Exiern

“Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny.”
- Dan, a guy at a Comic Con 2009 who was quoting a Saturday Night Live skit that was parodying Erogon point out the similarities of the movie to Star Wars by using the to the words said by Yoda a character written by George Lucas who based his writing on the archetypical hero’s journey the book “The hero with 1000 faces” by Joseph Campbell that in this case was summarizing the dualism of eastern philosophy that was handed down by the disciples of Buda and Confucius who claimed to simply being conveying revealed truths of the universe.

So I guess a proper citation would be:

“Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny.”
- The universe

So almost exactly 3 years ago I expressed some ambivalence about having nude pictures in the members area of Exiern:

http://exiern.blogspot.com/2007/09/thoughts-from-darkside.html

At the time it was the only way to keep the comic running and keep the artist paid. For the last 3 years it really has saved the comic on a number of occasions. With the once a week update schedule I could not build an audience to support the comic through normal channels. So there had to be nudity or the comic had to close up shop.

Now I have tried my best to keep the characterization positive and also I am pretty equal opportunity with the stripping. Man or woman you will be divested of your vest at some point and probably end up the opposite gender in the process.

In general I try to follow the wonderful quote by Cheris Kramarae; “Feminism is the radical notion that women are people.” Although granted that in Exiern some of the women are men and a few of them men are women this concept gets a little muddy but you get the point. I try to keep the women in the comic PEOPLE at all time. They are just people that we want to see naked.

Still the nudity is a cop out. It’s a way to squeeze more money out of the comic at the cost of some of the integrity of the story. I am not 100% convinced it is misogynistic, the calculation that naked=objectification is a very Taliban sort of math that I don’t agree with. But it is sloppy. It’s is basically saying my story can’t stand on its own merits.

Now I have already said that in the past Exiern could not stand on it’s own without the added nitro boost of an occasional nudie picture. But we are in a different era now. Our new artist is crazy prolific to the point where I can’t keep up with him script wise. I could move the update schedule to 3 times a week. It is possible that I could end the policy of having naked people and still be able to get enough cash out of the system to sustain the comic. It would probably cut profits by a third but a third of what we are making could sustain Exiern.

Today is the last of the scripted nudity in the comic. It ends with a whimper instead of a roar of a glimpse of some priestly members and a half covered nipple. But at this point the script is wide open and I could just steer things away from the burlesque side of things.

I am standing at the crossroad given an opportunity to reconsider the choice I made 3 years ago on this very day actually.  I could turn back.

“Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny.”

But I won’t.  Exiern will stay what it has become for a number of reasons.

I could sustain Exiern on 1/3rd the income but the point is that the other 2/3rds of that income has been going to other projects.  Knit Princess and Blade Bunny paid  by the excess from Exiern’s revenues.   If I turn my back on Exiern’s business model I have to kill these projects. If you think Exiern is sexist (I don’t agree with that but if you do) then is the price of making it less “sexist” by killing the very sweet and positive comic of Knit Princess worth it?

On top of that the “sexyness” over the past 3 year has become what Exiern is about. Exiern is a sexy transgender fantasy comedy. That is what the story is about that is the style of the both the art and prose and frankly I have come to enjoy that. Exiern is freeing in a way. It’s silly and sexy and just plain fun. To change that now would be a betray of the comic and the audience.

When I first started down this path I worried about portraying women as just bodies to be lusted over. To reinforce a stereo type that is very detrimental and just plain wrong. But by treating men and women equally by messing up who is who and what’s what I got to a new place and more interesting place. A place that’s about having fun and not getting too wrapped up in the puritanical restrictions of society. Naked /= Objectification if everybody’s getting naked.

“Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny.”

It is true but who every said the dark path was the wrong way to take? Well technically Yoda did but he’s just a puppet. When did you ever get good advice from a puppet outside of the difference of “Near” and “Far”.

Don’t get me wrong there are some real dangers with making a “sexy” comic;

Nudity undermines the integrity of your story. It makes it less serious. But if you are shooting for less serious then that’s not a problem.

Nudity will cause people to dismiss your comic off hand as porn and call you’re a pornographer. Once you use nudity in your work there is no turning back from that. You can spend the rest of your life writing children’s books you will still be a pornographer. It’s a compelling reason not to start down this path but not a very compelling reason to stop once you started.

(One addendum to this rule is that if you are a woman you don’t fall into this trap. After all women can’t be perverted only men. A woman making a sex comic is just liberated. If I ever make another comic like Exiern I am going make an online persona of Miss Girly Fem Vagaina a 18 year old ex-cheerleader who likes crochet, flowers, RPG’s and dating men who call themselves feminists. Miss Girly stopped cheerleading because she wanted to make a comic and date men who would support her empowerment. Not a single troll will complain about the comic no matter how perverted it is.)

Nudity can support bad writing. Forcing nudity into a scene where it doesn’t belong will make your writing bad. Good writing will decrease your sales were pointless cheese cake will give you’re a boost in revenue. But you must keep your writing good otherwise you are going to be straying into the world of objectification and eventually the comic will collapse.

All and all I would suggest avoiding nudity in a story. But if you are going to do it do it well because once you do there really is no turning back.

“Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny.”

And to that quote I would like to add the all time best Firefly quote:

“Well, here I am”

Now it will come to no surprise to you when I say “I don’t like Scott Kurtz”. This will come to no surprise because I have made some rather public statements in the past about how he is a horrible human being. It will also come as no surprise because the statement “I don’t like Scott Kurtz” is like the statement “I breath air as part of a metabolic process to produce energy” in that while the statement is not true for every life form on the planet it comes as no surprise when a life form declares it.

Now let me take a movement to say that PVP is a fine comic and there is nothing wrong with Scott’s work. That doesn’t change the fact that Scott Kurtz the individual is a braggart, bully and really has contributed nothing positive to society and I personally believe that he should be throw into the nearest volcano so that the races of man can once again learn to live in peace and harmony. But PVP is a fine comic. Scott is a very good cartoonist he is just a failure as a human being

That being said I truly believe Scott Kurtz deserved to win the Harvey awards for best online work this weekend. Let me explain why.

I am a member of webcomics.com. I would not recommend the site unless you are looking to make a gag-a-day type webcomic and you are not looking to collaborate with an artist as site has a is rather narrow focus. But I am a member because a few people I am friends with said it was good and because I have a deep and abiding respect for Brad Guigar. This again should come as no surprise since the statement “I like Brad Guigar” is about ubiquitous as “I don’t like Scott Kurtz” and “I breath air”.

The site cost 30 buck for per year so it’s a pay site with that there is sort of a social contract that this will be an ad free zone. So I was a little annoyed when Scott spammed the site with a post soliciting votes for the Harvey awards. It was shameless self-serving and really unprofessional. And I resolved to vote against Scott in the awards in that moment since I am a comic “professional” under the Harvey awards definition.

So I download the Harvey awards ballot and looked over the competition to find the best place to put my vote. This is what I saw:

High Moon – A good comic that is part of Zuda. Zuda as you know is the company that pulled all their online works from the web earlier this year. So the first competitor is not an online work if you want to be technical in that online works should be posted online. I am just picky like that.

Ok, so I have to reject that one. But there are 3 more competitors

Power Out – … What the hell is that? Well it’s hosted on Activate a site that has good comic. Sam and Lita kicks ass after all. So I pop over to Activate and look for this “Power Out” half hour later I can’t find the bloody comic. Yet another online work that is not “online” or at least so well hidden that it might as well not be online.

Moving along then, still have 2 left, I am sure they are going to be awesome.

Sin Titulo – Why the hell have I never heard of these comics? What the heck is a Sin Titulo? I am part of the webcomic community. I listen to the podcast and keep an eye on new comics. Why are all these comics completely unknown to me?

So I look at Sin Titulo. Fortunately it is online so it has a leg up over the last two. Unfortunately is it the dullest thing I have ever read. It may just be me but I don’t get this comic. I get through 6 pages before I have to call it quits. But perhaps I am being unfair. Perhaps Sin Tutulo is a wildly popular and well written comic that and I am just too ignorant to appreciate.

A quick look at the Alexa stats says that as far as being popular this is not true. Sin Titulo doesn’t even rank on Alexa. It’s stats are too low. This is a completely unknown comic.

Alright one more comic left. All my hopes are pined here,

Hark! A Vagrant – … Crap. Ok, I know this comic and a lot of people like it. I just don’t like it. Making fun of Ben Franklin? You know how some jokes are “too soon”. Like joking about how bad traffic is in NYC on September 12 2001. Hark! seems to me, to be jokes that are “too late”. “You ever notice how Mesopotamians walk like this, But tour Samaritans walk like this,” might have been a funny joke at the time but now it leaves me just scratching my head.

It’s well done and popular and probably the closest thing to competition in this list of comics. But still, I don’t really like the comic.

So am I so spiteful that I will vote for a comic I don’t like over a comic that I do think is well done just because the creator is a tremendous ass? No I am not that spiteful. I am plenty spiteful mind you but I am not going to insult my medium by voting for any of these other comics. Scott deserved to win this year Harvey awards when you compare PVP to the competition.

Now you could claim that the Harvey awards are all an insiders club and you don’t get nominated unless you know the right people, but that is not what this smells like. It seems more like laziness, not influence peddling. It looks like the committee just grabbed a bunch of random comic putting no research into the field. Sure it was people on the inside but that was more because the nominees were hastily written on a cocktail napkin one night in a bar. “Hey Stewartie makes a comic online doesn’t he? Sin something… Let’s put that on the list as well.”

All and all it’s a little insulting. Where is the ReMind, Gunnerkrig, Digger, Phoenix Requiem, Goblins, Sinfest, Oglaf, etc. Where are all the awesome innovative comics that are bursting on to the scene every day? Why didn’t the Harvey Awards do any research? It’s an embarrassment for them and an offence for the webcomic community. This is not a case of the big name overshadowing the independents. This is a case of a completely random selection of comic because the people in charge could not be bothered to actually think about online comics.

No, Scott deserved to win this years Harvey awards. And frankly if he was competing against a real selection of competitors not 2 comics that aren’t online, and unknown comic and Kate he probably still would deserve to win. If anyone should be insulted by this completion it should be Scott Kurtz because the Harvey Awards made his award completely meaningless.

I can’t wait for the crash to come; when the big companies collapse because there is so much quality work online. When the Harvey awards will be taken over by a new breed of professional who stock and trade is online. Granted it still will not be fair. Awards never really are. But at leas the new old boys network will actually care about this collection of tubes we cal the internet.

So you know I can’t spell. I have been thinking about the best way to correct that problem. Many of you have offered to edit the pages but the problem I have had with that in the past is reaching and editor in time for publication. The solution I came up with is instead on having one editor why not allow anyone who whats to edit be an editor by posting a proof of the page online before posting it in the main comic. This is what the new site; http:/editor.exiern.com is for. Preview of upcoming exiern pages will be posted there before they hit the live site. If there is a spelling error a user can comment and I will correct the error before it goes live.

The first two pages for next week have been posted:
http://editor.exiern.com/?p=9

Thanks in advance for those of you helping out to make the comic better.

Well I wanted point out this months donation comic because it’s a bigun.  9 pages of cat girl fun.  Granted this is more a humor comic than a people get naked comic with a rating of only PG on the whole thing.  But it was fun to write and I hope fun to read.

The second thing I want to mention is about the site TV tropes (http://tvtropes.org) an Exiern reader pointed me to the site because a troll was running amok with the Exiern listing.  Troll are not really a big deal, you can’t really fight people like that all you can do is ignore them.

However a look around the site I noticed that many of the links to Exiern on listing are broken or out of date.  Since TV tropes is a wiki anyone can edit the site.  I though I would ask you guy to talk a look and update the site so Exiern is properly represented.  Thanks in advance.

There are a few troll posts in the review section.  Just simply ignore those.  Remember don’t feed the trolls.

So we are on track for a new page of Exiern on Friday with our new artist Shipeng Lee, a vetrerin artist from the Drow Tales webcomic as well as a few other.  Just to give you a little teaser here is are the inks for the the next 3 pages:

This month we have a new wallpaper of Ctyx and Mira from these comics:

No Talking

A Glove Story

The funny thing is that Ctyx and Mira were throw away characters. Ctyx was introduced just so Faden could get off some funny lines and show that yes he is a bad guy.

Need a hand?

The interaction with Ctyx and his well developed friend Mira (seriously what do they feed the girls in the Grand Luminary Alliance) was and accident of miscommunication.  I wanted Fadens had to be pined by Tiffnay’s dagger only to be realased by some unsuspecting locals. The idea was to show that evil was still in the world and Faden was not quite gone. But Boom drew Tiffnay taking here dagger with here in this comic.

Not over yet

Suddenly my plans for the future were derailed. I wanted to do something with the hand but now there had to be a new catalyst to release the evil. Ctyx a boy who had lost his hand seemed like option for that. Mira was added as a moral counterpoint to Ctyx

I commissioned this wallpaper because people seemed to like the characters. I was vague what I told the artist to do. I just said put the to character in a scene together. I didn’t expect it to turn out so dramatic.

I got to say that this image has got my imagination churing. I don’t really know what is going on here but I want to tell this story. There is some essential about these two. Something about the lure of power in opposition to the calling of friends and family. There is something here. I just don’t know what quite yet. But Ctyx and Mira will return. I am sure of that.

Hey just wanted to give a heads up that there is a new donation comic in the members area.  Mind Games talks about Tiffnays thought after Denver left her along in the woods.   The classic angel and demon show up on her shoulder but thing don’t go normally from that point on.

Well Boom is sick. He can’t draw right now. Let’s all wish him a speedy recovery.

To put the illness in a more global context, you all might have noticed we have been having a hard time keeping up with the updates. I wanted to speak for a moment about what is being done about that.

As I have said in the past at this point Boom is Exiern. He really is a wonderful artist to work with and despite the interruptions we are experience right now quite reliable. So for right now on that front the updates on Exiern are going to be erratic until Boom’s life gets less toxic.

However I have to take responsibility for the effect this has the readership. Now there are Exiern has two type of readers the readers who read the free comic and the one s who pay for the exclusive content.

For the free content readers it would easy enough to say “well it’s a free comic you get what you pay for”. However I believe that this statement is fundamentally wrong. Readers invest their time in comic when they read it. They contributing material to the comic by talking about it one the web and generally integral to the success of a comic. Even if an online reader is not giving you money they are “paying” for the comic and deserve to be treated with the respect you give any other customer.

That being said there is not much good news for the public reader. I have been scrambling around to get extra material and everything gone south. There seems to be a global curse of illness chaos and death that is plaguing the artist community. I thought I would personally pay for a few more pages of Dark Reflection but Kraken has been bogged down as well so no luck there. My normal filler artist pool is completely backed up. And I have burned through all my back up art. For this month we’re screwed unless an artist suddenly appears who can crank out pages overnight.

Long term I have been working on getting a sister comic to up and running. Not Dark Reflections, because of the some nebulousness in the ownership of that property it’s never going to be more than an online comic. The new comic, like Exiern, would have a transformation theme but the setting would be different. This comic would update once a week like Exiern as well and share a member’s area Exiern. The problem is I can’t find a bloody artist for it. I have had 3 artists agree to it and then just disappear. And it’s not like I am asking them to do it for free. I am offering a competitive commission rate for the comic and every artist I find for the project seems to disintegrate into the ether the moment I send the contract. So the upshot is that is going to take some time to get online you probably won’t see it till August.

For the paying members the situation similarly bleak for this month, but it gets better faster. I’ve commissioned 5 new donation comics to be placed in the members area. Unfortunately remember the global artist plague/curse. It seems to be troubling the donation comic artists as well. I have been having the darnest time getting people to do any commission work for me at all.

Basically what I am saying is that I know there is a problem and I am trying to fix it. But with out an artist willing to take Government back legal tender in exchange for goods and services (which honestly is the problem I am running into here) the solution is going to be delayed.

• Boom is going to try and get the remaining comics in for this month.
• In April I have a filler artist coming in (I hope).
• By May we should have built up a little buffer to carry us through to July.
• Also in May a new donation comic should be posted and a new one every month after.
• In July-August a new Exiern style comic should be launching.
• In October Jessica Alba will beg me to take her as my devoted love-slave because frankly just because I plan for something to happen doesn’t mean it will happen. I just personally feel that you the readers should know what I am trying to do to fix this problem.

So a couple months ago I submitted a story to www.365tomorrows.com low an behold look what showed up today:

Good Humor by Eric Kimball

For those of you who don’t know 365 is a cool site that posts “flash fictions”, small stories that you can read in a sitting or listen to in a few minutes.   Perfect for internet browsing.   I really like the site.

Any way check out the story and let me know what you think.