different entity in the last year) decided to
launch a blog site called “Chicago Now” to try
and compete with HuffPo for local bloggers.
I’m not sure if you’d put me at the very end of
the first wave or early in the second wave, but
I was approached by one of the editors about
doing a comic strip for them. Len Strazewski
was originally approached, but he wasn’t available and referred them to me.
After a bit of negotiation, we settled on format
and I arranged to bring Scott Beaderstadt into
the mix as our artist. Scott’s probably best
known for Trollords, which was probably the
second most popular indy comic to Teenage
Mutant Ninja Turtles back in the indy boom
of the mid-to-late 80s. I should probably note
that when they were launching the property,
Chicago Now’s content was curated and they
paid a monthly retainer. It was very different
than it is now. This was also a site that was run
on an advertising/page views model, so I was
constructing a comic with that specifically in
mind, which isn’t the normal first priority with
webcomics.
The strip, while a bit of an unusual path, qualified me for membership in the Mystery Writers
of America.
We did it for around a year, at which point
the financial model changed to only paying
for page views local to the Chicago Market.
We’d had some technical issues shoehorning a comic strip into the Typepad platform
they were using, and discoverability issues on
top of the fact that the audience for the strip
wasn’t primarily Chicago-based, so we pulled
the strip over to a solo site for a bit. It went on
hold when my position at Columbia College
was eliminated, although we keep meaning
to get around to finishing it. There’s at least one
more chapter’s script in the can. The comics are
still up at www.divisionandrush.com.
SP!: YOU’VE ALSO ASSISTED ORGANIZATIONS
OF A DECIDEDLY NON-COMICS BENT,
INCLUDING THE AMA AND THE ASSOCIATION
OF AMERICAN PUBLISHERS, WITH BRINGING
THEIR PRINT BRANDS TO THE DIGITAL
WORLD. WHAT WOULD YOU CONSIDER
THE MOST CHALLENGING ASPECT(S) OF
PROJECTS LIKE THESE?
TA: The challenge is retain enough of the “feel”
of the print brand while fitting it into the wider
world of digital. The navigation is a little different and it’s not all about this month’s issue.
Back issues and old articles mean you need to
spend a little more time organizing content
categories and how the archives are accessed.
Adding some interactive elements. Getting
the news updates on the site without undermining the flow of the print edition. That was
a little different with medical journals or anything peer-reviewed. Studies can be breaking
news if they’re big enough, but not always.
These days, the print and digital roles are
sometimes swapped and the print is trying to
capture the feel of the digital, but without the
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