Little Monsters

I am very excited about launching the Little Monsters!

I didn’t set out to start this site. Originally, my goal was to create a special 40th birthday present for my twin brother. Growing up, my mother called us the Little Monsters because we got in a lot of trouble all the time. So for our 40th birthday, I created a book of single panel strips about the Little Monsters. I had so much fun doing it, I decided to keep it going.

My brother Philip and I are collaborating on the site. I will handle the comics and he will contribute blog posts every week about the real Little Monsters that will include great photographs of us growing up in the ’70s (back when photographs were more rare!).

To get started, there is a New Readers link on the menu that tells you about the strip and introduces the characters. If you want to give us feedback, you can post comments or use the Email Me link in the menu to send me an email.

Periodically, I would like to highlight some of the other webcomics that I love to read.  My first webcomic pick has to be Sheldon, which can be found at www.sheldoncomics.com.  Sheldon has a great style, is very funny, and updates every day.  It is one of the longest-running and most well-known webcomics on the Internet.  Sheldon himself is a 10-year-old dot-com millionaire.  The strip is about him, his grandfather, and his pet duck.  The humor is slightly geeky but always funny.

The thing that makes Sheldon so influential to me is that it proves that a traditional all-ages strip can do well on the Internet.  Many webcomics are not in a traditional gag format, or they appeal to niche audiences such as gamers or those looking for adult themes and language.

I wanted to write a strip that my children could read, even if they did not get every joke.  Little Monsters allows me to do that.  And Sheldon is probably the best of this genre.

One way to show appreciation for another webcomic is to do “fan art” for them.  In other words, you create a piece of art with their characters and give it to them.  They show it to their fans and link back to your site.

One of my favorite webcomics is Robot Beach.  It is a great strip with characters that are fun to draw.  You can check it out at www.robotbeach.com.

I created this art for Matt and he has it posted on his blog.

We have been working hard to create new ways to ‘feed’ the monsters directly to our readers:

RSS – We have an RSS feed.  If you know what that is, then you probably already know how to use it.  Click on the orange RSS icon in the menubar to subscribe to the feed with your favorite RSS reader.

Email – In the Little Monsters by Email section of the sidebar, just enter your email address and click Subscribe.  You will get an email message to confirm, and then you will receive all of our posts in your inbox.  If you don’t get the confirmation email right away, then check your spam folder.  If it went there, then add the address to your contacts so your email provider will know we aren’t spam!

Facebook – We now have a Facebook Fan Page for Little Monsters!  You can visit the page or Like it from the Facebook box in the sidebar.  If you Like our fan page, you will get our posts in your Facebook news feed.

Of course, we still love it when you visit our website.  And you can always Like, Tweet, comment, or email any post.  Don’t be selfish!  Share the Little Monsters with others!

Every Little Monsters post and comic has a Facebook Like button associated with it.  If you read something from us and you enjoy it, click on the Like button.  It is actually painless and free.  It helps us spread the word about Little Monsters and lets us know which things our readers enjoy.

If you are not on Facebook, you can still share Little Monsters.  At the bottom of every post are share buttons you can use to share our content through email, twitter, google buzz, and about a hundred other services I’ve never heard of.

We don’t get paid for this stuff, folks – but a little Like goes a long way.