T Campbell's Blog

New cover, hmmm... It's Antarctic Press, right?

Big boobied cat girl using a computer, obviously.
 

Yeah, cover art requires seperate permissions. That's a really easy mistake to make though, so I hope no one gives you a hard time over it.

Sorry to hear that your proofreader saw fit to add in so many mistakes, though. That's just annoying.
 

I wonder if he bothered to mention me in his book?

heh...
 

Just have to buy it and find out. ;)

Note the update.
 

How could he not mention the person who not only created megatokyo but is also responsible for it's popularity.
 

Looking forward to it. Maybe for the expanded addition, I can tell you the sorid tale of PigPanda.com. ;)
 

Sorry, I meant to ask and I am sure you have said before, but when is this expected to come out?
 

Book's due out in June.

Kidding aside, of course the book mentions Rodney, and more than just mentions. His role was crucial.
 

I am confused how the book has me with a crucial role considering I was never consulted before hand.

You know, to find out things like, facts and such.
 

Interviews comprised about 7% of the book's overall research. I grew distrustful of them: I started getting the feeling that some interviewees were editing their memories of how they'd felt years earlier. In most studies, this memory editing is a necessary risk, but in the age of blogs, it doesn't have to be.

I was more interested in surveying and synthesizing the public record-- the statements in blogs, in forums, in news articles, in the strips themselves-- statements that the public had had a chance to contradict. Only when there were clear gaps in the stories those statements told did I resort to interview.

The public record-- RCaston.com, the Megatokyo blog, the digests, the news articles, some secondhand forum posts (showing the pulse of fan opinion) and other sources-- seems pretty comprehensive. The story of Megatokyo and Caston's involvement from its conception to his departure has been told many times, and I saw no reason why Rodney or Fred would share new information with me when they'd had years to set the record as straight as they wanted.

So I read as much as I could get my hands on, and usually worked from that.
 

You are a WANKER
 

Sorry man, I just think there was a lack of foresight and stuff, people are angry, you know.
 

I hate Scott Kurtz. I hate PvP. He's so unprofessional it makes me die inside.

His strip is nothing but rehashed templates and when he actually does draw something new it looks like a cat's anus. He, on a fairly regular basis, misspells words IN the strip.

All that aside, the fact that he fills his site's main page with his blathering drives me nuts. All his does is piss and moan and whine about everything. It's infuriating. I love PA and PvP is funny about half the time but Kurtz's antics drive me nuts. I hope he sees this and I hope he will reconsider putting his whine-fest on his main page. At the very least man, please move it off the main page. I'm embarrassed for you. Do you think Bill Watterson would ever do what you do? I'm thinking no.
 

Bill Watterson wouldn't do most of the things that most comic artists do these days. So that's not saying much.
 

That's exactly my point. He knows how to conduct himself and remain professional.
 

I'm anything but Kurtz's fan, but the guy has the right to do whatever he wants on his webpage, Dan B. And sadly, a lot of people seem to get off on his "antics" so he has no reason to change that.

The only thing you can do is simply stop reading.
 

Bill Watterson also had a nasty habit of hiding away from things that frightened him, like positive press and fans.
 

Hiding from things that frighten you may be conditionally suboptimal, but I don't think I'd call it a "nasty habit."

I mean, if you are going to hide, "things that are frightening" seems to be just about the most reasonable category imaginable of things to hide from.
 

And for what it's worth, complaining about the marketing hype involved in calling you "World-Renowned" is stupid.

For one, your name on the cover means something to a significant portion of at least one of the potential target audiences for this book; it would be irresponsible to downplay your involvement. Given that, what should the copy have said about you? "He's just this guy, you know?" really doesn't cut it.

The other reason that complaining about it is stupid is because you are world-renowned. This is the 21st Century, after all; it's not all that hard anymore. I've been name-checked by people in the UK and Australia and Sweden and Myanmar; and there are almost certainly people in at least a dozen other countries to whom my name would carry some weight — and I'm nobody.

This is the Future; and in the Future, everybody will be famous for fifteen people.
 

I think the least you could've done in a situation like Fred and Rodney's is to check their blogs and interview them. That way if you found any disparity you could exercise your judgement. Just a thought.

Also I was wondering, do you really have millions of readers that are actually on top of more millions of readers? Because that sounds pretty hot...
 

this whole business is shady. i think I'd rather read stuff about the topic myself than trust somebody who didn't even talk to some of the biggest influences out there. Sure, you can read stuff, but the written words can easily contain the misrepresentations and alterations of fact that a vocalized interview can.
 

Hey, stop being a coward, Anonymous. Sign your name.
 

What the.. Scott Kurtz??? Growl! SNAP! Snarl!!! What the.. you didn't bother to interview these people who've been interviewed dozens of times before and have already answered the questions you probably would have asked? Growl! Snarl! SNAP!!!

I suppose it's easier to attack the credibility of an author and his works then to think about their research methods with an open mind.

Also, Kurtz?? SNARL! SNAP-SNAP!!!
 

Uh, it's not true that you barely cover Keenspot Entertainment or Chris Crosby at all, is it?
 

Of COURSE only Kurtz had a problem, and the others readily gave additional permissions (where none was anticipated, or probably needed).

You could have included the art from 500 random webcomics and it STILL would have been only Kurtz who gave you shit about it.
 

Sorry, I happen to think Scott is right here. At least T. acknowledges this. In this day and age of copyright suits and the like, why would you risk either libelling someone or eliciting complaints about copyright infringement? You're just LUCKY that the people whose art you placed on your moneymaking venture are good-natured folks and see no harm in what you did.
 

It's just the issue behind writing history, isn't it? That's why 'they' (academia) then created historiography, or, the history of history. All history books reflect a bias of the author, or his methods, or the time, or the culture. With something like web comics, where the present is still being created - and a medium that encourages interactivity - those outside factors seem larger to us.

The issue isn't us - we're living the webcomics moment - it's the future generations. If you seriously think this book reflects a DRASTICALLY FLAWED approach to the history of webcomics, then write another.

I'm buying it.

(And no, I don't know the author. And I love PvP.)
 

I'm sorry man, but i've never heard of you.

I have read PA, PvP, CAD, VGcats, Megatokyo, Purgatory on a consistent basis. (have been reading PA the longest, for about 6 years)

To an above poster who hates Kurtz, i have great pity for you, Bill Watterson lived in a different age of Comic Making, Kurtz pays for his webspace he can do with it as he sees fit.

How are Kurtz's "rants" about anything so different than the front page of PA on a tri-weekly basis?

I don't have a need to buy this book, as we are living through the webcomics "moment" I'm sorry you saw a need to cash in on other people's work T. You read webcomics (i would hope so anyway) and decided to jump on board, but lacking crative talent. You aren't well known despite what your add may say.

You're just another Attention Whore trolling the Internet.
 

For the record, not everyone was asked. You are welcome to hear Rodney's comments on his site. It seems to have drawn up quite a issue.

Webcomics are the creation of the people that make them. No one pays them to make what they do. I personally think if you get enjoyment out of it, and you are not playing for the site in anyway, the fact that you have to listen to a rant or two, no matter what their opinions are, isn't that much of a cost. That doesn't seem that bad of a payment if you are getting a new strip every couple of days. Some of these guys, as their comics get popular actually have to pay for you to enjoy their stuff as bandwith isn't cheap by any means.

Please keep that in mind the next time you sigh becuase a creator decides to put his own opinions on his own site.
 

So "world renowned" might be a bit of hyperbole, but I'm not sure why everyone is attacking T's credentials here. (Beyond the fact that he's written 1.2 million different webcomics and edits a fairly major webcomics site [one of the very few with hands-on editorial input].)

What is more important: the background of the writer, or the end result?

(And the idea that T is somehow cashing in on webcomics by writing this book is pretty laughable. He'd probably make more money spending the same amount of time walking around D.C. advertising for an online casino.)

T's methodology and choices of interviews aren't going to suddenly invalidate all of the aspects of webcomics that are important to you, even if he disagrees with them (or omits their mention entirely). This will be just one part of a larger dialogue on webcomics.
 

Uberclocked, I did read Rodney's comments in the last couple of days... and when researching the book, I very carefully read Rodney's OWN WRITINGS, including his "Truth About Megatokyo" post and his posts on the early Megatokyo strips.

It would have indeed been inexcusible for me to read only Fred's account of what happened. But what surprised me was that there seemed to be little disagreement about the facts of the case. Since both Fred and Rodney seemed to be saying essentially the same thing about those... why should I have suspected anything deeper?

FWIW, I didn't interview Fred either. And FWIW, I have a great deal of sympathy for Rodney-- I am also a writer who's lost a project to an artist, albeit on a much smaller scale.
 

1.2 million different webcomics... how old is this person and where does he find all the time to write them, plus edit a website PLUS write a book on the history of Webcomics... Just a small question to ask yourself when such claims are made
 

"internet", in the fashion that it is used, is just fine without the capitalization. Sally forth and whatnot.
 

Phen: You're a fucking idiot.

"You read webcomics (i would hope so anyway) and decided to jump on board, but lacking crative talent"

Uh yeah, T lacks creative talent. *That's* why he wrote Fans! - a five-full-pages-a-week webcomic - for several years! *That's* why he writes Rip & Teri and Penny & Aggie! *That's* why he's collaborated with lots of webcomics artists! Because he LACKS CREATIVE TALENT!

"You aren't well known despite what your add may say."

If you had taken the few seconds necessary to actually READ the post, you would have noticed that T *doesn't* claim to be well-known, that he *didn't* write the ad copy, and that he POINTS THESE ERRORS OUT HIMSELF!

That you haven't heard about T before says absolutely nothing. *I* don't read PA, PvP or Megatokyo (VGcats only occasionally), and I've never heard of CAD or Purgatory. That doesn't mean I assume them to not be well known!

"You're just another Attention Whore trolling the Internet."

No, he isn't - he's got way more attention than he's ever asked for - but *you're* someone who should spend a little more of your oh-so-precious time getting a clue about WHAT the fuck you're talking about before you actually start talking.
 

charlie parker?




AbMaj7 F7 Bb7 Bb7 Bb-7 Eb7 AbMaj7
 

I'm the guy who said he hates Kurtz and I hate Kurtz mostly because he creates this embarrassing image for himself and he doesn't realize it. His strip is late half the time or he can't upload a new one for whatever jackass reason like he's sick or not at home. He should be days, if not weeks ahead of himself so that is never a problem. He should be professional. PA rants and raves on their site but it is part of their shtick and it is funny AND they don't rock the boat usually as far as other webcomics are concerned. They do it tastefully. Kurtz is a hack. His art is sub par and his punchlines are flat and predictable. I read it because I hate him and I want to stay informed on exactly why I do hate him. I also hope that he will get his fucking act together and be the webcomic creator he could be if he put some effort into it. It's his job for god 's sake. You'd think he would take it a bit more seriously.
 

There seems to be a lot of conflicting opinions about what the problem here is. As an aspiring journalist, let me see if I can clear up a point for people who might be confused here.

As a journalist, you have one job. That job is to get an accurate, correct account of what you're writing about, and to write it impartially, in a clear, complete, accurate and entertaining way. That's what a journalist does. So why does that matter here? To the issue of pictures in the ad, it doesn't, Campbell says clearly that it was a problem and it isn't anymore.

However, as it applies to Caston, this is the issue as I see it. As a journalist, your job, as I said, is to get the whole story as best you can. Does this mean you need to spend a lot of time talking to different people who tell you the same exact story? Absolutely. Yes. Does it mean you ask the same guy the same questions he's answered a dozen times in the past? Yes. It can be as simple as a quick, "I read the account of this you wrote here last year and I'm planning on running with that for this story. Is there something you'd like to add to it, or is this here complete?" Why do you do this? Because different people say different things in different situations. What you write in your blog is going to be different than what you want to say to a reporter, simply as a matter of how you want it phrased and what you want to emphasize. That's one of the reasons that a reporter will take a written statement and call up whoever wrote it and ask if they would like to comment.

So fine, the co-creator of Mega Tokyo wasn't called and asked to comment on something. Why should we care? Well, it goes to what gives the reporter the right to publish something like this at all. If I want to go out on the street and yell my opinion on Scott Kurtz, I can do that. Nobody will care, but I can certainly go do it. Nobody cares because they take my opinion for what it's worth; One guy standing on the street and yelling. When you publish a journalistic work, you're telling people something different, though. You're telling them that this is a true and accurate account of what you're writing about, that you've confirmed that everything you've said is true and accurate, and that people should take what you've written as law. If, later, someone comes along and says, "You didn't even talk to me before writing about me in your book!", it looks bad. It looks like you didn't follow up on your research and that you didn't bother to do fact-checking. What you wrote might very well be exactly what they would say, but it looks like you don't bother to confirm your sources and double-check your facts. It makes you, as a journalist, look unreliable.

This is in no way a comment on the quality of the work that Mr. Campbell does, which I'm sure is to the highest standards, though I haven't personally read his published work. All I am saying is that a work of journalism is built as much on the creditability of the research done as what is actually said, and issues like this, while they might seem minor and unimportant, effect that underlying creditability.

So yeah, take this for what it is worth; One guy on the internet writing way too much on some blog. Hope it helps clear up for some people why anyone even cares.
 

Firstly I'll not profess to be some know-it-all about webcomics. I read what I like. Secondly you, sir, are full of shit. "7% of the book is interviews: I began to mistrust them" is a weak argument for "I just want to get my name out there". Write about something you actually know. Go write for the Dummies series: The How-to Guide for Bullshitting Without a Mouth. Honestly.

Anybody who's familiar with me is used to highly thought out rants that take 20 minutes to write and 15 to read. This aint like the rest, folks. Sub-five minutes:

You're not giving credit where credit is due. You used webcomic blogs as scripture. You used other peoples work for your own without giving credit. I've yet to see just who did the cover.

Antarctic needs to drop you. Off a cliff. With cement boots. Then throw a freight train in, just for good measure. And hope you never resurface again.

"I was more interested in surveying and synthesizing the public record" (quote taken directly from this blog)

Love that word, 'synthesizing'. Lay-mans terms for you kiddies out there: making shit up. Honestly. Check it on dictionary(dot)com.

The hell.
 

Sorry, just have to add something here: "I am also a writer who's lost a project to an artist, albeit on a much smaller scale."

Losing out on "Let's color Hello Kitty" to your big brother is not a project it's a problem, especially at your age.
 

Dan B.:

I read it because I hate him and I want to stay informed on exactly why I do hate him.

That's the saddest shit I've ever read on the Internet.
 

i understand how alot of people are angry at someone who basically just surfed the internet for stuff. but im also looking forward to a book about the webcomics history..though im seriously doubting your "world-renown" status. mainly because i have my doubts about some of the few webcomics that cater to a specific fan base. such as the-whiteboard which is the only paintball oriented webcomic ive ever heard of. or what about the hundreds of sprite comics for those that have good scripts but lack in artistic ability?..without some of those details i dont see how you could actually make a webcomic book.
 

danbee is a tool. 5 points to Chris.
 

Andrew said:

I've been a fan of web comics for a number of years now, after I was introduced to Megatokyo by a friend, just after the 1st edition printed version came out
.
Since then, I've been reading web comics on a daily basis.

Due to the appreciation I have for the medium, I can honestly say that it's a good idea to delve into the history of what has become such a modern marvel of culture.

HOWEVER…

As an artist, I can honestly say that one cannot simply infer the meaning and development process of a piece of work based almost solely on the forum posts and reactions of fans and critiques alike. To understand pieces of work, you MUST get interpretations DIRECTLY FROM THE AUTHORS / ILLUSTRATORS THEMSELVES.
To base an entire BOOK on “less than 7% interviews” is an inexcusably fallible method of research.
 

You assume that conducting a new interview is the only way to get the perspective of authors and illustrators. In most cases, there is a great deal of published material that presents their perspective in their own words. For the most part, I wanted to rely on material that had already had a chance to be challenged.
 

grypphyn, I really hate to trot out the American Heritage Dictionary here, but "synthesizing" means "To combine so as to form a new, complex product." Although, y'know, if I interviewed you, you might have a different take. WHICH IS MORE VALID? :-)
 

Wow dude, people are pissed with you aren't they? I guess this will teach you to do full research WITH interviews to make sure you get all the facts before you go and write a book where they're not all there.

Any author worth his salt is smart enough to do ALL the research he can and cover ALL the bases before even CONSIDERING publishing a book.

Any good COLLEGE student would know this. That's pretty sad. I hope amazon yanks your stinking book from its listing. Its not worth their time or money putting it up for sale.

Next time you decide to write a book, don't be a cocky-ass and call yourself "World Renowned", especially if your book is only half to a quarter baked at best. Learn how to be an author, you poser.
 

Hey, Lara? I didn't call myself world-renowned. Ever. Seriously.

If you're gonna call me on research, you might want to take the sixty seconds to read the actual post.

Now, here's the thing: if you and I had a private conversation and then you said I called myself world-renowned, it would just be your word against mine. This way, everyone can see it and duplicate my research for themselves.

That's basically why I did it this way. If you're interested in actual facts and not just a good old-fashioned blogger smackdown, go to http://history-of-webcomics.blogspot.com/#5. Otherwise, you're kind of late to this party. We're whining about the Eisners now.
 

I'd like to know who or what gave you the title of "World Renowned Webcomic Expert" when you neglected to check your resources on many counts and purposely left out information.

This is not a "history" of anything. This is just your overpublicized and hyped, badly proofread opinion. Why bother paying money for that when I can see the same thing from much more interesting people for free on their sites?
 

Slight revisions for the sake of clarity:

No, Mr. or Ms. Anonymous, it is not.

If you can't even bother to read the post that you are responding to, or the comment just above your own, then I think your position to lecture me about fact-checking is weakened significantly. In BOTH of them, I have said that I did. Not. Ever. Call. Myself. "World-Renowned."

Calling the post and the blog "world-renowned" was a joke, made back when I couldn't believe that anyone would take that hype seriously.

Like the only people who've bothered to comment on this thing after the first week (and it's nearly three months and counting now) you seem to have come here fired up by the opinions of a few people who admit they haven't read the manuscript, even though I gave them the opportunity to do so.

"Leaving out information" is not merely acceptable, it is necessary when the information in question could easily fill ten books of this size. I left out information that I felt was irrelevant. That is what any historian has to do, and bias is unavoidable, which is why I asked for other opinions about the manuscript till I was blue in the face. I have gone into great detail elsewhere about why I focused on the published record and not on interviews. You may disagree with that methodology, but don't you DARE tell me that the result is "just my opinion" when you, too, haven't bothered to read the actual manuscript. The fact is that I gave space to many points of view that conflict with my own.

And what's this "badly proofread" nonsense? I proofread the book myself, had friends and colleagues proofread it again, and then had an editor proofread it a third time. I suppose ALL of us could have proofread poorly, but you don't know that because *you haven't read the book.* Which means you've made up a lie. If I'd made up lies in the book, I'd get ARRESTED.

Most of the information in the book is available elsewhere, sure-- how else would I have found it? (Although the interviews I did, while a minority of the book's total research, are nothing to sneeze at, and that doesn't count the hundreds of conversations I've had with cartoonists off the official record over the years.)

If you want to do as much work as I did collating that information, you're welcome to it. This book has taken about 1440 hours of my life so far-- I'm afraid I can't track where the research ends and the writing begins, but I know that I've written other work this size in about 200 hours.

I do agree that webcomics are full of interesting people, many more interesting than me, but I wasn't aware that one had to be "interesting" to write an interesting history. If you can show me celebrity bios of all the successful historians, then I guess I'll stand corrected.

The funny thing is, I do have lots of regrets about this book. There are lots of things about it that I think should be better, that I hope to improve in future editions. But I'm a wee bit tired of having the same conversation over and over with people who can't be bothered to do sixty seconds of research themselves.

You want to challenge me? That's cool. I can learn from challenges. But don't waste my time.
 

I read your post actually. There just... really wasn't much in it.

And I do admit, I only came here because I was curious over what someone else wrote. I had heard about this 'venture' of yours before, but considering that I didn't consider you very impressive as a writer or as a comic artist (which is my own personal opinion, and I could care less if 'thousands' of others think otherwise), I didn't care to give it much attention.

Oh, and for the record... I didn't imply that you were calling yourself "World Renowned". I said I was wondering who or what thought that was an appropriate title to apply to you, since there is no way you could possibly know everything about webcomics. There are many webcomics out there that are plenty good that you don't even mention, whether because you never heard of them, or because you didn't consider them 'popular' enough to 'bother with'.

Which is fine, but your book is still nothing more than biased opinions and commentary. If you wanted it to be truly a 'history' you would have spent more than 1440 hours looking at webpages and spent more close to 10,000 doing interviews of all participants to get ALL sides of the stories rather than just the ones that were convenient.

1440 hours is nothing. All that shows me is that you only spent a year on this doing less than 15 hours worth of actual work a week on it. Serious writers don't go 'part time' on their research, or if they do, they spend more than just one year before they get the notion in their head that what they're working on is even close to being completed.

If you want an example... Dan Brown spent years researching topics such as Opus Dei, the myths and legends surrounding the Holy Grail and the Catholic church before he wrote The DaVinci Code.

But doing research never really was your intention, since you're getting paid to cut and paste from websites, and then get free advertisement by stirring up drama from the people you left out or insulted along the way. That shows poor showmanship on many levels.
 

I really shouldn't comment on this at all, but I had a hell of an evening last night, and since I can't yell at my bus driver this will have to do.

I can see the loophole in your previous statement about "world renowning" above. I concede that much... but if you've read the post you know that I pinned it on the overzealous copywriter for the PREVIEWS ad. It takes some doing to overpraise me to the point of my discomfort, but Antarctic has managed it. That's really the only problem I've had with the publisher, though.

Your figure of 10,000 hours is interesting. Breaking that down by 40 hours a week and 50 weeks a year, that works out to exactly five years of making this a full-time job (with, I suppose, my own comics writing as a "side interest"). I don't know what you think I'm getting paid for this book, but let's just say that this would not be a feasible proposition. I'm not sure I would have taken this on if I'd known right from the start how much work it WAS going to be.

Note that when I say work, I mean WORK, not relaxing at the beach and letting ideas percolate. You can do that with fiction like THE DA VINCI CODE, and I've done it with my fiction, but I'm talking about reading and research and writing here.

The "biased opinions and commentary" phrase would carry more weight if you explained exactly how this differentiates it from any other history ever written. Bias is to historians what self-centeredness is to fiction writers-- something we should recognize in ourselves and resist, but something we can never completely destroy. The "open" approach I've taken to this book so far seems to me the best counterstrategy against bias, though I'm open to other feasible ideas.

If you're really going to stack it up that way, though, I *HAVE* pretty well spent my life researching comics in general. That hasn't been the only thing I've done with it, but I assume you're not going to hold it to that standard, because Dan Brown has done some other things with his life, too.

I'm well past the days when it particularly bothered me that someone told me I wasn't a good writer. That's your biased opinion and commentary. No writer pleases everyone, and the Internet means we hear more from the disgruntled than we did in Stan Lee's era. I'm often caught between my self-promotional side, which has to flex its pride to make sure my ideas are heard, and my self-critical side, which wishes I was hella better. What gets me fired up right now is this notion that I don't CARE about the quality of my work, which I view as a personal insult.

I do work relatively fast. Sorry about that. My role models are less people who produce their first work in their forties and more people who produce a strong body of work throughout their lives. Conisdering how many books Brown claims to be working on now, though, I don't think he's going to continue to serve as the five-years-per-book example you want to make him.

And if you think I enjoy the "free advertisement" from people like Kurtz and Caston, then you know so little about me that I don't know where to begin correcting you. I gave Scott Kurtz the opportunity to give his feedback on the manuscript, but because I hadn't taken his initial suggestion to chuck Scott McCloud and install Caston in his place, he assumed that my mind was closed to all his suggestions, and decided it would be more productive to call the whole book crap instead. Without reading it.

This "free advertisement" has cost me a great deal of emotional energy (my feelings about Scott are still DEEPLY conflicted, as the last couple months on this blog plainly show). I do not consider this an acceptable price to pay for a sales increase. Naturally, you don't have to believe these are my values, but if you don't, then don't assume you know what my values are.

You haven't even scanned the book. By your own admission, you've come here simply because of the statement of someone else with an agenda of his own. And you say *I* don't do proper research. How the Hell do you know? What evidence do you have other than the griping of a cartoonist or two that the book doesn't gibe with THEIR biased views?

Finally, if it was Caston who referred you, it may interest you to know that I had ALWAYS credited him as the creator of Megatokyo, and AFTER his post, I sent him the relevant sections and he sent me a statement (reproduced at http://history-of-webcomics.blogspot.com), most of which I incorporated into the text. You won't find any mention of this on Caston's blog, though. For someone so concerned about issues of accuracy, he seems a bit reluctant to present both sides of the story.