D.J. Coffman - Sequential Artist, Thinker

Woke up to snow outside, we hear as much as 4 inches could come by rush hour this evening. I can’t complain though, I promised I would never complain about snow or ice again after seeing what the wildfires can do to houses and lives out west. Here on the east coast, people roll their eyes when you bring up the California fires, as if only movie stars or rich people lost homes– but I know that’s not true. Many people lost homes, lost everything. So I think about that now when I wake up to dangerous snow covered/ice roads, and I’m thankful that I don’t really have to leave the house today.

- Been awhile since we’ve had a review of Hero By Night– found this one this morning at WayoftheGeek

- My plan today for work is to letter Friday’s webcomic, then ink like a madman on a batch of pages I have waiting. I also feel like penciling up a new scene today, but we’ll see where the day takes me.

- I woke up to a mix of emotions about certain things I don’t want to talk about publicly. (surprise surprise!) One emotion was HOPE for the future, like I see some things going great. The other feeling was the feeling of being let down. Or maybe a little under appreciated. I know it’s in my head though, it’s not reality. Everything works itself out. I have to keep focusing on WORK now. I think that is the answer to overcoming paranoid mixed emotions in life in general. Bury yourself in something you enjoy doing. It could be video games, music… escape… for me it’s drawing and writing comics of course. I feel lucky that I have that.

- Speaking of comics… it would seem that the little “Hero-Cast” and blogging around again has bumped our pageviews up on the Hero By Night webcomic. One thing I can’t understand is, it seems to me that as our pageviews go up, our overall “Most read” ranking goes down on Drunk Duck. I’ve been told before it has to do with actual unique user numbers…. but it still says “Most Read”– so it’s sort of weird to check the Project Wondeful stats of Ethos which is #1 on there right now and see they only had half the page views I’ve gotten– and Charby which is consistently #1 on there, their Project Wonderful stats show that their pageviews are even lower and they’ve been knocked out of the top spot too now. I guess if it is based on unique readers, that’s fine, I must be below them, it’s something I’ll have to work on now in my promotion. I’m only bickering before coffee because it says “MOST READ” — and we’re clearly, according to pageviews, the most read comic on  Drunk Duck right now. I think that’s primarily because it seems like when we bring in a new reader there, they read a big chunk of the archives in one sitting. Going through the old comments on the strip I see a lot of those comments posted like “Wow, just found this and read it all today.” — anyways, that’s a little peek at how my marketing mind works in the morning before coffee. It’s curious. I’m not looking to knock anyone off– just a better way to spend my time pimping online and who I should be pimping to to increase new readership.

- Another thought about Drunk Duck, If I were running Platinum Studios, which owns Drunk Duck, I would utilize some of that space below the fold or under the main news posting or “MOST READ” section as a space to put in some sort of dynamic link to the Platinum store or the most recent products put up in it. Platinum has been really careful not to disrupt the community there, but I don’t think it would hurt anything pimping some of the Platinum projects somewhere on the main page. Right now I see a really poorly designed ad in the lower left for some

- The above was posted in thinking about the clear dichotomy that still exists between webcomic readers and comic book readers. (webcomic readers and comic book buyers?) — If we want more Webcomic readers to buy physical comic books or merchandise, webcomic readers are more apt to click on a link that says FOR SALE and it’s available immediately and gets to their house within two weeks. That’s why the dichotomy exists, because in the comic book market, we’re still asking people to preorder books that won’t be out for three months. I’m asking people right now to preorder our Issue 2 book which won’t be out on shelves until late February. (hopefully mid-February) –  I have a sort of grassroots promotion plan to get more webcomic readers into their local shops, and the catch is, just like online, they don’t even have to buy anything if they don’t want to. They just have to show up at their shop…. I’ll have more details at a later date, the holidays are going to be too busy to start this effort now. Bottom line though, it helps the stores, the creators AND the readers out. It won’t be a one way street anymore.

- Okay– these comic pages aren’t going to ink themselves. Off to face the day!