As you point out, it makes a big difference when you write long posts, greater than 1000 words at least. The sweet spot is somewhere around 4000-5000 words on a particular subject.

In your particular case, as a comic artist, the best thing you can do is add very descriptive alt tags for your images and captions. You'e very much a personality so SEO will behave differently Google recognizes you as the David B Clear.

I have experiemented with it on my technical blog and have seen good results. I'm still working at on Medium but I've seen some initial bumps in traffic, going from about 50 or less views a day to over 200 a day now.