The New York Times tech section highlights a popular community created comics on Reddit called Rage Comics.

In that way, rage comics are not like the average viral YouTube video. They are more like a Bob Newhart sketch: the laughs come not from replaying the public foolishness of some stranger, but from watching the awkward reaction of the observer, who almost always appears as a character in the strip. Like Garry Trudeau’s Doonesbury strips, there is usually a punch line after the punch line in which the author reacts to the situation. But where Doonesbury characters typically react with wisecracking aplomb, rage comic characters respond with — well, rage.

Gronk is a sweet comic, devoid of malice (except, perhaps, toward Canadian geese, but they’re jerks). But Gronk herself is, for all of her adorableness, a fully fleshed out character. She’s imaginative and playful, but she’s also selfish and doesn’t think her actions all the way through. Dale, for her part, more likely to punish Gronk for tweeting like an idiot or watching Real Housewives of Manitoba than for throwing a canister of glitter at her head. But the comic’s key feature is the strong love Gronk and Dale feel for one another and their shared joy they find in food, crafts, movies, and all the other things that spark their imaginations.

From the website:

THRILLBENT was created because John Rogers and I believe strongly that comics can and will be a thriving mass medium in the digital age if-IF-they’re created for modern media devices and not exclusively for printed pamphlets that are overpriced, uninviting to new readers, and abominably distributed in only a relative handful of storefronts nationwide. John and I both love print comics, but they’re crazy expensive for what you get and good luck finding them.

Each week, some of the most creative artists and writers around will bring new, free digital comics right to your monitor or mobile device, and we’ll show you ways of reading comics that will surprise and delight even the most jaded media junkie. Along the way, we’ll experiment with the form, and we encourage your feedback in the forums. Tell us what you like, what did or didn’t work for you, and what you’d like to see. In the meantime, we at Thrillbent Labs will continue to innovate. If you’re just arriving, join us now for the first installment of INSUFFERABLE: what happens when you’re a crimefighter and your sidekick grows up to be a douchebag?

The first two comics released are Insufferable and Luther

Correction: Original headline and story misspelled Mark’s last name.

I created Just the First Frame to be the best way to discover comics on the web. Two opposing issues surround web comics today: discoverability (sharing) and copyright infringement. I believe that showing only the first frame of each comic elegantly solves both. I’ll outline the argument below.

Great idea.

From Variety:

Weidenfeld, a former Adult Swim exec, had his eye on “Axe Cop” from the time he started scouting properties for Animation Domination HD earlier this year. The segs will be produced directly through Animation Domination, which is housed at the Fox network.

“It’s rare that you find something that feels both so new in its tone and content but also so fully formed,” he said. “To me it was very clear that ‘Axe Cop’ has potential to be a larger franchise.”

Axe Cop was created by Ethan Nicolle and his younger brother (who was 5 when the comic started) Malachai Nicolle.

Correction: The original post misidentified which of the brothers were the older and younger of the two. The story has been corrected and updated.

From his blog:

The “Best Graphic Story” ballot is intense this year. Bill Willingham (Fables) is there again for a fourth year with me, and without Studio Foglio on the ballot I am no longer shielded from the crushing power of his multiple-Eisner-winning team of graphic storytellers. Not that the other nominees are any less worthy of delivering a crush. I’m super-pleased to see Ursula Vernon’s Digger nominated, because that means it’s possible for me to lose while Webcomics win.

The Hugo Awards have been given for excellence in the field of science fiction and fantasy since 1955.

From his blog:

A lot of people have asked me if I’m scared about leaving the regular paycheck I was earning at the Daily News, and I can’t say that I’m not. But more than that fear, I’m absolutely charged with excitement over being able to devote time to the many side-projects I’ve been trying to find the time to do in the past few years. When you see what I have planned in the upcoming few months, I think you’ll see what I mean. This is going to be a phenomenal year.

And even more than that, it’s beginning to dawn on me that I’m going to have an actual life for the first time in 21 years. I won’t be working nights anymore. And I’m not going to miss holidays with my family. Newspaper life means getting Christmas Eve off, but not Christmas… and the same for Memorial Day and Labor Day and Thanksgiving and so on. It’s day-before; not day-of. And this will be the first time in 14 years that I won’t be working Sunday nights. I get to live a normal life.

Brad also runs the webcomics.com subscription site – an excellent resource for all things webcomics.

Notes:

• Started posting the strip only 2-3x a week in 2004
• She didn’t make a lot of money at first, mostly at conventions. She had no advertising or idea how to monetize website
• By 2005 she had a decent daily following and by 2007 she decided to take a leap and make it her full-time endeavor
• She tallied up the barest of minimum she’d need to earn to live and asked her fans to support her with the promise of increase to 5x a week
• Her fans came through but after a while those dwindled
• She started to monetize her work through book collections – first through print-on-demand and then to a larger publisher
• She makes posters from art story-lines that resonate with her readers
• She was invited to join Blind Ferret – a web syndicate that handles merchandise orders, fulfillment, storage, etc. that allows her to concentrate on her art
• To make it on the web you have to be an entrepreneur, entertainer and a storyteller
• There is no standard model to monetize your comics. Listen to your readers and find ways to allow your readers to throw money at you
• Business cards are vital. Make them creative. Have your URL – make that memorable and a dotcom and put it on everything
• Tip: look at your site’s web analytics and look for geographic areas with high concentration of fans – plan book tours in those areas
• She shared which conventions are profitable for her
• She adds a lot of extras in her books to help them sell

Follow her on Twitter

Michael Cavna interviewed Rich and asked him about any insights into this success.

I think it just really confirms the whole “free content” model, especially for creators who start with no existing audience or reputation. Not just as a publishing strategy, but also as a way of building a social network of a sort. It may take awhile for it to all come back to you, but you earn so much goodwill from your audience by providing your creative work for free over that period of time that when you need help, they are happy to respond.

It turns out I had this huge geeky safety net out there that I didn’t know about this whole time, made up of people who have been reading my comic for nine years but never contacted me.

On a related note, I mentioned last week that Rich Burlew’s Order of the Stick has raised nearly half a million dollars for a similar archive project. With 5 days left to go, he’s raised $777,558.