Modern Tales unbound

July 17, 2006 9:49 AM

Modern Tales, the subscription-only webcomics site, today makes most of its content available for free. Joey Manley explains why. Any recommendations?
posted by barjo (9 comments total)

Check these recommendations and these from Webcomics Review. I avoided the subscription ones before, but now that Modern Tales is free, I might take a second look.
posted by justkevin at 10:04 AM on July 17, 2006

Oh boy!
posted by sonofsamiam at 10:10 AM on July 17, 2006

I'm currently enjoying Teaching Baby Paranoia. Thanks! Never seen this before.

Or, to be more accurate, I feel like I've seen this before, but then saw the letters SUBSCRI- in a row, and before I could finish the word I bounded away from the computer, leaving a trail of fright-pee.
posted by Sticherbeast at 10:12 AM on July 17, 2006

Narbonic, which was part of Modern Tales, and went free recently (and which I'm currently making my way through the archives of).
posted by DataPacRat at 10:18 AM on July 17, 2006

It's the End of The End of Free!
posted by ntk at 11:08 AM on July 17, 2006

Sweet! Dorothy Gambrell's The New Adventures of Death for free! One of her other comics, Cat and Girl, is one of my favorites.
posted by hydrophonic at 11:16 AM on July 17, 2006

Vicious Souvenirs (flash based) and
Odd Jobs held my interest, back when
I was a paying subscriber.
posted by the Real Dan at 11:30 AM on July 17, 2006

Oh boy! I'm excited! Although now I can't remember which comics I ever wanted to read on Modern Tales. Hrmm.
posted by antifuse at 1:39 AM on July 18, 2006

The best business model for an online comic always seemed to me to be a subscription model which gives subscribers exclusive access to a sliding window of say the last three weeks of new comics while the non-paying visitors still have access to all the other comics. That way both the subscribers and non-subscribers get a new comic every update and both have access to the entire archives, which also attracts new readers. And wanting to know the latest developments in the comic seems like a strong incentive to subscribe. But as far as I know, no webcomic tried this model yet.

And I second the Narbonic recommendation.
posted by Runkst at 6:24 AM on July 18, 2006