Web-Based Comics

Lumpish Scholar writes "The Chicago Tribune (no registration required:-) has this long awaited article on Web-based cartoons and cartoonists. (A couple of Web-based cartoonists put together the recent Berkely Breathed interview, as reported here.) The Trib article mentions some of my favorite online cartoons: Kevin and Kell, College Roomies From Hell, and Helen, Sweetheart of the Internet (now in dead tree syndication and online here). Other sources: Keenspot, hosting service for forty online strips; Planet Cartoonist's list of the top 100 online comic strips; a similar list from Big Panda; Yahoo!'s same-day-as-the-papers strips; King Features; Comics.com, home of Dilbert (a.k.a. Dilbert.com), Peanuts (Snoopy.com), and other United Media comic strips, and cartoons from the New Yorker; Plan 9 Publishing, bringing online comics to dead trees near you; oh, yeah, and let's not forget that other online strip." I just wish Gary Larson would come back.

Comments

Sluggy Freelance

[Kletus Cassidy]

How could they do an article onWeb comics and leave out Sluggy Freelance. That's the funniest and most innovative of the online comics I've seen and I've read most of the ones they listed.

Don't forget...

[Ron Harwood]

Dr. Fun, Goats, Bob the Angry Flower and Too Much Coffee Man.

The web is reinvigorating comics.

[Heidi Wall]

Picture this. It is 1970. You want to be a comic drawer. You do it in your spare time, and perhaps do your comics for a couple of fanzines and so on. You have an art degree - you are well qualified. What options do you have? Your only real option id to start sending your portfolio around all the major magazines/comic books/ newspapers and so on, in the hope of being accepted for one. However, this is a competitive environment.

Today, however, you can set up your own page and appeal to the viewers directly. If you are succesful, you have your own cult of fans and people start taking notice in the serious press. The web has created an alternative career path for the aspiring cartoonist - even if you are unsuccessful, you can still be noticed and get your work out there.

Also, the freedom from commercial pressures means that todays comics are much more innovative than they once were - the cartoonist is free to create whatever he wishes, without interference. The modern comedic tradition, informed by Saturday Night Live, Monty Python and other such surrealist shows means that the modern comic can be downright bizarre.

This all holds fairly well with the subversive traditions of the comic. The web is reinforing those traditions and bringing them to the fore more than they were.

This is a golden age for comics - they are being reborn.
--
Clarity does not require the absence of impurities,

Lets not forget the multitude of manga based comic

[jandrese]

There all all kinds of comics out these days where the art and story exceed anythign you will find in the newspapers:
Sinfest
Explotation now
MegaTokyo
And for the 18+ crowd: The Thin H Line
Of course I'd never expect a major newspaper to carry anything positive about the Thin H Line. :)

Down that path lies madness. On the other hand, the road to hell is paved with melting snowballs.

What, no Sluggy?

[Greyfox]

Can't believe you missed Sluggy Freelance Seeing as how it's an option on a slashbox and all. That's www.sluggy.com for you goatse.cx paranoid.

Re:What, no Sluggy?

[RayChuang]

I'm surprised that Sluggy Freelance was not mentioned, either.

Remember, Sluggy Freelance has been around since August 1997, a veritable old-timer in terms of online comic strips. I believe it came out about the same time as the first User Friendly strips.

The only major online comic strip older than Sluggy Freelance I know of is Bill Holbrook's KEVIN AND KELL, which (I think) was originally distributed on CompuServe a little bit more than ten years ago.

Best place for dead tree comics online.

[eschatfische]

It's impossible to beat the Mercury News' online comics personalization engine. Most of the dead tree comics out there, only the ones you want to see, same day as the papers, in color! Free registration required, as they say.

I love web comics, but the problem I have with them is that I don't read them on a "daily basis" like the dead tree comics, so the ones with an ongoing storyline or character development lose a lot of their "flow." I like the "one day at a time" feel of something like Doonesbury or the kickass newcomer The Boondocks. When you read 'em all at once, it just doesn't feel right to me.

Other great online strips: the ones at Salon, especially Tom the Dancing Bug and Story Minute. And how could I leave out the deranged genius which is Space Moose!

The world hasn't been the same since Word.com got destroyed by their fish-oil selling masters. However, if you Google long enough, you'll find the old archive of Maakies still online.

Eschatfische.

One word: syndicates

[BeanThere]

The syndicates have done to comic strip art what the record companies have done to music. Family Circus is to comics as Boyzone is to music.

A worthwhile read is a speech given by Bill Watterson (creator of Calvin and Hobbes, who would not "sell out") called The cheapening of the comics.

Online Comic Strip Downloader

[penguinboy]

My program, dailystrips, automatically downloads web comics so that you don't have to visit several different websites.

Re:Online Comic Strip Downloader

[Lumpish Scholar]

My program, dailystrips, automatically downloads web comics so that you don't have to visit several different websites.

There are sites that do this via CGI, too. I deliberately didn't mention them in the submission, because they short-circuit whatever ad revenue these artists are making.

I'm not saying you don't have the write to write or use such scripts. I'm saying there's an ethical decision to be made here.