Hi
I've been meaning to try my hand at a thread like this for a while. Part of why I wanted to give this a try is things like VIews, Likes, Subs don't really paint the full picture of the life of a webcomic. Looking at one site mirror doesn't tell you how well a comic is doing overall and whilst we have promotion threads, feedback thread or review threads. Few pieces of info truly exist that try to capture the story behind individual indie webcomics.
This first comic i'm going to try this with is one that's genuinely near and dear to me. Which is Space Pack by @sefra114 A comic that has done alright for itself at first glance. With no promotion it's a comic that has broken the 250 sub mark and got close to 100K total views.
This comic however, has a much more interesting story behind it if you're willing to keep reading, because as I said, stats don't paint a full picture of a webcomic's life. There are plenty of places Webcomics can be and in Space Pack's case it accomplished something that's actually pretty impressive, Least I think so ^^.
It got nominated for not 1
not 2
ok you read the title it got nominated for 4 awards! 1 in 2022 and 3 in 2023. Back to back Nominations, I don't know about you but in my opinion that rocks. (Yes I am aware Simply Sarah has more DD award nominations than any comic in existence but i'm saving that comic for a future thread if this one goes well).
I need to start at the begining though and go right back to the start.
On Ferbruary 5th of 2021 Space Pack was first launched onto it's original homesite of Tapas. To give a brief Summary of what the comic is about without Gushing over it or giving away any spoilers. Space Pack itself is a comic set in the year 1996, it follows the story of 16-17 Year Old Bally WIlliams who finds an Alien with Amnesia called Nismo. It's a bit like E.T. The extra terrestrial meets Stranger things. The Antagonists of the comic are aliens that are conducting experiments on people and animals in an attempt to create Werewolves. That being said the Aliens trying to create Werewolves don't know what Werewolves look like and aren't very good at making said werewolves.
Bally's school is called Liverlife Which is based partly on an actual real High School called Livermore a lot of the comics humour revolves around changed real world names, brand names. It also has an expressive art style similar to that of the Poke'mon and Digimon Animes.
One of my personal favourite parodies in Space Pack is 'Fat Cops'.
In general Bally is a massive fan of Trash TV, her other favourite TV show is the Larry Slinger show. Fun fact I drew fan art of this moment from the comic a few years back. The Larry Slinger show being a pun on 'Jerry Springer show. This fan art desktop is pretty close to the energy of the original comic lol.
She's also a big fan of Slim Tim's. Bally's Dad is away as a result of having a job as a Truck Driver. Most Days she lives at home by herself in an empty house, She get's a lot of exercise but her diet certainly isn't the best lol.
Whilst she spends a lot of time alone she does have some friends. There's the Goths that she occasionally talks to when she's at school but most importantly there's her Friend Andy. A guy who doesn't excel all that well at school but is potentially a genius. One of his knacks in life is coming up with names for things. In Canon he's the one that names the quadruple threat of him, Bally, Nismo and Blake Space Pack.
Last but not least there's Blake who get's bitten and ends up with the Werewolf virus the aliens tried creating. There's some humorous Body Horror aspect to be had with this part of the story. It's one of the better Werewolf comics out there that isn't overly gory.
The comic also has a Webtoon's mirror that came out at roughly the same time as the Tapas mirror. It's last chapter (barring it's spin off slice of life series 'Bally and Friends') concluded it's storyline on October 17th of 2022. On the two biggest webhosting sites one would be forgiven for thinking 'hmmm yeah this comic did ok', but sometime much later the creator Sefra14 would mirror Space Pack onto two other sites. Comic Fury and the Duck Webcomics.
For the uninitiated the Duck Webcomics is the oldest webcomic hosting site that's still going. It's a bit old school, has good visibility and it's kind of the wild west in that pretty much anything goes on there. At one point it was once the Biggest webcomic hosting site in the world, but is nowadays home to a smaller and Passionate community. Who's site traffic is around 250,000 readers.
The site has a few things i've talked about in the past but for the sake of keeping this thread more focussed. The most important thing i'll be talking about is of course the site's own version of the Oscars. Which are The Drunk Duck awards. An Award ceremony which to my knowledge has been conducted since the year 2007. The current person who helps run the award ceremony is a user by the name of Niccea. Who in their own words comes out of hibernation once a year in order to run the awards and has been doing so since what appears to be 2011.
The awards themselves are presented by community members, the only rules being that each presentation must be SFW and family friendly. On this small site, a relic of a bygone era of Sonic Sprite comics, NSFW material and long term story telling action comics. Is where Space Pack's story starts to get interesting, because it was for a while, one of the most popular comics on the site. Even Peaking at number 4 in the most viewed list on the front page. I sadly don't have a screen cap of the original one but it looked something like this. Shoutouts to Life and Death by Joff and Charby The Vampire. Dunno what that bird comic at 3rd place is or who made it though. Hawk and Flo something or other? Anyway moving on
This image ultimately summed up how I found Space Pack. Most days when i'd log onto the Duck and check where my own comic was in the rankings. Space Pack would be right next to my own series when I logged on. As the complete nerd I am I clicked on and started reading. Like I do Every comic in the top 200 on the majority of sites i'm on lol.
Before making this thread funnily enough the same thing happened again on my continue reading list on Tapas.
Just like old times xD. As a result of me leaving comments on virtually every page of Space Pack's Duck mirror i'd become friends With Sefra and share a lot of common ground. The timezones are a bit of a stitch though so we don't talk that often but you know we got some important things to discuss here and there. Maybe
The next part of our story is the 2022 DD Awards. With a very snazzy looking entrance by Space Pack's Protagonists Bally and Nismo
The Awards Space Pack was nominated for that year was for best All Ages Comic. It was a competetive category. With Ghastley Heights clinching the win. Shoutouts to Essay Bee comics Presents Fusion. Essay Bee has some solid stuff that's worth checking out and most of their stuff can be found on Webtoons and Tapas as well.
2023 would be the Awards ceremony to remember for Space Pack as the comic would be nominated for 3 awards.
The 3 awards were Best Antagonist, Best completed comic and Best Adventure comic.
Best Adventure comic went to a series called Kitty Kitty Bang Bang a surrealist action comic that can be found on a wide variety of sites and has a sizeable and devote fan base. Perfect comic for a future episode of this Thread series. The other nominee was Without Moonlight. A very well written series about the German Occupation of Greece in WW2, which to my knowledge is only on Duck and Comic Fury.
Best Antagonist went to Eeve from the series Crater's Edge by Jason Moon Which has a Patreon Page. Called Jason Moon. The other Comic Nominated was Interstellar Battle Girls by Bravo 1102, who in fairness probably deserves an episode of this thread series devoted to him in the future. Kawai Kissu got nominated too. Solid comic and in case you're wondering yes, I am that much of an Avid reader that I have read all of the comics nominated for DD awards at least once and have read up and studied the stories of said comics. Which I plan to share with all of you when I have the time.
Best Completed Comic went To Simply Sarah, Which after over 10 years of being nominated for awards and not winning a single one, got it's chance to shine. It was a reward that was a long time in the making and well deserved.
So that's it a solid run, One fun thing about Space Pack is it and Sefra's main series OniXFox both got featured by Tapas recently. Space Pack itself is marked as completed on here and outside of Bally and Friends still going. That's where the story of Space Pack itself ends......
Right?.....
Right?
TestPanel (One of the left was Lacey Almer drawn in Sefra's art style, one on the right was me using the reference model)
Oh...
Test Panel
Yep that random Bird comic I mentioned earlier is going to be teaming up with Space Pack. Probably to fight Werewolves or something.
Well at least we're getting more Space Pack
Thanks for reading!