This Post Is Not As Long As The Last One (A Webcomic Primer, Part II)

...but the title is.

Something I should have mentioned in the Webcomic Primer two posts ago were two specific, significant differences between print comics and webcomics.

One: "Infinite Canvas". It's said that the first thing done with a form of new media is try to approximate what is done in the old media. A good example would be the first Bibles, printed to look like handwritten manuscripts. Another good example would be the adherence of most webcomics to the page or strip format. After all, they don't need to fit on pages, or anything for that matter! The computer screen is an infinite canvas, and webcomics can be of any shape, size, or form. But old habits die hard. (If you want to see some good examples of 'infinite canvas', go check out the website of the man who coined the term, Scott McCloud.)

You wanna know the real reason webcomics look like "real" comics, though? Most webcomic authors really want to be published in print, eventually. You can tell because most of the popular webcomics are.

Two: Webcomics are typically published one page, one strip at a time. Some (who are crazy) have daily update schedules: readers get a page a day! More common is the Monday/Wednesday/Friday format. I'm not sure why that is, exactly; maybe the acronym works out better. (Those two "T" days and the two "S" days are excluded.) Other, lazier artists (like me) use a weekly update schedule. Again for unknown reasons, the day is usually Monday. (Like mine.)

And that's how Internet comics are different from comics in 'the real world'. If you want to learn how the rest of the Internet is different from 'the real world', I can't help you. Go watch this.

Oh, and yesterday was Monday. Go read my comic.

A Webcomic Primer

This was originally going to be a post about "character fission" (when one character unexpectedly becomes two in the middle of writing a story), but said character fission took place while I was writing the first chapter of my webcomic (which you can find here!) and I realized that someone reading this might not realize what a webcomic is. D'oh!

So, here goes. A webcomic is a comic. On the Web. Shocking, I know. Don't stop there, though - there are a few differences between comics on the Internets (yes, all the Internets) and comics in general. If you live in the United States, I wouldn't be surprised if, on hearing the word "comic", you think one of two things:

1) Newspaper funnies! Oh, that Garfield.

2) Grown men and women flying, punching things, and wearing their underwear on the outside.

While this publishing paradigm is changing in our modern era (google "graphic novels" if you're curious), newspaper funnies and superhero periodicals do still make up the majority of comics material today. Now, "funnies" you'll find in great abundance on the Internets, although the popular ones are often different in genre and style than what you'd expect in a newspaper. (I recommend Dinosaur Comics; no, it's not what you think.) But superheroes... well, I don't actually know of any superhero webcomics. I'm sure there's many out there (Google gives me 1,190,000 results for 'superhero webcomic'; although oddly enough, the top results are lists of superhero webcomics, not actual comics) but they are certainly in the minority. The point? The variety out there is mind-numbing in degree, with the qualifier that since anything can be 'published' on the Web, the literary and/or artistic value of the comic may also be mind-numbing, though not necessarily in degree. On the other hand, comic gems that would never be published in today's world of ever-stricter publishing genres can gain huge readerships. (Not to mention that some popular webcomics have been picked up for publishing based solely on large web presence.)

Point?

Webcomics. They're not what you expect. You should read them. I'll probably elaborate more later, but for now, I have more papers to write.