[...] The discussion seems to have petered out at the post Are Webcomics Comics?. That’s the disadvantage of this format: when something scrolls off the front page, conversation tends to end. I did learn things, though, and I thank my knowledgeable and talented commenters and readers for that. [...]

[...] Johanna Draper Carlson, of Comics Worth Reading, started the ball rolling by giving two reasons why she had trouble taking webcomics seriously: the interface and the format. Slow load times and blinking banner ads are part of the problem, and as a reader of traditional comics, she has a hard time reading one page at a time, rather than sitting down with a completed work. And she admits to some cultural bias: For example, Mom’s Cancer, one of my best of 2006, started as a webcomic. If it had stayed in that format, though, it wouldn’t have had the power and impact that it did in terms of reading experience. I’ve been trained to think of things onscreen as short and ephemeral. A book contains material worthy of permanent collection, ideas to be reflected on and experiences judged meaningful. Webcomics have to overcome their history as a cheap way to keep up with comic strips at work before they’ll be taken seriously. [...]

Digger : I’ve read bits and pieces of Bone, and this is at least as good. Costs a micropayment to read the archives, but it’s pure wombats, hyenas, talking statues, liver jokes, and undead gods goodness. Ursula Vernon is an amazing writer AND artist, and it makes the work really stand out. It’s got beautiful black-and-white artwork, and marvelous characterization and dialog.

Gunnerkrigg Court : Sort of like Harry Potter meets Sandman with a dash (but not too much) of Saturday morning cartoons and Edward Gorey. Episodic with an underlying plot. Awesome world and really nifty techno-mytho-magical elements.

Both of these read better in one go than when following daily/weekly updates. They might be better described as graphic novels publishing online rather than “webcomics”, but people seem to like to call any comic on the internet a webcomic. I agree with above posters who said that a publishing medium is a kind of weird line along which to define a genre.

My mother always stressed how important it was that she could sit down to actually finish a story in one go.

So far the main problems I see with webcomics is that low barriers to entry lead to a much bigger slush pile, and the interface doesn’t lend itself to getting engaged as a reader. The first is a good argument for the job Johanna does. The second is a good argument for buying print compilations and for passing around links to specific pages instead of whole sites.

Erk! That’s hard! ;)
Howabout instead, I list the non-strip webcomics that I actually read/check on a daily basis*?
Harker: Engaging horror/swashbuckling pastiche of 19th century fictional characters centered around one Jonathan Harker. Sample nifty sequence involving Villefort from the Count of Monte Cristo: one, two. Pacing/scripting quality oscillates wildly around different values of really cool. Possibly disqualified since it is difficult to determine which year which chapter belongs to.

No Rest for the Wicked: A fairy tale cycle told with precisely the kind of implicit and explicit horror and comedy traditional stories deserve. Includes references to The Buried Moon and Grimm bros. The Girl with No Hands. Art quality varies widely, but is dead on during dramatic sequences. Beginning of Chapter Three, which was completed this past October. Part of the charm is in figuring out where the different characters came from, so I recommend starting at the beginning in any case.

Alpha-Shade: flash version, html version You’ve reviewed their first book before. Book two came back from the , printers shortly before Christmas, so it probably fits the time frame. Book two is all noir-ish suspense, obscure intrigues and character development with gorgeous art as usual. I couldn’t tell you if someone would get engaged by picking it up now, and I cannot figure out how to bookmark a starting point for a given page to show a specific scene. (Though the interface does let you jump to a given chapter start quite easily) Honorable mention for their intentionally bad gag-a-day vote incentive comic for webcomic industry jokes involving the price of Wacom tablets quantified in cans of pepsi, and the invention of the mildly NSFW “vote incentive fairy.” (Html links are starting to break with the post preview at this point. Link is supposed to be a href=” http://www.alpha-shade.com/www/JBVote/JBVote.htm”

Girl Genius. Because, well, duh. Awesome, swashbucklink story, gorgeous colors, comedy, great line quality, etc. etc.

So, yeah. Mostly Girl Genius, ftw, for the year.

*Megatokyo intentionally omitted due to it’s obvious wonderfulness. I can be objective about Mt in much the same way that light can choose whether or not to leave a black hole.

Jackie

http://www.webcomicsnation.com/rss.php?type=creator&creator=1160

Joey

Jackie

But I’m willing to make a go of it. Here’s just one example of an online comic that could, and should, be at the top of as many “best of” lists as possible.

James Kochalka’s American Elf: http://www.americanelf.com/

It started life as an annual (bi-annual?) print collection, but has found its true home online. In other words, moving from print to the web actually improved this work, both in terms of its popularity and its impact. It makes perfect use of the online medium, but there’s no fancy technology in play — it’s just a daily strip. The fact that people can read it on the same day that James made it is an integral part of its appeal — and that’s something that could never have happened with any other distribution medium, not newspapers, not comics books, not nothing. Reading just one strip is amusing. Reading a swath of them over time reveals their profundity.

That’s just one. And, yes, I got more. I got hundreds! Thousands!

The potential is there, but.

Most of the defenders so far have argued that web comics aren’t lesser, just different. Or that currently respected art forms didn’t used to be. Or just that web comics should be, because. But everyone is arguing potential, not actual. (As Johanna keeps pointing out.)

Web comics shouldn’t be dismissed because the technology isn’t common. (But it isn’t.) Nor should they be dismissed because WillS@Great.Lit.Org hasn’t produced a work universally accepted as good, regardless of media. (But they haven’t.) Web comics deserves just as much respect as anyone else for having created a work. (And to those using the term “floppies”, you might want to check your own biases.) But do any of them deserve a reward? I haven’t found one, yet.

I pick up floppies more often than you do, but the storage problem gets to me, too. Longboxes can only do so much.

Well, the obvious stuff includes infinite canvas, branching paths and comics in three dimensions, though I find there’s a lot of room for subtler effects.

Man, could that be any vaguer? Myk, if you’re still listening, I want to answer this more thoroughly but it’d take an article. Until I can write one, I recommend you Google “Making Comics Chapter 5 1/2,” available online. It’s much more revealing about this topic than Reinventing Comics was.

On a more personal note, the only kind of print comics that appeal to me are trade paperbacks or (preferably) hardcover collections of items I’ve already read in digital form — things I already know that I really, really love. Sort of like buying records only after you become familiar with the work of a musician through his/her songs on the radio. Anything else just clutters up the house, and I can’t stand the thought that everything I’ve ever read would have to follow me around this world in heavy, physical, inconvenient-to-access, difficult-to-preserve, expensive-to-store form. But I know that this is not a common attitude in the comics community. It’s Just Me.

Tara, re Galaxion running online: are new pages appearing yet, or is it still rerunning the print material?

Joey: I think myk’s gone a bit far, but the comparison between discussion and/or essaying and strips isn’t a compelling one to me. It took me years goofing off online, refining my mode of expression and opinions, before I would dare ask anyone to pay money for my thoughts. And yeah, I do value my print work (and my website in toto) more than I do any particular web-published piece. So even if I’m a Luddite, I’m consistent. :)

Roche, I’m picking on you because you posted last: if we agree to leave out the strip-like webcomics, what are the non-strip webcomics that are worthy of being named best of the year in competition with all comics, whatever format? I don’t want to put anyone on the spot, and I can see why some can’t/won’t name names in answer to that question, but no one’s answered it yet. (And your post didn’t seem particularly rude to me.)

I respect what you do, and I’ve been delighted with your reviews of webcomics that have made it to print. It would be lovely if you would look at some that haven’t made it to print yet, but that’s the world’s biggest slushpile I’m pointing at, so I can understand if you’d rather not. Attention is (so far) cheaper than dollars, so it seems rational to stick with things that both time and money have been sunk into.

Which is to say, my hardbound copy of Death: The High Cost of Living doesn’t invalidate my much loved copy of issue #3 at all, it just makes it easier to carry around. (And the floppy makes it easier to get friends hooked on Gaiman.)

Like floppies, webcomics have inconveniences attached to them: page load times instead of fragile covers. (And neither lends themselves to be being read in the tub, though some try.) I’d say that broadband is a prerequisite for a smooth enough reading experience to get hooked on anything via it’s archive. I’m sometimes stuck with dialup, so I feel that pain, but webcomics are futuretime as the Alpha Shade guys say.

The agility of an artist’s response to the audience, and the daily/tri-weekly/weekly supsense and release cycles are pretty unique. (Barring newspaper comics, of course, which will soon disappear.) Having that same time release structure, and a common starting culture (e.g. Scott Kurtz’s PvP) leads to a fair number of them being strip-like, but clearly that’s not inevitable, and not a determining characteristic of webcomics.

Should strip-like webcomics be out of consideration? Sure, if the rules normally exclude newspaper strips (or collections therof.) I don’t have a stake in that game. If you don’t want to see them on your best-of lists, okay by me. But since the format (html pages and images) doesn’t shape the content to be exclusively gag strips, nor nice tidy serialized fiction (e.g. Girl Genius), maybe it would be good to figure out why drawing that line is important to you.

You wrote: Webcomics have to overcome their history as a cheap way to keep up with comic strips at work before they’ll be taken seriously. Sounds kinda like how the superman newspaper funnies that were collected as floppy comic books were just a cheap way to keep up on the doings of Clark Kent. You weren’t baiting us with that, were you?