Just this week (thanks to Peter Morris in his “They won’t stay dead” thread – http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=352398), I discovered the web comic Casey and Andy, by Andy Weir.
Read the comic here: http://www.galactanet.com/comic/
Wikipedia page here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casey_and_andy
I really like it. It’s about two mad scientists who frequently die and come back without explanation, Kenny-style. In addition to the chaos caused by their insanely dangerous “X-o-mat” inventions, they are always being caught up in adventures due to their association with supernatural beings (including Satan, Andy’s girlfriend) and their propensity for attracting the attention of aliens and extradimensional beings. Content varies from highbrow to lowest of the lowbrow: There are many discussions of highly esoteric philosophical conundra, especially when “Quantum Cop” shows up. But there’s also plenty of scatological humor about things like Andy’s bowels (see today’s strip) and his malevolent and unhousebreakable cat, Cujo. Whenever Weir is sick or busy he posts a “cheesecake” drawing of one of the strip’s female characters. There’s also a lot of humor aimed at an audience of SF nerds, gamers, and computer programmers (Weir is all three); if you don’t get a particularly obscure joke, look at the “news post” below the strip, which usually explains it.
My discovery of this strip, as it happens, brings up an interesting question about the economics of artistic expression in the Information Age. I showed the site to a coworker, and he asked, “How does he make money? Does charge for access? Does he sell advertising on the site?” In fact access to the site is free and there are no ads. I could only tell him, “Lots of people nowadays do this kind of thing as labors of love.” Which appears to be the case. Weir has a day job – he’s a software engineer – and this strip is a spare-time hobby. He probably pays a small fee for the hosting space. In exchange for that and his labor he gets to amuse himself and he gets the acollades of a fan-base of like-minded geeks (some of whom have filled in for him when he was moving between cities). I don’t know how he ever will make money off the strip unless a collection is published in print form. (Then again, there is now a Casey and Andy GURPS, and Weir might have negotiated a licensing fee.) Is that how it will be in the future? Art is something you do for love and not money?