During out recent conversation about convention fliers, one member pointed out that this would make an excellent Hot Seat topic — and I agree whole heartedly! So let’s kick that off next. In the comments below, point me to a PDF of your flier (both sides, if necessary) and give me the usual:
Q: This morning I was surprised to find that a reader had commented on almost all of my comics and messaged me on Twitter. They were even decent comments. As this is a rare occurrence I was excited to show my co-author. This is when we both noticed something odd. The commenter’s name had a hash tag after it — #WR — which is used by white supremacists. It now appeared on every page of my comic. Looking through his feed, it was littered with racist and sexist messages.
This revelation really took the wind out of my sails. Now I was torn between respecting a person’s free speech and distancing my comic from political affiliations that I’d rather avoid. In the end we agreed to delete the comments.
I’m interested in your thoughts on the matter and if you’ve had to deal with similar situations?
On a related note, I was wondering about stalker-y fan behavior. I’ve had mildly stalker-like followers before, but nothing that forced me to make a stand. They eventually faded to the background, but what concerned me was the difficulty in maintaining good fan relations vs. distancing yourself from invasions of privacy.
A: Whew! There’s a lot there to cover! Let’s take it from the top…
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And now… the first of TWO new episodes of Webcomics Weekly coming your way in July! Due to the overwhelming Kickstarter support of The Webcomics Handbook, the WW crew will do four new episodes of our popular podcast. The first one has already…
And now… the first of TWO new episodes of Webcomics Weekly coming your way in July! PLUS, as members of Webcomics.com, you get to hear it before it gets released to the public!
Due to the overwhelming Kickstarter support of The Webcomics Handbook, the WW crew scheduled four new episodes of our popular podcast. The first one has already posted, and this is the second — with the third scheduled to drop later this week!
Dave, Kris and I got together for a marathon recording session over the weekend, and we taped enough material for two epic podcasts. Unfortunately, Scott was not able to join us — he was traveling to Texas to celebrate his father’s 70th birthday. But we soldiered on and talked about all of the stuff that’s been happening since we last got together in March.
For Kris, that’s a biggie — his wife, Marlo, is due with their first baby soon. So, veteran fathers that we are, Dave and I sit the lad down to share a little hard-won advice. That turns to anecdotes and eventually, the inevitable references to poopy diapers.
Meanwhile, Dave’s in the throes of promoting Stripped, the documentary on comic strips that has been a powerhouse on iTunes since its first day! The movie has just been released in Canada, and he and co-creator Frederick Schroeder are traveling all over for screenings. But what happens when cartoonists who didn’t get included in the movie complain to him about the grievous omission? Heh… tune in and find out!
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Today’s Archive Dive takes us to July 16, 2013, when I shared some information on a crucial aspect of running a WordPress install: Child Themes. If you don’t make your site modifications on a Child Theme, you risk losing a lot of hard work as soon your theme updates.
As we mentioned in last week’s Ten Tips for WordPress newbs piece, you never want to make changes to your WordPress theme. Instead create a Child Theme and makle changes to that.
It works like this. The site uses all of the coding from the theme except for the coding found in the Child Theme. The Child Theme is a selective over-writing of the original theme.
Anything you do to change your site through the original theme will be lost the next time the theme developers release an update.
Here’s how to create a Child Theme.
Patreon is an excellent resource for generating income for creators. However, judging your potential monthly income is a little tricky. I was amazed at how much my actual income differed from what I thought I was going to make — and it had nothing to do with the reasonable cuts that both Patreon and their transaction providers take.
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From postcards and mini comics to key rings and even soap (yes I know!) there are many ways to advertise at conventions but there’s one that’s ubiquitous: The convention flyer.
We’ve discussed it here in the past, but there’s a lot I want to add that we haven’t touched on before, so consider this an updated version of an archive post.
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Here’s a quick Pro Tip that really saved my skin when I started fulfilling Kickstarter rewards that involved free download of digital books.
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This is a tremendous discussion of something that baffles me at every comic convention I attend: What are the legal parameters of selling art that features characters that you don’t have the proper licensing for?
Quick note: I keep seeing mistakes like this one in other sites that discuss this topic:*
It seemed to violate my understanding of copyright, but also everyone seems to be doing it.
Please don’t make this rookie mistake. Unless you’re talking about reproducing, say, a panel from a published comic, this isn’t a copyright issue. It’s an issue of trademark. Remember — copyright is the right to make a copy of a piece of art. If you draw a Captain America illustration, your issue is not one of copyright. Rather, you are entering the arena of trademark.
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Today’s Archive Dive dates back to July 5, 2010, when we discussed humor writing:
Writing comedy is a challange that is made even more daunting in the fact that humor itself is completely subjective and impossible to define.
In the “How To Make Webcomics” book, our chapter on writing outlined a few frameworks for comedy — tried-and-true constructs that can be used as a general funny-idea generator.
But, in looking at several webcomics by Webcomics.com members, I keep seeing the following mistake:
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