Deke, Deke's unseen but heard cat, Rhoda and the Demiurge lie fallow, waiting for an artistic return that will never come.
So no, I'm not going to mock peoples' artwork. Because I know that even if they can't draw well now, they'll get better. If I had stuck with it, we'd be two years and 366 strips into it. I wouldn't be mistaken for someone who'd learned draftsmanship or taken courses or spent their life drawing, but I'd be competent at the least. And I won't mock someone over something that deep down I know I couldn't do better.
Have I ever considered cartooning since? Yes. A bad stretch of my day job turned into 8 four panel strips called Figurehead Todd, which sit in a sketchbook. The art's even worse in that one, but I felt a lot better. Maybe someday I'll put them up on the Unfettered By Talent site, so that the six people who actually noticed would have something new to look at. But for the most part, the only sign that I was ever a Keenspacer, ever a webcartoonist, ever one of Berkeley Breathed's 'strippers' is a livejournal icon I still use, featuring Deke's head and wearing a goatee, drawn as an icon for strip I contributed to the late, lamented 2002 Shakespeare's Birthday Celebration.
I know... you've seen these strips, and now you can't look at me the same way any more. I've... tainted myself, in your eyes. I understand that. But... I... I couldn't go on like this. I couldn't take the chance that one day you'd be pawing through the attic and come across the scrapbook and see it. If you never want to see me again... I understand.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 9:29 AM | Comments (1)
-->Eric Burns-White: I'm on the road, even as we speak...
...driving to Ithaca, New York! I have a few short strips and one longer one queued up for your reading pleasure. I hope you enjoy!
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 8:59 AM | Comments (0)
-->September 16, 2004
Eric Burns-White: Hey, what's time, energy, effort, payment model and site design. I WANT! I WANT SO SCREW YOU!
It's called Comanche, the WebComicServer. It's one of many well written open source alternatives for slurping webcomics from their pages into a nice, convenient place. Or even pulling down entire archives (on the artist's bandwidth) to sit, resident and pristine, on your hard drive.
This has little to do with me. My one foray into webcomics sits on Keenspace, lonely, unloved and crappy. And my own writing (which you're reading now) is under a Creative Commons license for noncommercial purpose. So I have no vested interest in what I'm about to say:
COMANCHE? THE BACK OF MY HAND!
This is beyond offensive and straight into full bore selfishness. These people generally put hours a day, time and effort into creating something. All they ask in return is that you go to their site and see the strip under their model. But why would you want to do that? Why would you want to look at their advertising or see their tip jar or merchandising day after day. You're busy and that makes you feel all guilty and stuff.
I especially love how it'll pull strips down and archive them locally, so those strips who give one strip or 30 strips away for free but require you to pay for deeper archives? Meh. What do you care? Subscriptions shmubscriptions! These people will do the work anyway, so why should I do anything here.
They have a FAQ entry on this site I absolutely love. Here it is:
Q: Don't you rip off the artists when you view the strips, but not the ads?A: Ad revenue on the web is so low these days, comic artists have already added (or completely switched to) many other support models. And I encourage everybody to make those models work for them. Please buy books or T-shirts, join their clubs, tip them money, do visit their homepages and click on some ads... I do regularly!
Yeah. That's why you have plugins to pull down archives for Doonesbury (which after 30 days you're supposed to pay for access for). And why your tool takes you away not only from the ads the artists put on their site but also their merchandising, their donations, their subscriptions -- in fact, from every possible "support model" they could have.
Also? Guess what. Keenspot makes money on advertising. They make it work. PvP? Makes money on advertising. They make it work. Something Positive? Makes money on advertising. They make it work. Just because you believe that ad revenue on the web doesn't work these days doesn't make it true. We're not in the .com bubble any more, but neither are we in the bust -- and there's a reason ads still exist.
I had to make a decision, when it came to how Websnark was set up. How do I handle excerpting the strips, without dicking over the artists either in bandwidth (which Comanche is happy to use, just not help pay for) or in giving their strips away. I decided to do all-thumbnails (so someone has to go to the site for the full sized strip) with click-to-enlarges that take you to the very page the thumbnail references. You want to see the strip? See it the way the artist wants you to see it, in the model that most supports him.
Some artists probably don't care if you rape their bandwidth and steal their children comic strips to enjoy away from their sites. They don't do this for money any more than I write Websnark for money. But for others? This is their job. This is how they put food on the table. This is their artistic expression -- the whole thing, not just the bits that change from day to day.
This thing takes food out of the mouths of their children, and I have nothing but contempt for it.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 1:13 PM | Comments (10)
-->Eric Burns-White: And now, we achieve infrastructure.
Now here's something interesting. Randy Milholland of Something Positive did an interview with the Guardian on online fundraising, cyberbegging, and the difference between them. It's a good piece, and it actually puts Milholland's story out accurately (which is never a certainty in these matters). It's worth a read if you're at all interested in how the web is transforming asking for money.
That being said, it raises a red flag for me. One that goes back to my last snark on the subject. You see, one of bits the article goes into is a new service called Dropcash, which links Typekey (you all know Typekey -- it's the authentication service that Websnark uses to keep people from easily being able to comment, as part of my ongoing effort to spread rage and insanity across the land. So far, it's working) to Paypal and gives a progress bar page to keep track of your progress.
Which means we now have a ready made infrastructure for people who are developing fundraising goals. It is now officially simple to organize a campaign to raise money.
You know, I used to keep an online journal, back before the turn of the century, that did pretty well. I got a couple of thousand readers at its height (I was going through a medical drama then, and pathos=ratings, my friend). This was before Livejournal, before Blogger, before Movable Type. Heck, the first version of the page was before CSS. I coded each new entry page manually, then uploaded it, then changed all the necessary links to it. There was a small community of journallers in those days, so it was relatively easy to keep up with each other, and there was more than a little work to get things going. You had to understand HTML, server configurations -- all kinds of things.
And it got popular, so the folks at Blogger made a tool to make it easier. And then came Livejournal, and all its spinoffs, and Movable Type, and all the rest. And now anyone who wants one can have an online journal, and we all do as a result. And unless you have a specific purpose blog (like, well, the one you're reading now), you're a celebrity of some stripe for some reason, or you're young, pretty, female and uninhibited you probably don't have more than a few dozen readers, if that. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that, either -- it's just that in a land of plenty, people graze from the plates that are near them instead of seeking out the tasty cheeses at the front of the room.
It's the same with webcomics. When there were no automated systems for posting, revising, updating and archiving, it was harder to put your comic on the web and less people did. Now, between Keenspace and the Autokeenlite scripts (and, pretty soon, the Webcomicsnation hosting service), it's become dead simple to put an automated webcomic up. And people do. By the truckload.
We've had a few instances of donation drives/membership models working well, but there's been some barriers involved with setting up infrastructure, even with Paypal. Now, it's going to be dead simple to set up a funding drive. Simple enough that everyone will do it. Hell, I might set one up myself, under the title "Eric wouldn't mind owning a high definition television he can mount to his wall." Not that anyone would donate to it, because why the Hell do you care what's hanging on my wall, but it'd be simple enough to do so why not?
Why not indeed.
In the land of plenty, people graze with what's near to hand. When everyone has a fund drive going, they'll each get twelve people donating money to their cause, and no one will actually meet their goals.
I wonder if Amway started like this.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 12:56 PM | Comments (4)
-->Eric Burns-White: Trying desperately to fit everything in before driving until my eyes bleed....
It's a busy day at work, naturally. Even though I'm trying to get everything done, because the sooner it's all done, the sooner I can get in my car and drive. From central New Hampshire to central New York. At least eight hours on the road.
Snarking will come as quickly as possible today, but understand if it's a hair... abbreviated.
(Does anyone actually care if it's abbreviated or comes at all, for that matter? I mean, this isn't a webcomic -- it's just me blathering on about stuff I can barely understand through all the fumes.)
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:57 AM | Comments (5)
-->September 15, 2004
Eric Burns-White: So, next year on the fifteenth of September, I need to remember to buy flowers for some guy named Jeph? That doesn't seem right, somehow.
(An excerpt from this particular strip of Questionable Content.)
You know how, after a couple of years of being in a committed relationship with a wonderful girl (or your preferred sex for committed relationships -- I'm open minded), she turns to you one day at the Food Court at a mall, sipping a frozen cappacino drink delicately, and says "when is the exact moment you fell in love with me?"
And of course, you have no idea. Or else it's actually the first time you ever had sex, and that's not what she wants to hear. So you think back to the first time you met her, that you remember, and come up with some vaguely plausible moment where she did something asskicking, or might have done but she was drunk so she won't remember, and you says "do you remember, that party at Stan's? You told Mike Davis to shut the fuck up and die. You had fire in your eyes. I knew right then you were it. You were the one. You were the perfect girl. I can't believe you went out with me."
Or something like that.
I don't want that, this time. I want this to be real. So, two years from now, when asked "when did you fall in love with Questionable Content," I will point to this panel. And there? True love.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 4:05 PM | Comments (2)
-->Eric Burns-White: Yeesh. See what happens when you say 'horror' and 'pantsman' on the same page?
Suddenly, three out of five Google Adsense ads Ads by Gooooooogle (who thought up that silliness?) are for surgical scrubs or kids' sized scrubs.
I don't get it either. Well, at least scrubs are dirt cheap. Or they were. Some of these feature logos and characters, which means they're probably more expensive than jeans now.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 2:32 PM | Comments (0)
-->Eric Burns-White: Unqualified gushing about Dead Inside. Just deal with it.
So. You already know I have a serious love on for Chad Underkoffler's Dead Inside. This is a role playing game that manages the hat trick of "easy to play, compelling background, and horror-based without being hopeless" with a scosh of "actual decency is rewarded and bastard-like behavior is penalized" that is the kosher salt that just turns the flavor up.
But I'm not here to cook. I'm here to gush. Specifically, about Cold, Hard World.
Cold, Hard World is a real world supplement for Dead Inside, which itself largely takes place in the Spirit World. And CHW fills in the gaps nicely. You can believe it, on the surface -- there are soulless people in the world. Some of them yearn to be whole. Others use their hollowness as justification for doing horrible things. Underkoffler gives people real motivations and real things they can do. In fact, it becomes possible to play Dead Inside without the Spirit World at all, which some people will prefer.
I playtested CHW, and liked it then. And Chad improved it based on playtest. This is just plain worthy.
And it's eight bucks for the PDF. Eight bucks! It's just thirteen for the PDF version of the core rules, too.
If you like horror with hope, if you like magic realism, if you like RPGs where tactical situations aren't the point of the whole thing, or if you like Neil Gaiman or Sean Stewart, you'll like this stuff. (And the dead tree version of the core rules is just twenty-five bucks, which is competitive with RPGs these days.)
Check out the Dead Inside Demo for more info. It's just worthy, damn it.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 2:11 PM | Comments (0)
-->Eric Burns-White: We need more superheroes with -Man after their name, damn it. Quartzman! Tileman! Pretentiousman!
(From VG Cats. Click on the thumbnail for full sized X-Ray Vision!)
I don't know why, but I have an inordinate love of the Pantsman episodes of VG Cats. It's not just the absurdity of the concept. It's that he absolutely runs with it. If you were a totally crap superhero with a totally crap gimmick, you'd be a little shit stirrer too. Batmobile? Egg that mother! Hall of Justice Reflecting Pool? Make your presence known!
What really nails it is the Superman delivery, though. Superman comes across as that one police officer who no matter what they do knows, in his heart, that things can be talked out. So he's just going to stand there and be reasonable. Of course, he can afford to do that. He can burn them if they won't be reasonable. Burn them with his eyes.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 1:54 PM | Comments (0)
-->September 14, 2004
Eric Burns-White: On supporting webcomics and the survival of the fittest fandoms.
Bang-bang. Two announcements, right in a row, unrelated except thematically. So close together their respective news posts are next to each other in Comixpedia's 24 Hour Pixel People.
Jamie Robertson announced that he would be ending Clan of the Cats in December, without resolving the plotline. Though if enough people subscribe to his new service he'll be able to continue it, he hopes. His reasons are financial -- with his current profession falling out from underneath him (in a way that reminds me, wistfully, of��Derryl Murphy's SF short story The History of Photography) he's looking at finding more work, and more work means taking the time to produce so elaborate a comic would be unfeasible.
Michael Jantze announced that he would be ending The Norm within the next six weeks. Though if enough people subscribe to his new service he'll be able to continue it, he hopes. His reasons are editorial -- after years of battling with the syndicates, he's getting out of the rat race, and as this was his job, he has to find other ways to support his family now, treating this as an ending.
Comixpedia connected the dots between these two strips, R. K. Millholland's successful challenge to his readers to financially support his leaving his job, and Fantagraphics's recent drive to raise money to survive. Robertson's situation is closer to the Fantagraphics situation -- he wants to continue, but doesn't see how he can afford to do so. Jantze's situation is closer to Millholland's -- he's effectively challenging his readers to put their money where their mouth is. Both clearly love cartooning and both have dedicated fandoms, with the question being can enough subscribers be drawn in to justify the decision.
To be honest, I don't know what to tell them. I'm in a weird situation. As you know, I support webcomics. I believe in them. I believe we're moving into a new era of patronage and micropayments and all the Scott McCloudisms you want to hear. I want to be supportive of these artists taking steps to change their circumstances.
And yet... I don't read either strip. So it's hard for me to be passionate, this time. And maybe that's good, because it lets me consider the model at play, here.
I don't read Clan of the Cats because despite its clear skill, it just didn't appeal to me. I tried archive trekking a few times (backwards and forwards, thank you), and the story didn't speak enough to me to make me want to continue. I think it's good, but clearly it's just not for me. I think it's an excellent citizen of the Webcomics community, however -- so I'd be really sad to see it go.
Note, by the way, that I think PvP is an excellent citizen of the Webcomics community too. So clearly, I'm insane -- to hear others say it, anyway.
I don't read the Norm, on the other hand, because I've never even heard of it. It just missed my radar. Go fig. And this doesn't seem like the time to start.
So the pitches being made aren't being made to me. They're being made, in effect, to the fandoms for those strips. I know Clan of the Cats has a vociferous one. I assume The Norm does as well. The question is, are the fandoms broad enough and generous enough to pony up the subscription fees. Unlike Something*Positive, they're not asking for one time donations with a clear goal in mind -- they're looking for a sustainable model. X number of subscriptions at Y amount of money = Z amount of food for the cartoonist and his family, and therefore we can do this thing. But even if they were just doing a straight donation drive (which is how Milholland, Fantagraphics, and even Sluggy Freelance did it), they're looking to their fandom to in effect become their bosses. Publishing, at the lowest order. They get paid to produce, and produce they will.
The question is, how many fandoms is the average webcomic reader a part of, and how many of them can they afford to support. Take me. I'm more nuts than the average person. I spend money on webcomics, and I subscribe to subscription services. But I don't tend to be part of individual fandoms. I don't do more than skim forums and communities (and being vain, it's more to see if Websnark was mentioned if anything). Other than tip jars (which I support when the mood strikes me) and merchandise (which is a whole other deal), when I subscribe to subscription sites it tends to be larger ones with lots of comics on them. The exception is American Elf, and even that's coming in less than Sebo's Kitty Klub and Join The Norm. There's only so much money I have to give. I'm not particularly affluent -- my needs are met and I buy nice toys, including money into cartoonists' pockets -- but I won't be able to subscribe to too many more sites if I want to have spending money for anything other than webcomics. (Not even counting paying my own bandwidth bills for what you're reading now, I would add.)
There has to be another way.
Frankly, I think that Clan of the Cats should eschew Keenspot (though Keen's been a good home to them) and sign on with Graphic Smash. I bet T. Campbell would be glad to have them, and have their extensive archives as a hook to draw people in. I think Robertson should do his Sebo strip, but host that on Modern Tales, so that someone who wants the Daily Funny is drawn to one pay site and someone who wants the Story is drawn to another.
But he might not be able to get enough to live on, doing that. He says he needs 200 subscribers. If they take the more-money-up-front-but-less-expensive-yearly subscription option of $25, that means he needs five thousand dollars a year to produce Clan of the Cats, even at 0 bandwidth costs by sticking with Keenspot. It doesn't seem like that much money, but I bet it's more than a Graphicsmasher gets, right now. (I'd love it if I were wrong.) As for the Norm? They're doing multiple levels of membership (shades of Sluggy, Kevin and Kell, and User Friendly) but also doing the Modern Tales thing of taking the archives away except for subscribers. Their lowest level of membership is $25 but it goes up to $5,000, and will include a magazine. We don't know how many subscribers are needed to "save the Norm."
I hope both of them make it, one way or another. But there's only so many independents who can do this before their fandoms' means will be exceeded by prior commitments.
There has to be a better way.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 4:08 PM | Comments (14)
-->Eric Burns-White: The power of scheduled posting compels you!
Today's snarks have been served up, despite the extraordinarily busy workload, thanks to Movable Type's latest version having the ability to schedule posts in advance. So, after my brief coma last night, I whipped out some snarkage and scheduled it for today. Assuming all went well, you had momentary entertainment through the morning, while I was able to desperately slave at work. What a glorious world we live in!
I'm going to Ithaca, New York this coming weekend. I'll be online from there, so Snarking should continue, but we'll ration the posts out through the glory of scheduled posting. Scheduled posting. It makes it seem like I care more than I do.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 12:29 PM | Comments (0)
-->Eric Burns-White: Will she do Tate's "Ode to the Confederate Dead" to try and get ten more minutes at bedtime?
(From Ozy and Millie. Click on the thumbnail for full sized Multitudes!)
Every so often, one must confront the essence of living within a poetic lifestyle. Simple truths have complex motivations. The world is never quite as basic as it might appear on the cover. Peanut butter can exist alone or with jelly to add flavor and liquid to the peanuty goodness. And as someone whose academic work was actually in American Poetry, I appreciate the Whitman ref. Though I wouldn't mind seeing more of a Robert Lowell thing going on the funny pages. Come on, gang!
I'm not as big an Ozy and Millie fan as I once was. The surreal humor tends to feel forced these days, and there's more and more sense of 'retread,' with less and less magic. Understand, Simpson is one of those artists who really pushes the "Calvin and Hobbes" button in my brain, so seeing the magic slip away is actively painful -- as it was when "Calvin and Hobbes" itself began to feel tired. I'm not a huge fan of the early retirements of the 80's/90's comic superstars (I think Breathed, Watterson and Larson punching out early after being moderately contentious did quite a lot to reinforce the idea that strips like Garfield are safe for syndicates, because their artists aren't so uppity and the revenue stream won't go away when they get tired, and that's just sad), but towards the end of Calvin's run it felt like he was falling into a rut. I've been scared "Ozy and Millie" was heading down that path.
Well, today's strip doesn't reverse that trend, but it certainly pauses it. This to me is what "Ozy and Millie" is all about -- something profound juxtaposed with something mundane. Millie being weird and yet Millie making sense, all at once. The Funny is brought, but makes you think, too.
Say it with me. Simpson gets a biscuit. A tasty, tasty biscuit.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:12 AM | Comments (1)
-->Eric Burns-White: Stylized art WINS! Whoo hoo!
So, Cartoon Network's Samurai Jack won an Emmy in the category of "Outstanding Animated Program (under one hour)." To do so, they beat out Futurama, The Simpsons, South Park, and Spongebob Squarepants.
I like everything on that list (well, almost everything. South Park has gotten pretty old and tired, and I've never cottoned to Spongebob, though I can accept it's skilled in its own way), but I'm glad to see that when the field of cartoons up for the Emmy is humor, four out of five, it's the dramatic show that actually won. If we're going to start edging towards an America where animation is considered a serious art form, we need to have recognition of artistic achievement that goes beyond "made a good pop culture reference or fart joke."
Yeah, I know. The Simpsons is brilliant. Futurama deserved better its whole run. South Park consistently exceeded its crudity to achieve true commentary and hilarity. Spongebob Squarepants lives in a pineapple under the sea. I grant you all of these things. But just like we're fighting hard to break the idea that "if it's a cartoon, it must be for kids," we need to break the idea that "if it's a cartoon, it has to be about the Funny instead of the Story." Samurai Jack is stylized and beautiful. It employs sophisticated storytelling techniques, frenetic action, true pathos, and gorgeous design. It challenges the viewer all of the time. And while it uses humor sometimes, it's not supposed to be funny all the time.
And it's not arthouse fare. It's meant to be competitive in the mass market.
It's nice there are five good shows up for that Emmy in the first place. It's even nicer The Simpsons or Futurama didn't take it pro forma. And it's nicer still that the show going for the aesthetic instead of sight gags took the prize.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 10:45 AM | Comments (0)
-->Eric Burns-White: You know, "Trading Spaces" is on the Learning Channel. Why? Why? WHY?
(From Wigu. Click on the thumbnail for full sized Learning!)
One of the cool things about Wigu is the references to Rowland's earlier strip, When I Grow Up. Long time readers know the teacher, Miss Jackson, is really just Gina. And that's cool. Very very very cool. And it also means that those kids are being taught lies! Lies from a filthy whore.
Well, it's better than them sitting at home watching Zoe on television. Or watching the Learning Channel. Seriously. What is up with "The Learning Channel?" I mean, at least the History Channel has some history on it.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 9:59 AM | Comments (1)
-->Eric Burns-White: It it? No... no, it couldn't be... no wait, it is... it's an IRREGULAR WEBCOMIC SNARK! YAY!
(From Irregular Webcomic. Click on the thumbnail for full sized LEGO archeology!)
I've been trying, desperately, to Snark about Irregular Webcomic for days now. Every time I start an entry, something comes up, and by the time I can get back to it the spark is gone. It's like doing Reader Response in English 101, only without the smell of chalk and sitting next to attractive 19 year old Freshman girls. So it kind of sucks.
But Irregular Webcomic doesn't suck. And it proves a couple of things. First off, you don't need to be able to draw to make a webcomic. Secondly, physicists with coding backgrounds can take overwhelmingly large casts and multiple themes and make them comprehendible through the power of User Interface Design.
David Morgan-Mar is an Australian scientist with a love of role playing games and lego. A longstanding GURPS contributor, his webcomic is based on the idea that he runs many many roleplaying games. The different miniature figures and LEGO creations represent his campaigns. Along the way, he's broadened into surreal areas (I don't think GURPS Crocodile Hunter has come out, for example, and the whole sequence of William Shakespeare as advertising copywriter just came out of nowhere.) Because there are so many different campaigns and ideas he works with (he calls them themes), his "previous strip" bar breaks down by theme -- so you can look at the last strip he did and backtrack, or look at the previous strip in the same theme, or the like. When themes cross over, he puts navigation bits for each of the previous themes on one page. Clearly he spent time on the coding to make it all pretty seamless. Either that, or he's obsessive-compulsive and doing it manually. If I were him, I'd claim the former even if the latter were true. But of course, I'm not him.
It's one of the few comic strips where the cartoonist-as-character schtick works, since Morgan-Mar's self-photos generally represent him-as-gamemaster, which makes sense. It's silly, and funny, and it's amazing how expressive you can get LEGO men. Today's strip (yesterday's really, by the time you read this) is in the Cliffhangers theme, which centers on a family of archeologists in the Jones family named after states (Montana 'Monty' Jones, his father North Dakota Jones, his grandfather Schliemannian Chair of Archaeology Minnesota Jones, and apparently now a Doctor Ginny Smith -- Ginny I assume being short for Virginia) fighting various Nazis and Hitler's brain in a jar. There are also Space themes, Nigerian Finance Ministers raising money through spam, Harry Potter gone horribly wrong, the Crocodile Hunter, hobbit puns, occasional guest strips, and amazingly high production values for photocomics (on the Space strips, for example, Morgan-Mar snaps pictures on his little built LEGO set with a blue screen behind a window, then screens in Hubble space telescope pictures of starscapes. Say what you want -- this is not a lazy comic strip).
This strip brings the Funny in a laid back kind of way. Morgan-Mar does what he does because he likes doing it, period. He's a total geek in a good way, unafraid to let his massive brain for science influence his humor, and yet also unafraid to do a whole sequence of jokes based on lego Death-figures who are given very specific jobs (Death By Insanely Overpowered Fireballs, Death by Being Sat On By A Giant Frog, and so forth). It's good soup, damn it.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 9:29 AM | Comments (1)
-->Eric Burns-White: I don't get how I do a snark about Adult Swim and it's not about Venture Brothers.
So, in watching Aqua Teen Hunger Force on Adult Swim (through the power of Tivo), I noticed that Meatwad's added a new shapechange form this week....
Is it me, or did he absolutely turn into Bob the Angry Flower?
Very cool.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 8:59 AM | Comments (2)
-->Eric Burns-White: Proving I'm a bleeding heart liberal at heart....
I spend a certain amount of each paycheck on webcomics, in one sense or another. Not a huge amount, typically -- five bucks to a tipjar here, a subscription there. I seem to be a sucker for cute plush -- my Skull plushie is theoretically waiting for me to get enough time at work (which won't be this week) to walk over to the mailroom and get it, and I dropped money last paycheck on a Narbonic brand plush gerbil. And I get compilations every now and again.
This paycheck, however, my money went to support the art form as a whole. I dropped some change on a membership at the Cartoon Art Museum of San Francisco. Not a high level membership (I don't have that much money), but enough.
The perks that come with membership... won't matter that much to me. I live in New Hampshire -- being able to walk into a San Francisco museum won't pay for itself, even if I manage to get there when I hit Baycon next year. I doubt I'll have much opportunity to use a discount at the museum store. I won't be at any of the receptions they hold, unless a miracle occurs. I doubt the newsletter will have much I don't already know.
But that's not why you give money to a museum.
It matters, guys. Art matters. Segar and Shultz and Capp and Gould matter. Abrams and Crosby and Krahulik and Kurtz matter. The hundreds... the thousands of webcartoonists and print cartoonists worldwide matter.
Art matters. So they get my money. Simple as that.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 1:23 AM | Comments (2)
-->September 13, 2004
Eric Burns-White: By "later," I meant "way, way later." And XPlay has some hope.
After barely sleeping last night and a notebook computer passing day of sheer adrenalin and discussing the merits of Berry Rubble versus Princess Ariel on the comment boards, I got home, settled in for an evening of snarking and cheer....
...and fell asleep. I'm going to go back to sleep momentarily. I only woke up at all because my cat demanded attention, and she has claws. Painful, painful claws.
While I pet her, XPlay came on the Tivo. Their new set (they moved from San Francisco, which is a cool place to be a TV show, to Los Angeles, which is... very standard) is incredibly busy and full of worthless tchotchkes... and the show itself is back to its low budget glory. Adam and Morgan wandered the new set and snarked about how utterly worthless it is for a show about video game reviews to have a set with egg chairs and fluorescent checker sets. It's back to being video taped, the higher production values only having lasted until they could take the time to go to Ikea... and walk around behind it, to where the Swedes take powerful drugs before designing furniture. And the voiceovers are back.
I am content.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:34 PM | Comments (1)
-->Eric Burns-White: Today and tomorrow...
We are handing computers out to our student body. The school year is beginning.
Snarks will be later rather than sooner. However, after this, it's all biscuits and gravy.
Thanks, all!
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 12:07 PM | Comments (5)
-->September 12, 2004
Eric Burns-White: I'd be more impressed if it was the special unrated edition with pharasees gone wild
I just saw a commercial for The Passion of the Christ on DVD. With "special bonus features."
I would pay two hundred dollars for a copy if one of the features was a Thermian language track like on Galaxy Quest. This thing is screaming for something surreal.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 8:24 PM | Comments (4)
-->Eric Burns-White: The unmitigated sensitivity of the 1960s cartoon industry
Heard just now on Birdman and the Galaxy Trio. Yes, I'm still watching Boomeraction. Despite having a Tivo. Go figure.
Falcon 7: Birdman! We've just received disturbing news about your old friend, the Maharajah of Ramadan. He's been kidnapped!
The... Maharajah... of Ramadan....
I suspect he was kidnapped from his Gentleman's Club, where he has lunch every Tuesday with his old friends the Viscount of Ascension Sunday, the Mayor of Yom Kippur, and the Governor-General of the Christmas Shopping Season.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 5:12 PM | Comments (2)
-->Eric Burns-White: Kill all the Oompas! Kill them all!
The incomparable Wednesday White made mention of this. Like a madman or a fool I followed the link. Suddenly, I was back rereading Joseph Conrad. Suddenly, Tim Burton was revealed as a sham and a poseur. Suddenly...
But there is no describing it. There is no describing what Stephanie Freese has done. You can only click the thumbnail yourself.
The horror. The horror.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 4:09 PM | Comments (6)
-->Eric Burns-White: Boomerang is one way to pass a Sunday. That's for sure.
When watching Boomerang on a Sunday, during the Boomeraction block where old action cartoons -- largely Hanna Barbara or Ruby Spears, but with exceptions based on whatever else Turner and Time-Warner managed to purchase so they can run for next to nothing -- it's sometimes fun to play "hey, it's that voice!" The most fun is to play it with Ted Cassidy, who was most famous as Lurch on The Addams Family, though truth be told we don't remember him for his voice on that show. The great thing is, he was gigantic and powerful, and yet he was also a kick-ass voice actor, doing voices on a vast majority of Hanna Barbara's different cartoons (and singing -- singing -- the Adam Ant theme song. It was fun to identify him as Meteor Man in the Galaxy Trio and Frankenstein Junior in the cartoon as the same name. And of course, when he guested on Star Trek as the android Ruk, and shouted with exactly the same voice as Meteor Man that "That was the equation! -- well, it was a great moment of cognitive dissonance. (And made you suspect that James T. Kirk would have sexual relations with Gravity Girl in the next scene.)
Today was the king of such voiceover shenanigans, though. The evil ruler of a shrunken city, on Thundarr the Barbarian, was done with the completely undisguised voice of Fred Flintstone.
Not the original, mind. Alan Reed died some years before Thundarr. But whoever voiced that villain was also the replacement actor for Fred, and was uncannily good at emulating Alan Reed's performance. And he used that same performance on Thundarr.
Years later, Thundarr worked as a mob enforcer for "Dabba Don" Fred Flintstone on Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law. I can't help but think this is where they met. And that Barney nailed Princess Ariel. Sure, Barney was married, but dude -- Princess Ariel. I mean, wouldn't you?
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 2:58 PM | Comments (5)
-->Eric Burns-White: Dis is whut we get today? Chee!
(From Superosity! Click on dis tumnale for full sized hully gee!)
Comics history time, kids. Richard Felton ("R.F.") Outcault created newspaper comics, for all intents and purposes, with Hogan's Alley, featuring the Yellow Kid, first published in Truth Magazine in 1894, then making the jump to Joseph Pulitzer'sThe New York World newspaper (and then other papers) in 1895. He was popular, so William Randolph Hearst lured Outcault away with a big salary and put newspaper cartoons on the map. Cartoons quickly became seen as important commodities for newspapers -- especially the "Yellow Newspapers" known for more sensational news as compared with the more staid, non-tabloid papers. Pulitzer and Hearst both published Yellow Kids comics for a while, and both merchandised the character, proving the market for such things. Consider the impact that had on cartooning through the new century, leading up to today. Outcault eventually returned to Pulitzer, by the way, and created Buster Brown for him.
Clearly, when Chris, Bobby and Boardy traveled back to 1895 to celebrate the first Labor Day, Richard Outcault's lesser known brother Ralphie met them and had his future changed, causing him not to die in a pile of pig manure and to take his brother's role as the grandfather of newspaper cartoons.
Which means Superosity was the very first Comic Strip! And you thought Chris Crosby wouldn't ever amount to anything. Sadly, this also means that Chris, Bobby and "Irony" are all in the public domain. But naturally, Keenspot will exercise its titanic merchandising muscles and force changes in Copyright Law to protect their huge profit potent--
Oh, who am I kidding. No one would be that nuts about comic strip characters.
Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:59 AM | Comments (0)
