Webcomic Reviews (TRIAL RUN) – **Submissions Closed, for now**

*** UPDATE: SUBMISSIONS CLOSED, for now ***

DON’T SEND ANYTHING YET! Please read first!

I decided to go ahead and just do a trial run of webcomic reviews, since people have been submitted webcomics for review (even though we have not been doing reviews for years). Sorry. JUST WEBCOMICS right now. That means a website with navigation, an archive or chapter selection, and it must be free to read. Hold off on other forms of comics.

So… You think you want your webcomic reviewed?

If you want your webcomic reviewed, you will have to understand that your comic will be reviewed. That negative (and hopefully positive) means things will be said about your webcomic AND your webcomic WEBSITE. Yes, both the comic and website will be under review. I am expecting us to be critical, but I’m hoping that it will be a HELPFUL critical (in most cases).

So if you don’t want to hear negative things, then don’t submit. Understand that we may feel you are way too amatuerish or may just hate your comic. But I promise that we will try hard not to be assholes about it!

Your ENTIRE webcomic may not be read if it is really long, but we will mostly look at the most recent work, and the earliest work, at the very least. We will also specify if we don’t read the whole thing, and what we read.

There may be one or more reviewers. They may or may not be an audio review or a text review. They may or may not be under the “Webcomic Beacon” podcast name. This is a trial run. I am not sure how we will go about it. But I decided we should give it a shot anyway.

If this whole thing works out, and the response is good, we’ll look at opening up reviews for a more regular thing.

This is how it will work:

For the next couple weeks, I will open up the email to people who want THEIR OWN webcomic reviewed (do not submit other people’s work). Please ONLY USE “webcomicbeacon@gmail.com” with the subject “Webcomic Review Trial Run: [comic name]”.

Deadline is October 5th. After that, all other submissions will be ignored.

We will then pick 4 webcomics that were submitted, to be reviewed. One review, per week, during October. This will be the Trial Run Period. Depending on the number of webcomic submissions I get, and depending of how things go in October, I may continue into November.

Not all submissions will be reviewed. If you have submitted for a review in the past, NOW is the time to re-submit!

Extra things to “help” you:

Don’t add any of our emails or twitters to “updates” of your comic. I had to block someone who was tweeting at us every single time they updated. That’s called SPAM. That’s what hastags are for. You can always contact us with press releases of a new book/chapter being available for PDF or print, etc. You can always try to send us free PDF or print comics to review (yes I have several… and I will probably get to them at some point), but know that we are not reviewing any comics on a regular basis.

The “Comic of the Week” comics (which are on hold for the moment because of [life hold-ups]), are NOT part of any review submission. The “Comic of the Week” picks are strictly quick picks of comics we would like to share with others. They also hardly qualify as reviews. Anyway, the C.O.W.s aren’t something anyone can ask to be showcased on.

Make sure your website is set up for comic readers. I mean that. A blogspot, or such, website with images stuck into a post is not going to be reviewed. A comic posted on facebook will not be reviewed. Your website must be comic reader friendly with navigation. Remember that the website will be part of the review. Why? WEBcomics.

Do not re-submit a comic for review; unless a new submission period is announced, or if we ask people to “bump” their review requests. Watch the website or follow @webcomicbeacon (Webcomic Beacon podcast) or @webcastbeacon (WCBN website news and asst. articles) or the WCBN Tumblr for such announcements.

 

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Comments

Oooh I love it when people review webcomics. I’d do it myself but people would think I have ulterior motives!

I’m not a fan of those kind of reviews. Not when it comes to webcomics and people giving away the comic for free. (In turn, if I ever review comics that are pay to read, then the value review will come into play).

There might be an outline or a “shtick” but the reviews won’t be a set up, just to put people down. I hate those kind of “reviews”. But we’ll be honest as possible.

And… to be honest… the reason why we stopped doing webcomic reviews on Webcomic Beacon a long time ago, it was because nearly all of the submissions… were getting really bad and amateurish, and we didn’t want to really say what we really thought. (Many really needed to learn how to draw and write better, and should not have been asking for reviews in those stages… many were….. pretty bad or just uninspired.).

We’d be interested in getting a review for our comic, but we’ve had several before and they all seem to focus on the first 30 pages or so. We understand the issues, but the pages aren’t going to be redrawn, so hearing the same critique of them isn’t helpful. We did try to take all the reviews given and apply the critique to the new pages, so that reviewers time was worth it and improvements could be made.

I know this is an issue with a lot of webcomics. Folks just aren’t going to go back and redraw pages, but like to improve themselves with time. Would your site consider being more lenient with areas of webcomics that have already been reviewed? (Which would need to be pointed out by the writer/artist of course)

As far as if we would “consider being more lenient with areas of webcomics that have already been reviewed”… no. We won’t be reading other reviews. We would look at the webcomic (and the website) as it is in all. Looking at the past and the present. Judging the writing, immersion, user friendliness of the website, the art progression, and the most current art and writing.

Still trying to figure out if there will be an absolute outline or method to the reviews, or it it may be more off the cuff. It is an experiment right now. But I’m not out with a mission to attack people and their work, but I also don’t want people to submit if they are going to be super sensitive about taking criticism.

In turn, I will be accepting criticism about the reviews as well. I’ve got ideas.

As stated above, for longer comics (in which it may be impractical to read the whole thing) we’d look at the beginning and the latest material. In general, there would likely be commentary on the early art, but also on the progression and later art. Because you (should) get better with art as time passes (if you keep drawing).

Still, this is a trial run for how I think I want webcomic reviews to go. I have no intentions of those asshole reviewers from 5 years ago (negative reviews for the sake of attacking creators). But I also don’t want to hold back on saying anything, and that people should be prepared for negative feedback.

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