Borked Planet

Part 3:

What the HELL does this have to do with webcomics, Anyway?!

or; Your Point Is…?

Webcomics find themselves at the point that “regular” comic books found themselves in the early 1980s. For those who don’t know, the 80s were filled with “Independent” publishers bucking the system and trying to make the newly established Direct Market to comic shops work for them. To the average person on the street, comics were still super-heroes put out by the two BIG BOYS and this was the model that most of the market followed. Sure, there were some books that eschewed the whole thing, but most books were still action/adventure that focused around science fiction or fantasy. Now Comics have a long diverse history; in the 50s the most popular books (barring DC’s 3 Big Guns) were Romance and Horror titles, and in the late 70s Sword and Sorcery was pretty damn popular. This doesn’t mean that the average man on the street, even the average customer at the Local Comic Shop, was aware of it. As I said earlier, if you were to ask them they would tell you Comics were four color spandex-fests of Boff Biff and Pow!

I know, you’re still wondering what this has to do with Webcomics. Don’t worry, we’ll get there. Just let me explain a bit more about comic in the early 80s and then I’ll have everything I need to make my point. Okay? Good.

Now, if you were to pick up any one of the books being published by one of these “Independents” in say… 1984, odds are that you would find some sort of editorial dealing with the “state of comics” and, usually, some mention in the letter column about adults reading comics. It seemed, if you take these pieces of evidence, that Comics were finally coming into themselves. Well… Let’s expand our search. Pick up three titles from ‘84, six, twelve. Grab a sample of one book from each of the thirteen “major” publishers of the day or just one of each of the titles they carry and you start to see something interesting. What you would see is that many of the names are the same. Not the names of the creators or the editors (which, within one company is kind of a given) but those of the letter writers, the “experts” cited in the articles or the magazines mentioned that really “get it.” For all that fans of the day knocked the incestuous nature of Marvel’s and DC’s writing pool (something that was soon to change, given Alan Moore’s success) equally horrifying is the circle-jerk that was “intellectual” fandom.

I’m not going to name names, I’m not going to point out which companies or titles were the most indulgent but the point is a simple one: as much as fans and small companies WANTED to believe that the industry had changed, had “come of age,” it had not. All that had happened was that a small (and don’t get me wrong, truly wonderful, devoted and intelligent) group of people had gotten together and realized that comics were more than spandex, that the lie that they’d been fed since the late 50s death of EC and the creation of the Comic Code was just that, a lie. Comics did not have to protected for the children because Comics was not, inherently, for the children. But for all their efforts and understanding, they were still just a small group.

Fast Forward 25 years and you will see the same thing on the internet. Webcomics are, actually, far more diverse than their print predecessors in both form, content, style and production value but that doesn’t mean that they have avoided the stigma of assumption. If you ask your average person on the ‘net, they will tell you they’ve read XKCD, they’ve seen Penny Arcade and other stuff “like that.”

Like what? If you wanted to pick two comics that were pretty far from each other in most every way you could do better, I’m sure- but you get my point. To most of the denizens of the Web, webcomics are about “nerd culture.” Maybe they discuss Video Games or Math or Movies or Social Networks or Comics. Doesn’t matter, it’s all “stuff like that.”

We like to delude ourselves, much as the Independent publishers of the 80s, that we have a real following, that people “get it.” There are coalitions and “Top Sites” and How To sites and tutorial sites and so on and so on, ad infinitum but mostly all we are doing is the same thing they were doing. And do you know how many of those companies are still around? Not counting Marvel and DC, I think the answer is three.

So what’s the point? That there’s no hope, that we’re all a bunch of fools? Of course not! If it wasn’t for the strong followings that First, Eclipse, Comico, Aarvark-Vanaheim and others gathered in the early 80s there would have been a much smaller fanbase for Watchman, for Sandman, for Acme Novelty Library and Eightball and Hellboy! Those early companies were the breeding ground for the comic fan and store-owner of the future, the people who were ready… who were waiting for the amazing and weren’t just ready to pay it lip service but to buy it regularly and write letters of support. A lot could be said for Art Spiegleman and his group of misfits in the eighties, but it was really the people who went out and bought the “conventionally” produced comics, who wrote letters and showed up at signings for American Flagg and Ms. Tree and ElfQuest and Mage and Cerebus who convinced the big companies, and the world in general, that comics could handle more that superheroes.

And that is our job on the web today. Not to vote for what we like most or spread the word about the funniest new series, (thought, hey go for it) but to prepare the world for the diversity that is out there. To not get bogged down over if a Webcomic has to use the format of the internet inherently or if it’s “selling out” to make books or have Project Wonderful ads or make T-shirts. To not make assumptions and be dismissive, to not say “well, that’s not really a webcomic.” but to do our best to spread the word and support the sites and comics that we do love.

And that concludes the 3 part article by Menachem Luchins, Thank You for contributing! Please check out Menachem on the web: Twitter and Funny Shorts Comic