How Are You Getting Webcomics News Now?

By | Thursday, November 21, 2019 Leave a Comment
Header image of children in a classroom learning about comics
As I stated last week, I've been a bit out of the loop for the better part of the last two years. The digital landscape has changed a bit, but in review, I'm seeing less than good news about webcomics news.

When I started getting into webcomics with any degree of seriousness, it was about 2004. I had known of webcomics before then, but I didn't really start reading any with any regularity until then. I recall thinking at the time that I was coming to the webcomics party exceptionally late. I mean, guys like Scott Kurtz, Jerry Holkins, and Mike Krahulik had been working for years at that point and they weren't even really the old guard. It already seemed like a crowded market, and I was thrilled when I could find the occasional webcomic that was JUST getting started.

But what I also noticed at the time was that I was largely on my own when it came to finding webcomic news. None of the usual comics news sites were reporting on webcomics with any regularity. Hardly at all, in fact. So what news I found was generally what was being posted by the webcomikers themselves underneath their latest strip. One of the reasons I started my webcomics column over at MTV Geek was because no one else was reporting on webcomics in any capacity. When MTV Geek shuttered its doors in 2013, though, there was still pretty much nothing else. Gary Tyrrell was doing his webcomics blogging over at Fleen but that's never really been a place for news per se; some newsworthy bits do come through there, but that's not really the point of his site.

When I moved over to FreakSugar, that was still pretty much it as far as anything resembling webcomics news. Brad Guigar has been running a few outlets for webcomics discussions (notably Webcomics.com and ComicLab) but those are generally geared for people making webcomics. News there is very much geared to an audience that is NOT a typical comics reader. Tom Spurgeon would occasionally post something he came across on social media, but those were very much a small part of his focus.

With my FreakSugar contributions falling to the wayside, though, and my former Comics Alternative podcast co-host passing away early this year, I'm seeing less of a source of webcomics news than before. There's a few social media accounts that seem to have cropped up, as far as I can tell, they mostly just promote whatever webcomic updates they come across.

So what am I missing? Is there still no good source of webcomic news? Are readers still relying primarily on the creators themselves to let them know what's news? How are you learning about webcomics now?
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