It’s a Bird! It’s a Plane! It’s Gay Webcomics!

However, on the web, Boy Meets Hero came out in smaller, more frequent installments that kept readers engaged. “We built our audience steadily by posting the story page by page, week by week and staying consistent in doing so... If we had presented BMH exclusively as a print comic I don't think readers would have been as patient with us since we would have been able to produce two, maybe three issues a year... I don't think we could have built up as large of a fan-base if the book had been exclusively in print.”

Those smaller and more frequent updates made Boy Meets Hero’s audience incredibly loyal and eager to see each new and eagerly anticipated installment. “Believe me we'd get letters if we were even a week late with a page!”

Now that the original story is complete, Boy Meets Hero has been collected into a hardcover book much in the way periodical comic books collect a story arc made of individual issues. “We avoided the expense and effort of printing and promoting several ‘floppies’ and just concentrated on producing our story one page at a time until it was finished.” Garcia explained. The duo is currently working on a new comic about the further adventures of Derek and Justin.

For many publishers, the collected edition is usually where webcomics becomes financially rewarding. A complete story is easier to sell than incomplete installments and many readers prefer to have a copy that can be kept on the bookshelf instead of being filed away in specialized storage boxes. Thus, the web allows creators like Avery and Garcia to avoid the costliest stage of creating comics and focus on the most profitable one.

Serializing comics on the Web as a way to get people interested in a collection is a tactic even established comics are now following. In 2005, Carla Speed McNeil announced that she would no longer be selling individual issues of her comic Finder, a series focusing on Jaeger, a nomad who travels through the various cultures of a far-future earth, one made up of many different cultures that are at the same time very different and familiar. McNeil’s future earth is a place where GLBT people are regularly encountered and are depicted as just another part of society, an inclusiveness that has earned Finder a loyal gay following.

A sample panel from Finder © 2008 Lightspeed Press

Instead of publishing Finder as a periodical comic, McNeil started putting her comics on the Web, looking to eventually be able to sell collections, which were always the moneymaker for McNeil. “The periodical was always intended to be advertising,” she explained to Publishers Weekly at the time of the announcement.

Putting his comic on the Web has also helped Greg Fox expand the readership for Kyle’s Bed & Breakfast, a comic strip that primarily runs in gay newspapers. Kyle’s B&B is a serialized drama focused on the lives of bed and breakfast owner Kyle Graham and the gay men who make his place a home for long or short periods of time.

Kyle’s guests have included a closeted baseball player, a married man dealing with coming out late in his life and a man looking for a place to stay after breaking up with his husband. Of course, their time under Kyle’s roof included plenty of steamy encounters and romantic entanglements.

From the beginning, Kyle’s B&B had a Web presence, something that’s helped the series find an audience beyond the reach of its newspaper syndication. “There are a lot of GLBT people who just don’t have access to any gay print publications. So there has been a huge Internet following.” Fox noted.

In fact, the website for Kyle’s B&B has become more than a place where readers can keep up with the lives of Kyle and his borders. It’s also a community for the fans. “Readers can comment and dialogue with each other at my website on episodes, characters, even small things like a certain character’s haircut or outfit. It’s very interactive and fun for readers. … My philosophy has always been it should be a place I would look forward to visiting, so it should be for others, too.”

Like Finder and Boy Meets Hero, a collected edition of Kyle’s Bed & Breakfast is available for sale. The book contains the first five years of strips and, to encourage readers to look forward to the next collection, only the most recent strips can be read online, though Fox will post key scenes from earlier comics if they help to understand the current storyline.