This is NaDruWriNi in Action - The Second
Saturday, November 4th, 2006
Webcomics. For me and everyone else involved in this community, this activity, this art form and brand new medium and every other grandiose adjective we can possibly apply to it… The word has gravity. We capitalize it. We emphasize it. We live in this utopian intenet culture called Webcomics and it’s filled with every one od us, convinced tht it is the ultimate. It cannot be beaten, it is the brace new world for sequential art.
I often wonder if it’s being taken too seriously. And this is coming from the guiy who does more than one podcast about Webcomics.
I’ve been labeled as the Quintessential Webcomic Enthusiast. I would gladly consider myself this. Hell, I love Webcomics so much there’s nary a thing involving them I don’t do. Except make them, it would seem.
I look forward and I see the future of Webcomics. This Age of Webcomic history that will come in 15 years or so. Wehere Webcomics are a household name, a common item, and perhaps even overtaking and supplanting the newspaper strips. We’ll have movies and TV shows and your children will be waering Webcomics pajamas on their way to bed.
I wonder who, amongst us, we could see participating and achieveing that. I assure you, it won’t be one of us. It’ll be someone brand new, someone from the outside coming in, taking with them their fame and notoriety that came from their previous career(s). They will go to Webcomics, and the public will go with. He or she is the one that will bring Webcomics to Grandma and Grandpa.
It won’t be one of us.
It might not be any of us at home.
In the common dwelling, where they boot up their arm computers and read their webcomics over coffe. The average person may not be reading Penny Arcade or PVP. They’ve got a narrow topic in gaming, they have taken and gilled that niche. It’s foreseeable that they cannot grow outside of that niche. It ill be the new webcomics, which will be accessable and readible ny grandma and frampa, It will be gamiliar and it will be traditional in srtlw.
It will be familiar.
Er eill not see the success that will come to the mOm and Pop comic. We’re inmdy, we’re alternative. we appeal to the minority. The majority need will be filled, for good or for ill. And that’s where Webcomics will be a thing.
And that bums me out, frankly. I’f really like tosee the blank label guys or PA get that success.
But it won’t be the same. Do you understand what I’m sauing?
I hope you do, because I don’t.
This is NaDruWriNi in action, folks. I have no ide what’s going on, and I seem to have lost most of my luvidity.
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I… wasn’t looking at the keyboard just then. As far as I can surmise, that’s nigh indecipherable. Basically, what I said what truly makes Webcomics the medium that it is, is less the comics themselves, but the delivery method and the direct creator-reader communication. Where we see as infinite, it still has its limits. And somehow, we need to identify these limits and detsroy them.
Are the limits our topic choice? Is it our deliberate off-the-beaten path content desicions what’s keeping us from becoming that household object? Is it our nerdcore nature? is it the profanity we use, and the harshness that comes with being edgier humor?
Are our very creative desicions keeping us from becoming that household name? Is it by simply being ourselves?
I do wonder.
There’s a less utopian vision I have. More hellish. I also wonder if this is all just temporary. If one day, the bubble will burst and everything comes crashing down. I do worry about that. I’d like there to still be a Webcomic “Industy” by the time I’m ready to make my move. Oh yes, I’m biding my time. That must be it.
I’m on this topic because a friend, a mentor, gave me the idea to talk about how I see the future of Webcomics. The truth of the matter is I can only speculate wildly, because I don’t fucking know. I’m not a future predictor, I’m not a planner. I’m an improvisor. So I’m not worried about where we’re going, or where we’re headed, because I know i’ll be along for the ride. Cuz I’m Phil Fucking Kahn.
Mother fuckers.