Hahaha

Joey
http://www.moderntales.com

Gossamer Commons becomes the Modern Tales flagship comic.

Other than that, it doesnt fucking matter. Eric Burns isn’t a journalist, and Websnark isn’t journalism. Can we drop that bullshit already?

There are many different intents in cartooning (and in any endeavor). Audience and finance are two reasons people do such things. They aren’t the only two reasons they do it.

Artistically, UfbT was a failure. So, I scrubbed it and went and did other stuff. I continued to grow. I continued trying things. And I found stuff I felt worked. And stuck with it.

You could indeed highlight a ton of flaws with Gossamer Commons, I’m sure. And I would agree with some of them, I’m sure. But to date, Gossamer Commons has succeeded in the things I’ve tried to accomplish. I look back at the first two chapters, and while I see things I need to improve, I also see a Hell of a lot that I wanted to accomplish and did. So no, I wouldn’t think it was a failure, even if you highlighted its problems. Whereas when I look at UfbT, I see plenty of things I attempted that simply didn’t work at all, and little that succeeded. So, I see that as a failure.

Money doesn’t enter into either.

You and I both know that there are lots of terrible comics out there that are (inexplicably to those of us with taste) wildly successful both in size of readership and in monentary gains.

So I still don’t understand why you used the word “failed” – because you know better than to link it to artistic merits.

If I wrote a ten page missive that outlined all of the flaws that I could find in Gossamer Commons, and I backed them up historically, literarily, and artistically… And you found yourself agreeing with at least half my points – would you then consider it a failure?

And how can you claim that you kept at it, when you say “*later*, I had the chance”. That’s clearly telling me there was a break between the two. Are you saying that you kept writing comics and didn’t share? If so, again, why use the word “failed”?

Well, except I did.

I did Unfettered by Talent because I wanted to, and because it was fun — but it was also terrible. Ergo, I failed at it.

I never thought I’d make a cent at it, though.

Later, I had the chance to write webcomics, and that’s gone much better. It’s exciting and fun and I love it.

However, we don’t make any money doing it. And I don’t see that changing. We might shoot for print at some point, because that would be cool. However, the standards for success we’re shooting for are artistic, not financial.

Newspaper syndication is definitely a direction I might want to explore for MT Free someday … maybe we should talk at some point …

Joey
http://www.moderntales.com