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William G
From Comixpedia
William G is the creator of the webcomics Galateia Gone Wild, a twelve page SF comedy done for a 24-hour comic day. And It's About Girls, a small but critically acclaimed ensemble relationship drama that was marked by infrequent updates as well as several format changes due in part to William G's constant attempts to improve upon what he feels to be his limited artistic and writing skills.
He seems to have come to accept his level of skill and has recently returned to cartooning with his weekly adventure series Bang Barstal. He has also just recently began running a revamnped version of It's About Girls, also to be updated weekly.
He also made a couple of short-lived attempts at webcomic criticism with his blogs The William G Blog, Honest Webcomic Reviews, and Delineated Life Which came under intense fan attack due to a poorly-written (admitted by the author) negative review of the popular webcomics Penny Arcade and PvP. This sparked a lively debate that continues to this day in the webcomics community about webcomics criticism, its need, its approaches, and how the authors of the examined comic should react. In late 2005, he re-entered the webcomics commentary game with Honest Webcomic Reviews, though some would say that the reasons for doing so were less than noble. As a result, it didn't last long and he's since abandoned the project.
He has also written for the The Webcomics Examiner.
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[edit] A bit of history that's mostly subjective
[edit] Once upon a time
Way, way back before history began ... well, internet history... actually, this story goes back to the dark ages of pre VHS... some kid named William George Beckerson (so named after his father and recently departed grandfather) got his hands on a Penthouse magazine that happened to be in the washroom of the office his father worked at. Skipping over the boobies, he was immediately drawn to the rather well-made Penthouse comic Oh, Wicked Wanda!. He left the washroom and immediately ran around the office, showing everyone who was working late how cool the comics he found were, and everyone giggled because young William didn't really understand the hilarity of the pornographic material in his hands... material that happened to be in the washroom of a government office.
Yup, those were the 70's alright.
[edit] A portrait of the young man as an artist
As William grew up he became more and more interested in these comic things. Luckily he had access to comics through his uncles that he never saw on the newsracks when he was a kid: Heavy Metal, Plop!, and various pornographic comics. How the early exposure to these comics would effect his later creative endeavours will never be known because it was washed away by the superhero comic flood of the 1980s. Trying his hand at the comic-making game, William took a long time to realize that he pretty much sucked at making the super heroic material of the time. So he immediately focused on the alternative comix scene as a way for him to practice his creative urge. But he just wasn't alternative enough, and upon realizing that, he turned towards manga.
Which he also sucked at.
Now, I know what you're thinking, dear reader: "Man, William's entry got defaced!"
Okay, I'm writing this myself. I know I'm breaking the objectivity of the Wiki-laws, but screw it. I can assure you that I'm the only person who can tell this story truthfully.
Where was I? Oh yeah, talking about myself in the third person - When William realized that he simply wasn't able to shoe-horn himself into the various styles that were popular at the time, he basically quit putting in the effort to make comics he used to. Occasionally he'd start dating a new muse and create a new work, but his heart was never as in it as it used to be when he was younger, something he still suffers from today.
[edit] The rest, you already know
He probably wouldn't be bothering with making comics today if two things didn't happen to him:
1) He went to Saint Mary's University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, where he started drawing for the school newspaper, The Journal. After trying to shoe-horn himself into another comic genre he wasn't suited for - the editorial comic - he said to himself, "Screw this crap! I'm gonna tell a story." With the backing of the editors, if not the rest of the staff, the first tale was known as It's About Girls. Indeed that was the basis of the webcomic of the same name. In fact, most of the ideas he has been working with in his web career came from that period.
2) He graduated and moved to South Korea in order to find the jobs that were missing back home. One thing you need to know about South Korea is that it has the highest broadband usage in the world. It's a heck of a wired country, and it's intensely easy to set up a website.
William lucked out with free hosting, and at his original website he began journaling his misadventures in Asia as well as posting webcomics. He developed a bit of a following in expatriate circles until his inability to tolerate the many failings of the community caused him to back away from that part of the web, something that would be later mirrored in his dealings with the webcomics community.
It was the pressure of being on a public stage as wide as the internet caused him to try and find his own voice as an artist and a writer. And while he feels he has far to go in both realms, he is starting to think that, thanks to his hard work to improve off-screen, maybe he no longer sucks at what he does.
In 2004 he legally changed his name to William George, for several reasons, the most important one being that having "G" as his name makes him hip with the kids.
[edit] In a nutshell
Likes: Good comics, good music, good food, good women, good company, and a good joke. He also likes seeing how he can take any system and poke a few holes in it.
Dislikes: Fanboys, his job, his old life in Canada, when the so-called "random" function on his iPod plays songs in order, and that his bowels no longer work properly. Showing that we're only as old as our medical needs.
Note: He wouldn't be greatly offended if someone were to spell-check this entry for him.
