The Third (and Fourth) Rule(s) of Write Club

It's been a while since David or I wrote a rant for this comic, so I figured I'd give you some sort of explanation as to why. First of all, as this comic doesn't pay the bills or the medical insurance, and as it has all of two readers (hi Ashton! hi Paul!) it tends to come second to the forty hour per week grind that is the working world. Second, as I'm still in Uni and it's that time of year for papers to be due, I've been writing fewer scripts (only two are waiting to be drawn now) due to writing three 10-12 page papers in the last month or so. Then, there was our mutual failed attempts at NaNoWriMo, which mostly were full of fail due to above-mentioned day jobs and education. Finally, there's been the car sharing situation. My much beloved 1992 Ford Taurus decided to die on me recently, and as such, I've spent the good part of November (which hasn't involved writing papers, a novel, or working a thankless, suck the life and soul out of you job) car shopping.

This comic was written some time ago, and initially featured a few more comic writers -- well, only one: Randy of Something Positive fame, but we used him as our very cheerful receptionist at the Something Positive STD clinic (across the street from our favorite coffee shop...) and he was such a good sport about the whole thing, we decided to leave him out of this one as a thank you to him for not only linking to us, but not filing some sort of defamation suit.

About this three part series: web comics are a labor of love unless you are picked up by some hosting company that has the time, manpower, and resources to market you effectively, or unless you're some sort of gimmicy or "what the hell is *that* niche comic. Boy On A Stick And Slither comes to mind: I'm still not really sure what the hell that's ever on about, but it's found its fan base, and so it goes. And grows.

If you came into webcomics in the early days, when a lot of web comic artists and writers were first starting out, there were only a few comics to choose from, and as the idea of web comics was quite novel, they grew a loyal following. There's no fault in that. Not to brag, but I was one of the few dozen online journals (you know, those things back in the day before blogs existed. Yes, there was such a time) in 1996 and I still can pretty much find several dozen people that will follow me to whatever wacky new writing project I throw myself into because they've been there from the beginning. There's some bonding there.

I digress.

Point is, just like there is in almost any sort of field reaching its saturation point (law comes to mind, as does politics) there is a Good Ol' Boys club, and said boys do not have time for new kids fumbling through the InterTubes, finding their way as they go, switching art styles and themes and writers and trying to carve out a set of characters and a universe, while they develop (or fail to develop) a long-standing world which has severed them for several years. Their fans, much like the people I know who've followed my writing exploits, are loyal -- to the point of being close to rabid zombies in some instances -- and for the record, some of the criticism leveled at Shakra in the comic come directly from criticism leveled at myself and David for our webcomic, and for any criticism we may have of any member of the Good Ol' Boys Club.

Having said that, we don't really dislike any of the individuals we mentioned in this storyline. Warren, John, Fred, Jerry, and yes, even Jeph, aren't bad people. They've been doing this longer, they have developed a comfort zone and content that makes people happy, and that's really awesome that they can maintain a fan base considering the fickleness of comic readers in general and webcomic fans in particular.

Having said that, however, I will point out here and now that while we believe those we've parodied are good people, we simultaneously do not think that people -- no matter how good -- are immune to criticism of their work, because stamina does not an artist make, nor does popularity. Picasso once claimed that he could put his name on shit and it would sell for millions because he signed it, and webcomic fans seem to buy into this idea because they're loyal to a great, big, Grand Canyon of a fault. As much as I like MegaTokyo, it moves too slowly for me to be bothered keeping up with it. This doesn't mean I don't like Fred; it means I stopped reading after it took one month to read the events of one day a few years ago. Similarly, I like Scary-Go-Round, but can Shelley die and stay dead for once? I really liked her as a zombie, and everytime she comes back, he gets a little bit closer to Days of Our Lives-esq writing for me.

And for God's sake, Warren, can you stop playing on the InterTubes with your holy slut army, step away from Second Life, and finish Fell...or any of the other 85 million projects you've started working on but stopped due to some strange form of InterTubes ADHD?

Having said all of that, I want to point out that I still think those writers are good at what they do, but being good at what you do and having lots of friends on MySpace/LiveJournal/Facebook/whatever of the moment social networking tool you choose doesn't make your chosen favorite comic writer/artist god. They're still human and maybe, just maybe, they need some feedback that isn't a massive, sycophantic handjob every now and again.

Feel free to send the hatemail to the ususal address. Thanks.