I’ve held off for as long as I could, but I am declaring advertising as a means of supporting this website to be beyond saving. I can no longer rely on it, so I have to adjust the way I do things in order to hopefully keep being able to do it for another decade or two.
Starting in December, the update schedule on this website will drop to twice a week (Monday and Friday). Patrons at the $3 and above tiers on our Patreon will continue to get three pages a week (Monday. Wednesday, Friday).
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If you’ve enjoyed reading the 4000+ comics I’ve made these past 20+ years, and look forward to reading the ones I’ve yet to create, then supporting us on Patreon really is the best way to make sure they happen. I’ve done the math here before, but I put out about 156 regular comics a year. At the $3 tier, that’s about $0.23 a page ($0.19 a page if you sign up for a year and get 16% off). I’m hoping that this change encourages enough people to support us directly to balance out the decline in advertising viability we’ve seen over the past couple of years. 2% of our readers support us on Patreon. If we can get that to 3%, we’d be golden.
I have posted this comic three times a week for free since 2002, and I held off changing that for as long as possible. But the online landscape that made that model possible has changed a lot since then. Most of the advertising dollars go to video platforms like YouTube and TikTok, while A.I. “art” floods social media. I feel like I have to make some adjustments.
This way lets me add value to our Patreon that hopefully draws more support there, while still continuing to post pages for free (albeit a bit slower).
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I mean, credit where credit is due.
A clean controllerang hit on an object that is in movement?
Thats not nothing!
yeah thats a legit impressive shot. someone been practicing his arkham games.
you know 100% thats where he gets all his skills.
Damn, beat me to it. I was even going to say the credit-where-credit opener.
Sad about the advertisement, but I understand. I dislike the Patreon interface, but I’ll continue there then. I’m already subscribed, but for anyone doubting:
It’s less expensive than a beer on the terrace these days where I live. For that money you get comics for a year, so it’s not like it’s a big ask. A single comic book is more expensive.
‘Tis true. I did the math in my head, it comes out to $36. That’s like… one and a half Marvel comic books.
I am already on Patreon for the Starcaster. And I concur, the interface is not very user friendly.
I there an otption where the comics would still be available on this website (or another but similar) but with a gatekeep linked to patreon ?
The only way to keep the comic here is to set this page up behind a paywall, or at least another version of it. When you sign in, you get the “extra” stuff but not signed in only gives you the two free comics. You could move Starcaster here as well. Especially if Patreon hasn’t expanded your readership any. I’m sure they take a cut so, you might be able do better with your own direct advertising and not run on Patreon. (I don’t know the numbers, but you probably have access to them)
Its possible. The webcomic Drive by Dave Kellet allows people to sign in with Patreon and get the Patreon released comics on his web interface so you don’t have to deal with Patreon interface at all really.
Not a complaint about the Patreon thing, I’ve been on there since it launched. Just a genuine question because I don’t buy comic books and I’m shocked by your statement.
A single comic book is more than $36 these days?! Or $30.24 with the year up front discount.
You did say “comics for a year” right before saying a single comic book is more expensive. Surely you must have meant a single comic book is more than $3? You can’t have meant $36, otherwise comic books are such a huge ripoff. My brain doesn’t want to believe that.
Yeah I made an oopsie. I subscribed a long time ago and dislike the interface enough I never went back. I mistakenly thought it was per year, not per month. Regardless it is a small amount to most people I wager.
Most comic books these days average between $20-25 a volume.
Agreed. I have a couple of things on Patreon and I’m reluctant to add more. It’s a very convenient way to support various things, it is the worst possible delivery method of things in return…
The app and site is just bad, there are no official RSS feeds and they shut down the APIs allowing people to make feed before. Best option is email to an already crowded inbox, and not even that is good since the images in the emails die after a week or two.
This is still one of the most bang-for-buck comics out there, even with this change. On the other end of the spectrum, you’ve got TwoKinds, which only updates an average of twice a month—with all the other work going to Patreon fan-service sketches—but rakes in an income.
Nice shot!
Now the Troll is on a timer though. He needs to give a time constraint for the duo to jump in the vat, or else his threat is null and void. They have already attacked him physically and nothing happened.
I don’t want a situation like in Avatar: way of water. How often can you take kids hostage and then not follow through on your threat if they do the exact thing you don’t want them to do. You lose all credibility as a threat.
There’s also the other side of the coin – the moment he follows through with the threat and releases the chemical, he loses any leverage and there’s nothing stopping them from beating/capturing/killing* him. He needs to take that into account, too.
*If they decide to go that far.
Thundress should just haul him off and lock him up. The blackhat can do..what? Does he give a fuck about them leaping in the goo? He just wants money.
At this point, I’d just break the Troll’s legs, knock him out, and then deal with the other two if they feel like sticking around to do the Troll’s bidding with the goo.
Alex is in it for the money, so he’d possibly just run away. Elijah is on The Mission though, so they’d probably need to talk him down or defeat him again.
Good point. I do think the threat of the gas is only secondary. The Troll is after their pain. He’s probably got a plan to make them look bad regardless what happens. Jump in? Not a good idea. Gas is released? He’ll spin it their fault. They stop him? Good chance everything is recorded and with editing they’ll look like horrible people. The gas is only a means to get them there and to make them do things that he can use.
I think Ethans superpower is not just respawning. A tiny, rotating thingy being hit center with a bladethingy all while everything is happening all at once? That´s some superpower stuff right there.
It’s on auto-aim.
That’s funny.
I have to agree. A lot of the things Ethan does really aren’t something a normal guy could do even with years of training. I want to believe there is more to Ethan’s superpowers than just respawning.
I think its more likely that years of playing video games for hours, if not days, on end has drastically improved his hand-eye coordination, his objective based focus and environmental/situational awareness.
Sure, sure. Days of sitting in front of a screen will make you throw things more accurate. That´s not what muscle memory is 😀 But I´ll try that explanation on my wife if she tells me to go for a walk instead of playing a walking simulator.
Welp, they’re probably going to have to come up with a plan other than Analog blowing himself up as a distraction again…
Hey I know, D-Pad can sever his arm off with an arrow instead!
…Nah, that’d probably too mean…
Still, it’d save the city and the tens of thousands of people living in it…
Welp. Time to join Patreon. Fair is fair.
He’s still trolling. Alex has not the real detonator, possibly Elijah has it.
If he was really trolling, the one destroyed was the real detonator and he’s having them chase Alex while manually initiating the dispersal of the chemicals.
Or there are two detonators (and Elijah has one, too), or detonators and a timer, or the chemical is fake and his actual goal is different… there is a number of options.
Yeah that was like, stupidly obvious.
Just disable the actual tank, the detonator is just a remote.
I doubt it would be that easy just because I doubt the tank would work in the first place. What, your going disperse an aerosol or liquid across MILES from a single central point the size of a gas tanker? That’s like someone threatening to blow up a building with a hand grenade, you aren’t even in the ballpark of scale to pull off what you are threatening. At best even if you exploded the tank to maximize dispersal you might rain liquid across half the street, and that’s if you just want to have random drops of liquid hit… Read more »
I don’t think setting up a whole bunch of units is realistically within the Troll’s budget unless he’s secretly a billionaire.
Like that requires owning a LOT of different buildings, not to mention hiring crews of people to set all that stuff up.
I mean you could say he uses abandoned buildings but what are the chances he’d find that many abandoned buildings within population centers?
When you have a literal speedster on your team, you can get a LOT done cheaply and quickly.
The speedster was able to talk to the duo and spray paint a wall at the same time. Running back and forth with materials and building a rudimentary device could take him a few moments. Like when we see the Flash build a particle collider in under a minute or build a house in seconds.
That still requires getting all of the materials.
This is where Sam will prove his worth, I think. Black Hat seems to only be intangible when he’s no clipping through walls, so if Sam can lay hands on him, he’ll freeze like a popsicle and the day will be saved.
Please, please have Game Boy just touch the wall and lock him inside it for the lolz
Going to miss the 3 times a week uploads. I am already a patron and ironically I still only use this site for my updates. Might have to either start using patreon or just wait for the 2 times a week updates. Thanks for everything you do Tim!!
What exactly is black hats power? I thought the glove let him do like mimicking retro game power ups or something. When did he get combo super speed and no-clip abilities? Is he just a better Elijah now?
He had “speed hacking” in issue #2. But his primary use was the wall clipping.
Black Hat’s power glove lets him speed hack and turn on no-clip. He can move through walls, but he can’t reach the same speeds as Elijah.
Sad about the patreon shift, but it’s perfectly understandable in today’s landscape.
Unfortunatly I won’t be able to shift there, just as I couldn’t for Starcaster, because the currency gap (I’m in Brazil) just makes those $3 a month really add up.
But I’ll still be here wading through the ads. 😀
Always feel bad about Brazil issues with things like this. Luckily you aren’t cut off from the content!
I hope the situation improves soon. It is always hard to hear that simply living somewhere else can make a big difference on something so seemingly small.
It’s sad that the business model is failing.
I was considering joining the patreon recently (because I have the funds and I follow you since 20 years, or just about).
This is the trigger to make this definitively happen. I’m right behind you. You do an amazing work and deserve to be recognized for it.
There is many ways now to block ads for reason, while you have sane ads that are not intrusive, many sites online are horrendous on this … worst are some news site that drop half page ad per paragraph (and Im no lying on this seen few local “free” news sites go this route; its very sad reality) …and some sites have full page ads blocking views , 15sec video having 1 minute of ads before starting, there is also malware ads around I kinda use triple stack (that I disable only per site) to keep safe from this horrendous… Read more »
I run DuckDuckGo browser on phone and AdBlock+Ghostery on PC. Not only is he intrusivenes bad, it just takes only.ONE intrusive malware ad to wreck things for a user. Surfing the internet without adblockers is kind of like visting a cathouse without so much as a condom. Bad idea all around. I don’t like little autorenewal stuff like Patreon, it adds up, and can be a pain to turn off. I do chip in for stuff like Kickstarters, but those are one time and don’t auto renew. Legit question, actually: what would keep someone from paying for, say, just one… Read more »
Nothing prevents it. It has always been the case that someone can sign up for Patreon, read all of the extra content, and quit. There are measures I can and will take if I see it becoming a real problem, like periodically deleting past posts, and offering them as a purchased PDF separate from the subscription. However, I try to trust people for as long as I can and until they give me a reason not to, and in this case I trust that most people are signing up to contribute because they enjoy the work I do and want… Read more »
“There are measures I can and will take if I see it becoming a real problem, like periodically deleting past posts, and offering them as a purchased PDF separate from the subscription.” – that’s something that might drive away people, who are your patrons already – see the VOD platforms, people are unhappy about content being removed from them, and some are driven to pirating what they want to watch instead, because if things can disappear at a drop of a hat, what are they paying for?
Yeah, well, that’s why I’ve never done it. But if I saw that happening on a large scale, then it means the subscription thing isn’t working, and now I’m moving towards trying a more a la carte content delivery approach similar to real comic books. I create 24 pages of content, package them and sell them for a single price.
PDFs by volume for me thanks, I’d be happy to support Starcaster that way. Starcaster is now Patreon only?
I feel you’re giving people a fair chance and they need to do the same.
Won’t this create an ever growing discrepancy between the regular website and the Patron one?
If by “discrepancy” you mean that subscribers will be further along in the story, then yes. After about a year, subscribers will be 50 pages ahead. After two years, 100 pages ahead, and so on.
This is the only reason I often pause for advance content, because once you are on it, if you ever get off it you are now waiting days watching old comics to see new stuff.
Granted 50/100 comics isn’t terrible at 2 a week meaning it would just be waiting a month/or two to catch up to new releases, but still it is a drawback.
It wouldn’t be a month or two. 100 comics behind means it’s gonna take 50 weeks, almost a year, to catch up. And it’s only gonna increase.
It won’t take long before any comics covering current events are gonna be irrelevant by the time they hit the website.
I understand why it’s being done though.
Tim: I was already a patreon subscriber, but I upgraded to the next tier. I can afford it, and I want to fund what you do. I personally hate the patreon interface. Maybe I should learn to ’embrace the suck’. I don’t currently go to the patreon site to see the early comics I’ve been entitled to. I’ve mainly been subbed in patreon to support your work. I would welcome a tier that allows us to continue getting your work on the site. I will understand if the dev work to make that possible isn’t affordable, or if there are… Read more »
I’m not abandoning this website, and I am looking into development options to simply gate posts here directly behind a subscription account (though that requires specific and extensive reworking on the backend). If I can integrate everything here, rather than separating it between here and Patreon, I will. But that might take time, and I need to implement a “right now” solution, if for no other reason than to have a little extra income so I can pay for that website development. :/
totally understandable Tim. honestly you could’ve made this call way sooner and I think it would have been warranted. especially since the way that youtube, twitch, etc have been pushing ads? adblockers are more prevalent than ever and I doubt many people think to turn them off for the small indie sites they would actually want to support. the big corpos have made it untenable to rely on banner ads I’ve got a fair amount of financial anxiety, but hopefully some day I’ll get secure enough that I can hop onto the patreon and do some catchup. until then I’ll… Read more »
Dang. I’m too poor for $5/month (Canadian). If it were the cheapest tier I could handle it
Yeah, kinda unfortunate the lowest tier doesn’t get the 3 comics (even if nothing else), though I get why Tim may not be able to do that.
Been reading the comic since the first day you posted. The fact you’ve been going this long is astounding. I remember how happy I was the day you posted about doing this full time. If you have to change up how you operate to keep things going, then that is what it is. I trust you’ve looked at it from every angle and aren’t making a snap decision.
Once I’m in a position to support you via Patreon, I’ll be there
Your name is “Thunderess”, not “Batman”.
Just snap his neck and be done with it.
They aren’t an anti hero either like that one guy we’ve seen. I’d say shock him to unconsciousness would be better.
And then toss him in the vat and see what happens.
Right, she’s not Batman. She’s an officially recognized hero who works with law enforcement within the confines of the law. No extra-judicial executions.
I bet there’s someone waiting for him on the other side of that door.
I did notice that Sam isn’t with them inside the building.
This mention of AI “art” does bring lots of interesting questions. Could Tim use AI to speed up his patreon releases to 5x per week? If so, it is still Tim’s art? Does it retains the same value we give to his work as if he drew everything old school? Would he even need to tell us that some panels were drawn with AI? Would we notice? Purely economically speaking, in harsh times for artists, how long can an artist resist the siren song of AI to double his output? “Daaaaaad i wanna go to the zoo!” “But i did… Read more »
We love you and want you to continue. I will join you on Patreon when I get paid again
Honestly, I think the best way to deal with the Troll is to just get in there, knock him out and don’t interact with him at all because that’s what he wants.
Good luck with the Patreon.
Thats a lot of talking for someone getting grabbed by the throat. Please punch his lights out…
Love the comic – subscriber since inception and will continue forever but I never miss a chance to say “I told you so” and I did advise way back when the comic went woke it would have this effect in the long term. It’s always been and will be your choice.
You all need to get some help to get over this woke boogyman thing
They need an Other to be scared by, it helps them process President Pedophile. Facts confuse them, hard to be twisted to their narratives. No wonder so many will be shunned by their offspring. Fun fact TheCK, trump can promise you anything and everything, but he cannot give you back the respect of your children. Maga parents will be hated til they learn to clamp their mouths with their bigotry. Mine has ass cancer, I promise he will go into the abyss alone, hated, and despised. I will share what kind of asshole he was in life, and piss on… Read more »
I think my Christmas present to my maga parent will be a video of me destroying a family heirloom. If you ask nicely, I might put on an ICE costume during it. Hatred for Hatred? It is the currency of the current administration, and more accepted than any crypto.
I don’t know why, but you’re one of the few creators I trust to be honest about such a drastic drop in ad revenue. Signed up on Patreon, hoping you can keep the story going.