In Before It Was Cool: Appreciating Webcomic Creators

2022-08-15 22:18:47 PDT (last update 2022-08-15 22:22:11 PDT)

Let's start this with a note I posted on an obscure Discord back in February…

In 2006 I started following this obscure webcomic that finished in 2015. It was a cute romantic comedy: not the kind of thing I usually read, but it was fun. Last week I got an update from them to check out their upcoming movie trailer. I thought it was a joke at first, but nope, it was real.

That was my introduction to the AAA title linked above. I ended up really enjoying the movie and can recommend it. It was a weirdly successful cross between a Hallmark Channel movie and an oddball webcomic.

I've been following webcomics since the web became a thing. Arguably before that: I used to follow Dilbert on Usenet through the Brad Templeton's Clarinet service back before Scott Adams bailed on the fanbase that made him. (I suggested "a clueless intern" to Adams as a character in an email a month or two before Asok entered the strip. Probably just a coincidence…)

I currently follow about 80 webcomics using http://piperka.net, although most of those are not currently active. A couple of my student friends created http://comic-rocket.com/ with a bit of help from me: one of them got me into webcomics on a much bigger scale 20 years ago.

So all this hipster cred-building is my way of saying…

Thank you. Thank you to the creators that made and continue to make webcomics. You folks are amazing. I have been but a happy parasite, for the most part, on your success.

Thank you. Thank you to the webcomic tool and infrastructure creators that have made my webcomic experience so smooth and special. Some of you are my friends. All of you have my respect.

Back when I had a full-time blog before, I'd post my current webcomic list every few years. Probably time to do that again. This is edited both for taste and to show only currently-running strips. It's enough.

I haven't included links, because exporting them is a bit troublesome right now. Again, you can type titles at Piperka or Comic Rocket.