How to Fail Art: Expect Easy Money

Hah, how about those Penny Arcade boys, eh? After ten years, they've built up an empire based on making fun of the video game industry's shortcomings (and using a lot of variations of the word 'fuck'). 'Shoot,' you reason, 'I could do that, too!' So you lick the tip of your pencil, fire up your pirated version of Photoshop, and begin cranking out comics about a subject you are passionate about: gay furry pride. After securing some space on a site about drunken ducks or nations of webcomics or what-have-ya, you create a bare-bones page, slap up some ads and a paypal button, and wait for the avalanche of micro-payments to push your wagon onto Easy Street. 

Two years later, you're still working at a Taco-Bell, and the closest you get to recognition at a comic convention is because your table in the artist's alley happened to be next to a panel room. What happened?

Before I get into why, I would remind the reader that I honestly don't claim to be an expert on making a successful webcomic – only on what hasn't worked for me. If you're looking on a resource that has tips on how successful webcartoonists got that way, I can heartily recommend the book “How to Make Webcomics” as it's chock full of helpful advice. But both the authors and myself agree that success almost never happens overnight, and when it does it's usually not the enduring kind.

I consider comics such as Penny Arcade, PvP Online, Shortpacked, WIGU, and Schlock Mercenary to be both popular and successful AND one of the main sources of income for their creators. Scott Kurtz's incredibly funny comic about his dad (interspersed with comics about some kind of gaming magazine office and a troll) updates like clockwork even while he makes ads and cartoons an' shit, while Schlock Mercenary's Howard Taylor has consistently updated every day for EIGHT FREAKIN' YEARS. Shortpacked's David Willis and WIGU's Jeffrey Rowland have rolled the success of an earlier series into their new projects, which shows both the importance of a cartoonist's reputation and the loyalty of their fans. And in Penny Arcade's case, the writing is still fresh and funny after ten years, and I hear if you click off the main page, they even have a comic! (I kid, because if my own art improved as Gabe's has in ten years, I would probably not be writing this blog.) In every case, it took YEARS of work for their creations to show a profit, and usually had (or still have) another job to support themselves.

Personally, I never got to the point where I felt comfortable asking for money for my own poorly drawn webcomic. However, I have noticed that there are webcomics of similar quality – or worse – that have no problem with asking for a hand out so they can continue drawing a comic about superheroes whose powers seem to be being drawn disproportionately, or perhaps they'll have a donation bar in order to get a wallpaper of some badly drawn anthropomorphic characters having casual sex or whatever. While I do not begrudge these people for trying to live off of their talents I do think that I, as a consumer, should be given a product that is worth 'buying'.

Given a filthy hobo selling chewed up, dirty looking pencils from a tin cup versus a slightly less filthy hobo selling clean, unmarred ones, which one do you think people are going to want to give their money? Sadly, to the drugstore down the street where you can get pencils that have been ultra-sanitized – but we'll get to webcomics versus traditional print strips in another article. My point is that the cartoonists making a living from their trade got there over long and often bitter years of personal investment: time, and above all – patience. Accept that you're going to be in for a long haul if you are serious about making money webcartooning. The bottom line is that there are no shortcuts.