Speaking of Media Empires

If I could wave the magic wand I would be able to make a modest income (say that of a middle manager at a reasonably successful non-profit) engaging in my endless tinkering with text and sound and image (the last of these has received very short shrift in my digital presentation but it
meant a fair bit to me once).

In fact I suspect that if I really threw myself into it I could succeed in this ambition, at least with writing, even in the treacherous mutant-infested cesspool that is 21st century freelancing. I strongly suspect that I would effectively end up working 60 hours a week and 80 percent of that would be hustling. I hate hustling. I'm bad at it and it makes me feel sad. Which is why I'm leaning strongly towards just getting a job: it's more straightforward, more lucrative, and it doesn't burden the "art" with any responsibility of financial sustenance. A better person (or a better artist) might find some method of avoiding these compromises. I in fact think I feel okay about how it is all trending.

But if I had my druthers... if I had my magic wand... if I had an oil tycoon instead of a country minister for a father and a fat trust fund... Maybe I'd try to get the Media Empire rolling - it's hard to resist in the face of how utterly dumb so much of this in-between stage current media distribution paradigm is set up. My own little despotic News Corp., which would subsidize these idiosyncratic scrawlings and all the rest.

So it has been interesting (by way of revealing that these personal musings have all been virtually unrelated preamble), if intermittently envy-inspiring, to watch the development of the New Media Empire that is Penny Arcade (who don't need any linkies from the likes of me) happening in real time. It's one of these things that just absolutely shouldn't have worked. There's no need to retread the story, or to point out the qualities that are making the thing a legitimate empire which now has enough of a moat dug in its top tier events and merch that it's not likely to be easily toppled by, say, waning popularity of the core strip (not to say this is happening or going to anytime soon).

Over the last several years the maturity of the thing as a business has been evident in a perceptibly increasing drive to diversify the media product base. There's a video section now, a couple of games that did well enough (though apparently not well enough to finish the proposed trilogy). The strip hosts the occasional experimental continuities, some of which are spinning off products of their own.

Finally I have arrived at my point, which is you should check out The Trenches (starting out at the beginning there, for reasons I'll shortly elucidate). I've been on the fence about it. It's a weird strip, relatively devoid of jokes and gags, defined by continuity and off to a very slow start (the opposite of Penny Arcade in other words). It's on something like the tenth strip and I just this day figured it out and was surprised to find myself somewhat actually invested in the story. What it is, in fact, is a three-panel comic narrative serial, which is something of an odd beast, the kind of thing that thrived in the golden age of newspapers.

And now, because of the incredibly slow start and the absolutely terrible job they're doing at presenting it (the thing has been around for a solid month now and the "New Reader" link still directs to a perplexing content-free placeholder page as opposed to, say, some indication of what the hell you're reading, directions to start at the beginning if you need to, directions to a "catch up" page with links and precis of the comics or something so I can get caught up when I forget the thing exists for a couple weeks as opposed to the endless clicking around with these wretched things - << < > >> - oh and how about a feed link since the "what's new" ticker thing at the top of the redesigned PA page says there is "new Trenches" 100% of the time and consequently is right twice a week but contains no useful information by virtue of being wrong the other 5 days, and don't even get me started about the old-link-puking broken PA feed) - not to mention the terrible job they're doing at promoting it (the what's new ticker, again, by virtue of saying the same stuff pretty much all the time, has become invisible to me and I presume anyone else who visits the main PA site regularly), it is never mentioned on the PA weblog, which has got to be one of the more abused, under-utilized bully-pulpits in the internet, co-creator Scott Kurtz doesn't even have a LINK to the damn thing on his PvP site, no not even a teensy-weensy one under the "Other Stuff I Do" heading in the lower left-hand corner of his website (P.S. Mr. Kurtz the PvP page also lacks a link their to your "TV" show you did a large and frankly undeservedly successful Kickstarter for which is also posted at the biggest gaming webcomic site on the internet as you might recall, what, are you afraid of diluting your brand? ARRGH), by virtue of all this, I'm worried the damn thing is going to tank and get scrapped now that I'm just getting interested.

The preceding paragraph was a sentence approximately half of which was parenthetical asides which raises questions about my credentials in critiquing readability but then again I don't exactly have a payroll over here. Seriously, Penny Arcade, do you not have anyone doing user experience over there? Because if you do they need an assistant or something.