Syndicates, groups, hubs, and collectives.

Despite the fact that few of them ever meet face to face, webcomickers seem to crave community and camaradie. To this end, some webcomickers seek out like-minded creators, and form groups. Some of these groups are meant to do little more than offer comfort and a sense of community, while others are meant to expand reader bases, and occasionally even make money.

This feature takes offers a snapshot of some of the perks and drawbacks of collectives, and then offers a list of these joined creative masses in the event that you've just been itching to be assimilated by someone... anyone.

It’s been nearly a year since Comixpedia began its remarkable transformation from the rough concept that Xaviar Xerexes pitched to me, to the webcomics magazine that it is now, and I think we’ve accomplished a lot for a group of loosely-affiliated webcomics creators, living in our own far-flung corners of the world.

Brad Hawkins’ Monkey Law is an excellent example of the kind of genre-hopping that webcomics makes possible. One part social-political commentary, one part funny-monkey stories, Monkey Law is an occasionally awkward marriage of seemingly disparate parts, that delivers a powerful punch.

One of the interesting offshoots of the webcomic model has been its propensity for sharing.

Because very few people are actually making a living at this, ownership of a particular imaginary world or character has not become the political minefield that it is in print and animation. It is still possible for webcomics creators to ape one another, use someone else's characters (with their permission, of course) and do the occasional cross-over. It is a luxury of not being in "business" that many webcomics creators have taken advantage of, and it's a luxury, I believe, which takes comics places that print can only rarely go.

Join us for where the wild things are...

Carl Jung called it the Shadow, though it's most commonly referred to as the Alter-Ego these days – a way of understanding how the different, and occasionally disparate parts of our personality relate to one another. The alter ego is that reflection of our inner-selves that we project into the outer world.

There is a commonly-held belief that great art is the product of great suffering, and a tendency to romanticize the notion of what it means to be an artist. In order to create art of significance the artist must therefore be poor, under-fed, miserable... and alone.

Mirror Mirror On The Web

It happens a lot. We don't spend a lot of time talking about it, or analyzing what went wrong. We don't sit down and articulate areas for improvement. Generally, the readership for a webcomic gone wrong takes its time and attention elsewhere, and the creator is left to toil away in obscurity and isolation until the fateful day they have to pull an "Old Yeller" and put their comic down.

When my friend Matt first suggested it, I thought it sounded a little crazy. I'd read Scott McCloud's dare, and I knew that plenty of people had already done it. But could I do it? I'd never drawn so much as a three-panel comic in my life.

Then again, I'd never tried.

One of the most interesting stylistic elements of most manga or anime, for me, has always been the character design. In most Western comics and animation, character design has as much to do with personal expression as it does with story.