Wednesday, March 26, 2008

New Web Comics Collective Forming

I know about it because I am one of the people behind it. Readers will recall that my primary web presence is the comic I do with my wife, Scratchin Post.

I thought I'd announce it here in case either of my readers is interested.

Here is the announcement in its current incarnation:


New Web Comics Collective Forming


A group of web comics people are forming a web comics collective.

If you have considered joining a collective, you might want to read our eligibility criteria. While it's meant to be welcoming, you will see that we are looking for particular types of colleagues from the web comics world.

Collectives offer:
  • networking and peer support
  • marketing advantages
  • increased traffic and exposure
  • enhanced convention presence
  • enhanced web presence
  • access to collaborative income out of reach to single titles
  • a friendly retreat when the studio walls are closing in
  • a chance to do fan-popular features like character trades,, fan art posts, etc.

Eligibility
  • You should produce a color strip. This can be defined broadly but if it's strictly black and white, it isn't eligible for this particular venture.
  • You should be working in one or more of  these genres: humor, anthropomorphic, real life, fantasy other than D&D themes (ex.: Kukuburi), science fiction, weird/surreal. No sprite, gaming or manga themes and styles, please.
  • Member comics should be suitable for a broad audience, and not contain explicit sex and vulgar language. Some of our members have a youth following and we want those readers to be able to read all member comics.
  • You should be working as a labor of love and artistic conviction, as opposed to producing a comic that is calculated in advance to appeal to a certain market segment.
  • Please be of a temperament that values a collegial atmosphere, mutual support, and cordial and timely responses to fan contact.
  • Don't be simultaneously hosted by sites that have legal encumbrances in their user agreements. Currently this means Drunk Duck, Comics Genesis and Zuda.
  • You should willing to produce a print-only story of defined length in the event the collective produces an anthology of member work.
  • Plan to show collateral merchandise in the collective store, if only for purposes of display. Members are free to maintain their own stores.
  • Plan to link to the collective on their home site and blog site, if any.
  • Members should themselves to membership in this collective, with the exception of collectives with a specific geographical focus.
  • You must be able to post weekly or more frequently. This collective is assembling around a commitment that there will be at least one update, every day of the year.
  • You should maintain a reasonable supply of filler material in case illness or disaster precludes timely posting. Such material might include a biographic snapshot of the creator(s), a self-contained story page, a tasteful display of collateral merchandise, Q & A to some fan queries, etc. We will not be displaying "excuse and apology" scribbles or other unprofessional stuff.
  • Profits from sundries sales FEATURING THE COLLECTIVE NAME AND ART will be applied to site overhead costs. This has no effect on your own merchandise or art sales.
  • The collective name is copyright the site registrant.
  • Hosting advertising and income from such, if it is undertaken, will be managed financially in the same way as site sundries.
Our primary marketing tool will be strip quality, but people with attractive primitive styles should feel welcome to apply.

This is intended to be a real friendly rule list, free of impositions on member freedom. At the same time, if we are to assemble a coherent group, we have to lay this stuff out so no one feels misled.

If you seem like a good fit after reading these guidelines, we would like to hear from you. Send an email of introduction and link(s) to your work to:

ScratchinPost (AT) gmail (DOT) com

Obviously you have sense to reformat that email address, which is written that way to thwart spambots. Just have questions? Go ahead and write anyway.


Below is a list of links to every web comics collective we know about. You will find a range in quality. We want to give the best ones a good, friendly challenge. I didn't have time to make them links, but most of them are dot coms and easily entered as their name plus .com.

blank label comics
bombshelter comics
boxcar comics
collective comics
comiculture
cornstalker
critical citidel
dayfree press
hyena comics
koala wallop
mediocre militia
nice, the
robopocalypse
sage
sugarskull
transmission-x
transplant comics
trees and hills