Webcomics , online comics , or Internet comics are comics published on a website, often exclusively, providing easy access to an audience, though some are published in books and newspapers but maintain a web archive.
Webcomics are like self-published print comics in that almost anyone can author their own webcomic and publish it. Over 15,000 webcomics now exist online, from traditional comic strips to graphic novels, covering many genres and subjects. Very few are financially self-sustaining.
Medium
There are several differences between webcomics and conventional printed comics.
With webcomics, the formal restrictions of the traditional newspaper or magazine format can be lifted, allowing artists to take advantage of the web's unique capabilities. Scott McCloud, one of the first advocates of webcomics, has pioneered the idea of the infinite canvas , where, rather than being confined to normal print dimensions, artists are free to spread out in any direction indefinitely with their comics, as demian5 has done with his scrolling When I Am King . Other comic artists, such as Mark Fiore with his Flash-based editorial cartoons, have experimented by incorporating interactivity and animation. Still, many if not most webcomics take traditional forms. Some, such as Scott Kurtz's PvP and Tatsuya Ishida's Sinfest , appear stylistically similar to black-and-white newspaper comic strips. This gag-a-day format allows for quicker, more frequent updates, potentially allowing an artist to build up an audience quickly. Other webcomics are presented in the same manner as traditional comic books, manga and graphic novels. These comics, such as Fred Gallagher's Megatokyo come in a page form rather than a strip form and tend to focus more on story than gags.
Several self-published comic books, such as Carla Speed McNeil's Finder and Phil & Kaja Foglio's Girl Genius , have stopped publishing individual print comics and instead serialise their content as webcomics, in an effort to reach a larger audience. They then only publish printed trade paperback collections.
Some webcomic artists publish comics that do not use traditional artwork. Sprite comics use copied and pasted video game sprites for characters. Similarly, some webcomics are created using clip art, found art and fumetti or photo-comics . Joey Comeau and Emily Horne's A Softer World , for example, is made by photography overlaid with strips of typewriter-style text, while Twisted Kaiju Theater uses photos of Godzilla toys. Artistic expression in these ready-made comics is funneled primarily into writing. Some artists, such as Ryan North of Dinosaur Comics , create comics with most strips having art simply copied exactly from one (or a handful of) template comics, with only the text changing, as in the constrained comics tradition. Pixel art, such as that created by Richard Stevens of Diesel Sweeties , is similar to that of sprite comics but instead uses original low-resolution work created by the artist. There has also been experimentation with 3D art in webcomics, most notably with the use of figures and models using the 3D rendering program Poser.
In recent years, an alternate presentation of wecomics has been with scanned images from the original paper publication. Several sites offer entire repositories of such form, following the protocol of listing the series and individual comics, often accompanied by a thumbnail of the front cover. htmlComics is one such site that presents millions of pages of such comics, and conforms to copyright laws by adhering to a presentation which mirrors that of a public resource library.
Webcomics that are independently published are not subject to the content restrictions of publishers or comic syndicates, enjoying an artistic freedom similar to underground and alternative comics. Some webcomics stretch the boundaries of taste, taking advantage of the fact that Internet censorship is virtually nonexistent in countries like the US and UK. The content of webcomics can still cause problems, such as Leisure Town artist Tristan Farnon's legal trouble after creating a homoerotic Dilbert parody, or the Catholic League's protest of artist Eric Monster Millikin's "blasphemous treatment of Jesus."
Webcomics which have built up significant archives will often publish collections of strips in books. Those in the form of either newspaper strips or comic books often publish in their respective forms, while artists who create webcomics with nonstandard formats find book publishing more difficult.
History
Among the earliest online comics were T.H.E. Fox , which was published on Compuserve and Quantum Link in 1986, Where the Buffalo Roam which was published on FTP and usenet in 1991, Doctor Fun which was published on the web in September 1993, Netboy which was published on the web in the summer of 1994, NetComics Weekly from Finnish Comics Society, which started in mid 1994,. Among the longest-running webcomics that are still being published are Rogues of Clwyd-Rhan , a Dutch comic that started in Nov. 1994, Art Comics Daily (which began in March 1995), Argon Zark! (June 1995), Kevin and Kell (September 1995), and Slow Wave (November 1995).
Other comics' artists claim to have been the first, or at least to have set a trend, within different genres and art styles. The Polymer City Chronicles which began on March 13, 1995 has the claim to be the first video gaming themed webcomic. Bob and George , which began to be presented daily in April 2000, was not the first sprite comic on the web, but is often identified as the one that set the trend. In August 2000, Twisted Kaiju Theater debuted. It was not the first photo comic on the web, but is generally recognized as the one that set the trend. It is inspired by Twisted Toyfare Theater, which is published in ToyFare magazine. In the Summer of 2000 Gutterflycomix.com appeared and holds the claim of, if not to be the first, one of the first online comics to try and take full advantage of internet technology, combining traditional comic panel style with flash animation, music and sound, email and other internet based media (it should be noted this type of storytelling is more common today by such t.v. shows as Lost and movies such as The Transformers).
The late nineties saw the number of webcomics increase drastically. Sabrina Online first appeared a year later in September 1996. A year later, in 1997, Goats appeared (in April), followed by Sluggy Freelance (in August), Roomies! (in September), Piled Higher and Deeper (in October), Newshounds and User Friendly (both in November). Penny Arcade , PvP , Jerkcity , Freefall , and Pokey the Penguin began a year later.
In March 2000, Chris Crosby, Crosby's mother Teri, and Darren Bleuel founded the webcomics portal Keenspot. Crosby and Bleuel also started a free webcomic hosting service in July 2000, originally called KeenSpace but renamed Comic Genesis in July 2005.
In July 2000, Austin Osueke launched eigoMANGA a web portal that published original online manga "webmanga". Within this year, eigoMANGA brought comic book industry attention to webcomics after being featured in many comic book web magazine articles and later appearing in the March 2001 issue of Wizard Magazine.
In August 2000, Scott McCloud's Reinventing Comics , half of which consisted of a treatise on webcomics, was published. Though sometimes controversial, McCloud was one of the first advocates of digital comics and remains an influential figure in the webcomics field. His theories have sometimes led to debates about where webcomics should go and what, precisely, they are. McCloud's early advocacy of micropayments has also been a source of debate.
In 2001, the subscription webcomics site Cool Beans World was launched after a high profile publicity campaign including extensive print advertising. It won Internet Magazine's "Site of the Month" award in October 2001. Contributors included, amongst others, UK-based comic book creators Pat Mills, Simon Bisley, John Bolton and Kevin O'Neill, and the author Clive Barker. Serialised content included Scarlet Traces and Marshal Law .
In March 2001, Shannon Denton and Patrick Coyle launched Komikwerks.com serving free strips from comics and animation professionals. The site launched with 9 titles including Astounding Space Thrills by Steve Conley, Buzzboy by John Gallagher, and Johnny Smackpants by Coyle.
On March 2, 2002, Joey Manley founded Modern Tales, offering subscription-based webcomics. The Modern Tales spin-off serializer followed in October 2002, then came girlamatic and Graphic Smash in March and September 2003 respectively.
By 2005, webcomics hosting had become a business in its own right, with sites such as Comic Genesis, DrunkDuck, Smack Jeeves and Webcomics Nation.
In June 2006, Universal Press Syndicate editorial cartoonist Ted Rall focused on webcomics for the third volume of the Attitude: The New Subversive Cartoonists series, and included comics such as The Perry Bible Fellowship , Cat and Girl , and A Lesson Is Learned But The Damage Is Irreversible .
While comic strip syndicat
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