Behold, the world of the future!
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Behold, the world of the future!
Posted at 12:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Thursday was a big day for the comic on the internet, as these things go.
TwitterMaster Roger Ebert (@ebertchicago) very kindly tweeted about a comic I did for the Village Voice in 2007, "Cormac McCarthy's Toy Story 3," and linked to an image of the comic. This became an instant sensation (again, as these things go), with hundreds of retweets, RTs, etc.
Unfortunately (through no fault of his own), Ebert's link was to a strange low-res advertisement-free jpeg image hosted by the Village Voice, so I don't believe the surge in traffic did the Voice any good at all. Further, Ebert did not refer to me or my twitter-me (@rubenbollilng) in his post, so it probably didn't do me any good at all either. This is also no fault of Ebert -- he's limited to 140 characters, he tweets something like a hundred times a day, and he has no obligation at all, obviously, to discover whether I have a twitter account he can publicize before he links to an image he likes. (When I found out about this going on, I tweeted about it, jokingly referring to his link as "unattributed," and he then jokingly made another tweet jokingly mentioning me twice, repeat, twice.)
Then I noticed that the Tom the Dancing Bug comic for this week (Nate, in "Risky Mangement") had climbed into the upper echelons of the reddit.com cover page Hot LIst, and this was also making it a hugely retweeted and referenced item on Twitter. There were almost 300 comments about the comic on reddit.com alone!
Unfortunately, the link on the reddit.com site was not to the site that had published that comic on Wednesday, boingboing.net, but was to a site that had apparently stolen the image off the boingboing site and put it up on their own: something called corporatecomplianceinsights.com
Now, how a site about corporate compliance with laws, rules and regulations can see a piece they think their readers would like and think it would be okay to violate copyright laws, copy the image and put it on their site is beyond me. But this meant that all the considerable traffic generated by the reddit.com posting was not going to the site that paid me to host the strip, boingboing.net, but to the site that stole the image and put it on their own.
So for all the activity generated, not much happened to those who had a stake in it. The Village Voice hosted the Toy Story 3 comic, but they get nothing from traffic passing over a jpeg image. Boingboing.net hosted the Nate comic, but they got nothing from corporatecomplianceinsights.com's apparent theft of the comic.
This world of marketing on the internet, which I've only just begun to dip my toe in, is wild. Sure, it's fun to get all the attention, but if the name of the game is attracting traffic, it's frustrating when you succeed in creating content that does so, but not to your sites. Something can blow up for 24 hours, then disappear completely, often leaving its creator bewildered and unsure if there was any benefit from it whatsoever.
My friend Tom Tomorrow (@tomtomorrow, www.thismodernworld.com; see how great I am at attribution?) said it well in a twitter to me about the corporate compliance site and reddit: "traffic whoring off content created several layers down the line is American ingenuity at work, circa 21st century."
Note 1: I did post a higher resolution version of the "Cormac McCarthy's Toy Story 3 comic" on this blog (below), and when I tweeted a link to it, that link got almost as much attention and traffic as Ebert's did, so I ended up with nothing much to complain about there.
Note 2: Someone from corporatecomplianceinsights.com did contact me Friday afternoon to very nicely apologize and offer to take the comic down.
Posted at 05:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Here, in a more legible format, is the comic that made the rounds on the internets today, thanks to Roger Ebert endorsing it on Twitter.
I created it specially for The Village Voice (where Tom the Dancing Bug ran for many years) in 2007 before "No Country For Old Men" came out.
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Posted at 08:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Posted at 10:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Following the lead of BoingBoing.net's series on real-life cannibal food mascots -- adorable cartoon animals encouraging humans to consume them and their species -- I present one of the very first Tom the Dancing Bug comics (the 18th, to be exact), depicting the ongoing adventures of Lyle the Talking Pig.
The next installment (there really is one) to be posted tomorrow.
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UPDATE 6/24: Here it is, the stunning conclusion to this Lyle the Talking Pig adventure:
Posted at 03:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
What connects the financial crisis to the oil spill crisis? Nate! And the corporate incentives he loves.
Posted at 02:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
I can't recommend this book enough. Cul de Sac is the daily comic strip successor to the Peanuts, Calvin & Hobbes, etc., line that we've all been waiting for. You should buy it now.
UPDATE: RIchard Thompson twittered that this was now available to order on Amazon, but on closer examination it looks like it's only available for PRE-order. Consider this a test of the Cul de Sac Golden Treasury Annoucement System. When the book is actually available you will receive further instructions.
UPDATEST: IT'S NOW AVAILABLE!
Posted at 03:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
This week, in Super-Fun-Pak Comix:
Percival Dunwoody, Idiot Time Traveler From 1909
Marital Mirth
Guy at Starbucks Writing a Screenplay
Three-Panel Biographies
Captain Dynamo & Paper Towel Man
and MUCH, MUCH MORE*
*provided you define "MUCH, MUCH MORE" as "The Seven Stages of an Actor's Career"
Posted at 12:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Posted at 01:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Regarding this week's comic:
"Dear Mr. Bolling:
"I posted a link to your latest Billy Dare on the Listserv for the AMI-the Association of Medical Illustrators, of which i am a member. Many of us have done micro-anatomy (histology) illustrations like yours for Big Pharma over the years, and could use some pointers. There may be a slide-talk speaking engagement in your future. Warm up your Powerpoint skills. Nice work."
Wow, thanks. After forty-five minutes of research and about six simple and inaccurate micro-anatomy drawings to my credit, I'm ready to pontificate. I'll send you my contract and rider (blue M&Ms only).
Posted at 01:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)