#also smackjeeves.

[genericpuff]

All the cool kids use ComicFury 😘

Hey y'all! If you love independent comic sites and have a few extra dollars in your pocket, please consider supporting ComicFury, the owner Kyo has been running it for nearly twenty years and it's one of the only comic hosting platforms left that's entirely independent and reminiscent of the 'old school' days that I know y'all feel nostalgic over.

(kyo's sense of humor is truly unmatched lmao)

Here are some of the other great features it offers:

Message board forums! It's a gift from the mid-2000's era gods!

Entirely free-to-use HTML and CSS editing! You can use the provided templates, or go wild and customize the site entirely to your liking! There's also a built-in site editor for people like me who want more control over their site design but don't have the patience to learn HTML/CSS ;0

In-depth site analytics that allow you to track and moderate comments, monitor your comic's performance per week, and let you see how many visitors you get. You can also set up Google Analytics on your site if you want that extra touch of data, without any bullshit from the platform. Shit, the site doesn't come with ads, but you can run ads on your site. The site owners don't ask questions, they don't take a cut. Pair your site with ComicAd and you'll be as cool as a crocodile alligator !

RSS feeds! They're like Youtube subscriptions for millennials and Gen X'ers!

NSFW comics are allowed, let the "female presenting nipples" run free! (just tag and content rate them properly!)

Tagging. Tagging. Remember that? The basic feature that every comic site has except for the alleged "#1 webcomic site"? The independent comic site that still looks the same as it did 10 years ago has that. Which you'd assume isn't that big a deal, but isn't it weird that Webtoons doesn't?

Blog posts. 'Nuff said.

AI-made comics are strictly prohibited. This also means you don't have to worry about the site owners sneaking in AI comics or installing AI scrapers (cough cough)

Did I mention that the hosting includes actual hosting? Meaning for only the cost of the domain you can change your URL to whatever site name you want. No extra cost for hosting because it's just a URL redirect. No stupid "pro plan" or "gold tier" subscription necessary, every feature of the site is free to use for all. If this were a sponsored Pornhub ad, this is the part where I'd say "no credit card, no bullshit".

Don't believe me? Alright, look at my creator backend (feat stats on my old ass 2014 comic, I ain't got anything to hide LOL)

TRANSCRIPTS! CHAPTER ORGANIZATION! MASS PAGE UPLOADING! MULTIPLE CREATOR SUPPORT! FULL HTML AND CSS SUPPORT! SIMPLIFIED EDITORS! ACTUAL STATISTICS THAT GIVE YOU WEEKLY BREAKDOWNS! THE POWER OF CHOICE!!

So yeah! You have zero reasons to not use and support ComicFury! It being "smaller" than Webtoons shouldn't stop you! Regain your independence, support smaller platforms, and maybe you'll even find that 'tight-knit community' that we all miss from the days of old! They're out there, you just gotta be willing to use them! ( ´ ∀ `)ノ～ ♡

[hjeojeo]

it's...missing smackjeeves hours..

telling myself if no one makes a good alternative for smackjeeves in the next like five years, im gonna start making one myself (only 10% serious)

i just miss like that atmosphere of 100% unmarketable, just comic sharing/making space.

where we all knew that 99% of the time the comics we see will never get finished bc ppl get busy, kids grow up and change interests ,etc. (i mention kids bc most of my memories of smackjeeves was when i was a teen, so it was a significant like developmental years as an artist kind experience for me)

like i remember most of the comics were like

barely legible sketch pages with like text written in mspaint.

there was absolutely no quality standard. and that's why it was so good

it made me as a kid feel like oh i can do comics! cause it can be WHATEVER YOU WANTED IT TO BE AND LOOK HOWEVER WAY.

and the collaborative ones on smackjeeves were so fun to look at

just overall.

having that. rough, crude, unmarketable space for art/comics was significant.

[sharpibees]

tbqh ik its probably not the most smart and Marketable move but I think I won't be reflecting Devil Waltz to any other platforms (Tapas, webtoon, etc) besides the main site anymore. I'll still post it on x/bsky/tumblr but I don't want to feel like DW's readerbase is centralized on platforms I have little control over. Also tbh its a pain to reformat DW other than traditional print + I am lazy + its free!

[sforzesco]

ALRIGHT

to get it out of the way, TRIKARANOS will always be free to read and there will NOT be an early access tier, but I'll probably start talking about patreon more as a way to support it (& also me because I have. bills to pay.)

I'm still writing it, but I've started drawing the first chapter, altho it won't be done until....the end of october, maybe sometime early november. this comic doesn't have a set schedule or release. what it DOES have is it's own blog!

⭐ ta da! [link]⭐

if you're on desktop, feel free to check it out! I'm pretty happy with choosing this theme + how the banner looks with it :) you can check it out on mobile too, but there's Nothing To Look At There because there are no custom themes for the mobile vers of a blog

[meejijis]

Suddenly wanted to go look for my cringey comic I've made way back in 2010 when I was in my weeb phase so I went onto smackjeeves, hoping to find it, only to find out that apparently I'm a few years late learning that smackjeeves SHUT DOWN on December 2020........ That. Really sucks. A lot. What the fuck 😭😭😭

[reignofrust]

If you went to [REDACTED] Highschool in 2018 and you find this blog…Hi! 👋 Happy to announce that those little bitches from the school newspaper weren’t a fever dream!

[gloomy-prince]

SUPER OLD RAINBOW! ART THREAD!!! Open only if you are brave enough to face teen me's cringe art...

(mostly joking but fr white Mimi and skinny Boo jumpscare below)

Very first digital piece of Boo and Mimi circa 2011!! I was 14 when I drew this. Usually I'm able to look back fondly at super old art of mine but this one does make me cringe a liiiiittle bit. Mimi girl what are you wearing, why are you white. Boo also had pink eyes in the beginning, which she would continue to have for several years to come (even in the current iteration of RAINBOW! they were pink at first, I later recolored those pages) but it was only later that it was due to the color scheme of the comic and not because they were literally pink. I'm pretty sure they were meant to be contacts, because their hair is and always have been dyed rather than anime-esque natural colorful hair, so that was some crazy dedication from Boo back in the day.

More 2011 art showing off Mimi's goth/scene-ish style and green eyes. They were initially meant to have pastel and neon fashion senses, respectively. The story was already named at this point, only a few days or maybe weeks into its inception, which is impressive considering it has taken us literal years to name other stories (I'm looking at you, Phantom Pains)

this one is from super early 2012! Interesting to think that this was less than 9 months later since it feels completely different to me. The first version of the comic had started at this point, and the pink and green color scheme was just starting to develop. This lineup features some characters that would later be cut. Lucian and Lily were friends of Boo, and Cecilia was Mimi's ex girlfriend. Notably Clarice is not on this lineup, and frankly I'm not sure why.

A picture I drew to commemorate 50 fans on RAINBOW!'s smackjeeves page, mid 2012. Boo's outfit resembled a recolored version of her 2011 outfit, but I have no idea what Mimi is wearing. What. are. you. wearing.

Chibi-ish drawings of Boo and Mimi cosplaying various characters, from early 2013. Homura Mimi is very funny to me, I really don't know why I didn't draw her as Kyoko. I assume I was trying to keep them as paired characters, but I didn't do that with the Sailor Moon or Disney ones, so I who knows why I did it with PMMM. Mimi's hairstyle changes to a shaved cut somewhere around this time, but it is much more dramatic than her current undercut, and her hair is still pretty long. Boo is wearing a closet cosplay of Fluttershy that I myself wore once. These also resemble the chibi-ish drawings on the chapter intermission pages of RAINBOW! Vol 1.

A character study I did in late 2013, which would be shortly after I made a major style shift into the art style that would eventually develop into the one I currently have. At this point, Boo was meant to be fatter than Mimi, but the execution wasn't really there at all. There is also a doodle at the bottom of me and Sunny at the time (I am the one with long hair), expressing thanks for 300 fans on smackjeeves. Considering it had 50 in mid 2012, the readership was pretty slow growing back then.

outfit exploration for Mimi, circa 2014. At this point I started to expand the color scheme a little bit more so that not every character would be paper-white, though she is still very pale even though she is no longer meant to be white anymore. None of these outfits really resemble her current style, and I don't particularly like any of them either. It took me a very long time to settle on a fashion sense for her.

an Adventure Time-eqsue drawing of Mimi and Boo that I actually drew less than two weeks after the previous image despite the difference in things such as the way the hair was drawn. I had to include this one because it blew up overnight, which was a huge deal for highschool me, I remember checking my phone at school a lot because it was just getting hundreds or even thousands of notes over the span of the day. I think it has something like 16,000 notes. Still the post with the highest number of notes I have by far, so I guess I peaked in high school, whomp whomp

More fashion exploration, this time of Mimi and Boo, from early 2015. The color scheme is starting to approach what it currently is, but much more dull since I used to be afraid of bright colors. Mimi's fashion sense is starting to get closer to what it currently is, but the pastel goth influence that was popular in early-mid 2010s tumblr is apparent. In chapter 1, Boo wears an outfit that is extremely similar to the one with the bear shirt, except it's a rabbit instead. The dress that Mimi gives to Boo is also almost identical to the depiction of it here. This drawing implies that Mimi was originally going to be present in the film noir scene where Boo finds her mom, which is interesting...

Another cast lineup! This one is from late 2015-early 2016. Mimi is wearing an outfit pretty similar to what she wears in chapter 1 but with the colors altered. The execution of Boo's body type is starting to improve but she's still kind of pear-shaped. Mimi is also a little more square, and her hair finally looks like the style she has now. Clarice gets to be in the lineup this time and she is SUPER tall. I think she is still taller than Milo. And Mimi is around 5'7"-5'8", so Clarice must be around 6 foot by that logic.

The original version of chibi-ish Boo riding a bike in her Kiki outfit, from 2016. I think it was meant to be a banner of some kind, possibly for tapas or tumblr. A newer version of this drawing features as a chapter intermission drawing in the physical book.

The original cover for RAINBOW! from 2017. The color scheme is finally starting to get a little brighter! This is actually a redraw of an older drawing from 2014, I want to draw it again someday. Also, I was going by Rain at the time.

A drawing I did in late 2017 for a class in which we were meant to try digital painting and I went for a very simple approach. I like that Mimi's legs are a little noodle-y. This is also the first drawing where Mimi's eyes are no longer green, but dark pink instead. By the language of RAINBOW!'s color scheme, that means they are brown. Boo's eyes are still pink, however.

Another drawing for a class, this time from 2018. I can't remember the specifics of the assignment, but I used the opportunity to draw the playground and Max, the dog, for the first time. I like the way the trees look in this. That little snip of hair by Mimi's ear also made a reappearance here for some reason.

The original version of the drawing that would become the cover of RAINBOW! Vol 1, from mid 2019! I believe I drew it to be a banner on Tapas, but I used it for tumblr as well.

And lastly, Boo and Mimi outfit sheets from 2019-2020. I messed with them for a while, hence the timeframe. Boo's eyes are finally green, which I changed since I liked the idea of Mimi having green hair and pink eyes, and Boo having pink hair and green eyes, as if they are reflected a bit in each other. Outside of RAINBOW!'s color scheme, Boo's eyes are actually blue though. It took about a decade, but I finally settled on a fashion sense for Mimi.

BONUS ART!!! ���💖✨✨ I thought these would be better grouped together rather than chronologically with the rest.

RAINBOW!'s banners from its era on smackjeeves! Smackjeeves didn't have square/circular icons but rather these thin long banners which could also be animated. I thought that was so fun, so I always animated them at least a little, even though one doesn't seem to work. It was customary to write girls love/boys love on the banner of mlm/wlw romance stories then, so almost all of them say that. I still see that trend on some comics on webtoon and tapas nowadays. They are from 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2017. I don't believe the 2017 one was ever used.

And RAINBOW!'s icon throughout the years! I always refused to change it, only update it, because I thought it was really cute. They are from (approximately) 2017, 2018, 2020, and 2021.

And finally, art from 2021 of Mimi with her cousin August, who will be the protagonist of our next comic, Phantom Pains. Weird to think that we'll be on that comic in foreseeable future, since it is also over 10 years old now. Bit of a passing the torch type drawing to end on. 💕 If you made it all the way here, thanks for reading! Hopefully it was fun and didn't hurt your eyes.

[emilylsart]

SURPRISE PIXEL ART TIME!!

I felt like making these little sprite edits of the Scott Pilgrim video game characters! Featuring the playable characters on top as well as Knives and some NPCs on the bottom.

I took some clothing inspiration from the anime while Ramona's is from a well-known Bryan Lee O'Malley drawing of her. Changing the colors on them was the fun part :) Also, colored-in mouths! Ain't that something!

The reason I made these sprite edits is that during the weekend, I went on a nostalgic trip to look at some sprite comics I liked during my teenage years...(around 2016) they were mostly Kirby comics, LOL. I usually read them on ComicFury now since Smackjeeves died out a few years ago...it was my only source of sprite-comic reading back then :(

Somehow, all of it gave me the urge to make one on my own...Well this is what I have for now, just a little overview of what the Scotty P. video game characters will look like in my own version of them. Hope you like!

(all original sprites were downloaded from The Spriters Resource and edited in Krita)

[EDIT: fixed Young Neil's hair a bit]

[mynameismad]

now that you’re making updated versions of early sakana pages for webtoon, are you planning on formatting those new versions for the hiveworks website as well, or will those pages remain in all their original glory?

The sakana-comic.com pages will always remain in their original versions!

With links being suppressed on twitter (which used to be my biggest platform) and ad revenue down across the web, It's been much more difficult in the current social media climate to point people to a unique website like sakana-comic. So I figured I'd be remiss not to give the top webcomics aggregate a fair shot. (Still missing SmackJeeves all these years later though... u_u).

You could probably consider the Webtoons version its own separate comic project because of how many edits I'm making, and I'd encourage any SAKANA fan to check it out and see what's different! I'd also HIGHLY encourage everyone to visit and interact with their favorite webcomics on their home websites, not just Sakana's (and please make sure to turn off your ad-block while you're there!) All indie creators are feeling the squeeze right now!

[gazeopard]

Kique: Anthro or no anthro?

So I was looking at the preview for Chapter 14 and I noticed how one of the big cats is lifting Ranach (I'm assuming it's him by the double-nicks in his right ear) by the front of his cloak with his front paws. I'm not gonna link it because it's on Patreon.

I don't know if his readers/fans have noticed it yet, on Patreon or otherwise, but over the years he's been recently trying to incorporate more and more anthropomorphic characteristics onto his canine and feline characters. Case in point, his gratuitous and unnecessarily graphic NSFW pages, where he puts his characters in various human-sex positions. Then there's several rare moments in the comic where he plays around with his anatomically-accurate quadrupedal dog and big cat characters and suddenly makes them do things with their paws and hind-legs such as this:

Non-anthro dogs should not be able to cross their hind-legs like that. They can "sploot" similar to the way Jahla is, but "splooting" is where dogs, cats, and others such as squirrels spread their hind-legs out on both sides of their bodies. Jahla is lying flat on her back, but her hind-legs are cross over one another the way a human would.

Normally, this wouldn't be a problem. It's perfectly fine to give quadrupedal characters the ability to use their paws as hands. After all, that's what "anthropomorphism" is: giving human traits or characteristics, physical or emotional, to non-humans. They don't always need to have bodies with human anatomy fully bound to being bipedal and wearing clothes to be considered "anthro"/"anthropomorphic". But the problem is not that the characters are anthropomorphic or can hold things in their paws. The problem is that this is occurring far into the sequel and none of it was present in Asmundr. If I recall correctly. When characters out of nowhere start exhibiting such traits several pages ahead without any explanation (and when such traits are used so sparingly), there's a problem. It's interesting how for the majority of Asmundr and its sequel, he's had all his characters completely quadrupedal with lack of evolution in their paws, where they can't grip things using their digits like human hands. But now, he's been slowly and gradually changing the rules throughout the rest of the comic. In Home, we've had a few other rare and weird occurrences where dogs and cats would do things with their paws, including but not limited to the awkward-looking panel where Kargo apparently snapped his own arm to grab one of the raiders in a strangle-hold while stabbing it in the neck, and we had Feaf holding up the Golden Lioness feather. And later again when Zahira holds the aforementioned feather after Feaf gives it to her. Characters are also now embracing one another with their forelimbs, which doesn't break the suspension of disbelief too much, as it happened many times in The Lion King and Simba's Pride, but up until Home I don't think we ever saw characters being capable of supporting or holding each other like that. There are possibly other instances where these things happen, but I don't remember the rest. Where was all of this in previous chapters? Where was this in Asmundr? Why weren't these characteristics present throughout the comics? If he had gone in this direction from the start, it would have saved his readers and himself the grief of making excuses and constant head-scratching.It would explain how they'd be able to put the armor and tunics on, as so many readers were scratching their heads in an older chapter. It's weird that he's pulling these rare and sudden behaviors from his characters' anatomy on his readers like this. Screenshots taken by the old CCS blog from the first time Kique had the comments open and posted Page 305 on Smackjeeves:

Symbolism? Where?

So many readers were scratching their heads and getting frustrated by his vague answers for how his dog characters could put the armor on, and he excused it away by claiming the clothes had magnets created by the aliens. I know magnets were established earlier in the story, but I don't remember if it was always there or if Kique had gone back and edited the page to include Roamer's speech-bubble including magnets. I'm sure he didn't, but I wouldn't be surprised if he did go back and add some things since he's had a bad habit of doing that, even with the Roamer x Kargo panels and pages, making it seem like Roamer was always uncomfortable around him or hesitant even though he never was, until Page 214 on Chapter 7, where Kargo is being intimate with Roamer until Roamer basically tells him to slow down and Kargo obliges... which by the way, was so generous and sweet of Kargo to do, slowing himself down and allowing Roamer to catch up and get more comfortable around him. Unlike Rogio. The page initially had slightly different dialogue that Kique edited, but still has the same meaning. It baffles me that Kique dragged that dude through the mud, made him go full OOC and irredeemable, and then killed him off, only to bring him back and forcing him into a poly relationship with Roamer AND Rogio (the dog who betrayed him and used Roamer RIGHT AFTER THE PUP FUCKING BROKE UP WITH KARGO BTW) and after Rogio "saved" him from the spirit world complete with reopened wounds from his death and forcing Kargo to believe he owes his dept to Rogio. All so Rogio can look good. But I digress. Why these dogs even need clothes when they have thick fur meant to protect themselves against winter, I have no idea. And why they even have shirts, I have no idea either. I remember he'd draw his old German Shepherd fursona and his old girlfriend Meg's feline fursona in a Don Bluthy style where, naturally, they were quadrupedal but still able to hold things in their paws and balance on two legs, since they were heavily inspired by All Dogs go to Heaven and Madagascar. Wurr, No North and Lost Scent have also done this (and I'm currently trying it out with my own art/story). If these anatomical aspects of his characters were always present since Asmundr, if he had gone in the anthropomorphic All Dogs direction from the start, it wouldn't look so out-of-place. I'm curious about what his readers think of these instances or if they've even noticed it yet. With Avantifeigr, I can buy it because she's a heavily-modified canine that has always had hands and the ability to grip things since her introduction as a monster. And climb, even if Kique made her conveniently forget how to until the fire at the Meteor Tribe.

But yeah. This is what happens when you make up your story and its world-building as you go and publish the first draft without editing, redrafting, and polishing. EDIT: Someone reminded me in the comments of these pages. It looks so awkward. Same with this one with Raimo (the black GSD-looking dog) and Lifa. Piccolo snatching the stick and pointing it at Raimo's chest looks very awkward. There was also this scene with Rogio that I overlooked.

[flamboyant-king]

I've wanted to make a webcomic for like a dozen years. Inspired by the stuff on smackjeeves. (Yeah that relic) Like, hey, I'm an amateur artist but I have no story idea and I have geometry proofs to write. But I have an idea now, maybe not the most action packed and unique idea, but it's different and slow paced.

I want to make a webcomic with Harvey and Camellia, you know them, you love them, it already has a name, Grow as We Go. It's basically the cutesy, wholesome stuff I've already been posting, but now it will be actually cohesive. Chronological. Canon.

I just want to cement them down in a consumable way, cause I love my characters, I rattle them in my brain daily, but their stories are fit for different mediums. ArtPG, Wiwi and the Golden Acorn, and Meanie Greenies are fit for actual video games pacing and mechanics, Grow As We Go has the pacing of a webtoon, the composition of the long pages will really emphasize the flow of time and recovery, and Find Eli is also a webcomic whose timeline will merge with Grow As We Go. I just have a lot of ideas that's hard to pin down and actually work on because of the ADHD--and it stinks. A dozen years! I coulda started making comics in high school, but noooooo, I had to do homework and play Super Smash Brothers Brawl.

I'd love to hear any thoughts you guys have, does a slow paced comic sound interesting to you? Just a cozy, wholesome webcomic to follow whenever you like. Like not even weekly updates, I want the time to really feel like it's passing in real life alongside the comic. Thank you~

[genericpuff]

Tbh at this point you should just make your own webcomic app/website because it would probably be 100 times better than whatever going on with webtoon right now.

hahaha it wouldn't tho, sorry 💀

Here's the fundamental issue with webcomic platforms that a lot of people just don't realize (and why they're so difficult to run successfully):

Storage costs are incredibly expensive, it's why so many sites have limitations on file sizes / page sizes / etc. because all of those images and site info have to be stored somewhere, which costs $$$.

Maintenance costs are expensive and get more so as you grow, you need people who are capable of fixing bugs ASAP and managing the servers and site itself

Financially speaking, webcomics are in a state of high supply, low demand. Loads of artists are willing to create their passion projects, but getting people to read them and pay for them is a whole other issue. Demand is high in the general sense that once people get attached to a webtoon they'll demand more, but many people aren't actually willing to go looking for new stuff to read and depend more on what sites feed them (and what they already like). There are a lot of comics to go around and thus a lot of competition with a limited audience of people willing to actually pay for them.

Trying to build a new platform from the ground up is incredibly difficult and a majority of sites fail within their first year. Not only do you have to convince artists to take a chance on your platform, you have to convince readers to come. Readers won't come if there isn't work on the platform to read, but artists won't come if they don't think the site will be worth it due to low traffic numbers. This is why the artists with large followings who are willing to take chances on the smaller sites are crucial, but that's only if you can convince them to use the site in favor of (or alongside) whatever platform they're using already where the majority of their audience lies. For many creators it's just not worth the time, energy, or risk.

Even if you find short-term success, in the long-term there are always going to be profit margins to maintain. The more users you pull in, the more storage is used by incoming artists, the more you have to spend on storage and server maintenance costs, and that means either taking the risk at crowdfunding (ex. ComicFury) or having to resort to outsider investments (ex. Tapas). Look at SmackJeeves, it used to be a titan in the independent webcomic hosting community, until it folded over to a buyout by NHN and then was pretty much immediately shuttered due to NHN basically turning it into a manwha scanlation site and driving away its entire userbase. And if you don't get bought out and try your hand at crowdfunding, you may just wind up living on a lifeline that could cut out at any moment, like what happened to Inkblazers (fun fact, the death of Inkblazers was what kicked off the cultural shift in Tapas around 2015-16 when all of IB's users migrated over and brought their work with them which was more aimed towards the BL and romancee drama community, rather than the comedy / gag-a-day culture that Tapas had made itself known for... now you deadass can't tell Tapas apart from a lot of scanlation sites because it got bought out by Kakao and kept putting all of its eggs into the isekai/romance drama basket.)

Right now the mindset in which artists and readers are operating is that they're trying way, way too hard to find a "one size fits all" site. Readers want a place where they can find all their favorite webtoons without much effort, artists wants a place where they can post to an audience of thousands, and both sides want a community that will feel tight-knit. But the reality is that you can't really have all three of those things, not on one site. Something always winds up having to be sacrificed - if a site grows big enough, it'll have to start seeking more funding while also cutting costs which will result in features becoming paywall'd, intrusive ads, creators losing their freedom, and/or outsider support which often results in the platform losing its core identity and alienating its tight-knit community.

If I had to describe what I'm talking about in a "pick one" graphic, it would look something like this:

(*note: this is mostly based on my own observations from using all of these sites at some point or another, they're not necessarily entirely accurate to the statistical performance of each site, I can only glean so much from experience and traffic trackers LMAO that said I did ask some comic pals for input and they were very helpful in helping me adjust it with their own takes <3).

The homogenization of the Internet has really whipped people into submission for the "big sites" that offer "everything", but that's never been the Internet, it relies on being multi-faceted and offering different spaces for different purposes. And we're seeing that ideology falter through the enshittification of sites like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc. where users are at odds with the platforms because the platforms are gutting features in an attempt to satisfy shareholders whom without the platforms would not exist. Like, most of us aren't paying money to use social media sites / comic platform sites, so where else are they gonna make the necessary funds to keep these sites running? Selling ad space and locking features behind paywalls.

And this is especially true for a lot of budding sites that don't have the audience to support them via crowdfunding but also don't have the leverage to ask for investments - so unless they get really REALLY lucky in EITHER of those departments, they're gonna be operating at a loss, and even once they do achieve either of those things there are gonna be issues in the site's longevity, whether it be dying from lack of growing crowdfunding support or dying from shareholder meddling.

So what can we do?

We can learn how to take our independence back. We don't have to stop using these big platforms altogether as they do have things to offer in their own way, particularly their large audience sizes and dipping into other demographics that might not be reachable from certain sites - but we gotta learn that no single site is going to satisfy every wish we have and we have to be willing to learn the skills necessary to running our own spaces again. Pick up HTML/CSS, get to know other people who know HTML/CSS if you can't grasp it (it's me, I can't grasp it LOL), be willing to take a chance on those "smaller sites" and don't write them off entirely as spaces that can be beneficial to you just because they don't have large numbers or because they don't offer rewards programs. And if you have a really polished piece of work in your hands, look into agencies and publishing houses that specialize in indie comics / graphic novels, don't settle for the first Originals contract that gets sent your way.

For the last decade corporations have been convincing us that our worth is tied to the eyes we can bring to them. Instead of serving ourselves, we've begun serving the big guys, insisting that it has to be worth something eventually and that it'll "payoff" simply by the virtue of gambler's fallacy. Ask yourself what site is right for you and your work rather than asking yourself if your work is good enough for them. Most of us are broke trying to make it work on these sites anyways, may as well be broke and fulfilled by posting in places that actually suit us and our work if we can. Don't define your success by what sites like Webtoons are enforcing - that definition only benefits them, not you.

[hjeojeo]

you know that time i was really emotionally missing smackjeeves, i realize now that it's true that you can't replace the unique community that developed there, BUT thankfully it wasn't the only grassroots-vibe thriving site. like someone on my post mentioned comicfury to me and i was like too caught up on my attachment to smackjeeves to really think about the fact that yeah there IS still comicfury! comicfury is great!

so i've been reading a lot of comics again and going through the forums on comicfury and yeah this really is the community vibe i've been missing!

im glad comicfury survived the...what do i call it...the era of "webtoon/tapastic's weird capitalism-comic-monopoly where the expectations and standard of what's considered a 'good comic' got ridiculously high and unsustainable and harmful to the creative community where artists die from overworking and also ppl all around feel like comics aren't an approachable medium even tho there shouldn't be this social expectation of needing to reach some kinda 'good enough' level of 'skill' to do comics".

sorry. horrible sentence, but truly everytime i try to pick like two words to describe it, i just tumble into the anger rant of that entire run on sentence hell.

anyways this is a post about me feeling grateful that comicfury is sitll around and i've just been having a good time reading indie comics again :'). my fave.

[rockybloo]

I've reached the point where I don't stress too much over neat lineart for my webcomics because I've read soooo many comics with varying quality and have enjoyed each one and the story they told that it really drives home how it's okay to make a panel a bit messy or imperfect since each one is simply meant to help tell a story.

I've read SOOOO many old Smackjeeves and Comicfury comics by people scanning paper they drew on with pencil and paint bucket tooled to fill in. I've read comics by people who didn't have the best anatomy skills but had enough confidence in their story to push through so you see them getting better over the course of the comic. I've seen pure black and white comics that are basically just sketches but have some deep ass story telling that puts some mainstream media to shame.

Realizing "Hey...I don't have to pour all my blood sweat and tears into this page, only just a couple drops" because of the other comics I enjoy reading that aren't absolutely picture perfect creations just really makes working on them a whole lot easier.

It also super helps that I view the webcomics I work on as basically "extra detailed lore to understand my OCs better" instead of "I WANT TO MAKE MONEY OFF THIS ONE DAY". Not to say making webcomics for money is a bad thing (get that bread yo), but doing it as a fun little hobby for myself is what makes it more fun and less stressful for me.

[shaydh]

I’m about to make an embarrassing old art post, but...wanna see some of my comics throughout the years?

Hell Hath No Fury (2008), a thing I started doodling in sharpie and continued for all of 8 pages. Notable only in that it lead me to make a smackjeeves, and then I started drawing...

Ganked (2009) the MMO comic which lasted 13 pages.

From My Black Heart (2009-2010), urban fantasy BL. I think at this point I finally got a tablet and started drawing digitally. Also, this one made it to the second chapter, ooo

Convergence, a Dragon Age fancomic (2011-2014)

Then in 2015 I got really into Baldur’s Gate and drew a handful of fancomics (2015 - 2019)

And then I played VTMB. I actually had a little fancomic with Vandal (2019) before I started Awash in Blood comics.

And The Streets Awash in Blood (2021, ongoing)

Anyway, I realized most of these are no longer on the internet and got nostalgic lol

[longlostlorian]

I don't want to add on to that good webcomic post with what I'm p sure is just my own fruitless navelgazing, but I started doing webcomics as a kid in the mid-aughts and the scene was basically unrecognizable from what it is now. I would come home from school and post sketchbook comics scanned in with minimal touchups, and I don't think I've ever gotten as much engagement on anything in all the years since. I didn't know how to implement a comments section (I was hardcoding everything in html on a domain my dad helped set up for me, lol) but I got tons of emails from excited/curious readers every week! A phpbb board (early internet forum) with 300+ human members (and all the fun of viagrabots I had to cull by hand)! People were just excited by what it was possible to see online. And that was for a bad comic made by a kid with minimal skills that nobody remembers today!

For better or worse, the grand majority of readers live on apps now. Webtoons and tapas host hundreds of the most niche, beautiful passion projects you can imagine, better than nearly anything available 20 years ago, but there's just as many stories that were literally churned out by content farms (studios with large teams producing a groupthink product they aim to sell/IP farm - in other words, something that's nobody's baby). And by and large, the userbase is simply too young to discriminate. They've literally been trained to view webcomics as content. Does that mean readers today are the problem? No, of course not! And it's hard to complain about greater access to free, often queer art that's technically better than it ever has been before. I'm glad young readers have easy access to things like that.

But webcomics have become subject to the same level of scrutinization as any other aggregated content. Don't post for two weeks and people will talk about you like you've died, and a week later they stop talking about you altogether. The culture that I grew up with by and large doesn't exist anymore, though remnants of it struggle bravely on. Part of this comes as the "wild west" aspect of the internet circles the drain. When comics are produced with the knowledge that they will go up on webtoons/tapas - sites with strong censorship requirements - people dull down their work. They have to. Anything that goes on those sites automatically becomes a product. And so the truly weird, the unexpected, the indie, and the unapologetically, freely, charmingly bad (and messy) aspect of webcomics is systematically sucked out, both by the exacting standards of a captive consumer base and by the requirements of the platform.

I don't know that I view wt/tapas as net evils or anything like that. I use them myself. And I've heard things about places like comicfury that make it sound like a great substitute for the culture that used to exist around smackjeeves, drunkduck, etc. I also think it's more accessible than ever before for creators to monetize their work, even if for most of us, passion projects never come close to paying the bills. So maybe what I really miss is the early internet and I don't think it's ever coming back.