I posted this in Mastodon the other day, but I do believe it deserves a repost here, with slight adjustments.
I personally have a passion for webcomics, I love drawing them and enjoy reading (whenever I have TIME to do so, which has been lacking tbh), but sometimes I feel that no matter how popular some webcomics are it’s still a very niche thing, there’s rarely a case of a particular webcomic becoming mainstream (besides memes, of course).
I know about Webtoons and Tapas, aight? I’m just wondering because even WITH those websites it feels like webcomics in general are this little thing that most people either don’t know or don’t think about.
Am I wrong?
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They’re doomed to be niche (unless they go viral like XKCD), but that’s not the fault of them being webcomics. It’s because, like any other web content that isn’t heavily commercialized, you kinda have to go out of your way to find it. Search engines favor sites owned by big companies, either because those companies are sponsors or affiliates for those search engines or because their sites generate a lot of traffic on their own (which looks good to search engines), and someone who just looks up “comics” is going to be bombarded with pages upon pages of DC and Marvel related stuff before they even see a syndicated newspaper comic, let alone a webcomic.
I’m going to actually agree with the other guy, though feel free to reply back. When finding a webcomic, it becomes something you need to subscribe to. Compared to books or TV shows, content ends up drip-fed for story-based webcomics. For comedic ones, you have the burden of needing to be funny consistently.
And then you also face the issue that you have with most other forms of media. If it’s too early on and it’s bad, you’re not sure if this is just a rough patch and worth investing in later, or if it’s good, you don’t know if this quality would continue (though you’re definitely more likely to keep reading). If it’s something that’s been going for years, the sheer size of it might be daunting.
And then, even with all of these problems, you still have the even further issue of if it’s something you’ll enjoy. XKCD is fantastic, but if you’re not technical, you’re probably going to be less interested. Oglaf is also great, but it’s super-NSFW and basically constant sex jokes. Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal bounces hard between philosophical humor and dumb jokes. Questionable Content requires you be enjoy slice-of-life comics–so long as they’re set in the future with sentient AI. Twokinds needs you to be a furry or okay with that, but also invested in fantasy. Penny Arcade is not funny to people who don’t enjoy video games.
What you’re left with is a small group of people who are looking for drip-fed reading material, and of that group, a smaller subset that are looking to add to their existing lists, and of that group, a subset that likes your genre, is interested in your presentation, and most important of all, has actually found your comic. Some of the more interesting takes I’ve seen have come from webcomics, but they’re competing with more successful formats.
For those who are into the philosophical type stuff, I’m quite a fan of Freefall (http://freefall.purrsia.com/ – you might have to copy paste that link since Lemmy doesn’t like linking to sites that don’t support HTTPS (that’s how old this comic is)). The basic premise is “humans have created robots with full human intelligence, and they outnumber humans thousands to one. Now what? What are the social and political ramifications of that?” The series explores robot rights, the ethics (and, more importantly, the inefficacy) of modifying a robot’s brain to prevent it from getting any funny ideas, what happens when someone tries to mind-wipe all the robots and they find out about this plan and stage a revolt, who is responsible for an AI’s actions when acting under direct orders, whether or not man-made beings have souls, and more, all while keeping the tone upbeat and never letting up on the jokes even while exploring complex and often depressing philosophical conundrums that don’t have easy answers.
(After the robot-mind-wipe program almost goes through and is neutralized by a group of robots, humanity stages a debate about whether or not keeping the robots around is a good idea knowing that they can do that. The leader of the group who says robots should be left as is is a human. The leader of the group who says robots are a threat to humanity and should all be destroyed is a robot. I am seriously not doing Freefall justice. Go read it. Right now. The first 300 strips (each strip is 3 panels) are a bit underwhelming – honestly you can just skip them and not miss much – but they’re less than a tenth of the archive, and after that I promise you will be glad you did.)
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