webcomics: form
May. 26th, 2006 05:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
egypturnashI should preface this by noting that I don't read any webcomics with any regularity. Well, I read T's Fite! because he's doing it as LJ, and that integrates. And maybe I should look for RSS feeds for a few others by my friends and integrate them into LJ. But I'm one of those people who reads webcomics by going through the archives irregularly, and doesn't keep aware of the trends and the hot newcomers.
There's a certain number of conventions I've noticed to webcomics. So many people seem to give each installment a title. And there'll be rants, commentary, and glosses running next to them - sometimes a blog, sometimes commentary on the strip itself.
I can understand the urge to do both, but I feel like both of them are, perhaps, guiding the reader too much. Does every page of a normal comic book have a title? No; why does a continuity-oriented webcomic need one? Because everyone does it. Why does a three/four-panel gag strip need a title that ironically spins the strip? Everyone does it.
I'm not saying it's bad in and of itself - but I wonder why it's so endemic in web comics? It feels foreign and awkward to the rhythms of most strips. It worked fine in the ironic existential humor of "Zippy the Pinhead", which is the first place I saw it in modern comics. Really, a per-strip title feels like a throwback to the awkward strips of the early 1900s to me. (Maybe the relative youth of webcomics-as-medium is why we get things like this cropping up? New medium, new conventions; let's try reviving some old ones?)
Something not to do if I ever get off my ass and start one myself, I suppose. Just a branding header, small links, and the page. No commentary, no title. Titles for units of story large enough to need one - chapters, at the smallest. Here's the story, make of it what you will; here's a link to a character reference, here's the forums, here's the archives, here's the shop.
I guess I feel like the author talking about why they drew one page or what they loved about it doesn't have to be immediately exposed. Maybe in the deluxe edition, maybe in the forums. In the endnotes of the book like the 'Finder' collections. In the five-year retrospective collection of the creator's favorites. But not right there next to the strip, spinning it and guiding the reader.
And then there's the blog-under-the-comic. I don't mind it normally, it kinda works. I really hate the way any link someone makes to today's Penny Arcade gets redirected to the front page, which completely lacks the comic and only has their blogs, though.
There's a certain number of conventions I've noticed to webcomics. So many people seem to give each installment a title. And there'll be rants, commentary, and glosses running next to them - sometimes a blog, sometimes commentary on the strip itself.
I can understand the urge to do both, but I feel like both of them are, perhaps, guiding the reader too much. Does every page of a normal comic book have a title? No; why does a continuity-oriented webcomic need one? Because everyone does it. Why does a three/four-panel gag strip need a title that ironically spins the strip? Everyone does it.
I'm not saying it's bad in and of itself - but I wonder why it's so endemic in web comics? It feels foreign and awkward to the rhythms of most strips. It worked fine in the ironic existential humor of "Zippy the Pinhead", which is the first place I saw it in modern comics. Really, a per-strip title feels like a throwback to the awkward strips of the early 1900s to me. (Maybe the relative youth of webcomics-as-medium is why we get things like this cropping up? New medium, new conventions; let's try reviving some old ones?)
Something not to do if I ever get off my ass and start one myself, I suppose. Just a branding header, small links, and the page. No commentary, no title. Titles for units of story large enough to need one - chapters, at the smallest. Here's the story, make of it what you will; here's a link to a character reference, here's the forums, here's the archives, here's the shop.
I guess I feel like the author talking about why they drew one page or what they loved about it doesn't have to be immediately exposed. Maybe in the deluxe edition, maybe in the forums. In the endnotes of the book like the 'Finder' collections. In the five-year retrospective collection of the creator's favorites. But not right there next to the strip, spinning it and guiding the reader.
And then there's the blog-under-the-comic. I don't mind it normally, it kinda works. I really hate the way any link someone makes to today's Penny Arcade gets redirected to the front page, which completely lacks the comic and only has their blogs, though.
no subject
Date: 2006-05-27 02:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-28 12:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-28 02:15 pm (UTC)I don't think having your smallest storytelling unit be a chapter is ignoring the demands of the web; for some stories, 4-6 panels is simply not a viable unit. There are books with chapters that range down to half a page and all have titles; there are books with lengthy chapters that're just numbered, there are books with no chapters at all. It's a combination of the demands of the form and the demands of the story.
I guess I tend to think in a more long-form for-print format than a gag-a-day for the web; a title for every single page seems like an intrusion to me.