The stats for my blog, clearly show just how popular the various chapters of Science Tales have been, with the Evolution chapter a clear winner, with 259, 263 page views, and it's still getting a respectable 200 hits a day. Although Psychiatric Tales sold well enough, the chapters of that book I placed on my blog barely feature compared to Science Tales. Even if you subtract all the hostile traffic Science Tales has generated, there's still a huge level of potential interest for this book.
It shows, I think, that the comic strip medium has a huge audience waiting out there beyond the tiny bubble of fandom. Readers coming to my blog to read these chapters were not the usual comic book crowd. They were drawn to to read these comics because of the subject, not because of the medium. Many noters commented that they didn't usually read comics at all. Teachers wrote to me, wishing they had individual chapters printed out so they could hand them around the classroom.
The book will be out in the UK in April and It'll be interesting to see whether these stats convert into sales. I think they will.
I didn't sit down and think "I wonder what subjects will really capture a lot of attention?" I wrote these strips because I felt passionately about the subjects. I strongly urge comic book community, especially those working in the so-called mainstream, to think about what they feel passionately about. There's no area that comics can't cover: music, sports, movies, politics. All are fair game as subjects, and if you're passionate about it, then there's a good chance huge numbers of other people will be as well.
So get to it.
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