The Quick Impression Of Dead Rising For The Xbox 360

Wow, it doesn’t suck!

Lately I’ve been going through a ton of different webcomics just getting a general feel for them to see how they stack up when compared to their physical, paper cousins. There are a few good ones here and there, but not many, and it’s becoming quickly obvious that if you’re going to do a webcomic, you’ve got be sure you’re doing it as a labor of love. Webcomics for aspiring comic book artists are just like the typewriter or word processor for aspiring writers; just because it’s there and makes it easier, the better technology equipment doesn’t magically make you an artistic genius.

Of course, there’s also the fact that most webcomics are free, which is why it’s doubly important to make sure this is a labor of love, because unlike the comic artists and writers that work for the Big Boys like DC and Marvel, these people (for the most part) don’t see a penny for their efforts.

Of course that’s not always the case. For example over at the website Top Web Comics, which lists the 100 most popular webcomics on the ‘net, the #1 and #2 comics DID eventually get picked up by a smaller publisher (that specializes in Anime/manga style comics) and they are now making some money off of their work, but this is the exception rather than the rule.

For the most part, these comics are usually uneven in some way, whether its lopsidedness in favor or art or writing, but after a while, especially by traditional measurements of comic book quality, it becomes obvious why these guys aren’t with Dark Horse, or Vertigo or Image.

Mostly I’ve been mulling these things over because there’s still that question about what to do with Nowhere which is still slowly but surely being created.

It’s a bit of a kick still, to write out those scripts and watch them actually turn into the pictures. There’s a childish glee in looking at the process and seeing how it goes from thoughts, to words, to words and pictures and think “I had something to do with that.” But the exact nature of Nowhere’s online presence has yet to be determined.

Also, I think the fact that manga/anime is becoming the de facto style of art now, and that popular art is quickly devolving into either “Jim Lee super detailed musclebound spandex” or “Akira/Ranma 1/2/[insert anime title here]” is really putting the squeeze on individuality. It’s also having the unexpected side effect of making me actually dislike anime. I used to think it was so cool when it was this rare exotic thing in an overcrowded world of Transformers and He-Man, but now that it’s come into the mainstream and EVERYONE is drawing almost exactly the same way, I find it’s relentless conformity to be suffocating.

Or maybe I’m just getting old…