Saturday Deep Dive: Did someone rip off my story/gag?

Today's dive into the deeper archive of Webcomics.com takes us aaaallllll the way back to Aug. 17, 2011, when I discussed different ways to handle a situation in which you feel your creative property has been borrowed.

Q.: I have been making comics for about five years and I've run into a problem that I imagine most cartoonist's struggle with: Realizing that your idea, may in fact, have already been done on The Simpsons. Or Penny Arcade. Or Achewood. Or Somewhere else.

Recently, I went through my entire archives and noticed that there were handful of comics with themes or punchlines similar to other creator's work. I would never purposely plagiarize anyone's content; however, subconsciously something must have slipped through the cracks. Ultimately, I became somewhat obsessed and end up redoing the "problem" comics in my archives because I felt really, REALLY uncomfortable with them. I've seen my work get ripped off before, ranging from general ideas all the way to stolen punchlines word for word (I have four or five thousand readers, so I assume this is normal?)

Just curious how a creator handles two problems

1. What do you do when you look back and realize you've accidentally appropriate someone's idea?
2. What do you do when others rip you off?

I'd love to hear your thoughts and I'd like to suggest this topic for a WW podcast, since I think it's a common problem for cartoonists.

Thanks!

Read the entire post and comment there.

Friday Archive Dive: Getting help with your coding skills

Today's Archive Dive comes from Sept. 13, 2012, when I shared some tips on improving your HTML and CSS PDQ.

So often, we webcartoonists are called upon to do things that are so far outside our comfort zones. Like add HTML code or update a CSS script.

Comment under the original post.

Hitch It / Ditch It Hot Seat

You know the rules, I go to your site and identify one thing you're doing great and one thing you need to work to improve. If you want to participate, put your name, comic and URL in the Comments below.

Send a mass email from a spreadsheet

One more lesson learned from my first Kickstarter.

Once The Webcomics Handbook was finished, I was faced with the perplexing problem of how to deliver a PDF file to 1,016 backers. Sending individual e-mails was out of the question. Using Dropbox was an option, but since I was going to begin selling this book digitally, I wanted to keep everything in one place. I was also  concerned about the ability to distribute updates to the book as the need arose.

So how does one send over a thousand e-mails distributing separate download codes among specific e-mail addresses?

Indiegogo now offers two funding options

Indiegogo is one of the top crowdsourcing entities used by webcartoonists. (The top is undoubtedly Kickstarter.) But I've never been able to fully endorse Indiegogo because of their policy of releasing all of the pledged money -- even if the campaign failed to reach its goal.

From my original post: