TWCL

[jinxtigr]

*drags on Chesterfield* You probably don't know who I am. On the internet some call me 'Jinxtigr'. I've seen the dark side of many a paywall. And I was not afraid- 'cos I'm a cop.

Okay, no, that's a lie. I'm not a cop. I'm not even a spy in the pay of Bengo- but I'm a nonprofessional cartoonist with a professional schedule, and I got into the webcomics.com inner circle for what I think are still legitimate reasons- and made it out- alive.

dun dun DUNNNN...

Okay okay- I got trolled out by a conflict between another poster and my wishes to play nice for Brad Guigar, which is a situation that I doubt would happen for many other cartoonists. That said, before that situation blew up, I saw a great deal which I can recount in my own terms. I saw what Khoo was posting. I saw what was really behind Kurtz's 'This is an intervention. Your comic sucks.' teaser- and believe it or not, that was an extremely useful post, yet virtually nobody 'got' what he was really saying. I saw hints of some amazing resources to come- and may never know if they come to fruition, or if they just implode like the 'intervention' post.

You'll hear it all, and I'll answer questions so long as it's not to pirate their actual content- which I couldn't do anyhow, I didn't try to save the text of any articles or even my own posts.

But first- my reasoning on why to spend $30 on that site. Reasoning that is still valid- just not for me.
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[jinxtigr]

People have criticized Brad Guigar's statement that the paywall separates the serious from the nonserious. It's understandable to take offense, as he seems to be saying a webcomics.com membership is a union card to webcomics, and that's not true. What is true, however, is an even more inflammatory related statement...

If you cannot- not 'choose not to', but CANNOT- 'waste' $30 on something that might help your cartooning career, you will fail. Period.

Now, this is not to say webcomics.com will be that help. I could see that go either way- for some it's a slamdunk obvious benefit, for others it might be little use at all. The point is, it can't be about the money, because we're talking about running businesses, and nobody doing that should have cashflow so bad they can't keep $30 liquid. Hell, if you can't come up with $30 for something (if not a site, what about a book on art technique?) where are you going to get the time to run a comic? Time costs money. There's a close relationship there. Anyone who's too strapped for cash should not be starting a business- make a hobby comic but don't expect to earn squat from it if you can't bootstrap it.

Here's the corollary- by definition, everybody at webcomics.com is a cartoonist who is able to come up with more than $30 liquid to support their business's startup. I call that a self-selecting group with better odds than most of succeeding, if they keep it up. But it's not because of webcomics.com's resources- it's because you have to be able to spend the money even if it's wasted. There might be exceptions- the guy that does Station V3 seems to have some kind of vaguely contentious relationship with the site and Scott Kurtz specifically- but on the whole, you pay to get in, which proves you can and do spend money on your 'factory' to produce your 'product'. It's a committment- doesn't matter if it's legit or a ripoff. It's self-selecting. For the most part, the people I saw in there reflected that. Some of 'em didn't- also by definition, if you have $30 you were going to spend on crack, you could get into webcomics.com instead.

Some people can apparently afford both! But notice how I said 'more than $30'? There's a reason I phrased it that way. Next- who's minding the store?
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[jinxtigr]

There's no graceful way to say it so I'll just say it: in paying, you set up a RECURRING yearly payment that's run out of the Penny Arcade offices.

I got to Robert Khoo's personal work voicemail in just two voicemail menu selections. Didn't leave a message- sorry for the dialtone Robert! I was just confirming who was running the show. The phone support is out of Penny Arcade's office and I could've ended up on the phone with Khoo if he hadn't been out that day. (I have no idea what he would have thought of this, but I do know I'd have to have a damn good answer for why I was calling him up at work.)

Now, I already run a small business that (understandably) isn't my comic. I was taken aback, but I was confident I wouldn't be tripped up- but it's worth underscoring that part. It's a RECURRING yearly payment. You have to be confident your organizational skills are up to budgeting a yearly item. Otherwise, if you forget, they will just bill you forever. That's a dangerous game- I really didn't expect that, I expected to get reminders like a magazine subscription. Instead, the only option is that recurring payment.

A lady I know who runs and owns a store in a nearby town instantly said 'Oh, so it's a scam!' when told of this. I had to explain that no, not EXACTLY, but it is evidence that perhaps in this transaction Khoo is lurking in there and being NOT ON YOUR SIDE... since it's set up so it won't harm you if you're on top of your game, but if you're basically meat, then- woopsy. You need to be able to run your personal budgeting to track and remain aware of expenses that can come up as rarely as once a year.

If you can't manage that you really shouldn't be trying to start a business of any sort- or signing up to webcomics.com.

Next- the infamous 'intervention' post by Scott Kurtz, and what he is really saying in it.
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[jinxtigr]

"This is an intervention. Your webcomic sucks."

Who has ever been better than Scott Kurtz at stirring the pot? I was dying to find out what was lurking after the cut. Even if it was just 'LOL u suk' I figured it'd be entertaining, like watching Gordon Ramsay tee off on some fool.

Turns out it's more interesting than that- but the subtleties were lost on most subscribers.

Scott used the analogy of a cargo cult- which turns out to be dead on. He sees a crowd of people who make two strips, put up the same store front software he's using, make the same breakdown of shirts, books, etc, and go 'where's my webcomics business?'. Some of his ire was directed at people he doesn't think are funny, or who have bad art, but it seems like his big gripe is people trying on the trappings of the professional- marketing, sales, advertising- when their comic 'sucks'. Scott is saying, "Go back to the woodshed for ten years. Virtually none of you are 'ready'. I spent years being not ready, and kept at it. Don't cheapen what I've done by wearing all those hats when your first strip went up last Tuesday".

Mind you, he didn't literally say anything like that- I'm not going to use his real words, if you want the real Kurtz rant you know where to find it and what it will cost you, yearly! But contrary to expectation, he really was not making a post to get people all to say "Yes! I suck! I abase myself oh Kurtz!", as fun as that must have been.

I say that because that's exactly what happened. The cargo cult kicked in, and the comments thread acted like a perverted AA meeting- you had to post and say "I'm 'X' and my comic sucks". A few people dared to say, "Hey, I don't suck, I'm still learning and my mom says I'm a unique snowflake", typically to be greeted with awkward silence. One guy got called out directly by Kurtz. The whole thing turned to 'how much do you say you suck, for Kurtz'.

It must have been very frustrating, because I don't remember seeing ONE SINGLE response that said, "Yes! I'm getting rid of my cafepress store and stopping advertising and I'm just going to learn to draw and write for a while". I didn't see anybody decide to scale back their promotion and merchandise and focus on their comic. It was taken as an ego deflation lesson when the real point was about how ego can drive ACTION and dissipate your energies uselessly.

I didn't post to that thread, because I've only been drawing for a couple years anyhow, and I had ALREADY removed my advertising, given up any idea of comic merchandise, and gotten to work in cozy obscurity. I totally agreed with Kurtz, and felt that he had no beef specifically with me.

One interesting thing I did see, which I'm very disappointed to be passing up, was this- Scott was involved. He said 'you didn't pay me $30 for me to suck your dick'. He was leveling with people, maturely but also in the manner of a Gordon Ramsey surrounded by kitchen muppets, and it's not that 'the gloves were off'- that implies meaningless abuse- no, the guy had an AGENDA. He had a sense of what people needed to do for webcomics to work for them, and he was not shy about expressing it clearly and connstructively. To me, the 'cargo cult' analogy for amateur webcomics is a real stroke of insight.

Scott suggested that he would be doing more of this. I'm going to say that if he does, that's webcomics.com's single best resource, in fact a better resource than what Robert Khoo can bring. Kurtz comes off like a blowhard, but his instincts about what matters are simply amazing.

Next- the mystique of Khoo, and Khoo so far in webcomics.com.
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[Beertycoon]

I'm loving this...keep writing
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[Gregori]

Interesting and insightful stuff Jinx! Thanks for writing this...keep it coming!
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[smbhax.com]

jinxtigr wrote:

The phone support is out of Penny Arcade's office

Huh!
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[jinxtigr]

Stalking the wild Khoo...

Robert Khoo is ascribed godlike powers by a lot of webcomics creators. He's made a few posts on webcomics.com, but it's possible that his true value to the site isn't posts at all. I was eager to find out.

A little background- I'm 42. I run a small business which is my primary source of income (which is NOT my comic) and all the years I could have been learning to draw, I spent either on my 'day job' (sound engineering) or learning about business so I could operate one. I've got countless books, I have industry connections (not the comics industry!), have attended seminars- have spent way, WAY more time and effort on this than I have on my art.

So, I don't look like a working cartoonist, but I'm uniquely qualified to tell whether Khoo is bringing business value to webcomics.com, and in fact the field I'm most informed in- music business- is VERY similar to the comics business, right down to the way contracts are constructed and the mechanisms for handling artists.

The single best reference I can offer if you want to say the same, is Donald Passman's book "All You Need To Know About The Music Business". link. This is the Burne Hogarth for media contracts, your support team, royalty calculations etc.. I already knew a lot of it but it's unequalled in value and depth. It's one of about eight books, seminars, and people that I have found that put me on the path where I can afford to do year after year of a daily webcomic for nothing.

What's Khoo able to bring to webcomics.com? Not as much as people probably hope. I think people want the magic cargo-cult secrets to webcomics, and there aren't any. Khoo's articles have been on things like the webcomics business model, and contracts. The business model thing turned out to be a system of relative sizes and significances in which almost everybody, popular or not, fails to make even the lowest rung. (I'm about 1/5 of the way to that lowest rung, which ain't bad for my limited abilities). The contracts article was really limited, and Khoo said outright that he'd use a real lawyer to look over a contract that mattered- he broke a sample contract down into elements as crude as saying 'this is a FIRST panel. This is a SECOND panel...'. I realize I've spent a lot of money over the years learning this stuff but I didn't find kindergarten-level analysis of a contract helpful. Khoo even missed some very important points about the value of small boring words- like 'but' and 'except'- which are commonly used to mislead, in contracts. It's useless to tell people to look for the section that says 'this is WHAT YOU GET under the terms of the contract' and not tip them off to watch for "except as in section H", and section H says "uh, no, we pwn you".

Maybe it's just my experience coping with contracts drawn up by music business attorneys speaking...

That said, even if Khoo cannot practically help the novice cartoonist get started by writing articles- there's one area where he could be of incomparable help, and that is the area of negotiating deals for webcomics.com members. There's already discounts in place for comics conventions that more than cover the cost of site admission, and Khoo is positioned like nobody else I know, to be able to get more concessions like that out of cons, vendors, equipment makers... it doesn't affect me, because my genre comic is too niche. I hit many conventions a year but they're furry cons, not comics cons, and there probably won't be any discounts for those (heh, I'd probably have been able to arrange some but it's moot now...)

So, the Khoo factor can be described thus- there's no magic business secret so obviously he hasn't been telling any. The webcomics business model was nothing but a powerpoint chart teaching nothing useful to novices. BUT, and this is a big BUT, Khoo is in a position to extract not only automatic yearly payments from subscribers, but also to extract discounts and special deals from a huge range of players in the webcomics business arena, very easily. How many, I don't know, but if you are mainstream enough that you intend to go to comics cons and take advantage of comics resources, there's every reason to believe Khoo will help Brad Guigar come up with more subscriber perks. It's just a matter of whether you're moving in those circles. If I was brainstorming, I'd say he should try to get discounts on convention dealer tables- print-on-demand runs- and Cintiqs. We shall see- certainly if webcomics.com gets that kind of stuff, they can and should announce it far and wide, so we'll be hearing about every perk if they have ANY business sense.

Next- in the trenches as a damn furry with creepy art
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[Lifes a Witch]

Hi, Jinx! I've been waiting to read what you had to say about your experience. I am enjoying my membership and I liked what you wrote about the reasons for joining. That is very similar to my thought process.

Regarding the recurring payment, you can turn that off in your paypal settings. Someone was concerned about that too and I looked it up in my paypal. You just have to root around for it. If you paid directly with CC, you can call your credit card's customer service and have the recurrence turned off.

When I signed up, I asked Brad about the Penny Arcade connection. He reminded me that "webcomics.com" has always been Penny Arcade owned, they just let Brad and those use it.
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[iser77]

Thanks Jinx for this valuable insider's info! You just made great PR for webcomics.com, this should have come from Brad himself...
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Yours Truly, "My 25 Percent"

[jinxtigr]

Now- what happened with this great deal to cause me to leave.

I don't get along with everybody- I have that aspie know-it-all thing going on and try to stick to what I really do know, but I'm not shy about sounding off. I've also written several books, or books masquerading as forum posts so there are people out there who do not take delight in seeing me coming, and there's a major one on the Halfpixel forums- which are now the webcomic.com forums, which are now the webcomic.com subscriber area.

One fine day, a guy posted a request for help with his art. He posted what he did, and he posted an example of someone else's art he liked better, and asked for specific advice on how to get closer to that. Seemed like a great time to whip out my relentless analysis and problemsolving mojo, and get helpful. Sure enough, the guy was not shading with reference to lighting, and the example he wanted to emulate was LOADED with shading representing a clear light direction, and I enthusiastically explained this at length, taking pains to not knock the guy, because his stuff was good, it just lacked that technique.

I've got a blog site where there are boxes with Twitter feeds- one of them searches for references to 'Tally Road'. Who should turn up but this major un-fan, tweeting to himself, "Oh no, the tally road guy is on webcomics.com- that guy is pure poison!".

Next thing you know, the guy has Had Enough. He's entered a stage technically described as 'butthurt', and he's going to tell the whole community just how much they need to shun me and not be fooled. And he does- as brutally as he feels he can (the new site MAY allow cursing, but he wants to come off like an authoritative voice. The gist- I suck, I shouldn't be telling anybody anything, my advice is meaningless and I should shut up and 'study color theory'.

Somebody else chimes in, in a similar state of butthurt, also saying 'study color theory'. I get upset- I'd just learned one of my cats has cancer rather than as I thought a cyst- and I try to retaliate as politely as I can, not wanting to swear or flame. Since neither of these guys appears to update a comic regularly, I say, please show me your 430 comics to learn from as my 430 obviously aren't how it's done. (This is a pretty brutal attack among any cartoonists who know that IS how it's done if you don't stop there but keep going to 4300 and beyond)

One of the things that bugs me is, 'learn color theory' is a meaningless statement. I've been working with Photoshop since before it had LAYERS (i.e. PS3- 4 was the layers, I think) and have never heard anything out of Halfpixel I didn't already know, down to the details of line screens and CMYK gray removal. I spotted the flaw in Brad's 'unsharp mask' debate (in his process, you've already run 'Threshold' so unsharp mask can't do anything). I had recently sent in errata to a Deke McClelland Photoshop book where they mistakenly swapped names between viridian and aquamarine (I DID have to look them up on Wikipedia to be sure, though). So don't tell me to learn color theory, 'k? Performance is education times instinct. Education alone still has its place.

As this interaction got uglier and uglier, I wrote Brad- using the link on his Evil Inc. page. And I asked- what would you have me do? I want to be nice in your forums for you, but I am so done with putting up with this stuff. I knew that if he was criticized in that way he'd be beside himself. I asked him, how would you feel? I asked him, what do you want me to do here? I'll do whatever you tell me, but I'm gobsmacked and do not know how to respond.

Next- Brad's response.
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[Marooned]

Huh. I totally missed this whole drama, and I thought I looked at all the threads. Interesting.
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[jinxtigr]

When Brad got back to me, he was full of apology. He'd remembered that me and this guy didn't get along, he hadn't moderated as he should, he was going to moderate the thread and clean it right up. The sense I got was that I should carrry on, making every effort to never say an unkind word. Getting in fights wasn't going to be good. Noted.

Brad did indeed clean up the thread- by nuking almost everything said that was the least bit contentious. The other guy got to keep a remark about 'you should learn color theory', but me and my troll got decimated- modded into little stains on the carpet. My earlier enthusiastic post was untouched, but the 'color theory' thing (meaningless) was the only information after that which survived, because all the information on either side was happening while tainted by an angry argument.

Picture a policeman, whose only method of dealing with anything is a firehose. If a fight breaks out, he considers it crucial to not take sides, so he hoses everybody down with the firehose equally, and considers the matter closed. Somebody sticks up a bank, and the next thing you know, robber and tellers alike are spluttering, disarmed, in the street. Technically, the problem is solved! It's just a little frustrating if you were the bank teller, because you want the cop to pat you on the head and give you a donut and say, there, there, nobody sticks up banks on MY watch.

Brad's just too 'Midwest' to be a good moderator. It's against the grain for him, something he probably hates to do, where he gets annoyed at everybody involved for being jerks to each other. Yet if you are 'midwest' like him, without a position of authority to rely on, you become a punching bag.

I posted to a thread, about new revenue streams (which said that people were spending on SEO, social media etc and gave some figures). I mentioned that you shouldn't have to pay for SEO ever- at the time I was the #1 google return for 'furrry comic', and I explained why that had happened and how to do it. The troll sat for a bit thinking of how to hurt me without getting modded, and then posted that I really missed the point- the article wasn't about SEO at all. He took some trouble to come off disappointed in what a loser I was posting useless things, while shying away from anything that might get him modded.

I saw this, thought for a second, and wrote Brad again, asking if I could leave and have at least the recurrring yearly payment turned off, or possibly a refund if he was comfortable with that.

In politics there's a thing called the Overton Window. You manipulate it by making statements that are outside polite discourse. You don't intend to persuade directly- your intention is to sway public perception through giving people a sense that the 'average mood' of discourse is veering a certain way. It's very much like real-life trolling- it's a dedicated campaign to make statements just within what's considered acceptable, to lean the average the way you want, and get uncommitted opinions to be colored by the mood. One way to cope with this is to not try and be conciliatory, but instead to nail down your position and match 'tude for 'tude.

I know enough about Brad Guigar to know that this would just make his life miserable, and he'd end up Midwesternly pissed off at everybody involved. So, retaliating was out. Walking on eggshells would be totally stupid and not what I wanted to do with the site- so what was left? Acting as normal, and not responding, while a troll without an actively updating comic took every opportunity to shit on my respect and reputation within the community, while Brad did as little as possible to interfere and was particularly careful not to take sides.

I'm gonna say, paying $30 a year for that is just fucked.

A lot of that is the particular situation with Brad unwillingly taking on moderator duties- I can't think of a job he'd like less. But if you're trying to maintain a community, you're stuck with it. You sometimes will have to take sides. Look at Dave Kellett's comments- he's on record that he's had posters where he said, 'if you're not smart enough to see what this place is like, I don't want you here'. You have to call out people and even take sides, if you have trolls, because that's how the community learns.

Brad promptly and completely refunded my $30. He seemed a bit frustrated with me, perhaps, for not coping better, but I'd had nobody chime in by way of support (who wants to get tag team trolled by association?) and I was frustrated with him, for a kinda personal reason I'm finally ready to admit as bridges seem quite burned...

A long time ago, when I had about 30 comics up, I wrote Brad asking what it felt like to just start all over (knowing he'd scrapped his first strip). He wrote back and lambasted me, and I took it, but he said keep at it, in a couple years you'll be OK. I wrote him again about something else about a year later, and he did the same thing- went and looked at my comic, and surprised me by saying that I'd got better. If I remember correctly, 'light years' better than the horrifying initial stuff.

I've had this troll guy say on halfpixel.com, on the free webcomics.com and now the pay site, that I have literally made NO progress at all. Nothing. No change. That's a pretty bold statement (as well as a meanie hurty hurt statement) and I've often sat there going 'but... but Brad... but if he wanted me to quote him, he could just say something, I better be quiet'

Not once did Brad so much as say 'Nah, it's kinda better, I think you may be exaggerating a bit', which would've been so easy to say and hard to argue with- I'd have felt a lot less cornered- but that would be like taking sides, and better to watch a random comics noob get publically humiliated than to even hint at what you yourself told the poor bastard privately...

So there's THAT bridge burned. Yes, Brad once told me my art had improved from 365 daily updates drawing every day- and I kept this secret for him during lots of trolling where I was being publically scolded with the opposite, and never let on that the site admin had said otherwise. I think he was right (wouldn't be hard, that first stuff was crazy crude) but I waited in vain for the guy to say even the safest, most guarded supportive word to get the troll off my back, and what blows my mind is how easy that would have been, and how effective it would be. I know I am never going to let fear of being judged stop me from having someone's back who might have problems or whatever.

And there you have it. Webcomics.com is a neat place with some great resources and enormous potential, especially if you're in a mainstream comics vein and don't piss people off or enrage the trolls. If you have enough midwest in you to get along with everybody, you should do fine. If you hit mainstream comics conventions, that alone might be worth admission. But if you're more of a Kurtzian temperament than a Guigariod temperament, watch out- it ain't TWCL, you're not supposed to defend yourself, and the kindergarten teacher will NOT say 'No, Donny, Chris is a nice boy' to help you, even if he told you so in email. You're on your own.

I'm definitely too much of a wuss to handle that, though I'm okay if I get to hit back

Four stars for webcomics.com if you're not an insecure, whiny bitch- two stars if you're too much like, well, me and in the right circumstances, well worth the money. Just watch that recurring charge so you don't forget it...
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[Marooned]

Having read that, I can only say that this seems like it has very little to do with the site and a lot to do with this dude you don't get along with. With a side helping of not liking how Brad moderated the issue. You didn't like it, so you left.

It kind of feels like you couldn't dump on the guy here, so you came here to dump and explain what you did instead.

In any community you have to be able to handle people who give you a hard time. Heck, we've all dealt with Bengo here and his lunacy. So I'm pretty surprised that you bailed. You've been around here a decent amount of time.

I missed the whole thing, so it must have happened pretty fast. Maybe I'm wrong - but this is how it reads to me. It sounds a little like you were disappointed with webcomics.com - felt you weren't getting your money's worth, and this was a way for you to get a refund and pull the plug. Maybe that is why Brad sounded disappointed, because he got the same vibe.
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[lonelyfetus]

Wouldn't it have been worth the $30 and non-refund for the articles themselves?