12-15-04

Stay for the Pie

Okay, this is not so much an editorial as it is a column...or a guide.  A loose one, anyway.  I've discovered recently that on many webcomic sites, the comics are not the only attractive feature.  Don't get me wrong; the comics are good or I wouldn't go there, but I find myself clicking back to a lot of them between updates simply because they have good sidebar features.  Yeah, I know...a lot of you are probably looking at this and saying, "Well, duh, Brett."  But some of you may not be, so this column is for you.

Elf Life
I'll start with Carson Fire's Elf Life, partially because he's a fellow Texan and I like him, but mostly because he seems to be trying to do more with his comic and his site than anyone else.  He gets his own paragraph for the second reason.  Fire is one of those artists that is trying to support himself with his comic; however, he's not as vocal about it as others, due to some very loud and very annoying people who whined like little girls a little over a year ago.  For this reason, he has spent a lot of time enhancing his sidebar content.
          Fire recently redesigned his site; I'm a little ambivalent about the new design but that may just be because I'm lazy.  His original layout was a fairly standard scrolldown in order of importance showing all of his features on the front page with links to the archives for more of each item.  The new design is a sort of visual table of contents with link buttons to various features and various storylines of the comic (for the past 13 months or so, Fire has been maintaining something like 7 storylines at a single event).  It would be hard for many readers to realize that he even has a webcomic up, which may be what he's going for; he's always billed Elf Life as a novel in comic form.
          Okay, that's the coffee, now to the pie...yummy, yummy pie.  We'll start with the Biff Notes:  Many artists occasionally include notes that explain a certain comic or put it in the context of the milieu (that's a French word that literary writers have adopted to mean "world in which the story takes place"), but Fire goes beyond that.  Since his return to the comic last summer, he has posted daily notes, dissecting his own comic panel-by-panel—sometimes only a note, sometimes a full explanation of why it's important.  No one goes "huh?" about an Elf Life comic, or, if they do, they don't for long.  The next big feature is his Blog.  A lot of artists have a link journal or a smallish blog so their readers can go and squish around in the minutiae that make up a webcartoonist's life; this isn't like that.  Fire's blog is a tapestry of Fire's skill as a writer.  He has three main sections there: the main blog which deals mostly with the page and the comic, what he's doing to it and why, then he has a section where he posts his tips and discoveries about PolyEdit, a dynamic text editor.  Finally he has The Faerie's Right Wing, a political opinion section that is simultaneously unobtrusive and provocative.
          He also has links, of course, and Fire has recently joined a few exchanges in an effort to build his readership.  And he has a community.  This starts with his tag board, which resets every time he posts a new comic, but it spreads out to the forum in such a way that the two are really inseparable and may be a little daunting to new visitors because of the interplay and sense of community history.  Worry thou not, however, they are a welcoming gang of dabblers, and almost never say anything rude to guests or new fans.

On the Subject of Community
It should be noted, at this point, that despite its much-touted influence on world-wide community and the Global Village, the Web has largely been an isolating influence on society.  Seriously, sitting in the dark and typing is not something we normally associate with the idea of "community".  That being said, there are two comics whose communities should never be missed, if only for entertainment value.
          First up is Filthy Lies, which relies on a tag board for most of its community spirit (there's also a seldom-used forum, and Enigma has the inevitable link journal (appropriately titled "Stalk the Author"), but the vast majority of community is in the tag board).  I'm using "community" in a very loose sense, here.  Enigma's tag board is less a comic strip community than it is an open-forum radio call-in show.  Generally the tags begin with and wander back to the subject of that day's comic, but between there you can find amazing sidepaths into politics, pop culture and particle physics.  Enigma [actual name edited for space] is a good guy, and he does a good job of keeping the rowdies on his Tag from getting too rowdy without sucking all the fun out of the room.
          For serious community, however, swing by the forum for Maritza Campos' College Roomies from Hell!!!.  She takes the idea of webcommunity, puts a funny hat on it and makes it stand in a corner.  First there's the games.  Games?  Yes.  In her comic, CRFH!!! she has created a game that one of her characters has always played with his sister:  the nonsense contest.  I've never been clear on the rules, and frankly, I'm afraid to find out, but on Campos' Forum she allows nonsense contests to run, and they quickly get to more than 200 pages per topic (assuming an average of 15 messages per page, that's a lot of nonsense).  She allows other games, as well, including structured role-playing.  Her readers also spend a lot of time analyzing her strips.  I mean a lot of time.  Depending on the story of that day's strip, some of her on-topics can look more like an alt.lit newsgroup than a casual message forum.  And Campos shows an amazing amount of control with these topics; I have never seen her pop into a discussion for the pure evil joy of saying "HAHAHA you're wrong!!!" or (even more fun) "Well, you were right, but now I've changed it so you're wrong!!!"  Again, as with Elf Life and Filthy Lies there's a strong sense of community there, which can be daunting, but there is also a lot of courtesy and respect for newbies.

Processes
For a glimpse into the kind of mind that can produce a daily webcomic without interruption for four (coming up on five) years, check out Howard Taylor's Schlock Mercenary.  Taylor is another artist who recently went the professional web artist route, but, like Fire, he hasn't been very loud about it (or maybe the web hasn't--I dunno).  This is a shame, because for consistency of style, humor, and just big-dog ability to get his comic up and posted every single day (with extended Sunday's), you can't beat Schlock.  He really is always at least a little funny, even when he's dark and scary, he manages to get a good nudge and a wink in there.  But what we're here for, is sidebars, and Schlock only has one of note, and that is a very detailed outline of Taylor's process in creating the comic.  It's a very interesting thesis on how to expedite the artistic process.
          If you want to find out how you can start your own, comic, or just draw anthropomorphic characters, check out Faux Pas.  First and foremost, Robert and Margaret Carspecken have a really fun (and family oriented, like a Disney movie when they were good the first time) comic.  They also have a few very well written (with examples) tutorials on how to draw characters and lay out a strip and its panels.

Holy Crap
Lastly, for sheer mass of comics from a single source (sort of), you have to check out John Troutman's Basil Flint.  Right there on his front page, next to his comic you will find link buttons to his other projects.  This guy has a lot of projects.  He writes and draws Basil Flint every weekday.  He writes and draws Sporkman (a semi-prequel to Basil Flint done entirely with chibi characters that somehow manage not to be annoying) on Wednesday and Saturday.  He writes and used to draw Felicity (not the WB's drama queen, a sharp, funny spinoff from BF about the title character's sister, a Bond-style secret agent) on Tuesday and Thursday.  And he does much (all?) of the writing for Vigilante Ho! a weekly comic-book format with (apparently) painted pages (it's possible—even likely—that artist Meaghan Quinn is just THAT skilled with photo shop, either way, I'm impressed).  Troutman's collaborator, Quinn, has also taken up the art chores for Felicity, which has recently moved, along with VH! from its former spot on Comic Smash to Keenspot.
          Talk about bang for your buck (or, really, click, since so very few webcomic readers ever actually pay for their pleasure).  Many lesser artists have often wondered how Troutman can be so prolific.  Some have even gone so far as to suggest that he doesn't actually do his comic at all, employing Third World Sweatshops to produce his huge mass of high-quality work.  I, of course would never proliferate such a horrendous accusation, but, if Sixty Minutes wants to do an investigation, far be it from me to try and stop them.

[Editor's note:  Since publication, I've been informed that Troutman writes all of Vigilante, Ho! and that Ms. Quinn is that skilled, but with Corel Painter, not Photoshop.  Still impressed, CN]