BATMAN, SUPERMAN AND you

Student number: g07e3613

Web 2.0 has provided the global community with the means to be in contact with anyone no matter where they may be at that specific time, whether it be another country or province. Internet and email are a great means to stay in touch with peers but blog sites, such as MySpace, Facebook or Twitter, have taken this concept and made it more personal. Now not only can one be in constant contact with friends but we can learn details about other individuals and independent companies that we have only met once or never met at all through personal profile pages that these blog sites allow ourselves to make. Blog sites have created a cyber community on the web making it easier to send and receive information about virtually anything or anyone.
In this essay I will focus on three different websites who make use of Web 2.0 to share in either the art or comic universe. The American based blog site Comic Blog Elite, South African based Vetseun and African Crisis which concentrates mainly on political issues in Africa.
The importance of being able to disseminate information and market oneself as a young up and coming artist is essential. This essay will discuss how crucially important blog sites have become to young creative individuals and comic book lovers as a marketing tool and how the World Wide Web is now a source of unlimited visual references and resources.
Being able to acquire information like this as a young illustrator, hoping to become a comic book artist, is very useful not only can one find out information about events, individuals and products around the world but you can also share information about yourself allowing others to learn more about you and your craft. As a young artist exposure is very important. Being able to get your name out into the art world and be noticed has never before been as accessible and easy as it is today. The process of constantly having to call and meet up with potential clients, curators and gallery owners to present them with a portfolio is very laborious and time consuming. Today an artist’s work can be fully documented on the web, using photographs or scanned images, and be explained through summaries of the work by the artist themselves via a blog site. The personal webpage on the blog site then becomes the artist’s virtual portfolio making it easier for potential buyers or curators to discover younger talent.
As a comic book fan keeping up to date with newly released issues of your favourite comic can be quite problematic especially when you, the fanatic, live in a different country. Today there are many blog sites and web pages created by other comic book fans across the world who constantly share and update information and as an illustrator who uses these comics as a reference for most of his/her subject matter these websites and web pages become very important.
Comic Blog Elite I will use as the example of Web 2.0 abilities as a sophisticated creation of information sharing technology in this essay. Comic Blog Elite is a collection of hundreds of different major comic blog sites contributed by individuals who constantly monitor the comic book world. This web site has divided its blogs into categories from the most important such as: “News and Reviews” to the less important, “Rants and Nonsense”. Comic Blog Elite discusses the activities of major comic book labels and corporations such DC and Marvel Comics and with the hyperlink system always active one can easily jump from the blog to your preferred comic book website. The site is updated everyday through the links it has to all its other websites that it is associated with. So when one of its affiliate websites updates anything, Comic Blog Elite’s link to the affiliate websites is automatically updated. So everyday from all over the world different comic book fans can always keep in touch or engage with what is happening in the greater comic world by posting, reading or commenting on different blogs.
Comic Blog Elite also houses blogs with information about all major and independent illustrators and cover artists, like Steve Dillon (Preacher) or Todd McFarlane (Spawn) their different styles and any up and coming projects that they might be working on. As an illustrator interested in learning about newer trends and styles making waves in the comic world, being able to acquire just such information so easily is big benefit.
Comic Blog Elite is essential to the comic book fan since now, in the time of fast progression in the world of technology, many people have lost interest in reading books. Graphic novels and comic books have recently been considered a dying art form because of its decreasing amount of readers and many of the big corporations (DC and Marvel) have turned to recreating its most popular titles into high budget films, such as The Dark Knight or Spiderman, in an attempt to resurrect comic books back to its former glory as a dominant pop culture.
In South Africa the graphic novel/comic book scene is not that big. Commercial book stores, like CNA, do stock a minimal amount of comic books but if you are a true die hard comic reader you would never find what you looking for in any of these stores. Commercial book stores such as these would not stock the more explicit and mature graphic novels such Preacher and The Boys because these exhibit extremely graphic illustrations of violence, even though they tend to stock Playboys and other adult magazines on their shelves.
In Cape Town there are only two book stores who only exclusively trade in comic books. One of these is The Reader’s Den in Claremont, a small book store with not many daily customers. Another major comic book distributor is Outer Limits in Jo’burg. South African based book stores like The Reader’s Den and Outer Limits require the information about their store and products to be freely available to all potential readers, so even though they do have their own website it is still crucial for fans to independently research through personal blog sites that then link up to established web sites. This is important because as a fan, of any kind of art form, you the viewer would also want a platform to engage with other comic book lovers and book store owners allowing everyone’s interests to be heard so that suppliers can have knowledge of what it is their clients would like to see on the shelves in their stores.
Unfortunately none of the sites I discovered based in South Africa were as sophisticated as that of Comic Blog Elite but they did provide information of the local comic trade, like GothamCentral.co.za and of the independent comic books such as Bitterkomix created by artists Anton Kannemeyer and Conrad Botes.
The blog page i discovered for Bitterkomix was on a local website called Vetseun.co.za. Vetseun provides the reader with a listing of every single issue of Bitterkomix since its official release in 1992. The publication has made many headlines in the South African art world for it’s harsh, over-the-top “take no prisoners” style of writing and illustration. Vetseun’s web page also displays the cover of each of these issues with a brief summary of what each is about and other details like guest contributors. Bitterkomix is not like the conventional story telling illustration that the public is accustomed to because conventionally the illustrations floating around our country are of a political nature. The artist nine out of ten times would usually be Shapiro, not that I am saying he is not a good artist its just that it seems our public seem to only be aware of the one local illustrator.
Which brings me to the African web page called AfricanCrisis which deals with political issues from all over the African continent. AfricanCrisis is not as sophisticated in the Web 2.0 design but string together a collection of different political cartoons and illustrations from around the continent, and the globe, allowing you, the eager illustrator, to not only be politically aware of situations in other countries but, but to get insights into illustrations styles that are not freely available on the mainstream cartoon and comic book universe. Illustrations can be submitted by the public and with each submission of an illustration different visitors to the site can view these cartoons and leave comments about them making this a fairly good blog site since everyone’s voice gets to be heard which is what “blogging” is all about and what Web 2.0 set out to achieve, give everyone a voice.
Web 2.0 is now in control of the way we communicate as a global society. We can access blog sites and web pages from the palm of our hands via cell phones, even gaming consoles like Playstation and Xbox have blogging sites that one can connect to via the console. With that being said all websites should be open to giving the public the freedom to voice how they feel about what is being said, what is happening around the world and on the web. Comic books have been an essential part of the better half of my creativity and the fact that people are now neglecting this dying art form is scary for me. Blog sites provide us die hard comic book readers with a platform to keep engaging with the comic world and fans all around the globe in an attempt to keep this great art form alive so that new and exciting writers, illustrators and readers get given the chance to share in their one common love, COMICS.

Bibliography
www.africancrisis.co.za/article.php?ID=40735&
www.vetseun.co.za/anarkans/skryf/hondbkp.htm
www.comicblogelite.com