Ava's Demon

When it comes to having an online presence, Michelle Czajkowski shines. She can be found on numerous social media platforms such as Patreon, Instagram, Twitch, and Tumblr, and as seen in the video, her Twitter alone has 45.8K followers. An important aspect of creating a prominent online identity is establishing connections with the fanbase.

Czajkowski uses some of her social media, especially Patreon, to give sneak peaks for updates on her webcomic. By exposing content on her social media platforms, dedicated followers feel part of an insider group [1]. The extra behind-the-scenes content provided on her Patreon account through the tiered rewards system also strongly engages detail-invested fans, and it provides more content for fans to immerse themselves in [2].

Fans have also gone off and created their own fanart of characters from Ava’s Demon. Many retweets featured on the Ava’s Demon Twitter account are from fans who cosplay as characters, revisualize the characters in new environments, or recreate scenes from the story. Czajkowski herself started off as a fanartist before releasing Ava’s Demon, which is how she built such a strong initial audience. Fans who enjoyed her art for Sailor Moon and other common interests stayed for Ava’s Demon [3]. Therefore, when Czajkowski reblogs fanart on the Twitter account, not only does it boost artists from possibly humble backgrounds, but also it further enables a sense of community as she acknowledges her fans. Czajkowski is able to rise in popularity through the Internet because of her eagerness to connect with fans, and her online identity is an example that emphasizes that a webcomic is more than just the content in the comic itself: it is also represented by the community created around it lead by the creators.

1. Russell W. Belk. "Extended Self in a Digital World," Journal of Consumer Research 40, no. 3 (2013): 477-500. doi:10.1086/671052.

2. Elizabeth Ellcessor. "Tweeting @feliciaday: Online Social Media, Convergence, and Subcultural Stardom," Cinema Journal 51, no. 2 (2012): 46-66. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41341035.

3. Massimo Repetti. "African Wave: Specificity and Cosmopolitanism in African Comics," African Arts 40, no. 2 (2007): 16-35. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20447826.