Monday - October 18, 2004:

The Webcomics Examiner has taken some chances that may or may not pay off, keeping the site reviews to around half a dozen a month, sticking to the once-a-month format while surrounded by an interent that demands more frequent updates, reviewing strips that reside largely on paysites, publishing reviews of risque material like Sexy Losers, and reviewing strips with relatively low readership. All of those choices have hurt the traffic of the Examiner in the short run, with the possible exception of reviewing Sexy Losers. I think some of that controversy may have increased readership.

In the long-run though, the same choices should guarantee a long life for the site and the medium certainly needs this kind of treatment. If there has been a problem with the site, it is that the Examiner's reviews have been overwhelmingly positive. I know my first reveiw contained nothing but praise. My second was much more realistic. Each issue seems to strike a better balance, a good sign for the future. Web-comic reviews should share little territory with movie reviews, because where a handful of movies are released every week, there are thousands of web-comics out there already, many with growing archives. Most of these have never been held under the kind of microscope the examiner uses and we cannot hope to review everything. So while movie critics are expected to review the major movies released each week, good and bad, we cannot afford to waste time on reviewing comics that don't get us excited about the medium.

All this leads me to HB. I am excited by the webcomics world, on a daily basis. Every day, I see potential and since this strip is supposed to blur the lines between blog and comic and audience and creator, I think pecking at the edges of reviewing might be fun. I had always intended to use HB as a forum for doing some very brief reviews of webcomics, but originally I thought I'd like to use the same process used by the Webcomics Examiner. It occurs to me that it might be more exciting and less likeley to anger creators if I only review strips by creators who want their work reviewed. That said, I've added a form to the site for submitting your own comic for review. More details can be found on the submissions page. All you'll get is a five panel ribbing, but I'll try to write a little more about the strip in my blog comments below and I imagine the comment section could get pretty noisy with budding reviewers who disagree. I can't wait.

-Bob Stevenson