Ridiculous Opinions #284
We're launching Sunday Comix to reclaim our comics from Big Tech and connect directly with you!
So, last week, I laid out the problem with Big Tech and its effect on its users. If you want a refresher, you can go here to read last week’s newsletter. Better yet, you can watch the video linked above from my good friend Zombie Comics Aura, which makes me sound much more intelligent than I actually am. I’m very proud to be a part of this whole thing.
So, when we KNOW about Big Tech and what it does to people, how are we going to solve this? As most of you who are receiving this will realize, I’ve been doing a newsletter since 2014. The newsletter was a great way to go directly to readers, without a lot of interference on the top end.
And yet, there was interference. I originally started out using MailChimp, but MailChimp started to lean more towards advertising and enterprise things. They weren’t all that interested in small fry like myself. Thus, I switched to that new and interesting platform, Substack. But Substack was publishing Nazi newsletters as well as mine, so a couple of years ago, I made that switch.
The good news with each of these changes is that when I do a newsletter myself, I have CONTROL over things. I simply packed up my list of subscribers and moved on to greener pastures. Now, I use Buttondown and I’ve been very happy with it.
But what about the readers of our comics? Well, I present to you The Sunday Comics Collective. I am including the “Letter to the Editor” section of our FIRST newsletter, which will be coming out tomorrow, so you can read about what we are trying to do…
So, here we are! If you’re receiving this, then you’re at the forefront of a group of comics artists who are trying something new. This is SUNDAY COMIX and it is brought to you by a group of artists called THE SUNDAY COMICS COLLECTIVE. We are experimenting with something that none of us has tried before.
For many years, we have given you our work for free (unless you’ve given us money through Patreon or something like that). And hey! That’s our cross to bear! We decided to do the work. We wanted to get it out there. We thought, “Hey, why not put our hard work out there so people on social media can comment on how not-funny our comics are or how many misspelled words we might have or how our politics do not align with EXACTLY how things are done!” We enjoy that abuse and are clearly gluttons for punishment.
That didn’t stop us, however. We wanted people to see our comics, for good and for bad. We have all toiled endlessly to ensure that our books get seen, that our artwork was out there getting likes and upvotes and multiple comments that lead to discussions amongst people who enjoy what we do. But as we’ve done all of this, we’ve had one big problem…
…Big Tech.
It’s awesome that Instagram and Reddit and Webtoons and many others have given us a forum for our work! But that’s the key here…this is work. And because we are doing work, we should, theoretically, be paid for our work. When all of these big tech websites allow us to put our work out there for them, they are not doing this out of the goodness of their hearts. They are doing it to make money. And the more people they get to interact with the work that we do for them, the more money they make.
That’s fair! That’s capitalism! They built it! We use it!
But there is also a certain lack of appreciation for the things that we do. This takes many forms, from algorithm changes to shadow bans to suspensions to comics outright disappearing. For the longest time, the internet seemed permanent, as if the things that we put out there would always be there. But the demise of Twitter was a wake up call. The changing of algorithms was a wake up call. Elon sticking his nose in Reddit was a wake up call. A group of us started thinking, “Maybe we should find our own way of doing things…”
That’s what you’ll find here.
Sunday Comix is made by us. And we are part of the Sunday Comics Collective. We are a group of artists that are a union of creators. We will publish our books our way and we will push those books directly to you.
Sunday Comix is available for FREE to all of you. But for those of you who want to contribute further to Sunday Comix, you can pay $2 a month for our bonus features. Those bonus features will take many forms. They could be exclusive comics, interviews, videos, process tutorials…you name it!
But the comics? They will come to you every two weeks on a Sunday morning and they will be free for all to read! If you don’t like reading them with email, then you can go to our archive and read them as well.
And everything we make, money-wise, from this endeavor will be split equally among the contributors to this zine. You can support us for one month or you can support us for a year, and you can spend as much money as you’d like! But we will give you our comics for free.
And of course, we will still be active on all of our social media platforms. We don’t plan to be exclusive. If you follow us on Reddit, we will still be on Reddit. If you follow us on Bluesky, then we will still be on Bluesky. If you support us individually on Patreon, you can still do that!
But at the end of the day, you’ll know you can find us right here as well, and catch up on everything you might have missed (or that you might have missed long ago).
This is just the beginning of Sunday Comix. We have a LOT more planned for the future and we hope you’ll be right there with us!
Thus, we are starting a new comics “zine” or “newsletter” or whatever you want to call it. We started putting the word out last week with a series of ads and comics and we have a VERY healthy number of subscribers at the moment, both paid and free. If you’d like to subscribe, feel free here.
The bottom line with all of this is that we are trying something new. Will it work? Who knows? But we’ve got to try something, because the world in which we live is changing. That may sound drastic, but it is true.
Big Tech has to be abandoned. We must create our own social networks and work directly with people. There should be no middle man. I’ll let you know how this all works out!