AMA — Transitioning from a comic strip to a comic book

Q.: I actually want to know how you feel the transition from 3 panel to 6 panel is going. Has it given you the greater freedom with writing you hoped for? Does it make establishing a theme more or less difficult? Does it make some characters better or worse options for the new length, and if yes with whom?

A.: That’s a great question!

First, a little back story. Evil Inc started out as a comic strip — usually four panels in length. This was because Internet publishing in the early 00s was ad-supported. (We called it free, but that was marketing language.) Under an ad-revenue business model, frequent updates were strongly rewarded. Therefore, posting a new comic every day generated a volume of pageviews that translated into a pretty good income.

I found myself at a crossroads when ad-blocking software threw the entire system into a tailspin. As many of us shifted to crowdfunding — like Patreon and Kickstarter — the need for daily updates diminished. And at that same time, social-media was changing the way my readers consumed content.

I reasoned that I could do a lot better keeping my readers’ attention in this new landscape if I took longer story swings. After all, telling a story four panels at a time is a herculean task. Newspaper cartoonists were able to do it because they had a captive audience. Today’s readers are the polar opposite of that.

So I reimagined Evil Inc as a graphic novel. I started thinking my story in terms of 22-page chapters. This had less to do with the length of a mainstream “floppy” comic book, and more to do with the number of minutes in a TV sitcom. I converted minutes to pages, and I started writing my stories like the episodes of a TV series. I incorporated an A-B story structure, and started thinking in terms of narrative archetypes like the Hero’s Journey. This brought an immediate focus to my writing. My comic-strip stories rambled and wandered pretty drastically. Writing with a beginning-middle-end structure to each chapter brought an end to that.

Today, I write each page as an entire unit, and I release it on the Web a half-page at a time. The typical half-page is about seven panels. That means I’ve only really added about three panels. It doesn't sound like a lot, but it makes a big difference. That's almost an entire second strip that's entirely devoted to the story. Instead of trying to sneak a story beat into five very short pieces, I have two big swings that fit together as one. If I'm careful about including an entry point into each half, I've got a shot at retaining people who are discovering my on the Web. And when the page gets put together for the book, it reads cohesively.

I think you’re going to see that in the next couple of Evil Inc books. I decided against publishing a new book over the past two years because I decided the risk was too great. The Covid pandemic has caused ripple effects in printing and shipping that — honestly — are still causing problems to this day. I’m hoping to launch a Kickstarter in the early past of next year, and I already have that book laid out. I’ve read through it a few times now, and I think this is where I really found my rhythm as a writer. I’m super proud of the book. I'm very excited to get it into your hands when the time is right.