That must have been really ugly... You are amazing you could continue in spite of that, what a strong heart! I'm kind of envious...
I was once in a similar situation and now that I think of it, it was what dissuaded me from engaging in any activity online, being it publishing webcomics or just talking. I still kept doing webcomics in my freetime after that, but worked more on improving my writing, storyboarding, drawing etc than doing finished pages (it was also because I started getting jobs as an illustrator so my focus shifted).
It wasn't about people saying nasty things about my webcomic, it was because some crazy woman who drew lion king porn felt endangered by the improving skills of me and my friend whom I was at that time helping set up her own webcomic (just to clarify, NEITHER me NOR my friend did any R-rated stuff, the only resemblance was that our characters were anthropomorphized animals, mine dragons and my friend's cheetahs, but our country is small so all this stuff gets grouped together).
She started attacking my friend under various nicknames while I was in hospital for months and did it to make it look as if I was writing the nasty stuff (while she was trying to get close to my friend to make it hard to believe if she was revealed). Thankfully my other friend tracked her down via IP. By nature I'm a person who always sees everyone as good people until they prove me wrong so it was hard to believe when I learned what was going on after returning from hospital. The funny thing was that the boyfriend of that crazy woman chatted with me some time prior when they quarelled for a time and during the chat he told me about all the nasty things she had done to him, very similar to what she supposedly did to my friend. With this information it all pieced together and I finally learned that internet can be such an ugly place.
When I think about it, she did get what she wanted, I stopped publishing my comic and ever since then I never heard about my comic friend again - she was probably as disappointed as I and also she didn't know who she should believe as that crazy woman kept on pretending to be her friend, ugh.
Ever since that I found it hard to be active anywhere online even when I have time, but Tapastic somehow feels safe to me. I wish I could stay here a bit longer.