"What Will You Do?"

Everyone has their little routines in life- their habits. When you do something so much it eventually seems like an instinct. Cracking my knuckles, biting my nails, watching the news...it's natural at this point. But one particular habit of mine makes me think about the psychological stress of being an artist more than a special on Kurt Cobain- my web comic check.

webcomic, n. (plural: webcomics)

1. (webcomics, Internet) An online comic strip, especially one first published on the World Wide Web. (Thank you, Wiktionary.)

I've been reading webcomics for at least a few years now. It started out with a comic called Megatokyo, and it took off from there. I had a thing for Ctrl+Alt+Del for quite a while. Then I stumbled upon VG Cats, and that took me to MS Paint Adventures, Allan...and so on.

I learned to adore these comics in all of their pixelly, nerdy, clever, beautiful glory. MS Paint Adventures' Problem Sleuth had me laughing until I cried, and confusing me to death with "weird puzzle shit", all the while using simple character designs and a ridiculous story line. Octopus Pie made Brooklyn seem hilarious, and reminded me how much I loved Supermarket Sweep. Beaver and Steve hit me with a shoe.

Whenever I'm online, I flip through my bookmarks toolbar, checking for updates. Did Boston post something new on 21deadmonkeys? Did Herman The Manatee get hit by another boat? And more often than not, a comic artist has yet to put anything new on their site yet. Some will post filler that says, "Updating tomorrow!" But a lot of the time, the artist may explain why they missed an update. These stories are sometimes as arresting as the comics they make.

Some explain their life's issues in ways I think would be very hard to put up online for lots of people you don't know seeing. Some may even draw it out, if they do journal comics (Inkdick and Allan especially). Some lose motivation in what they're doing and move on to new things. Sometimes in the middle of a really great storyline. But I will forever wonder why these people end up in the middle of terrible circumstances. Allan of Allan fame got ran over by a car...and then got braces too. Ducky Boy in 21deadmonkeys was based off of a real friend of the artist, and he died. I only knew him as the guy with the mohawk who usually said the punchlines, but I'll be damned if I wasn't depressed when I read those words. Sometimes an artist's brand new Mac gets stolen out of his car just after they buy it, when they can just barely afford it anyway...but his readers donate money to him and he eventually gets a new one.

This sort of thing is something I find particularly beautiful about webcomics as a medium. You can talk to your readers more directly than a comic maker in a newspaper could. With MS Paint Adventures, the comic goes in the direction the reader wants it to- creator Andrew Hussie reads fan submissions and picks one and goes with it. You could leave a comment on a comic and the artist may say thanks for your compliment. It's like a really great concert- the barriers between the producer and the consumer are blurred. The unity makes it even better.

Waiting and watching,
AJKazlouski