Online Comics at OnlineComics.net
I've created an account here, to promote my comic a little, and to see what else is out there. I think this is a pretty exciting time as far as the proliferation of amateur comics goes; I'm not so sure what's going to happen to professional comics--particularly comic books, which seem to be in the process of imploding. Bookstore sales, particularly of manga, have just exploded, but the 32-page staple-bound objects seem to be on the way out--or at least acting as loss-leaders for the collections.
Sure, a lot of amateur comics (and even the semi-pro to pro webcomics) are crap, but like Linus, I'm all about the sincerity. And publication by Image, Marvel or DC, or King Syndicates or UP, doesn't exempt you from Sturgeon's Law. Even if 99% of amateur comics are crap to only 90% of pro comics, the numbers of amateur comics that aren't crap are greater than the numbers of pro comics that aren't crap; it's inevitable, given how many of them there are. OnlineComics.net lists 4,238 comics. SmackJeeves hosts 6,105. Comic Genesis over 6,000. A lot of those are barely comics, but still...
What's more, even the crappiest of those, the ones that even a mother couldn't put on a refrigerator represent genuine public involvement in art. I think folk art is important, and healthy. For a long time it seems to me there's been hardly any mass folk art in America, outside of music and arguably cooking. There's always been some, but this feeling that everybody and their neighbor is producing something that they're proudly displaying to the world via the web (just like blogging is turning everybody and their neighbors into reporters and publishers) is something new and exciting. And I'm proud to be a part of it.
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