Posting Has Been Sparse Lately
You might have noticed that I have not been posting much lately. Much of this has to do with the fact that over the last couple of months i have been working on a new website. The website is a comic devoted to current economic issues. I plan on developing an audience with this website which will allow me to pull in revenue through advertising. For this reason the website must be very professional and I kindly ask that you inform me of any errors you might run across while viewing it.
and now, without further ado:
Smith and Engels
March 17th, 2007 at 7:09 pm
Wow - it looks really impressive. Even the backgrounds have some nice touches. Especially the sarcasm poster and man of the year magazine. I will post about each of them individually soon. I have read all of them - and my favorite so far is the Wall Mart light bulb one.
March 17th, 2007 at 8:28 pm
I love the artwork, but think you need someone more politically tuned, like JMG
March 17th, 2007 at 8:41 pm
Actually, i have links to articles that the comics are based on.
March 19th, 2007 at 3:52 am
“developing an audience with this website which will allow me to pull in revenue through advertising”
a) I am obviously not among your target audience, as we both mutually agreed on in yesterday’s conversation.
b) Nevertheless, I am still curious as to how you will explain to me what exactly a so-called “libertarian product” is… I mean, WHAT ON EARTH is a “libertarian product”??? Is there something like a libertarian banana, for example, or a libertarian jar of peanut-butter? Of course, I’m joking, and I’m halfway understanding what you mean by “libertarian product” - but somehow, I find this term to be very amusing. So, aside from t-shirts, which you want to be seen advertised on your website, what other sorts of “libertarian products” will be advertised there? It all comes down then to political propaganda booklets, or other biased shit that is advertised there. I would not want to sacrifice and sell out my artwork and my creative potential for the sake of libertarian money-givers that advertise libertarian products.
So, again, the next time you run across a truly libertarian product, at Wal-Mart, for example (ha), send me a picture. Send that along with the picture of your coffee-table, which, strictly speaking, is not a coffee-table, but a couch-table, but heck, you guys are so damn complicated and I CAN’T FOLLOW ANYMORE, not even the comics, cause I’M A DUMB ASS GERMAN.
March 19th, 2007 at 6:47 am
Awwww you’re a web cartoonist now, that’s so cute. Good luck though.
Do you even read web comics? There’s a pretty giant community out there which links each other and has resources for advertising and so forth, I don’t know if you’ve done any research.
Some suggestions:
Good ideas and good jokes, but you may want to work on delivery a little more. Longer conversations with more back-and-forth might help, rather than one person sayng a paragraph, then the next saying a paragraph. Similarly, shorter sentences and more punctuation might help make it feel more like real speech. I often find myself liking your ideas but having to re-read things to fully understand them, which breaks the flow of the humor; I imagine this problem would only be worse for someone who didn’t already know your ideas and conversational style.
My favorite comic was the most recent (Fear Solidarity) because it has a real punchline rather than a direct statement of a funny idea- I think this definitely works best for you. Also the giraffe’s speech, with a ! and “” felt alot more natural, and was easier to follow.
As for sight design, it looks very nice and professional. One suggestion would be at teh top or bottom ofthe comic box, have buttons set up like:
Comic Newest Comic –> . This is a pretty standard convention that makes navigation much easier.
I didn’t check all the links for the comics but if you keep doing this they’ll eventually go dead, you may want to consider including a blog post along with each link for each comic that briefly describes the article, other background, and yourfurther ideas on hte topic (which are also interesting, and will get readers interested in the ideas of the site in addition to the comic itself). Similarly letting people log in and leave comments might be a good idea in teh future if this takes off and you get a regular readership. Developing a fan base is the best way to spread the word and get things done, and letting them feel like they’re part of the process helps alot.
How much research have you done for this? There are thousands of webcomics around now, some of them morethan a decade old, so any problems you’re facing have already been solved many times in the past.
How are you currently/planning to get word out about the comic and get people to link to it? There’s probably a lot of options for this, but you need some serious exposure among people who read webcomics.
How long does each strip take to make/would it take once you’re used to it more? How often do you think you could post? People respond much better to a comic that updates on a regular, reliable schedule (every monday-wednesday-friday, every uesday-thursday, every saturday, etc).
Anyway there’s a lot to think about, I read a ton of webcomics so let me know if I can help in any way from an audience’s perspective. Good luck, this is pretty cool.
March 19th, 2007 at 6:52 am
Actually I see now that you do have forward and back buttons, but they don’t seem to be visible on the Homepage (or blog), just from the archives? Probably want to change that.
Also, missing the word ‘to’ in the last sentence of the very first comic.
March 19th, 2007 at 11:34 am
mmh, maybe then Darwin isn’t your target audience, either… That’s what you said to me yesterday when I pointed out the fact that I had a hard time following your comics in the first place. Besides my being a “dumb ass” (Steve Green, and in parts, he’s right), my difficulty to follow is exactly based on what Darwin described and what I said to you yesterday: The dialogues sound too theoretical, too abstract for me to even be able to follow, and the more complicated a dialogue gets, the less sharp and to the point irony is possible. I furthermore also told you, that I had a hard time following the speech-bubbles that were somehow connected to each other. Well, again, I’m just too stupid…
The other point that has not been publically discussed is your style. As I described it: It’s somehow “roundish”, not edgy at all, maybe a bit too cute to be satire. You said that this would be ironic, and yes, it is ironic. Your style is detectable among others, can be recognized, partly due to what I describe as “roundischness” - the pictures and figures are all somehow “soft”. Sorry that I am lacking the right words here. Not that I’m looking for anything “aggressive” or alike. yep, that’s what I had to add, but heck, I’m not your target audience…..