Comic for Monday, June 11th, 2018
Just as a reminder, my failure will continue into this week, and there will be no update on Thursday. Next week we should be back to our regularly scheduled Monday/Thursday entertainment. If its any consolation, I basically just tacked two pages together anyway, as I am want to do when, which makes the time saving nature of this process a little theoretical at times.
The Consul has earrings roughly 50% time. Probably less. Those are the sort of thing that I really forget to draw almost all the time… Like people with neckleces like Rovak and Nathan I forget occasionally, particularly in Rovak’s case, but at least those are like consistently part of their outfit. Earrings and things are just extraneous. I mean, there are times where Peter has gone back and forth from having a collar on his shirt in their earlier days, so… these things happens.
We are pretty close to the end of Chapter 12, so I don’t think it’s going to end up the longest chapter. Will be close, but Chapter 6 was apparently just ridiculously long. Maybe if you account for increased page size Chapter 12 is longer. Going through the archive it seems like I’ve increased the page size at least twice. It would probably be basically impossible to ever print this comic, haha.
Loading ...
I get the feeling Kally’s about at the point where she’s not sure if she wants to move in with Peter or sic her dragon on him. (Curious if that means she really is aware that she didn’t actually stop Skyhammer herself, though. I mean, it leans that way a little, but….short of actually saying it….I’m bad at this…)
Though the Consul seems intent on making sure she’s the most fun and/or interesting character for these last several pages.
Update on ads… well, the site is now entirely ad free. The Google Ad was removed, but the PW Ad was fated to stay… until I got the news today that Project Wonderful will be shutting down.
I have pretty mixed feelings on this, as PW was one of the only really webcomic friendly advertising venue, and I think their closing statement was an interesting reflection of the status of web-media, and the not particularly positive way it has developed.
Even before the advent of what may come with net neutrality changes (whatever your stance on it) it is definitely true that traffic on the internet is becoming more and more concentrated as it grows, and it comes as not a lot of surprise to me that PW model is folding. I think a webcomic aggregation is still in the future out there somewhere, the ones that exist so far don’t really appeal to me, so we’ll see.
All of this doesn’t effect us here as The Far Side of Utopia is supported enough by Patreon, and isn’t my primary source of income, but I thought it was interesting enough and wanted to put a comment out about where the ad went, as what was going on with PW, as I suspect many of you found this comic or other comics through it.
So… how are you going to find webcomcs to read in a post-Project Wonderful world? If you found this somewhere else, where did you find it? Do you have thoughts on the closing statement, or how sites like this operate? Do you prefer your entertainment aggregated on a social feed?
Anyway… end ramble/mini blog, will read through your thoughts if you guys have any.
So I don’t personally visit “dozens or hundreds of sites per day” but it is closer to a dozen than “3 or 4”. I visit facebook between twice a week and once every several months, youtube is between a few times a week and monthlong spurts of inactivity, and I end up using most webcomic aggrigate and a lot of the hosting sites not at all (mainly because the sites are often designed to force you invest in their platform enough that it makes it difficult to use different stuff). All this to say, I understand the problem that PW was referring to even though I actively avoid falling into that trap. It is somewhat sad to see them go considering that they really did do a good job of not being a problematic advertiser and I personally found a number of webcomics through them.
Project wonderful was a place where I found a good number of webcomics, but it is probably somewhere around the #3 or #4 spot. Most webcomics I have found through webcomic collectives like “Top Webcomics”, though you have to be careful to find one that is focused on the type of stuff you want to read (the aforementioned one has been drifting toward more X rated stuff, for instance, and so I check it less and less). The second or perhaps an even bigger place I look to find webcomics is through the webcomics themselves. It isn’t as popular these days, but it used to be that every webcomic artist would either list what they were reading or have a personal link exchange with similar webcomics. This meant that, once I found one thing I liked, I could easily find 4 or 5 more. And from there even more. That is one of those things from the olden days of webcomics that I wish would come back. All this to say that I won’t be having trouble finding webcomics, even without PW, though it is sad to see them go.
As for the question about aggrigation: Nope. I get exactly 0% of my entertainment that way.
As for Net Neutrality, that becomes more complicated very quickly. While the expectation of net neutrality is good (that internet providers won’t throttle competing websites so that their own proprietary ones get all the good bandwidth and all the others look slow and clunky) the reality of it is that the particular laws for net neutrality also include provisions giving large companies a virtual monopoly in their respective areas. Areas such as internet providers which are some of the worst handled consumer providers (likely due to the fact that there isn’t any competition). Cell phone providers also fall into this category, which is why there are really only 2 or 3 options in most areas. Etc, etc. So the question doesn’t become “is the concept of net neutrality good” (because obviously the answer is “yes”) but rather, do we keep the current legislation so that bad things don’t happen right away to a large number of websites even though it leads to a destructive monopoly, or do you want better internet a few years down the line (once the monopoly breaks) even though it will likely have immediate consequences? Neither are really great options, but currently they are all that we have got.
There you go, my two cents worth. Feel free to agree or not, you are all entitled to your own opinions as much as anyone.
TopWebComics seems to have gotten increasingly sketchy has time has gone on. For example they used to display their voting records, but when the voting records displayed that the vast majority of the top comics were botted there (as in, a block of 5-10 IP address cycling through voting for them hundreds of times, not even particularly tricky botting), their solution was to… just stop displaying the voting records.
Now I don’t know that I blame them per se, they have seemed nice people when I’ve interacted with them, but I also don’t know that I had a high opinion of the premise anyway. There was a webcomic search/compilation site called Piperka which was somewhere between a joke and a useful site that I liked, but it was just one person’s hobby and they eventually seemed to have gotten bored and wandered off (as most hobbiests are want to do).
Most of my readers came from PW banners, with TWC as the second highest source, and guest art being the third highest. Nature search is the highest these days, but that’s all people that have already read it before returning it to; people aren’t just randomly searching “the far side of utopia” and “pastutopia”, so those aren’t new readers, even if they show up as it.
All three of those flows are sort of cut off these days, with PW going down, TWC I still advertise on occasionally, but I’m not convinced the quality is going up there (as you mention, as the sort of people drawn from the site is sort of skewing off in a direction not as applicable to this comic), and I don’t really do guest art anymore (as I don’t really follow that many comics that closely anymore, I don’t really see when people ask for it; the return on investment for drawing guest art is almost always worth it, especially if it entertains the comic author, but the return on investment for finding people that want/need it and will post it, have a compatible audience, and then doing the research reference for the character, etc… definitely not a good return on investment).
So, while as you guys know, I’m not exactly obsessed with readership numbers, it does leave me wondering what the paths going forward for webcomics are. Obviously there are the big players in the market like Taptastic, Naver, or Hiveworks, but in general those sort of aggregations sites don’t really suit me as they all have their own stylistic preference. I don’t know, I don’t have a thesis here, just been thinking about it after seeing the PW shutting down news.
Not all of the people that search for “the far side of utopia” are returning readers. I’ve told a few people about the webcomic, and at least one follows semi-regularly now (though not commented that I have seen). Word of mouth does a fair bit, though it does have it’s limitations if it doesn’t end up becoming a meme.
Honestly I don’t know what to say. New readers are important, as old readers (no matter HOW dedicated) will eventually fall away (weather that is due to major life changer or simply old age); but it is also important to recognize that there are much more reliable ways to get popular than drawing a webcominc.
As for how to get more readers without making that the center of your concern, that part I don’t know. You have mentioned it before, but your webcomic is a bit unusual so that makes it hard to fit into a lot of established groups or to find similar other webcomics to trade with. The only thing I can think is that maybe some of your readers might know some similar webcomics to bypass the “finding comics with a compatible audience” part, and maybe you can even bypass the “want/need” portion by creating it as fan-art incorporating your own characters and theirs. Including both means that in the pictures description in would say “[character name] and [character name], along with [utopia character] from The Far Side of Utopia”, more ensuring that your comic gets referenced. I don’t know, but I’m certain that some of your other readers might have much better ideas on low-effort high-return advertising than I do.
Getting new people in is important, but definitely not always easy.
I’ve used word-of-mouth a bit too, although IDK if anyone has actually followed up on it.
Of the webcomics I read, the only similar one (in the “hard rules” and “politics” side of things) is Erfworld. I see that more often in rational-fic, like HPMOR, than comics, I think.
I actually did find your website through project wonderful. I’m truly sorry to see them close. I actually planned to advertise through them if I ever finished some of my own projects. It’s rare to see an ad company with integrity.
It was probably by biggest source of readers over the course of the comic, though I advertised on it only intermittently, it was definitely one of the best ways to promote a wbecomic. Way back when, I wrote a guide on advertising webcomics through, and in more recent times, Dan over at Demon Archives wrote a better one.
Of the ones he wrote about, 2/3 are now dead, and I don’t consider advertising on Hiveworks (the last one he mentions) viable for the average indie creator as their budget starts in the 2k range last I checked. I think he might have a more recent one, but I’m not aware of too many good options.
Hey, though, and this goes out to any readers here, if you start your own comic, I’m happy to mention you in the comments 🙂 (well, probably, I won’t judge based on art quality at least, as that’d be a little hypocritical 😉 ).
While I get a few of my web comics through comic fury, I only found one active comic through comic fury. I read three other active comics there, but I found them through other sources. I think I had an account on comic fury for about two weeks before I found out that two of them had been on there since before I knew of comic fury. I spent quite a while after that looking at what else they had, only to find I was wasting my time.
Regarding Net Neutrality: I prefer the option where we fix the laws we have directly, rather than dropping the laws and then hoping we get better ones later.
I probably shouldn’t have touched the Net Neutrality one, as that’s sort of off topic and going to consume a lot of the conversation, but the reason I mention it is I think it ties into the direction of the internet. Already we are seeing that less and less traffic is going to random sites; for a growing percentage of the internet population, “the internet” is just how you get to Facebook/Twitter/Youtube/Instagram/Reddit, etc. Privately owned sites are sort of like the quaint back allies, already going the way of mom-and-pop stores of the brick and mortar world.
This is compounded by that it is pretty hard to actually make money as a content creator via the major platforms. Patreon was a revolutionary step, but its started to plateau (not for me in particularly, but for the total users and dollars invested) and I wonder if that can really support content creation, or if content creature will keep trending toward more professional media companies.
Given that someone like me can’t really advertise on Facebook/Google/etc beyond personal influence (posting about it) as managing a Google ad campaign for something as generic as “comic” or “webcomic” would be full time job, I wonder what sort of future (and I mean long term, decades) this sort of content has.
It’s just a curious topic, and one that I have a personal interest in (for obvious reasons 🙂 ).
I’m a bit more optimistic than a lot of people about independent platforms, mostly because I remember the old dial-up days of internet. Back then if you wern’t on AOL or a major company than you were relegated to the outskirts of the internet that may or may not even work well. That was all well and good except that there were a lot of things that didn’t fit well there. And then the .com boom happened and everybody everywhere seemed to have their own personal website. That Wierd Al song “White and Nerdy” talks about having a website for his dog, but in truth that wasn’t far off from the truth.
What I see now just seems to be the last bits of the market readjusting back to more normal levels. Afterall, web hosting isn’t actually free and most personal sites (like webcomics) don’t have the consumer base to even pay for those costs via ads. But if you combine a lot of “personal” sites under one banner of similar ones, via a hosting site (like DrunkDuck), than the whole can bring in enough trafic to use ads to be self supporting.
That doesn’t mean that personally run sites (like this one) don’t have their place, just that it seems odd that this is where people would start (rather than starting on a hosting site and them migrate to a personal site when they have sufficiently grown in readership). Eventually it is better financially and in terms of creative freedom to have your own website, but (so long as sites don’t try to force either artists or consumers to never be able to leave) I see no real issue with hosting sites being a first step.
Speaking of how the internet has changed, I miss the days when a random google search would turn up all sorts of interesting web pages. Nowadays, I often struggle to find things I know should be out there, because every search just turns up propaganda and sales pitches unless I get very specific about what I’m searching for, or manage to find terms that haven’t been optimized for by sites yet.
In the contest between SEO and google, SEO has won.
I use adblock because of the horrible nonsense some ads have. (Not that it manages to stop all of them. There are probably less invasive viruses.)
And I think I might actually miss Project Wonderful being around. (Frankly, I don’t think I ever (knowingly) whitelisted them (probably should’ve but when you can’t see them it’s easy to forget about), but I recall times on my phone I’d see them and actually checked out the ads sometimes. Found a couple of interesting things. Don’t recall what, now, mind you, but still.)
How sad is that? Missing (certain) ads. I feel like that statement is just wrong, and depressing….but….it is kinda depressing, just in a different way….
I found you via some link back from another web comic. I since moved to read your comic via http://www.comic-rocket.com, as I read too many comic to keep them in tabs or remember where to go to read updates.
They were definitely an interesting idea, and still a useful tool, with all it’s automatic book marking and so forth, unfortunately it is also sort of a legacy service, as I think development ceased and they accept new ads and the like (which was their revenue model).
I keep a link to it on the sidebar with their icon, but my comic-rocket traffic has definitely fallen over time as not many new users are entering that system, and there is not much of a way to promote a comic on the service anymore.
I had to laugh out loud at Ms. Summer’s last line in the last panel. 😀 It’s just… I did not expect that. She nearly always acts and talks caustically around Peter and blames him for various things. And this is one of the few instances where it seems that she likes his company and/or cares about him. OTOH, I suppose Peter does owe Kally lunch, at the very least, for what he put her through.
Well, to be fair, Peter is probably usually to blame for things. She just skips all the steps of figuring out why and how he is to blame, and just gets on with the blaming. Frankly, with Peter, that’s usually a fair assumption.
He is sort of the only person she can really hang out with though here. The rest of the MSB of her department seems to be tucked away in safe houses, Arron is her boss and busy, and her brother is running around chasing Atter.
Peter may be an annoying ex, but at least he’s the devil she knows. I don’t get the feeling Kally herself is particularly good at the whole making friends thing.
Madame Consul forcibly reminded Kally that she still had feelings for Peter (see HERE), and she may be offering to renew at least a part of their friendship. I’m also pretty sure that keeping her at arm’s length was Peter’s effort to shield her from the crapstorm he was bringing on himself. I view it as one of Peter’s few failures that the I.D.S. went after her anyway.
Since that plan didn’t work, now I’m wondering if he’ll still try to push her away, or keep her with him and give her what protection he can offer.
I expect Peter to not choose between those two options. Either of them sound far too easy for him.
I think Kally is starting to see the picture Peter has been painting, and possibly looking for the doorway back in.
Panel 10: whoever gave Biana the keys to it about that though
I cannot figure out if it is a lead into the next panel Peter is talking in, then it should be:
keys to it. About that though…
(some punctuation is needed, but i cannot tell what you were trying to do.)
He’s telling Kally whom she should be annoyed at. He isn’t switching topics. It’s one of those things that’s much easier to interpret when it’s said out loud than in print.
I had to look at that for a bit, too, but if you break it down this way: “Seems like you should probably blame [a person] about that, though.” The person in question being “…whoever gave Biana the keys to it…”
@djitt: is right, it does sound less contorted when spoken. As far as rewording it goes, there just isn’t much room in that panel to do so.
And here we see someone use advanced Peter handling skills.
1. State that you are annoyed
2. Ignore all manipulation related issues
So, does Kally know that she didn’t hit skyhammer? That it was dis-integrated just before her breath weapon?
I thought that was rather strongly implied back on that page where she tried to shoot it down. (I’m too tired to find the page. But she had a unique vantage point from way up in the sky and on the other side of town, so she could see if her shot lined up or not.) But your question seems redundant now because Kally’s dialog on this page makes the answer quite evident.
The page in question had more than one way to view what the facial expressions meant.
Now, unless magic has some sort of feedback, indicating a hit or a miss, than there is no way that Kally could know if she hit. She was at least a mile away (hard to see even a big missile that far away). She was shooting a big ass breath weapon, which from her perspective would block out / obstruct most site. And she was shooting something that was pretty much on scale with a shooting star. (blink and you miss it)
And when Kally didn’t immediately bring it up, i was unsure if she knew, or was just puzzled.
She might still not know for sure, but surely by know she knows about the leaked transcript of Biana authorizing firing it, and Peter’s role in it.
Given that, she probably suspects that there was a fail safe place, even if she doesn’t know if she hit it or not. Given that it was part of his plan, she probably at very least chooses to assume there was no actual chance of thousands of people dying.
Her simply assuming it here could be her version of fishing for more information even, trying to get him to reassure her that there was never any danger, etc, etc. Of course, she is talking to Peter, so that’s, uh, not likely.
It appears she knows. Likely she knew at that moment that she’d missed.
She knew before she fired the shot that the odds were too far against her hitting it to work. And of everyone around, she was the only one who got to see where the skyhammer blast fell apart – and odds are very good it was probably below where her shot would have hit it, because Muim’s range isn’t that far.
http://pastutopia.com/?comic=comic-for-monday-december-25th-2
(To clarify, I’m not trying to say that it’s not possible Muim can reach that far, but rather it’s been implied in the story that he can’t.)
Further, Kally knows more about her own range than anyone else. And while that was clearly at a range where her effect could be seen, it was probably too diffuse to be effective, and she knew it. Or maybe to be that effective.
Basically, she fired the shot because she felt doing it would be the safer plan than not. She did not have any thought that it would be effective, and she did not seem to believe for very long that it had been.
(Edit: added the link)