Comments on: Bill Waterson on Webcomics

By: BiggestGon

BiggestGon — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 08:47:41 +0000

Even if you aren’t a complete convert to digital media, you can still use online music to inform your purchases and sample new artists.
Wouldn’t it be great to know before you buy mp3 music if it was a great all-around album or just had one or two good singles? By using your online resources, you have this ability.
You can listen to short snippets of songs at online stores like Amazon.com, or you can stream entire tracks and albums at sites like MP3.com.

By: DigiSur

DigiSur — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 11:19:46 +0000

Dear friends! What are you think about digital camcorders with wireless internet? I want to bay this gadget,
but i have some troubles… What are yo� say about it? I read many materials about it - http://digital-reseller.blogspot.com/ - it is expensive but, very useful…

By: Ozymandias

Ozymandias — Wed, 05 Oct 2005 06:13:53 +0000

I have to agree with DJ and say that web is the way to go. A good eample is ‘get fuzzy’ i enjoy that comic alot in the paper but know that if it were to go online the man could get away with alot more story arcs. Another problem i had with syndication is that i was searching for a particular stip of Calvin and hobbes to use for a power point presentation on bats (properly cited) and couldnt find anything online, and i dont own a scanner so i spent two hours finding zilch. Is it so wrong to have access to these things for uses as this. Its just more free publicity for the artist and site.

By: Eparchos

Eparchos — Sat, 01 Oct 2005 17:30:45 +0000

I don’t think that Calvin or Opus would make PvP or PA a crap stain on the history of comics. Both of those comics have as much intelligent content as Calvin ever did, and rarely suffer the boring sophistry which plagues Opus. I personally prefer PvP to Opus, and think that Breathed should have quit while he was ahead, with Bloom County. Lord knows the world didn’t need another Doonesbury.

By: Randomizer

Randomizer — Thu, 29 Sep 2005 20:04:20 +0000

I think a lot of the comments so far are from people in the comic scene, who are forgetting just how small that scene is in the grand scheme of things.

Something we are learning about the web is the inevitability of “aggregators” — sites or services which collect together a lot of content producers so that they can be easily found by an audience. Newspaper syndicates are dinosaurs, yes, and so are major commercial music labels, but their absence doesn’t mean that quality will automatically find an audience. People have to know about it, and that can be a very indirect process.

And in webcomics, there are aggregators, sites or places with a large audiences. There are explicit aggregators, like Yahoo and other web portals, KeenSpot/Space/Whatever, Boxcar comics, Blank Label, and whoever else, but there are also “natural aggregators” — popular sites on one genre which link to others in the same or similar genres. I don’t recall how I found Yirmumah, but it was probably linked-to from PennyArcade or something. Sure, I keep reading because I think it’s quality, but that’s not what brought me here.

Of course Calvin&Hobbes would wipe the floor with DJ any day of the week, but that’s because Calvin&Hobbes is already famous. Would an equivalent quality comic with the same broad family-friendly appeal to the same? I think it’s highly contingent on how that hypothetical new comic gets linked-to by others.

Aggregators, even informal ones, inevitably look like stuck-up cliques to people on the outside. The net might kill United Features or Warner Music or whoever, but it won’t be the end of content cliques.

By: Don The Idea Guy

Don The Idea Guy — Thu, 29 Sep 2005 12:50:03 +0000

This is the exact same debate that applies to bands seeking record contracts with major labels and radio airplay. You don’t need ‘em, they’re dinosaurs, they don’t understand new medium, the listener’s demands for control and content, nor do they seek to understand it.

Like the dinosaurs, they stand in herds and stare at the bright ball of fire hurtling toward them to bring about a flaming death to their industry and simply think “ooh. pretty light. — it’ll never hit us.”

By: Tirade

Tirade — Thu, 29 Sep 2005 08:22:26 +0000

Funny that you happened to mention both of my favorate print comic strip authors…

By: Eric

Eric — Thu, 29 Sep 2005 02:40:20 +0000

Contrary to what Steve above think,s I doubt any webcomic could compete with Calvin and Hobbes. Steve is giving a great example of fan-boying gone bad.
Please everyone remember, just because you like something does not mean it is better than everything else in exsistance.

By: Steve

Steve — Thu, 29 Sep 2005 01:15:13 +0000

I wonder how popular Calvin and Hobbes would be on the internet. Most of it’s audience were old women. My mother and grandmother loved the strip. Don’t get me wrong. I thought it was a good strip as well but a majority of it’s audience dosen’t even know how to use a keyboard. DJ, you’d destroy Watterson and he knows it. That’s why he’d never venture into your waters.

By: Zach Miller

Zach Miller — Wed, 28 Sep 2005 23:46:09 +0000

http://www.uclick.com/client/wpc/wpopu/

Opus on the internet.