Big Secret™
Josh Holbrook
4/12/05

Like anybody else, amateur web cartoonists hope to “make it big” one day.  Most hope to come from a small personal project with free hosting to a project so popular and profitable that it can become their job.   Of course, as with the rest of the world, only a select few of these people actually make it big.  These few creators are the people that other amateur cartoonists look up to, and some even hope to learn from them exactly how they, too, can enjoy the same status.  One day, Jeph Jacques, the writer of the very popular online comic “Questionable Content” wrote to the world on his LiveJournal on this very subject:
The biggest issue I run into when I talk to other aspiring (or frustrated) webcomic authors is that many of them seem to think my success is…something that could be repeated if only they followed the same recipe/promotion arc/business model that I did… As if there's some Big Secret™ that all the "big" webcomics know that equals instant, massive popularity. As if there's some magical formula that anyone can follow to have a popular webcomic. As if you can buy 22,000 readers per day.(35)

Even though there isn’t a “Big Secret™” for making it big, there are still methods and practices that make a comic more likely to become successful as a webcartoonist.  In this paper, I hope to find out exactly what these practices are—the closest thing webcartoonists have to a “Big Secret™”.
Before I write about success in webcomics, I should explain exactly what webcomics are.  A webcomic is “some sort of sequential art that is available via the web”.(10)  What does this mean, exactly?  First, sequential art refers to art where images put in a sequence tell a story.  When these images are lined up in reading order, they are called comics, and when they are flipped through in past succession to simulate movement they are called motion pictures. “The web” naturally refers to the World Wide Web, the same place that people find Google.com or any other web site. So, a webcomic is any comic that can be found on the Internet on a web page.  Webcomics started showing up on April 5th, 1992, when “Where the Buffalo Roam” began to be distributed via Usenet (an internet discussion system that predated the World Wide Web by over ten years). (17)  While “Where the Buffalo Roam” never gained widespread popularity, it does have the honor of being the first and oldest online comic.(17) Later came webcomics pioneers such as “Doctor Fun”, and before the end of the decade some of the currently most popular webcomics were established, (18).
Success in webcomics comes in many forms.  However, while it can be different from cartoonist to cartoonist, I believe that most forms of success can be grouped under personal success, artistic success, story-based success, popularity or financial success.
The simplest form of success to achieve is personal success.  By this, I mean that the creator is happy with what and how they are doing as a webcartoonist.  In order to reach this level of success, a cartoonist just has to start a webcomic because he likes to draw and/or write comics.  I reached this level of success as soon as I posted my first comic.
Artistic success—that is, whether the art half of the comics are considered good or not—is another form of success.  Perhaps surprisingly, most readers don’t look for much when it comes to artistic success.  As Ilja Naumov, an avid comics reader, said:
The artwork, though important, is not crucial to me.  PVP is small-scale and black-and-white.  Something Positive is at times almost abstractly-drawn, but colored.  VG Cats and Chugworth [Academy] are very well illustrated in terms of image detail, cleanliness, and color depth.  Still, since it's the verbal or situational content that really matters to me, art is a fairly low-rank consideration. (45)

The fact that the writing is more important than the art to Ilja could be because “It’s damn hard to tell the difference between a limited toolset [drawing skill] and stylistic choice”. (13)  For example, Rich Burlew draws a fairly popular web comic about Dungeons and Dragons called “The Order of the Stick”.  All the characters are drawn in the form of stick figures.  This is not because Rich Burlew does not have the skill to draw better, since he has a degree in illustration and graphic design, (5):
Let’s be clear: I choose to draw stick figures because I think they bring the right air of humor to the strip, and because they create a unique style. People often criticize the OOTS style under the assumption that I am incapable of doing “better.” I would argue that there is no “better” or “worse” involved. I use stick figures because the stick figure style is what is right for the comic. (5)

This doesn’t mean that webcomics art can’t be good or bad.  For example, the art in “A Lesson Is Learned But the Damage Is Irreversible” is excellent, while sprite comics shoddily assembled in MS Paint are not. (43,36)
Creating an enjoyable story or sequence of events at any scale is another form of success, and one that is often more important to readers, as previously noted.  Story-based success can come from any combination of a well-written and involving story, quality humor, and well-timed pacing. These are all subjective qualities, because people enjoy different stories, timing and senses of humor.  For example, Eric Burns says, “For some, Superosity brings the Funny every day. For others, it doesn't bring it at all“. (10)  Pacing is important because a comic can have a quick or slow pace depending on the nature of the comic, but if a comic’s pacing is either frantically fast or unbearably slow it can quickly turn off readers. (10)  Humor is the easiest way to succeed story-wise because humor can cover for the lack of story or good timing:  This is a quality that only humor has. (10)  Story is important if there isn’t humor in the comic, because without a story or humor the work is more of an online sketchbook than an actual comic. (10)
Popularity is arguably the most sought-after form of success.  This comes from many areas.  The most important yet most underrated of these would be actually having a quality product.  As Jeph Jacques said in response to those people that wanted to know the Big Secret ™, “I will say it over and over.  IF YOU DO GOOD WORK, PEOPLE WILL READ YOUR COMIC”. (35)  This should seem intuitive because people read material that they like, but people often worry about other little ideas that lead to success.  A quality webcomic however leads to these other ideas.  Viral marketing, for example, is very closely related with a quality product, as Jeph Jacques explains:
Word of mouth and quality are, to my mind, intimately connected.  If people like your work, they will tell their friends about it. If their friends like your work, they will tell your friends, and so on.  Loose social networks fostered particularly by high school and college students are the biggest vector for what some people rather cynically call “viral marketing”, but it happens everywhere you have one guy looking at your website and laughing, and calling his buddy or wife or personal chef over to take a look.  The opposite side of this coin, of course, is that if your work isn’t very good, people will be less inclined to tell their friends about it.  You basically have to be somebody’s favorite webcomic…you have to do some pretty [expletive] good work if you want to succeed. (35)

Getting connections also comes from having good work.  A few people feel that they won’t become popular unless they have connections with people that are already popular, and that it is these connections and not the quality of their work that really matters. According to Wednesday White, these people should be worrying less about connections and more about actually having something to show:
Shut the [expletive] up and draw something…I get tired of “who you know” games.  I can fathom the need for professional contacts, buzz between creators, that sort of thing.  I can’t grasp, however, the mindset that says that one should just not draw the bloody thing due to lack of same, let alone the expectation that napkin doodles would draw publication after the ex nihilo creation of a bond with…some guy. (51)

As Wednesday White says, these people seem to think that these connections will come out of nowhere (the phrase ‘ex nihilo’ means ‘out of nothing’). (27)  This is not true at all.  It takes work to get these connections, and the way to get connections in the comics world is to impress them with cartooning skill, as voiced by Kris Overstreet:
In comics, the only way to get work is through connections—knowing people who know people.  This is a fundamental truth.  HOWEVER… the way to get to know these people IN THE FIRST PLACE is by DOING [expletive].  Draw.  Write.  Self-publish.  Get off your duff and do something to draw attention to your talents.  Then pimp the [expletive] out of yourself, and you’ll get your connections…and if you have any talent whatever, you’ll get work. (46)

Niche markets allow for new material to not be overshadowed by other good work already in existence.  If an artist was going to draw a comic he may have a better chance if he centers its plot about cooking than if he centered its plot around computer games instead.  This is because there are already many ‘gaming comics’ on the internet, including one of the most popular of all webcomics, “Penny-Arcade”.  Drawing in the same market as “Penny-Arcade” would mean that the artist would be in direct competition with “Penny-Arcade” and would likely never reach popularity because would-be readers would likely treat it as a “Penny-Arcade” clone.  However, if they were to draw it about cooking, then they would likely be practically the only comic in that market and would, have a greater chance of succeeding (assuming that gourmet chefs read webcomics).  This all leads back to Jeph Jacques’ feelings on good work:
I believe that webcomics are a meritocracy functioning within a capitalist framework, meaning that you have to be the best guy in that niche market if you want to succeed. I’d say that the White Ninja guys are a good example… there are more aspects of the niche-market to consider, of course (for instance, there seems to be plenty of room for both a Penny-Arcade and Ctrl-Alt-Del in the “webcomics about video games” niche), but the point is that you have to do good work...(35)

Financial success is an ultimate goal for many webcartoonists because it means they can quit their day job and focus solely on drawing and writing comics. This is also very tough to do, and only a few webcartoonists are able to do it. In order to gain financial success, a webcartoonist has to find a successful business model.  Right now, most comics follow a business model that is some combination of paid advertising and merchandising, though some also either are subscription-based or employ micropayments.
Right now, most webcomic merchandise is in the form of t-shirts (and compiled books in some cases).  Many beginning webcartoonists use free Cafépress stores to make their merchandise, but the merchandise is naturally of lower quality than if they used another method.  Others sell through other companies.  For example, Penny-Arcade and PVP both sell merchandise through Thinkgeek.com.  Still others, such as Jeph Jacques of Questionable Content, hire a professional to print the shirts and sell them themselves. (32)
Most webcomics are completely free to view.  However, there are two business models that allow webcartoonists to charge for viewing comics.  The first, a subscription system, usually allows users to look at the newest comic plus a preview story, but require them to pay a fee to read the older comic strips.  A good example of this is Modern Tales, a collective that makes its money through such a system.  Surprisingly to some, Modern Tales has made a profit. (24)
The other, micropayments, may be the most controversial.  In micropayments, people pay as little as a penny for each comic they wish to view.  Proponents of micropayments feel that viewers would gladly pay such small amounts of money if it was a quick and simple process. Critics of this system feel that micropayments have serious flaws.  Penny-Arcade’s writer, Jerry Holkins, wrote about his feelings on the subject:
It's not like you could just jump out the gate with a micropayments system in place, that's nonsense. How can people find out about you, how can your concept spread in the viral way that is the Internet's strength, when people have to ante up for what is essentially an unknown quantity? For someone like Scott McCloud [a main proponent of micropayments], somebody who is already established in realspace media, that scheme might work - but if this mechanism is chiefly of use to those already enfranchised, that takes his inspiring manifesto down a couple pegs...He imagines that other people - in fact, that everyone - would gladly pay for things if given the chance to do so. That is demonstrably, empirically false - most especially so on the Internet, and most damningly so where content is concerned. But the final strike against his assertions is the most telling: ... the very foundation of his argument - namely, the sub-dollar transactions called micropayments - do not exist. They are not real. Yes, we have facsimiles of these that operate now (you can see them on the left), but they are not elegant, they incur significant charges, and they are not available to many, many readers because, for whatever reason, they are not able to perform credit transactions. (30)

At the time Jerry Holkins wrote this (2001), there were not any micropayment systems in place.  The facsimile he mentions, likely PayPal, does not work nearly as well as a true micropayments system should, as it is designed for larger transactions, like a credit card.  Today, that is not quite true—there is one company, called BitPass, which now offers micropayment services. (2,3)  His other points, however, are still valid.
Pure webcomics often have an attitude against newspaper comics, with the feeling that the newspaper as a medium for comics is outdated and hopelessly tied up with greedy syndicates and pressure to censor everything.  However, at least a few people have formed hybrids between newspaper and internet comics.  Michael Jantze started as a syndicated cartoonist with his comic “The Norm”.  However, “The Norm” is now available only through the internet.  “Michael became savvy to the power of the internet before the syndicated did and he licensed back his own property from them for net sales…the syndicates didn’t know what they were signing away.  So Mike really represents the hybrid”, Scott Kurtz claimed on his web site. (42)  Kurtz himself is also a hybrid of sorts, though from a different angle.  Scott Kurtz has wanted for years to be in the newspapers, and decided that now the climate was right to offer his comic, PVP, to newspapers directly for free. (42)  Bill Holbrook, the artist of “Kevin and Kell”, could also be considered a hybrid—he not only publishes “Kevin and Kell” on the internet, but supports it financially by drawing two other comics for the newspapers: “On The Fasttrack” and “Safe Havens”. (6)
All these forms of success ultimately rest on actually doing good work in the first place--but, what is good work?  Over time, a few general guidelines have risen to define what is good work and what is not in the form of lists and rules created by webcartoonists that have both their own projects and those that they read on a regular basis on which to base them. One set of these rules, written by Andy Weir (the creator of “Casey and Andy”), is jokingly called “The 10 Commandments of Authoring Webcomics”:
1) Thou shalt update regularly. If thou doth not, thy readers shall flee like unto the Hebrews from Egypt.

2) Thou shalt not use lined notebook paper to draw upon. It is an abomination.

3) Thou shalt only do thy own lettering if thou can make it legible. Else, thou shalt use a god-damned font.

4) Thou shalt not spout L337 nor other internet abbreviations in thy characters talk bubbles. It is a sin.

5) Thou shalt not violate the sanctity of the fourth wall. It is overdone.

6) Thou shalt not rip off Penny Arcade, PvP, or any other popular existing comic. Thou shalt show some freakin' originality!

7) Thou shalt not make a comic comprised entirely of screenshots of video games.

8) Before making a webcomic, thou shalt first practice thy art skills until they are distinguishable from a kindergartener's.

9) Thou shalt not make thy comic too big to fit on a typical computer screen without scrolling.

10) Thou shalt, on occasion, make thy comic funny and devoid of suck. (49)

This list covers most of the basic ideas considered by most webcomic creators and fans to be the general guidelines of doing good work.  These “10 Commandments”, paraphrased, say to update regularly, make the work look clean, don’t write in overused gimmicks such as internet slang and breaking the fourth wall, and be original and funny.  It also touches on sprite comics in particular.  Other guidelines not worded by Andy Weir are using fillers correctly when an artist can’t make an update for any reason, including a cast page—especially for more complicated comics.
1337 sp33k and gaming roommates have been used by some of the most popular webcomics known today—namely “Megatokyo”, “Penny-Arcade” and “Ctrl-Alt-Del”.  However, they are used so often now that they are often looked to as old, boring and unoriginal, and are discouraged.  “Ctrl-Alt-Del”, a gamer comic that centers around two roommates that spend most of their time playing video games even knows that it is following a standard format.  In the very first comic, one of the main characters says, “So it’s a strip about two guys that sit around and play video games?  Seems a tad cliché, doesn’t it?”. (4)  Breaking the fourth wall (having the characters acknowledge that they are in a comic, breaking any illusion of reality)  is also discouraged to a lesser degree thanks to comics such as “Real Life”, but is still seen regularly in comics such as “No Fourth Wall to Break” and even “PVP”, one of the best webcomics.
Clean and prepared art is encouraged because it looks more professional and is easier to read. Ways to get clean and prepared art include drawing on plain paper and not lined paper (as Andy Weir noted), erasing all pencil marks, inking the comic strip and typing the dialogue in most cases, and resizing the comic to better fit the screen.  Large images are especially discouraged.  Webcomics, because of their digital nature, can have images as large as a cartoonist wishes—this property has been dubbed “infinite canvas”.  According to the Webcomics Examiner, infinite canvas “works great for special occasions, but it’s too much work to be something I’d do all the time…and doing that’d spoil the impact of it after a while”. (47)  This is because reading such large comics takes a lot of work on the way of the reader, who has to scroll through the entire image.
Sprite comics and other forms of cut-and-paste are also generally frowned upon.  Cutting and pasting is a technique where a drawing is copied from somewhere else—either outside or inside the comic itself—to save drawing work for the webcartoonist.  Sprite comics, a variation on basic cut-and-paste, are made by taking images of 2-d video game characters (called “sprites”) from screenshots of games such as Megaman and Sonic the Hedgehog.  These characters are then re-colored and pasted on top of some sort of background, with words attached.  Sprite comics are bad in particular because they often break copyright law.  Cut-and-paste comics in general are usually not very good because they have so little to show for art that they rely entirely on their writing, which has to be very good:
Cut and paste comics live and die in their humor.  For most humor strips, the execution consists of phrasing, or art choices, of panel sizes.  When your figures barely move and generally only talk, however, language becomes all, tone becomes crucial, and your job gets a lot harder. (8)

This idea that cut-and-paste comics are actually harder to make than ones with completely original art escapes many amateur webcartoonists, leading to a lesser product.  This doesn’t mean that they can’t be good, and there are in fact a few good cut-and-paste comics. “Daily Dinosaur Comics”, for example, utilizes cut-and-paste so much that it uses the same frames and images in the same positions every day.  Yet, because Ryan North is able to use these panels to write fresh, funny and engaging material every day, people enjoy his work.
Updates are important to a lot of viewers, because they expect to be able to read a new comic every day and will stop reading them if there isn’t something new to keep their attention.  An update schedule can be as spread out or as tightly packed as a cartoonist wishes—most regularly-updated webcomics update between once a day and once a week.  The important thing is that these updates aren’t missed, or that at least an acknowledgement of the reader is posted in a new comic’s place.
Some missed updates are tolerated.  They are tolerated more for amateur webcartoonists than they are for professional webcartoonists—that is, webcartoonists that do it as their job are held to a higher standard than those that don’t:
This is the difference between a strip where the Webcartoonist has made it his job (PvP, Sluggy, Something*Positive and the like) and one where the Webcartoonist works a full day job and tries to do this stuff in their everyday life, too. If [the artist of /usr/bin/w00t] were putting food on her table by the graces of this strip, my reaction would be this is your [expletive] job! Rework your priorities! But she's not putting food in the table via this strip. She's doing this strip because she wants to, because she loves doing it. And we're lucky to get whatever she can do. She doesn't owe us a [expletive] thing. (7)

Eric Burns forgave the creator of “/usr/bin/w00t” for only being able to make a few updates a week because she also has a day job.  However, he has been much less forgiving of Fred Gallagher of Megatokyo, who does publish his webcomic as his day job.  In fact, this was one of the reasons he stopped reading Megatokyo.
For some people this isn’t as big a deal.  To them, as long as they get work every now and then, they are happy.  Some, such as comics fan Ilja Naumov, are simply more forgiving of webcomic artists:
The criticism comes from less-patient and more instant-gratification-demanding audiences, whereas I am perhaps simply more forgiving/patient…Well, from what the author[of Megatokyo] leads to believe, his musings about the subject come from his philosophy, and if he is overwhelmed and emotionally incapable of creating another comic, he is letting down his fans.  Some would say simply that this is unacceptable, but I realize that webcomic artists are people too.  I would have to say that the discrepancies within Megatokyo's updates are completely excusable…

I myself am able to forgive updates more readily when the comics are of higher quality to compensate.  For example, I stopped reading “Nahast:  Lands of Strife” because the author missed weekly updates on a regular basis.  Meanwhile, I still read “A Lesson Is Learned but the Damage Is Irreversible” when it doesn’t update for nearly a month because the artwork and writing are good enough to keep me from leaving.
When missing an update becomes inevitable, people have mixed feelings on filler art.  Some feel that a late update or simple note is desirable to filler art because fillers are usually boring, (1).  Others feel that fillers are good, if written correctly:
The best filler art may be killer fast, but still fulfills the essential strip requirements. The Something Positive Filler Art, both for today (the deeply offensive and [expletive] funny explanation of what happened to Monette's baby)...hits the top mark. He just had to draw one panel's worth of stuff today, and that pretty simple stuff to boot, and fill the rest with expository text and things that would make the Baby Jesus cry. It's exactly what we go to Something Positive for, [expletive] it, so we've hardly been cheated, (16).

Eric Burns continues to say that worse filler art aims for this, but misses.  He says the worst fillers are, while not funny or at all work-intensive, is still in the conceit of the comic.  The bottom line for filler art is to not make it a habit, and try to post quality filler art when one is forced to.
Writing a cast page is also a good idea for webcartoonists, especially for story-driven comics.  Cast pages are “absolutely necessary, the main because [they] provides the new reader with a fast roadmap so he can jump right in, and provides the long time reader with a quick reference to refresh his memory if need be”, (10). A cast page is a page that describes the main characters of the comic. .  A cast page doesn’t have to be fancy.  For example, Questionable Content’s “About” page doesn’t even have pictures of the characters—just their name and a short description, (32).  This does the job of describing characters of the comic for newcomers quite adequately. Even so, readers would rather see no cast page at all than a link to a blank cast page:
NO ONE GIVES A [expletive] HOW NICE YOUR CAST PAGE LOOKS, IDIOT!\

They don't come to your webcomic to see the cast page. They come for the Comic. The cast page makes the comic accessible to them! Period! Any crappy cast page, out of date and poorly written, is eons better than no cast page, and infinitely better than advertising one and then not following through! [Expletive] IN A BUCKET, PEOPLE! Take ten minutes out of writing your [expletive] "Rant" and PUT UP A [expletive] CAST PAGE! (7)

At this moment, I am trying to start a webcomic, and am also looking to reach some level of success.  I have already attained personal success to a degree just by starting my webcomic.  I can work for success in my art and writing in the short term, and hope for eventual popularity and even a way to make money off my project.  But how do I get there?  There are many different techniques and guidelines in reaching success. I can “pimp out” my material in an attempt to get connections.  I can also put ads on my web page and offer comic merchandise to my readers.  If I thought I was up to it, I could also attempt to put a subscription system—or even a micropayment system—in place.  All of these suggestions, however, stem from and are supported by doing good work in the first place.  By doing good work, I can not only attain success based on good art and writing alone, but attract new readers, get connections, carve my niche and eventually turn my popularity into a profit.
But how do I actually do good work in the first place?  First, aside from trying my hardest, I can work on the presentation of my webcomic.  This means having clean background colors and crisp lines, but it also means resizing the comic to properly fit the size of a computer screen.  Being original in my jokes also helps.  Using old jokes and gimmicks such as internet slang and breaking the fourth wall are often frowned upon because they have been done so often in webcomics that they are no longer original.  Having varying art as opposed to cut-and-pasted art also helps, especially when the writing of a comic isn’t very strong.  Regular updating is also a large factor to many in gaining a significant readership.  Other suggestions include including a cast page of some sort and self-censorship when encountering the urge to use curse words.  If I follow these guidelines and “do good work”, maybe I too can someday “make it big”.

Sources:
	
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25.	ibid.  "The History of Online Comics (Chapter 9)", http://www.comixpedia.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=2132&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0, February 13, 2005.

26.	Dean, Greg.  “Frequently Asked Questions”, http://www.reallifecomics.com/stuff_faq.php.

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