Webcomics!

In our last class, we discussed graphic fiction and comics. I was sort of pumped to talk about this, because I thought that I enjoyed reading comics, but it turned out that I wasn’t familiar with almost everything that we discussed. That was cool too, because I learned some “history” stuff on the genre, but it also made me wonder what comics I had been reading that were somehow different from the ones we discussed. Excuse me while I do a little bit of reminiscing:

When I was younger, my comic-knowledge was entirely Japanese; that is, I read lots of manga. I worked my way through the manga section of Barnes & Noble (I didn’t know of any comic book stores nearby), and only around high school did I start to venture into the other, smaller end of the comic book shelf (simply labeled “graphic novels”). I picked up a few books that stuck with me (the BONE series was particularly fantastic), but for the most part I had trouble finding stories that I liked here. At this point, though, it was becoming pretty uncool to read manga, so I started reading a new genre of graphic fiction: webcomics.

I think webcomics are a pretty fascinating subgenre. For starters, just the fact that there are artists creating and distributing comics totally for free is pretty strange. But, of course, that opens them up to countless possibilities. It’s basically the ultimate indie: not only does the artist not have to satisfy a publisher, they also don’t have to stick to deadlines or even worry about pleasing an audience. There’s quite a range of subjects (although in my experience it’s a lot of in video game joke comics, there’s also a weird range of most genres). Besides this freedom, a webcomic is also able to utilize its medium (the internet) in ways that a traditional book cannot. The “comic” Homestuck really pushes this: it tells a story using image, text, animation, music, interactive games, and even the webpage itself. Actually, I wish I’d brought up Homestuck in class, because I think it’s a super interesting evolution of the graphic narrative.

Homestuck!

What’s the difference between the comics I read and the comics we talked about in class? I think another awesome thing about webcomics is that, since uploading a comic to the internet is infinitely easier than publishing one, there are tons to choose from. So, it’s easy for me to find the comics that feel similar to the ones I read as a kid. So, regardless of what you read in middle school, on the internet you can probably find something pleasantly similar.