Wednesday - March 23, 2005:
Digital Strips by Daku and Zampzon is another attempt to expand the medium of web-comics with a concept that would seem doomed to failure by its very definition. The site offers weekly pod-casts about web-comics, sounds talking about sights (of course, shows like NPR's Fresh Air have long since proven the logic wrong). Each MP3 file runs between thirty and sixty minutes during which Daku and Zampzon mix news commentary and reviews of web comics. For reviews they pick a couple each week, and, like this site, welcome submissions and tips from viewers on what to review next. They've already taken a stab at this little blog and had a bunch of kind and constructive things to say. Thanks guys. It does make reviewing their site a little awkward. I'm worried I'll start some kind of battle of the reviewers. Wait. I just figured out who watches the watchers.
So does the web-comic world need what amounts to a weekly radio show? I don't know. There were already just under ten regularly updated web-comics news sites before they entered the fray so my gut reaction is that there was no need. But just today, a reader has partially convinced me otherwise. With so many web comics, and only a few sites and forums devoted to constructive criticism and news of the medium, there just may not be enough help and information out there for up-and-coming creators, or rather, there may not be enough people willing to take the time to do an honest, insightful critique, or rather there might not be a good mechanism for sorting through it all. There is indeed a lack of places on the web to get helpful criticism and I think I understand why. I end up spending between two and four hours on each site I review. This includes several read-throughs, writing, drawing, coloring and lettering the strip and writing the blog. All this and I proudly proclaim my reviews to be completely inadequate. That's part of the reason I've included the comment component to maybe get a little help from others and clarification from the creator when I've screwed up. One problem with the podcasts is they do not encourage much interaction but they are certainly some help with the sorting. There's a commenting component on the site, but it seems rarely used. And as Daku and Zampzon admit, lots of their listeners are not even visiting their site, but having it auto-loaded onto their Ipods. Also, at two strips a week, they're not putting much of a dent in the volume of people seeking reviews or help. Of course, I'm only doing three a week myself. I guess in combination enough of these small formulas can make a difference, but for now, my hope has been for a while that more creators take a little time to help new-comers to get better through the forums, not in any formal or time-consuming way, but through some of the several web-comic forums out there. Personally, I have the folks at the Zwol and Talk About Comics forums to thank for helping me out back around 2000-2001 (I guess that assumes I've gotten better as a result. I'm sure I have.). I'm not sure either community is very vibrant lately, but three years ago, both were kind and thoughtful places to get lots of honest feedback. Lately, I've been pleased with what's going on at the buzzcomix.net forum.
But back to Digital Strips: I still don't quite get the appeal of listening to a podcast and I'd be interested to hear from people who listen to this one regularly. The production values are fine. I love the sampling in the intro of Ralph Bakshi's Heavy Traffic, a movie that ought to be required viewing for indie and web comic artists. And there experiments with interviews have been largely successful. I'm less excited about the soundtrack throughout, although it might be adding some energy to their conversation which can be a bit boring. And because I'd already read the news on their site, I fast-forwarded through their rereading of it, but then that's the beauty of the pod-casting format. Again, the news is there for the ipod crowd, but even the reviews seemed to go one or two minutes too long, my own included. I did discover a couple of really solid strips in the process of digging through their archives though, and in the end, that will be the draw. I think it's part of the draw here too. The thousands of strips on the top-lists and update lists are just too unwieldy to deal with.
I have only one piece of real advice. It would be helpful to post a program schedule with each episode. Let the audience know where each review or interview starts. It doesn't have to be anything too specific. I think it might be a pain to catalogue the time for each news item, but knowing what and where the big chunks are would be a enticement for me to click that download button.
At some point down the road, I'll do a strip in which HB and Pink can react to their own review. I had just finished the strip above a day before we were reviewed.
Thanks for the submission and thanks for taking a look at the HB Comic-Blog. Please keep the submissions coming. More than two months worth have come in over the past week and a half. Whew.
-Bob Stevenson
