Washington Post Best Webcomic of 2011
1st Runner Up. That’s right, Black Snow: Two Drink Minimum gets the silver.
It happened fairly quietly, and I haven’t seen the Washington Post follow up on the story yet, but when the polls closed on March 30th at midnight Black Snow beat out 18 of the biggest webcomics around in one of the nation’s most prominent newspapers, with a whopping 20% of the vote.
Yes, we lost to Homestuck, who had a staggering 47% of the vote to be crowned #1, but we came in higher than Penny Arcade, XKCD, Girl Genius, Hark! A Vagrant, Wapsi Square, Something Positive, The Oatmeal, Wondermark, Schlock Mercenary, Battlepug, Cyanide and Happiness, Dresden Codak, Girls With Slingshots, Gunshow, Least I Could Do, Muktuk Wolfsbreath, Hard-Boiled Shaman, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal and Questionable Content.
The number 3 comic, Girl Genius, only had 7% of the votes. So while we technically lost this poll, I’d call it a resounding victory. Our fans slowly kept voting until the poll closed, while most others quit after a few days. Much like our adopted home town of Detroit, we fought and clawed our way up, refusing to just roll over and die.
Remember my famous/infamous “we need this win” speech? Well, we really did. And I think for a comic that didn’t really exist one year ago to be ranked number 2 by a media juggernaut like the Wash Post is a pretty big win. We’re somebodies with some laurels we can rest on now instead of nobodies who’ve achieved nothing.
I’m sure the poll means little to Homestuck and the other larger published comics, but it means a lot to us. And I thank our rabid, crazy, stupid fan base for all the votes.
In the long run does it really change anything? I don’t know, it might give us some bragging rights and clout when it comes time to market and publish TDM or one of our other comics. In the immediate has it had major impact? Not really. More people know who we are and more visitors are checking out the site. But at the end of the day we are still just a couple of poor guys with day jobs chasing a far off dream.
And once again, thank you for helping us get that much closer to achieving the dream.