Success vs Stigma of Webcomics

[hushicho]

I think another stigma we should avoid is believing that people who seek economic viability are somehow "less than" those who do it purely for the fun of it.

So very true. I've literally had people shun me -- actually shun me -- for saying yes, an important goal to my production is to profit from it. Yes, I love telling a story. Yes, I love art. But it is still a job, and it's something that I intend to make money from, in large part because it's all I can do with my current state of health. If I examine something I'm doing, be it a project, a series, or whatever else, and decide it's not viable to continue...that's what I have to do. I shouldn't catch flak about that decision. I actually have to worry about what I bring in, to actually live.

The "puritan work ethic" influence on especially modern American culture is regrettable, but treating people poorly because they want (or even need) to see some returns from their creative work is, I think, one of the major contributors to the highly toxic landscape in the creative market. It's only just now starting to reach a point where creators are actually saying "yeah, no, I'm going to be compensated fairly or you can eat an entire bag of dicks, thanks."

And thank goodness for that!! I've lived through too many years in the shadow of traditional publishing, where creative professionals are treated like the proverbial red-headed stepchild.

[Delete]

Totally agree. To me it feels like in our modern world its more about instant gratification instead of being challenged with whatever medium you're reading/watching. I feel like nobody wants to stick around for character development or build up. I feel like a lot of people these days would not want to sit 2 hours through Blade Runner just to hear that Roy Batty's final monologue when they can google the 2 min clip.

[tayo_rafferty]

I'm not arguing with what is popular on tapas but what deems a comic successful. ^^

I think what is popular is essentially 'successful' in terms of Tapastic. The nature of the platform right now makes a large audience the only real qualifier for 'success', in the conventional sense. The thing is, the creators of this platform are trying to evolve that into 'tiers of success and revenue' much like Youtube, in which you may have a smaller audience but if you've got an effective Patreon or you bring in a lot of traffic then you can earn ad revenue and garner support.

The other thing they have introduced are tapas coins in conjunction with the tapas app in order to make revenue generation on indie content more feasible, 'track-able', and accessible to amateur artist and broad audiences. I think for most people who get their content exclusively through the tapas app they are going to understand the nature of micro-transactions paired with free content, it's familiar to them.

So right now I think that a successful comic is any webcomic with a large audience (2500+ subscribers). Though I think the creators of Tapastic would rather see everyone using tapas coins as a sort of intra-economy so that one day larger creators can amass tapas coins and they can flow through the community (contests, give-aways etc) and all the ad revenue can more or less be kept by Tapastic. Making the future qualifier for success how many tapas coins you are generating

[VexinglyYours]

something i think worth mentioning is why webcomics ARE successful. anyone familiar with the blunders of the big 2 (Marvel and DC) knows that they have a horrible habit of not producing quality content for marginalized groups. yes, we have a black Spiderman and a female Thor, but why should they be given hand-me-down superhero titles instead of their own completely original identities? webcomics is a platform for independents to create stories that the mainstream isn't bothering to put out, especially when it comes to marginalized folks.

[shaneoid77]

Well I don't think there's anything essentially wrong with wanting to make money from your work

I didn't say there was. I just meant we should celebrate the variety of accomplishments rather than focus on the financial successes, otherwise we'd just focus on the comics which are making money, which not all are attempting to do.

[hades]

Thank you everyone for your input. I appreciate your views and sidings. ^^

[danrafter]

Hi, All: Interesting discussion. I really do want to make money off my comics writing -- and I'm not doing that here, of course. But for me, a successful web comic that I've written is one that I can read weeks, months and years later and still be proud of. I look at some of the first comics I wrote and I cringe. They were too wordy, with big text balloons crowding out the panels. I think I'm better today -- and my web comics seem more successful to me because of that -- but there's also improvements to be made.

So, if I'm not embarrassed to show off my comics -- and I am embarrassed to show some of my earlier stuff, even though it was published traditionally -- then those are my successful ones.

Dan

[nerosmoke]

I feel like you will find prevailing patterns in a lot of the most popular webcomics on Tapastic.

Cute art-style
Contrived relatability
Digestible content
Non-narrative non-linear content
'Random' Humour
Eastern Influences
Pop-culture references
Contrived humour
This is evident in other forms of media. There is a clear influence of eastern manga within character designs and storytelling present with big studio animations like Zootopia and smaller animations like Teen Titans Go. The worst part is that a lot of younger millennials (those born in the 90s) and whatever we call the generation of kids born after 2000 want this type of content because Teen Titans Go is the most popular show on cartoon network right now...more popular than Adventure Time (which is equally wacky but has substance).

Look at the big comics on this site, the ones with hundreds and thousands of subscribers. They all more or less fit the description I gave.

There's plenty of quality in the mix too but most of the popular comics with substance seem to be anomalies

Hope that helped.

WARNING THIS IS AN OPINION PLEASE TRY NOT TO BE TRIGGERED

I have been butt hurt by this does that count?