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Webcomics and the Security Blanket :
The Comfort of Familiarity
by Brandy L. Danner
Webcomics have reached a point where what they need most is to be noticed and appreciated by a wider, more understanding audience. For this purpose, ideas are not as important as raw content: while a comic should not be fully derivative, it should include recognizable elements of popular culture to which a wide audience can relate. While critics focus on character development, language, and visual content, what the majority of the webcomics audience wants to see is something with which they can identify, some aspect of real life, even in a comic read primarily for escapist reasons.
 The majority of webcomics creators and readers came of age in the ‘80s and ‘90s, decades characterized by self-referential pop culture and merchandising. Many of them still follow pop culture phenomena as adults, and include references to these (and the phenomena of the past) in their creative work. This is very helpful in marketing one’s comic, as there is shared ground here: it keeps the already-established audience by appealing to the familiar—that is, grounding their comics in a recognizable reality—and draws in new readers by including, say, Darth Vader in a panel, to appeal to Star Wars fans.
Julie Keene’s Okay Pants uses references that don’t specifically mirror our pop culture, but mimic it instead. In one strip, Julie finds herself the subject of a reality show (Reality?); in a later story arc, Goomba-like Bello the mushroom is stranded in a Mario-esque video game (Magic Garden). Her fictional references make the strip a self-conscious parody of popular culture, placing it in a universe that is simultaneously ours and apart from ours. Keene’s forays into pop culture are too few and far between to consistently deliver the familiar in terms of products, but her strongest work are the strips that center on mundane events (strips from the current "Moving" storyline here and here) most readers have gone through.
 Adrian Ramos’ Count Your Sheep is a bit stronger, particularly in the area of what he calls his “semi-strips”—single panels instead of a strip. The comic features young Katie, her mother Laurie, and Ship, the imaginary sheep friend they can both see. Ramos’s pop culture insertions frequently center on Katie: Katie wishing to be Luke Skywalker, Katie spying Elvis, Katie and Ship pretending to be Harry Potter, and one memorable drawing of the CYS cast as an Abbey Road cover. The Abbey Road semi-strip in particular forges a connection between webcomics and culture, as readers who have seen both will likely remember the blue-toned CYS characters each time they see the Beatles’ album cover. Ramos’s use of such diverse cultural icons strengthens it considerably; in covering virtually all aspects of pop culture (music, literature, movies, television), his comic will connect with a wide cross-section of readers.
 One of the strongest comics on the web is Dorothy Gambrell’s Cat and Girl, which often seems to be a vehicle for delivering jabs at cultural phenomena. Strips like “Music Lessons” or “Cat and Girl’s Costume party” make no sense to those who aren’t familiar with the Baby-Sitters Club or Raymond Carver. “Cat and Girl At Sea” relies on knowledge of Carvel ice-cream cakes (specifically, Fudgie the Whale and Cookiepuss), and “Grrrl’s Scouting” parodies the Girl Scouts of America. From Calvin and Hobbes to international politics, Cat and Girl is a confidently self-aware look at all aspects of our popular culture.
It is the lure of the familiar that keeps readers returning to these and other comics. The more we can recognize of a webcomic’s temporal, geographic, or cultural placement, the more likely it is that we will continue reading. The ideas presented are less important than the comfort provided; readers will continue following the comic as long as there is something familiar for them to cling to. The best webcomics are the ones that best fit into pop culture values; that is, that creativity and originality are useless on their own, and need to be combined with more accessible (i.e., recognizable) elements. There is virtually no appeal in being distinct from popular culture, as it is with that culture that webcomics readers want to connect.
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