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There Is No Theory
by Shaenon Garrity
Each new issue of the Webcomics Examiner reminds me once again of how little I know about webcomics. It’s a big, baffling Information Superhighway, and I’m too busy writing Derek Kirk Kim/Bill Mudron slash fiction to read everything that’s out there. Deciding to be big enough to admit my ignorance, I asked Joe Zabel to provide me with three comics at random for my contribution to the Triangulation Challenge. My lucky draw:
The Seraph Inn
Smitty Fisher
Mangada
 Perfect! These three comics appear to have nothing in common! The Seraph Inn, by Sarah Ellerton, is a longform comic set in one of those high-fantasy worlds where “thief” is a professional job description. The hero, Acheron, is a furry, horned creature called a da’kor who sets off on a quest to find an elf-maiden’s long-lost love. Along the way, he acquires traveling companions and uncovers evidence of shady politics behind the elf’s disappearance. The Seraph Inn is now three meaty chapters long, with new pages appearing regularly. The art is a fairly well-crafted example of the jewel-eyed, Photoshop-colored, anime-influenced look that people often describe as “manga style” although I can’t think of any actual Japanese manga that look like this. Better backgrounds would push the art in Seraph Inn over the top. Comics like this barely register in the Keen and Modern Tales communities which vaguely comprise the webcomics “mainstream,” but in their own realms (anime and furry fandom, as far as I can tell) they’re a large and vital presence, as illustrated by the fact that the Seraph Inn site links to about two dozen other comics that look more or less like Seraph Inn, and are similarly well-established and well-produced.
 Smitty Fisher, by Sam Roberts and Pete Morrissette, exists on a far distant arm of the irregular galaxy of webcomics. It’s a black-and-white serial strip with a plot that reads like a half-remembered midnight movie, or possibly an early Dan Clowes comic. Smitty shoots the breeze with friends, neighbors, and his randy girlfriend, while being followed everywhere by a grotesque, rotting, teleporting corpse. Federal agents are after him for acquiring a secret file, but it seems to contain nothing but disjointed ramblings about “brain police” and “Dimension X.” The art, with its stark lines and solid blocks of black, is clean and strong if somewhat stiff; it suggests a strong Jaime Hernandez influence. The archives now comprise 35 pages of Smitty Fisher strips, with three strips to a page, but the story is in no danger of resolving itself, and Roberts and Morrissette appear to be updating slowly of late.
But not as slowly as the third point of the Triangulation Challenge, Mangada, by Ivan Song. The “About” section of the elegantly-designed site explains, “Mangada was created to share my stories with as many readers as possible. I hope that the comics will entertain or at the very least mildly amuse you just as it did for me. Enjoy.” At present there is only one comic on the site, the short story “Mirror.” It’s a sparse story in which a boy reminisces about a classmate’s traumatic experience. The comic is drawn in a realistic, detailed, strongly manga-influenced style. The art is exceptionally good; the story is heartfelt but thin. The site promises a second story, “Leeroy,” theoretically coming soon.
 After pondering these three comics for a long time, long enough that Joe Zabel repeatedly emailed me to ask where the hell my essay was, I floated my first possible Grand Unified Theory of Webcomics: The more interesting the webcomic, the less frequent the updates. The one story in the Mangada site is far from perfect (to my mind, it needs some kind of crazy “Twilight Zone” twist at the end, but maybe that’s just me), but it’s interesting, the art is great, and overall it’s a breath of fresh air. Unfortunately, it’s all that’s on the site right now, and that hasn’t changed since Joe sent me the three URLs a month ago. Smitty Fisher hasn’t had many new strips in that time, either, although Seraph Inn continues to pop out a new page every few days. Such is the way of webcomics: often enough, promising artists run out of finances, or move on to other projects, or get bored, and vanish forever (or move on to print). The Web is by nature impermanent, and so are most of its comics. I reject this Unified Theory because it’s kind of depressing, and because James Kochalka updates nearly every day and he’s better than everybody.
My second possible Grand Unified Theory of Webcomics: Dot eyes are a billion times better than other eyes. This is true, but in this case really applies only to Smitty Fisher. Frankly, I suspect that I like the artwork in Smitty Fisher mostly just because the characters have dots for eyes. I love dot eyes. This may seem unfair to the manga-style and anime-style cartoonists who lavish so many hours upon crafting intricate, multifaceted, shimmering pools of astigmatism, but I feel more can be expressed with the simple dot. Except sleepiness. It’s really hard to do sleepiness with dots. I’ve had solemn conversations on this subject. At any rate, this isn’t so much a Grand Unified Theory of Webcomics as a Specific Theory of Why I Like Smitty Fisher, so I reluctantly dropped that one too.
I looked at the comics again. Bafflement. There really is no common thread linking these three works. Not only are the stories, art styles, and formats entirely different, they all come from different worlds, different sensibilities about what comics are all about. At present, there’s probably no place for any of them in the print comics world, but on the Web they have half a chance to thrive. Their respective readers may never cross paths, and that’s fine. It’s a big Information Superhighway.
Maybe that’s the point.
It was three in the morning, two days after I told Joe I’d send him this essay. I rolled my wrists, cracking my knuckles with a noise like a string of firecrackers; drawing has ruined my left hand, typing my right. I blame webcomics. I leaned back and typed my final sentence, knowing it was probably too pat, not really caring because it was still true.
Shaenon Garrity's Grand Unified Theory of Webcomics: There is no theory. Do whatever.
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