Either webcomics artists are an unusually innovative bunch, or I’m reading too much of their work. 😉 In any case, on the heels of OhNoRobot, Biggest Webcomic Loser is another very interesting (and somewhat bizarre) project coming from the comics community. Overweight comics artists have decided to join forces to lose money and raise fat for charity. Er, sorry, the other way around. It works like this:

• Each artist defines a personal weight goal.
• The site is updated regularly with new comics from the artists who have signed up for the project.
• Visitors can choose to pledge financial support to UNICEF on a per-lbs basis (apparently they’re not innovative enough to use the metric system).
• The financial support per-lbs is indicated next to each comic.

The total amount of pledged money for all comics is already at over $5K, and given that it’s only been running for a few weeks, it seems like it could go much higher. Once any artist has reached their weight loss goal, those who have pledged to support “them” (i.e. UNICEF) will be reminded to make a donation.

The one thing I would change is to try to pick a general theme for the comics to follow — otherwise they tend to focus on the idea itself, which might not be the best way to attract readers who do not have the same, er, problem.

It’s a bit strange to tie this specifically to the webcomics community, but it has the advantage of providing interesting new content (comics) every day. I wonder if something similar might work for blogs. See Pledgebank for a very cool generic pledging system.