Posts By: Marisa Brenizer

Underdog Origin Story

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The Beginning

When trying to promote my own webcomics, I noticed a huge lack of quality when it came to Facebook groups dedicated to comic creation. Each group’s wall was flooded with self-promotional posts.  I observed that when everyone is elbowing each other, trying to be seen in a sea of thumbnails, no one stands out. What’s worse is that little to no conversation is encouraged or initiated. Needless to say, after religiously checking my comic’s analytics every night, I often found that my Facebook promo efforts were often in vain – few (if any) page views, rarely a comment, and a no feedback.  Not exactly the front page of Reddit, right?

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What’s In A Name? Choosing An Effective Title For Your Webcomic

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Consider this; 2.5 billion people are known internet users worldwide, with more people adding to that number every day. It’s a truly enormous pool of potential webcomic readers, but reaching them isn’t easy. Marketing strategies and networking help, but no single method is completely effective on its own. Part of the reason for this is the competition for attention, with over 22,000 competing webcomics monitored by The Webcomic List alone–and thousands more beyond that. All this free content means that for a webcomic to attract a large crowd, it needs to not only be appealing to its audience, it needs to be good at being noticed in the first place. Ads and banners can help with that, but nothing represents the identity of a story quite like its title. There are several things to consider when choosing a title for a webcomic.

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Creativity

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The most common question that creative people get asked by “normal” people may well be, “Where do you get your ideas?” It’s a difficult question to answer, because it assumes there is an easy answer, some kind of tangible oasis that transforms visitors into brilliant artists. In my experience, ideas for comics (and other art forms) aren’t found in one place, but in EVERY place. And if one wants to be a creator, then one should constantly be seeking out new experiences in life and art alike, actively seeking inspiration instead of expecting it to arrive.

[Tweet “Ideas for comics aren’t found in one place, but in EVERY place.”]

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Should we “Ink” Digital Comics?

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Inked linework is an iconic element of comics. Duh.

But have you thought about why? I guess because of the whole history of how the art form evolved; I’m not an expert on that. But it makes sense to me that Doré et al. etched rather than painted for book illustrations, and that Outcault et al. inked cartoons in a way that could be reproduced on plates. Pencil, pastel, and paint and other media just don’t play as nice with printing presses as clean linework does.

[Tweet “Pencil, pastel, and paint and other media just don’t play as nice with printing presses as clean linework does.”]

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The Webcomic Graveyard

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Hiatus.

That is a word that evokes certain dread in webcomic readers. Updates that mention an impending hiatus often get more comments than usual, specifically in response to the hiatus rather than the actual page. Why? Because they fear what’s coming—death.

Webcomics get cancelled and abandoned more frequently than most any other type of literature. There is a veritable cemetery of forgotten stories that will never be completed wasting away in cyberspace. Sometimes a creator will reboot or hand the series off to someone else, but this is atypical and not always successful. Is any of this a surprise? Not really. Webcomics aren’t usually a lucrative business and with no deadline, contract, or material gain to look forward to, the motivation to continue making a webcomic has to come from within the creator. That alone is a rare discipline, but even the most motivated writers find themselves in a predicament where they cannot complete their work. Life gets in the way, there’s a dispute in the creative team, or perhaps the writer simply no longer has the resources to continue. There is a trove of unfortunate circumstances buried beneath the graves of dead webcomics. If these lost tales had epitaphs, what would they say and what lessons could both readers and creators take from them?

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Putting the “Com” in Comics

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You may have a comic, but do you have a community? Support can be hard to come by when you’re a comic creator. You may not even be able to turn to your own family for advice or critique, let alone friends.

“Hey, mom – here’s my new page. What do you think?”

“I’m glad to see those years at that art institute are finally paying off. Wait – you…you are getting paid for this, right?”

At this point, you may find yourself turning to your readers for insight and advice. They are, after all, your demographic.

“Hi guys – I’m trying out a new coloring technique. Let me know what you think!”

*crickets*

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Don’t Fear the Timer

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Fifteen minutes.

That’s all the time I’m allowing myself to write this blog. Aaaand, my OCD just kicked in. There will be no note consultations, no pre-arranged outlines, no bullet points, no thesaurus checks. Just me, a keyboard, and a kitchen timer. Why am I doing this? Because I spent a lot of time this week coming up with an interesting blog topic, researching the subject, taking notes, and making a general outline of what I wanted to say – the problem is…I can’t say it. It’s as if my brain is so excited over the prospect of writing that it’s tripping over itself to get its thoughts out. “My” thoughts out. I used to be able to knock out essay after essay in high school with ease and enjoyment. What happened? Have my writing muscles atrophied? Is there so much information in my head that when I ask it to form a queue chaos and panic breaks loose?

Ten minutes. Oh boy.

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