Monitor Duty by Randy Lander "New Paths" Early on in the life of The Fourth Rail, Don wrote a column with his thoughts on competition and how it doesn't apply as much to the web as it does to print media. His thoughts align pretty closely with mine, and I've actually been thinking about the number of comics sites out there. However, even with all the sites out there, comics fans still don't have everything they need. That started me thinking, what do we need? I've noticed in the occasional thread on a forum or when looking at new trade paperbacks that there are many times when critics with varying tastes agree on a book, whether it's good or bad. Having me or Don like a book is nice, but having me, Don, Greg McElhatton, Johanna Draper Carlson, Augie De Blieck Jr. and Chris Butcher all agree on a book pretty much means you'd have to search really hard to find someone who wouldn't enjoy the book. Don and I, back in our early days, used to have a "Second Opinion" button that would link our reviews of the same book, allowing readers to compare and contrast opinions. And I started to think, how cool would it be if someone could do this across the entire web? Imagine a site that would update on a regular basis and list all the books that had been reviewed, with links back to the review, allowing readers to compare and contrast reviews from a variety of different reviewers. It would give a much broader sense of the book, as the reader would get to see how several different pairs of eyes saw it. It would speak loudly for books to be avoided or not to be missed, as you could see pretty easily what the consensus was. Not everyone uses ratings, but for those who do, including the rating next to each review link would allow an even quicker scan of the basic feelings of some reviewers on the book. This kind of thing is being done for movies over on Rotten Tomatoes, and I almost always go over to see what the general feeling is on movies that are coming out. To be honest, it rarely affects whether or not I'll see the movie, as my mind is generally made up by that point, but I always find it interesting. I'd love to see something like this for comics. And though it ceased updating in March of 2000, The Word Balloon used to do an excellent job of this kind of linking to comics-related interviews all over the Internet. Such a site does sound theoretically possible, at least. Mind you, I'm not volunteering, I've got my hands full trying to work a full-time job and help run this site at the same time. It just struck me as kind of a neat idea. Something else I'd really love to see, and it may actually exist out there somewhere, is a site that focuses more on the art side of comics. I am not an artist by any stretch of the imagination, but a site that allowed new artists to post sequential art and sketches and get critiques from a group of their peers would be a fantastic resource. It would be even neater if it became a place for professional artists to show off some of their work that's either in the making or just for fun, and could be a learning tool for new artists as well as an enjoyable look into a side of comics that many of us don't know that well. The only thing I knew of that was like this was Steve Lightle's artist Yahoo! group, but there may be more resources of this nature out there. At any rate, it certainly seems like an area with room for growth. If you want to get really specific, I wouldn't mind seeing a site based on linking music and comics. Chynna Clugston-Major has linked music and comics quite well in her Blue Monday books. In fact, I just recently put together a compilation CD of the music mentioned in Absolute Beginners for my own personal use, and plan to do the same with The Kids Are Alright when I get a chance. Larry Young has put together soundtracks for Astronauts in Trouble and often mentions the music he uses to letter by. I'd love to see a site where artists, writers, publishers, fans and anyone else could put up a suggested "soundtrack" for a graphic novel or lists of the best music to use as background when drawing or lettering their comics. Given the crowded nature of the Internet these days, you might argue that the last thing we need are more sites. However, the more we have out there, the more variety we have, the more chance that someone will find a site that suits their personal tastes. And that gives us a chance of getting a broader audience, one person at a time, as they find a web community to fit their experience with comics. And a larger audience? Well, that's what we all need. Email Randy Lander comments about this column, or discuss it on the Fourth Rail message board.