When my girlfriend first saw my old webcomic, she had the same reaction that most people have. She read a few, and went “Oh.”
Some people really get into them, but most people? “Oh.”
The “I don’t get it” isn’t explicitly said, but it’s there. I made the amateur mistake of trying to explain one of the jokes to Sarah, and got the response I deserved:
“No, I get that.”
See, Giant Bee comics aren’t funny exactly. On occasion they’ll make me laugh, but more than anything they’re just weird. It’s a brand of weird that I enjoy (it’s pretty heavily influenced by Nedroid and Daisy Owl, the latter sadly no longer running) and it oscillates from dark to light in a way that I find amusing, but I completely understand why many people don’t like it.
A few months after showing Sarah Jane my webcomic, my little sister came down to stay with us. She enjoys my Whiteboard Comics (or at least she cleverly pretends to) and she also loves referencing obscure things, so when she made a joke about there being “fleventy minutes to go”, I was wracking my brain trying to work out where “Fleventy” came from:
For some reason the number stuck in Sarah Jane’s brain as well, and ever since then, whenever I ask her anything involving numbers (including the incredibly corny “How much does Peter love you?”) I always get the response “Bleventy*!” in response.
*close enough.
So while SJ will probably never sit down and read through my old webcomic, I enjoy the fact that a tiny part of it has permeated our day-to-day life.
Whiteboard Comics has been on hiatus for a long time now – with my new-found “routine” (and the fact that I now own an iPad, which would make colouring and possibly even drawing a lot easier) I’m considering getting back into them. Drawing one first thing in the morning each day, and colouring/uploading them whenever I get a chance.
That’s not a promise, but if you see new comics arriving in the next few weeks, you’ll know why.
(actually it’ll probably take longer than that. Our next WSKB show is in 9 days, and organising that inevitably takes over my life for two weeks out of every month.)