Jeph Jacques was laid off six months ago. The 24-year-old Hampshire College graduate and former 'office bitch'-a term he now uses with a smile-had been drawing an online comic strip, or 'Web comic,' since 2003. Instead of finding new work last September, he began updating his Web site, "Questionable Content," five days a week. He now derives his entire income from T-shirts sold on the site.Jacques spoke at the Boston University School of Education last Wednesday night along with R. Stevens-a fellow cartoonist who makes his living drawing the popular Web comic, "Diesel Sweeties." In a question-and-answer session titled "Robots, Indie-Rock and Small Business," they discussed the entrepreneurial and artistic aspects of their careers before their mostly college-aged audience of about 150.

They are not unique. In the last several years, Web comics have become an increasingly popular medium, and several dozen cartoonists support themselves solely through such Web sites. Jacques and Stevens said that popular Web comics can receive more than 40,000 unique hits a day.

"You don't make money off people reading it," Stevens said. "You make it off the half of one percent [of your readership] who wish to own a T-shirt."

While the two Web comics are both humorous, each takes a different approach to art and storytelling.

The light-hearted "Questionable Content" follows the lives of Marten and Faye, two "indie kids" living in an unnamed town in the Northeast. While the strip largely explores indie culture, it has developed an increasingly complicated plot revolving around Marten's hidden romantic feelings for Faye, whose own interest in Marten has so far remained ambiguous. Jacques occasionally hints at romantic tension between Marten and Dora, a barista and ex-goth, as well.

Jacques receives countless e-mails on the subject each week, and fans often pose questions about Marten's romantic travails at comic book and fantasy conventions where cartoonists like him appear.

"I love the notion of 50 storm troopers lining up and asking me when Marten and Faye are getting together," Jacques said.

"Diesel Sweeties," a "pixel comic" whose style resembles early video-game graphics and is also updated daily, follows a much looser plot. Its characters-an assortment of robots and humans each invoking different stereotypes and personalities-also explore romantic themes.

"I don't like things that start a beginning, and then go up, and then arc and come down, because that doesn't happen to me, and I don't think I could write that," Stevens said. "So I figured we just wind up these toys and get to know them very well, and they would go where they're going to go."

Stevens has been writing "Diesel Sweeties" since 2000, and has over 1000 comics in his Web site's archive. The strip is generally considered one of the most well-read Web comics.

To reach audiences and make a living, other web cartoonists have employed even more inventive methods of attracting readers and selling products. Cartoonist Scott Kurtz allows free use of his Web comic "PVP" by newspapers (provided they attribute the strip to his Web site), and Image Comics distributes print versions of the comic to stores each month. "Something Positive" creator R. K. Milholland asked his readers to donate a year's salary to him. They complied, he quit his day job, and he now updates daily.

The most popular Web comic is "Penny Arcade", which premiered in 1998. Channeling online gaming culture, it was the first Web comic to appeal to a niche audience, and today enjoys the largest readership of any online strip. Stevens estimates that its Web site may collect as many as 150,000 unique hits a day.

Jacques and Stevens believe that Web comics have become popular not only because they allow artists to explore specific subcultures like gaming or indie rock, but also because their work does not have to satisfy an editor. Scott Kurtz, Stevens notes, had to edit the word 'god' out of a number of archived "PVP" strips.

"Web comics as a whole have outgrown paper comics, in this country at least," Stevens said. "I don't think we have the money. We have the people."

And while Stevens may not make the salary of a syndicated cartoonist, he concedes that Web comics offer certain perks to their creators.

"If you put 'cartoonist' on your tax return, you can write off comic books," he quipped. "I think I wrote off $700 or $800 worth of comic books last year.