Shopping for Success

Comic Lab

A listener asks if they should write one big, successful comic or several mediocre ones. We have a bigger question: What makes you think you have a choice?! Also, it turns out the whole "Substack nazi" thing was yet another case of Platform Panic.

SPONSORED BY...

ComicLab is brought to you this week by the book "How Comics Were Made, a Visual History from the Drawing Board to the Printed Page." Comics historian and ComicLab fan Glenn Fleishman has spent years researching the history of newspaper comic strip production and reproduction and is bringing his expertise to this printed work full of comics from Yellow Kid through Krazy Kat, Doonesbury, Peanuts, and, yes, Dave's own Drive! It will feature never-before-seen original drawings and printing artifacts, such as "flongs," the hilarious old-fashioned name for printing molds. The book draws from museum collections like the Billy Ireland Library and the Charles M Schulz Library, generous access to artists' own archives, and Glenn's personal collection. Glenn's taking the book to crowdfunding in February, using lessons drawn from this very podcast! You can read more about the book or sign up to get an alert when the campaign launches by going to howcomicsweremade.ink.

ON THIS WEEK'S SHOW...

• Which is better... one big success or multiple mediocre ones?
• UPDATE: Kindle Direct Publishing
• UPDATE: Patreon is fixing free membership
• UPDATE: Substack didn't have such a big Nazi problem after all
• Fighting AI with Nightshade (https://nightshade.cs.uchicago.edu/)

Substack's Platform Panic

For more information on this topic, please check out these posts:

• freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/these-rules-about-platforming-nazis
• freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/how-to-quit-substack

Many of the people who were making the most noise on this issue are switching to Ghost. Check out Ghost's TOS — in which they've even highlighted their clause on refusing to moderate content! And, on top of that, the total number of nazi accounts that were found on Substack was only 5 or 6, none of them monetized, and collectively had fewer than 200 followers-- and most of them wound up being taken down by Substack anyway.

You get great rewards when you join the ComicLab Community on Patreon

• $2 — Early access to episodes
• $5 — Submit a question for possible use on the show AND get the exclusive ProTips podcast. Plus $2-tier rewards.

Brad Guigar is the creator of Evil Inc and the author of The Webcomics Handbook. Dave Kellett is the creator of Sheldon and Drive.