Let's talk about webcomics
for a minute. Webcomics
are a clear descendant of both the comic
book and the comic
strip. However, they are different from both.
Both printed formats require a
publisher, and said publisher is going to have certain requirements
as to content, acceptability and so forth. Printed comics must be
acceptable to their audience and follow certain basic conventions
that make the publisher money.
Webcomics
have neither of these requirements. A webcomic
artist can build whatever they choose, and the only real
limitation is whether they can afford to maintain a domain name and
keep the work going. If that work interests an audience, then the
artist can continue, possibly indefinitely.
There are a number of them out there
(nobody's really sure how many), but it's definitely in the tens of
thousands, if not more. Art ranges from the spare to the lush, and
the writing ranges all across the board in terms of quality and
consistency. But they are usually pure expressions of a single
artist or small team (rarely more than two people).
And they work. There are a few
webcomic artists who have
begun to make a living doing nothing else. There are also Tycho
and Gabe
from Penny Arcade who are
turning it into something of an empire, with not only merchandise,
but a series of video games and their own gaming convention (Pax).
They are also exploring new kinds of
storytelling, with new themes, plots and devices, and opening up
entirely new realms of what can be told in a sequence of panels,
drawings and words. The official term is now Sequential Art, and you
can get a degree in it.
To those of you who may never have
dipped into this very different world of storytelling, I highly
recommend doing so. Here is a list of a few of my favorites.
xkcd –
written by a mathematician with a distinctly sarcastic sense of
humor, this one is great for thinkers
Schlock
Mercenary – a space opera/comedy comic written by someone who
knows his physics... and his amorphous blobs
The
Devil's Panties – Jennie Breeden's semi-autobiographical comic
Questionable
Content – Jeph Jacques' slice-of-life twenty-something
relationship comic... plus psychotic little robots
Something
Positive – Randy Milholland's brilliant, morbid, funny-as-hell
take on life, with lots of philosophizing, and the most beautifully
sad piece of sequential art I have ever seen (you'll know when you
get to that page)
Dominic
Deegan – a pun-filled fantasy story about a grumpy seer, his
cat, his apprentice, his family and saving the universe, repeatedly.
A completed comic, and well worth the read from beginning to end.
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