Thread "Webcomics in the year of your lord, 2020 and now." in forum "Comic Talk and General Discussion *"

Posted at 1:01PM, Jan. 23, 2021

So, there's been crazy shit going on all over the place. We all know this. We hear about it constantly. My question to you is how has working on or reading webcomics helped or hindered or otherwise affected you through these things?

EDIT: this might be a topic for a quackcast some time so if you DONT want us to read your comment out, please let us know at the beginning fo your comment.

I'm also going to clear this up a little by saying im mostly talking aobut mental health stuff. Does making webcomics help get you through? do you use the medium to help you convey certain things that you experience in relation to mental health? and i wnat to make it clear that i'm not saying that you have to have a diagnoses to participate. just mental health in general.

Posted at 7:01PM, Jan. 24, 2021

Last year it was really good to work on Bottomless Waitress/ It helped calm me and centre me.

Pinky TA was a huge pain as usual though and after I finished the latest page I decided to have a break from it for a while and sew instead :)
Sewing is giving me that same centering.

Posted at 9:01PM, Jan. 24, 2021

I would say I used my comic to help myself and others find some humor in the pandemic life (aka "the new normal").

I didn't do much about the election because it's so touchy and controversial. My family reads and supports my comic, but most of them do not agree with my political views.

The pandemic has given me more time to really try and work on the comic and churn out more strips that I would otherwise…

Posted at 6:01AM, Jan. 25, 2021

I've been having trouble being productive and staying focused. I have a lot of brain fog and more migraines since my mild Covid infection this summer. I don't know if they are directly related. Because I also happen to be aging.

It sucks because my comic is my escape and my stress reliever. I need it mentally but can't access it physically sometimes. I wanted to be more active in the awards and everything too, but it's all I could manage to complete barely a page or two a month.

DD is basically my entire social circle at this point, but interaction also seems dependent on my ability to produce, so it's really frustrating to not be able to do the latter, which also removes the former.

Posted at 1:01AM, Jan. 26, 2021

I would say that creating webcomics has helped me anchor my mind into the here and the now. It is kind of like a form of meditation. I've experienced a lot of anxiety as well as all these strange, stressful and sometimes terrifying inner tensions in 2020.

Not just over the pandemic and the isolation (which I think has taught me to appreciate IRL company more then ever before), but largely also over our global, political situation which I am convinced has made the whole situation far worse then it needed to be.

I've lately struggled to cleanse myself of all the politically informed outlets on Youtube, that I've been watching for years, one of them for almost a decade, feeling that "this is all just sad and depressing now, and watching it is not gonna motivate me or make me feel any better about any of it, I might as well just quit this and focus on things that takes my mind away from the future and the world and focuses everything on where I am and what I'm doing now".

Creating webcomics has certainly helped me with this. I'd like to think that I am using at least some of my stories as a means to convey my personal view on the human condition, mental health being one aspect. A way for me to wildly (and in a admittedly cheesy and quite childish manner:P) explore, and come up with imaginative ways to express, what might be happening, or could happen, inside the human soul and in human society, now or in the future.

I know it doesn't look like it right now, my first priority is still to entertain, both me and anyone reading, but I believe my angling towards that will come shining through more and more down the line, hopefully in a way that is fascinating or at the very least amusing^^

Posted at 6:02PM, Feb. 1, 2021

I have been enjoying creating my webcomics just as my wife has knitting winter hats. We’ve been retired for a few years now, so this has worked out great for us during the pandemic. She donates those hats for kids (schools are beginning to open up here). We sit on the couch doing our favorite hobbies while it seems like crazy stuff is going on in the outside world.

Because of the political climate, we have been watching the news a lot more than we normally would. Frankly, I would be happy to cut my news-watching in half. You get just as much information, stuff is repeated so much and it would be easy to catch up.

I live in Portland, Oregon and our city has been in the news a lot about the rioting that has gone on, especially with Antifa and Proud Bois fights. A lot of my Tag Forester comix have been dealing with what’s been going on here. There’s also a big homeless problem here. I try not to be preachy but some of it comes out in my stuff.

Posted at 7:09AM, Sep. 20, 2021

Crazy shit? What do you mean? It's year 2020 and… o yeah, there was one year that didn't happen because of unspecified virus of unknown origin. My reaction to all this was to get a lot of resources I need to draw, like my favourite kind of paper and ink, and lock myself in basement with intention to improve my art. Stress caused by this lockdown gave me insomnia. But not the normal one - the kind that gives me superpowers and makes me insanely critical of everything. So few months of my life was looking at what I drew while mental copy of myself was standing behind me, screaming "it's not good enough".

That's about creating. When it comes to reading webcomics, I don't really consume other people's content as much as I used to. I guess intense working on my own stuff changed me in some way. Watching movies or playing games isn't really that fun anymore. The only little thing that brings me joy in this crazy world is working on my comic.

This and also complaining about people who are control freaks and want to tell creators what you can and can't do.