Webcomics Nation was a

webcomic Webcomics (also known as online comics or Internet comics) are comics published on a website or mobile app. While many are published exclusively on the web, others are also published in magazines, newspapers, or comic books. Webcomics can be c ...

hosting and automation service launched on July 29, 2005 by Joey Manley. Unlike Manley's previous webcomic sites, Webcomics Nation was based on

user-generated content User-generated content (UGC), alternatively known as user-created content (UCC), is any form of content, such as images, videos, text, testimonials, and audio, that has been posted by users on online platforms such as social media, discussion f ...

and relied on online advertisement revenue, which increased in viability in the second half of the 2000s. Webcomics Nation quickly became Manley's most financially successful website, and encouraged him to turn his

Modern Tales Modern Tales was a webcomics subscription service active from 2002 to 2012. Joey Manley was the website's publisher and original editor. The site featured a roster of approximately 30 professional webcomic artists. Shaenon Garrity, one of the s ...

sites partially free as well. Manley began merging Webcomics Nation into Josh Roberts' ComicSpace in 2007, but this process took longer than hoped and Webcomics Nation eventually closed down in 2013.

Concept

Though Joey Manley was well known for creating a family of webcomic subscription services (consisting of

Serializer Serializer.net was a webcomic subscription service and artist collective published by Joey Manley and edited by Tom Hart and Eric Millikin that existed from 2002 to 2013. Designed to showcase artistic alternative webcomics using the unique nat ...

Girlamatic Girlamatic (sometimes stylized as GirlAMatic or Girl-A-Matic) was a webcomic subscription service The subscription business model is a business model in which a customer must pay a recurring price at regular intervals for access to a product ...

, and Graphic Smash), he stated that he mainly focused exclusively on the subscription business model because online advertisement rates were low and

bandwidth Bandwidth commonly refers to: * Bandwidth (signal processing) or ''analog bandwidth'', ''frequency bandwidth'', or ''radio bandwidth'', a measure of the width of a frequency range * Bandwidth (computing), the rate of data transfer, bit rate or thr ...

was expensive in the early 2000s. When online advertisement became more lucrative in the mid-2000s, and the subscriber numbers of his existing platforms remained stagnant, Manley decided to transition into a business model more similar to that of Keenspot. Webcomics Nation was designed to host and distribute webcomics in a similar fashion to how services like

Blogger A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order ...

and

Flickr Flickr ( ; ) is an American image hosting and video hosting service, as well as an online community, founded in Canada and headquartered in the United States. It was created by Ludicorp in 2004 and was a popular way for amateur and profession ...

host blogs and photos respectively. Webcomics Nation offered unlimited Web space and support to any cartoonist for $7

USD The United States dollar (symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the official ...

per month, but the website was mainly known as a free hosting service, supported entirely through advertisement money. As the revenue of free webcomics supported through advertising eclipsed the increasingly unpopular subscription model, Manley eventually turned Modern Tales into a free website as well. Webcomics Nation also aided cartoonists with little to no experience with web technologies to set up a webcomic. Talking with ''

Publishers Weekly ''Publishers Weekly'' (''PW'') is an American weekly trade news magazine targeted at publishers, librarians, booksellers, and literary agents. Published continuously since 1872, it has carried the tagline, "The International News Magazine of ...

'', Manley stated that "A lot of people don't have that kind of dedication to technology. The younger cartoonists do, but some older cartoonists don't."

History

Manley launched WebcomicsNation.com on July 29, 2005 after having the service

beta test A software release life cycle is the sum of the stages of development and maturity for a piece of computer software ranging from its initial development to its eventual release, and including updated versions of the released version to help impro ...

ed by a large number of major cartoonists (including

James Kochalka James Kochalka (born May 26, 1967, in Springfield, Vermont) is an American comic book artist, writer, animator, and rock musician. His comics are noted for their blending of the real and the surreal. Largely autobiographical, Kochalka's carto ...

Lea Hernandez Lea Hernandez (born March 11, 1964) is an American comic book and webcomic creator, known primarily for working in a manga-influenced style, and for doing lettering and touch-ups on manga imports. She is the co-creator of '' Killer Princesses'', wr ...

Roger Langridge Roger Langridge (born 14 February 1967) is a New Zealand comics writer, artist and letterer, currently living in Britain. Biography Langridge originally came to public prominence most notably with the ''Judge Dredd Megazine'' series ''The Stra ...

, Tom Hart, Cayetano Garza,

Daniel Merlin Goodbrey Daniel Merlin Goodbrey is an English writer known for his work in webcomics and the British small press. Biography Goodbrey became known as a creator of experimental digital comics and hypercomics. He is the inventor of the Tarquin engine, an ...

, and

Spike Trotman Charlie Spike Trotman, also known as C. Spike Trotman, (born November 18, 1978) is an American cartoonist and publisher known for creating the long-running web comic '' Templar, Arizona'', and for publishing the ''Smut Peddler'' anthologies of w ...

). Manley advertised the service in part through its use of modern Web technologies such as

XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable ...

, RSS, and " web services". Paying users were offered unlimited bandwidth and disk storage, the ability to lock their own webcomics behind a subscription wall or to sell advertisements on their own pages, an automated email list, a scheduling system, and an archive management system, among other features. Webcomics Nation quickly became Manley's most profitable project. The free version of Webcomics Nation became available in 2006.

Eric Millikin Eric Millikin is an American artist and activist based in Detroit, Michigan. He is known for his pioneering work in artificial intelligence art, augmented and virtual reality art, conceptual art, Internet art, performance art, poetry, post-In ...

, beta-testing new Webcomics Nation features in late 2006, described the evolving user interface as closer to that of Adobe products than a typical Web-based interface. By 2006, many cartoonists were running webcomics on Webcomics Nation, including Modern Tales usuals such as

Shaenon K. Garrity Shaenon K. Garrity is a webcomic creator and science-fiction author best known for her webcomics ''Narbonic'' and '' Skin Horse''. She collaborated with various artists to write webcomics for the Modern Tales-family of webcomic subscription serv ...

, Lea Hernandez, and Tom Hart, as well as print comics veterans like

Jay Stephens Jay Stephens (born March 22, 1971) is a Canadian cartoonist and animator currently living in Guelph, Ontario. He is best known as the creator of Discovery Kids's animated television series ''Tutenstein'' , Cartoon Network's ''The Secret Saturda ...

, Batton Lash, and Ingalill Roesberg. In 2007, Manley collaborated with OnlineComics.net-creator Josh Roberts to expand on ComicSpace, Roberts' comics-oriented

social media Social media are interactive media technologies that facilitate the creation and sharing of information, ideas, interests, and other forms of expression through virtual communities and networks. While challenges to the definition of ''social medi ...

and publishing platform. Webcomics Nation was merged into this platform, alongside some of Manley's other websites, and ComicSpace was planned to "relaunch" in the second quarter of 2008 as an "all-in-one solution for webcomic creators ndsocial networkers interested in comics". In January 2009, Manley wrote that the merger was "one of the more technically difficult projects" they had undertaken, and that it was taking longer than he had hoped. Webcomics Nation and Manley's other websites closed down in April 2013, and he died in November that same year.

References

External links

Official website
archived using the

Wayback Machine The Wayback Machine is a digital archive of the World Wide Web founded by the Internet Archive, a nonprofit based in San Francisco, California. Created in 1996 and launched to the public in 2001, it allows the user to go "back in time" and see ...

{{Joey Manley Webcomic syndicates Free webcomic hosting services Internet properties established in 2005 Internet properties disestablished in 2013