i'd like to tell you about my comic strip, but can't
Just a quick note that's probably going to turn into several paragraphs. It's mainly directed at my fellow cartoonists, but you regular readers are welcome to follow along.

So, this Thursday, I decided to write to some cartoonists. According to my out-box, I sent seventeen messages in all. Most of them said the same thing: "I'm a cartoonist, I have a comic strip you might like. Can you take a look at it? If you like it, please tell a friend or tell your readers. If you really like it, why not nominate it for the CCA Outstanding Gaming Comic award? My strip actually had gaming in it. Thanks." Except I used a lot more words.

I felt really awkward about doing this. You see, most comic strips get noticed by word of mouth advertising. That is, you like the strip, you tell someone else about it. What's really strange is I feel like I have to let you tell someone else about the comic strip. If you tell someone else, it's okay. If I tell someone else, it comes across as spam. Don't I have as much love for the strip as you do? Don't I want the comic strip to succeed as much as my readers do? I want people to know about my comic strip; I can't tell anyone about my comic strip. It's maddening sometimes.

I do admit, I have made a mistake. I should not have mentioned anything about the CCA awards in the message. In hindsight, I think it pushes the message closer to being classified as spam. Instead, that mention should have been here, on this site. Meaghan Quinn (of the very cute Monster comic strip and a long-form actionesque comic called Eat The Roses) wrote to let me know that my letters were "giving a bad impression and you're going to get ignored and thought of as desperate" which was entirely not my intent. She's absolutely correct. My "please look at my work" message should've been just that.

She also suggested if I do send out any more messages with the CCA stuff in it, to list some other comics that could also be nominated as up to three nominations can be made by each voting member. So, here goes: I'm going to also nominate Dork Tower and possibly PVP, but I might save that nomination for Absurd Notions as Absurd Notions appears to be gearing up for a comeback. All three strips actually have had storylines featuring people playing games.

Seth C. Triggs of Buddies in Big Places (an anthropomorphic comic strip with a huge archive) wrote back as did Sergei of Doubt It (a daily strip that has a really neat art style). Seth didn't seem to be offended by the message (he's already posted in the Tag Board); Sergei classified the message as semi-spam ("Processed luncheon meat or something.") and provided some feedback on the artwork here at PE(aott).

Anyway. I'm writing this to publicly apologize to my fellow cartoonists who believe that my messages did cross the line into spam zone. It never was my intent to foster bad feelings about my work or my strip. Just consider me a fanboy, trying to tell you about a comic strip I really like.

Posted at May 8, 2003 05:38 PM