Friday Archive Dive: Brand the Comic or the Cartoonist?

Today's Archive Dive somes from Aug. 30, 2011, when we talked about the branding advantages of focusing on the comic itself versus focusing the branding on the cartoonist.

This is a question that was submitted to Webcomics Weekly podcast that we never got to address, so I thought it would make a good discussion topic here.

Q.: I'm just starting out in webcomics, and what brought me to the medium is its potential to tell a great story. But looking at the comics that the four of you [at Webcomics Weekly] have really built your success on, it seems the comics that do well are the ones that don't necessarily have a story arc but continue indefinitely until the writer decides it's time to stop. Given this, I'm wondering about your opinions of the wisdom of deciding from the beginning that a comic will span, say, four years, and after that will absolutely and without question be finished--of course, giving way to a new project.

I don't know that I necessarily accept the premise -- that only non-story comic strips can be successful on the Web...

 Read the entire post and comment there.