@DanialArin: You make some good points. Like many webcomickers are choosing to do, I launched Galaxion with a small buffer (which was the “A Matter of Principle” short story), to help give readers something more to chew on than just a page or two of content. I’m beginning to think that the magic time for webcomics to really grow in readership is in that first year, when the archive is big enough to have some good content but not so big to be intimidating to someone coming along for the first time. It’s a tough balance. I’m really interested in hearing what my fellow panelists will have to say!

How many condolence letters do I feel like writing for sake of protocols that I don’t even care about?

Also, the snipes down in the hole would really appreciate it if you stopped ‘tump tump tumping’ around up there. Those deckplates don’t replace themselves, you know…

As a reader, I think it’s easier to get into gag-a-day comics when they first start up than it is to get into serial storytelling comics. With gag-a-day, you can get a feel for what they’re about in the first three or four posts, and decide whether to stick with it or let it go.

With storytelling comics, there’s often not very much story in the first few strips or pages. Many artists seem to post their concept art between when they get the software set up and start advertising, or just put up a “coming soon” page for a couple months while they build up a buffer of pages. When they finally do start posting story updates, the first one is usually a cover page, and then, depending on the format and the writing style, it can take a number of strips or pages to get enough story posted to properly set the hook. Admittedly, I’ve seen some storyline webcomics set the hook in the first post – “Sandra and Woo” comes to mind – but those are few and far between. (Then again, “Sandra and Woo” is like “9 Chickweed Lane”, in that it intersperses gag-a-day entries among the storyline sequences.) “Galaxion” set the hook in two, and then took three more to really pound it in.

Once a comic has been running for a while, storyline comics offer a much greater incentive to the reader to go back and read the archives. This can be extremely time-consuming if the comic has been running for years with frequent updates; some, like “Freefall” or “Misfile” have been running for several years, with multiple posts per week. In this case, a long-running storyline comic calls for a significant investment of a reader’s time, to go back and review this archive, but if the writing is good, and the artwork is not poor enough to detract from the experience, a reader who has taken the time to do so will be a reader who sticks around.

At the same time, many storyline comics lose something for a reader who doesn’t review the complete archive, as they will often find themselves missing out when something from the past comes back to the forefront. At the very least, a new reader will need to read a few of the more recent posts in order to be able to understand what is happening at a particular moment. Gag-a-day strips may refer back occasionally, if they have any elements which develop over time, but for the most part a new reader can jump into them as they post without ever going back to look at older material. If there are fixed characters, a quick review of the “cast” page might be in order, but for the most part there is little lost going forward by just picking up from the most recent post at the point when a new reader discovers them.

I don’t agree with all the entries on the Good Show, Sir blog. But a lot of them really had me giggling.

What books would you nominate for that blog?

I actually bought China Mieville’s Perdido Street Station entirely because of the cover art. Not only was I not disappointed in the story, I discovered that the art was completely accurate not just in details but mood. I think I caught that sense of honesty which was why it sold itself to me.

On the other hand, some of the classic SF novels are the worst offenders in the ‘here’s a random picture of a rocket’ category. Even the Chris Foss covers for the 1970s Panther editions of Asimov’s Foundation trilogy. Pretty and generic but not really thematic.

Michael Whelan on the other hand, is darn awesome.

It still impresses me how effective the good old Star Trek wallscreen is. I wonder whether a practical bridge could use a full surround set of wallscreens for 360 degree situational awareness – but while it would look way cool, figuring out sight lines for everyone could be tricky. Would probably need some kind of center ‘pod’ to focus everyone’s attention like you have here.

I kinda wish this Space:1999 revival had been made, just because of its control room: http://www.republibot.com/content/interview-keith-young-talks-about-his-space1999-blueprints-and-revival-you-never-got-see?page=0,8

For one, they had several covers in there which were by no means awful; but much more importantly, their snarky asides about the covers frequently made no sense at all.

For instance, one of the entries is for an admittedly hideous cover of one of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ John Carter of Mars novels; yet instead of pointing out how bad the painting is, they make fun of the subject matter of the painting: “Ha ha! A muscular guy riding a green, eight-legged horse! How ridiculous!” — indicating that they pretty much don’t know the first damned thing about the book whose cover they are making fun of.

They do that over and over again: They are constantly deriding the subject matter of covers which are directly illustrating events and characters that are actually in the books. They do it with several of Darrell K. Sweet’s Xanth covers; and rather than criticizing his art style, which can frequently seem overly posed and stiff, they criticize what he is drawing — and in each case, the things he was drawing were actually in the book.

That speaks to me of a web site which runs on autopilot, posting things to make fun of whether they have anything worth making fun of or not.