What About Webcomics?

Everybody loves comics, right? Whether it’s a comic strip in the newspaper, an editorial cartoon, a comic book, graphic novel, or manga, I doubt there’s anyone who can’t find something to like in sequential art.

One of the big explosions of online creativity in the past few years has come from webcomics – comics created especially for the web.

Some webcomics are the same style and format you find in the newspaper. Some explore other genres – science fiction, romance, horror. Some webcomics are even formatted like pages of a standard-sized comic or graphic novel.

And webcomics are big. PvP, a leading webcomic about video game/nerd humor, has well over 100,000 daily readers and is one of the 7,500 most-visited sites on the Internet.

One of the big discussions in the webcomics community is how to make money from them, since most webcomics are given away. Many people sell t-shirts, mouse pads, print collections of the comics, but what about a wireless frame specifically built for webcomics?

It could work like this:

Start with a frame. It would need to be simple to use, affordable, and with a screen size that will make presenting 3-5 panel horizontal comic strips look good (though this would prevent display of webcomics formatted like standard comics pages or larger, multi-tiered newspaper strips like the latter versions or Calvin and Hobbes).

This frame could sell for $25-$50, essentially enough to cover the cost of manufacturing and marketing, but not so much that people have to think too much about it. Since this would be a niche item, low entry cost would be a real virtue.

Along with the frame, customers would also need to buy a monthly subscription, like a cable TV plan. Perhaps you could buy a basic package of a few comics for $1 a month. Add a couple more to it for another $1-2. Providers could offer packages by genre or style.

Because the frame would be wireless, new strips would be delivered to the frame everyday.

Perhaps a little software could even be built into the frame to allow it to save all the strips in an archive for repeated enjoyment.

While a frame like this would probably never be a mass-market item, it could sell to die-hard fans. And it could be a big boost to webcomics creators and newspaper comics syndicates, both of whom can always use more revenue.

The webcomics side of this equation likely wouldn’t be too hard, since most already offer RSS feeds. The business questions — for both webcomics creators and technology companies — are likely the trickier ones.

I don’t know whether a device like this would interest many webcomics creators or if it would wither under the everything-is-free ethos of the Internet, but if wireless digital picture frames get a really strong foothold, it could be an interesting topic to revisit.

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