(Part of an impromptu mini-roundtable on the failure of TCJ.com)
A few days ago, Noah wrote to me about a critical endeavor that he is planning for the HU site. By the by, I mentioned that TCJ.com deserved another “kick in the butt” now that it had enough time to improve itself to which he responded that he was planning a little something on Sunday (read here).
Noah’s complaints are not the voice of a single cranky individual, they are merely some of the unvoiced grievances of a number of online reviewers and comics enthusiasts. Noah, as well as I, can point to a number of seasoned reviewers and bloggers who find the new TCJ.com a mess.
The passing of the print Journal didn’t so much signal the demise of long form comics criticism but the death of a consistent and semi-regular venue for thoughtful criticism. The online version is clearly not anywhere close to becoming a replacement despite its avowed aims and its stated contributor list. In his article, Noah writes:
“Meanwhile, on the same day, Tom Spurgeon had 17 posts. Sure, some of them are just individual images…but many of them were substantial. With its layout problems, the one thing tcj.com had going for it was the promise of constant, high-quality content…and yet its team of dozens is getting its ass kicked by one guy. Because that one guy actually cares. And caring, as it turns out, really matters.”
“I’m being somewhat inconsistent here; in my earlier post I said there was too much content; now I’m saying there’s too little. But, alas, I think the site has managed to have both problems at once. Because there’s no sense of why what’s being posted is being posted, the site feels both overwhelming and insubstantial. The whole thing has an air of despairing malaise — the toilet paper spools and spools, and you can hear the creaking and the distant flush.”
Towards the close of his article, in a long list of “why nots”, Noah closes with the following:
“…Why not have Gary dive into that rolodex and get some creators to write pieces? Why not do something to make it seem like the energy that went into so many issues of the journal is being put into tcj.com?”
My feelings are quite close to those of Noah’s. The site does not so much lack content as a strong editorial hand – something which is just as necessary in an online magazine as it is in a print venture. The lack of this coupled with the poorly conceived website design is disrespectful to any writing which does appear on TCJ.com.
Is it any wonder that so few writers have produced consistent and substantial content for the website despite being included in TCJ.com‘s long contributor list? Just to pick a few names out of the air, none of the following writers have produced any new work for TCJ.com: Charles Hatfield, Jeet Heer, Chris Mautner and Joe McCulloch. For one reason or another, all of these writers prefer producing articles for their own blogs then TCJ.com, the online presence of what was once the most respected regular print venue for English language comics criticism.
Just to be clear, no one writes for TCJ.com because of the money. The money is nice but it is almost certainly viewed as a gesture of appreciation by TCJ‘s writers. The amount of money I’ve earned from writing for the print Journal since the early 90s would still be less than what many professionals earn in a single month in their day jobs. This illustrates the relative unimportance of financial incentives when it comes to writing about comics.
In his blog entry, Noah mentions a “problem” with Kent Worcester’s course syllabus posting. If there was a “problem” with Kent Worcester’s post, it had nothing to do with its content. The real issue was that it was placed in an interminable stream of content which included single line blog entries, short reviews which must have been dashed out in under an hour, and long, thoughtful pieces on comics and comics history. This muddles up the reader’s expectations and, inevitably, its tolerance for the website as a whole.
A well run and designed website is a basic building block in any online magazine. A website which treats single line blog entries and articles running into a few thousand words with equal weight and respect is clearly one which doesn’t warrant any serious writer’s attention or approbation. The site design as it stands is the equivalent of a regular print magazine being printed on toilet paper and being cast into a row of hedges (I should add that the fact that both Noah and I have resorted, quite separately, to the same sanitary product metaphor to describe the website reflects the dire straits it is in).
Very little copy editing is done with respect to TCJ.com. The job of the editors and website designers is quite simply to allow the best writing to shine through and not to add to the chaos that is the web: highlighting articles of particular interest; separating more formal articles from blog entries (and, I would suggest, with more than a single tag); and the further separation of short form reviews from those of greater length and interest. In other words, the very things which they used to do for the regular print Journal.
As it stands now, TCJ.com reflects a great deal of what Gary Groth railed against in his “Welcome to TCJ.com” post in early December where he wrote:
“It would stand to reason that we’re living in a Golden Age of criticism. But, we aren’t. Very little writing on the Web is of any real critical worth — or even pretends to be— and there is no journalism to speak of. I have never assiduously followed comics blogging, but so much of what I’ve read feels dashed off — amateurish, shallow, frivolous…”
It also displays very little of its stated aims:
“…one of our goals was to bring the Journal’s editorial strengths to its website — perspicuous, analytical, passionate, and fearless criticism and commentary about comics. Over the past few years, I noticed a handful of truly discriminating critics emerging on the web (Robert Martin, Dan Nadel, Bill Randall, Charles Hatfield come to mind), but I never quite knew when they would appear or where…”
The above quote seen in the context of TCJ.com as it stands today would be humorous if it wasn’t so sad. It is pretty telling when TCJ.com shows less interest in the promotion of comics criticism than a steadfastly commercial site like Comixology.com.
As a whole, TCJ.com reflects not so much the aims expressed in Gary’s introductory article but the sentiments expressed in his quote in The Comics Journal #300:
“The Comics Journal has always been the biggest pain in the ass, not just to ‘put together’, but in every conceivable way. It wins enemies, loses friends, and influences no one since it’s in print and no one reads print anymore. It’s always late, it’s labor intensive, it’s a political minefield, and probably an anachronism.”
TCJ.com is a token web presence; a hideous, slapdash attempt at “making up” for the diminished print Journal. It is an embarrassment.
Chris Mautner did have a couple of posts: for example, this review.
All the other extremely depressing points you made stand.
I basically agree with what you wrote. Certainly your description of the problem is correct. But I disagree to an extent about the issue of payment. You mention Jeet Heer, who is my favorite writer on comics at the moment. He has his own group blog, Sans Everything, and contributes frequently to ComicsComics. I assume he gets paid nothing for those posts. He could be contributing to tcj.com and could be getting paid something for it (I assume–and that’s a mighty big assumption). So why doesn’t he, all things being equal? Is it the lack of editorial oversight on tcj.com? I don’t know that there is any more editorial oversight on Heer’s other two blogs.
I write about comics and art on my own blog. Obviously no one pays me to do this. Recently, 29-95.com, a blog owned by the Houston Chronicle, asked me to contribute reviews of local art exhibits to them. More or less what I was already doing for my own blog, except I now get paid to do it.
I don’t need the money. The payment is a pittance. It’s right up there with Comics Journal page rates. I have a normal professional day job that pays pretty well, so money is not an issue. But I chose to move some of my writing from my personal art blog to this commercial blog.
Why? A bunch of reasons. For one thing, I thought I would reach more readers with 29-95. And the extra money, while not important, is nice. (The most I ever get from my own blog is the occasional comment.) And writing for someone else forces me to write better–I feel obliged to think my reviews through more carefully, to bring the reader along. On my own blog, I was consciously writing for myself.
The problem with tcj.com is that even with payment for writing, it apparently doesn’t offer writers something that their other outlets (where they don’t get paid) do offer. The question is–what is it lacking relative to Sans Everything or ComicsComics that keeps Heer from writing for tcj.com?
(Of course, I am just using Heer as a stand-in for all the writers you mentioned and others. In each case, they may have highly individual reasons for not doing pieces for tcj.com. But in the end, it all means that the value to the writer of doing a piece for tcj.com is less than the value of not doing the piece, which is really sad.)
Thanks for your insights, Robert.
Indeed, what prevents Heer and other writers from contributing to TCJ.com? The only thing TCJ.com might offer some writers is the possibility of reaching more readers and even here this distinction is gradually being eroded. In every other respect, personal blogs have the upper hand.
Primarily, the articles are given space to breathe on personal blogs and not cast aside after a matter of hours. There is a greater sense of creative freedom for those not contributing blogs to TCJ.com. The response from the readership is more pronounced when feedback is intentionally elicited. This a by-product of my first point but also has to do with the targeted (and very interested) audience such personal blogs draw in. There are also many writers who prefer to reserve their best writing for print magazines, a prejudice which will only be exacerbated by the current state of TCJ.com.
TCJ.com lacks any clearly defined sensibility or personality, something which I must say marked the last few years of the print Journal. I know roughly what I’m going to get within the first few sentences of an article at Comics Comics, Thought Balloonists or Jog the Blog. That’s part of their attraction. The print Journal used to stand for a certain attitude and for quality, in-depth articles/interviews. I hardly see any of the above in its current incarnation.
Some of the basic changes that need to be made to the website seem so commonsensical that I didn’t bother mentioning it in the body of my blog entry (they have also been reiterated a number of times in other venues). Firstly, getting rid of the single column blog stream thus enabling the separation of simple blog entires from carefully written articles. Controlling the flow of articles so that quality long form writing remains highlighted (i.e. properly headlined) for more than 24 hours (it’s considerably less than this at present). Continuing to highlight worthy articles or interviews long after their publication date based on the individual editor’s insight. Making the website easier to search and more navigable. It doesn’t speak well for TCJ.com that I had to use Noah’s old article to find Gary’s TCJ.com “welcome” article.
This is just the tip of the iceberg but really only what any reader requires from a web magazine or newspaper to say nothing of the more nuanced aspects of web design that could be added by a good designer. Since these basic changes have not been enacted as yet it would be appear that they are deemed unnecessary, too expensive and/or too time consuming. In which case, I suspect TCJ.com will continue to muddle along until someone takes it upon him/herself to do something.
“In which case, I suspect TCJ.com will continue to muddle along until someone takes it upon him/herself to do something.”
It’s worth pointing out that the “muddling along” could last essentially forever, and/or could eventually end in the website just being shuttered. I’d like to think they’ll eventually get their act together, but whatever has prevented them from doing so up to now (lack of funds/time/interest/whatever) doesn’t necessarily have to be solvable.
Removed by admin.
Ironically, the link from the tcj main page to this article is screwed up. May want to address that…
I admit that I kind of like the slapdash approach to the TCJ page–I can scroll through all manner of good, bad, and indifferent stuff and decide what I want to bother to look at. Maybe this is troubling to the contributor (and contributes to their lack of contribution), but for a reader, it works ok. It is obviously quite different from the print TCJ experience–but that’s not bothering me overmuch. I do hate the flashing adds in the margins, though–that makes my head hurt.
How is the link screwed up? It seems to be working….did it not take you here?
I fear you’re in the minority in terms of wanting to look at the tcj.com page; I think Bryan’s reaction (run away and don’t come back) is more typical among those I”ve surveyed….
RW, just to comment on one point:
“Is it the lack of editorial oversight on tcj.com? I don’t know that there is any more editorial oversight on Heer’s other two blogs.”
Editorial oversight can work in various ways. At Comics Comics and Jeet’s own blog, as on this blog, editorial mainly works by limiting contributors. That is, I don’t interfere with what anybody writes, except to choose them in the first place — which is an important step, obviously (I also do some scheduling, which may or may not happen at the other blogs we’re discussing.)
Anyway, the point is, tcj.com doesn’t do that in the same way. There’s a huge roster of folks listed as contributors; big enough that you don’t get a cohesive group of writers. At the same time, the content doesn’t seem curated or edited; it feels like anyone can pop up on the main page and post anything they want. As a result, contributors don’t feel like they’re part of a team, nor do they feel like they’re being selected for the quality of their work and then promoted. No community, no prestige, little money — there’s not a whole lot of incentive to want to contribute.
I write for tcj.com somewhat regularly myself…but because this blog is on their domain now I have an obvious interest in their continued functioning which isn’t necessarily going to be shared by other writers.
Noah, there are a lot of writers out there who have a place in their heart for what The Comics Journal stands (used to?) for.
Robert was the TCJ editor who published my first piece in the magazine sometime in the early 90s so you know he feels something for the mag, as do most of the writers mentioned above. Like myself, they have a long history with the magazine firstly as readers and then as occasional writers.
I’ll wager that many of them would like to see TCJ.com continue as a functioning entity. However, these sentiments aren’t enough to convince them to contribute top notch articles to the website. And I doubt if I’ll find any long form articles like your Spiegelman piece on the website any time soon for obvious reasons. Good will can only go so far especially when it is treated with such disdain.
My wife (who used to work in the hotel line) told me once that if you want a restaurant with bad food or service to fail, the one sure way you can contribute to this is by not complaining and not giving feedback. The one sure way in which TCJ.com can guarantee its failure is by completely ignoring the feedback given by its most ardent readers and supporters.
Oh, I absolutely agree that there’s a lot of good will towards tcj. I was just explaining that I had an additional interest, which perhaps explains why I’m a little more prolific there than some.
Though even so…my incentive to write long pieces for tcj.com is limited. I can get paid more elsewhere…and if I can’t get paid and am doing it for essentially free, I’d rather put it on this blog, where it’ll get a lot more feedback.
Doesn’t anybody know the editors well enough to just email or call and ask what the deal is?
Not that I object to TCJ/Failblog Roundtable, but still…
Or you could see if Dirk (presuming he is in fact web dude) would submit to a live questions/web chat from the peanut gallery.
Caro, there *are* a number of people whose voices will ring louder than any of those on this blog. I have no idea whether they are saying anything or whether they will even be heard.
In the end, it’s still Gary’s baby (and his money and time). He will do with it what he will. Noah and I are just interested by-standers. If the owners finally agree that the house is on fire (or worth saving), I’ll be glad to pass along the buckets of water.
Sure, I know the editors (I just even emailed with Gary for the first time recently.)
I know this may sound odd but…I kind of feel like it’s not really my business what the ins and out of the internal difficulties are. As a reader and a writer, I can comment on the output probems, which I think can be useful, as Suat said. But in terms of sorting things out in the back end…that starts to involve all sorts of potentially messy details that really need to be handled by them, not by their freelancers.
Whoops; as often happened, Suat said it better than me.
Suat always says it well!
It’s just that the effect of having all these hosted blogs and not having a strong editorial identity for the main site is that the difference between the “internal” TCJ and the “freelancers” is really really ambiguous…
I just can’t get over how ugly the site is. It’s like 1998 geocities ugly. I keep expecting the theme music from the Legend of Zelda to start playing every time I load the main page.
Ha! If only TCJ.com was as good as The Legend of Zelda or at least Ocarina of Time …
Correct, I click on “Read this story” and it takes me to something else. I had to go straight to HU to read the grousing.
As a web reader, I just kind of like perpetual new content. TCJ does have that, even if it varies widely in quality.
Yes…it’s ugly…but so am I, so I can’t hold that against it too much.
That’s bizarre, Eric. It takes me to the right place, and other people seem to be finding it okay…I don’t know what’s up.
Where does it take you, Eric?
When I click on that button in Chrome or Firefox, it takes me to that blog category page with the link to Suat’s post (at the moment it also says there is 1 comment, which is spam).
In IE, the “Read this story” button pops up erratically. For Rob’s review of Mome right now it’s is completely missing.
I also get the feeling that the sense of community has kind of diminished. The “sign in to comment” bit may have something to do with that. I know that the boards aren’t anonymous or pseudonymous, but that’s got a much different vibe in an online community than an article which can be directly followed by comments has. In this format, encouraging reader participation is key whether anyone wants to really deal with it or not. It also might be a good way to scout for fresh content contributors.
I guess– I guess what I’m really getting at, though, is that I’d like to see more fights (well, and discussions). I mean, here you have The Comics Journal and the Internet, twin engines made for fierce combat, and there’s just not a drop of blood on the ground. What gives? And yes, maybe it seems a little bit cheap, but for me part of what the Journal is all about has been chasing down and grappling with points that are frequently obscured or outright evaded in so much available commentary (even still!) in the name of politeness (politeness? is that what I’m getting at? I admit I don’t really know if that’s what it is). And the spectacle of arguments frankly draws curious eyes which might then be routed to other content.
And when every group comics blog with a half-grinning appreciation for something mildly trashy (which I have myself, but that doesn’t mean this next part isn’t true) fancies itself the Cahiers of comics, well, somebody needs to be around to take them the hell down a little bit. There’s too much unearned positivity in web-based comics talk, and the Journal, in my experience with it, has been a great tool for examining and undermining unearned positivity–in print. Where has that gone? How could it not have made the transition? And yet…
Well, we’re very mean here. Perhaps that could work as a stopgap measure?
I’m of two minds on this. I do agree that the homepage needs some work. Articles fall off the main page and into oblivion, unless you know what you’re looking for. And the layout is kind of fugly. But it doesn’t bother me because I rarely ever see the homepage; I follow the TCJ updates via a newsreader and navigate directly to the articles I want to read. If there is something slap-dash about the quality of posts at TCJ, then I never noticed because everything in my newsreader has an incongruous quality. It’s a big mess of info that I filter myself.
And in the interest of fairness, my life has been brightened by regular doses of R. Fiore. Credit where it’s due, etc.
Comics Comics just pwned TCJ.
Caro describes my situation–maybe it is my browser. Still seems odd. I’m on Safari…and it has always worked before.
“Comics Comics just pwned TCJ.”
Sigh. Clearly I have backed the wrong horse.
“Sigh. Clearly I have backed the wrong horse.”
Time to brush off that Teratoid Heights review. Send it over on newsprint. They like it over there.
Hi all,
Thanks for the kind words (from some). I should state for the record that I’ve written for TCJ in the past and plan on writing for the TCJ website in the future. The reason I haven’t done so yet is that I have two other blogs to write for. When I’m working on a posting or essay I have to decide where it fits best. If it has a political angle, I go for Sans Everything. If it intersects with the quirky concerns of Dan Nadel, Tim Hodler and Frank Santoro, I write for Comics Comics. My thought is that the next time I have an idea that requires an in-depth historical analysis, I’ll do it for the Journal. Each blog has its own identity and I try to match my writing to the blog at hand.
Hey Jeet. Thanks for clarifying. And congrats on the new comics comics site; it looks lovely.
My quips aside, here’s an online marketer’s perspective, since I do that in real life. And I am snowbound & procrastinating, unlike Vancouver.
(My first draft turned into an online business plan. Split-testing, Crazy Egg, conversions. Madness! If you’re interested, drop me a line and I’ll have you selling acai berry in an hour.)
Short version: the design gaffes suck, mainly for framing the launch as TCJ/Fail. Yet they can be fixed… install the Disqus comments manager here, move the RSS feed to the top there. “Continuous muddling” becomes “continuous improvement,” as Toyota would have it.
The big problem?
The “interminable stream of content” favors clicks, while TCJ is (and should be) written for readers.
For clicks, sell ad space. Split articles up over multiple pages. Tell advertisers you get X unique visitors and X^2 pageviews. Put the ads in the hotspots for ads.
For readers, find out what they want, watch what they do. Give them free stuff (essays, TCJ-Date, Krypto-Revolution of the Age with tween trolling & RickRolling in the comments) and they give you time & attention, eventually as a reflex. Everyone reading this has sites you check 5 times a day, and TCJ’s main page is not one of them. HU might be.
Right now TCJ’s design favors clicks over readers. Johanna Draper has pointed out it needs just a few small fixes– the commenting thing is the main one, easily fixed with a plugin like Commentluv or Disqus. Read her post, though, for her accurate take on the mismatch in Gary Groth’s opening shot and the reality of the site’s execution.
One of the biggest things I’ve learned since Noah invited me to HU, since I left, and from hanging out, is the very real degree to which the internet is about conversation. Its whole damn architecture favors conversation. Whoever fosters that will thrive, whoever stomps it out or ignores it will fade. Noah’s very, very good at fostering it. TCJ was when people wrote letters. If it can translate the spirit of the old Blood & Thunder into curated blog comments, six months from now everyone will be reading it first thing in the morning for the spit & gristle.
And buying acai berry from their email list.
And here’s a question: what are some sites to model?
PS
I left out the best thing.
Hey, did anybody else’s front page just change? All the ads are at the bottom for me now, under the post-valanche.
Caro, mine’s the same. Try reloading, your PHP probably got all janky.
I almost looked up “post-valanche” in a French dictionary.
Bill —
They did fix the comments feed problem: there’s a link now. It doesn’t work on Chrome though.
Not to let the editors off the hook, but so many of the problems on the site feel like sloppy technical work rather than sloppy editorial choices: you don’t have to have a single blog-style “here’s the latest post everybody!” to have a lot of clicks.
You can run a “latest posts” feed in a sidebar and people will watch it. (The “posted to our site” section of Journalista feels like a dinosaur to me.) You can have a “featured story” that doesn’t get pushed off without even necessarily having to have what and when be hand-selected by an editor.
Technical glitches like not having comments manager installed, not having any kind of user-available preview/edit/delete function for comments, too high a number of lines that show up in the archive “indexes”, buttons and feeds that don’t work, really weak search, links that go to either the temp or the archive site, apparently on purpose…all give the impression that the technical leadership is even worse than the editorial.
Over on the message boards, Noah commented that instead of having comments attached to the article it would be cool if the “leave a reply” action sent you to the message board. Kind of a terrific idea.
Noah is AMAZING at fostering conversation. Noah, write a manual.
Bill — yup, reload didn’t help but restarting the browser returned it to normal. It was so pleasant for a few minutes there.
Post-valanche: I suppose the recent east coast portmansneau has resulted in a very bad habit…
Aw, you’re making me blush.
I’d like to believe I have some secret formula for encouraging conversation, but I think it’s just being online a lot and responding when people comment. In any case, I’m no Ta-Nehisi Coates, in any case.
And as long as I’m covering myself with false modesty, I’d note that I don’t think the message board idea was mine; it’s what they do on comicon (I think?) and several people on the thread suggested it (if I mentioned it, it was probably in reference to somebody who’d already done so.)
I agree that there are a lot of technical problems…but I’ve come around to thinking the editorial ones are real, and are ultimately more important. But I’d be happy to have them fix either at this point (and they seem to be working on the techical ones at least.)
Oh, and Bill, I took your comment and posted it. You never really escape HU!
Dammit, Noah, that was my intellectual property! You’re worse than the kleptos known as Google.
I tend to think message boards are dead generally. Comments threads & the universe of social media options do it a lot better. What do users want? Usually a drive-by, or to read people they respect respond to essays.
Caro. Portmansneau. Good one. I got nothing. Except some Acai Berry.
I think having response threads after the articles themselves would still foster discussion (and fighting! don’t forget the fighting!) much more effectively than linking to the message board. Why not just have it right there instead of having to click back and forth (or switch tabs or whatever)? Plus you have to register and log in for the boards. I know there’d be a risk of annoying/anonymous folks coming by with their buddies to disparage this or that post, but frankly it’s not as if any of their challenges or arguments would be difficult to wave aside, and it would bring in that many more hits to the page. And be more fun. Robust, even. Certainly different than what you get when people have to take an extra step before saying something dumb, and more of a participatory experience than it is now.
Think of it! There’d be genuine echo-chamber behavior, ass-kissing, favor-currying, and at the same time contrariness for its own sake, accusations of echo-chambers, idiots yammering on about how “it’s just like high school,” people who have to prove they aren’t just yes persons by taking exception to this or that thing said by someone they otherwise always agree with, and somewhere in all that noise there would be genuinely insightful stuff that’s worth digging through all the crap for–in short, everything that makes the Internet great.
Ng,
Would you provide a link to a site (it doesn’t have to be comics-related) whose layout TCJ should emulate/imitate?
Lots of such have already been mentioned in comments. But here’s some more:
The most pointed example is probably the lovely new comics comics site.
Also embarrassing for us is Melinda Beasi’s stunning one-person site.
Other’s mentioned at various points include the Comics Reporter, the Atlantic, Splice Today — and the list goes on….
Thanks, Noah. I’m reading all of these in a rather haphazard manner, so it wasn’t until about two minutes after posting my comment that I saw all of the sites mentioned in the comments section of your most recent post.
Thanks for the compliment, Noah!
Related to… someone’s comments here (or in Noah’s post, I’m lost now, you guys get so many) earlier on, I think having to register to comment can be a real barrier to discussion. That goes for having comments lead directly to a message board, too. Jon tried that once at PCS to try to drive more traffic to the message board, but instead people just stopped commenting completely. I think the more hoops people have to jump through to leave a comment, the less likely they are to participate at all on a site.
I think it works on comicon…but there’s pretty much a one click and over thing. And they get a lot of traffic in any case.
Some sites don’t want comments; Tom at the Comics Reporter doesn’t allow any. TCJ sort of has an ethos of give and take, so that would be a kind of weird choice for them…though perhaps a better one than the halfway thing they’ve got at the moment….
Tom’s really good about reprinting emails sent to him though. I think his centrality in the industry means everyone wants a piece of him, so moderating comments would be another full-time-plus job.
I don’t think I’ve ever been on Comicon? Isn’t it a pre-Web 2.0 site? Message boards are dead, unless they’re private membership sites. Cf. Achewood’s “fanflow.” Nice Tony Robbins/Wilelm Reich swipes lately, btw.
I’ve never understood sites that didn’t want comments, but I suppose that’s the blogger in me showing. I write about manga because I want to be a part of the larger conversation… blog to blog to twitter to blog. So for me, shutting down any part of that conversation would work against my own efforts. I realize, of course, that not everyone is writing for the same reason as I am, especially those who come to the internet as journalists.
Once you get to a certain traffic flow, I think it becomes impossible to deal with comments. And when you reach that size too, if you don’t police things closely, the comments turn into an endless series of really unpleasant flame wars.
But you have to get way larger than most comics blogs to have to worry about that….
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