Fleen: Other creators have taken comics-on-paper and transitioned to the web as a means to spread their back issues to new audiences while maintaining a print line. Others have gone further and shifted entirely creator-owned comics to online for first publication. Given that your experiment with Skullkickers online is a week old, any idea which direction you’ll end up taking?

JZ: It’s too early to say which strategy would work best for Skullkickers. We’re definitely releasing our new story arc through Image as issues starting in April. Once we see how well that does, and if the online serialization of older issues helps sales, then we’ll be better informed to make that kind of decision.

Fleen: From a logistical standpoint, what made you decide to go with Keenspot instead of using the Skullkickers domain you already had?

JZ: The Skullkickers website has become a catch-all place for people to find out information, get comic previews, see reviews, and find out about things like the upcoming Munchkin card game expansion. If Skullkickers continues to grow then I’d like skullkickers.com to be the hub for every aspect of it, not just comic pages.

If the Keenspot site picks up enough steam then it’s possible I’d redirect the .com address to it at some point and integrate the other material as part of the webcomic site. We’ll see how it goes. All of this is an experiment. I feel like it’s one that will help us grow, but it’s not a certainty.

Fleen: Skullkickers has a third story arc that’s getting ready to debut, and you’ve mentioned that the full story you want to tell would take six or seven arcs, if the sales could sustain it that long. Does the possibility of running the comic online without having to make the costs of printing / publishing / distribution make it more likely we’ll see that full story?

JZ: Yeah, it’s absolutely possible. I see the comic online as a way to engage new readers, bringing them onboard the story we’re building, showing them the great stuff we’ve already done and, day by day, make them a fan of the series. At that point it’s easy for them to get all caught up with our trade paperbacks, issues or digital comics if they’d like.

If the series keeps sustaining its creative costs, on any and all platforms, I’d be thrilled to tell the master story I have all planned out, dragging our monster mashing idiots all over the place wrecking every trope and setting imaginable as we skewer the grand-daddy of all fantasy stories, the “heroes of destiny” cliché.

I want people to enjoy Skullkickers and I’m not picky about how they’re doing that. In print or online – it’s all comics and it’s all viable. The divide between physical and digital media is breaking down in video, print and audio. They’re not really “webcomics” any more, they’re just comics.

Fleen: Okay, let’s talk about creative costs a little more. Creating/printing/publishing/distributing floppies of Skullkickers: considering all the people that need to be paid requires x number of readers buying the comic to just break even. You aren’t even making any money, you’re just paying everybody else associated with the book.

Creating/not printing/production work/hosting Skullkickers on the web: same deal, but this time you need y number of readers for the ad rates to hit that break even point. What’s the ratio of x/y? Any idea how many readers of the comics you have that aren’t actually buying it (e.g.: the entire population of Russia), who can now be contributing to your financial well-being?

JZ: As the web archive deepens, our pageviews will tend to go up because each new reader is getting caught up, contributing a whack of pageviews all in one day as they do so. Ad campaign payout rates also fluctuate a lot from month to month. Those two factors change the math of it quite a bit.

If we’re talking readers who are only reading the latest page every day and that’s it (1 pageview per reader per weekday) that number balloons quite a bit, as you might imagine. In that not-really-realistic scenario we’d need about 20+ times as many readers as we have right now in print to cover our monthly issues just in ad view payout money.

That sounds like a massive increase, and it is, but in our first week at Keenspot we had more unique IP visits (i.e.: new readers) than all three printings of Skullkickers #1 combined, so we’re off to a strong start out the gate.

My fingers are crossed that a combination of web pageview ad payouts, print comic sales, digital comic sales, trade sales and convention sales will work together to keep the series running strong so I can tell the entire story I have planned.

Fleen: If Skullkickers did shift to an only-print-the-trades model, would we still get those post-arc guest issues?

JZ: I intend to keep those going, yes. Our Tavern Tales collaborations are far too fun for us to skip out on. I’d be thrilled to get comic superstars like Scott Kurtz, Ryan North or Rich Burlew onboard for a Skullkickers Tavern Tale.

Fleen: We both know that you’re not going to answer, but I have to ask: when do we learn Baldy and Shorty’s real names?

JZ: They have names? Who told you that? :)

Fleen: Art is all about appropriation and reworking, but this is at least the — third? fourth? — fairly obvious direct copy of your work by different parties. What is it about your work that makes you such a high-profile target for these situations?

Fink: There is a great deal of difference in being inspired by a work and completely copying it. I’ve been inspired by a ton of artists and it’s reflected in my work I’m sure, but that is the outcome of living within the art community and growing up with it. After cookie loves milk got printed there was a swarm of food based shirts, peanut butter and jelly, ketchup and mustard and if they were inspired by my design it wouldn’t bother me.

I think the reason It’s been stolen so many times is that the art is fairly simple. I’m just playing around with the idea of cookies being good with milk, it’s something everyone understands. I’ve made other designs for Threadless that are much more illustrations rather than funny concepts and those never get ripped off (not that I’m daring anymore) because it’s a much more complex thing to copy. The thing with simple designs is that you can just take the idea and make art that is slightly different, that way they think no one will notice who they stole it from. Obviously I also can’t hold a copyright on the idea of cookies being good with milk, but I can take action against people who blatantly copy and even trace my designs.

Fleen: In a weird way, is it flattering that so many people want to copy your designs?

Fink: No! Haha. A lot of people ask this and it’s really not! Every time I get an email about some Cafe press store selling cookie loves milk rip-offs or a big name department store selling a trace or some shop in Hong Kong printing exact copies it just completely ruins my day. You don’t get paid an awful lot to make shirt designs so feeling like you are getting exploited is never fun. If it were just something similar someone made that they weren’t selling it would be a completely different story, but I know these places are making money off of something that is mine.

Fleen: This is a Threadless shirt design, and they hold the copyright to be defended. In a perfect world, what would they do now?

Fink: Well it might not be a perfect world but it might be a polite one at least! In the past when dealing with these situations Threadless has granted me the authority to take legal action myself.

Fleen: What would make it less likely for you to be targeted in this way?

Fink: I’m not really sure. Less jerks in the world? Science needs to find a way to see if a person is a jerk or not right when they are born! “It’s a girl! Oh…I’m sorry, it’s also a jerk.”

Honestly I think more people need to be aware of art theft and how often it happens and how wrong it is. There are people who just appropriate things without even thinking that it’s stealing. Someone once sent me a shirt with a panel from my comic, Chester 5000 on it. It was cut up in with a bunch of panels from other black and white comics. I would assume that the person who made the shirt just thought they were making a shirt covered in cut-outs from cartoons, not realizing that you can only use art from the public domain. I don’t think most people are actually taught what intellectual property means.

Fleen: What do you think drives people to engage in such blatant copying?

Fink: I think it’s just ignorance and in the case of Todd Goldman simply wanting to make a buck by any means possible. He churns out copy after copy of other people’s work, it’s the quantity over quality technique. He thinks, “If I make enough crap someone will buy at least one.” And at this point it’s really pretty disgusting since he knows he is blatantly ripping off hard working artists and he’s been involved in so many legal battles for it, it’s hard to imagine being such a nasty person.

Fleen: Todd Goldman has tossed lawsuit threats over copying accusations in the past. Do you feel that speaking truthfully about this — “situation” — puts you at any risk?

Fink: It’s always a little scary dealing with situations like these but I feel that I have enough evidence against Goldman that I can talk freely. His rip-offs of my work are far from coincidental since he actually offered me a job back in 2008, telling me he loved my Lil’ Soap and Cookie Loves Milk designs and then instead of giving me work apparently decided it was more profitable to just rip me off.

Fleen: How long before somebody starts passing off Chester or Time Traveling Jess as their work? How badly will you beat them?

Fink: SO HARD. I will beat them with all of my fists at once! And then Top Shelf will beat them too! Both books (Chester 5000 and We Can Fix It) are due out next year and honestly I’m excited but kind of scared to death!

Fleen: So, how did you end up with the publishers of puzzles to Thomas Kincade, Painter of Light™ ™?

Yates: Well, Gary, I was just minding my business one day back in June, y’know, making puzzles, comics, toys, y’know the usual. And then all of a sudden this dude Jason from a big puzzle and game manufacturer emails me and just found my work, and is super-excited. We talk on the phone later that day and agree to see if we can’t make some kind of production Bafflers available to the masses.

Over the six-month viability and development process, (VP of Development) Jason and Ceaco at large have treated me with respect and seem truly excited to break some ground, making something the mainstream puzzle market hasn’t seen before.

But to answer your question directly, Jason said he was just surfing the web for interesting illustrators for work, but I only had one, expensive, highly clicked Project Wonderful ad for my puzzles up that very day at Questionable Content. So yes.

Fleen: Are you doing original Baffler designs, or have they licensed some of your existing designs?

Yates: Ceaco and I will be working together to adapt previous designs I’ve made in painted wood for the initial series. It’s been and going to be a tricky process, but I’m confident we’re going to get some great results.

The production Bafflers will still be inlaid tray puzzles, printed on chipboard, with graphics directly taken from an extensive spray-paint mottling “library” I am providing. Ceaco is creating custom dies to cut each of the Baffler designs, so they will be just as lovely and tough as my original.

Fleen: Since most of us probably aren’t puzzle afficianados, give us some scope — how many puzzle designs do these people publish each year, how many copies, in how wide a market?

Yates: Ceaco is a gentle giant, one of the largest North American jigsaw puzzle companies, selling and distributing world-wide, via many imprints and licenses. They sell jigsaw puzzles everywhere you can find them. From specialty game shops like It’s Your Move to Barnes & Noble and Target, it’ll be out there!

I am not exactly sure how many other folks’ work Ceaco pick up a year, nor their exact distribution figures, but I do know they are selective and successful, so hopefully that is a good sign!

Fleen: Any idea how many copies they’re going to print of your designs? How many designs, and over what time frame?

Yates: We’re starting with 3 “abstract geometric” designs for the first production run, but there will likely be more designs added in if everything goes well. There will be plenty of them, is all I can say. Put them on your Xmas (next years) wishlist, they should be available officially in stores October 2010, but if all goes to plan, we may have some ready a little earlier than that.

Fleen: Are they putting your designs into a definite price band, or will it vary with the size/complexity?

Yates: The first three will all be around 8″x8″, so they will definitely be affordable and probably around the same price mark. Some bigger or smaller ones may be in the works, we shall see….

Fleen: What’s the name of this line of puzzles? Are they all “Bafflers”, or do they have individual titles, and does the Chris Yates name/website/mention of wooden originals make it onto the packaging?

Yates: “The Baffler by Chris Yates: X” will be the title of the product! This is my thing, Gary-O! Copyright and signature on the back, man! (“X” being the name of the specific design of course).

Fleen: How’s the book [XDM] doing?

Tayler: Quite well, especially when you consider the track record of independently released RPG materials. We’re at the very top of the small-publisher curve. The authors are extremely pleased, and have been well paid. It is not earning me money as quickly as Schlock books do, though, so I need to bust my tuckus and get Resident Mad Scientist ready for print. The kids need new shoes.

I’m still thrilled to be part of the XDM franchise, and if I sound even the tiniest bit disappointed it’s only because I’m accustomed to selling 2000 books in a month of pre-orders as opposed to six months of steady sales.

Fleen: From the descriptions I read online before the seminar, and from some of the summaries at The Daily Cartoonist, I saw “self syndication” as a recurring theme. Does traditional syndication have a future? Must it be much smaller than it was before, on the scale of the individual or small company instead of massive media corporations?

Tayler: My opinion on this grows out of the latest concept that blew my mind. Seth Godin said It’s easier to find content for your audience than audience for your content. Webtoonists struggle to find audiences, but once they’ve got ‘em, look what they do! Penny Arcade launched a convention to rival Dragon*Con! Historically, we have looked at syndicates as gatekeepers to a large audience. The fact of the matter is that they are not.

Who “owns” the audience for a syndicated comic strip like Cathy or Beetle Bailey? It’s not the syndicate, and it’s certainly not the cartoonist. It’s the newspaper editor. These are the guys who have been doing the easy work of finding content for their audience. The problem they have now is that their audience is aging, and up-and-coming audiences are not subscribing to papers.

Those up-and-coming audiences … we all want a piece of them. If newspapers, syndicates, or cartoonists have a future in the coming world it is as owners of audience.

Fleen: So the takeaway there is to find the niche that is a) underserved, and b) something you understand? To look towards your tribe but not be a carpetbagger?

Tayler: Well put. Yes, that’s a good approach. But you can kill yourself looking for an underserved niche. Look for a niche where you’re an expert, and do what you love. That way you’re more likely to do it better than anybody else does.

Fleen: Is the cartoonist (of any stripe) essentially an individual for the purposes of business? Obviously, keeping relationships with other creators is important artistically, but can cartoonists have shared business relationships or does it have to be a solo game?

Tayler: Shared business relationships are critical. Partnering is the only way to get everything done. Sure, you may think you can do it all to begin with, and perhaps when you’re beginning you actually can do everything you think you need to. But there comes a point when, in order to scale effectively, you have to partner with somebody else. Maybe that means contracting with TopatoCo or ThinkGeek. Maybe it means sharing table expenses among cartoonists with a common LLC.

Fleen: I think I want to explore this a little more. On the one hand, you’ve got services companies like TopatoCo , and on the other hand, you’ve got collections of creators working towards a common goal. I’m still not sure anybody other than Blank Label Comics [of which Tayler is a member] has gone the LLC route as a cooperative venture. Other collectives seem to operate more on a more informal basis ranging from handshake to Okay, let’s just write it down and all initial a copy, but short of formal lawyered-up contracts and governance structures. Is the more formal construct that much more helpful?

Tayler: For tax purposes it’s very helpful. You can collect money in one place and distribute it without one person taking the tax hit. The alternative is to only ever collect money as individuals, and when you’re negotiating with an ad broker or a convention that can be tricky. But it’s definitely not for everybody.

And yes, as you’ve pointed out, relationships with other creators is critical. You don’t need to join a collective for this, but you do need to go to where the other cartoonists are. This might mean hanging out online at Webcomics.com. It might mean attending conventions outside that comfy 50-mile radius of your home. And yeah, it might mean spending money on professional development at a seminar just because there are people going whom you’d really like to meet.

Fleen: Amy Lago and Lynn Reznick both missed your presentation; which questions of theirs did you most want to answer, and what questions did you most want to ask them?

Tayler: I would have liked to ask Amy Lago what she thought of my strip. She did some portfolio reviews, but I decided not to get in line because I wasn’t paying to be at the event and the folks in line were. Also, I’m a big chicken.

I would have liked to explain to Lynn Reznick that I’m not giving anything away for free, not any more than Mark Anderson or Daryl Cagle are. I’m letting my online archive sell books, and I’m selling access to my audience to select advertisers.

I really would have liked to talk quietly with Amy about what she thinks the future of syndication is in light of the importance of audience ownership. I could be wrong! She might have very solid, demonstrable ownership of an audience in a way I don’t understand. But we didn’t get the chance to talk about that.

Fleen: Okay, let’s start with the easy one: what was the topic of your presentation? You mentioned it was along the lines of what you learned, but you must have had some structure in mind before you went live.

Tayler: I knew what I did not want to present. Most of those at the event had seen my Free Content Business Model presentation on YouTube, and repeating that would have been bad form, especially since some of the data was two years old in 2007, and is demonstrably erroneous.

I didn’t have a firm presentation in mind when I got on the plane. I’m comfortable shooting from the hip, I knew I was going last, so I figured I’d let thoughts coalesce during the event.

What I ended up presenting was Concepts That Have Blown My Mind. It was a tour of some important things I’ve learned, things that have altered the landscape of my mind. They included mundane things like the principle of Opportunity Cost, and complex, disputable concepts like Nassim Taleb’s Black Swan and Clayton Christensen’s Disruptive Innovations. Each was presented anecdotally in the context of where I was in life at that time, and how learning these things shaped my decisions.

The Disruptive Innovation bit is a touchy one, because we webcartoonists are as apt as not to point at syndicated cartoonists
and say Stop whining about declining buggy-whip sales, the automobile is the future! So I presented Disruptive Innovations in the context of my days at Novell, where I first studied Christensen’s work, and then I went on to explain how I tried to apply it to what my company was doing. I got it exactly, 180-degrees-out-of-phase wrong. (I also talked about learning from failure, and this was a good data-point.)

My goal was to have the audience not tune out that principle before learning it. I think it worked.

Fleen: What’s the most important thing that independent [web]cartoonists should be doing that they generally aren’t?

Tayler: I think some of us need to be interacting with our niche audiences as subject matter experts rather than as cartoonists. [Daryl] Cagle doesn’t lecture on cartooning. He teaches people about politics, and history, and he uses political cartoons to do it. Keith Knight is similar in that he lectures on race and culture rather than how he parlayed an understanding of those into a comics career.

If we talk about cartooning, we limit our audience to people who are interested in the art, the process, and the business of cartooning. If we talk about our subject matter, however, we get to use our cartooning to reach much larger audiences … audiences that are likely to pay to hear us. The lecture circuit pays pretty well. That said, I don’t want to do the lecture circuit. Not much, anyway. Okay, maybe a little.

Fleen: Okay, what topics could you (or want to) lecture on?

Tayler: Have a look at writingexcuses.com and xtremedungeonmastery.com. World-building, character-driven writing, and table-top RPGs are things I love to do, and am happy to talk about. In those settings I do. I’m not paid to lecture, but Keith and Daryl convinced me that I could be. (But I still want to be a cartoonist, not a public figure.)

Fleen: And let’s turn the original question around — what approaches does the traditional syndication model need to adopt from indy creators now (or more likely, five years ago)?

Tayler: Own the audience. “Syndicate” your work using RSS, go viral, and get as many people reading as possible. Hook ‘em young, and drive revenue by selling direct. Most webtoonists already do this, and see it as stating the obvious. The syndicates could do this but don’t. I don’t know why not.

Fleen: Keith Knight’s pretty well known for certain concepts: Try everything; have feet in all possible worlds; own everything. Who else brought similar key concepts, and what were they?

Tayler: I talked about lecturing already. Mark Anderson talked about how he sells comics to corporate presenters for use in their presentations, and how that’s currently outperforming his magazine revenue by nine to one. I wouldn’t have thought that market was that good, but that’s because I’m not part of that customer demographic so I’m blind to it. That’s an important lesson, right there.

Amy Lago spoke about what makes a successful syndicated comic strip, and while that’s not what I want to create the information was certainly helpful.

Fleen: I’m curious as to her criteria — both what makes for a successful strip, and what “success” means these days.

Tayler: The best bits of what she said were probably said in person during portfolio reviews. I stood aside and let the paying attendees take advantage of that opportunity.

Fleen: What will you be doing differently based on what you learned?

Tayler: Feeling less guilty about looking for more pies to stick my finger in, mostly. I may consider charging a nominal fee for reprint rights when somebody wants to stick my stuff in a slide deck. Oh, and I’m definitely going to do an iPhone app. The smartphone platform has all the hallmarks of “disruptive innovation” about it, and I don’t think I saw that until this weekend.

Fleen: Are you using iPhone app to mean exactly that device, or as shorthand? Is this going to be an app to be sold (and thus drive revenue) or an app to be given away (and thus drive audience via another connection to your work)?

Tayler: For now, it means iPhone app. It won’t be a free application. My goal is to make reading the comic on the iPhone better than reading it on the web. We’ll see about other devices next year. Right now I’m focusing on the market segment where money is being spent.

I do have to be careful, though. I’m surviving off of two key revenue streams from a single intellectual property. The opportunity cost of pursuing additional markets with new properties is quite high, so I need to budget my time and do some research before picking new projects. XDM was this year’s experiment for me. There’ll be another stretch next year, but there won’t be two next year.

Fleen: Let’s start with the basics: how large is TopatoCo at the moment?

Post: Counting Jeffrey [Rowland, webcartoonist and TopatoCo supreme leader] and myself, we have four full-time employees, three part-time, and another hire on the way [at TopatoCo headquarters in Easthampton, Massachusetts]. Also, [David] Malki ! is our Director of Marketing [in Los Angeles]. By Christmas season (which starts in October for us), we’ll probably have to add somebody just to handle the print-on-demand tasks.

Fleen: Given the pretty basic nature of the work — I’m guessing folding a lot of t-shirts — what’s the appeal of TopatoCo. Why shouldn’t I just go work at McDonald’s instead?

Post: For starters, we pay better than McDonald’s. It’s a relaxed atmosphere, folding shirts and listening to podcasts. You’ll start out on general tasks and as we’ve seen what people are good at, and as the need for delegation comes up as we grow in new directions, we add new responsibilities. We’re in the planning stages of offering benefits and insurance — we’ve been shifting from a sole proprietorship to becoming a corporation, now we have to start looking at grownup things.

Fleen: TopatoCo’s pretty identified with Jeff [Rowland]‘s public persona, as seen in his comics, tweets, and such. He presents himself as somewhat — let’s say haphazard. Do you have any concerns that potential business partners or associates in the future might not be able to distinguish between Internet Jeff and Real Jeff? I mean, might you have to deal with, say, Barnes & Noble in the future, and they do a Google search and say, “Uhhh, no.”?

Post: We don’t see dealing in the near future with anybody that wouldn’t be able to distinguish the internet persona from who he actually is. You can either roll with it, or accept the fact that we’re a company that does things differently but gets things done.

It’s not too different from small design shops or advertising companies who can present a really out-there image but still be perceived as effective, if weird. We deal in webcomics, it’s a really weird business, and you can get away with being weird in this business.

[Editor's note: By way of evidence supporting this last statement, I have a press release that ends with the phrase, TopatoCo president and founder Jeffrey Rowland expressed delight at the new developments before collapsing into a pool of liquid exhaustion secreted by his own pores.]

Fleen: A recent press release listed Dave Kellett and Kris Straub as your 43rd and 44th clients, respectively. How big are you planning on growing TopatoCo? Or maybe the question should be, how big can it grow and still be TopatoCo?

Post: We’re on kind of a moratorium right now, because we’ve grown so quickly over the past year and we don’t want to fail to serve our existing clients they way we should. But we’re not dumb, so if we get an email from somebody that makes us go “Wow, I can’t believe ____ emailed us!”, we’re finding a way to work them in. We’re looking to partner with the right clients, which might not necessarily be individual creators. With the right employees, we could grow to maybe 75? 100 clients? Beyond that, it wouldn’t feel like us anymore, and there’d be so much on our website that it’d be tough to find anything.

Fleen: Do you have a lot of creators wanting to work with you?

Post: We have a constant solicitation from creators that want to work with us. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but it’s one or two a day, and we have to decide what the right relationship with them might be. Right now there’s a backlog of 150 or 200 people waiting to hear from us, ranging from Well, I’m thinking about starting a webcomic to people we know really well.

It’s a matter of finding creators that will be a good fit and finding out what works for them — do they want to keep their own store for some classes of merchandise, and have us handle other things? Do they want to sell artists editions of their books, and we handle the rest? Do they want to turn it all over to us? We want to work in the best interests of the artists.

Fleen: So you started your own publishing imprint, with the just-released third Dr McNinja collection featuring a bar-coded ISBN and Topato Potato on the back and spine of the book. A recent press statement included the following: TopatoCo plans to publish several more collections of comics in the coming months which will be sold online and at conventions, and distributed only to select retailers.

Is this publishing venture going to be an in-house service for your client base, or will you be developing it to the point of being more stand-alone? Could anybody that needs or wants to put a book together and doesn’t know how to deal with the logistics come to you like any other publisher?

Post: Right now, we’re looking to offer TopatoCo Books as an in-house service for clients, and not to take on clients specifically for publishing. We would like to see it open up in the future, but we have to concentrate now on taking care of our own people. And it’s not just the printing and distribution — if a creator wants to do a book but doesn’t want to design it and lay it out, they can just give us the image files and we can add those services. If they like doing those jobs, they can give us press-ready files instead; it’s a matter of how involved they want to be.

Fleen: TopatoCo started as a way for Jeff to ship his t-shirts to customers. Then he started doing fulfillment for other creators, then became a t-shirt publisher (fronting costs and handling the logistics, with creators only having to do the design), then offered print-on-demand, now book publishing … what’s next on the menu?

Post: We always went with the things that made the most sense, in terms of what products we wanted to offer, and what was possible to do (or learn to do, then do). And we’re still trying to do them really well, so we’ll probably spend the next couple of years focusing on these areas we’re already in, but if something comes up that makes sense, we are always open to new ideas.

Fleen: One of the questions that came up at the Zuda panel in San Diego had to do with how readers find webcomics to read. The answer dealt with word of mouth, recommendations from creators you already read, and association with trusted soruces — if you read anything at Transmission X, for example, there’s a very good chance it’s incredibly good. Is TopatoCo aiming to be one of those trusted sources for quality?

Post: I hope we are. We really try to pick and choose who we take on, based on what we think is good work. There’s a lot of popular comics out there we have no interest in working with because it wouldn’t fit our style.

Fleen: TopatoCo is taking over the Dayfree Press booth at San Diego, and is planning on a lot of shows in 2010. What’s the plan?

Post: Counting NEWW [which will take place in the same building as TopatoCo headquarters], we plan on doing 10 shows in 12 months. We did sort of a dry run at Emerald City this year. We’ll work with our creators, find out who’s planning on tabling on their own, and for those that aren’t (or maybe just have an Artist’s Alley table and aren’t really selling on their own), we’ll bring their merchandise and sell it like a regular publisher.

We’re going arrange it more for the clients that can’t make it to the show — we want everybody to have merchandise available, but if somebody’s got their own booth full of books and shirts the next aisle over, it doesn’t make sense to duplicate it in our space. For those artists that are at the show and not tabling elsewhere, we’ll have announced signing times, so that they don’t have to be at the booth for the entire day — they’ll be able to get up and walk around and see the parts of the show they never get to see.

Fleen: Almost one show a month, mostly far away. Sounds crazy.

Post: I actually like working the booth, making sure everything gets down and everybody’s where they should be.

Fleen: You sound like the Mom of TopatoCo.

Post: Sometimes, I feel like the Mom of the internet. But I’ll live.

Fleen: Let’s recap briefly on the terms of your deal with United Features Syndicate: your comics ran three days a week at comics.com for about two years, and this was a syndication development deal, right? That is, with the stars aligning correctly, this could have led to a print syndication contract?

Cloud: Yes. Early in the process it seemed promising, but ultimately they weren’t willing to offer me a print contract.

Fleen: Why are you leaving comics.com?

Cloud: It’s been 2 years and, with no real shot at syndication, I lost faith in the process. I began to feel constrained by the small size and missed the freedom of being independent. To be fair, [UFS acquisitions editor] Ted Rall was very supportive and accommodating. I could have stayed and switched to a larger size. There were no editorial constraints placed on BOASAS. I think what happened was that I put limitations on myself.

Being a syndicated cartoonist has always been a dream of mine, but deep down I knew that BOASAS wasn’t newspaper material. As a feature, it’s a bit too niche and “unfunny” to be a big hit with editors. Newspaper circulations are spiraling downward and the powers that be are becoming ever more conservative. This pleases their boomer-era readers, but alienates the younger internet generation. I don’t know anyone under 25 who subscribes to a newspaper. I’m sure there are a few, but not enough to sustain the industry. Newspapers are eliminating comics, not adding them. This is the reality of syndicated comics today.

Fleen: You’re the second member of Dumbrella that UFS signed; with Rich Stevens giving up his print syndication deal last year, and now you giving up the web deal, is there something fundamentally incompatible between the syndication model and the independence that webcomics creators have?

Cloud: Absolutely not. Both are valid business models and they’re not mutually exclusive. Cartoonists should consider every opportunity. Being independent feels right for BOASAS, but maybe one day I have idea for another comic that’s a good fit for the newspaper environment. The one thing I don’t want to do is force BOASAS into a safe area for the purposes of appealing to feature editors.

Fleen: What’s next for BOASAS? You have a signing with Ted Rall and Stephanie McMillan next week [editor’s note: 7pm on the 13th at Bluestockings Bookstore; McMillan and Rall also have one the previous day at Revolution Books, but what are your plans after that? Any more death-defiance in the cards?

Cloud: Yes. I’m looking forward to event with Ted and Stephanie. To be on the same bill with two of my favorite cartoonists is an honor. As for BOASAS, I’m switching to a larger rectangular size. It’s different from my original large square, but still allows me space to experiment and gives my “jokes” time to develop. I feel invigorated working with this new size. Beyond that, I don’t know. I’m not much of a planner. I want it to be fun again. I want to stop worrying about turning my comic into a business. I want to stick it to the man a lot more.

Fleen: How’s the beard doing? Keeping it in shape in case of emergency?

Cloud: The beard rages on!

Fleen: What’s the last day DS runs in papers?

Stevens: August 10, unless something changes.

Fleen: When do you turn in that last submission?

Stevens: Loan me Dr. Doom’s time machine and I’ll tell you! This may retcon my previous answer.

Fleen: Anything you want to accomplish in your remaining time?

Stevens: To be honest, I’m just doing my best and trying not to get Senioritis. I won’t be giving up any of the characters and can grow and change them for the first time in a couple years. This hardly feels like an ending.

Fleen: What was the prime factor in deciding to quit?

Stevens: Not to sound like a jerk, but time and money. I was (currently still am) spending 12+ hours a day 5.5 days a week keeping my business afloat and doing 12 comics a week. My website and merch were a little over 90% of my gross income last year. When the workload starting making me sicker and fatter, it was pretty much a no-brainer which job had to go.

(And before there is any argument from the Peanuts-worshipping gallery, this was my experience. It is not true for all newspaper strips or print cartoonists, but I lived it and have the debt and carpal tunnel to prove it.)

Fleen: How many papers did you get to pick up the strip? What kind of plans did the syndicate have to increase that?

Stevens: Overall, I think about 50 papers ran DS at one point or another. Some loved it, some hated, some didn’t care. It was a pretty respectable launch, especially in a down newspaper market. If I had no other creative outlet, I’d have stuck around. That’s a hell of a lot of people, even if they’re generally less interested than a web reader.

Stevens: I’m not sure what plans they had or if I should guess. All I know is they had one amazing sales mofo named Ron who is a golden god in my eyes. Sadly, he was only one man.

It’s natural in these things for us geeks to spring on the “Evil Syndicate“, but I don’t blame ‘em for anything. They can’t force editors to dump 80-year-old comics and they can’t legally kill all the rabid Snuffy Smith fans who would set the world ablaze if he ever left print.

I’m not saying they aren’t working on ways to kill these people, but I don’t think radioactive nanodagger ink is ready for prime time yet.

Fleen: What would have been the alternatives that would have kept you in the papers?

Stevens: If the cash was there, I’d have considered scaling back on my web strip and creating a saner schedule. The internet not only pays my modest salary, it’s also my first love. I’m really glad I never gave up on the web.

There’s a freedom to completely running your own show that I’ve really missed. Most traditional cartoonists think we web guys are insane and waste all our golf time designing t-shirts and worshipping Satan, but you know what? There’s only one totally positive American trait: scrappy entrepreneurism.

Fleen: Any idea what your print efforts worked out to on a per-strip basis? Did you clear minimum wage?

Stevens: I tried not to ever quantify the dollars per strip or invent an hourly rate. So much of cartooning is experimenting, editing, throwing things away and free associating that giving yourself set times leads to less fulfilling work.

Fleen: Okay, so how did the syndicate checks compare to the “day job” of webcomics & merch?

Stevens: In the words of MC Hammer, “U Can’t Touch This.”

Fleen: What positive things are you taking away from all this?

Stevens: It was grad school. Med school. Boot camp. The editorial help I got working with Ted was awesome. Having another pair of eyes questioning my writing was incredibly helpful. Would never have gotten that anywhere else.

The perspective of going from moderately well-known on the internet to an absolute nobody in the outside world was really useful as well. Working for a completely new audience who couldn’t give a shit about obscure band lyrics and computer in-jokes forced me to grow a whole lot of new comedy muscles. Hopefully I can still move my neck.

The other positive thing is the joy that I dodged a bullet. You know the bullet where a loved project becomes a fifty year millstone one never gets to put down until one drops dead.

Fleen: So that’s seven fewer strips a week you have to deliver — what will you do with the free time?

Stevens: I’m going to gut my apartment and website and make up for about two years of neglect. I’ll probably lose interest in the apartment a week in and start one of about six blogs/webcomics I’ve had on the back burner.

Somewhere in there, I’m gonna sit down and make a collected book of the newspaper strips: Dead Tree Experiment is a nice title, don’t you think?

Fleen: Yes.

Stevens: I kind of miss getting regular exercise, too.

Fleen: Stepping away from the comics page opens a slot — any preference what the newspaper editors use to fill it?

Stevens: Boy on a Stick & Slither.

Steven Cloud is one of the true unsung geniuses of webcomics. He took a web-only deal with the same syndicate right after I did and wound up having newspaper editors special order his strip. There are a lot of really good family friendly comics out there, but BOASAS is the only one I never miss.

Fleen: John, Joey’s previously referenced Alan Gershenfeld and Michael Angst, also from E-Line (and their bios are very interesting) in interviews and the like. Tell us a bit about your background and E-Line Ventures.

Boeck: A little background first — previous to forming E-Line, we were working various places in the world, building up self-sustaintaing ventures with social good as a goal. In India, we helped set up call centers — now there’s lots of call centers in India, but we set them up so a village could have a source of income and be self-sustaining [instead of corporate].

Fleen: Sounds like Grameen Bank.

Boeck: Grameen Bank is a model of ours. I’m a principal in E-Line Ventures; we do acquisitions, venture capital investments, and build infrastructure with an overall goal of distributing business processes with a social mission. Social good within a sustainable business [is the aim]. ComicSpace is our third investment, and I’m serving as the Chief Operating Officer.

Fleen: The merger of the Modern Tales/Webcomics Nation sites and the ComicSpace/Online Comics.Net sites makes sense on the surface, but what led from the ‘we should combine our opportunities’ conversation to the ‘we should be bringing in money guys?’

Manley: We needed to do more than could be done with a pair of underfunded sole proprietorships. Just combining our operations wouldn’t solve all the problems, and would creates some; we needed a business structure to do everything we wanted, and we needed to figure out how to split money. Both [Josh Roberts and myself] had plans to do new things that we couldn’t do without that investment … programmers, designers, artists, ad sales people were needed because we wanted to do it right. Both sites were profitable for single owners, but we needed to make it sustain 4 to 5 people for it to work.

Fleen: So how did you settle on E-Line as your partner?

Manley: Theirs was the first proposal that didn’t skeeve us out. They didn’t want to just write a check, they wanted to work with us — they’re teaching us, they’re not out to steal the IP. These guys have invested in other companies that can help us.

Fleen: How so?

Boeck: Just a hypothetical example — you want to do a mailing of the annual newsletter for your club with 200 members; no business-services company is going to want to do that, because it’s too small. But if [E-Line] invested in a business mailing company, we could leverage that investment to provide a service to [a ComicSpace customer].

Fleen: It’s on the record that Joey and Josh are co-CEOs, but even Ben and Jerry disagreed from time to time. How is that working out?

Manley: John, why don’t you answer that one?

Boeck: Josh and Joey have very different approached. Joey is creator focused, Josh is reader focused. Joey’s front office, Josh is back office — they’re a very good mix, and they’re passionate about the business and their opinions, but have not been passionate in opposition. There hasn’t been a need for it, but partially I’m there to act as a filter between them if there were that opposition. [This model] is a great incubation [that can work] for a number of years … but it may change in the future.

Fleen: What percentage of the combined companies will be retained by the original owners, and what percentage sold to the investors? And, what was the monetary goal in the investment round?

Manley: Josh and I are individually and collectively the largest investors. E-Line and other investors are minority stakeholders.

John: We are closely held; we didn’t throw things open to a flood of investors. The majority of [ComicSpace investors] have participated here at NYCC.

Manley: The goal was to ‘break even’, which we met. Since closing [on 26 December 2007], both the top- and bottom-line numbers have exceeded projections.

Fleen: John, between you, Alan, and Michael, you’ve got a history that spans movies, business, videogames, books, overseas journalism, boutique investments, healthcare management, and various IT fields. So for highly skilled business executives, what’s the appeal of a niche art form with a history of direct creator ownership/control?

Boeck: Bottom line, we believe there’s a social return to empowering creators to sustain themselves. The business services aspect appeals because of the synergy with other companies we’re invested in.

Manley: They see the potential in webcomics; this is where ‘comics’ is going. The old industry is going away, but ironically more people are making them. This is where all media are going, and [web]comics are leading the way.

Boeck: The model we’re talking about, we think it’s the right one for where ‘[web]comics’ is going: entrepreneurial, creator-owned … this is the future of all media.

Fleen: Joey, back in November you got quoted over at CBR saying that ‘the subscription model will be swept away’. That leaves ad revenue and hosting fees as the primary revenue sources if ComicSpace stays as it is now. You also talked around the idea of merchandise (books, shirts, and prints, where current webcomics creators really make their money). And then these two quotes from the same interview:

Manley: We’re not a publisher, we won’t be a publisher. Our merchandise will be with the same strategy as being a service provider, not being a publisher.

Gershenfeld: We’re much more interested in being a facilitator than a publisher.

If I ran a print-on-demand concern in North Carolina, should I be feeling nervous?

Manley: Not at all; our services will be mix and match. It’s not a one-size-fits-all solution. You could use our hosting, Lulu’s printing, somebody else’s tshirts or ad buys. We want to integrate ‘competing’ vendors to provide best-of-breed solutions to creators.

Boeck: This is an opportunity for Lulu and their competitors.

Manley: I want to integrate so — for example, updating your webcomic also means updating your Print on Demand project so you dont have to do everything twice. If we can integrate the Lulu API into our service, if they want to work with us, we all win.

Fleen: Let’s play ‘what if’ for a moment. This page has called for the creation of ‘Aduz’ or an ‘anti-Zuda’, a business-services provider that works for webcomics creators, instead of creators working for a publisher. Could ComicSpace fulfill an that role, perhaps everntually becoming something like the Freelancer’s Union, providing benefits like retirement accounts and health insurance by pooling together enough creators, and supplying other things that individuals can’t get on their own?

Joey: That’s it. When I saw that post I was, ‘uhhhh’ [grimaces, possibly to indicate annoyance that somebody figured out his plan].

John: We want to allow the artist to delegate the secondary tasks that aren’t writing and drawing, and to pay a fair fee for those services, not to have to give up the IP in exchange for those services. For things like insurance and retirement funds — I wouldn’t rule it out, but it’s not on the roadmap right now.

Fleen: Finish this sentence: ‘Because of ComicSpace, in five years webcomics will be ________ .’

Manley: More profitable for more people. And I mean ‘profitable’ in every sense of that word, not just financial.

Boeck: More in control by, and serving the interests of, the independent creator community.

Manley: Maybe some more anti-Zudas will pop up, and some Zudas won’t.

Fleen: So when’s the official launch?

Manley: When it’s ready.

Boeck: Summer. We’ll say early summer, 2008.

Fleen: Why don’t we start with a bit of background—exactly what change will you guys be taking with respect to Halfpixel Studios?

Guigar: Dave Kellett, Kris Straub, and I will be leaving to form a new Halfpixel group with Scott Kurtz. The new Halfpixel will be much like the current Halfpixel—a place for collaborative efforts among the member artists—but with an added emphasis on comic-convention appearances and our joint projects like the Webcomics Weekly Podcast and the How to Make Webcomics book.

Kellett: With Halfpixel, we’ll all be a bit more independent with our strips and surrounding business. But whenever there’s a group project to be had or a new initiative where two or more of us could collaborate, we’ll be doing it under the Halfpixel banner.

Fleen: … and with respect to Blank Label? Are you guys getting breaking up with BLC, or are you agreeing to see other people?

Guigar: Dave, Kris and I—after an awful lot of discussion and debate—decided that we couldn’t split our energies between the two groups and do well by either. We’re leaving BLC. But we’re leaving as friends.

Straub: Yeah. The webcomic community seems to have collectively settled down from the drama that would have followed an announcement like this. It wasn’t fair to the guys at Blank Label (or the new endeavors at Halfpixel) for us to have our attentions divided. There’s only been well wishes and high expectations from everyone in both groups.

Kellett: One of the core things that’s always made Blank Label work is the idea that “everyone contributes�?. Everyone pitches in, and everyone reaps the benefits. But if we’re putting all of our free energies into Halfpixel, we can’t contribute to BLC … and we really felt it wasn’t fair to ride on other people’s effort.

Fleen: Brad, you and Kris are charter members of BLC, and Dave, you kind of got the whole ball rolling with that cartooning fest at your place. You represent a third of Blank Label, and some of the more public faces of the collective. What’s it like changing your relationship with an organization that you built?

Guigar: BLC was formed on friendship, and that hasn’t changed. We announced our departure to our BLC partners a few weeks ago, and we received support, well-wishes and congratulations. The only thing we didn’t get was Webcomics Drama. I have no doubt they will take the BLC we all helped to build to newer and better places.

Straub: There’s a sadness too, I won’t lie. It’ll really hit home when I’m in the new apartment and BLC isn’t beside me. I would stay awake, just to hear her breathing.

Kellett: Ha! Awesome. But seriously: these are all still great friends of ours. When we need advice or help, we’ll still turn to them first, and vice versa. When we grab a beer or over-priced coffee at a convention, it’ll still be with these guys.

Fleen: What is it about Halfpixel that makes it a better fit for you guys? More manageable size, greater degree of autonomy (or integration), better snacks? It’s the snacks, isn’t it?

Guigar: Scott makes a mean crab puff pastry. Beyond that, it’s not really a question of “better�? or “worse.�? It was simply that the four of us saw ourselves getting involved in some projects that have a tremendous likelihood of long-term success, and realizing that we were going to have to choose between trying to give a half-effort to both groups or give a full effort to one.

Straub: I started the old Halfpixel out of a desire to really push myself creatively and see if I could come up with the next big thing. That philosophy stuck when Halfpixel became me and Scott, and it’ll be a driver for the four of us now.

Kurtz: I think that Webcomic collectives are the new garage bands. Everyone plays an instrument and you look for people to develop a sound with. We all got together and started jamming one a week and realized, “Holy crap, guys … this sounds GOOD. We should take this on the road.�?

Kellett: Since starting in on the podcast and the book, the four of us have been on the phone or iSight nearly all through the day. And for me, something has just been wonderful about that. I laugh more with these three than I do with just about anyone in my life. And when your business is to be funny, make people smile, and spread a little joy around…you could do worse than gravitating toward the people that make you laugh.

Fleen: Scott—you and Kris have been working together on projects for quite a while now. What made you two want to expand the circle to Brad and Dave?

Kurtz: Cartooning is a shaky foundation to build a livelihood on. It’s certainly not impossible, but it’s hard work. So you look for life preservers when you do this for a living. I just found three incredibly buoyant life preservers. I’m not letting go. Dave and Brad have taught me as much in the last year as I’ve learned on my own in the last 10. They really brought me around and helped me refocus on the next 10 years of PvP.

Straub: Working with these guys and exchanging ideas has made the most positive impact on my work of anything I’ve done in the last seven years. It was just a natural fit.

Fleen: Which came first—the idea for a bigger Halfpixel, or the idea for more authors on the book?

Straub: That’s kind of a chicken-and-egg thing. Scott and I have been close with Dave and Brad for a long while, and it really started cementing with the Webcomics Weekly podcast. We never set out saying “Hopefully, by 2008, Halfpixel will grow to four members, and in 2009 we’ll pick up two more.�? It just felt like we were all in the similar place business- and cartooning-wise, and it became very easy to imagine us all working together. And How To Make Webcomics is just going to be orders of magnitude better with Brad and Dave onboard.

Kurtz: Ever since I suggested the book I’ve been thinking bigger. I want to take this beyond the book. I want How to Make Webcomics to be a lecture series, a DVD series of demonstrations, etc. So I always hoped it would expand into something bigger eventually. It’s funny because Brad and Dave wanted to contribute to the book but were afraid to ask and come off as pushy. And I had asked once and they seemed quiet so I assumed they didn’t want to. Finally we all figured out we wanted the same thing.

Kellett: That’s totally true. We were all too shy to ask each other to dance, like seventh graders at the Halloween Dance. But Brad’s already written one book on cartooning, and I’ve done two graduate degrees in the art and history of cartooning … so we’ve been amped to work on this with Scott and Kris. And once it came time to plan out the chapters and who was writing what, we all got very excited.

Fleen: What sort of projects besides your own comics will this new partnership allow for? Kris and Scott already do the PVP series together—will there be larger collaborations from here on out?

Kurtz: I think there will be more “subtle�? collaborations than obvious ones. We’re all trying to help each other improve. I used some imagery in another interview and I’ll repeat it here: We’re all grabbing on to each other’s bootstraps and pulling up at the same time. Dave has already collaborated with us by helping us figure out the importance of setting up and running the Halfpixelstuff.com store. We help each other through writer’s block, etc. That’s the stuff I’m most excited about.

Straub: I’d like there to be some collaborations, but I won’t think we’ll be announcing that Dave and Scott are doing a new strip, and Brad and Kris are doing one, and Kris and Dave are doing a third. It’ll be more subtle, like me cribbing a whole week of Evil Inc. punchlines. So watch for that event.

Kellett: Aside from the podcast, the book, and the possible book tour, most of the collaborations will be behind the scenes. But if the last few months are any indication, we’ll be inspiring each other a lot on creative, business, and organizational ideas for each other’s individual projects—and that inspiration is worth a lot. Just springboarding ideas off these three—just springboarding, mind you— probably made me an extra $15,000 this year.

Fleen: BLC popped into being one day, with specific members bringing specific skills to the mix. Is the new Halfpixel following that model, or was this more along the lines of, “We work well together, this feels like a good fit, why don’t we make it a little more official?�? What kind of roles will each of you be fulfilling?

Guigar: Halfpixel will be a little less formal than BLC. It’s going to be an entity that facilitates group appearances and group projects, but overall, we’re all focusing a little bit more on our individual comics and using Halfpixel to do group things.

Kellett: Exactly. The focus will be on our own stuff. But the conversations and collaborations and appearances that flow from that will be under the Halfpixel banner.

Straub: Yeah, for me, this is about finding the best way to forward my own work as a business. We’ll figure out whatever needs to get done, but there are no real roles or positions.

Kurtz: Think of Halfpixel as more of a support group than a collective.

Fleen: A lot of the buzz around BLC in the early days was about how various members would be taking the lead on various tasks. Are there any functional holes in BLC left by this change?

Kellett: I wouldn’t think so. These are smart, smart guys … and whatever skillset they don’t know, they’ll master very quickly.

Guigar: This is going to be a tremendous opportunity for some BLC members to step up and do some things that they hadn’t had the chance to do until now. You’re going to see some of those guys in a whole new light.

Straub: Functionally BLC is in good hands with Troy, the server admin. This is not a tight spot for these guys—BLC still has its heavy hitters, the ad network, and the reputation for being some of the classiest webcartoonists around.

Fleen: Is this it for the expansion of Halfpixel, or are there other creators out there that might be a good match?

Guigar: My answer to this is the same as it was when we formed BLC. It’s not a syndicate, so there’s no real upside to adding more members. More to the point, there’s a real detriment to adding more members. The decision-making slows down and gets more complicated, group dynamic shifts, and more variables get introduced to every project.

Straub: There are a lot of creators I like, and would love to work with, but Maybe they should be in Halfpixel! is the last thing on my mind when I think about them. I think four is plenty.

Kurtz: Everyone who buys the book is officially a member of Halfpixel.

Straub: That’s what I meant.

Kellett: If we could, I’d love to make John Glenn an honorary member, in absentia. Because, c’mon, what a great guy. He went to the moon. [Editor's note: Before you write in, we at Fleen are aware that John Glenn never went to the moon; we believe that Kellet meant Neil Armstrong.]

Fleen: Lightning Round! Each of you finish this sentence as quickly as you can: For me, this new cooperative venture will be …

Guigar: Incredibly fun and professionally satisfying.

Straub: Called Halfpixel. Gary, you need to pay more attention when you’re doing an interview, that was like the first thing we said.

Kurtz: Mustache! Sorry, let me look in the other direction when I answer this. It will be refreshing.

Kellett: Hug-a-licious.

Fleen: Quick pool bet: how long before Brad tires of the constant abuse and snaps, killing the rest of you in an entirely anticpatible spree?

Guigar: Am I allowed to place a bet?

Straub: No more betting with these deadbeats. I won the pool on how many indie comics we’d get handed at SPX and I haven’t seen a dime from these guys. Okay, four months.

Kurtz: Oh crap. Kris won the SPX bet? How much did we all agree on for that?

Kellett: $20. I’ll Paypal it to you now, Kris. Look for that $18.67 (less Paypal fees) in your inbox.