Warren Ellis’ new site THE ENGINE has a thread specifically for webcomic creators to plug their work. It looks like there’s just 2 rules: you only get one post and no superhero genre work. Read on for Ellis’ call for plugs.
Webcomics people: you’ve got one post to introduce yourselves and your work to a bunch of people who like having new things to read. Go mad.
THE ENGINE RULES APPLY: if you’re doing superhero fiction, I’m afraid I have to ask you to seek an audience elsewhere. I’d particularly suggest boards like Millarworld would be interested in your work.
Don’t overload the post with images, and do NOT spread yourselves around the forum with your mad sluttery. I will be forced to cull you like seals.
ALSO: this is for people who make comics, NOT for non-creators to recommend webcomics.
Webcomickers go.
I can understand trying to avoid the otaku, fan-boys, but the homepage reads:
“a community based around my adult-oriented original creator-owned works, and a place to have public conversations with other creators.”
Why must that exclude creators of adult-oriented original creator-owned super-hero works? Of course, I’m a bit biased as my super-hero-like cyborg protagonists run dangerously close to that line.
It’s his house, his rules, but it still stings. And he hasn’t “culled” my listing yet, so I suppose I shouldn’t complain.
The vast majority of *any* genre falls below that level of quality. If someone is that goddamn afraid of the Internet why are they even here?
It’s like a gift box sampler of amazing webcomics!
It took me a day to work up the nerve to plug there.
Because they’re able to control an environment where the stuff they don’t like doesn’t have to be present. Like a message board.
mr. ellis sure doesn’t know much about webcomics if he has to fob off superhero stuff.
Warren’s audience isn’t quite the same as our audience. He’s just being careful. He shut down his original forum for many reasons; one of which seemed to me to be his growing discomfort with all the superhero hype going on in there — you could watch it develop over time — even among people who claimed they didn’t really like superhero comics. There’s a mindset in the direct market that can’t ever quite shake the superhero virus. Warren seems to attract a certain niche within the direct market crowd. I know a few of his most rabid fans personally, here in Louisville. They’re sort of halfway between the DC/Marvel fanboy and the Fantagraphics art snob. Unlike the fanboy, they don’t accept any old crap the mainstream throws at them — but unlike the art snob, they’re still very much enamored of superheroes — or, if not superheroes specifically, of heroic fiction (think Planetary, for example). There’s nothing wrong with this at all. But if there *were* a forum online where, suddenly, thousands of inept superhero webcomics would suddenly rear their heads at once, Warren’s forum would be where it happened. Unless he forbad them. Which he did.
As Jesse Hamm pointed out once (I forget where), when people think of popular mainstream comics, they immediately think of the top of the charts, or of the artistic innovators — Miller, Moore, Bendis, Ellis, Morrison, Quitely, Cooke — but the vast majority of “mainstream” superhero work falls far, far, far below that level of quality. These companies are churning out lots of pap that wouldn’t be welcome on TNT even at 5 am. I’ve only read a few superhero webcomics, most of them on GS — and most of them are way better than the average mainstream comic. But I’ve also read some real stinkers, of course! (No names! No names!)
Joey
http://www.moderntales.com