If you missed part one of SBC's interview with Modern Tales Publisher Joey Manley, it can be found here.
In part one, SBC and Manley discussed the causes behind AdventureStrips' end, as well as his take on how the core and sister sites are performing in general. In this second part, SBC and Manley discuss Girlamatic and his overall near- and long-term outlook for Modern Tales, as well as the details behind the DivaLea Show starring Lea Hernandez and two other planned Internet radio shows.
Tim O'Shea: How aggressively do you want to grow the concept (Modern Tales) in the next year to 18 months?
Joey Manley: The goal for the first year was to grow our business in terms of its breadth -- to plant seedlings in every important corner of the webcomics field, and see just how wide we could stretch ourselves across the landscape. New sites, new ideas, new business models. You can consider the first year our experimentation mode: what works, what doesn't, and why? My goal for the second year of Modern Tales is to grow in terms of depth, and particularly to start spending most of my time and energy on marketing, advertising, and promotions, so that the seedlings we've planted can continue to grow stronger. Now that we have a good idea of what works, and we have a solid family of products, the need for experimentation and new products subsides a bit, and it's my responsibility to help this business mature. We want to make each site more polished in terms of its graphic design and functionality over the next year -- and, of course, we want to continue to grow in profitability.
My long-term goal is that some, or all, of the MT cartoonists will be able to make a living solely from their webcomics work within five years of Modern Tales' launch.
TO: What has been the biggest surprise or benefit to developing and implementing the whole Modern Tales business model?
JM: We grew much faster at first than I expected. I didn't expect for the site to be profitable during the first year. It was profitable during the first month, and has only grown since then.
TO: Were you taken aback by the initial somewhat negative response some (clearly not all) folks had to the Girlamatic concept?
JM: I'm never surprised at anything I read on the TCJ boards. That's really a strange microcosm over there. I love TCJ and Fantagraphics, but I'm not sure how much I love other people who love them. Anyway, what took me aback is how many people from way, way, way outside the comics field got excited about girlamatic. I'm getting emails from people, mostly women, who've told me they haven't read a comic in 15, 20, 30 years, but who have just plunked their cash down on the counter for a subscription. That's gratifying.
TO: How did the DivaLea show come about? How technically challenging was it to set up initially?
JM: My background is in streaming media. I was Vice-President, Interactive for streamingmedia.com for a couple of years, until the company laid off everybody. So the technical stuff isn't too challenging (except that I was used to having much better equipment, back in the day).
Before I launched Modern Tales, I used to do a talk show about webcomics. That's really the secret pre-history of Modern Tales -- that's how I met all the launch cartoonists, and that's how the brainstorming to do a subscription-based webcomics site got started. After MT launched, I had to discontinue the show because MT was eating up all of my time. Even back then, Lea and I had been in talks about her taking the show over, but it never quite happened. So you can say that the DivaLea Show is the final culmination of something that has been in the works for over a year.
TO: As the sidekick, do you have to be mindful of not taking over the show, or is it (as it seems to me) a natural give and take between you and host (and Girlamatic guru) Lea Hernandez?
JM: Well, I don't think it would be possible to take the show over from Lea! She's quite a personality.
TO: So far, what do you find to be your favorite thing about doing the show? What do you and Lea hope to accomplish with the show in general?
JM: I like listening to the shows -- strictly as a fan, I'm glad they exist.
In general, the idea is to bring comics creators -- webcomics creators and print comics creators -- into the lives of our listeners. There's only so much humanity that comes through in a print interview. Audio makes you feel more like you know the person. You can hear the pauses they take to work something out in their minds. You find out what makes them laugh. Even if the interview isn't as deep as, say, a 30-page career retrospective in The Comics Journal, you still take away something that you couldn't have gotten any other way -- a sense of the human being.
TO: You've mentioned they'll be other shows, can you provide further details?
JM: One will be focussed on artcomics, and will be hosted by a comics critic whose name hasn't been associated with Modern Tales in the past. Another will be focussed almost exclusively on webcomics, and will be hosted by Modern Tales' own cayetano garza jr.
