For the next couple of weeks I’m going to be posting a paragraph on seven weekly webcomics I consider worth reading. The schedule will run Tuesday to Thursday for the first week, and then Monday to Thursday for the week leading up to Halloween. These comics range from fantasy to science fiction, comedy to drama, and mixtures of these varied genres. I’m not going to rate these comics as the “best” weekly-updating comics (as such a rating would be purely subjective in any event). Instead, these are some comics I figure my readers might enjoy that won’t significantly increase their reading schedule (outside of the required archive-crawl that comes with any new comic), but I do enjoy all of them and recommend them to my readers.

Unfortunately I didn’t have time to include graphics for these write-ups. But I think a lack of graphics is a small price to pay for content while I’m sans-Internet for the next two weeks. Take care, gang!

I decided to take him up on the offer and stopped reading, until a month had passed. And then I paused for another month… and then decided to see if EGS improved any with a longer delay… going for two months between readings. Eventually I decided to go for broke and see if even longer periods of not reading the comic improved it any. That’s when the experiment broke down. A third month passed and I paused at the start of a new storyline… and had a bad feeling about it. So I procrastinated. A fourth month passed. Finally after five months had passed I swore enough was enough. And over the last two weeks I’ve slowly forced myself to catch up on the comic.

The funny thing is, I’ve experienced this sensation before. It’s the same feeling I had way back when I was drawing the webcomic Tangents… and started missing updates. The more time that passed between an update, the harder it became to start updating again. Finally, unhappy with the direction of the comic it went onto hiatus (and eventually was lost from the web; my only copy is in a hard drive that suffered data corruption). In short, I had gone into a reader hiatus. The more time passed between reading updates, the less I wanted to read the comic.

This is a shame, as the problems I’ve had with the comic during my last couple of reviews (around ten months ago) have mostly passed. While Shive continues to have an unfortunate desire to empower his cast rather than allow their personalities carry the story, he has started to focus more on the characters and less on various hijinks. Even the recent conflicts between Super-Ella and various summoned critters (and the concurrent conflict with Grace and other summoned critters) were fairly concise and didn’t dwell on pointless conflict. (I must admit I was puzzled as to the antagonists of the story, but I suppose ultimately it doesn’t matter.)

It is true that some comics are best read in one sitting. For City of Reality and Cheshire Crossing (which unfortunately looks to be dead at this point), comics designed to be read one chapter at a time, it can work well. But when you have a comic like El Goonish Shive, reading the comic one storyline at a time becomes more problematic, and what started out as a reading vacation almost ended up with me dropping the comic.

Naturally the best method of examining this venue lies with Megatokyo’s more recent past. For the last couple of years, Gallagher has been creating the comic digitally, using a graphics tablet to map out, draw, and hatch the comic. For the last year he’s been using the streaming video program UStream during much of the creation process, allowing fans to watch as the comic takes shape. Periodically he’ll indulge in some silliness while doing this, creating a series of digital omakes where a teddy bear (given the moniker of “Snarky Bear” by viewers) in the comic will come to life and ridicule the characters, Gallagher himself, and the situation. In addition, Gallagher will watch the chat discussion as he draws and will often pause in the art to briefly comment on something being said or questions that viewers may have.

From a time management perspective one flaw is immediately relevant: the social networking aspect of UStream and taking time out while drawing to talk to his fanbase. While it’s understandable (and in some ways necessary) for a webcartoonist to interact with readers in order to connect with them, doing so during the creative process impedes on that process and slows creation of the comic. These are often established readers, many of whom already are on the comic’s forum (where Gallagher also interacts fairly regularly with fans). In some ways, it’s become almost a game among UStream viewers to get Gallagher to respond to some comment of theirs (one that I’ve indulged in from time to time, which is perhaps one reason why I’m more lenient concerning MT’s update schedule seeing I’ve a small amount of responsibility for the delays, even if a fairly minor one).

Don’t get me wrong. I understand that webcartoonists want to share the creative process with their readers, and it helps strengthen bonds between the cartoonist and part of the fanbase. Unfortunately, it’s only part of the fanbase, and not even necessarily a large segment either. Given the difficulties in getting UStream to work as a viewer and on the hoops viewers need to jump through to join the ongoing chat, streaming video of the creative process ends up becoming an exclusive fanclub that ultimately slows the creation of the comic. If a webcartoonist is fairly efficient in other venues then this may not matter much… but ultimately it can be more trouble than it’s worth.

The next problem is one that most people wouldn’t consider a time sink: technological innovation. Specifically, the creation of art through a digital venue, eliminating the entire ink-on-paper aspect of the comic. Now, I can hear the cries already: the use of graphic tablets allows artists to bypass the scanning and clean-up stages of the comic, which saves time. And on the surface, this would appear to be a valid argument. But in practice, this ends up not to be the case, as the case study of Gallagher’s Megatokyo will show.

Over the past year I’ve watched Gallagher work on Megatokyo on a fairly regular basis, often at different points of the creative process. To be honest, it’s fascinating the amount of work that goes into the comic, including initial rough sketches akin to storyboarding, which are then lightened and used as a guide (similar to blue pencil preliminary sketches) while Gallagher starts work on the final draft of the comic. At times these roughs will be tossed out entirely when he decides something didn’t work, and at times entire finished products are thrown out when he decides that the art just doesn’t work.

It’s quick. It’s easy. With just a couple clicks of the mouse (or more likely the stylus) he will throw away several hours of work because he was dissatisfied with it. The paper equivalent would be to grab the paper you were drawing on, crumpling it up, and throwing it in the waste bin. And while it is (theoretically) easy to “undo” that action, I’ve rarely seen Gallagher do just that. Instead, he’ll go back to work trying to create something new… and often finally have to step away from the art session due to real-life concerns (such as caring for his young son or doing stuff for his wife), and all that work remains lost.

A less egregious example lies with the above-mentioned mini-omakes of Snarky Bear. Initially, Snarky Bear would appear with a message about Gallagher’s absence before he left UStream to do something in the real world. But slowly the character (and a couple similar characters) started making the rounds, periodically appearing to entertain viewers and growing in complexity in the process (though nowhere as near in complexity as the regular art).

Now, omakes are a tradition among manga and I must admit it would be amusing and quaint to see Gallagher create “Dead Piro Day” omakes with Snarky Bear and crew, quickly drawn in the omake tradition, to amuse readers during unforeseen delays in updates. But as they exist now, Snarky Bear’s appearances are ethereal and ultimately only delay the comic itself. They’re entertainment that serves no real purpose but to amuse Gallagher and his viewers… and ultimately, is that not the purpose of the comic itself? The only reason Snarky Bear exists then is due to the graphic tablet. Without the tablet, the comic would not be on UStream and Snarky Bear would not have appeared to viewers or gain a following.

The kicker lies, however, with the latest MT update which Gallagher drew by hand. Due to various problems this year, Gallagher decided to not attend any conventions (though later he did end up attending one convention which I think was fairly local for him). To make up for this, he created a Virtual Con where fans could buy sketches and pay for them online, after which he would draw them up and ship them out. He did this using Hammermill cardstock rather than creating the art electronically. And he noticed something: the creation of the sketches took a fraction of the time as drawing the comic itself.

So he decided to draw today’s comic on the Hammermill cardstock instead of online. It took a fourth of the time.

Yes, you heard me right. The comic took a fraction of the time it normally takes, despite the added time spent scanning and cleaning up the art afterward. I’m unsure how much of the final product was digitally produced or the amount of cleanup was needed to digitally tweak things, but the comic itself was created fairly quickly. In explaining this, Gallagher mentioned that he often will draw fine details in the digitally-created art, zooming in close to get detail just the way he wants it. Drawing on paper eliminates that ability, and simplified the process.

I have to think that the lack of online distractions and the greater permanence of the Hammermill comics (which discourages just throwing everything out and starting anew) also had a hand in speeding up production. As a result of this time savings, Gallagher is considering shifting back to drawing the comic by hand rather than digitally producing it. He hopes to return to two updates a week (though if the time savings was as great as he stated, I could see a theoretical return to three updates a week, perhaps after building up a small buffer).

Naturally, non-digital drawing won’t work for everyone, especially as most people utilize digital coloring for those comics that are in color. But as a base from which to build the art from, non-digital drawing may help cartoonists from encountering various time sinks that can significantly reduce productivity by inadvertently increasing complexity in the creative process.