The Rebirth of Comics

Malfourmed writes "The Sydney Morning Herald is running a story on web based comics and how the new medium can change the traditional "left-to-right in a rectangular frame" paradigm. Concentrating on the work of Scott McLoud it also mentions geek favourites Dilbert and The Matrix, among others. Micropayments are discussed, with the article claiming that after you pay your 25 cents "most of which goes straight to McCloud, cutting out the middlemen that make it difficult for comic artists to make a living from their work, and in the process doing justice to their talents." One of the more interesting sites discussed is the Oz Comics 24 Hour Gallery, the result of a competition in which artists had 24 hours to create an original, 24-page comic. So popular was the contest that the server suffered from a veritable slashdot effect."

Comments

all for it

[NetMagi]

I'm all for ANY distribution method where the artists actually get a sizaeble sum of the profits. .

Political commentary...

[Cutriss]

Concentrating on the work of Scott McLoud it also mentions geek favourites Dilbert and The Matrix, among others.

Is this an unintentional spelling error of Scott's last name, or an intentional jab at what some people think of his ideals?

"Tyranny" of Left to Right Format long broken

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

Bill Watterson broke this a while back in the later years of his Calvin and Hobbes strips. Once he got popular enough to be able to dictate some things for artistic sake, he declared that his comics will only be published in a rectangular area where he has free rein inside, free from panels or any other limitation within. Most papers required all comics to be broken into panels so they can be arranged how they saw fit. Watterson hated those limitations, especially for a strip that was so involved with fantasy and imagination. Some papers had to actually shrink his area in order to keep the proportions right and for other comics to flow right around it, but he remained steadfast, and thats how the sunday strips were presented until he ended the strip, a strip still sorely missed by me and many others.

Re:I recall

[Mmm coffee]

I'm a big webcomic fan for the fact that you will find a LOT of comics online that no publisher in his right mind would consider going near. I don't think I've laughed at a mainstream print comic since I was six. But get online and you're looking at a whole 'nother ballpark.

A perfect example of this is Sexy Losers, my personal favorite. (Warning, comic so NSFW it's not even remotely funny.) The most quoted strip - Girl is about to commit suicide. Guy asks her if he can have sex with her before she jumps. She calls him a pervert. Guy says "Well, I'll just have to wait until your body washes ashore, then." Man, I wish they'd print *that* next to Garfield.

Online comics can go, do, and say things that 99% of publishers wouldn't consider printing, and as such tend to be a lot more origional than the rest. Yes, the vast majority of webcomics are total and complete crap, but every now and then you come across a few gems that drag you in and make you read each and every comic several times over. (I am specifically talking about Venus Envy which I linked to above in the word "a", I never dreamed I would become a huge fan over a comic about freakin' transsexuals, for christ's sakes.)

Re:Unfortunatley.

[li99sh79]

If you hadn't noticed, 90% of the comics page is stuck in a rut so big it's been reclassified as a box canyon. It seems that paper editors choose the least offensive most watered down cheap fare they can find for the comics page. This practice has turned the whole thing into a tremendous waste of time, as the same few jokes are told over and over again by the same old tired characters.

There are also comic strips that run in real time and let the characters grow and change, and then there are strips in between. "For Better or For Worse," "Luann", "Crankshaft", "The Norm", and "Doonesbury" all experience the passage of time and character growth in one form or another.

The Funny pages are as much a place for "comfort" good as they are cutting edge humor. Most of the big hitters have been in the game for twenty years or more, people are familiar with them and they don't like chance. For years the Detroit Free Press tried to drop Modesty Blaise but everytime they did there were howls of protests. In fact, when artist/writer of Modesty Blaise decided to end the strip the Freep had to run a notice that the strip was over for a week in the strip's palce to make sure people were clear on what happened.

Then again the technical quality of most of the strips that run in your local paper are better than most of the web comics out there. It's also not a given that all print strips are uncreative crap. Strips like "Get Fuzzy," "Pearls before Swine" and "Boondocks" are all just as good, if not better, than even the top-tier webcomics.

Besides, how many webcomics did jokes about how big the X-Box is? How much character development have Tycho and Gabe undergone over the run of Penny Arcade? Webcomics can be just as predictable and static as the newspaper funny pages

-sam, really should start outlining his /. posts