Digital Comics Part 1: People Make Comics on the Internet? You Don't Say!

Yes, our favorite art medium has made the jump, like its older siblings prose and visual art, from the two-dimensional paper/canvas to the two-dimensional screen and stands straddling the chasm between them.

Actually, it did it a long time ago. According to Wikipedia a few single-panel drawn-and-scanned cartoons first appeared on the early internet provider CopuServe in the mid-Eighties. They were followed by a few newspaper comics going online when their print existences were canceled.

[At right, the first "Argon Zark" web-strip by Charley Parker. The first true webcomic. June 1995. Believe it or not, it was still being updated as late as 2oo8!]

Real sequential art/designed-for-the-web comics first appeared in the mid-Nineties. Where were you? Pretty remarkable that the evolution from single-panel to multiple-panel mimics the birth of newspaper comic-strips and the parallel evolution from reprints or continuations to new material mimics the development of the comic-book. History repeats itself... as they say.

I was in the fourth grade in 1995, but there's really no excuse for taking as long as I did to start reading them. In 2oo6, in my sophomore year of college, something made me finally want to find a good webcomic. I cannot recall for the life of me what it was specifically but I do remember thinking: "Gee, a lot of my friends read webcomics. Print comics readers and non-readers alike. What am I missing?"

Among others, what I discovered was "Diesel Sweeties" by R. Stevens, a pixel-art webcomic strip about a robot who dates a former porn star and their wacky friends, some human, some robotic. Yes that's right. Robot. Former porn-star. Wacky friends, some human, some robotic.

I loved it. I stayed up and in one night read almost half of the then six-year-old archive. The characters are exaggerated without being caricatures and the situations are hilarious without necessarily being ridiculous. Indeed, the relationship between Clango and Maura could be seen as very forward thinking... You know, symbolically. Or like, for the future of advanced robotics.

The best one-stop-shop for webcomics is unquestionably Act-I-Vate.com. Home of the stories of Act-I-Vate's unofficial ringmaster Dean Haspiel and the ongoing adventures of his existential explorer/lover/brute Billy Dogma. Not to mention the work of one I've sung the praises of on this site before: Mike Cavallaro. Plus the brilliant Xeric Award winnng Jason Little and way more amazing comicsmths than I have space to list here!

Somewhere along the way, some brilliant and wonderful person or persons steered my ship into the harbor that is xkcd.com

"xkcd" is, in my humble opinion, the best webcomic on the net for one reason: It consistently does so much with so little!


Brilliance. Brilliance. Brilliance.

Sciency, romantic, hilarious brilliance.

Another comic I soon discovered and loved was "life with leslie" by Les McClaine. If all these robots and absurdist humor has you thinking the web has no comics of logical integrity or realism, well... that's because a lot of them don't. But it doesn't mean there aren't ones out there that do. "life with leslie" (available on EvilSpaceRobot.com, although sadly no longer updated because its creator has moved on to other work) is largely made-up of little celebrations of the simple moments of everyday life. Often done excellently!

There are probably literally millions of comics online. Most of them for free. All of them available from any computer, phone, or magical futuristic device with internet capabilities. (More on this in part two!)

Today, I actually make a webcomic myself, updated monthly at my site The ComicSmithy!

But I just recently took a different plunge. I connected several webcomics' RSS feeds ("Diesel Sweeties" and "XKCD" among them) to my Google reader account. So help me, I'm following these webcomics as they are updated in the same way I watch the solicits and visit my comic shop regularly. I have made the leap and stand with one foot in each world. Two worlds that are now far closer than they once were when the first sequential art was uploaded to the web more than twenty years ago.
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If the gods of time management smile upon us, part two should arrive in your longboxes tomorrow.

Why I Trade Wait (Sometimes)

This looks AWESOME.

I dig the title (Flags of our Fathers), I like the writing in the preview, I like the Denys Cowan art in the preview, and I'm a sucker for World War II stories... particularly those featuring Captain America and The Howling Commandos.

This is a comic book that I want.

But... 22 pages of story for $3.99 is a tough sell and this is why some people, myself included, have a tendency to trade wait for books like this.

The series is four issues long, so that's sixteen dollars for 88 pages (which, ratios being what they are, is the same 5.5 page/dollar ratio as the book). Now, it's possible that they'll release it as an even more expensive hardcover first, but if I'm waiting I can wait for the trade and here's why:

If I wait for the trade, the most it'll cost me is $15 dollars- and, because the page count is so low, I expect it will be less, even cheaper if I track it down on Amazon. The ratio continues to get lower and lower if I'm willing to wait a couple of months.

This is why people trade wait- because comics are expensive, and trades are, quite simply, a lot cheaper. Contra Jon's objections (and, for the most part, I agree with them, which is why I buy most of my books on a monthly basis), trades allow for comic book readers to consume many more panels for a much, much lower price. This is also true of most $3 dollar books, like the first volume of Chew, for instance (which includes the series' first five issues and costs $9.99, which is hella savings), or, as is more common, like the first volume of Thor ($14.99 for six issues, and much cheaper on Amazon). Even in the latter case, waiting for the trade is the price of a comic book. If I'm willing to wait for some series I want to read (Chew, for instance) I save myself several books worth of money. If the move to $4 books continues, I think I'm going to trade wait more and more.

Again, this is not to say I disagree with Jon; in fact I think most of the comic-buying audience continues to prefer the single-issues, except in cases when they come to a series, writer or artist late in the game (which, I suspect, was the original purpose of the collections). This is, I suspect, because there's something compelling about a pamphlet, something beautiful and something worth keeping. There's a tension, though, because saving money (and, in particular saving money in such a way that it helps me buy more comics) is also compelling. The future of the comics industry is going to be in finding the balance, if we haven't already found it.

The Comic Symposium Is Upon Us....

On April 10th, Bard College will host its Fifth Annual Comic Symposium. Clare and I have been planning it for months, and it's nearly here. Featuring presentations from both Clare and myself as well as other members of the Bard community and, most excitingly, Bard grad and comic legend Chris Claremont. Above is the poster that I designed, and I think it's pretty sweet.

Hope to see y'all there.

I've Held My Tongue Long Enough!

I've tried to be patient with you, Marvel. And really, I love you, I do- you take about ten dollars from me on any given week, so I must love you, right?

But I can't be patient anymore- I'm pissed off and I'm not going to take it.

Why am I pissed off? Coming out in June are:

Six comics with Deadpool in the title
A Spider-Ham 25th Anniversary Special
Two minis with titles beginning "Spider-Man Presents..."
A "Darkstar and Winter Guard" mini
A Hercules in Space mini?
The start of a new "Hawkeye and Mockingbird" series

and where, in the name of the ever-lovin-blue-eyed-Thing, is Daniel Rand?

It's been months since the Immortal Weapons one-shots ended and we were promised that the Immortal Iron Fist was not canceled.

Well it looks like it is, and I call foul. I know, I know, Marvel knows its business better than I do... but look. Luke Cage is in the middle of a renaissance and his best buddy is nowhere to be found. In its heyday, Brubaker, Fraction and Aja's Immortal Iron Fist was one of the best books out there, about a character almost no one cared about. It was so effective that some people, (read: me) are now actually fans of the character that no one cares about. And what do you do, Marvel? Why, you leave me high and dry!

So, thus begins my quest to return the Immortal Iron Fist to exactly where he belongs- comics pages anywhere. I'm going to review the new Iron Fist stories. I'm going to review old Iron Fist stories. I'm going to write and draw my own Iron Fist stories and I'm not going to stop until I get what I want (and believe me when I say my comics are going to be torturous).

So, that's where I stand- I'll see you in the funny pages, Marvel Comics. The newsprint ain't big enough for the both of us.

In the meantime, I'm going to go learn Kung Fu.

(actually, I was going to do most of this stuff anyway- but I figured couching it in revolutionary language might get people who aren't me to care.)

Who Buys All Of These Damn Comics, Anyway?

There are six, count 'em, six (6) (SIX!) Deadpool comics solicited for the month of June.

What?