There is no way to promote a webcomic anymore or gain an audience. RSS is dead. Livejournal is dead. You cant fit a comic in a tweet, and even if you could it has to get engagement immediately in order to go anywhere. Now even twitter is dead.
I want to restart comicing, but instead it’s “what would I draw if I knew nobody was going to read it”
I guess I have some thoughts here, though I can’t say they’re all that insightful. I recently did a Kickstarter for a collection of my own webcomic. It succeeded, but I still lost money after all was said and done, which wasn’t unexpected. I just wanted to have it in print and to be able to offer a print version to my few readers, and Kickstarter was just a means to that end. So money was never a motivation either positive or negative. In fact, my first webcomic will be 20 years old tomorrow, and I never made any money off of that, even back in the day.
In regards to what was motivating me, I have no idea. I had maybe 20 regular readers on the website itself (actually, I don’t remember if I ever thanked smbhax for shouting it out the last time I de-lurked. If not, thanks for that), and the only reason the Kickstarter succeeded was that a Something Awful thread re-posted the whole thing earlier in the year. I think, maybe, having the printed book for myself was the main motivation to complete the project, which kind of relates to what everyone has been saying.
I did, briefly, think of taking the webcomic down when the book came out, thus becoming a “graphic novelist” but ultimately I realized that that would just be cutting off my nose to spite my face. I am holding off on putting the revised print version up, since I had some backers pay for a digital-only copy and I don’t want them to feel cheated. But I am going to have it up for free eventually.
If I can offer any words of encouragement, it would be that even a few people is not nobody, and there will always be a few people. Even though I only shipped about 60 books from this Kickstarter, I did ship them all around the world, which is fun to think about. I think if profit is not a factor (and I have no idea how to make a profit from any of this) the emotional difference between reaching a few people and reaching a million is negligible (and maybe even inversely proportionate, considering that a few readers are likely to be nicer.)
Project Wonderful advertising was essential for me back in the day; you could run skinflint campaigns snapping up loads of cheap ad spaces constantly.
There’s Comicad Network that’s trying to duplicate it but they don’t have anywhere remotely near the reach PW had – Publishers - Comicad Network – especially if you’re looking for non-adult ad spaces. And they no longer allow free bids, so, drat.
The Webcomic List was good for some reach and for networking on the forum, but the forum is gone and the site is pretty much busted for most of the comic entries now; my TWCL listing broke in 2020 when I switched to https, and my attempts to update it have not been successful. Looks like a lot of the old listings there are in a similar boat; and it doesn’t look like new listings are being processed.
(As far as listing sites go, Belfry - https://new.belfrycomics.net/ - and Piperka - https://piperka.net/ - still work. Topwebcomics is still around, still subject to voting shenanigans of course.)
Since I do my art traditionally I list the original artwork pages on https://www.comicartfans.com/ , I think I get some sales and maybe a few readers that way, I dunno.
just finished reading hamletmachine’s starfighter
military conspiracy thing with gay sex and a delightfully anime set-up where the military is deliberately shipping pilots together in gay relationships to enhance their combat potential. some abuse and violence. it’s really good when things get spicy 
so uh… anyway if people have like yaoi/yuri to rec hit me up. i’m probably more unfamiliar than you expect
The Greeks were the most anime of all the civilizations
i believe this
realizing i knew about this but i never think about ancient greece except for mythological monsters
did you all know fate/go (terrible game) made the minotaur hot? greek things i think about
it was highly effective too!
i mean easy start, if you liked starfighter they have other ongoing stuff but predictably for me by far and away the thing of theirs i think is best is Mickey + Jessica, the ongoing comic about lesbians doin mob crime. the butch lead is goals for me and that definitely includes the murder
i finished reading the available pages like minutes ago. its so good!
Est Em’s works have some of the best art
I vaguely recall my spouse liked the webcomic TJ and Amal quite a bit (its a road trip webcomic with also nice art)
I did it! I actually tracked down the first collected volume of Harlan Ellison’s Favorite Furry Comic
Hoping I can sneakily buy the the rest of what they had one at a time because the comic shop kinda underpriced them, and thanks to Ebay’s policies I think you can’t actually sell this on there anymore so…yeah this is probably my best shot.
feeling mopey so been reading random peoples deviantart comics, been enjoying this one “robbers of l.a.”, which is about heists but also long blocks of rambling text over mspaint doodles.
all these more prosaic bits i really enjoy, where the plot just trails off and it gets weirdly detail oriented. years go by just wandering around, monologuing about their finances or fixing up their house punctuated by random violence
the creator has done a bunch of media featuring “Beaks” which he describe as “like humans but with different head shape.” thinking about the carl barks thing that the ducks aren’t ducks but caricatured humans, and it’s really too bad he never tried this approach.
Tales to Astonish #52
yesterday i read all of inside mari and together with a quote from around the end of it it feels like oshimi started in one place and fell to another conclusion towards the end. i guess he was questioning when writing the beginning wether he wants to be a woman and eventually arrived at being happy as a man and i can’t criticize him for that but the eventual “twist” recontextualizes events earlier so much i don’t even know what any of it’s supposed to be anymore
like, when the komori inside mari jacks off the original komori like it’s a normal thing, and later after that the original komori desperately confesses his love and the komori inside mari rejects him and pretty much calls him a worthless piece of shit, and immediately both of them think of themselves as scum at the same time
these things manage to read a certain way as long as the komori inside mari and komori are actually the same person (post & pre transition) but once the reveal is done i no longer know what to make of it
uh, anyway i really enjoyed it either way tho i’m confused and maybe disappointed. particularly at the seeming lack of yuri in the outcome 
i should get back to happiness, i liked vampires “birdfeeding” blood to each other a lot
Summon back to the forum by Oshimi talk~ There’s a lot of people blatantly working through their gender through comics these days but most of them aren’t like, generational talents. Possibly the best hair in manga?
(nudity warning)
The continuity of the various stands between panels from different angles! It’s nuts!
He wrote in the afterward to Inside Mari that he’s happy being a man but the next year he put out Waltz which is very good but also, uh, let’s just say not the work of someone having a good time with gender. Within three he was drawing himself as a girl again and basically begging someone to forcefem him, so, you know.
I lent someone my books so I don’t have them on hand but Oshimi gives the game away in, iirc, the author’s note in the first volume. He says something along the lines of ‘I want to be a woman but, even if I become one, I’ll always be tainted by having been a man. Even if I magically turned into one like in a manga, I’d still be tainted.’ The fantasy that Inside Mari is selling is basically that thing trans girls do where they get really obsessed with the possibility of being intersex. It’s the fantasy of getting the trans fem experience, becoming a girl and fumbling your way through gender, but then finding out that you’re more valid than valid. You’ve never even been a man!
The abusive mom stuff in the later bits that is basically a dry run for Blood on the Tracks kinda brings it down, and like, obviously I wanted weird trans masc yuri ending, but I think I ultimately like the ending. It’s so upsetting. Mari is unable to function until the parts of her identity that are difficult to reconcile with what she’s projected to the world are jettisoned, and then she turns to her girlfriend and says ‘I’m not gay anymore.’ The comic does an entire generic slice-of-life graduation chapter, looks you in the eyes, says, ‘Well, isn’t this nice?’ and dares you to blink.
I have a ton of screenshots from my first read-through of it somewhere, but idk what I did with them. It really is some incredible comic
will someone PLEASE force-fem oshimi?
i’ve felt that. only answer i could come with was “it doesn’t matter”
really hope oshimi can be ok somehow
