So a Mary Breitman e-mailed me and asked me to answer some questions for her collage course.

 (I use to reply back to every e-mail, I've just been too busy and they kept piling up... sorry.)  

Anyway, she got me in a right moment, so here be the contents of her e-mail with my answers.

 (Catching me in a rare serious moment where I'm not acting like a complete asshole or goofball).

  I'm working on a group project for my first year Humanities class (The Networked Imagination) at York University.   Because I'm a geek (a bossy geek at that) I bullied my group members into choosing webcomics as our topic.

Our final product has to be in the form of a website and I thought asking some of my favorite webcomic creators a few questions and posting their replies in a pretty little section would be interesting and insightful.

Without further ado, here is the beast:

1. First of all, what made you decide to start your own webcomic?

2. What made you choose the internet to publish your comic instead of any
print media?

I had a deal to publish "Kung Fool" as a print comic.  Not the current one, but the original action-comedy set in ancient China.  Somewhere during the process I pissed off the editor and the project was canceled.  The publisher went bust a little later.  The webcomic was first conceived as a weekly gag comic featuring the KF characters primary to promote the print comic.  With nothing left to lose, and experimenting with the then relatively new Macromedia Flash, I went with the current "behind the scenes" story straight to the web

3. Have you ever published a comic via any kind of print media?  If so, what were some of the differences in the way your work was received and how did your attitude towards your work differ, if at all?  If not, would you consider utilizing print media in the future?

Aside from freelance illustrations, before KF, I worked on a couple of projects illustrating finished scripts.  But they never made it to print.  It takes thousands of dollars to publish an independent comic with a very slim chance at success.  With the web, the cost drops down to the cost of hosting and you get instant feedback.  The current model for the web seems to be to "serialize" the webcomic for free on the net and profit, if any, by advertising and merchandising.  The printed work would go under merchandising along with T-shirts and other knickknacks.

4. Do you worry about copyright issues since web-publishing made it that much easier for people to use your work without your consent?

No.  There's no point.  Everywhere on the web is a click away, and I have more traffic then any would-be copier ever could.  Besides there's no money to be made and as I would have all the original files, including the original drawings on paper, there would be little incentive to try.

5. With the lack of compulsory editors, guidelines and limits concerning what you can include in your webcomic, what would you call your 'quality control'?

Self discipline and guilt.  You try to keep a schedule, but since everyone knows you're doing for free and in your spare time, there's a lot of leeway.

6. Do you find the lack of enforceable censorship and/or outside editing liberating or are there web-unique obstacles to presenting your work the way you want?

Very liberating.  But only because I am an accomplished to a degree and I do know what I'm doing.  I think a lot of teenagers just starting out could use a little guidance, if only as something to bounce off of. We all need boundaries of some sort.

Any solution presents new problems.  The web has it's own unique set of challenges.  The browser is horizontal, versus the vertical comic book, the need to update as much as possible, the issue of color, the very fact it's an everchanging ephemeral screen instead of a relatively permanent dead tree.  The list goes on and on. Essentially, a comic use to be printed on ink and paper and distributed to retail outlets; comics are more and more being created and viewed on computer monitors and distributed through the Internet.  The only catch is there's no money. But that's always been the case for freelancers anyway...

7. Are you satisfied with the amount and quality of feedback you receive concerning your work?  Do you believe the internet is a suitable medium for the sort of feedback you require in order to improve your work and grow as an artist (cliché, I know, but humour me...)?  Why or why not?

The feedback's nice.  It tells me there are people reading and enjoying my work.  As for improvement and critique... I'd rely more on cartoonist forums then on fans.  Fans'll tell you what they want or like, but not what you need as an artist.  There are definite differences between a critique, review, and compliment.  But if I do something really good or really bad, I do get a bunch of people hollering at me.

8. Do you currently recieve any monetary compensation for your webcomic (donations, merchandise sales, etc.)?  Is monetary compensation important to you?  If so, do you find web-publishing to be an appropriate medium for the sort of compensation you wish to receive?

I get a few bucks here and there, about ~$50 a month if you average it out.  
Of course, not a lot of people realize this, but that about the same profit I'd be making had I self-published.  No, more likely I'd have lost thousands of dollars.  I'm being serious.

Money is important, I do want to get paid, I do have bills to pay.  But no one becomes an artist to make money, I could be doing a hundred different things if I just wanted to get paid.  The trick is to make a living out your art.  The web would be profitable with enough readers.  The top tier guys get 10,000 to 30,000 unique visitors a day.  KF has about 3,000 uniques, and most of the nameless masses only do less then a hundred a day.  Just math, really.

9. Does monetary compensation (or lack thereof) affect the quality of your work?  If so, in what ways?  If not, what drives you to continue your work?

Yes, if the comic made money I could devote my full time to it.  Without it, I have to delay the updates and cut corners for speed.  But I'll still do it, 'cause that what I do.  It goes down to what you are fundamentally.  Why do you, why do anyone do what they do?  Strip that question down to the essence and you come up with the very question of existence: why?

The "realistic," the "material" answer usually boils down to satiating desires.  We need food, water, shelter, love, etc... All living things require them, but why?

It's a meaningless question.  Not an irrelevant one, but a meaningless one.
The search for meaning is an abstraction, disconnected from reality. It is a problem derived from, created by language, not by the concrete world we live in.  This is not meant to be semiotic side stepping, but an acknowledgment of the dissonance we create by confusing"why" with "how."

In short, there is no why.  But it's more important we ask such questions then we answer them.

10. Any webcomic-related plans for the future?  In other words, where do you see yourself in <insert whichever number that strikes your fancy> years and if you care to guess, where do you see the webcomic 'industry' in the same period of time?

There is no industry, it's a bunch of loons drawing comics in the dark somewhere.  I'll be ending KF in the coming months and starting a new one fresh and clean, called, "Glendale High Manga Club."  We'll see how that one goes... I see my self in 10 years doing exactly what I'm doing now: Drawing comics. Whether I'll be famous, popular, or rich'll be irrelevant.  Hopefully I'll make enough money to pay my bills.  How's that for wild ambition?

The following questions are not a part of the survey but will rather serve as a primary source for two other sections of the website.  The first will concern the actual making of a webcomic.  Seeing as how I lack any kind of artistic skill I've never actually attempted the art of webcomics.  Still, I have to write about it.  See my problem there? So, it would help me greatly if you could include some sort of description of how you go about producing a strip.  Some mention of the software you use, maybe the editing process, that kind of stuff. I realize that every artist's method will be different, and diversity is what I'm looking for here.  I know in some cases there are online tutorials but I'm not looking for instruction, rather for opportunities to explore how webcomics depart from the traditional way of producing comics for print.

I write up the comic, sketch on paper, scan in to computer, covert in to vector, and color/letter in Flash. Upload to web page.
Yeah, yeah, I am working on a detailed tutorial to be released in the future...

This thread has artists describing their various methods.

The other section I would like some of your opinions about deals with the 'webcomics vs. comics on the web' thing.  I find that many people see no
difference between the kind of work you do and having some daily news site upload a Dilbert strip every day.  I would love to have your thoughts on that issue as well.

Most of the webcomic community is made up of rejects from the print world and amateurs, so it's mostly a question of politics and to some extent, semantics.  I suppose the a pretty good loose definition of "webcomics" would be a comic that is somehow made with the Internet in mind, either in the production or distribution.

I'd like to thank you in advance for any input you can grace me with. Not having to make stuff up would make this project so much funner to work on...