Brian Clevinger

Meginnis:

There's an argument to be made that we ought to be discussing David Anez's Bob and George rather than 8-bit Theatre here. Debuting on April first of 2001, it predated Brian Clevinger's comic by almost exactly eleven months. The premise of the strip was one that anticipated much of what was to come. Feeling himself an inept artist, Anez used sprites ripped from Mega Man video games instead of actually drawings. But just until the *real* Bob and George strip was ready, of course. You'll note that if you go to Bob and George today, he's still using the sprites.

It's impossible to know who has inspired more artists, Clevinger or Anez, but if you were to judge purely by resemblance, Anez would easily be the winner. Mega Man sprites are a standard in sprite rip comics, and most of them have a very similar aesthetic: four small panels, each an identical square, requiring a ludicrously minimal amount of effort.

Clevinger gets the honors for two reasons. Firstly, he is the better known creator. Secondly, while sharp writing is not totally unknown to the sprite comic world, 8-Bit Theatre is on a level of visual sophistication his contemporaries -- and imitators -- have never achieved. Whereas Anez used video game sprites as a transparent way to avoid work, Clevinger has continually pushed himself as a photoshop artist, finding new challenges to make his life almost as hard as if he had to actually draw the comic. There have been a few serious missteps along the way, but recent comics especially -- if you can get past the initial conceit of none of the material being actual fresh art -- have been pretty good lookin'.

But Clevinger's greatest strength is and always has been his writing. Long before he was even thinking of making comics, he was writing books. His dialogue, a precise balance of fan-pleasing formulaic gags (Black Mage hates everyone and is evil, Red Mage thinks the world works like D&D, Fighter is stupid, etc.) and absurdly geeky humor is something to reckon with. It keeps an almost Simpsons-like pace (with, admittedly, all of the forgettable toss-aways implied).

The combination of repurposed Final Fantasy art and generalized geekery has made Clevinger the webcomics equivalent of a super-star. He has to be careful not to "wang" other sites' servers when he links them, and he actually makes a living on 8-Bit. It all goes to show one of the most important realities of making art on the internet -- seizing the attention of a niche audience is often far more profitable than occasionally making overtures to the public at large. This was illustrated most clearly to me when I first arrived at my current college. My geeky friends and I bonded over Cowboy Bebop, Final Fantasy Tactics, 1984, Super Smash Bros., and 8-Bit Theatre.

Discuss!

Zabel:

How about that pixelated look? Did that originate with R. Stevens' Diesel Sweeties?

There's an interesting stylistic trend here that harkens back at least to User Friendly, and is present in recent hits like Dinosaur Comics. It's the use of templates in an aggressive, obvious way. This sort of thing has been done in print comics like Red Meat and Tom Tomorrow, to produce a satirically pre-fab look; we talked about it as a form of detournment in an Examiner Roundtable on "conceptual webcomics" in March.

But a lot of these works like 8-Bit Theater don't fit well into the "conceptual" category. The artists aren't doing metafiction, they're doing mainstream meat-and-potatoes comedy and storytelling. And their readers don't seem to be bothered by the stiffness and artificiality of the template graphics. They accept them just as they'd accept a panel by Jim Davis or Ernie Bushmiller.

I think that part of the reason is that gag comics have evolved very simple styles, with a great deal of consistency. Charlie Brown's head is always the same oval shape, and he always walks with his little legs above the ground and a scribbled shadow beneath him. With the advent of photoshop, it's exceptionally easy to realize this kind of consistency by copying from templates.

There's probably a lot more covert use of templates in print comics than we realize; their use can be disguised easily. But what's different on the web is that so many artists let it all hang out. They're either being especially forthright and honest, or maybe they just don't care.

Meginnis:

Well, you could argue that "the pixelated look" originated with R. Stevens, but that would be sort of missing the point. It started with the now-technologically crude video games that Clevinger, Anez et. al directly copied from. I also think it's pretty ridiculously likely that this is where R. Stevens actually drew inspiration in the first place.

As far as this culture of "letting it all out" that you seem to be suggesting is fairly unique to the 'net where comics are concerned, I think context is all-important here. Whereas most of us do not make movies, magazines or music, pretty much all of us are content providers to the Internet. We blog, we make our own websites, and a huge portion of webcomic readers make their own webcomics too. And hey, we can E-mail most webcomic artists and correspond directly with them whenever we want! We have a sense of community with artists like Clevinger and Ryan North -- both people I have corresponded with! -- that we do not have with Steven Spielberg, Tom Cruise, or Bono.

You see an acceptance -- even a glorification -- of barebones work in any medium where the creators and the consumers feel like a community. I do a lot of indie music writing, and there's a general sense of camaraderie in that. A lot of the people writing the reviews are in bands themselves -- I have a totally secret experimental electronica project myself -- and a lot of the people going to your shows are the people who are going to be playing the same venue next week. So you know what they're going through, you get that they can't afford fifty effects petals, and you excuse them for maybe having a pretty basic sound. You can empathize.

Same thing with the Internet, to an extent. There are other, mitigating factors in both cases you mentioned, of course. 8-Bit's visual conceit has quite a lot to do with its content. Indeed, they are inseparable. Same thing for Dinosaur Comics. It's not that readers are putting up with these visuals to get to something else, it's that they are explicitly embracing the visuals and the concepts they represent. That said, there is a fundamental reality in play here, and that is that we tend to let webcomic artists off pretty easy. I would submit that this is because we feel fraternity, or, sorority, or, unisexity, with the artists whose work we enjoy. We identify with their struggles, and accept that they, like ourselves, are limited.

William G.:

For some reason, this reminded me of this quote:

"In a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence." -Laurence J. Peter

Fred Gallagher and Rodney Caston

White:

I'm having trouble writing a cohesive introduction here; perhaps the disjointed paragraphs might make useful springboards for conversation in the meantime.

Megatokyo gets pigeonholed as a gamer-geek comic, or something that only works for those already steeped in anime/manga fan subculture. I don't think that's been true since Fred Gallagher split with Rodney Caston, his original writer. There are some legacy plot and character devices left over from that time -- the walking dating sim game accessory, the voice actress and the idol singer, the job in a media tchotcke shop -- but the numbers could be filed off very easily if the story, for whatever reason, needed to be rebooted. Even the more absurd subplots seem related to game companies in name only.

This is not to say that there's not a strong Japanese bent in the whole thing, just that the roles could remain consistent separated from the tropes they go along with. No matter how Megatokyo started out, these days it's more or less a shounen romance manga written in English.

Furthermore, it's a shounen romance manga written for print, paced accordingly, that happens to have each page posted online as soon as it's completed. I'm a faithful reader, but I've come to view the website as more of a working journal for a serial print publication than anything else.

If comics like Argon Zark are examples of enthusiasm for and (then nontrivial) experimentation with the online medium, then Megatokyo strikes me as an exercise in ambivalence towards and wariness of it. The one big format shift has been from four-panel to B6(?) art. The creator routinely displays mixed emotions about his online fanbase, the unique scheduling and frequent update requirements of an online comic, that sort of thing -- he's living out the manga fan's dream of someday publishing such a thing of his own, and the web presence seems more of a means to an end. I wonder how much of a knock on effect this has had on other artists who drew their inspiration from Gallagher's output, methods, and success.

I don't mean to discount Gallagher's passion for his work at all, because anyone who can transform their art into a cottage industry and a high-profile publishing contract obviously cares about what they're doing. But there's a certain inclination towards the path of least resistance which bothers me. The signature pencil-only art stems from the latter, for example:

"Well, i'll be the first to admit that inking takes me a long time to do, and when i do it in a hurry - it really sucks. So i said fuq it, and tried out how it would look in pencil (the way i do pencil drawings typically) Largo and I decided 'yea, that's pretty cool' and so - pencil it is. "

That's from the rant below the first comic. Now, the pencil-only approach has worked quite well for Gallagher and for MT -- I'm very much a fan of it, and I think it looks smashing in print. But pencil hasn't really been optimal for online display until quite recently, so it seems an odd choice.

Campbell:

MT is an unusual beast in webcomics because it's a big strip carrying on despite a change in the original writing lineup. At DC and Marvel Comics, that's the norm; even in comic strips, it's often done, but in webcomics MT's the only really successful example. A lot of the debate over its current state seems to me rooted in that circumstance.

Thing is, you need to get through the Caston-Gallagher Megatokyo to have even a hope of understanding what's going on with the minor characters, post-Caston. I don't agree that the fantasy characters are strictly Caston-legacy-- they add dimensions to the story, and Gallagher has some things to say about them, albeit in an earnest tone unmistakably his own.

I also have to disagree with the "path of least resistance" assessment. In the first post, Gallagher was still regarding MT as something of a lark, a warm-up before he started his "real" manga. Once he saw how big this thing was getting, his attitude changed, and the pencils began to deepen. The kind of crosshatching and shading he now does with every strip-- I'm a failed penciller, and I *know* how smudgy that gets if you let your guard down for one second.

The stuff about this essentially being transplanted manga, with a manga-ka's wariness of the online medium, is bang on target. I didn't really enjoy the series much until I saw it in collected form.

Meginnis:

I'll come right out and say it: I don't like Megatokyo.

As a writer neither Caston nor Gallagher had much going for him, but at least in Caston's case, there weren't thousand year subplots about which Japanese school girls might possibly want to screw the Lago. The whole thing smacks of endless wish fulfillment. The artist loves Japan, so guess where a character sharing his internet nom de plume flies? The artist loves dating sims, so guess what the protagonist's life basically turns into? There is this aspect in most art, of course, but rarely is a narrative this popular also this threadbare and this direct. We can safely assume, for instance, that a part of Hutch Owens' character comes from Tom Hart's desire to be really and truly counter-cultural, to the point where many would find him revolting. But there's more to Hutch than that. In the case of Megatokyo, we are intimately aware of what the artist wants, because he's told us in news posts. He's told us in the comic itself. The universe conspires to give him exactly that for no clear reason, except, of course, for the fact that he happens to be drawing it.

I've defined the difference between that which is pornographic and that which is simply scintillating as a question of justification. It's porn if the pizza guy walks in, makes a tired pun about sausage with a sleazy grin on his face, and this somehow actually directly results in his going to bed with Mrs. Smith. It's erotica if he walks in, makes a tired joke about sausage, and we happen to know a number of character details about the pizza guy and Mrs. Smith -- he's a habitual kidder who got kicked out of high school for playing a dumb prank on the vice principle, he has an obsession with adult films couched in the terms of his disturbing childhood, and he happens to be pretty well endowed, which he is not in fact proud of, but terribly embarrassed by. He doesn't know how to talk to women when he's thinking about putting that inside them. Meanwhile, Mrs. Smith loves puns, hasn't had sex in the ten years since her daughter Patti died, because she doesn't think Mr. Smith can love such a bad mother ever again. She's guilty and she's full of self loathing and she can only bear to do what she does with the pizza guy -- indeed, she HAS to do what she does with the pizza guy -- because she thinks he's a loathsome, pathetic human being.

That is the difference between porn and erotica. You'll notice that erotica is, in this case in particular, even less exciting than the pornographic version. It's also much harder work.

I can't read Megatokyo for precisely the reason that it has attracted such a large fanbase (unless, of course, someone wants to argue that it's for the whole "I only use pencils" thing, which would certainly be interesting). It is transparent and by my definition pornographic in its endless quest to service the naked desires of its artist and his audience. Nothing ever feels adequately explained, but because that's what they want, they don't question it. And because they also want their lives in Japan to be very serious and emotionally meaningful, the comic often takes itself very seriously -- even though, if it honestly wanted to do that, it really ought to take a moment out to explain these things. To convince me these women are all actually interested in the protagonist, and that for that matter, *I'm* interested in the protagonist.

All this in mind, I take a rather dim view of MT's historical significance at well. Certainly it brought and continues to bring new people into the fold of webcomics by way of the anime/manga connection. It also helped to create an audience for the many other manga-influenced webcomics that have cropped up in its wake, doubtless owing much to Gallagher's influence. But the number one thing I take away from Megatokyo is simply this: If you're willing to pander enough, you don't have to be that great of an artist. (Though I will admit Gallagher is a cut above most on the web, most on the web can't draw.) You don't have to be a good writer. You don't have to keep a consistent schedule, and you don't have to maintain the slightest illusion of professionalism. In fact, you can bitch constantly about how miserable your job is. And you know what? Hundreds of thousands of people will line up and ask you, "May I have another, sir?" If you're blatant enough, if you're obvious enough, you may well be able to find an audience to finance your naked fantasies. Because, of course, it's their fantasy, too.

I wouldn't feel comfortable saying all that if it weren't for my own interest in Japanese culture. I own anime and manga, I grew up on their video games, and I'm fascinated by their totally bizarre popular music. I understand how one might become obsessed with it all. I understand how that country might seem like heaven to a geek. Lord knows it's exciting to me that there's a culture out there that actually finds such weirdness as Revolutionary Girl Utena fit for popular consumption.

But still, come on. There's Japan, and there are the basic tenets of good storytelling. One doesn't cancel out the other.

William G.:

It's sad when geeks get to Japan and discover that it's not all beautiful girls with short skirts who are all easy lays for dorks who've watched every episode of Ranma 1/2

Well, I was disappointed. BWAHAHAHAHA!

Sorry, carry on.

Zabel:

Damn it, Mike, you say you don't like Megatokyo, and then you describe it so it sounds like the best comic ever! Doing a comic purely for your own sordid gratification, and having a huge fan base that reads it for the exact same reason-- that ROCKS!!!

In discussing Megatokyo, can we get into the whole area of how Manga has affected webcomics? Has it had a bigger impact that in print? Does it take on different aspects?

I haven't done any kind of survey, but it seems print Manga in America is mostly reprinting the works of Japanese artists. Web Manga, on the other hand, consists mostly of comics by American artists inspired by the Japanese styles.

Garrity:

I've never read much of Megatokyo (although I've tried), so my main contribution to this end of the discussion will have to be the observation that Megatokyo is one of the few webcomics, along with Derek Kirk Kim's "Same Difference" and arguably Scott Kurtz's "PvP," to make it big in the print market. It's also, to date, the only "manga-style" American comic to come close to competing with actual manga in bookstores. I teach manga drawing classes to teenagers at local libraries, and it's regularly mentioned in the same breath as "Fruits Basket" and "InuYasha" when the kids are asked to name their favorite comics. At one library, it was the hands-down favorite, beating out all Japanese manga in popularity. Megatokyo is also the only webcomic I've ever seen on a T-shirt worn by people on the street when there wasn't a Linux convention in town. It has perhaps greater mainstream penetration than any other comic that debuted online.

And, yes, I'm a little baffled by its popularity. The characters are cute and often beautifully drawn, and the very recent artwork shows a greater level of care and detail than what's appeared in the past, but in other respects the art is often surprisingly amateurish; it's not uncommon, throughout the first two print volumes, for characters in a panel to be drawn completely out of scale with one another, or for the action to be unclear because Fred Gallagher didn't bother to draw any backgrounds for page after page. The plot, when Megatokyo started, was mostly otaku in-jokes and retreads of gags from shonen romantic comedies (girls hitting lecherous guys with heavy objects, lots of boob jokes), and is now mostly very, very, very slow-moving romantic angst that assumes you already know enough about the characters to care why other characters (who look pretty much the same) are having vague, solemn conversations about their love lives. The people who read Megatokyo know, intimately, what real manga looks like and how it behaves, so why do they like this rough, slow-paced approximation? It's not bad, but it's not outstanding, aside from the nice character art. (I like the "pencils-only" finish, too, to be honest.)

The best explanation I can give is that Gallagher has tapped into things that a lot of American manga fans like about manga, and they're not necessarily the same things that make manga popular in Japan. For a lot of Western otaku, Japan fills the same function as Middle-Earth or Starfleet or twelfth-century England does for other flavors of geek: it's a fantasy world where everything is attuned to their desires and, if they could magically get there, they wouldn't feel like outsiders anymore. In this Japan, nerds are the ruling class, video games and comic books abound, cutting-edge high-tech toys flood the streets, and everyone dresses in cool, crazy fashions. And, of course, hot teenage girls fight each other for the right to hook up with introverted geeks. This fantasy version of Japan is seductive to a certain young, tech-saavy, socially awkward but culturally aware type -- the type that increasingly dominates the Internet. Megatokyo delivers the fantasy in full: it's about two American fanboys who move to Japan and, aside from some early fish-out-of-water difficulties, discover that it's exactly the way it's depicted in manga.

I think a lot of American otaku are also attracted to manga for the romance aspect. "Boys' romance" as a genre essentially doesn't exist in American pop culture, and it's something a lot of teenage boys, in particular, crave. Readers who aren't intensely into shonen romance may find the plotlines in Megatokyo slow, boring, and frequently baffling, but for readers who really love the genre, it's like the crack cocaine version of normal shonen romance: the basic concept boiled down to nothing but the essentials, with all distracting elements filtered out. For young people working through their own budding romantic turmoil, unable to find much in popular entertainment that reflects what they're feeling, Megatokyo's endless dialogues about who likes Largo and how and when and why are infinitely fascinating.

Gallagher knows how to give otaku what they want because he's one of them; these are presumably the things he himself likes about manga. The Megatokyo website assures readers, "relax, we understand j00." And it does. It really does.

Hopkins:

I have little to add except that I'm one of the few people who came to MT before finding anime. I still have zero experience with manga of any type, except for MT and similar strips like Eversummer Eve.

On a side note, I highly recommend Eversummer Eve for detailed manga style art. Denise Jones has some wonderful art with occasionally richly detailed backgrounds and scenes and her story is a weird fantasy mix of Celtic mythologies. Very different from Fred's pencilled work, which, btw, I love.

Like it or hate it, MT is probably the most influential webcomic in this style.

William G.:

I was reading what was written about Megatokyo and the idea of wish fulfillment.

Doesn't providing that seem to be one of the main ingredients for comic success? Putting society's...um... "losers" in a position of power.

In classic print comics we got Superman and X-Men (outsiders being better than the mainstream), and Batman and Spiderman (people done wrong by bad people, and getting revenge for it) And then on the web we have Megatokyo (nerds falling ass backwards into Japanese pussy) and Penny Arcade (Nerds humiliating those who anger them), etc...

I realize that there are plenty of exceptions to this, but I cant help but wonder if the great secret to success is to simply give a sense of empowerment to the powerless. To make people think they can be more than they are. At least, that's how the popular webcomics seem to come across as.

Zabel:

Actually, Bill, you've hit upon one of the roots of storytelling. Power is always a pivotal factor. In The Tortoise and The Hare, the Tortoise is empowered by his perseverance. In Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby, Brer Rabbit is empowered by his cleverness. In David and Goliath, David's got his slingshot.

The empowerment theme is rather empty, though, when the power is not somehow earned. In The Hobbit, Bilbo is pretty much on his own, and earns every victory through his cleverness and courage. But in The Lord of The Rings, Frodo is simply handed the ring, and provided with a Fellowship of protectors. He doesn't really earn his central place in the story, which makes Lord of the Rings more of a wet dream, frankly.

Tatsuya Ishida

Campbell:

With Sinfest, Tatsuya Ishida was far and away the most popular cartoonist on Keenspot almost from Day One. In McCloud's terms, Ishida has an Iconoclast skin over a Classicist muscle and bone structure. His surface ideas are challenging enough: a crazy God, an entrepreneurial Satan, a hero who fancies himself a pimp. But look beneath them and you'll see him shooting for the perennial innocence of beloved characters like Charlie Brown, Pogo, and his main character's lookalike, Calvin.

The push and pull between a love for newspaper cartooning and gleeful freedom from its restrictions has no better example than Ishida.

Hopkins:

One of my favorite Sinfest features is when he turns a character and a concept into a kanji character. Not knowing Japanese, I have no idea if his kanji is accurate or not, but I love the way he takes an expressive pose, sort of a 'thousand words' moment, and translates it through a series of reductions to a simple kanji calligraph. Influential? Probably not. I've never seen anything like it elsewhere. Definitely an intriguing artistic move though.

Next to that, I love Percy and Pooch, which I think is probably the most popular feature in Sinfest for most people. Pooch's playful innocence and childlike ability to be absolutely entranced by the most mundane things is delightful and refreshing. Percy's attempts to be serious and adult, coupled with his constant vulnerability to normal 'kitty' distractions illuminates our own inability to betray our inner self or true character, regardless of how we'd like to appear to the world. Plus it's really, really cute.

It's always been a fun read for me. He presents his art with bold, impressionistic strokes alternating with detailed, decorative designs, and his strips are interesting explorations of his thoughts on current events and general political/religious conundrums.

Zabel:

As a key to understanding the artistic history of webcomics, Sinfest represents the flipside of most successful webcomics. Generally, successful webcomics don't possess a high level of professional polish-- they succeed because they've found a way to get readers to relate to them strongly, oftentimes in a nitch market that has been ignored by commercial entertainers.

Sinfest is a highly-polished professional work. It looks like a top-grade syndicated strip, and is even formatted exactly like one. But what sets it apart from syndicated strips is its uninhibited subject matter.

The first episode is a classic example. It shows the Devil sitting at a sales booth, with the sign above him proclaiming "Anything You Want/ $ Your Soul." The main series character, Slick, walks up to the booth, mutters "What the hell," and sits down.

Sinfest is about sex, greed, and other devilish matters. It walks, talks, and looks like a newspaper comic, but has far more edge and daring. What's especially striking about it is the way it pokes fun at religion, with a heavenly host who's vain and petty, and an evangelical named Seymour whose worship of God is shown as ridiculous.

The classic newspaper strip it reminds me of the most is Johnny Hart's B.C. It has the same sense of being universal and abstract, especially with the manifestations of a God and the Devil; Sinfest is of course more linked to contemporary society and sexual politics. Ishida seems to have recaptured a lot of the inventiveness and surprise of the classic '60s comics like B. C. and Peanuts. A. G. mentioned the transformations into kanji calligraphy; my favorites are the repeated motif of characters appearing on a nightclub stage to perform their particular bits as rappers or slam poets.

Campbell:

Kurtz's business sense and self-promotional savvy are inextricable from his art. He wasn't the first to use templates, but he was the first and is one of the best at designing them with clean lines for a polished, "professional" appearance. Artwise, he may not have been the first of us to use templates but he was the first to admit it freely and to use them despite a fair amount of artistic proficiency, which I think sent the signal to a lot of cartoonists that this was an okay practice.

His writing has an audience-focus that I wish we saw more often online. For many webcartoonists, self-expression is the first and last goal-- write what you want to read, and hope someone else is also interested. Scott doesn't think that way. For me, the archetypal PvP strip is a filler he drew while refining his art style-- Cole Richards, the strip's most respectable character, giving a thumbs-up sign with his face smashed into a pie, over the slogan, "ANYTHING FOR A LAUGH."

And he knows that making some people laugh means pissing other people off. He's described both his main character and himself as "master of the inappropriate comment." He's been almost fearless when it comes to stirring up trouble, and that's often made him an unpopular guy, but I think it's a critical quality in a comedian. If his targets are sometimes a bit closer to home for most of us than Microsoft or Nintendo-- well, sometimes comics need hurting.

Comics has its pure marketers like Jim Davis and the editors of DISNEY ADVENTURES, and its freewheeling anarchists like Tom Hart and Ted Rall. Scott Kurtz has a foot in both camps, and it's the tension between his two sides that makes me find him amusing-- and occasionally, fascinating.

Burns:

There are three things that immediately leap to mind, for me, and all of them stem from his redefinition of himself and his business. See, he was going along, doing strips, missing a bunch of them, bored with what he was doing. And his wife essentially challenged him to put up and shut up, and he decided to put up.

He ended up doing three things as a result. The first off was the complete redrafting of his character designs (which had a metahumor nod to them). He put a lot of extra work into them, to get things working the way he wanted them and to respark his creativity.

The second, was the development of a series of core templates which he hand-drew (as opposed to cut and paste on the system) to jumpstart both his consistency and his training. After time, he weaned off them, but for a while, he could use the template as a guide to keep his character designs solid (and increase his speed of production), while continually training his hand and eye in the daily development of those characters. Do I think this is substantially different than "cut and paste?" I do, in fact. There is something to be said for the development of a house style, and the simple fact is I'm sure Kurtz can draw Cole or Jade with his eyes closed now, adapting to any pose he wishes, without any template to follow. This again reinforces both consistency and training, and has clearly made a big difference in the third point, to follow.

Third, he stopped missing updates. Posting something every day on a strip that's meant to be daily is a clear best practice for webcomics, and Kurtz clearly advocates that as a key practice in his later success. And, of course, he's right. If you have something on the site every day you say you're going to, people come back, day after day after day. It becomes habitual. And they grow from liking your strip to being a fan. And ultimately, it meant Kurtz got to quit his day job and do this for a living, which was his personal benchmark for success.

I think one can argue that Kurtz's methodology and character designs have both been influential on webcomics that follow, as well. I know other artists have at least tried the templating system he used after his reworking, and certainly his fanbase has ultimately produced other webcartoonists. While his artistic style is ultimately a stylized variation on American Cartooning 101, it's a highly clean and polished variation that reinforces the basic literacy of the form to people who read it.

Zabel:

One of the distinctions of PvP is that it started off very strong, with sharp, professional art and a cunning sense of humor. Take a look at the second comic in the archive, a really subtle take on the worker vs. boss situation:

This piece is clearly in the tradition of Dilbert, but Kurtz makes it his own; for one thing, the boss, Cole, is more sympathetic and real. For another, the humor depends on Kurtz's ability to depict a fairly complicated action in a slick, economical manner. I really like the way he uses a quasi-sound-effect, "Fold. Fold. Fold." (with periods!) to suggest the curt hostility of Jade's response.

Kurtz is a very good designer, and each of his characters is a distinctive icon rendered in cool, precise linework. I think the reason templates have worked for him is because they are based on solid drawing in the first place. Also, for most of the series, they're very well integrated into the artwork, and supported by a lot of original drawing. One of the things Kurtz does with the templates is to copy in the basic contours of the characters, and then add in the eyes and mouth to show their changing expressions. That helps create the basic comedic trope of having a character at rest, but with a sudden movement of their eyes or mouth.

Anyway, a lot of times Kurtz may appear to be using templates, but really he's not. Take a look at this strip, where Cole is shown in three successive panels. It looks like a template, but if you look closely at the lines, it's obvious that Kurtz has drawn Cole three times.

T has been using the term "nerdcore" to describe comics that appeal directly and unapologetically to the obsessions of socially-challenged individuals. PvP seems to have taken this route more than other comics. One early strip sums up his outlook. It's pretty hard not to be sympathetic to the idea that the new Godzilla movie is more important than the meaning of life itself!

I think a lot of appeal of the series, though, is in the Security Blanket phenomena that Brandy Danner described in her Triangulation Challenge essay, to wit, "while a comic should not be fully derivative, it should include recognizable elements of popular culture to which a wide audience can relate." Kurtz constantly plays off of pop culture; not just gamer culture, but Star Wars fandom, Charlie Brown, the X Files, and so on. In a lot of ways his characters are more comprehensible and real because of their pop culture obsessions-- we know them because we know what they like.

Garrity:

Several people have already opened their PvP essays by commenting on its business sense. Maybe this is just because Scott Kurtz's fellow webcartoonists are understandably fascinated by his rare ability to make a living from his comic, or maybe it's because PvP, for all its folksy nerd appeal, exudes a businesslike air. It's the most polished and reliable of the daily webstrips, and its website is set up more as a gaming news/culture hub than as a page for an online comic. PvP has a very successful merchandise line and a print deal with a major comics publisher, and its failure to gain much of a foothold as a syndicated newspaper strip has more to do with the poor state of newspaper syndication than anything else. Kurtz obviously takes his comic very seriously as the way he makes his living, but at the same time he's as nerdcore as his fans. In this respect he's similar to Scott Adams, who managed to build a small marketing empire while remaining "just one of the guys" and a nerd hero to thousands.

Earlier I rambled at length about Sluggy Freelance, and PvP (which started at around the same time) strikes me as something of the anti-Sluggy. Where Sluggy is crudely drawn, with an almost deliberate "fanart" quality, the art in PvP is slick and consummately professional. You will never see a PvP character drawn off-model, and the finish on the strips is as smooth and clean as that of Kurtz's friend and longtime cheerleader Frank Cho. Where Sluggy delves into intricate months-long storylines and massive character arcs, PvP sticks to the storytelling range of modern newspaper strips: plots typically last a week or two at most, and, although the status quo does sometimes change, there's relatively little running continuity. Where Sluggy occasionally plays with different formats, the structure of PvP seldom, if ever, ventures beyond the standard daily newspaper strip layout. And the focus remains solidly fixed on the central characters and their adventures around the office; sometimes wacky or magical things happen, but this isn't a strip given to flying off on wild tangents.

In short, Kurtz has had a clear idea, almost from the beginning, of what he wants PvP to be -- a daily comic strip for gaming geeks -- and he devotes his considerable creative talent and business acumen to making it exactly that. He is much more a craftsman than an artist, and proud of it; many of his infamous online fights with other webcartoonists have revolved around the ancient Art Vs. Business argument, with Kurtz defending populist craftsmanship and attacking what he sees as elitist art snobs. Kurtz isn't interested in creating high art or pushing the boundaries of the webcomics form. He wants to draw a daily comic strip for gaming geeks, period, and he's damn good at it.

The use of templates in PvP is an example of this brass-tacks approach to cartooning. Kurtz is great with templates. His work looks organic and expressive even when it's clear that he pieced the characters together from already-existing parts. At the same time, these templates are used strictly for pragmatic reasons: to give the strip a consistent, polished look, and to speed up production so that Kurtz can stick to a daily schedule. They aren't there for any greater artistic purpose. By contrast, a cartoonist like John Allison uses templates to give his strips a particular look: he wants the stiff, collage-like, "design-y" effect his templates produce. Kurtz isn't interested in using templates creatively. He uses the tools at hand to produce the strip he wants, without much in the way of further experimentation.

So it is with the writing and plotting. As I write this, the current PvP strip is part of a two-day dramatization of one of the hoariest of con jokes: the guy who goes to a masquerade as the Human Torch and sets himself on fire. (The derivative flavor of the sequence is not helped by the fact that this exact gag was used in the short-lived "Clerks" cartoon, which had a visual style very similar to PvP's.) It's an old joke, and Kurtz infuses it with life not by providing any new twist -- the guy sets himself on fire, he dies, it's all pretty straightforward -- but simply by telling it as well as he possibly can. The artwork, the timing, the Photoshop finish on the flames -- it's all done much more effectively, I'm sure, than any cartoon about a guy pretending to be the Human Torch and setting himself on fire has been done before. A lot of PvP strips work like this: they reiterate well-worn fandom in-jokes or geek experiences in a familiar way, but with an exceptional level of polish and elan. PvP is very much a "security blanket" strip; not only does it invoke familiar geek-culture icons as a major part of its humor, but it generally presents them in a familiar, accepted way that's almost guaranteed to satisfy fans.

In my earlier post, I suggested that the DIY quality of "Sluggy Freelance" was at once its greatest strength and its greatest weakness. Similarly, the greatest strength and weakness of PvP is its polished professionalism, its flawless consistency and focus. Kurtz puts out a high-quality product, and only a high-quality product. PvP may sometimes offend (or, more likely, the accompanying "rants" on the site may), but it will never surprise. It's hard to fault Kurtz for not experimenting or taking risks with his strip, because he doesn't want to; he's drawing exactly the strip he wants to draw, and doing it with a level of skill that few cartoonists ever achieve. But it does mean that, in the end, his work has pretty strict limits. PvP is a daily comic strip for gaming geeks. Period.

Burns:

While I agree with the vast substance and breadth of Shaenon's comments, I feel like I need to chime in on the last bit. While it's certainly true that PvP was born of Gaming Chic, I think it has simultaneously outgrown and been outpaced by it. Whatever PvP is now, it is neither limited to nor an exemplar of gaming culture.

If anything, I think PvP belongs to the tradition of workplace humor. Someone before me brought up Dilbert, and the comparison is apropos -- this is a strip of personalities in a geek workplace. The subject of their magazine is gaming, but really the vast majority of strips have no more to do with gaming or gaming cliches than say, "Sports Night" had to do with sports.

What Kurtz has is a general pop culture strip with heavy emphasis on geek culture. Video games are a part of that, but comparatively only a small one. While his plotlines tend to be short (though he does sometimes work in long term undercurrents of story, such as the Brent/ Jade year of being broken up), they have less to do with video games as they do with the different archetypes of the North American Geek trying to cope with the world and the elements of their fascination.

Put another way, I don't think most gamer geeks would waste their one and only wish on getting the General Lee from the Dukes of Hazzard. And if they did, it would be a one-shot gag instead of a running one.

This doesn't argue any of Shaenon's points -- they all jibe with my sense of the strip. However, I would broaden his category from "gamer geeks" to "geeks," or even "workplace" or "popular culture."

Zabel:

I find it hard to agree with Shaenon that PvP has no surprises and takes no risks. In spite of Kurtz' public stances on the arts, I think his series is much like other quality webcomics; it's limited by the talents of its creator, of course, but it's not limited by a too-narrowly defined mission.

Take this strip, for example-- the joke here is almost abstract in nature; it's kind of an exercise in pure cartooning.

I also think that a lot of the comics, especially the color strips, show a real joy in rendering and composition; it's hardly a boiler- plate operation.

BTW, I think I finally put my finger on whose art Kurtz's reminds me of- - Al Hirschfeld.

Millikin:

Picking up on T's remark, "Comics has its pure marketers like Jim Davis and the editors of DISNEY ADVENTURES, and its freewheeling anarchists like Tom Hart and Ted Rall. Scott Kurtz has a foot in both camps, and it's the tension between his two sides that makes me find him amusing-- and occasionally, fascinating."

I wasn't sure how to respond to this, so I used my Ouija board to contact the ghosts of American anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolommeo Vanzetti, both wrongly executed in the electric chair in the early 20th century. They weren't hard to get a hold of; perhaps they were already awake, with what's left of their rotting bodies rolling over in their graves.

Sacco explained that he was troubled by the claim that "one foot in the anarchist camp" applies to a comic that seems at best apolitical and at worst a celebration of consumer culture. He said he wasn't very familiar with the comic, but was interested to see how a comic with one foot in the anarchist camp (a comic that's supposedly somewhat similar to the overtly political comics of artists like Ted Rall or Tom Hart) reacts to important world events and political and social issues. Sacco explained that he's not really good with dates -- being dead he sometimes loses track of time -- but he swears he remembers something more important to the contemporary anarchist happening around September 11th, 2001, than what he finds in the PvP comic strip archive. Maybe there was something involving terrorist attacks, preparation for war, racial profiling, civil liberties being threatened ...

Sacco reported that the week of September 11th, 2001, this comic with one foot in the anarchist camp was concerned about ways for guys to pick up girls over IRC. The week of September 17th, the comic with one foot in the anarchist camp was concerned about Little League baseball. The week of September 24th, the comic with one foot in the anarchist camp was concerned about playing Quake. The week of October 1st, the comic with one foot in the anarchist camp was concerned about the super hero video game City of Heroes. I asked Sacco whether sticking it to the man by making comics about Little League a month after the Little League World Series was over might qualify as "one foot in the anarchist camp." He said that doesn't even qualify as "half-assed in the anarchist camp."

Vanzetti told me that it's not even appropriate to bring up the word "anarchist" as some sort of poorly-chosen synonym for "rebel" when discussing a comic that's such a slave to conforming to the format of contemporary newspaper comic strips that it limits itself to:

1) The same G-rated humor you'll find in most contemporary syndicated comics 2) The same comic strip format used by most contemporary syndicated comics 3) A cartoony style similar to that of most contemporary (you guessed it) syndicated comics 4) A black and white color palette Monday through Saturday, even though it's displayed on computer monitors with millions of colors. Apparently web comics anarchists can only use color on Sundays? Which is a really bizarre coincidence, odder than Lincoln having a secretary named Kennedy, because Sunday just happens to be the same day that newspaper comics are in color.

Vanzetti said that's not "one foot in the anarchist camp," that's "won't touch the anarchist camp with a ten-foot pole."

He also pointed out that the indie street cred of "Disney Adventures" is not to be disrespected -- they regularly publish swell comics by people like mini-comics legend, serializer contributor, and metro-Detroiter Matt Feazell. And when Rick Geary isn't doing documentary comics about Victorian serial killers, he draws "Society of Horrors" for "Disney Adventures."

When Vanzetti explained that, it kind of made me sad to think that some artists publishing on the web are afraid to take the same chances that "Disney Adventures" takes. Then I made a joke about Vanzetti's big-ass crazy mustache and he stopped talking to me.

Zabel:

Oh man, Eric, that is a great post!

I don't think it's just Kurtz; I think the vast majority of webcomickers are apolitical and lightweight.

And it's probably inevitable that any comic in the gamer genre is going to be a celebration of consumer culture. That's what those comics are all about, after all-- comedies about a consumer product, computer games.

I think consumerism is also inherent in the nerdcore phenomenon. That's what makes nerds so sad and pathetic-- their obsession with stuff they bought at the store. The original security blanket, the one Linus dragged around, had a lot more emotional resonance.

William G.:

This is true. Nerds are label-whores on a level that would put Paris Hilton to shame.

Campbell:

Eric and I come from such different worlds on this one. Much as I try to be omnivorous, I grew up with the newspaper strips of the 70s and 80s (comic books were Archie, Richie Rich and Captain Carrot, until puberty). Looking at a traditionally-formatted strip like PvP, especially one with clear print ambitions, I tend to look at it from the perspective of the typical newspaper strip. (Making 39,124 comparisons between print and online comics for the first draft of the book has probably reinforced that perspective. Yeah, I'll tone that down.)

And from the perspective of the newspapers, it doesn't take one whole hell of a lot to be "anarchist"-- soon as you say Jesus is cool with being gay, you're already liberal going on radical, if Lynn Johnston and Garry Trudeau are any indication.

"One foot in the anarchist camp" may sound a little strong to most everyone else, though, so let's try a restatement: Kurtz has many, many characteristics which are entirely traditional for newspapers and others which are entirely traditional for nerd humor. PvP seems like it should be utterly conformist-- but it isn't, quite. There are those few occasions when he ventures into really strange territory-- "Well, you know, trolls are actually asexual." "We're talking animal porn here. ANIMAL PORN." "Okay! Calm down! We're the only ones who know the Savage Dragon is dead! If we just walk out of here quietly, I don't think we'll be charged with murder!"

The tension between Kurtz's carefully-crafted entertainment machine and his outbursts of self-expression, that's what interests me. It's as if Bugs Bunny were, most of the time, the nice, inoffensive fellow he's been since 1957-- but every once in a while the 1930s Bugs came roaring back out.

Tycho and Gabe

Meginnis:

Penny Arcade has in many ways grown more and more similar to its closest competitor, PVP, over the years. Its art began as a crude but passable (and in the world of webcomics at that time, even somewhat outstanding), but these days Michael "Gabe" Krahulik is one of the slickest, most consistent and most influential artists on the web, easily Kurtz's equal. Consistency is a large part of the secret to PVP's success, and such is the case with PA as well. I can't remember a single occasion on which the strip was late. Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays are Penny Arcade days -- I associate the brand with the days as strongly as I do my college class schedule. The pair have also recently gotten into brush-ups similar to those of Scott Kurtz, boiling down to a sort of populist versus experimental argument, with Jerry "Tycho" Holkins going so far as to literally call McCloud a charlatan. But, in the broadest sense, Penny Arcade shares PVP's inaccurate classification as a strip for gamers. Both are, as Eric has pointed out, actually strips about pop geek culture at large with a gaming skew.

This is not to say that there aren't a hell of a lot of jokes about video games. If you don't game, you probably won't get this strip beyond the idea that, hey, some people play video games and suck, and you definitely won't have a clue why this is hilarious. But, while video games are still used as a launching pad in this strip, the joke is something anyone can get: a terrible revelation, followed by an awkward pause. Or, hey, there's the occasional joke about dicks! Always a crowd pleaser.

Probably the aspect of the strip least discussed and most undervalued is writer Holkins' linguistic prowess. Many have said that the news posts he writes to accompany each strip are in fact funnier than the comic itself, and I would agree that this is sometimes true. In both the Twisp and Catsby strips and the grammar-themed comics with Mr. Period, the humor is entirely dependent on Holkins' sharp writing. (These are my favoritest strips ever.)

The more oft-discussed thing PA has going for it is of course Krahulik's art. He tacitly admits it's more or less a direct takeoff from Stephen Silver's work, and it's a good thing, because it's blindingly obvious. He has in turn inspired a lot of imitators, some better known than others. His bold, slick lines, stylized anatomy and bright colors have a lot to do with PA's success. He briefly experimented with different approaches to his style in 2002 with varying levels of success, but ultimately stuck with what he knew. He's since gotten considerably better.

In the end, the artistic impact of Penny Arcade can be seen in two ways. One, it is a standard bearer as I've previously described Sluggy Freelance -- it's what people think of when they want to talk about a slick, professional online comic. It's also one of the most commonly emulated comics out there. If a site looks a lot like Penny Arcade, there's a good chance its creators want it to be a commercial success. To a webcomic artist, a strong Stephen Silver influence looks like money. But, more broadly speaking, Penny Arcade is an example of a solid online gag strip that probably does more to recruit potential webcomic readers than the vast majority of webcomics. Because once you get so used to reading a strip online on MWF, you begin to wonder why you couldn't on the other four days as well.

Campbell:

Tycho and Gabe are the archetypal gamer cartoonists, of course. Count me among those who think they got there as much by talent as by "right place, right time." Most people forget that there was a gamer genre before them in print, with strips like Knights of the Dinner Table and What's New With Phil and Dixie dealing with tabletop games, and PvP representing all types of gaming in its early stages. After a couple of years of T&G, the genre was about video games, first and foremost. The writing deserves considerably more credit for this than the art-- but in the last few years, Gabe's developed his style into a force to be reckoned with. Many of their practices-- the complex blog-comics interaction, the exclusive gaming jokes, the gleeful crudity, the two-member cast whose couch seems to encapsulate the universe-- would inspire almost slavish imitation. They've moved away from that last one a bit, but not in time for all their acolytes to get the memo.

Zabel:

One thing I often notice about Penny Arcade strips is that they seem to start and end in the middle. There's no beginning, there really isn't an ending, we're being treated to a slice. This gives the strip a raw, immediate feel to it that I like very much.

This rather crude early strip is an example of the tendency-- . The first and second panels places us in a fantasy world, with no hint of its relevance to Penny Arcade-- we have to scroll down to see Gabe is fantasizing.

Flash forward to a recent strip and we see the same rapid-fire delivery. The first panel simply shows Tycho explaining the one thing he likes about the game "Dead to Rights," and establishes Gabe in the background of an outdoor scene; no dog is shown. Then panel 2 explodes with the rabid dog tearing off after Gabe, and the third panel shows the attack. A more traditional comic wouldn't show the actual attack, it'd show the aftermath, maybe with Gabe making some comment. Capping the scene with the attack is lots more powerful.

Meginnis:

Joe is getting to the heart of a big aspect of what separates Penny Arcade from other gag strips here, and I'm glad he brought it up.

It seems to me that the strip, though it does usually confine itself to a traditional three panels, thoroughly eschews the traditional "setup, beat, punchline" format. More often, there are a few small gags -- or simply dense, amusing dialogue -- leading not so much as a punch line that wraps up the whole comic as a closing punch like the one Joe cites in the case of the vicious dog attack.

This has lead, perhaps not entirely unfairly, to a perception of Penny Arcade as a crude, violent comic. It's certain that from the perspective of punchlines, Holkins depends on obscenity and violence to a degree that nobody's mother would be particularly proud of. But the clever jokes are often in what many strips essentially use as dead space to build anticipation for the inevitable punchline. An interesting tradeoff is being made here.

Essentially, in that we are rarely surprised by the basic tone or contents of a Penny Arcade strip, the punchline is predictable. But in its frequent senselessness, this ending is at least superficially surprising. At the same time, since it is unnecessary to create a logical bridge from the setup to the punchline, the space that was once the content-lite "beat" is now freed up for pretty much whatever the pair wants to do with it. This is where their best jokes often take place.

Zabel:

Regarding obscenity and violence, Mike brings up something else I think is distinctive: PA's fierceness. It isn't the same as the underground comics, of course (compared to some of Crumb's work, PA looks like a bible tract!) But PA is addressing a mainstream web audience in a way old-fashioned mainstream media would never allow. They couldn't have done this series in the newspapers, or for Marvel Comics-- no way!

This certainly sets them apart from PvP, which has a "family" atmosphere (Kurtz even tried to market a child-safe version to newspapers.) Even Sinfest, which is trying to be edgy, doesn't have nearly the sociopathic glee of Penny Arcade.

Meginnis:

Yeah. Penny Arcade's mainstream success seems to strengthen something that I've felt for a while now -- that the so-called "mainstream" as we know it is ridiculously removed from what it ostensibly ought to be based on: the basic preferences and tolerances of the average person.

The average person doesn't care about the word "fuck." The average person doesn't really mind seeing a cartoonish depiction of a vicious dog attack.

We humans are made of tougher stuff than our popular culture would suggest!

Zabel:

The dog attack reminds me of Seinfeld a little. In Seinfeld, the stories can do anything to the characters because they aren't sympathetic, and by the same token, PA can have a dog ripping into Gabe because we don't give a shit about him, that's the whole point.

But bringing up Seinfeld reminds me of a major source of PA suckage. What makes Seinfeld great is that it has this set of distinctive characters, and the comedy arises from the characters. PA has no character development-- the two characters are basically the same, and everyone else who appears in the strip is merely a target.

Now if you could combine PvP's characters with PA's juvenalian delinquency, you might have something.

Campbell:

I dunno if Gabe's exactly unsympathetic so much as invulnerable. A new reader might be shocked, but read a couple of weeks and you quickly catch on that no matter what horrible thing happens to Gabe or Tycho in one strip, they'll be fine in the next.

Even more remarkable, Gabe will remember nothing of the attack. What really gets me is how often PA flies in the face of everything I know about consistent characterization. In one strip Gabe is a sort of responsible husband and father, in another he's a homicidal maniac who cuts off Tycho's hand and mocks his pain. As I write this, they've just completed an arc with Tycho as a doting, protective uncle, and followed it right up with a "true story from Comic-Con" which presents him as a chiseling, money-hungry shitheel.

This is "super-deformed characterization"-- aspects of a personality rising up suddenly to dominate the whole. One reason they can bring this off is because their style of humor is so loud to begin with-- another is their minimalist approach to casting. With only two real characters, it's more important to vary the schtick, and besides, the blog is always there to remind you who Tycho and Gabe "really" are. More or less.

Hopkins:

The characters Gabe and Tycho are invulnerable because Mike and Jerry don't 'do' continuity except in very rare cases, and then only in small doses, such as the Ann-archy strips, the CTS or the occasional foray into various scenes they've already set up. Afterwards, it's as though nothing happened. They're like Wily Coyote. Blow them up, drop them off a cliff, it doesn't matter. They're not real, they're cartoon characters. They're there to demonstrate a point from the blog, generally speaking. They're not there to be developed or cared about. You could read a strip from anywhere in the archive and find them as two dimensional as they are today. (This is not meant as a slam. My point is that they are designed to be two dimensional to a large degree.)

And, to forestall the inevitable rehash, one does not have to read the blog to 'get' the strips. The blog relates to the strips and vice versa, but they are capable of existing and being enjoyed independently.

PA is very much a current events strip, and very much a transient experience. Everything is about the now, both in the columns and in the strip. They don't dwell on past events or old flame wars, for the most part. This is, to me at least, very much in keeping with their mission. They're not building up epic literature, they're doing columns and comics about games and gamers.

Btw, I am not a major game player. (I think this line or some variant is required to be stated by everyone who ever reviews PA. There's probably some contract somewhere, or maybe a little guy in Italian silk and a cigar tells you "Youze gots ta say dis.") However, I am easily able to enjoy the comics and the references 95% of the time. The remaining 5% I gather from context. PA is not just for gamers.

Scott McCloud

William G.:

Well before McCloud became a presence on the web, he had established himself as an important figure in the world of comics with his book Understanding Comics-- required reading for anyone serious about the strange medium called comics.

Understanding Comics was written at the height of the comics speculator boom and the optimism at the time, that comics were just a few steps from becoming a cultural force along with TV and movies, fills the book. His closing suggests the idea that comics was a wide open medium, that it could be about anything, made by anyone, and accessible to everybody. It was a promise that seemed to vanish along with the comic market shortly after the book's publication.

This idea, in a way, became the main theme of his follow up book, "Reinventing Comics". Written during the dark years of the post comic market implosion, "Reinventing Comics" didn't waste time by trying to assign blame for the failure of comics. Instead McCloud focused on ways to salvage a medium that, at the time, did look like it was about to vanish from the face of the Earth.

For our purposes, it's the second part of the book that matters the most. In it he discusses the online revolution and how the internet was looking like the place where the great dream of comics being about anything, made by anyone, and accessible to everybody could come true. That the internet was the comic shelf big enough to hold everyone's dreams.

Not being content to simply sit back and tell people, "Go web, young artist. Go web.", McCloud put his money where his mouth was and used his personal website as a place to explore all of the possibilities he imagined for using the web as a method of comics distribution, as well as being a place for experimentation. For example, using infinite canvas as a story-telling aide, having the audience participate in the creation of the comic, and using emerging technology to help ease those browser navigation blues.

At times McCloud has been on the receiving end of ridicule by webcomic conservatives for putting his optimism first, it's his seemingly unquenchable belief that webcomics are about anything, can made by anyone, and can be accessible to everybody has made him the medium's greatest cheerleader. Regardless of where you stand on some of his ideas, you have to respect the man, because he gives you his respect. He sees what we all do as important.

Zabel:

I don't think it's necessarily disrespectful to criticize McCloud. And while Reinventing Comics is a thought-provoking and no doubt influential book, I can understand why many webcomickers were disappointed by it.

McCloud discusses dozens of print cartoonists in the book. But he only briefly mentions the work of seven webcartoonists-- Charley Parker, Don Simpson, Tristan Farnon, Mark Martin, Ed Stastny, Cat Garza, and Mark Badger (for some frickin' Dark Horse Comics online crap!) Furthermore, Simpson, Martin, and Badger are primarily known for their print comics. And lo, my children, McCloud's book even mentions a Star Wars adaptation as one of the notable webcomics on its roster! The shame. The shame!!

The book came out in 2000, and considering the lead time for publication chores, the contents may have been completed a year or more beforehand. But Kevin and Kell was being published in 1995, and both PvP and Penny Arcade were around in 1998. I'm puzzled by how McCloud could have been aware of Ed Stastny, but never heard of any of these comics. Maybe the book just came out a little too early or a little too late, but it gives the impression of being quite out of touch. Obviously it also suffers for being a printed book, that ever-more-irrelevant dinosaur of another era.

McCloud's perspective seems to be distorted by his background in the print comics from which he hails. He thinks of comics primarily as comic books and graphic novels. And this bias no doubt influenced the ideas he championed in the book, and in his online comics series I Can't Stop Thinking.

Take for instance his notion of the infinite canvas. Whatever one thinks of the idea in abstract, in practice it's primarily an idea for creating comic books and graphic novels in an online context. That is to say, it requires length and depth. But PvP, Penny Arcade, and most other successful online comics have no need for an infinite canvas, because the individual comics are only three or four panels long. Furthermore, it would be very difficult for an infinite canvas comic to become popular, because the artist probably needs a week or more to create each "canvas," which is too slow an update schedule for most webcomics readers.

Or consider the other idea he's most known for, micropayments. What micropayments represent is another attempt by McCloud to reinvent the internet as a medium for comic books and graphic novels. In other words, when you go into a comics shop, you pay for the comics you take home and read; well, McCloud obviously hoped to transplant that same market economy to the internet.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm sympathetic with McCloud's point of view. I too want to eck out a nitch for graphic novels on the internet, and I too want to see artists paid directly for their work. But it's worth asking, has McCloud's ambitions for the comic book form blinded him to what webcomics actually are? Could it be that he just doesn't get it?

William G.:

I think you have a fair criticism of the book there, Joe. But the webcomics world as we know it today was still this vague concept at the time, and PvP and Penny Arcade were not the opinion-makers they are today. Both of his "important" books are definitely creatures of their time, and I think he, like so many others, got caught up in dotcom fever.

But the thing is, nothing he suggested was actually wrong. In effect, all he did was say, "These things are possible to anyone who has the drive, skills, and determination to do it." And he's absolutely right, all methods are feasible on the internet. It's just that the average web-user is like water in the respect that they take the path of least effort. And having your four panel gags right in front of you caters to that, whereas five minutes of scrolling, no matter how nice "Delta Thrives" looked, does not.

But yeah, he did discuss print artists a lot, but it was simply because there was almost no one on the web worth talking about at the time. He "didn't get it" simply because there wasn't an "it" at the time.

As for micropayments and other the financial ideas he put forth, they really seemed geared towards motivating the professionals at the time to jump to the web. The book, after all, was about saving the medium of comics.

Think about it: If you're Joe Q Freelancer, and you're feeding your family by drawing "Generic-Man!" the idea of sending your stuff out there for an audience that expects it for free is, quite frankly, idiotic. And that's right, it is idiotic to give up a steady job in the hopes you can sell enough secondary merchandise to keep dinner on the table. That's why few pros have bothered with the web, even though its readers have become more willing to spend than before.

The reason comics like Penny Arcade, PvP and so forth managed to thrive in this sort of environment is that they are essentially fan works. And a fan's main motivation is to let everyone know exactly what they think of the material they're obsessed with. I've dealt with fan groups since the mid 80s, and let me tell you, they think nothing about putting their words and art out there for free. Some of them just want to earn a prime spot in the nerd pecking order, but many others feel that getting their message out is more important than anything else.

In a way, they're a lot closer to pure artists than most would like to admit.

Having these works that would have been given away for free anyway, on a delivery method geared towards transmitting free information was simply a match made in heaven.

Campbell:

For me, Scott McCloud is comics' foremost "pure researcher," and the mistake most people make is over-identifying him with infinite canvas and micropayment-based comics. Eisner was over-identified for a time with the concept of the "graphic novel." Both of them deserve credit for those ideas, but both of them have plenty of others.

I think even McCloud himself makes the mistake of spending a lot of time and energy defending his ideas when, really, the market will prove their value. I'm gratified to see him working on new material now that has little to do with them, at least directly.

Virtually every comic of McCloud's is some form of experiment, some actualization of his ideas: "What if we did it like this?" What McCloud has which a lot of his fellow experimenters do not is actual storytelling chops. I'd urge everyone to read his "Whose Mind Is It Anyway?" for an example of the raw power he can bring to the process. It's not his ability to follow experiments that makes his comics work. It's his ability to put heartfelt content into exotic forms that makes those experiments succeed, more often than not.

William G.:

I pretty much agree with what you said T.

Personally, I think it's a shame that a few of the methods he used didn't really catch on. A lot of artists see their fanbase as a form of community, for better or worse. I'd figure that something like the "Choose Your Own Carl", where the audience is basically writing it, would be perfect for that sort of thing.

Another great method never picked up on was the Morning Improv... Though I guess it could be argued that daily gag strips are all improvs of some sort...

Now, I gotta admit that a number of those strips don't seem all that improved to me, but there were some damned fine comics in the series. My personal favorite was "Meadow of the Damned" where a group of people don't find eternal damnation to be all it was claimed to be. But they were all great artistic exercises. McCloud did his best to produce comics outside of his normal "Zot" artstyle. which is very important for comic creators to do because it exercises the art muscles.

Those muscles turn to jelly very quickly when creators rest on their laurels, or find their niche and refuse to budge from it. And even the most creative folks start producing stagnant, uninteresting work when that happens. I thought a Morning Improv method would be something all serious creators would have picked up on in order to keep the skills sharp... or at least to improve them.

But, it seems that the man himself over-shadowed his work... which, oddly enough, seems to be the case with a lot of webcomic creators. Must the the web's exhibitionism taking over.

Burns:

The other thing to consider about Scott McCloud is the role of the iconoclast in the development of art. In a lot of ways, McCloud took up the role of Artistic Academic (a role traditionally held by Will Eisner and Joe Kubert) with his first book's publication. This placed him in a unique position when he wrote Reinventing Comics -- he had solid credentials not only as a print comic creator but as an iconoclastic thinker in comics. He had significant academic street cred.

Yes, he didn't really go into the role of existing webcomics (with a few exceptions, like Cat Garza) in Reinventing Webcomics, but to me that was because he wasn't really talking about the actualization of webcomics. He was discussing their potential. The infinite canvas as a theoretical point strongly highlights the difference between the electronic medium and paper. It's natural his examples would focus on those creators pushing their limits, rather than the creators who were using the new medium to present traditional concepts like the four panel strip.

Likewise, a lot's been made of McCloud's championing of the micropayments model -- a model which has seen limited success at best. However, by focusing on McCloud's conclusion, people forget the nuclear bomb McCloud set off in the minds of the print community and the emerging online community when it comes to the *theory* involved: McCloud's theories heavily involved the role of the middlemen -- publishers, distributors and retailers -- between artists and audience. And he emphasized, in ways pretty much anyone can understand, how the online world could reduce that to two steps for all intents and purposes. Artist to audience, period. Yes, Space Moose, Kevin and Kell and Sluggy Freelance were actually doing it, but I submit that Reinventing Comics was a necessary step for illustration and cartooning in general to understand the possibilities of it.

These days, fewer and fewer webcartoonists are even pursuing syndication or mainstream publication. It seems like too much work for too little reward to them. (There are *always* exceptions to that, of course -- the syndicates and the publishers aren't dead.) People seem to feel that they can produce their comics, get their audience, and get some remuneration through a number of models. (Hell, I never thought I'd be selling tee shirts, but I'll admit the extra money's come in handy.) As a result, the power of the middlemen honestly is diminishing. United Press Syndicate, DC/Vertigo and Fantagraphics are all seen as great gigs if you can get them, but hardly the end of the world if you can't. And so, there's no pressing reason to slant your artistic development into something one of those would be willing to publish.

That's the legacy of Scott McCloud in webcomics, for my money.

William G.:

Heh, I'm shocked Diamond still carries the book.

Artistically speaking, for me, one of McCloud's more important aspects is how he doesn't write for only himself. Telling a story, be it trivial or meaningful, seems to be his goal whenever he puts stylus to cintiq. Reading his blog over the years, one does realize that he's as big of a geek as the rest of us, (try and find some posts about new tech toys) but he doesn't limit his work because of it.

There are obvious benefits to pandering to a niche, but his subject matter has varied as widely as political commentary to off the wall buffoonery.

This is probably due to his years in the print industry, where NOT trying to grab as many different types of readers as possible was once seen as financial suicide. Now if this unwillingness to keep a tight audience focus is part of him "not getting" the world of webcomics, as suggested above, then I hope he never does.

He's a better writer for it.

Zabel:

Thanks, Bill! And thanks to all the participants, and to the readers who've made it this far!

Next issue, we'll publish Part Two of this discussion, focusing on Tristan Farnon (Leisure Town), Cat Garza (Magic Inkwell), Justine Shaw (Nowhere Girl), James Kochalka (American Elf), Tracey White (Traced), Jim Zubkavich (Makeshift Miracle), Roger Langridge (Fred The Clown), along with a few surprises. Join us then!

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