REX TRADE WORKS

There is an idea in webcomics that says that any one comic could be the representation of your entire body of work to a new reader.  What this idea cautions an artist against is falling into the trap of thinking that a comic’s archives, or blogs might win over a reader.  If today’s featured comic does not draw the reader in, that reader is not going to stick around to view the archives or anything else.  You get a few seconds and one feature to “set the hook” and give that reader reason to stick around.  That being the case, it puts tremendous pressure on each individual strip to be the absolute best that it can be.

All this seems pretty straight forward, however, at odds with this idea are several things, probably the most obvious are deadlines.  A consistent and predictable update schedule is hugely important in developing and maintaining an audience.  You want to honor an audience’s effort of taking time out of their busy day to come to your site with a new strip every time you said you would have one.  But meeting this obligation, you might be pressured to post a product that just isn’t your best.

There is also another issue that might not be as obvious.  In an effort to tell stories beyond a single strip, I have really come to enjoy telling stories over several strips.  Reading comics growing up, multi strip stories were some of my favorite stories told in the comic strip format.  I remember one story arc in Calvin and Hobbs where Calvin is trying to do homework, but being a distracted child, he grows and floats away into space the course of several strips.  If you read some of these strips as stand alone comics, they don’t make sense, but when you read them together, they become something wonderful.  I have to admire the Watterson, the cartoonist behind Calvin and Hobbs for trusting his audience, in effect saying, if you stick around I’m gonna give you a better story.  But on the flip side, if that was your first Calvin and Hobbs comic, my guess is that your not coming back.  You’re effectively taking a single page out of a novel, handing it to the reader without explanation and asking them to love it.

But that’s where I am today, breaking the rules.  I am putting up a strip that when it stands alone, I know that it isn’t as strong as much of my other work.  Trust me, I have gone round and round on this issue.  At the end of the day, I am desperately trying to write and draw a comic that I want to read every time.  My hope is that when this strip is read together with the strips in cue to follow, the whole piece becomes something stronger, which in turn elevates my entire body of work.

If your reading this, thanks for stopping by.  If this isn’t your first time here, thanks for sticking around.

CM!