Hi, Folks!
We’re a couple months into running this new “Johnny Saturn” site, and I feel really positive about how things are panning out. There’s still work to be done on the site, and still some new digital products to roll out, but overall I think we’ve aimed this bus in right direction. Hmmn… Maybe I should have said “plotted this boat on the right course,” or “piloted this plane on the right heading,” or some such. Somewhere there is a great analogy, just waiting for this moment, yet I didn’t think of it.
Over on Comix Talk, Tim Demeter has a trio of articles about the future of Webcomics and the difficulties of long-form webcomics. Tim’s a really smart guy, and his answer is to package webcomics for easy reading on handheld devices like iPhones and cell phones and the like. This may be a big component of webcomics future, but I’m undecided. I’ve never loaded a comic onto an iPod, and I haven’t bought any of the cool gadgets like iPhones, so I don’t really have a feel for this yet. Maybe this is the future, and I need to see the writing on the wall before I get into it, and maybe it’s not.
When I first heard about webcomics, it was Stan Lee’s webisodes that drew me in. I only watched a couple of these, because they were more akin to crude animation than comics. Later, when the webcomic revolution hit, most creators and fans settled on good, old fashioned static comic pages. No animated elements, no soundtrack, no voiceovers. The static comic strip let comics do what they were good at, and yet still allowed for digital delivery.
I passionately love cartooning, as you can probably tell, but I also take it seriously. Delivering pages on schedule feels to me like Benita and I have our own television show, and the show must go on! The fact that people read what we write and look at our pictures makes it seem all so worthwhile! We are storytellers, first and foremost, and being able to share our tales is at the very heart of what we do.
So, Thanks! Scott.
