Democracy Comes to Comic Strips

I want to publish a comic strip. Not like your regular daily funnies, but a new concept. You see? Up until now, you read comic strips, like them or hate them, but besides ranting to a newspaper editor or writing hate mail to the author, there has been little that you can do to influence the course of the comic strip's story-line. I propose to change that.

I propose that comic strips should become democratic, that is, that the readers of the strip should be empowered and educated and then vote on the principal issues that affect the characters of the strip. It is still unclear how the voting will take place, but it will probably have to be online, since I don't expect to have the resources to handle paper ballots, and can't put a voting machine in every precint. Of course, if I were to go the voting machine route, it would be subject to rigging and elections could be stolen. I still have not decided if there should be super-delegates or not, and how many electoral votes each state should get. I think that every citizen deserves the chance of getting their vote counted and recognized.

My idea is that there will be a website associated with the comic. For now, Midtoon.com seems to be available (please don't take it). All the comic s will be avaliable there for perusing, and there will be elections every week (several may be running at a time) the results of the electoral votes will be calculated and they will affect the life of the citizens of Midtoon, USA. In a future post I will talk about the main characters and the way they interact with each other.

How is this new Democratic Comic going to fund itself? Making a comic strip can be a lot of fun, but it is also hard work, and I expect that my efforts in bringing you a quality product should be remunerated. But how? That is a question that keeps me tossing and turning in my sleep, and that affects my day job (yes, until I become a millionarie web comic publisher, I will have to keep a day job). Am I going to impose a Tax to all residents and citizens of my comic world? Will it be donation supported? Will it sell itself to the corporate media and be funded by adverteasing? I know it is spelled advertising, just think adverteasing is more accurate. Will it plug and place products and try to license out to gather funds? Will we issue an IPO?

What seems more likely is that in order to vote in Midtoon elections, you must register, and to do so, you must be a resident of Midtoon. Becoming a resident of Midtoon will probably require some type of tax. The amount has not been determined yet, but it must be really really low, to allow for a million people to pay it. A million of you giving me one dollar a year? Far-fetched? I don't know, but I don't think it should be hard, especially if Midtoon is successful. There are likely to be sales of products, online auctions, a paypal donate button, a "citizen" tax (something way higher than the resident, maybe $5,00 that would give you access to the citizen's only events, a red white and blue Midtoon Citizen pin and a full year of bragging rights)

In keeping with my strong belief in freedom, Reading the comic online will not require payment of any type. Once a year, I plan to publish a Midtoon Yearbook; a professionally printed collection of a full year of Monday through Saturday comic strips and maybe some electoral information and political analysis of the happenings of Midtoon. My goal is to reach the 50K readers mark in three years. I think the Yearbook will be running around $12.00, but this is subject to change.

As far as adverteasing goes, no. I don't think that adverteasing should have a place in the first Comic World Democracy. Sure, there will be self-promotion and links to our own products (like framed art, pins, t-shirts, hats, etc) We will see if we can make the efforts worthwhile woith this financial scheme. I plant to accept political contributions, but Midtoon has very strict anti-lobbying laws, so don't expect that you will be able to influence the results of an election just because you make a campaign donation. Your vote will still count as one, unless you happen to be a super-delegate. I have not decided if the vote of the citizens will be worth more than the vote of the residents, or if there will be super-delegates at all. This is probably a principle that undermines the basic concept of a democracy, so I may not allow for that. We will see what the future brings along these lines.

There are many options available to us, but before we can decide how to fund this venture, I have to create the content. This is not the .com era when people were getting millions just on the idea of future income. Today, you need something real to offer. I will be talking about it in the next post. For now, I will go sign a deal with McDonald's to include a Midtoon character in their kid's meals and sell the movie rights to Miramax.

See you soon in Midtoon.