LAST TIME: With everyone stuck inside with COVID the webcomic world has seen a massive boost in funding and several surprising series launched ahead of perennial leaders. But with that waning as people pretend this whole pandemic thing is over, the LODZ was beginning to reassert itself. How has the landscape changed? Have leaner months hurt these new risers?
(Note: LODZ is the Low Oxygen Death Zone, aka the point where people go from a slow slide down the scale into a rapid drop off the listings into the land of has-beens and never-was, their market share eaten by others.)
1. Jeph Jacques (Questionable Content), 12,854 Patrons (+259 Patrons). No matter what, some things are eternal. The unconquered king of the Web Comic Patreon pile remains the gentle giant and his continued pivot from indie snark to explorations of identity with robots. Good on you Jeph, I'm glad you're out here singlehanded proving "get woke go broke" is BS.
2. Faizan Durrani (Paperback), 3,935 Patrons (+1,103), Power Ranking +30. Paperback isn't a webcomic, it's an iOS manga reader that is ad-free. I don't know what it's doing here, but I'm glad that someone's making it, I guess?
3. Zach Weinersmith (SMBC Comics), 3,179 patrons (-30), Power Ranking -1. Zach continues to have the slowest, most miniscule trickle from his patrons. It's still a crowd that most webcomic creators would kill for, but it puts him ever closer into the strike range of our next comic...
4. Rich Burlew (Order of the Stick), 3,070 Patrons (-5), Power Ranking -1. Rich seems to be stabilizing after a rather meteoric rise over the last year or so. Still, all he needs is one good push to take Zach's (usual) place in second. Will he make it before OOTS ends?
5. David M Willis (Walky no Naku Koro Ni: Daigaku-hen), 2,471 Patrons (+11), Power Ranking +1. Willis ascendant! It's a battle of inches compared to the last time we looked in on this but even so, like Jeph, Willis has a charm that seems to resist market trends, always winding up somewhere in the 4-6 rankings.
6. Tom Parkinson-Morgan/ABBADON (Kill Six Billion Demons), 2,321 Patrons (+87), Power Rankings +3. ABBADON also ascendant! I had worried that this patreon was on its way out with K6BD in its final arcs, but if anything that seems to have reinvigorated it. How far can it go before it ends?
7. Robert Jefferson (Comics Explained), 2,287 Patrons (-257). Power Ranking -3. Oof. Well for every rise someone has to fall, but this was precipitous. I guess when your thing is explaining comics for people who got into them through the movies, you're going to be hurt by a lack of comic book movies and a drying up of the COVID money. Still hurts to see...
8. Kate Beaton (Hark! A Vagrant), 2,247 Patrons (+126), Power Ranking +2. Kate continues to come back into the internet's good graces as she navigates webcomics without burning out and her own life as an adult. Wholesome stuff. The kind of success story you want to see in this industry, you know?
9. Alice Oseman (Heartstopper), 2,223 Patrons (-164). Power Rankings -2. I really did think Oseman was posed to take on the world there for awhile, but she's been consistently bleeding her way out of top ten for awhile now. I guess is the first real webcomic victim of the post-COVID funding bust. Thankfully the author is pretty well established elsewhere.
10. Emily McGovern (Background Slythern, Emily's Comics), 2,215 Patrons (-61). Power Ranking -2. Another on the "death by inches" grind here, I was always so baffled at how well someone who drew things that were primarily designed to circulate as memes on tumblr and facebook did in here, but it seems like her day in the sun might be finally coming to an end.
Yeah, kind of hard when your subject matter continually gets tained by the author being both a terfy pieceo f shit and incapable of shutting the fuck up.
Just a quick comparison of numbers here to last time, which was still pretty high on stimmy money: 1st and 2nd place are doing better, but everyone else is generally looking a little leaner with the 3-5 range being hit the hardest usually to the tune of about 100 less on average.
And, as always, I will be keen to remind viewers that Burlew's patreon isn't so much a fund for Order of the Stick so much as the OOTS Forums Life Support.
That's true, the SA Tradgames board is legitimately solid just basically it's own weird fiefdom apart from SA that exists as the equal and opposite reaction to the shittiest parts of the OSR movement.
Gonna have myself a cigarette and then we will look into what has happened to the 11-20 slot. A lot of our top ten perennials have yet to show up. Are they still hanging in there? And does this mean the LODZ is back?
11. Akusai Katsu/lifelight (My Dear Cold-Blooded King), 2,141 Patrons (-339). Power Ranking -6. Ouch. Well, it's a dead comic and I'm going to guess their new one has been pushed back to November. The Webtoon market is fickle in ways even the old keenspot one wasn't. I think unfortunately they've got further to fall before they can mount a comeback.
12. Zachary M. Stafford (Extra Fabulous Comics), 2,019 Patrons (-1). Power Ranking -1. Zachary hasn't really moved from their spot, which to me tells me they're honestly the descendant of SMBC in terms of style and audience, they've just had a few people surge past them. I'll be curious to see if they remain stalwartly somewhere around the rank 11 spot.
13. Christopher Grady (Lunarbaboon). 1,980 Patrons (+35). Power rankings -1. Weirdly enough we're seeing kind of a calcification around this area that didn't used to occur, a sort of middle card bracket of webcomic artists who have followings that seem relatively stable. Wholesome guy, wholesome comic, wish him the best.
14. Tom Siddell (Gunnerkrigg Court), 1875 Patrons (-34 Patrons). Power Rankings -1. This calcification seems to include Siddell and his fall from a chunk of his fandom's grace. Once a perennial top ten contender, six months out with no real growth from his fall isn't a good look, but there's nobody for him to blame but himself.
15. Danielle Corsetto (Elephant Town), 1,799 Patreons (-25). Power Ranking -1. I am dying to know what the fuck happened here. I never read Girls with Slingshots but it was always a solid contender for the 6-11 spots. Is Elephant Town not finding an audience? Did she fuck up? Why is this one of all things seemingly on the LODZward slide?
16. Manuel & Gieszel Gody (Black Sands Entertainment), 1,784 (+33). Power Ranking -1. Still we're by and large in the same 11-20 we were before, just off by one. These fine folks seem to be doing just as well as they were the last time we saw them, and are at this rate set to be rank 14 at least the next time we look in on the rankings.
17. Tracy Butler (Lackadaisy), 1,612 (-30). Power Rankings -1. Again, off by one. Again I am amazed that people believe this hard in a comic that seems to have stopped updating in lieu of an animation coming out eventually. That's a lot of pressure to be under, so hopefully for everyone involved it all goes well.
18. Dan Shive (El Goonish Shive), 1,436 Patrons (-5). Dan Shive may have in fact be now a new gate keeper, the man to beat by metrics when you want to try to break into a relatively stable patreon market, and your first sign you are inexorably slipping into the LODZ if you fall under them. Grim, but the market is full of grim realities.
19. Abel Haagen and Christian Albers (Wooden Plank Studio), 1,392 Patrons (+735). Power Ranking +37ish. New blood, bursting into the top twenty! You love to see it! I'm a lot more excited for this than I was a lot of the people the last time or two, because so much of it was fuck around "I'm stuck inside" money, but this could be genuinely something new!
20. Aina Palm (Idiots Don't Catch Colds), 1,302 (-180). Power Ranking -3. Webtoons in general just ain't doing so hot right now, it looks like. After such a rapidfire rise that seemed insulated from the market vagaries I didn't expect to see a major backslide like this; they seem to be hemorrhaging about 100 patrons a month. Wonder why?
My guess is one part shiny syndrome wearing off, one part that, like Keenspot or Drunkduck or what have you before it, it's essentially a massive self-hosting circuit.
Doing some quick number comparisons, 11-20 is in an interesting spot where 11-15 are feeling the bleed that most of top ten is, though not as severely, and 16-20 are generally as healthy or healthier? Which suggests if trends continue we will eventually see 11-20 completely invert, which would be wild.
I don't think Lackadaisy is ever making its way back into the top 10 again. If it surges back to its glory days it'll be as an animation and it'll be off the webcomic charts. That sun has set.
Thanks to COVID expanding how much money people spend on this stuff, I should probably work my way through 21-30, where things at a glance are getting kind of... weird.
21. Aryyn Diaz (Dresden Codak), 1,295 Patrons (-10). Power Rankings -1. Well, you got me. By all accounts Diaz has been on the slow patron bleed for the last... what, 14 months at least? But they're actually up money from the last time we saw them. So whatever they're making when they deign to make it, has a small but enraptured fanbase. Takes all sorts.
And yeah that might be it too, maybe they've learned not to call fucking Will Eisner a mediocre white guy anymore. Or maybe they just don't have a take that radioactively fucking stupid left in them.
If I believe in a world where people can be better people, and, unfortunately for all of us, I do, I can believe that maybe Aryyn learned something from being stuck in the revolving door that was Twitter's Main Character slot.
Yeah, look, I don't fucking like them, I think their webcomic is shit, has been shit, and I haven't been able to bring myself to read it to see if it's still shit but I'm willing to go out on a limb and say it is, but I will agree with you there.
I'm sincerely, genuinely hoping coming to terms with their identity has helped them immensely in that regard, because a lot of their stupid shit they used to say felt like the sort of proving yourself posturing you do when you're trying to assert your identity to yourself as much as anyone else.
I hope in realizing they're not the Good Webcomic Feminist Ally Guy because they're not a guy at all has brought them a measure of peace and a better life.
22. Joshua Barkman (False Knees), 1,280 Patrons (+100), Power Ranking -1. The funny bird comics are slowly encroaching on the top 20. I have high hopes for them still. I think they could be a solid midcard contender who creeps up this list, or at least gets 20 on lock.
23. Lucy Knisley (n/a). 1,274 patrons (-60), Power Ranking -4. Seriously you don't do webcomics and your Patreon seems to be kind of a lark for you, why are you on this list. Why are you here? Go home.
24. Ticcy (Kiss It Goodbye!), 1,150 Patrons (+544), Power Ranking +44ish! HOLY SHIT. Another out of nowhere injection of new blood, this time for a [checks notes] girl's love webtoon set in Japan by an Italian ace? You know what? Sure. Fucking rock it. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. I hope you continue your rise.
We have three more before we hit our cutoff of 1000 patrons, but I feel confident in saying that if you're below these two, you're more than likely done, or on your way up for the first time.
27. Jenny Hefczyc/Jenny-Jinya (Loving Reaper), 1,117 Patrons (+50). Power Ranking -1. This might be the one exception to the previous statement. This is actually closer to standing still on the power rankings, with such a massive upset in Kiss It Goodbye. The halted momentum isn't good, but it's not a confirmed beginning of the end. We'll see in November.
Speaking of halted momentum, Plurk favorite Mary Cagle (Sleepless Domain, etc) once again does not make our power rankings chart, sitting at 919 Patrons.
28. Johnathan Rosenberg (Scenes from a Multiverse), 1,079 Patrons (-24). Power Rankings -4. For a guy who is retired, like Howard Taylor, that's not a bad number for him. It's a bad number for anyone under him who is still on the full-time hustle.
29. Sophie Labelle (Assigned Male), 1,049 Patrons (-31). Power Ranking -4. It used to be that Sophie was basically always at the bottom falls out point, and I guess that's not any less true, she could still rally. But this feels more like she's a bit under the bottom falling out. I wonder why she's always struggling in these, did something happen?
Also in the "Popular In Our Circle" category of those that didn't make the chart: Dingo the Dog / Mysterie Krew (Scoob and Shag) is sitting at about 830 patrons, which is about where they were beforehand.
Oh, and because I delight in keeping
Quinneapolis
updated on this: Since we last did this, Sinfest has slipped from 160 to 170 in power rankings, down from 347 patrons to 327 patrons, and down from $1091/month to $1025/month.
I think Dingo had a major depressive episode which completely tanked the pace of Scoob and Shag (alongside its burgeoning complexity), and unfortunately the slowed pace means they kind of missed the train towards the webcomic midcard.
No matter what, some things are eternal. The unconquered king of the Web Comic Patreon pile remains the gentle giant and his continued pivot from indie snark to explorations of identity with robots. Good on you Jeph, I'm glad you're out here singlehanded proving "get woke go broke" is BS.
Paperback isn't a webcomic, it's an iOS manga reader that is ad-free. I don't know what it's doing here, but I'm glad that someone's making it, I guess?
Zach continues to have the slowest, most miniscule trickle from his patrons. It's still a crowd that most webcomic creators would kill for, but it puts him ever closer into the strike range of our next comic...
Rich seems to be stabilizing after a rather meteoric rise over the last year or so. Still, all he needs is one good push to take Zach's (usual) place in second. Will he make it before OOTS ends?
Willis ascendant! It's a battle of inches compared to the last time we looked in on this but even so, like Jeph, Willis has a charm that seems to resist market trends, always winding up somewhere in the 4-6 rankings.
ABBADON also ascendant! I had worried that this patreon was on its way out with K6BD in its final arcs, but if anything that seems to have reinvigorated it. How far can it go before it ends?
Oof. Well for every rise someone has to fall, but this was precipitous. I guess when your thing is explaining comics for people who got into them through the movies, you're going to be hurt by a lack of comic book movies and a drying up of the COVID money. Still hurts to see...
Kate continues to come back into the internet's good graces as she navigates webcomics without burning out and her own life as an adult. Wholesome stuff. The kind of success story you want to see in this industry, you know?
I really did think Oseman was posed to take on the world there for awhile, but she's been consistently bleeding her way out of top ten for awhile now. I guess is the first real webcomic victim of the post-COVID funding bust. Thankfully the author is pretty well established elsewhere.
Another on the "death by inches" grind here, I was always so baffled at how well someone who drew things that were primarily designed to circulate as memes on tumblr and facebook did in here, but it seems like her day in the sun might be finally coming to an end.
yeahlook upon yon internet, ye mighty, and despairOuch. Well, it's a dead comic and I'm going to guess their new one has been pushed back to November. The Webtoon market is fickle in ways even the old keenspot one wasn't. I think unfortunately they've got further to fall before they can mount a comeback.
Zachary hasn't really moved from their spot, which to me tells me they're honestly the descendant of SMBC in terms of style and audience, they've just had a few people surge past them. I'll be curious to see if they remain stalwartly somewhere around the rank 11 spot.
Weirdly enough we're seeing kind of a calcification around this area that didn't used to occur, a sort of middle card bracket of webcomic artists who have followings that seem relatively stable. Wholesome guy, wholesome comic, wish him the best.
This calcification seems to include Siddell and his fall from a chunk of his fandom's grace. Once a perennial top ten contender, six months out with no real growth from his fall isn't a good look, but there's nobody for him to blame but himself.
I am dying to know what the fuck happened here. I never read Girls with Slingshots but it was always a solid contender for the 6-11 spots. Is Elephant Town not finding an audience? Did she fuck up? Why is this one of all things seemingly on the LODZward slide?
Still we're by and large in the same 11-20 we were before, just off by one. These fine folks seem to be doing just as well as they were the last time we saw them, and are at this rate set to be rank 14 at least the next time we look in on the rankings.
Again, off by one. Again I am amazed that people believe this hard in a comic that seems to have stopped updating in lieu of an animation coming out eventually. That's a lot of pressure to be under, so hopefully for everyone involved it all goes well.
Dan Shive may have in fact be now a new gate keeper, the man to beat by metrics when you want to try to break into a relatively stable patreon market, and your first sign you are inexorably slipping into the LODZ if you fall under them. Grim, but the market is full of grim realities.
New blood, bursting into the top twenty! You love to see it! I'm a lot more excited for this than I was a lot of the people the last time or two, because so much of it was fuck around "I'm stuck inside" money, but this could be genuinely something new!
Webtoons in general just ain't doing so hot right now, it looks like. After such a rapidfire rise that seemed insulated from the market vagaries I didn't expect to see a major backslide like this; they seem to be hemorrhaging about 100 patrons a month. Wonder why?
Well, you got me. By all accounts Diaz has been on the slow patron bleed for the last... what, 14 months at least? But they're actually up money from the last time we saw them. So whatever they're making when they deign to make it, has a small but enraptured fanbase. Takes all sorts.
The funny bird comics are slowly encroaching on the top 20. I have high hopes for them still. I think they could be a solid midcard contender who creeps up this list, or at least gets 20 on lock.
Seriously you don't do webcomics and your Patreon seems to be kind of a lark for you, why are you on this list. Why are you here? Go home.
HOLY SHIT. Another out of nowhere injection of new blood, this time for a [checks notes] girl's love webtoon set in Japan by an Italian ace? You know what? Sure. Fucking rock it. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. I hope you continue your rise.
26. Howard Taylor (mhm). 1,124 Patrons (-35). Power Ranking -3.
This might be the one exception to the previous statement. This is actually closer to standing still on the power rankings, with such a massive upset in Kiss It Goodbye. The halted momentum isn't good, but it's not a confirmed beginning of the end. We'll see in November.
For a guy who is retired, like Howard Taylor, that's not a bad number for him. It's a bad number for anyone under him who is still on the full-time hustle.
It used to be that Sophie was basically always at the bottom falls out point, and I guess that's not any less true, she could still rally. But this feels more like she's a bit under the bottom falling out. I wonder why she's always struggling in these, did something happen?
Since we last did this, Sinfest has slipped from 160 to 170 in power rankings, down from 347 patrons to 327 patrons, and down from $1091/month to $1025/month.