Poison Ivy Gulch

There’s a belief out there that with any creative endeavor – be it a webcomic, a graphic novel, a television series, a band and so on – that you don’t need a massive audience of millions.  You just need 1,000 true fans.

Brad Guigar over on Webcomics.com elaborated on this viewpoint in a recent article.  Here’s a snippet:

Let’s assume a social-media following of 1,000 fans who are — overall — highly invested in a webcartoonist. When that webcartoonist makes a post, let’s say that 200 of them engage in that post in some manner. That’s a 20% response. Not bad at all! The algorithm picks up on this as evident of a post that even more of the followers might be interested in, and distributes the post to even more followers. If the engagement continues, the post continues to be distributed. If that engagement includes shares/retweets, the potential for engagement starts to expand. And of course, at some point, this wave of interest runs it course, engagement drops, and the post gets distributed to fewer and fewer people until it stops getting distributed entirely.

Now lets’ take that same post. But this time, let’s assume 10,000 followers. However, unlike the preceding example, these followers aren’t as emotionally invested in the webcartoonist they’re following. Those 1,000 true fans are still there, mind you, but they’re mixed into a larger group. Once the post is made, we’ll assume the same amount of engagement — 200 instances. However, 200 out of 10,000 is only 2%! The algorithm judges this post to be much less relevant than a 20% engagement and distributes it very little past the opening salvo. Even if it accounts for the bigger audience — even it if “grades on a curve” — that engagement is never going to rise much beyond two percent. As a result, that post dies an early death.

You can read the article in its entirety here but Mr. Guigar brings up a good point.

The original theory was put forth by Kevin Kelly of how you only need 1,000 true fans.  This is one that is quite solid as Kelly makes the same points that Guigar did; a smaller fanbase would be more dedicated that millions of fans plus you could have more of a direct relationship with them in that you sell your work directly to them (this is the logic behind crowdfunding sites like Kicsktarter and Indiegogo).

That is something I aim to do with Poison Ivy Gulch and ultimately my other comics.  I want to cultivate fans who are more dedicated to my work as opposed to having mass appeal.

Washington is not a place to live in. The rents are high, the food is bad, the dust is disgusting and the morals are deplorable. Go West, young man, go West and grow up with the country. – Horace Greeley

I’m Max West and I’d like to tell you about my creation.  I’ve been drawing comics for quite some time; I’m the creator of Sunnyville Stories plus its spin-off, Dominic & Claire.  I also created the webcomic Tiffany & Corey and the graphic novel Von Herling, Vampire Hunter.  I am also developing a picture book but that’s not what I want to talk to you about today.

Poison Ivy Gulch is an online comic strip that will launch on Monday June 1, 2020.  It is entirely done by myself and will get updated twice a week on Monday and on Wednesday.  

Poison Ivy Gulch takes place in a frontier town of the same name somewhere out on the Western frontier sometime in the 1870s.  The comic strip features a cast with a number of stock characters.  The main stars of the strip are Lotta Doler, a female gambler from back East, and her sidekick, a small boy named Ace.  Why don’t we meet a few of them?

In Westerns, you meet a hardy bunch of characters. There is no jealousy on such pictures. – John Wayne

Lotta is considered the protagonist of Poison Ivy Gulch.  She’s a redhead born and raised in New York City; she was born on July 7th as the seventh of eleven children.  Learning card games from a young age, she took to them quickly and mastered them.  Rather than be married off to some rich man, Lotta heard stories about the West and left her family behind to go out to the frontier.  Lotta lives in her own house, financed by her gambling winnings.  When not at her house, she can be found at the card tables of the local saloon, taking on all challengers…and cleaning them out of their money.  I guarantee that you’ll be seeing a lot of her.

Ace is the deuteragonist.  Ace is 9 years old and lives with Lotta in her house.  When not at home or at school, Ace can be found wandering around Poison Ivy Gulch and its surrounding area.  He’s an adorable urchin not unlike Dennis the Menace or Calvin of Calvin & Hobbes.  You’ll be seeing much of him too.

There are other characters living in town.  One of them is Mayor Samuel Sidewinder.  Mayor Sidewinder is a Boston native who was once a legislator.  A scandal forced him from office and he was declared State Fink.  Eventually finding his way out West, he made his way to the ramshackle town of Poison Ivy Gulch where he became the mayor.  Mayor Sidewinder is constantly being re-elected due to voter fraud;  one of his favorite activities is visiting the town’s cemetery where he registers the deceased to vote…for him.

There’s other characters living in town but I won’t spoil them for you.  You’ll just have to read the comic yourself to meet them all.

People love westerns worldwide. There’s something fantasy-like about an individual fighting the elements. Or even bad guys and the elements. It’s a simpler time. There’s no organized laws and stuff. – Clint Eastwood

Maybe you’re wondering why I chose the Western for the medium of comics.  The Western is a fiction genre that has mass appeal throughout many cultures and over many borders.  In spite of that, the Western is a uniquely American creation, essentially our own commedia dell’arte with well-established tropes, familiar plots and stock characters.  Westerns have been made into literature, television shows, movies and comics; they’ve also been parodied, homaged and deconstructed numerous times.  

The inspiration for Poison Ivy Gulch was the newspaper comic strip Tumbleweeds, created by T.K. Ryan (1926-2019) and running in newspapers from 1965 to 2007.  To be honest, my creation owes more to the simple art style of Charles Schulz, creator of Peanuts.  My own style has always leaned towards simplicity and ideas as opposed to capturing reality.  The style itself would not look out of place alongside other newspaper comics like Peanuts, Wizard of Id, B.C. and the Far Side.  It also owes much to such comedy Westerns such as Blazing Saddles, Three Amigos and the Shakiest Gun in the West.  It does borrow too from the traditional genre media such as classic Westerns (John Wayne, etc) and spaghetti Westerns (Clint Eastwood, Sergio Leone, etc).  As research, I spent countless hours reading Western literature and watching some of those movies mentioned above.

Westerns give people a chance to see wide-open spaces and life before technology took over. – Bill Pullman

There are very few Western comics online and this is a reason why I chose to create Poison Ivy Gulch.  All in all, I think it is a very unique and original creation.  You’ll enjoy it.

If you do like this comic of mine, why not tip me over on Ko-Fi?

Feedback is welcome too.  You can email me at poisonivygulch(at)aol(dot)com or if you prefer snail mail (which I like as it is more personal), I get mail deliveries by the stagecoaches that pass through.  You can send your letters to:

POISON IVY GULCH

℅ DIFFERENT MOUSETRAP PRESS

1100 19TH AVENUE N, #108

UNIT J

FARGO, ND 58102-2269

In conclusion, I hope you enjoy Poison Ivy Gulch.  It is witty, clever and enjoyable.  If all goes well, you may just see it in print form.  There is always the possibility of a print comic or a graphic novel complete with original stories or books collecting the various comic strips.  

“America owes nearly as much to Cooper as to Franklin and Washington: For if these two great men called the society of the Union of States into life through legislation and glorious battle, it was he […] who through his sympathetic story-telling and the sincerity of his patriotic sentiments spread its lustre beyond the sea.”

— George Sand, Fenimore Cooper (1856)