Karmic Debt Comics

I’ve talked about Webcomic Collectives before, but this is in response to the seeming death of The Webcomic Planet Collective.

I believe the WPC, was slowly suffocated by the same thing that kills a good portion of the online communities out there; Lack of participation of its members. (And yes I include myself in that). Everyone thinks “Ohhhh, it would be great if we did this!” or “Hey, why don’t we do that!!” but when it comes down to the actual doing, they are no where to be found. Expecting a few people to do all the work involved in running any sort of community is the surest way to kill said community. I am sure there are a few internal reasons for the death of the WPC but I still believe the biggest reason it collapsed is we, it’s members, stood by and let it happen. It’s a shame really because it was a great group of creators, and the sense of community when I first joined was really strong. Maybe that is what killed it, me joining?

This (along with the slowness I have seen in other communities) leaves me wondering if the idea of a Webcomic Collective can survive in these days of Facebook, Twitter, RSS Feeds and the like. Nearly every webcomic in existence has a Facebook fan page, so if I “like” a certain comic I can get updates about it pretty easily. It sort of equates to a one stop shopping experience, why go to 8 different places to see your favorite webcomics when you can just go to Facebook? One thing that can make a collective thrive is dialogue and discourse between it’s members, but a good portion of this is achieved through Twitter nowadays. As a matter of fact a good deal of fan interactions happen via Facebook and Twitter now. (I have no hard facts on this, it’s more of a personal observation) So what exactly can a collective offer than?

• Cross promotion of a group of creators? Again this is done just as effectively through Twitter, say through “Follow Friday” or the more obscure “Webcomic Wednesday”.
• A place to springboard ideas into the real world, such as Collective Anthology, calenders etc. This is one place where collectives could be effective. The trouble being that for all the enthusiasm usually exhibited for participating in this sort of thing, it rarely comes to fruition.

The one thing I think a collective could still do rather effectively is provide a centralized place to see webcomics. (Think Comicspace but on a smaller and more manageable scale). A reader would have one place to have access to all the collective comics and their creators. Imagine this collectives webpage to be similar to the Facebook live feed page, with all the updates of various comics and the tweets from the collectives creators. This to me is where a collective could truly shine…. alas it is a mere pipe dream.

Perhaps the age of the Webcomic Collective is behind us, and we just need to move on and not look back.