Really? The sort of comic I was thinking of would include, let's see, Sinfest, Romantically Apocalyptic, Drive, SSSS, Questionable Content... I could go on, but each one of these extends the field of comic-strip art along at least one dimension, and outstrips in subtlety anything attempted in newspaper comics. I'd even include XKCD, which certainly wouldn't seem like "art" to a casual glance, but what would you call the well-nigh insane depth of "Time"?
It's hard to prove it either way, but my suspicion is that there are already more people making their primary living from online comics than there are making their primary living making newspaper comics. And if that isn't true, Patreon will make it true in less than a year from now.
Patreon really is a miracle worker from this sort of niche content. I've seen fairly niche people put up a Patreon campaign, then actually freak out about how much money they end up getting, because you aggregate a couple thousand $1-5/month donations and Holy Shit. (Suddenly it's a Real Job (TM).) It's incredible feasible to go from "scraping by, annoying your parents and friends with what looks like a vow of poverty to do your Stupid Shit and living in constant money stress" to "comfortable middle-class lifestyle with reasonable income assurance". Not perfect, of course, but reasonable.
Yes, Patreon is really transformative for those people who haven't had other means of monetizing.
I really think that in the long term Patreon is more important than Kickstarter for the arts. Kickstarter by its nature is much splashier and makes the big news articles, but it's Patreon that changes lives by chugging along month after month after month after month.
Can you imagine what Watterson could get directly from the public on Patreon? Most assuredly a better offer than any newspaper could ever offer him now.
Yes, I can't stress this enough. I'm an investor in Patreon, but I've also been working closely with artists (like Zach) for the last few years as we've managed + run their crowdfunding campaigns on kickstarter and the like.
Patreon is the next stage in the evolution. It is my belief that this platform will spur the second renaissance for creators who can at last focus entirely on their art without just one well-funded patreon (e.g., Harper Lee and To Kill A Mockingbird).
Woah, Drive is still updating? I thought he basically got too busy, the updates seemed to be once every month or two. Must have changed RSS feeds on me or something.
Sinfest: http://sinfest.net/
Romantically Apocalyptic: http://romanticallyapocalyptic.com/
Drive: http://www.drivecomic.com/new.html
SSSS: http://www.sssscomic.com/comic.php?page=1
Questionable Content: http://questionablecontent.net/
XKCD "Time" : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_(xkcd)