T Campbell's Blog
Writer of Penny and Aggie, Fans (also called Faans), Rip & Teri, Search Engine Funnies and A History of Webcomics. Experienced webcomics editor, currently seeking full-time work and working on strange and interesting new things...Saturday, July 02, 2005
The Demographic History of Webcomics: The Roundtable
These are some of my thoughts as I try to compose The History of Webcomics Chapter 7, "The Screen Scene."
I'd like to hear yours in response.
Who is reading webcomics?
The easy answer is "people like Tycho and Gabe," but that's an assumption with no hard evidence to back it up. The last demographic studies I can find are a Keenspot survey in 2001 and an extremely informal Richard Stevens estimate in 2002. We can extrapolate some data from surveys of Web users as a whole, but only some.
Education: First off, the webcomics community seems to be pretty well-educated, with "undergraduate student" and "college graduate" the most frequent answers. This causes few immediate problems. Smarts are good. The only danger is that if you only spend time with people with college educations, you tend to marginalize people who don't have them.
Easy liberalism: Under-representation of certain groups like blacks and Russians doesn't mean the webcomics community's prejudiced against them-- usually, quite the contrary; they eagerly accept almost everyone (they're a little wary of groups with a reputation for intolerance, like certain strains of Christianity). But accepting another group is not the same as hearing from that group, hearing its concerns. Erika Moen's excellent Examining My Racism captures some of the problem, to my mind... if you don't have contact with other groups, how "understanding" can you really be?
Nationality, Language: My impression is that webcomics-- an American invention-- have mostly been practiced by English-speaking nations: USA, Canada, England, Australia. I know of exceptions like Maritza Campos, Reinder Dijkhuis and Mikael Oskarsson, but not too many, and all of them speak English. Foreign-language webcomics might as well not exist to hear us talk. What's really surprising is that Japan, hailed as Comics Heaven and with a rich tradition of doujinshi, does not appear to have produced many online works that are popular with English-speaking audiences.
Could I be ignorant? Could a webcomics culture exist in Japan or elsewhere, as isolated from ours as a parallel universe?
Race: Speaking of Japan, something that's always struck me as odd about manga is how white most of its characters look-- the big eyes, the pale skin, the height. I get the same feeling when I think about the all-white cast of College Roomies from Hell and the largely white cast of RPG World and Sinfest (ignoring the non-human characters for now). I'm not urging some kind of "affirmative action" here, but I think there has to be some significance to the fact that white creators tend to pick protagonists that look like themselves, and creators of other races tend to pick protagonists that look like white creators. Also, not all non-white races have equal voices, either. Asians in America have almost as much Web access per capita as whites, but blacks and Hispanics have considerably less-- and when I think of non-white characters in webcomics, most of the really big ones seem to be Asian: Aubrey, Peejee, Zoe (half-Asian). There is It's Walky, but race seems largely incidental to its mixed-race Walky and Sal; if not for one joke about dancing, I might have thought their skin tone was a coloring quirk. The Asian Diana has a more plausible experience, having to deal with the stereotype of being a "brain" on top of her own serious emotional problems. I'm only impressed by three-dimensional characters-- tokenism is far from dead.
I'm not really sure what this means yet. I'd appreciate any particularly perceptive studies of race in art and culture. And refutations, as with all of these.
Sex: When Keenspot did its survey, it had almost as high a percentage of female readers as that of the entire Web. That is truly astonishing when you think about it. Even if the proportions have changed a bit since then, there's no denyin' that the Web is way more friendly to female readers and female creators than either the American comic book industry or newspaper strips (though comic books are finally starting to wake the fuck up about this). I consider it a sign of health for webcomics in general. You need two genders to breed.
Outside of a few moronic forum posts which I won't dignify with a link and one questionable storyline by somebody who's usually better (so I won't embarrass him), I haven't really encountered much sexism in either webcomics readers or creators. Have I missed something here? Feel free to depress me.
Orientation: Not that the Web's breeder-only-- at least, not any more. Justine Shaw shattered a lot of preconceptions, even among us "enlightened liberals," and reached an audience that had never really had a voice before. She described herself as "not a comics person," and I think the webcomics depictions of gay people before she came on board (including, um, mine) lacked the authenticity of first-hand experience.
Correct me if I'm wrong about this.
Age: Webcomics are a youth movement, relatively speaking: the average age seems to be younger than that of the average Web user, comic book fan and newspaper reader. Yeah. No real surprises here. As you get up to retirement age, the percentage of Web users seems to decline pretty steeply.
I would like to hear how youth-oriented strips like Ozy and Millie deal with a "webcomics culture" that features PG-13 sex and violence regularly. And I'd like to hear if there are any webcomics aimed at a significantly older crowd, and how they're doin'.
Class: This is the big one, I think. Fantastically rich people aren't spending a lot of time reading webcomics, and neither are those who can't afford Internet access, or a computer, or power. This sort of puts webcomics into a set tax bracket. Scott McCloud's "Whose Mind Is It Anyway?" is the exception that proves the rule: couldn't webcomics spend a bit more time capturing diverse human experiences, and less in Starbuck's and at the video game console?
How many characters in webcomics are not middle-class? Are there any webcomics being created by those who are poor (and I mean on-the-street poor, not student-loan poor) or really well-off?
Religion: We hear a lot from the atheist, agnostic and secular humanist sections, with minority voices from various Christian sects, Judaism and paganism. Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism... nnnnnnot so much.
Or am I missing something?
In conclusion, the webcomics audience seems way less factionalized and cliquish than the audiences for comic strips and American comic books... though the graphic novel/manga market comes close in many respects, and may be ahead of webcomics when it comes to depictions of orientation. That is something to be proud of. But webcomics fandom still doesn't represent the whole world, or even the English-speaking world, or America, and the way we talk to each other sometimes, I'm not sure we realize that.
If we did represent America, you can bet Bush wouldn't be President.
I'd like to hear yours in response.
Who is reading webcomics?
The easy answer is "people like Tycho and Gabe," but that's an assumption with no hard evidence to back it up. The last demographic studies I can find are a Keenspot survey in 2001 and an extremely informal Richard Stevens estimate in 2002. We can extrapolate some data from surveys of Web users as a whole, but only some.
Education: First off, the webcomics community seems to be pretty well-educated, with "undergraduate student" and "college graduate" the most frequent answers. This causes few immediate problems. Smarts are good. The only danger is that if you only spend time with people with college educations, you tend to marginalize people who don't have them.
Easy liberalism: Under-representation of certain groups like blacks and Russians doesn't mean the webcomics community's prejudiced against them-- usually, quite the contrary; they eagerly accept almost everyone (they're a little wary of groups with a reputation for intolerance, like certain strains of Christianity). But accepting another group is not the same as hearing from that group, hearing its concerns. Erika Moen's excellent Examining My Racism captures some of the problem, to my mind... if you don't have contact with other groups, how "understanding" can you really be?
Nationality, Language: My impression is that webcomics-- an American invention-- have mostly been practiced by English-speaking nations: USA, Canada, England, Australia. I know of exceptions like Maritza Campos, Reinder Dijkhuis and Mikael Oskarsson, but not too many, and all of them speak English. Foreign-language webcomics might as well not exist to hear us talk. What's really surprising is that Japan, hailed as Comics Heaven and with a rich tradition of doujinshi, does not appear to have produced many online works that are popular with English-speaking audiences.
Could I be ignorant? Could a webcomics culture exist in Japan or elsewhere, as isolated from ours as a parallel universe?
Race: Speaking of Japan, something that's always struck me as odd about manga is how white most of its characters look-- the big eyes, the pale skin, the height. I get the same feeling when I think about the all-white cast of College Roomies from Hell and the largely white cast of RPG World and Sinfest (ignoring the non-human characters for now). I'm not urging some kind of "affirmative action" here, but I think there has to be some significance to the fact that white creators tend to pick protagonists that look like themselves, and creators of other races tend to pick protagonists that look like white creators. Also, not all non-white races have equal voices, either. Asians in America have almost as much Web access per capita as whites, but blacks and Hispanics have considerably less-- and when I think of non-white characters in webcomics, most of the really big ones seem to be Asian: Aubrey, Peejee, Zoe (half-Asian). There is It's Walky, but race seems largely incidental to its mixed-race Walky and Sal; if not for one joke about dancing, I might have thought their skin tone was a coloring quirk. The Asian Diana has a more plausible experience, having to deal with the stereotype of being a "brain" on top of her own serious emotional problems. I'm only impressed by three-dimensional characters-- tokenism is far from dead.
I'm not really sure what this means yet. I'd appreciate any particularly perceptive studies of race in art and culture. And refutations, as with all of these.
Sex: When Keenspot did its survey, it had almost as high a percentage of female readers as that of the entire Web. That is truly astonishing when you think about it. Even if the proportions have changed a bit since then, there's no denyin' that the Web is way more friendly to female readers and female creators than either the American comic book industry or newspaper strips (though comic books are finally starting to wake the fuck up about this). I consider it a sign of health for webcomics in general. You need two genders to breed.
Outside of a few moronic forum posts which I won't dignify with a link and one questionable storyline by somebody who's usually better (so I won't embarrass him), I haven't really encountered much sexism in either webcomics readers or creators. Have I missed something here? Feel free to depress me.
Orientation: Not that the Web's breeder-only-- at least, not any more. Justine Shaw shattered a lot of preconceptions, even among us "enlightened liberals," and reached an audience that had never really had a voice before. She described herself as "not a comics person," and I think the webcomics depictions of gay people before she came on board (including, um, mine) lacked the authenticity of first-hand experience.
Correct me if I'm wrong about this.
Age: Webcomics are a youth movement, relatively speaking: the average age seems to be younger than that of the average Web user, comic book fan and newspaper reader. Yeah. No real surprises here. As you get up to retirement age, the percentage of Web users seems to decline pretty steeply.
I would like to hear how youth-oriented strips like Ozy and Millie deal with a "webcomics culture" that features PG-13 sex and violence regularly. And I'd like to hear if there are any webcomics aimed at a significantly older crowd, and how they're doin'.
Class: This is the big one, I think. Fantastically rich people aren't spending a lot of time reading webcomics, and neither are those who can't afford Internet access, or a computer, or power. This sort of puts webcomics into a set tax bracket. Scott McCloud's "Whose Mind Is It Anyway?" is the exception that proves the rule: couldn't webcomics spend a bit more time capturing diverse human experiences, and less in Starbuck's and at the video game console?
How many characters in webcomics are not middle-class? Are there any webcomics being created by those who are poor (and I mean on-the-street poor, not student-loan poor) or really well-off?
Religion: We hear a lot from the atheist, agnostic and secular humanist sections, with minority voices from various Christian sects, Judaism and paganism. Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism... nnnnnnot so much.
Or am I missing something?
In conclusion, the webcomics audience seems way less factionalized and cliquish than the audiences for comic strips and American comic books... though the graphic novel/manga market comes close in many respects, and may be ahead of webcomics when it comes to depictions of orientation. That is something to be proud of. But webcomics fandom still doesn't represent the whole world, or even the English-speaking world, or America, and the way we talk to each other sometimes, I'm not sure we realize that.
If we did represent America, you can bet Bush wouldn't be President.
Comments:
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I would like to hear how youth-oriented strips like Ozy and Millie deal with a "webcomics culture" that features PG-13 sex and violence regularly. And I'd like to hear if there are any webcomics aimed at a significantly older crowd, and how they're doin'.
Ozy and Millie doesn't strike me as a child-audience strip, any more than, say, Calvin and Hobbes or Peanuts. And I'm doubtful of the idea that there's a dominant "webcomics culture" that misfit strips have to "deal with" - the range of subjects and approaches in webcomics seems pretty wide.
Ozy and Millie doesn't strike me as a child-audience strip, any more than, say, Calvin and Hobbes or Peanuts. And I'm doubtful of the idea that there's a dominant "webcomics culture" that misfit strips have to "deal with" - the range of subjects and approaches in webcomics seems pretty wide.
I'd like to address two of your designations.
First, regarding age... I've been following a wide variety of webcomics over the past several years, and it's been interesting to watch the evolution of the plot and characterizations in many of them (in addition to the art, but that's to be expected with practice) as the authors, most of whom are significantly younger than me, gain maturity and experience. In general, characters and their interrelationships become more complex, and their emotions become more realized and take a greater role in determining their actions.
As for (gender) orientation, I've found the first-hand transgender perspectives presented in Venus Envy and Transe-Generation to be fascinating and enlightening (to a boring vanilla straight guy like me), and there are also strips who are willing to explore the gender boundaries such as The Wotch and El Goonish Shive (though I think it's safe to assume that their authors aren't writing about frequent gender-swapping from first-hand experience). I personally suspect that the increasing influence of anime has much to do with making it more acceptable to venture into the fringes of gender relationships, but I'd also be happy to believe that it reflects a growing (if still minority) acceptance in American society at large.
First, regarding age... I've been following a wide variety of webcomics over the past several years, and it's been interesting to watch the evolution of the plot and characterizations in many of them (in addition to the art, but that's to be expected with practice) as the authors, most of whom are significantly younger than me, gain maturity and experience. In general, characters and their interrelationships become more complex, and their emotions become more realized and take a greater role in determining their actions.
As for (gender) orientation, I've found the first-hand transgender perspectives presented in Venus Envy and Transe-Generation to be fascinating and enlightening (to a boring vanilla straight guy like me), and there are also strips who are willing to explore the gender boundaries such as The Wotch and El Goonish Shive (though I think it's safe to assume that their authors aren't writing about frequent gender-swapping from first-hand experience). I personally suspect that the increasing influence of anime has much to do with making it more acceptable to venture into the fringes of gender relationships, but I'd also be happy to believe that it reflects a growing (if still minority) acceptance in American society at large.
There doesn't seem to be much of a Japanese webcomics community to speak of. Possibly because there are much better self-publishing opportunities
(the dojinshi market can't really be called "amateur").
I've seen some presumably digital-only manga, but they're mostly one-offs produced to be posted on the Futaba Channel imageboard (starring the OS Girls).
(the dojinshi market can't really be called "amateur").
I've seen some presumably digital-only manga, but they're mostly one-offs produced to be posted on the Futaba Channel imageboard (starring the OS Girls).
The Netherlands has quite a lively webcomics scene these days, as evidenced by the recent Clickburg festival. We didn't quite manage to overrun the WCCA this year, but we could, if we got more coordinated.
The Netherlands has quite a lively webcomics scene these days, as evidenced by the recent Clickburg festival. We didn't quite manage to overrun the WCCA this year, but we could, if we got more coordinated.
Consider it the otherway, who has the access to computers and the time to read? And are you concidering Print comics that are being reprinted on the web via the newspapers you can access 'em. I'm sure there's a lot more people out there than you realize.
One possible sexism disappointment. The author puts out a polically conservative comic, which has amusing spots if you're not ideologically hidebound-- although conservatives will probably find it funnier. That strip also might be worth noting as a contrast under "Easy Liberalism", in part because the author's FAQ notes the strip is partially produced in reaction.
Another (bad) example is Chugworth Academy. Most of the sexist attitudes seem to be nominally for comic effect. It's not a very well written strip, overall.
As far as issues of orientation go, I'd second pointing out Venus Envy as a quality strip. It's also funny, even when dealing with some of the less pleasant parts of the alternate lifestyles it covers.
Oh, and you might glance at the demographic survey results from Howard Taylor of Schlock Mercenary. Not specifically useful, but worth the glance. The current newspost has some amusing commentary on the results. "0.03% of you (yes, YOU) are living in American Samoa. You there! GET OFF THE COMPUTER AND GO TO THE BEACH!"
"Drooling fan girl" is probably right; some of the demographics is likely to be a result of economics-- "follow the money". You might want to look into Korean webcomics-- the (vaguely) similar culture w/ Japan combined with the high degree of rollout of DSL in South Korea would seem conducive.
Another (bad) example is Chugworth Academy. Most of the sexist attitudes seem to be nominally for comic effect. It's not a very well written strip, overall.
As far as issues of orientation go, I'd second pointing out Venus Envy as a quality strip. It's also funny, even when dealing with some of the less pleasant parts of the alternate lifestyles it covers.
Oh, and you might glance at the demographic survey results from Howard Taylor of Schlock Mercenary. Not specifically useful, but worth the glance. The current newspost has some amusing commentary on the results. "0.03% of you (yes, YOU) are living in American Samoa. You there! GET OFF THE COMPUTER AND GO TO THE BEACH!"
"Drooling fan girl" is probably right; some of the demographics is likely to be a result of economics-- "follow the money". You might want to look into Korean webcomics-- the (vaguely) similar culture w/ Japan combined with the high degree of rollout of DSL in South Korea would seem conducive.
Good point about religion. The only webcomic I've come across yet dealing with any of the eastern religeons is Patrick Farley's The Jain's Death.
there is an interview with Joi Ito (Japanese VC) over at IT Conversations that talks about the differences between the 'net experience in Japan vs the US, which I think addresses the issue of why there are not more Japanese comics.
Basically, due to certain technical issues (including the creation of a decent kanji keyboard) the Japanese have never experienced the PC Revolution that the US has gone through. Their net experience is more mobile tool based (i.e. cell phones). Which makes web comics kind of pointless on a mass scale.
Also, the reason for european features in Japanese manga is because it is easier to convey emotions and expressions that way. Esspecially in the early days of manga when the tradition started. It is probably less so now (with better printing techniques) but momentum is hard to fight.
Basically, due to certain technical issues (including the creation of a decent kanji keyboard) the Japanese have never experienced the PC Revolution that the US has gone through. Their net experience is more mobile tool based (i.e. cell phones). Which makes web comics kind of pointless on a mass scale.
Also, the reason for european features in Japanese manga is because it is easier to convey emotions and expressions that way. Esspecially in the early days of manga when the tradition started. It is probably less so now (with better printing techniques) but momentum is hard to fight.
Matt's got a point. Although the technological barriers to the use of Japanese on the PC were surmounted quite a while ago, and PC/Internet use is growing in popularity (the 2ch message board gets an enormous amount of traffic), computers still haven't hit the mainstream 100% yet in Japan. All of the popular works I've seen that refer to PCs treat just owning a computer as a hobbyist thing, sort of like scratch-building your own or running Linux is over here. There really is no concept of "the family computer" (unless you count the Famicom "family computer", a.k.a. the Nintendo Entertainment System)
My two cents:
AGE: I first started reading webcomics actively around 1998-1999 -- I was about 25 at the time, and I'm 31 now. I'd imagine that I'm in one of the bigger webcomic demographics -- net-literate people between 25-40, people who have the income (or equipment at a job) to allow for high-speed websurfing, and the spare time (i.e., no kids yet) to follow multiple webcomics on a regular basis. But that's just me.
I've mentioned in the past that I've hosted events for Fred Gallagher at Anime Central, and the audience at his panels (1700+ people) is definitely much younger than myself. I'd put the median age at 19, mmmaybe 20.
With regards to ethnicity, a couple of points. With SINFEST, I've always read the lead character "Slick" as Asian. The author himself is Asian, and the character has an exaggerated hairstyle that I've seen fairly often on Japanese men -- spiky, with the ends dyed blonde, while the roots are still black. Throw in Slick's height (and the cliche that asian men are short) and the connection to Tatsuya Ishida himself (Slick is the viewpoint character, whom is often an extension of the comic creator, who in this case is asian), and I got the impression that Slick was Asian. Sorry, that was kinda round-about.
With regards to anime/manga art, and the tendency to make the characters look caucasian: based on what I've read of Japanese culture, the "big eyes small mouth" look was pioneered by Osamu Tezuka, who is still considered to be one of (if not THE) all-time greats of the animation and comics industry. He was hugely influential -- but one of the biggest influences on his work was Walt Disney.
Like so many other things from Japan (cars, the electronics industry, game shows, baseball), the Japanese took something from our culture, in this case old-school Disney animation (check out the designs on the Dwarves in Snow White, compare them to anime characters from the last couple of decades), and made it uniquely Japanese before shipping it back to us in its new form.
In addition, the Japanese people are so homogenous physically (compared with, for example, caucasians, who have a wider variety of natural hair colors and skin tones), that using non-asian hair colors is a way to help the reader differentiate characters from each other. Sailor Moon isn't *really* blonde, the theory goes, it's just stylistics to help make her stand out from the other Sailor Senshi. This is especially helpful for art styles that use very simple lines for faces, making it hard to differentiate between characters using only facial features.
I'm pretty sure I got some of this from "Manga Manga" by Fred Schodt, but it's been a bit since I read that, so I'm not 100% sure.
- Isaac
AGE: I first started reading webcomics actively around 1998-1999 -- I was about 25 at the time, and I'm 31 now. I'd imagine that I'm in one of the bigger webcomic demographics -- net-literate people between 25-40, people who have the income (or equipment at a job) to allow for high-speed websurfing, and the spare time (i.e., no kids yet) to follow multiple webcomics on a regular basis. But that's just me.
I've mentioned in the past that I've hosted events for Fred Gallagher at Anime Central, and the audience at his panels (1700+ people) is definitely much younger than myself. I'd put the median age at 19, mmmaybe 20.
With regards to ethnicity, a couple of points. With SINFEST, I've always read the lead character "Slick" as Asian. The author himself is Asian, and the character has an exaggerated hairstyle that I've seen fairly often on Japanese men -- spiky, with the ends dyed blonde, while the roots are still black. Throw in Slick's height (and the cliche that asian men are short) and the connection to Tatsuya Ishida himself (Slick is the viewpoint character, whom is often an extension of the comic creator, who in this case is asian), and I got the impression that Slick was Asian. Sorry, that was kinda round-about.
With regards to anime/manga art, and the tendency to make the characters look caucasian: based on what I've read of Japanese culture, the "big eyes small mouth" look was pioneered by Osamu Tezuka, who is still considered to be one of (if not THE) all-time greats of the animation and comics industry. He was hugely influential -- but one of the biggest influences on his work was Walt Disney.
Like so many other things from Japan (cars, the electronics industry, game shows, baseball), the Japanese took something from our culture, in this case old-school Disney animation (check out the designs on the Dwarves in Snow White, compare them to anime characters from the last couple of decades), and made it uniquely Japanese before shipping it back to us in its new form.
In addition, the Japanese people are so homogenous physically (compared with, for example, caucasians, who have a wider variety of natural hair colors and skin tones), that using non-asian hair colors is a way to help the reader differentiate characters from each other. Sailor Moon isn't *really* blonde, the theory goes, it's just stylistics to help make her stand out from the other Sailor Senshi. This is especially helpful for art styles that use very simple lines for faces, making it hard to differentiate between characters using only facial features.
I'm pretty sure I got some of this from "Manga Manga" by Fred Schodt, but it's been a bit since I read that, so I'm not 100% sure.
- Isaac
I wouldn't say there are no webcomics with diverse casts of characters. Have you ever heard of "Shadowfall?" Kaichi Satake, the creator, is Asian, and his comics feature Asians in starring roles. His style is not manga, either, it's more mainstream pre-Image comicbook style. The Asian characters not only have Asian names but LOOK Asian. I've read his comics for years now and never found a character of any race to be less than three dimensional. From reading his blogs, he also fits that category of "poor," not just a student loan kind of poor, but on the verge of homelessness poor. It looks like this article focuses most on the big name comics and not on the true big picture. Seek out more people like him for your research and you'll have a better idea of what the scene is really like. There are simply too many webcomics out there to make such blanket statements about them. Have you looked at all of them? Unlikely.
I'm older than your average webcomics reader, too, if what you say is true. Being over 50 maybe makes me more discriminating in what I'll read. Grammar, spelling or other language errors will kill my enjoyment of a story, as will excessive focus on politics, sex or gaming. If there were more stories about adults and real adult issues, I guarantee you would pull in more readers like me. I would even pay to read excellent stories, if I could find them. Most webcomics artists are just not delivering them.
I'm older than your average webcomics reader, too, if what you say is true. Being over 50 maybe makes me more discriminating in what I'll read. Grammar, spelling or other language errors will kill my enjoyment of a story, as will excessive focus on politics, sex or gaming. If there were more stories about adults and real adult issues, I guarantee you would pull in more readers like me. I would even pay to read excellent stories, if I could find them. Most webcomics artists are just not delivering them.
Excellent ending, SexyOgre. And you're right: there's more of what statisticians call "spread" in webcomics. Conservatively, I would guesstimate there are 5,000 webcomics in existence (with Keenspace alone providing a healthy chunk of them). Faced with that kind of reading assignment, I turn to this blog to help patch areas I might otherwise miss.
I knew of Kaichi but hadn't checked in with him for a while. Will do.
I knew of Kaichi but hadn't checked in with him for a while. Will do.
First, please excuse my english.
I have to tell about the place of webcomics in french-speaking countries. It's pretty interesting, but the language barrier prevents you to hear from us.
I'm the creator since april 2000 of the only french-speaking websites which speaks about webcomics in general (Abdel-INN.com) : it was first a directory, after that I began to publish articles and reflexions, today it's a kind of a blog with advanced search functions. I dedicated a university research work to online stories 3 years ago.
French-speaking comics are a kind of tradition (we talk about "bande dessinée franco-belge", because Belgium is very active through the comic medium) : you probably heared about Tintin (from Hergé) or Astérix (from Goscinny & Uderzo).
During the 1990s, BD (which means comics to us) passed through a real revolution. Some authors and independent editors published new kinds of stories, many of them dealed with autobiography. Try to find about Lewis Trondheim or Joann Sfar if you want to discover this movement. The fact is that the public began to think that BD could be more than a childish litterature. Today it's considered as Art, and journalists speak about it very often.
It's the totaly opposite of he situation in english-speaking countries where webcomics took profit of the lack of consideration givent to traditionnal comics. The result is that webcomics developped there more in an amateur way : professionnal editors mostly ignored it during the last years.
Another problem is that french-speaking people had a few years of delay before interesting themselves massively to the Internet and broadband connections. The market is smaller too for french-speaking webcomics, cause the language isn't as used as english over the Internet.
Past year, youg comic artists discovered the power of blogs used as a tool to publish their work. Mostly thanks to Frantico, who reached a 8000 readers audience each day after 5 month of every day publishing (which is enormous considering the french-speaking market) ; his work has been published in a book and is now nominated for the "first-book" price of the Angoulême convention (the biggest one for BD). But editors doesn't seem to think that they could make money in publishing online : they only realized that the new creators express themselves over the Internet and that they should look there to find new talented ones.
Please contact me if you want more precisions about it. I would be very interested in collaborations with people of the english speaking webcomics scene. My aim here is to build a professionnal scene for frech-pseaking creators : many of them are really talented !
I have to tell about the place of webcomics in french-speaking countries. It's pretty interesting, but the language barrier prevents you to hear from us.
I'm the creator since april 2000 of the only french-speaking websites which speaks about webcomics in general (Abdel-INN.com) : it was first a directory, after that I began to publish articles and reflexions, today it's a kind of a blog with advanced search functions. I dedicated a university research work to online stories 3 years ago.
French-speaking comics are a kind of tradition (we talk about "bande dessinée franco-belge", because Belgium is very active through the comic medium) : you probably heared about Tintin (from Hergé) or Astérix (from Goscinny & Uderzo).
During the 1990s, BD (which means comics to us) passed through a real revolution. Some authors and independent editors published new kinds of stories, many of them dealed with autobiography. Try to find about Lewis Trondheim or Joann Sfar if you want to discover this movement. The fact is that the public began to think that BD could be more than a childish litterature. Today it's considered as Art, and journalists speak about it very often.
It's the totaly opposite of he situation in english-speaking countries where webcomics took profit of the lack of consideration givent to traditionnal comics. The result is that webcomics developped there more in an amateur way : professionnal editors mostly ignored it during the last years.
Another problem is that french-speaking people had a few years of delay before interesting themselves massively to the Internet and broadband connections. The market is smaller too for french-speaking webcomics, cause the language isn't as used as english over the Internet.
Past year, youg comic artists discovered the power of blogs used as a tool to publish their work. Mostly thanks to Frantico, who reached a 8000 readers audience each day after 5 month of every day publishing (which is enormous considering the french-speaking market) ; his work has been published in a book and is now nominated for the "first-book" price of the Angoulême convention (the biggest one for BD). But editors doesn't seem to think that they could make money in publishing online : they only realized that the new creators express themselves over the Internet and that they should look there to find new talented ones.
Please contact me if you want more precisions about it. I would be very interested in collaborations with people of the english speaking webcomics scene. My aim here is to build a professionnal scene for frech-pseaking creators : many of them are really talented !
I do know of one webcomic that adresses issues such as death and religion and sexual orientation: Bruno (cf link - it's not MY web page, but I'm not good enough with HTML to make a good-looking link).
Funnilly enough, I found this web-page because I'm hoping to study the same subject (i.e. the history of webcomics) next year in university - the Sorbonne, in Paris. The previous comment was therefore quite interesting to me, as will be the book when I can buy it on Amazon this summer - Tim Tylor, time to get cracking! ;)
Personal info to help your statistics: I'm bilingual (French/English), live in France, age 21, and have jumped into webcomics because I stopped my studies for a year and got intensely depressed and bored. Now I'm getting better, I find myself still reading one or two of them on a regular basis (but no longer ten or twelve, as I used to in the unemployment days!). Voila, good luck to you for the hard work, and I hope to be able to read it soon!
Funnilly enough, I found this web-page because I'm hoping to study the same subject (i.e. the history of webcomics) next year in university - the Sorbonne, in Paris. The previous comment was therefore quite interesting to me, as will be the book when I can buy it on Amazon this summer - Tim Tylor, time to get cracking! ;)
Personal info to help your statistics: I'm bilingual (French/English), live in France, age 21, and have jumped into webcomics because I stopped my studies for a year and got intensely depressed and bored. Now I'm getting better, I find myself still reading one or two of them on a regular basis (but no longer ten or twelve, as I used to in the unemployment days!). Voila, good luck to you for the hard work, and I hope to be able to read it soon!
hmmm... Tim Tyler isn't the author of this work-to-be, it's actually T Campbell... Sorry for the mix-up...
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