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Introduction by Joe Zabel

According to T. Campbell's History of webcomics, the first-ever webcomic was published on April 15, 1992. In the twelve years since, webcomics have grown into a vastly popular and provocative medium. Webcomics are not a fundamentally new way to communicate-- they closely resemble print comics most of the time. But they are a revolution in several important ways-- they can be published much more cheaply than print comics; they can be distributed much more broadly than print; they can be published much more quickly, allowing artists to comment on news events that occurred only hours ago. And as an electronic medium, they open the door to an exciting array of formal innovations-- motion, sound, infinite canvases, and the flexibility of hyperlinking.

At first glance, the current state of webcomics is a stark contrast to the revolutionary potential of the medium. The vast majority of them are not breaking new ground, but mimicking the oldest form of print comics, the daily newspaper strip. And because they aspire to be advertising-supported, most webcomics appeal, like newspaper strips, to the lowest common denominator.

At the same time, print comics are experiencing a new revolution of their own, becoming more and more focused on the graphic novel format that allows creators to express complex visions that span hundreds of pages. And by breaking into the book market, they are reaching out to a new, more sophisticated readership.

It sometimes seems as if the most radical revolution in comics is taking place in print, and passing webcomics by. Nevertheless, there are plentiful examples of webcomics that break new ground, both within the familiar formats and well outside of them.

From the vantage point of the current state of the art, this roundtable will attempt to look forward. How will webcomics continue to generate excitement? What remains to be discovered? Will webcomics fall behind print comics, or will they continue to represent the cutting edge of the medium?

Daily Strips

Zabel: My first question for the group is, what do you think about the daily strip as a medium for webcomics? Do you think it can be used to break new artistic ground, or is it too restrictive a format?

Stevenson: Dailies still have plenty of ground to break.

First, the internet has virtually eliminated the distance between creator and consumer, but most daily webcomics have been slow to take advantage of the possibilities this opens up. The editorial advantage of this proximity has been thoroughly explored. Without editors, advertisers or censors between the comic creator and the audience, webcomics are exploring every kind of content. But they're not exploring every kind of communication, particularly the two-way communication that makes the internet so exciting in comparison to other media.

To meet deadlines, most daily webcomics are being drawn days or weeks in advance, limiting their ability to quickly respond to world events, trends and, most importantly, feedback from readers. The growing popularity of blogs offers a lesson on this front. More timely content and two-way communication can increase interest, feedback, and incorporation of feedback into the work itself, blurring the job of the comic creator and comic consumer. The prospect of this kind of reader-feedback loop would probably horrify many webcomic creators who chose the web for the increased autonomy it offers. This may be part of the reason it is such an under-explored possibility, but the potential is tantalizing.

Second, daily webcomics are only just beginning to challenge the traditional form of the comic-strip. Bill Waterson of Calvin and Hobbes waged a long battle against the syndicates to give creators more creative control over the shape, size and format of Sunday comics, but the internet obliterates nearly all such spatial constraints. Though many weekly and sporadically-published webcomics have experimented with this freedom, most daily webcomics still stick to a four or five panel, horizontal format. Several, though, have begun to challenge the tradition. Too often, they have simply traded one standard size and shape for another, but the potential for a constant, daily exploration of space is still exciting.

Von Flue: I just started a daily strip myself, to test a lot of what you're talking about. It's going well so far but, like Bob said, you've got to do a month or two ahead of time.

Instant feedback has been the most rewarding part of having a daily strip, for me. The immediate reaction that is possible (as you said in the intro) is a fantastic tool for people who have something specific to say about the world. My experience is it's vastly under-used, however.

And regarding the restrictiveness of the strip format in general, I find working under artistic constraints to be freeing in a lot of ways, but working in three panels is very hard. Especially when you're used to working with all the space you want. You've really got to economize what you want to say, and rely much more on words and pictures illustrating different areas of your story, as opposed to complimenting them.

William G: I see the daily form as being very important if your plan is to gain a large following for your comic so you can become a web micro- celebrity. But I also see this approach as being the fastest route to producing some pretty uninteresting comics.

Well... as I think about it, this seems to be mostly true with gag strips. In the world of print, the only comic I can think of that has managed to remain interesting after some three decades is "For Better Or For Worse" and mostly because Johnston is using her four panels to produce something between a continuing story and a daily gag. If there is ground to be broken in a daily, this would be the route to take. And I do see a few webcomic dailies practicing this approach.

But as I said, if you want to be popular on the web, you need to produce daily, and the gag strip is the best method of doing that. The problem, just taking a look around some of the more well known gag strip comics (print and web), is that they all have a heaping dose of "Garfield-itis". In other words, they are mediocre on their best days, unbearably bad on their worst.

However, this seems to be what the people want. And if you want their patronage, that's what you have to give them. So I see the daily strip as always being the standard on the web.

Danner: I think there’s a lot to be said for working within a restrictive format as a means of breaking new ground. If your goal is to innovate, then the tighter the restrictions you put on yourself, the more you’re forced to think creatively about how you’re going to make your work stand out. Look at Merlin’s The Nile Journals for instance. Each week he puts up three strips of three panels, in imitation of traditional strip format. But what he does inside those panels is completely unpredictable.

The main problem with the daily webstrip format in my opinion isn’t that it’ s too restrictive, but that it’s too open ended, temporally speaking. I’m a firm believer that stories need endings, and there’s only so long you can keep going before it gets stale. Most comics that are more than three or four years old are clearly past their prime, Narbonic being the notable exception. I give huge credit to David Willis for limiting his ongoing daily comics to three- or four-year story arcs, followed by a new start somewhere else.

Of course, in all these cases, I’m talking about comics in the “For Better or for Worse” mold, where there might be a punchline, but there’s also a larger story being built. I don’t want to imply that you can’t do a pure gag strip that will be solidly entertaining— but I find that I don’t tend to stick with that kind of comic for very long before I’m ready for a new gag to takes its place. The problem with this sort of strip is that it’s deceptively easy to do, but phenomenally difficult to do well.

At any rate, I don’t think the daily strip is going away, and I don’t think it needs to go away. Innovation doesn’t come from the form, it comes from the innovator. And a serious innovator can work with whatever tools are at hand.

That said, I’m still looking forward to a greater diversity of form anyway. It may be a workable form, but there are so many other possibilities that it does frustrate me to see so many people trying to wedge themselves into the same form. Especially since there are so many people for whom it’s just not the best way to go.

Garrity: Narbonic will end in a couple of years (I'm shooting for New Year's 2007), hopefully before it jumps the proverbial shark. It has a set story arc, and when that ends, the strip is over.

I love continuity comic strips, and it saddens me that, with few exceptions, they're no longer welcome in the newspaper pages. Two of my all-time favorite strips, "Thimble Theatre" and "Alley Oop," were action-comedy serials with storylines that could stretch on for months. I also have great affection for "Gasoline Alley" in its heyday. The only modern strip in the "Gasoline Alley" mold, "For Better or for Worse," continues to stand as a last, lonely reminder of how absorbing and affecting a good serial can be. (Lynn Johnston is planning to end "For Better or for Worse" in three years, so enjoy it while you can.) It's unfortunate that print cartoonists are now discouraged from doing continuity strips, or strips with any storylines that last more than a week, because it's very difficult to maintain humor or interest in the gag-a-day format. Not impossible, mind you; "Peanuts," "Barnaby," and "Calvin and Hobbes" all did just fine with limited, non-continuity plots. But difficult.

For me, the webstrip format offers the opportunity to do the kind of comic strip I love but can't get in the newspapers anymore. There are also practical advantages to the strip format; I think a standard four-panel strip represents the amount of comic a person can comfortably write and draw in a day. A daily strip has an advantage on the Web, where readers can get in the habit of receiving their morning or evening fix, and the regular updates create a sense of communication between cartoonist and reader. The Web has produced at least one genre of daily strip I personally consider exciting and potentially important to comics: the daily diary strip. It's a new form of autobio comics that would be hard to do in print, but on the Web, with the ability to publish a comic within minutes of creation, it's easy and natural.

However, I hope that strips will not continue to dominate webcomics. Most of the interesting work in the last two years has been in longform comics -- both traditional "page-sized" comics like Derek Kirk Kim's "Same Difference" and Dylan Meconis' "Bite Me," and the comics that take advantage of the unique properties of the Web. I hope that in the future we'll see more expanded-canvas comics, more Flash based comics, more hyperlinked comics.

But this may be difficult, because I think we're definitely going to see more crossover between Web and print. With the graphic-novel market expanding, print collections have become a major revenue source in the eternally low-income world of webcomics. The "Megatokyo" books are among the best-selling graphic novels in the country; Scott Kurtz's monthly PvP comic book does extremely respectable direct-market sales. The lure of print dollars may discourage webcartoonists to experiment with formats that only work on the monitor.

Cartoonists' Background

Zabel: I think one of the issues here is what a person's comics background is, whether the person comes from comics fandom or from an artistic or commercial art background.

Comics fandom is primarily concerned with comic books. It isn't just superhero fandom, as some think-- it's also a fascination with significant comics of the past like the EC comics and Eisner's The Spirit. And for some of us it's an interest in the underground comics of the 1960's. But for the most part, comics fandom has not been very much interested in newspaper strips.

In recent years comic books have exploded in a number of directions-- sophisticated graphic novels, manga, independent comics, classic reprints. But the public at large is not much aware of anything besides Spider-Man in the comic book field.

I don't think a lot of the webcomics artists come from comics fandom. Their main exposure to comics has been from newspapers, and from the commercial art world. Comic books to them mean Spider-Man, which doesn't interest them creatively. The idea of comics as something you sit down with for an hour or so to read is fairly exotic to them, and not necessarily desirable.

At least that's the impression I get. When I talk to some webcomickers about longform comics, I sense a disconnect. Of course, to be fair, I suffer from a disconnect as well when talking about daily comics. I've respectfully studied the work of Bernard Herriman and Milton Caniff, but I'm really not "into" those four-panel strips.

Garrity: A lot of webstrippers seem not very interested in comics in general. The longtime webcartoonists, in particular, are general-purpose geeks, not comic geeks. They kind of know comic strips, because everyone reads comic strips, so that's what they draw. They don't generally know much about newspaper strips in an artistic or historical sense, though, which is why you see so many "Bloom County" ripoffs (my own strip, sadly, included) and not many "Skippy" ripoffs. But this could just be my perception as a comics-history snob.

William G: I agree with the general geekery thing. Most of the people making daily webcomics are not comic artists. They're just using the form because they see it as easy to do.

One of the problems I've encountered in the various webcomic communities is that there is an overwhelming atmosphere of willful ignorance. They can follow the "setup, beat, gag" method well enough because they've read it in the funny pages all their lives, but they simply don't know why or how it works, and they don't want to.

And why should they? The web brings them an audience, they can ape the genre well enough, and the computer can gloss over their artistic flaws enough that they can get away with a three panel talking head strip about how the X-Box rules.

In a "debate" over the importance of learning to ink/ script/ color/ etc, by hand so you can find the mistakes in your art and how to fix them when they show up, I was told that they didn't have to do it because "It's the year 2004" and that I should "wake up and smell the microchips". Basically, the web and the PC have dumbed it down and made it too much easy for them.

While the D.I.Y. nature of the webcomic is great because it allows voices to be heard that otherwise wouldn't in the restrictive world of print, it also lowers the bar so much that it's surprising to see the decent strips we do see.

Von Flue: This is true in any medium though. I mean, how many bad electronic "music producers" are there online now? Or gothic-y graphic designers, who just use scratchy grunge on multiply over blown-out stock photos? Or webdesigners, period?

All of this will eventually boil down to the root and learned skills of an artist as the deciding factor of quality. The work of an artist who is trained will stand out to you in any medium (when you can find it).

Does this quality theory include writing too? It's pretty easy to see crappy art, but how hard is it to pick out the good writers from the mediocre? For me, most webstrips have shitty writing too (present company excluded, of course). But I'm not a gamer or geek or recently graduated, nor do I think talking toasters are exceptionally funny. So I often just chalk this up to being "out of the loop". But if the theory holds that most webstrippers are bad artists, shouldn't they be writers primarily? Or did they just fall into both aspects?

William G.: I completely agree with this. Like all tools, a computer can be used for good and evil. Usually evil. But I still see the problem is that many don't seem to want to learn those skills that can bring their work above the mud simply because of this ease of use. For example, look at Amy Kim Ganter. She is working in a manga style, but she has learned the tools needed to make comics well, and as a result, her work has risen heads and shoulders above the rest of the online manga-style comics.

As for bad writing, that is a difficult thing to pick out. Writing is like the foundation on your house, you cant really see the cracks readily. They need to be exposed over time, and exposed they do. whereas a lousy paintjob is there for all to see.

Man, what a useful metaphor.

But this gets back to the my previous view that people don't really care about originality and quality, they just want a daily diversion. It's pretty obvious when you take a good look at what's out there with the large audiences. Garfield-itis is as virulent on the web as it is for print dailies.

Zabel: Putting Neal's question into the specific context of the daily webcomics, I think the format encourages writing that is very simple and spontaneous. Some daily comics have larger story arcs that span numerous episodes, but the writing is nevertheless finished one small segment at a time, and it's designed to give the reader a little kick in each of those segments. Also, unlike graphic novel writing, there's no turning back-- once an episode is published, it becomes a part of the story even if the writer later changes their mind. Of course a writer can "cheat" and go back and revise the earlier episode; but readers have already read it, so that doesn't make much of a difference.

The long story form should be an exercise in pacing. But the daily format imposes its own pace on the unfolding of the story, which drastically limits the writer's options.

Campbell: The world outside the comics culture is like a big frat-sorority mixer, and in this atmosphere, comics get attention because they're easy. "Hey, baaaabe," they say, quirking up their lips and beckoning readers with one finger. "You don't really want to listen to that Text guy go on for paragraphs and paragraphs about world politics or feelings, do you? Come on up and have a look at my pictures! We'll have some fun."

A few comic strips (PEANUTS, CALVIN & HOBBES) turn out to have great personalities in the morning. And some readers eventually settle down with comics with a bit more substance (MAUS, PERSEPOLIS). But to make a comics reader out of a non-comics-reader, comics need to dangle that instant gratification. We need to show the n00bs just how orgasmic we can be.

The traditionally formatted, non-continuity comic strip is pure instant gratification. It makes none but the most basic of demands: set-up, development, JOKE! NEXT! No scrolling, no questions about which way to read, no sweat. And without some easy introduction to the pleasures of the form, precious few readers would leap right in to discover its depths.

Zabel: T. Makes an excellent point about making comics-readers out of non-comics-readers. In fact, that's a vital role of webcomics-- to be missionaries for the comics artform.

You wouldn't believe the anxiety and pessimism after the great comics shop boom and bust of the 1990s. People were seriously speculating that the next generation would lose the ability to read comics, that it would become a rarified folk art only understood by scholars and hard-core fans. And with the shrinking number of comics shops, and the gradual retreat of newspaper funny pages, it was hard not to take these pessimists seriously.

The web has changed all that-- comics are once again a vibrant part of our culture, no longer held captive by a handful of backward-looking publishers. And clearly that's what the future holds for webcomics-- to bring the art of comics to every corner of the Earth, and into every unenlightened eye.

You've probably heard of Free Comics Day, staged by the shops and the publishers to bring in new readers. Well, on the web, EVERY day is Free Comics Day!

Von Flue: I like your optimism here Joe, but I have to say we might be better off if comics did die out and became a lost artform. Then, webcomics could take it's place as an art medium without the constraints of the crappy mainstream superhero perception.

And, as for EVERY day being Free Comics Day! I KNOW. And doesn't that suck?

William G.: I dunno Joe. Even with the web, comics are still a minor artform with a geekish fanbase. And geeks are into all sorts of obscure stuff the general public is unaware of.

When I gave some text-free copies of Daily Dinosaur Comics to my students, the non-comic reading ones all asked me how to follow it. And the thing is, Koreans read the same way we do, so it's not that sort of confusion. they just didn't understand the language of comics.

Of course, maybe the language itself became too arcane, known only to a select few. I have no idea.

As for audience participation. I love my fans, and I explain any questions that come up. But really, I'm the master of the ship, and other views are not required.

Short Story Comics

Zabel: Short stories have never been an especially popular form in prose fiction or in comics, but alternative comics anthologies of short story comics have appeared frequently over the years, and some, like the Flight anthology, have been major successes.

On the web, though, we haven't seen a lot of attention to the short story comic. A lot of talented artists begin their webcomics career by publishing short story comics, but they generally become well- known only when they do a longer serialized graphic novel; Derek Kirk Kim is a good example of this.

I myself tried to kick-start a greater interest in short story comics when I edited Longplay for Modern Tales. (Shaenon has emphasized the longer tale more in her stint as Longplay editor.) But Longplay didn't attract as many readers as we'd hoped.

So my question is, do short story comics have an important role in the future of webcomics?

Danner: One thing I don't see coming yet is a working model for short standalone stories, in the E-Voluton/Original Longplay vein. Sure, the occasional notable piece will float up to the light, primarily via McCloud's blog, but I don't see a successful online short story anthology coming yet. Which really surprises me -- two years ago, I would have predicted it as the single most web-suitable form going, since it caters to the instant gratification/short attention span mindset perfectly. And yet it's completely failed to get any sort of foothold.

Zabel: I think short stories have found a place in webcomics, though not as large a one as I would hope. I was just looking at Keaner.net last night, which has a collection of stories. In fact, if you follow the links of the Flight crew, you'll find a lot of short pieces there.

A frequent pattern in a cartoonist's development is to do one-pagers, then do short stories, then longer stories, and finally a large-scale series. Doing a short story is extremely important, because it teaches a storyteller how to choose his scenes wisely and with economy, how to get to the point, and how to fashion a satisfactory ending.

Unfortunately the web encourages a lot of artists to skip the transitional steps and launch directly into the epic saga, often without ever having finished anything.

William G.: I find that "skipping stages" and launching into their epic to be a big problem with most of the comics on the web.

Nobody wants to take the time to learn their craft. Pisses me off.

Danner: Now that's something Bill and I agree on!

Personally, I think short stories *should* have a role in the future of webcomics, for just the reasons you mention. But with the exception of some of the creators who are more focused on their craft, it's just not happening. Which surprises me not just for the reasons I already mentioned, but also because the short story, in the form of the mini-comic, is the standard entry point for alternative comic creators. I would have expected those creators to naturally gravitate toward doing short pieces first.

On further reflection, of course, I realize that the reason minis are the norm in alternative comics is financial reasons less than a desire to hone their craft. The web eliminates that financial obstacle to doing longer work.

The good news is, like Joe points out, there are a number of talented individual creators doing short work and posting them quietly on their websites, where they get some spillover traffic from the creator's more ongoing projects. But I'd still love to see an online answer to the Flight concept. Especially since so many of the Flight creators are coming from the web to begin with.

Von Flue: Short stories (used as a euphemism for self-contained one-time works. right?) should have a real place when we talk about money and new readership. I imagine that people outside of the existing comics market wouldn't prefer to pay for serialized work. They don't buy their books serialized, or movies (with a few exceptions, of course *coughKillBillcough*). We've seen the rise of the graphic novel and TPB in print, attracting non-comics people specifically because they are complete works. (and can be found outside of a comic book store, like webcomics...)

So, if we want to attract new readers and distance ourself from the classic print-comics stigma, we'd do best to put out self contained works.

Garrity: I think that short comics, although they'll probably never attract massive popularity, are finding a niche in the blogosphere. A growing number of new cartoonists get their start on blogs or Livejournal, where they tend to develop a following as artist "personalities" rather than on the merits of a single work. It's not uncommon for comic blogs to feature a variety of short pieces. A lot of the Pants Pressers have done shorts, for example. Scott McCloud just linked to a lovely short comic by Dylan Meconis and Hope Larson that I didn't even know existed.

William G.: If the current demand for a daily diversion continues, it'll prevent one-shot stories from taking off and getting the recognition they need. There is a status quo right now for what the public wants to see in their webcomics, and while it has it's benefits (such as allowing the popular artists to make a living from it), it also prevents works that are created and presented differently from finding their place.

Which is too bad, but it's the way the web is shaped right now. Maybe changes will occur in the attitudes, composition, and tastes of the audience as well as the creators over the next few years.

Political Webcomics

Zabel: This has been an unprecedented election year, and it's been reflected in webcomics. Not only have popular political comics like Tom Tomorrow been viewable on the web, but web-specific series like Fetus-x and The Ralph Bunche have grown into a thriving subgenre. Webcomics have unique advantages in covering politics-- the commentary can be informed by up-to-the-minute news; and the web knocks down the barriers for controversial efforts. No letter-writing campaign is ever going to silence a radical webcomicker.

Since we still find ourselves in more or less the same situation now as before the election, is it reasonable to expect that political webcomics will continue to thrive? Or are we at the point of political burnout?

Campbell: Too much in need of satire for webcomics to give up THAT arena. I think we'll see it expand.

Danner: Maybe it's just me, but political cartoons mostly stopped being very funny after the election. Tom The Dancing bug's "The morning Americans woke up and found out who they really are" came across horribly defeatist and cynical. This Modern World followed with a long list of really depressing, and completely un-funny facts about how Bush managed to win. Eric Millikin's frustration seems to have reached head-popping levels, which certainly brings energy to his comics -- but at this point Fetus-X is bordering on the evangelical, which is interesting, but not necessarily entertaining. I don't think Ralphe Bunche has even updated lately. And even when the comics themselves do show some humor, I'm finding it really hard to laugh.

So, yeah, I do think there's some burnout where political cartoons are concerned. I think a lot of readers just aren't in a place where they feel like laughing at political foibles, and most of the cartoonists are just too depressed to do their best work. And even if the election *hadn't* gone the way it did, just the pure volume of politics over the last few months would have left most of us in need of a break.

And I do think we'll see a bit of a break. Tom the Dancing Bug dropped politics altogether for the latest strip. I don't think that will be the only cartoon to do that, at least for a few weeks or months. But that will be a temporary thing. We all need to recharge our hope, and our drive, and our senses of humor, and that's going to take some time. But once we're there, yeah, political webcomics will definitely continue to gain momentum and audience -- if anything, they'll be even more determined to have an impact next time around.

William G.: Never before in history has there been a nation in such self denial as the USA.

My dear friends, speaking as one of those dirty foreigners, you are citizens of the only surviving 19th century imperialist power. You don't think Hawaii became a state on it's own, do you? That Spain just handed over the Philippines and Puerto Rico in the late 1800s because they were bored with them? Who forced open Japan so they could sell them stuff?

Thing is, during the last two hundred years, America has had the luxury of telling itself that it was "only protecting our interests" when it came to their modest little empire. And that it wasn't an empire because the public were told it wasn't. If it were, then that would go against the entire ideals that America was founded upon.

And comic artists (creators in general) are idealists, and one of the ideals is that you don't have a political leader who acts like an elected king. America is supposed to be about democracy, equality, and liberty after all. That's why the rest of us love what your nation represents.

However, this past election has shown that the public will support those with imperialistic desires and goals. The reason so many liberals/ idealists have been so angry leading up to the election and so furious afterwards is because they can see what the Osamas of the world loathe: An American empire that is starting to no longer deny it's essence. That realization has hurt a lot of idealists/ creative folk. America has been acting like an empire for a long time, and evil men like Osama see and fear it. That's why they do the evil things they do.

Will there continue to be political cartoons? Of course. Free speech is one of the pillars of American culture. Will it be still available come the end of Jeb Bush's time as king (2008 - 2016)? Only time will tell.

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