I actually bought things from their ads because I wanted to support them. Those days are long gone.
Fuck, remember webcomics?
Achewood, Diesel Sweeties, Cat and Girl, Penny Arcade, Cyanide & Happiness, Joe and Monkey, Questionable Content, Dresden Codak (always updated way too infrequently), Dinosaur Comics, Gone With the Blastwave, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, The Perry Bible Fellowship, When I Grow Up/WIGU/Overcompensating, Married to the Sea, hell, even CTRL+ALT+DEL left us with Loss. I could go on, there’s definitely more.
…but I don’t like to talk about what happened with SinFest.
A lot of these sites had advertising, but I don’t remember any of it being so off-putting that I felt the need for an adblocker. Honestly, at this point, I don’t even recall if adblockers were a thing yet in 2000-2005.
So much content in those early aughts. I’m still waiting on a Complete Achewood. Damn you, Chris Onstad!
PlasmaDistortion@lemm.ee 8 months ago
SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 months ago
They mostly advertised other comics and merchandise from other comics, if I recall correctly.
Also, Adblock originally released in 2002, and Adblock Plus came out in 2006.
I do recall one of the reasons I respected webcomics ads was they weren’t ones that were animated, blaring music, or asking me to try to play a mini-game by clicking on something that specifically can’t be caught by your mouse.
jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 8 months ago
I still read the order of the stick, even though it updates glacially: www.giantitp.com/comics/oots.html
It’s so good. Starts as a goofy DND joke strip, develops a ton of pathos.
SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 months ago
What early 2000’s webcomics taught me is there were a lot of really great writers out there with some subpar art skills.
When the writing is so good, you don’t give a shit that it’s all stick figures.
Patch@feddit.uk 8 months ago
Some of them were actually pretty good artists; occasionally you’d see them do other stuff and it’d be genuinely good on an artistic level.
The whole stick man, lumpy face, primitivist thing was just an “in” aesthetic (while also being conveniently really quick to produce).
root_beer@midwest.social 8 months ago
There are a few webcomics out there that have some excellent artwork. Lackadaisy is the first to come to mind, though updates have always been verrrry sporadic—especially now that she’s working on an animated version—and there was one called The Abominable Charles Christopher that was fucking phenomenal, but it just sorta… stopped. I’m still subscribed to the RSS because I’m holding out hope, but I know it’s over.
SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 months ago
Some of them were actually pretty good artists; occasionally you’d see them do other stuff and it’d be genuinely good on an artistic level.
Right, but some of them also blossomed beautifully!
I remember Dresden Codak being good art from the get-go, and it only got better over the years. Same with Perry Bible Fellowship, that guys got some fucking artistic chops.
The whole stick man, lumpy face, primitivist thing was just an “in” aesthetic (while also being conveniently really quick to produce).
I’d say this went for things like Cyanide and Happiness, which if I recall correctly, had a series of artists, it wasn’t all just one person.
Stuff like Sluggy Freelance? Yeah, the art and writing really never got that much better.
Then you have Dinosaur Comics, whose entire shtick was just re-using the exact same panels for every comic.
jak@sopuli.xyz 8 months ago
Anders loves Maria
SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 months ago
Hell, I’m about to go and edit my original comment and make links to any that are still around. Looks like a lot of them are!
ChunkMcHorkle@lemmy.world 8 months ago
AceFuzzLord@lemm.ee 8 months ago
One of my absolute favorite webcomics is Peter and Company. I didn’t realize this, but the website lists the first strip as being from 2005 and the latest being from last month.
pacmondo@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
I remember having popup blockers, but not a whole cloth ad blocker.