2005 janv. 30
Webcomics addict
This is my first post in english, the reason is I'd like to answer here to Joey Manley. Many of you probably don't know him, but he's one of the most important figures in the little world of webcomics. As an opening of a new weblog dedicated to this new way of storytelling, he explains briefly the three steps of talkaboutcomics.com's life. I'd like to share with him and other english-reading people my own experience as a french webcomics addict.
The fact is I'm trying since a few years to do on french-WWW the same as Joey Manley did on the english one. You must know that Joey founded ModernTales in 2002, "the leading subscription-based webcomics service, serving fine webcomics to thousands of paying readers and tens of thousands of daily non-paying readers".
During the first month of web-discovering, I experienced many little things about creating comics for this new media... But I realised that no french website existed to represent this new-born art. I created a little directory, which grew up and became Abdel-INN.com. Today it offers (for free) links to about 650 stories in french, english and others languages, available online for free. I decided to open it to animations, games and videos too : in my opinion the question isn't about how to put comics on the web, but about how to tell stories with digital tools and for a digital diffusion.
I must recognize that the audience for a french website isn't really the same as ModernTales' audience : something like 30 times less. But there are less french net surfers than english net surfers, and I'll continue to support this art as long as possible. Perhaps would it be possible to open a french-ModernTales, licenced by the english one, which would offer translated webcomics ? And some really creative french authors could see their work translated and published in english for a new audience !