ON COMIC STRIPS GOING ONLINE

HITTING THE MARK

As a life-long fan of comic strips in newspapers and magazines, not to mention the Sunday funnies, I read with interest this piece on how comics are faring in the digital world, especially with the onset of mobile distribution*.  As the New York Times explains,

"What do you do when the distribution method you have relied on for more than a century begins to falter? In the last two months, two syndicates have revealed their hands.

In November, United Feature Syndicate, which distributes 50 comics, including “Peanuts,” “Dilbert” and “Get Fuzzy,” made its full archives and portfolio available free on its Comics.com Web site. The company also added social networking features for tagging and rating comics. Visitors can have comics sent to them via e-mail or RSS feed.

The point is to attract more and, ideally, younger readers to the syndicate’s comics..."

Cartoonists are not waiting for the syndicates to develop new business models. They are posting to free sites like Comic Genesis and Webcomics Nation. Some Web comics, like “The Argyle Sweater” by Scott Hilburn, have been picked up for syndication, but that is unusual. Even more rarely, a Web comic might attract a large following at a stand-alone site; such is the case with “Penny Arcade,” a video gaming strip.

Cartoonists are also experimenting with color, animation, sound and novel distribution methods. "

There is a fair bit of entrepreneurial effort online with cartoons over the past few years.  One of my staples is the Cartoonbank, which has an interesting history, as this New York Times interview with it's founder from last year explains:

"After two years of submitting cartoons and getting nothing but rejection, Robert Mankoff finally succeeded in selling his first cartoon to The New Yorker in the 1970’s. He went on to become one of the magazine’s premiere cartoonists and ultimately its cartoon editor. He also had the clever idea of founding The Cartoon Bank, a company meant to syndicate and archive thousands of cartoons; it was bought by The New Yorker in 1997, and Mankoff still serves as its president."

The paradox of online of course is that it shifts the model from too little to too much.  There's only so many cartoons one needs to digest in a newspaper or a magazine (unless of course it's the Sunday funnies, in which case it'll take a while).  Online, the problem quickly becomes one of abundance and how to cope with it all and find the stuff that's really funny for you.  Again, the first piece above explains:

"...But Brian Walker, a member of the creative team behind the comics “Beetle Bailey” and “Hi and Lois” — both syndicated by King Features and created by Mr. Walker’s father, Mort Walker — warns that too much exposure “can take away from the strip itself.” If a comic’s characters are everywhere, he asks, why bother reading the newspaper strip?

And Mr. Walker, who is also a comics historian, believes that comics are best appreciated on paper. He likens reading a comic on a screen to watching a movie on an iPod: the general idea comes through, but some of the essential artistry is lost.

In print, the comics are as much a part of many people’s morning routines as a cup of coffee. The question now is whether daily comics can make a jump to mass electronic distribution and a younger readership — or whether they will be tossed aside like yesterday’s news."

It's a brave new world, and like most things online these days, it's a blessing and a curse for both publishers and consumers.

* Image source.

Comments

[Dipankar Sarkar]

I am a avid comic reader, so i can generally agree to the fact that its still a very paper based distribution. Unless its the case that a certain comic is not available :), when i turn to downloading them.

Hopefully these guys will solve the distribution and monetization models issues, thus allowing the consumers (like me) to enjoy legal online copies in the near future.

Dipankar