Modern Tales was a webcomics publisher active from 2002 to 2012, best known for being one of the first profitable subscription models for digital content. 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 site's original artists, took over as the publication's editor in 2006. Other Modern Tales artists included Gene Luen Yang, James Kochalka, Dorothy Gambrell, Harvey Pekar and Will Eisner.
Joey Manley was an American LGBT fiction author, web designer, and webcomics publisher. Manley wrote the successful LGBT novel The Death of Donna-May Dean in 1992. He moved to San Francisco in 2000 in order to work in web design. Manley was the founder and publisher of the Modern Tales family of webcomics websites, which included Modern Tales, Serializer, Girlamatic, Webcomics Nation, and others. Manley is considered one of the "founding pioneers" of the webcomic movement for creating a then-revolutionary subscription model.
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 nature of the medium, the works on Serializer.net were described by critics as "high art" and "avant-garde". The project became mostly inactive in 2007 and closed alongside Manley's other websites in 2013.
Narbonic is a webcomic written and drawn by Shaenon K. Garrity. The storylines center on the misadventures of the staff of the fictional Narbonic Labs, which is the domain of mad scientist Helen Narbon. The strip started on July 31, 2000, and finished on December 31, 2006. On January 1, 2007, Garrity launched the "Director's Cut", an "annotated replay" of Narbonic. Narbonic was part of the subscription-based Modern Tales website for several years but moved to Webcomics Nation in July 2006, where it resumed being free-to-read. The comic is also a member of The Nice comics collective.
Vera Brosgol, also known as the Verabee, is a cartoonist and storyboard artist.
Webcomics Nation was a webcomic 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 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 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.
Girlamatic was a webcomic subscription service launched by Joey Manley and Lea Hernandez in March 2003. It was the third online magazine Manley established as part of his Modern Tales family of websites. Girlamatic was created as a place where both female artists and readers could feel comfortable and featured a diverse mix of genres. When the site launched, the most recent webcomic pages and strips were free, and the website's archives were available by subscription. The editorial role was held by Hernandez from 2003 until 2006, when it was taken over by Arcana Jayne-creator Lisa Jonté, one of the site's original artists. In 2009, Girlamatic was relaunched as a free digital magazine, this time edited by Spades-creator Diana McQueen. The archives of the webcomics that ran on Girlamatic remained freely available until the website was discontinued in 2013.
Lea Hernandez 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, written by Gail Simone and published by Oni Press; and the creator of Rumble Girls from NBM Publishing.
Dicebox, by American cartoonist Jenn Manley Lee, is a science fiction webcomic which has been hosted at the subscription-based comics anthology site Girlamatic. The comic, planned for four books totalling 36 chapters, is set in the space-travelling future and is primarily the story of one year in the lives of two women factory workers, Griffen Medea Stoyka and Molly Robbins.
Skin Horse was a webcomic written by Shaenon K. Garrity and Jeffrey Channing Wells, and drawn by Garrity. The storylines centered around the misadventures of the staff of a little-known government agency working on "Project Skin Horse". The strip started on December 31, 2007 and ended on June 26, 2022, and was updated every day of the week. Skin Horse is part of Webcomics Nation, where it is free to read. It is also syndicated on GoComics, where the past month's updates are free to read, with further archives available to subscribers.
The Create a Comic Project (CCP) is a youth literacy program and webcomic created by John Baird. The program uses comics, many taken from the Internet, to encourage children to write their own narratives. The program began in November 2006 at the main branch of the New Haven Free Public Library as an after-school program. The project has since worked with several other groups, including the Children's Museum of Pittsburgh, Braddock Carnegie Library, and the Pittsburgh YMCA. Baird has presented the results of his work on the project at several conventions and conferences, including South by Southwest Interactive and SXSWedu. The project has been praised for its work in engaging children in learning by Marjorie Scardino, CEO of Pearson, Professor Mirta Ojito of Columbia University, and Arne Duncan, the US Secretary of Education.
Jason Bradley Thompson is an American artist, author, comics creator, critic, and editor. He is best known for his Eisner-nominated book Manga: The Complete Guide, his graphic novel interpretation of H. P. Lovecraft's DreamQuest of Unknown Kadath and Other Stories, and his Dungeons and Dragons adventure walkthrough maps published by Wizards of the Coast on their website as well in books such as Waterdeep Dragon Heist.
Sluggy Freelance is a long-running webcomic written and drawn by Pete Abrams. Starting in 1997, it is one of the oldest successful webcomics, and as of 2012 had hundreds of thousands of readers. Abrams was one of the first comic artists successful enough to make a living from a webcomic.
The history of webcomics follows the advances of technology, art, and business of comics on the Internet. The first comics were shared through the Internet in the mid-1980s. Some early webcomics were derivatives from print comics, but when the World Wide Web became widely popular in the mid-1990s, more people started creating comics exclusively for this medium. By the year 2000, various webcomic creators were financially successful and webcomics became more artistically recognized.
Notable events of 2003 in webcomics.
Notable events of 2000 in webcomics.
In contrast with mainstream American comics, webcomics are primarily written and drawn by women and gender variant people. Because of the self-published nature of webcomics, the internet has become a successful platform for social commentary, as well as lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) expression.
Notable events of the late 1990s in webcomics.
ComicSpace was an online social network and webcomic hosting service created and managed by Josh Roberts and Joey Manley between 2006 and 2012. The website was inspired by MySpace and was intended as a place where writers, artists, publishers, and fans could interact and share their work. Though ComicSpace was highly successful upon launch, it never fully took off. Roberts and Manley expanded the scope of the project with the help of investment firm E-Line Ventures in 2007, and Manley began merging his existing websites into ComicSpace, starting with Webcomics Nation. By 2012, interest in ComicSpace had waned, and Roberts and Manley abandoned the project.
