"If at first, the idea is not absurd, there is no hope for it."
Albert Einstein

I came up with the Triangulation Challenge as a way of encouraging new and unusual ideas.

It's a variation of the creativity game known as Brainstorming, designed in this case to produce publishable content for The Webcomics Examiner. That is to say, I wanted it to focus on the art of webcomics.

In the spirit of Brainstorming, the players are encouraged to suspend judgment and self-censorship regarding their ideas. To give the players a starting point, the game establishes a set of arbitrary rules: each essay must consider three randomly-chose comics; it must discuss a "Grand Theory of Webcomics" that has a name; and the whole thing should be concocted in a two-hour concept-crunching session.

My own essay below is the vanilla approach to the game. I was neither sincere nor insincere; I just took the first notion about the three comics that came into my head and tried to convince the reader of it. Tym Godek's essay seems to take a similar approach, though I suspect he's a little more convinced of his idea than I am of mine. Brandy Danner's scathing analysis of pop culture references may not be sincere, but it's all too convincing.

Many of the other essays take a more tongue-in-cheek approach. Rob Balder, Steven Withrow, and Alexander Danner have fashioned send-ups of preposterous academic papers and scientific treatises. Ryan Estrada repurposes the game as an homage to conspiracy theory literature, and Eric Burns uses it as a self-parody of his obsessively fannish persona.

Still others use the essay as a way of questioning the whole premise of a Grand Theory of Webcomics. Welton Colbert demonstrates that fixed notions about comics quickly become out of date and can suffocate one's appreciation of new artists. And Shaenon Garrity concludes that each of her comics is so unique that her sensibilities rebel against trying to tie them together with a common thread.

A competition means nothing without winners and losers, so we recruited a panel of judges to pick the most "useful" essay. More about their deliberations below.

Dubious and absurd as this game has been, it is nonetheless an opportunity to consider twenty-seven different comics and three portals from unusual perspectives. I also hope it's been a healthy exercise in concept-stretching for the participants and our readers. And however silly the authors intent, I'm left wondering: Are webcomics advocating Luddite ideas? Are portal sites a form of gentrification? Are pop-culture references the only things that matter?

--Joe Zabel

The Entries:

The Process of Virtual-Community Gentrification in Digital Comics
by Steven Withrow

Online Luddites and The Secret Plot to Undermine The Great Advances of Science and Technology and Bring About a New Agrarian Order
by Alexander Danner

The Mariposa Principle
by Joe Zabel

Nihilism is Easy: the Theory of Entropic Narrative or Webcomics and the Death of Culture
by Tym Godek

The Not-That-Good Principle
by Welton Colbert

The Webcomic Code
by Ryan Estrada

The David Willis Sequential Art Derivation Principle
by Eric Burns

The Webcomics Uncertainty Principle
by Rob Balder

Webcomics and the Security Blanket : The Comfort of Familiarity
by Brandy L. Danner

There Is No Theory
by Shaenon Garrity

And the winner is...

Because of too much MOCCA and not enough mocha, our judges bailed on us! So ye editor is left to make the decision. My own entry gets dumped, of course, because I can't be objective about its obvious greatness.

All of the entries are inspiring and thought provoking, but one stands head and shoulders above the rest-- The Not-That-Good Principle, by Welton Colbert.

A cartoonist from the classic era, Colbert's creations include the legendary Fumbletown Funnies and Lil' Fellas. As it happens, he is a fictional character created by Ryan Estrada, and featured on our last issue's cover.

Colbert's essay highlights the rockbed principles of the classic funnies, and contrasts them with the ephemeral values that plague comics today. And he demonstrates beyond doubt that the internet is not a place where anything should go.

We're excited to see fictional characters doin' it for themselves, and we hope Welton will be back again soon. And we certainly expect the wily old toonsmith will get a kick out of the fictional Rolls Royce we're sending him.