Webcomics Economics

Webcomics creator T. Campbell digests the sad news that most people don't make any money creating webcomics ("especially if they have nothing to do with videogames" is the commonest wisdom I hear). Sure some people have jobs with startups and hyped businesses like Clickwheel, but on the creative side, not alot of black ink. Campbell looks at the idea behind webcomics collective (he is a member of several, it seems) and his verdict is generally negative:

This is bad news for those who, like me, have likened Keenspot and Modern Tales to "the DC and Marvel of webcomics" or "the comic-strip syndicates of webcomics." This was certainly true in intent and for a while it seemed true in execution. And after that, we wanted it to be true, because we were particularly good at being members of collectives or because we just wanted to make and make and make comics without having to complicate our taxes.

Bad news for us, and yet... great news for everyone doing webcomics, because the businesses that are doing best in webcomics are businesses of one. And all you need to be a business of one is the decision to be.

It's still weird the ammount of cheerleading and "team comics"-style hype these webcomics people engage in. Quite a bit of mystical vision-eering about the possibilities of comics on computer screens similar to the "comics can be anything you want them to be" era of print comics cheerleading circa 1980-2000.