Okay, some background. There's this documentary called "Adventures Into Digital Comics," you see, where the interviews were all done years ago.
Three years ago. On the internet, three years is exactly how long it takes for everything you know to be proved wrong. I remember them coming up to me at my very first Comic-Con, shining bright lights in my face and asking me for wisdom. I have no idea what I said. It was probably a bunch of ridiculous crap along the lines of
this. If any of it ended up in the movie, I will be happy to sit and watch it and laugh at myself. Because even if you are ambushed by a bunch of roving morons with a camera, you need to take responsibility for the things you say. If you claim to be an expert on a subject (and I have some experience with webcomics at this point, eight and a half years worth), then you need to be able to either defend yourself from criticism or you need to be able to look back and laugh about it and learn from the experience.
Anyway, Penny-Arcade did a hilarious send up of the whole thing. I knew it was coming, because Tycho and I had chatted about it the day before it went up. Tycho is the sort of guy who has turned down paid speaking opportunities at universities because he simply doesn't believe that he should be paid for talking about exactly this sort of thing. He makes jokes about video games for a living, and he knows exactly how seriously that should be taken. He does, however, take the business of telling those jokes deadly seriously. Anyone who makes webcomics part of their living should.
So, as usual, there have been some followups to PA's lead. Scott Kurtz had a great rant on the subject with which I wholeheartedly concur (there's a sentence I never thought I would type). There have been comics written about it. And Eric Snark (who is either a webcomics blogger or not a webcomics blogger, no one is entirely sure, least of all the man himself) has chimed in with this 5000 word piece of mind-numbing drivel taking PA to task because they were mean. Mean to Cat Garza, who, it must be said, is a nice guy who has drank a bit too much of the Modern Tales/McCloud Kool Aid, along with some other substances that we have been unable to identify (or procure for ourselves) as of yet.
This is bullshit, Eric. Total bullshit and I'm calling you on it. When people make public statements about a subject that they claim to be experts on, they can expect to have those claims challenged. That goes for Cat Garza, and it goes for you. You want to play with big boys? Expect it. "Mean" has nothing to do with it and it's a pitiful defense. PA is all about the "mean" and I wouldn't have them any other way. That's what makes them so goddamned entertaining, and why they are able to support their families. Cat is not a deer, and neither are you, despite how poorly you were treated in elementary school.
Cat Garza and the rest of the MT artists are so hypnotized by McCloud and Manley that they don't stop to think that their business model, ther digital revolution isn't really taking off at all. Micropayments and walled-off content are not revolutionizing the industry. They're creating a group of artists who are justifying their choices by huddling in groups and spouting platitudes so they can stay warm at night when the gas bills go unpaid. Hunting for firewood may not have much artistic merit in it, but it keeps you warm. They would do well to heed the message that PA is sending them. Optimism doesn't pay the bills.
Cat and the other folks think that free content is somehow beneath them, somehow offensive to their enlightened sensibilities. It is this prejudice that keeps them from really getting it.
But none of this has anything to do with anything. The real villains here are a bunch of filmmakers releasing material from three years ago and calling it cutting edge, getting a bunch of cartoonists all huffy and puffy. You shouldn't do that, filmmakers! Cartoonists are easily disturbed. Be nice to them!
The lovely part of this is that I will be releasing conent via BitPass (McCloud's pet micropayments system) in a few days (if we can get it working, which we, a couple of guys who have 20 years of website building experience between us, cannot do so far), making myself into a massive hypocrite. Yes, there was "the bet", and I have to do it, but I'm also curious to see how it pans out. Because if my calculations are correct, even "wildly successful" on this particular project will still not pay the bills. I'll share the numbers with you when we're done, and we can figure out exactly where it fails.
