Since the dawn of time, people have been expressing themselves with comics. Whether it was Neolithic cavemen showing off their buffalo hunt or a bunch of Americans complaining about taxes on their tea, we’ve found that cartoons often display our wants, needs, and desires, better than words alone ever could.
When the internet came onto the scene, comics were one of the earliest forms of entertainment to gain virality. Penny Arcade, Ctrl+Alt+Del, and even the dreaded Homestuck all existed on websites that helped shape the internet in a pre-social media age.
“Comics are a super dynamic medium and can be made to fit whatever you want them to,” internet comic artist Ingrid Ochoa told Passionfruit at New York Comic Con, which took place Oct. 9 through 12. “They are incredibly versatile, and their evolution has existed parallel to the internet and any platform they’re on.”
Over the past decade, internet users have siloed themselves onto a handful of social media platforms, so creators have had to find new ways and places to tell their stories.
Ochoa has found success with her romance comic “The Kiss Bet” on the comics platform Webtoon. The comic currently sits at over 200 pages, has been viewed over 170 million times, and even has Hot Topic merchandise.
From a young age, Ochoa started reading manga and realized, “I suck at words, but I have this vision in my head that I want to get out.” So she started practicing drawing, making her early comics on internet relics like The Duck and SmackJeeves.
“The Kiss Bet,” along with other comics on Webtoon, utilizes an infinite scroll feature like TikTok does. This feature allows readers an extra level of immersion, which a six-panel comic broken up into slow-loading pages just can’t have.
“You feel like you are watching a video or something, you can have a jump scare or something random that pops up on you,” Ochoa said.
Other comic artists have had to get creative to earn their success. Shen Comix, who also posts on Webtoon, started out making comics for his friends and the school newspaper before he started posting to Tumblr.
From there, his comics about everyday life, emotions, and how life gets you down pulled in millions of views, earning him 1.8 million Instagram followers. But with that massive audience comes an anxiety to give the fans what they want, he said.
“I have this stress reaction when stuff just doesn’t perform well on social media because I know that it’s going to impact my career,” Shen said. “Other people don’t go to work and think if they don’t perform well enough, they won’t get paid.”
Ochoa’s fans are incredibly devoted to her romantic tales of high school love and heartbreak, with fans “shipping” certain characters together or wanting them to be romantically involved.
“Sometimes I’m like, fine, I’ll give you what you want,” Ochoa said. “But I’ve had to change people who are supposed to be together, which has been for the best because people keep coming back for more.”
To make sure they create enough content, both Ochoa and Shen have to come up with clever ways to force them into the creative spirit while working from home.
For Ochoa, getting into that “creative spirit” all depends on where the story is — it can be harder for her to sit down and write during a dramatic, tense plot point compared to when it is “fluffy, exciting and cute” and she is “excited to start working right away.”
Shen has tried multiple tactics, including flipping a coin to “see if I’m working or playing video games for the first few hours” and changing into “business casual” to make it feel like a more professional work environment.
These comic artists have managed to turn their passion into profit, even while fighting through the drudgery of the creative process. They each have a Patreon, a merch store, a deal with Webtoon that pays them for episodes, and sometimes get brand deals.
Webtoon makes deals with artists, helping them bring their content to different mediums, advertising for them, or allowing them to put content behind a paywall. Ochoa and Shen also have their own revenue sources — Ochoa makes exclusive content for Patreon and Shen earns royalties from his book deals.
They aren’t just artists but also traditional influencers who have to play by the game of the algorithm.
“I feel like this generation is still really big on just reading, and even webcomics, I think, are becoming even bigger and bigger than they ever have,” Ochoa said. “Anybody can make comics, and there are a million genres, which are constantly expanding.”
