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rynlingBefore I get into the case studies, this is a bit of contextualization. There's more to say, of course, but I think ten short paragraphs (about six to seven minutes of presentation time) is enough. Also, if you think I'm overemphasizing the impact of Homestuck, allow me to offer the alternative possibility that the Gen X crowd who studies live-action television fandom doesn't emphasize its impact enough. Okay, here goes:
I believe that the microblogging website Tumblr is the primary online platform that facilitated a new culture of independent comics publishing in the 2010s. Tumblr was launched in 2007, and the creators’ intention was for the site to be an easy-to-use tool for music fans to upload videos and sound files, which could be catalogued using a limited number of metadata tags.
At the time, the primary online platform for media fandom was LiveJournal. LiveJournal’s bare-bones layout made it simple and easy to create a personal journal with no prior knowledge of web development. It was equally easy to create a moderated public community in which anyone could comment on posts, which resulted in daily active threads with hundreds of contributors.
LiveJournal was text-based, which suited older media fandom cultures centered around the creation and distribution of fanfiction. Although a few users and communities embedded images into their posts, doing so required a basic knowledge of HTML coding. In addition, a user who wished to post images either had to use an offsite image hosting service or pay a fee for LiveJournal to host the images directly.
For fan artists, the portfolio hosting site DeviantArt emerged as an alternate to LiveJournal. Because its social sharing features were extremely basic, however, even popular artists on the site received engagement that would be considered quite paltry by Twitter standards. Moreover, the lack of community moderation meant that issues such as harassment, art theft, and the distribution of deliberately disturbing “shock images” were common on the site.
Due to its ease of use, simple customization features, and unlimited capacity for media uploads, Tumblr emerged as a viable alternative to DeviantArt for artists. The site had a particular appeal for webcomic artists, who were able to capitalize on its ability to host a public-facing blog in addition to an internal subscription feed accessible to registered users. Images posted to Tumblr could easily be shared between users, who could “reblog” posts to their own blogs along with a link to the original poster’s account. Essentially, Tumblr was a webpage hosting service with grassroots marketing tools baked into the platform, and its vertically-scrolling format was visually optimized for comics.
Although many scholars of online fandom place the decline of LiveJournal at the end of the 2000s due to a change in the site’s owners and management, I believe the major shift to Tumblr occurred in the early 2010s due to the runaway popularity of the webcomic Homestuck. Homestuck’s website had its own internal message boards, but the culture of these boards mirrored the caustic mordancy of 4chan and could be chaotic and unpleasant. Many younger fans who didn’t feel comfortable on the Homestuck message boards shared their art on Tumblr, where their posts received an outpouring of positive feedback.
This flood of encouragement was enticing, and Homestuck fanfic writers on LiveJournal began crossposting their work to Tumblr. Writers for more mainstream media fandoms, such as BBC Sherlock and Supernatural, saw their success and followed their lead, thus directing even more traffic to Tumblr. By 2012, Tumblr had become the de facto fandom blogging website for artists and writers, who formed loose communities around metadata tags that had their own easily accessible internal feeds.
Creative teams posting their webcomics on Tumblr directly benefitted from this increase in traffic to the site. Artists in particular could bolster their profiles by drawing fanart for popular fandoms, especially fandoms that fell within the broad range of interest for the Millennial users who’d developed a taste for anime and video games. If you could draw an interesting and attractive picture of Sailor Moon, for example, that might bring hundreds or even thousands of new subscribers to your blog and, by association, your webcomic.
American comics publishers such as Image and Boom! and animation studios collected under the Cartoon Network umbrella were keenly aware of this surge in highly visible talent. During the early-to-mid 2010s, many artists were recruited and commissioned directly from Tumblr, while other artists were able to leverage their success on Tumblr into a competitive edge when applying for internships that led to studio contracts.
Commissions from big-press comics publishers could be wildly exploitative, however, and studio animation work often requires long hours with few breaks. While it’s tempting to celebrate success stories like Nate Stevenson and Trung Le Nguyen, I think it’s also important to acknowledge the lack of viability and sustainability of the professional systems that enabled these successes, as studio contract work leads to psychological burnout and physical injuries for many artists. It’s precisely because professional success in traditional venues is so chimeric that it’s necessary to consider alternative methods of publication.
I believe that the microblogging website Tumblr is the primary online platform that facilitated a new culture of independent comics publishing in the 2010s. Tumblr was launched in 2007, and the creators’ intention was for the site to be an easy-to-use tool for music fans to upload videos and sound files, which could be catalogued using a limited number of metadata tags.
At the time, the primary online platform for media fandom was LiveJournal. LiveJournal’s bare-bones layout made it simple and easy to create a personal journal with no prior knowledge of web development. It was equally easy to create a moderated public community in which anyone could comment on posts, which resulted in daily active threads with hundreds of contributors.
LiveJournal was text-based, which suited older media fandom cultures centered around the creation and distribution of fanfiction. Although a few users and communities embedded images into their posts, doing so required a basic knowledge of HTML coding. In addition, a user who wished to post images either had to use an offsite image hosting service or pay a fee for LiveJournal to host the images directly.
For fan artists, the portfolio hosting site DeviantArt emerged as an alternate to LiveJournal. Because its social sharing features were extremely basic, however, even popular artists on the site received engagement that would be considered quite paltry by Twitter standards. Moreover, the lack of community moderation meant that issues such as harassment, art theft, and the distribution of deliberately disturbing “shock images” were common on the site.
Due to its ease of use, simple customization features, and unlimited capacity for media uploads, Tumblr emerged as a viable alternative to DeviantArt for artists. The site had a particular appeal for webcomic artists, who were able to capitalize on its ability to host a public-facing blog in addition to an internal subscription feed accessible to registered users. Images posted to Tumblr could easily be shared between users, who could “reblog” posts to their own blogs along with a link to the original poster’s account. Essentially, Tumblr was a webpage hosting service with grassroots marketing tools baked into the platform, and its vertically-scrolling format was visually optimized for comics.
Although many scholars of online fandom place the decline of LiveJournal at the end of the 2000s due to a change in the site’s owners and management, I believe the major shift to Tumblr occurred in the early 2010s due to the runaway popularity of the webcomic Homestuck. Homestuck’s website had its own internal message boards, but the culture of these boards mirrored the caustic mordancy of 4chan and could be chaotic and unpleasant. Many younger fans who didn’t feel comfortable on the Homestuck message boards shared their art on Tumblr, where their posts received an outpouring of positive feedback.
This flood of encouragement was enticing, and Homestuck fanfic writers on LiveJournal began crossposting their work to Tumblr. Writers for more mainstream media fandoms, such as BBC Sherlock and Supernatural, saw their success and followed their lead, thus directing even more traffic to Tumblr. By 2012, Tumblr had become the de facto fandom blogging website for artists and writers, who formed loose communities around metadata tags that had their own easily accessible internal feeds.
Creative teams posting their webcomics on Tumblr directly benefitted from this increase in traffic to the site. Artists in particular could bolster their profiles by drawing fanart for popular fandoms, especially fandoms that fell within the broad range of interest for the Millennial users who’d developed a taste for anime and video games. If you could draw an interesting and attractive picture of Sailor Moon, for example, that might bring hundreds or even thousands of new subscribers to your blog and, by association, your webcomic.
American comics publishers such as Image and Boom! and animation studios collected under the Cartoon Network umbrella were keenly aware of this surge in highly visible talent. During the early-to-mid 2010s, many artists were recruited and commissioned directly from Tumblr, while other artists were able to leverage their success on Tumblr into a competitive edge when applying for internships that led to studio contracts.
Commissions from big-press comics publishers could be wildly exploitative, however, and studio animation work often requires long hours with few breaks. While it’s tempting to celebrate success stories like Nate Stevenson and Trung Le Nguyen, I think it’s also important to acknowledge the lack of viability and sustainability of the professional systems that enabled these successes, as studio contract work leads to psychological burnout and physical injuries for many artists. It’s precisely because professional success in traditional venues is so chimeric that it’s necessary to consider alternative methods of publication.
