from Spiegel Online

 Powerpoint Slam: "You only find really good comics on the internet."
By Anette Frisch (translated by Evonne Gambrell)

When Dorothy Gambrell wakes up, her gaze falls on the computer that stands an arms-length from her bed. Above it hangs a schedule with deadlines for her online cartoons - the cartoonist earns her money with webcomics.

Like many other cartoonists, the New Yorker has found her artistic home and source of income on the internet. She lives off the fees that her readers must pay (for example, for The New Adventures of Death) and the sale of merchandise from her homepage.

The regular updating of her material is also important, so the 24 year-old works diligently on her online episodes every day in her mini-apartment, where the bedroom is simultaneously the workroom, a drum set and a keyboard dominate the living room, and the cat, "Cat," seeks out the view from atop the kitchen cabinets.

A new trend is developing in New York in which promising, highly creative webcomics are reaching a new, "real" public through unconventional means: Brooklyn cartoonists pull their virtual stories from their hard drives and present their newest work via "Powerpoint," an overhead projector slideshow.

"The highest concentration of cartoonists live in Brooklyn," claims Dorothy Gambrell. In the Galapagos Bar, a converted mayonnaise factory in Brooklyn's hip, artistic Williamsburg neighborhood, she presented episodes of her online comic Cat and Girl. In front of approximately 200 spectators, the 24 year-old clicked "quite slowly" through the Powerpoint slides while a friend played minimal electronic music on an organ.

Powerpoint Slam - Slideshow as "In" Event

The idea of projecting webcomics on a wall before an audience belongs to John Hodgman. Once a month, the former literary agent organizes the so-called Little Gray Book Lectures. The 32 year-old was fed up with customary readings, which he said increasingly resembled a "trivial PR event."

At the "lecture series," as the event is academically named, a total of four or five authors and artists take part. The readings aspire to be "inspiring and instructional." The New Yorker credits illustrated stories with just as much meaning as the written word. He focuses on online comics, of all things, because of his special affection for the medium: "Right now, you only find really good comics on the internet."

Gambrell's comics - the quibbling conversations between Cat and Girl, the strange adventures of Death, and the unsuccessful endeavors of pop band The Four Fours - are available exclusively online. Although she has been discussed as a phenomenon by renowned publications like Wired, her three comics have yet to appear on paper. "It's good that way," muses the 24 year-old who, with precisely-cut bangs, resembles her heroine Girl. "I enjoy the freedom of not having an editor sitting in front of me. I can be as obscure as I want."

David Rees likewise enjoys the freedom and immediacy that the online medium offers him. For Hodgman's program, the 31 year-old presented the audience with part of his successful series Get Your War On. The "dilettante drawing style" of his martial arts comic My New Fighting Technique is Unstoppable earned much praise for the diplomaed philosopher.

The Web as a Path to Print

Rees's breakthrough came about with his engaging anti-war cartoon Get Your War On, in which he comments on the American invasion of Afghanistan. He counted around 1.5 million visitors when his comic premiered online in October 2000.

Since then, the celebrated underground star has sampled the world of the mainstream and expanded into book shops; Get Your War On has appeared in print form in the USA and has been available in France since April, the American music magazine Rolling Stone publishes new episodes every month, music channel MTV has expressed interest in the film rights, and the New York Times recently devoted space to a profile of him.

In spite of his success beyond the internet, Rees doesn't let himself benefit from the laws of the free market economy. He donated all proceeds from the first edition of Get Your War On, a total of $17,000, to Adopt-A-Minefield, a non-profit organization that supervises safe clean-up operations in Afghanistan.

Dorothy also recently got a job in the "real world," creating a series for the monthly city guide The L Magazine. For the 24-year old, this is a perfect diversion: "The extra job prevents me from thinking too much about the rest of my life."

For Gambrell, the rest of her life is standard crises of growing up in capitalist society. "If you are not willing to believe that success in the workplace is to be unquestionably desired or that money or fame is an actual measure of anything, you can be left without any measure at all," she explained. "And it's kind of frightening and well worth avoiding."

Therefore the cartoonist will stick with the internet, a medium more familiar to her than print. "It is perfect because you can be eccentric and evade the capitalist structure." And if this unconventional artist finds the Little Gray Book Series to be an unconventional forum, then she is right at home.


(Corrections: I do not nor have I ever had bangs. And the cat's name is "Pucci").