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Zabel: At SPX this year I had the unhappy feeling that print was surging forward and leaving webcomics behind. It was the gleam in the eye of a former webcartoonist I talked to, who now had a prestigious print deal, and confessed that he hadn't logged on in months. It was in the impassioned panel discussions of the print cartoonists, compared to the subdued and awkward forums devoted to webcomics. It was the general perception that print comics had finally gotten its act together and was moving forward into a bright future-- while webcomics seemed to be stalled.

A lot of this impression, of course, can be attributed to my own manic/depressive tendencies. But it prompts me to ask some difficult questions--

Can webcomics ever match the prestige and allure of print?

Are they gaining on print, or are they starting to fall behind?

Will we ever see the dedication to a webcomics project that we see to something like Acme Novelty Library? Will we ever see a convention devoted to webcomics that will rival the lavish events in honor of print?

Will webcomics ever get their act together?

Danner: I would almost think you and I were at different SPXs this year! But that may be because you weren't at last year's SPX. Take the panels for instance -- yes, they were more subdued and less well attended than the print panels. But compare this year's pair of panels, which focused on practical technical advice in one, and on a heated debate over business models in the next, with last year's one panel -- which barely got past answering the question "what is a webcomic?" There was definite progress there.

And add to that the fact that you couldn't look at a corner of the con space without spotting a webcomicker. Some were manning tables and some were just visiting, but they were all over. There were folks from the MT sites scattered all over, there were at least two people from PV Comics, and both of the founders of 01 Comics. And Dumbrella's unified display was rivaled only by the more established print publishers.

As to whether we're gaining on print, whether we'll ever have our own convention -- well, I just don't see that as an issue. I'm not interested in seeing webcomics and print comics equally viable alternatives. I'm interested in blurring the line between them to the point where it's all just comics. I want to see more print comics creators putting their work online. And I also want to see more webcomic creators putting their work in print. Barring the more technically experimental comics (and likewise, the more art-object type comics in print), it's just a difference of distribution. I just love comics, no matter how they're distributed, and I'd like to see more people getting their work out to their audience any way they can.

Stevenson: I am absolutely positive webcomics will win out over print. The reason they're not making greater gains now is tradition. The reason they will win in the long-run is a combination of convenience and economy. Comic readers are used to a particular format, not just panels and balloons, but printed and stapled paper, paper that is portable, easy on the eyes (convenience) and relatively inexpensive (economy). When webcomics get close enough to those and a few other standards of enjoyment set by print comics, they will win because of all of the other advantages that have dotted this discussion. Laptops are a piece of the puzzle, but they are still expensive and only relatively portable. Wireless internet access and access blankets that are springing up in lots of small places is another piece of the puzzle. Another leap is needed though and I think the final piece may be found in some combination of the laptop and digital paper. Digital paper is the one that will hold us back for a while though. Screens project light that require lots of energy and involves complex equipment that needs to be protected by a hard shell. Also, light emissions cause eye strain. Digital paper is still far away from fulfilling any promises for webcomics, but the trends look promising. Cost is coming down rapidly. Sheets are getting thiner. Resolution is increasing. Color depth is getting better. I don't think the promise for digital paper, and subsequently my promise for a victory for webcomics, will be fulfilled for some time, but it will happen. Once computers are better at being paper than paper is, computers, and consequently the internet, will win.

I too have a short story to share. My father is a bit of a visionary. When my mother dragged him out to purchase an 8-track player, he forced her to wait a few months because he was sure 8-tracks would be quickly replaced by the next big thing, cassette tapes. They were. Thirty years later, both of us badly needed new computers. I waited another year to buy mine, a laptop, despite my father's protests. He is still running a 386 purchased around 1991. He's waiting for a leap, a giant leap, the shattering of Moore's law (Computer processing speeds will double every 18 months. (not sure on 18)). For a few years he was convinced it would be crystals that would do the trick. These days it's organic compounds and chemicals. In either case, he's still waiting.

Don't hold your breath for that day you'll grab your favorite webcomic on the way to the bathroom fresh off the web, but it's coming.

Garrity: This year felt like something of a "down" year for webcomics. Perhaps that's only because 2003 was so busy, including as it did the debuts of Girlamatic and Graphic Smash, the launch of Comixpedia, the first wildly successful web-to-print publications (Derek Kirk Kim's "Same Difference" trade, Scott Kurtz's monthly PvP comic), the first Eisner nominations for a webcomic (Justine Shaw's "Nowhere Girl"), the much-anticipated arrival of BitPass, and the rise of several interesting new webcomics and creators. This year didn't seem to include as many exciting milestones; the established sites kept chugging along, the established creators kept putting out fine work, and, unless I missed something (and I often do), nothing new came along to knock our collective socks off.

On the other hand, the webcomics scene at the San Diego Comic-Con was more energized than ever before, especially in the hub of booths formed by Scott McCloud, PvP, Pants Press, Dumbrella, Keenspot, and the other big guns. (Scott convinced Modern Tales to rent a booth and join the cool kids next summer.) Kazu Kibuishi's "Flight" anthology, showcasing young Web artists who have had little or no work in print, was one of the big successes of the weekend, right up there with Jeff Smith's giant "Bone" collection. The annual webcartoonists' dinner turned into a jam-packed "Flight" party, so big that some of us had to go elsewhere (which was how I wound up playing Exquisite Corpse with Roger Langridge, Dirk Tiede, and Jason Thompson on a hotel balcony). Derek Kirk Kim won an Eisner Award for the "Same Difference" book, and Lea Hernandez won Lulu of the Year for Girlamatic. Overall, the webcomics crowd seemed much more enthusiastic and vital than the print comics crowd. A substantial majority of print comic-book fans seemed to come to Comic-Con for the video games, movie trailers, and Hollywood autograph sessions, with comics a distant afterthought. The webcomics people were clearly there for the comics. Their comics.

Webcomics are now a little over ten years old, depending on your definition of when it all started. The first five years were marked by raw, crude cartooning, the establishment of successful formats and genres (so many newspaper-style strips, so many tech-support jokes), and working without an economic or social net. The second five years brought more sophisticated art and storytelling, the increased testing and breaking of creative boundaries (Diary strips! Infinite canvas! Flash! Comics that aren't about computer nerds!), and the establishment of organized collectives, aesthetic theories, and moneymaking schemes. I think we're now shifting into a new period: a period of mainstreaming. I predict that the next few years will be distinguished by increasing traffic between the webcomics and print comics world, and hopefully beyond. Already, webcomics as diverse as PvP, "Megatokyo," and "Same Difference" enjoy massive sales in print, and both Scott Kurtz and Keenspot are attempting to conquer the newspaper comics page. Many of the most interesting young cartoonists today are webcartoonists, and print publishers are beginning to recruit new talent from their ranks. A great many established print cartoonists are experimenting with the Web, and some (Tom Hart, Roger Langridge) now do substantially more work online than in print. The Web is becoming an accepted place for all cartoonists, whatever their ultimate goals or interests, to play.

The great danger of this shift is that the rush to print will leave web-specific comics out in the cold. To prevent this, it's crucial that the webcomics community nurture interactive, Flash-based, infinite-canvas, and other web-specific work. The good experimental stuff needs critical attention, popular support, and, whenever possible, money. Critical webzines like Comixpedia and the Examiner, which can call attention to the capital-A Art that's out there, are crucial; so are experiments in making money strictly from the Web, like Modern Tales and BitPass. I'm very excited to see webcomics move into the larger comics world, especially since I think we can help revitalize comic books and strips and create a true comics "mainstream." But we can't ignore the unique properties and potential of webcomics, or we risk losing the very distinctiveness that gives webcomics that oft-touted Infinite Potential.

Darwinism

William G.: Print comics have prestige? And have gotten their acts together?

When did that happen? Last I looked, variant cover mania was still running wild.

Truthfully, if there is going to be any working relationship between the web and print, it'll be as the web acting as a sort of farm system for print publishers. And that WILL leave web designed works out in the cold. Hell you can see web designed works getting the short of the stick already. All of those "update notification/ list" type sites don't have the sophistication to handle infinite canvas comics, let alone a Tarqin Engine/ Flash/ IC based work.

These comics won't represent the future, unfortunately.

The sad fact remains that the world of the webcomic is dominated by people who are just biding their time until the print industry comes a-calling. They design their webcomics for print because deep in their heart, they know they went to the web just because it was the only place they could get published. They do not care for the artistic medium that is the webcomic and what it can be used for. For them, it's just a way for them to get a taste of micro-celebrity while they wait for their four color knight in shining armor to take them to the Android's Dungeon & Baseball Card Shop.

But I don't see the webcomic world becoming stagnant. It already is. It's become a mirror version of print, dominating genres, very little innovation, and everyone who comes on board wants to get a piece of what little pie is left by offering the same thing with a new ribbon on top.

Unless the necessary demographic shift I'm hoping for does occur and the webcomic choices are limited. Then what's available will become a commodity. But that shift has to happen if the web is to compete on the same level. Basically, those Surface Sixes need to go away and return in far lesser numbers.

As it stands now, with their parent companies keeping the print industry afloat, there is more of an opportunity for a larger number of people (not by much, mind you) to earn a living from comics. Where as the web seems to offer nothing but a fanbase that will attack anything you link to in your blog for you.

Can the web get it's act together and become a viable entertainment medium? Yes, but it needs a bit of Darwinism first.

Will it? Only by accident. Or by the force of a powerful web-personality to push it along. However, the people who have the motivation to do so aren't popular enough to pull it off, and those who are popular enough to change it, won't do so because changing the status quo may harm their position at the top.

The ego rush that comes from web micro-celebrity is far more important than improving the medium you're working in, after all.

Garrity: Well, let's just KILL OURSELVES NOW.

If it weren't for the enthusiasm I saw from the webcomics crowd at Comic-Con, I would have agreed that this year was a bust. Remembering the weekend-long crowds at the Pants Press booth and the swarm of creators -- dozens of creators, all of them enthusiastic, many of them damn good -- heading off to Scott McCloud's dinner, I can't agree. The web creators and fans at Comic-Con seemed especially invigorated compared to the print comics people, who, more than ever, seemed to be scrambling after media tie-ins and utterly bored with comics. I mean, the graphic novel that generated the most buzz was "Bone," the last comic of the '90s indie boom. There's actually a lot of interesting stuff happening in print comics right now -- the manga explosion, works like "Persepolis" and "In the Shadow of No Towers" doing crazy bookstore sales, reprint projects from "The Complete Peanuts" to the upcoming new Smithsonian collection -- but it's all happening outside the established comics industry and its rickety infrastructure. The "mainstream" thinks the big comics event of the year was "Spider-Man 2."

I don't see the increasing shift to print as necessarily a bad thing; in fact, I think it has to happen for webcomics to survive economically and expand to a wider audience. (Yeah, yeah, stuff like PvP already has more readers than "Spider-Man." Whoop-de-shit. It doesn't have more readers than "Shonen Jump" -- and the "Shonen Jump" readers PAY.) It's a mistake to think of print comics as the enemy. At the end of the day, it's all sequential art.

However, I am concerned, as I said earlier, about web-specific comics getting ignored. To a degree, this has always been a problem, from the day "Kevin and Kell" started getting more hits than "Argon Zark." Experimental creators like Patrick Farley, Cat Garza, D. Merlin Goodbrey, and Tracey White (way to read straight off Scott McCloud's links list, Shaenon) are never going to be as popular as the more accessible gag strips and manga soaps. That's fine. "Tarnation" isn't burning up the box office like "The Polar Express." But experimental art can survive, as it does in other media, if a structure exists to support these works and the people who enjoy them. That's why we need critical/review sites that can call attention to the non-blockbusters on the Web. And we need to make it possible for webcartoonists to make money directly from the Web, not just from print.

Money is the big missing piece in the webcomics puzzle. And, to jarringly jump metaphors, I don't think a magic bullet is coming along anytime soon. My best-case hope is that subscriptions and BitPass will become more commonplace and accepted. I think the real secret disappointment of 2004 was that, after two years of slow but steady growth, Modern Tales revenues plateaued. It may be that MT just expanded a little too far in 2003; there are now four anthology sites and several single-series sites, a lot for readers to handle. But if this turns out to be the farthest the subscription model can go for the foreseeable future, we could be in trouble.

Not necessarily a lot of trouble. Obviously, a great many creators are happy to keep creating for the Web even if the pay is crap. But if we want webcomics to be more than a testing ground for amateurs (which, mind you, is not entirely a bad thing; the American comics industry is desperately in need of a testing ground for amateurs), if we want to be able to entice good new creators into experimenting with web-only work, we have to improve the revenue options online.

One more thing: there is no getting rid of the Surface Sixers, and I don't think chasing them kids off our virtual lawn should be our goal. Pretty much every creator goes through a period of emulating/totally ripping off her heroes, and every creator goes through a period of unpolished, uninspired work. Raise your hand if you haven't been guilty of either of these crimes against Comics. The important thing is to urge young creators to move on to better, more original work. Unfortunately, as I think we all know, it's easy for some webcomics enclaves to get inbred and complacent, for some webcomics creators to remain willfully ignorant of the work being done by other artists and lose interest in improvement or experimentation. It's also easy for critics like ourselves to get depressed by the huge amount of crap out there, and how popular some of it is, and forget that there's also a lot of good stuff, and quite a bit of it is coming from very young creators.

Yes, I'm a starry-eyed idealist, and I'm sure everyone's rolling their eyes by now. But I'm cautiously very optimistic about webcomics, maybe because it was only a few years ago that nobody seriously thought they could be any good, or make any money, at all. Come on -- I've been around long enough to remember when everyone but Cat Garza sucked.

Von Flue: Man. Bill never disappoints... and neither does Shaenon... Two totally different outlooks and I agree with them both.

Despite all the great reasons Shaenon came up with for why this year didn't seem to suck as much, I think we all agree it did, there should have been much more stuff to talk about. I think this is because we have everything we need in place, except the readers willing to pay. And we're gonna be in stasis till they show up.

I would like to see advertising targeted somewhere else than at existing comics book readers, or webcomics fans. I'd like to see ads in webzines and art mags, print ads, articles in your local papers. I think we have grown to fill our tank here. We've got about as much as we can out of the spillover from print. It's time to go out from our father's house and find new readers (especially readers that don't think $.25 is a lot to pay for a comic reading experience. Heck, even readers who remember paying $.25 for a comic!)

We've got work waiting for them. It's more diverse than print, more readily available. Cheaper. There are a variety of payment methods they can use, a variety of ways they can support us. There an infrastructure of diverse commentary and criticism. Let's go find real people and bring them back. We've got about all the blood we can out of the turnip in the cape.

Campbell: I may have some perspective here. FANS, my first and best-known comic at this writing, was created in print and transplanted to the Web. I most definitely did get into the Web because it was the only available publishing platform. But as soon as I was there, I started exploring: infinite canvas, repeating backgrounds, limited color, music.

Unfortunately, this made most of my early work unprintable, despite the fact that it never really got as "Webbish" as most Web-only comics. In the early days, I didn't care about this-- we'd taken our shot at print and failed, after all. But time went on, the series got more cachet... and then joined Modern Tales just as MT was experimenting with some POD books.

It killed me to turn down the chance to put the entire body of work in print. Killed me. But the result would have been too much work for too little payoff-- for the reader. Not to mention me.

Darn tootin' I'm not making this mistake twice. I'll be dabbling a bit in the Web's possibilities in future works, but I think my "Web- only" days are behind me.

As for The Future of Webcomics...

It may behoove us to remember that the people at this table do not perfectly represent the ENTIRE webcomics community. We're heavily weighted toward Modern Tales in here, a company founded on the idea of "lower readership, fairer compensation."

I support the Modern Tales model (GOD KNOWS), but it's designed to work with the existing overall webcomics audience. Expanding that audience takes a different (read: advertiser- and merchandise- supported) approach.

The really outrageous success stories of the last ten years are strips like PENNY ARCADE, SLUGGY FREELANCE and USER FRIENDLY, none of which could be accused of targeting only "fans of comics." They found TANGENTIAL audiences, people who didn't necessarily read comics but were kindly disposed to the form and devoted to the target topics of gaming, science fiction and Linux-friendly geekery. SOMETHING POSITIVE reaches out to cynics of Generation Y. MEGATOKYO *does* reach out to fans of romantic manga, but that group was large enough, and poorly served enough, at its debut to give it a strong following.

It is THOSE stories that we should be studying if we want to get serious about widening the audience. They're the ones with daily readerships in the six and seven figures. That's what I call REALLY making a dent.

William G: I find myself having to agree with Mr. T (Campbell) here. As much as we like to think of comics as art there are far too many people who still see it as "only" entertainment, and the current trends in entertainment is to market to the public's increasingly self- indulgent tastes. Niche marketing. Of course, for the web, it's the nerd niche. One glance through the top twenty shows that off pretty well.

So, this means that the next super successful web artist needs to find a subculture that's not currently being served and make a comic for them. It's a cynical way to make art, but I suppose if you don't see your life's work as art, then you won't have to worry about looking at yourself in the mirror and saying, "Hack!"

Well, it's also possible to create the right comic, with the right themes, at the right time, so I shouldn't be so mean. "Love and Rockets", is a good example. As are/were "MegaTokyo" and "Kung-fool"

Maybe it's time to borrow a page from the trend-makers and start trying to find out what the kids are digging and ride it for all it's worth? I think the artists who will do that, will be successful.

Campbell: Well, as I see it, we can pursue the art form or we can pursue an audience or we can pursue a little bit of both. If we WANT to develop our artworks with no regard at all for their commercial marketability, we can do that. That's what the underground comix movement did. The movement only lasted a few years and only left a few legacies. But WHAT a few years. And WHAT legacies.

But I want a healthy webcomics field, and to me that means VARIETY-- variety of comics and variety of readers. In such a field, there would certainly be room for those who take "comics as art NOT entertainment" as far as it can go. But the readership for such strips would be replenished by other, more "digestible" properties. And if that sounds like rationalization, ask yourself: how accessible was the first comic you read and liked? Most people don't start on the hard stuff.

Of course, I tend to see more value to the entertaining comics than even this... but that's another discussion.

Zabel: I see things differently. I don't think we need Darwinism, and I don't think we need better advertising or better payment systems.

I also don't think we need to blur the distinction further between web and print. I agree with Alex that there shouldn't be arbitrary and pointless distinctions between web and print; and I think it's very useful to develop a comics market that easily transitions from web to print and vice-versa. But the web is a unique location where unprecedented opportunities exist. It should be a medium unto itself that we regard with fierce pride, a sense of belonging and loyalty.

What we need are more artists who have the drive and imagination to push webcomics to the outer reaches of excellence. We need people who have enormous, unsquashable dedication to their craft, over arduous expanses of time. I think that's one thing print has that we'll have trouble getting-- everything is so easy for us, so we don't develop the survival skills print cartoonists have evolved in the "off" years.

If we have artists who are incredibly talented and incredibly dedicated, the paying audience will come. If the whole world is talking about the astounding work artist X is doing, then paying customers will start to flood whatever subscription, bitpass, or advertising site artist X is working for.

But that kind of public attention doesn't come easily. It requires enormous effort and insane ambition. It requires rare talent. And of course it requires time.

So to sum up-- pride, dedication, patience, talent, and insanity is what we need more of.

William G: Joe, I agree that the motivated people can get things moving, but that's Darwinism in action. There probably will be audience spillover from those highly motivated webcomics, but when a new creature arrives on the scene, the will locals need to adapt to match pace. Any webcomic artist that fails to adapt to the new energetic webcomics world that you envision will likely be forgotten. And if anything, what you suggest would probably be the catalyst for my predicted reduction of webcomics.

I do sort of look forward to it, even though I know it'll mean the end for me.

But I'm not sweating it. As the classic Canadian song goes, "We're here for a good time, not a long time. So have a good time. The sun can't shine every day."

Artists of the Future

Zabel: Ok, I wanted to ask one more question, a good closure question--

Which artist or artists working now do you think is exemplary of the future direction of webcomics?

Garrity: The Pants Pressers and Kazu Kibuishi. Very young, very talented, and raised within the Nouveau Web: the artsy adolescent dreamworld of blogs and scanlations and Photoshop colors, not the graceless nuts-and-bolts nerd country that was the Internet when we old-timers were starting out. Whereas most of the early webcartoonists could write much better than they could draw (and, mind you, they couldn't necessarily write all that well), the new kids are gifted, flexible artists whose shared flaw is a tendency to embrace visual style over story substance. For the most part, they all do print-friendly work. They made their print debuts this year via "Flight," and I suspect that the coming years will see them moving comfortably between Web and print. For better or worse, they're a forerunner of things to come.

William G: I think Amy Ganter, Hard, Fred Ghallager, and Ghastly are creating the sort of comics that will represent the future. The manga-style artists have tapped into the growing cultural juggernaut that is translated Japanese manga. And with all of the kids who are reading it now, what gets filtered through them will be what we'll be seeing in five to ten years.

Campbell: Most exemplary artist of the future? I like Bill and Shaenon's hypotheses for the NEAR future, like the next few years or so.

Beyond that, I'd honestly say there's no way to tell. I never would have guessed it'd be anything like PENNY ARCADE, five years ago, and that's not just because I was a lot dumber then. One thing I love about webcomics is that they're a dynamic chemical stew of influences-- the newspaper strip, the alt-comic, the superhero comic and the manga are all making their voices felt, but so are influences that have never factored into comics before, like the heavy college-student concentration in the audience and the medium's gale-force interactivity. This makes 'em tough to call.

Now the stuff that's most exemplary of the future of the direct market? Oh, probably SPIDER-MAN #ELEVEN-OCTILLION-EIGHTY-SEVEN.

Zabel: I pick Jenn Manley Lee as an artist who represents the future of webcomics. Lee's work doesn't indulge in any flashy new techniques or formats; in fact, her pages are a lot like print comics pages.

What I find forward-looking about Lee's work is that she's carefully crafting a complex, long-running saga that will slowly build a loyal readership. Her writing is not easily understood in short doses, but for the patient reader it's addictive. It's not overflowing with 'tude, but instead reveals her characters' personalities at a leisurely pace. And it's the very antithesis of the boiler-plate gag strip that has proliferated on the web.

Lee is also forward-looking because of her dedication to craft and quality. Her artwork looks good today, but it will also look good twenty years from now. It's not a captive to trends; it is not rushed in order to meet a publishing schedule.

Lee's work can stand shoulder to shoulder with any comics creator working in print; in fact, it's likely that her saga will one day become a bestselling printed graphic novel. But it's logical right now for her to be creating for the web, since a lot of the appeal of Dicebox is its subtle coloring, which would be very expensive to reproduce in print.

For webcomics to have a bright future, we need to attract more artists to the medium who have the dedication, ambition, and independent spirit to produce their best work. Lee is one of those artists.

Danner: I love that everyone has pinned the future on such different factions -- because everyone's right, of course. The manga-influenced comics and the newspaper/daily-gag strips aren't going away anytime soon. I do think Shaenon's right that the Flight-type creators represent The Next Big Thing, but I don't see them supplanting The Old Big Thing -- just adding to the mix. The future of webcomics doesn't lie in any particular school of webcomics -- it lies in striving for the broadest possible diversity.

I would love for Joe to be right about Jenn Manley Lee representing the new wave of creators. But I don't see that happening, if only because she's such a tough act to follow. Most people simply don't have her extraordinary talents or ambition. Even if she does inspire more people to try that route, few will be able to produce results that stand in the same sphere as Lee's work. Though she certainly does provide a wonderful goal to strive for.

Von Flue: I don't think I can come up with one person who best exemplifies the future of webcomics. I would say in terms of narrative experimentation, I think E-Merl represents where we should be going. In terms of more formal experimentation, Cat Garza used to be the guy (there's an IF vacuum currently, right?). I think in terms of content and stories we can look to DKK, Jenn Manley Lee, and others (although I think these rely on the look of print too much to be the future of webcomics. I'd like to see a truly "native" webcomic, that wasn't penciled or inked or somehow designed for print AND the web). And I think even our own Shaenon Garrity represents the kind of personality we should have in webcomic's future.

I can't pin it on one person and that's good, isn't it?

Stevenson: It bothered me that I couldn't come up with a name, any name to represent the future of webcomics. I started visiting the comic sites of creators I admire and looking through their links. Ninety-five percent of the links would be recognizable to webcomic fans, but something less than five percent of them were to places I hadn't been. Those numbers might seems predictable, but I think there's something to them. There are little holes in the webcomics world, and the future of the medium lies on the other side. For example, I stumbled through one onto a relatively new artist critique forum. A significant portion of the work there was absolutely beautiful, at least on par with some of what we toss around as the best in webcomic art, but few if any of these artists have any intention of creating webcomics. They're headed into animation or graphic design. At the same time, the content and style of their sketches relied heavily on the comic tradition.

As the sites I visited were those of creators who I would consider artists first and writers second, I am sure the same trend could be found in writing. The best representation of the future of webcomics is some meeting of those two worlds, maybe in the form of talented writer/artist individuals but more likely in the form of partnerships. For either group to crawl through those holes though, webcomics will have to become more profitable. One of the profit models has to become more successful and on a larger scale. Therefore, my future of webcomics representative would be an unknown comic strip creator, head covered with a paper bag, a webcomic Murray Langston, too embarrassed by the prospect of having to earn a living on the Gong Show, but wanting work that paid.

Murray never took the bag off his head.

Zabel: On that ironic note, we conclude this roundtable. Thanks, everybody! And thanks to the devoted readers who have made it this far!

All images copyright 2004 by their creators.