I’ve read, and am a big, big fan of, Understanding Comics. I always thought that it was the type of book I wanted to write someday (I’m sure you’ve heard that before). I haven’t read Reinventing Comics yet, but hopefully I’ll be getting to that soon.

I wanted to comment on your vision of online comics. As an artform, the Web can make a very interesting format in which comics can expand… artistically. While the Web does away with the restrictions of the comic page, and offers different things graphically that paper cannot duplicate, I don’t think that it will reach the mass audience that traditional comics ever will, but only because of the nature of the format itself. I can’t imagine anyone wanting to sit down at their computer for a great length of time and stare at the screen so that they can read their comics. Yes, I think that people will want to read them (I have read a few of yours and I enjoy it), however, I don’t think that it’s something that people will want to make a constant practice out of. It’s not a tangible medium, and I tend to think that people prefer tangible things over virtual things. Yes, downloading music is a testament to the use of the computer to obtain entertainment, but many of these users go and buy the actual album if they like what they’ve downloaded. In my opinion, people want something they can hold, something they can take with them from room to room, from location to location. There’s something more personal about having a tangible piece of art in your hands that a virtual piece of art cannot offer. The experience is different. It’s kind of like viewing the Mona Lisa online as opposed to viewing it in a museum. Printing out an online comic isn’t the same, either, because when you print out an online comic you are losing the layout that was intended by the artist.

The best thing the Web has to offer comics is wide virtual distribution, which is what the Web is already offering the music industry (which same said industry is trying to destroy). Of course, for artists, there’s an almost limitless amount of space in which they can work. I do think comics can exist online, but they should be treated according to the nature of the format itself. Online comics are not the same as tangible comic books, and therefore the composition of and offering of these comics should be done in a way that is exclusive to the nature of the Web. For instance, I’m not going to lay out a “page” the same way I would on paper (you already know this). I’m going to look for a different way. At the same time, however, I have to think about the experience a user is going to have while navigating through the online comic. The last thing one would want to do is frustrate a reader by making the navigation difficult (unless, of course, that’s the artist’s intention).

Actually, when all is said and done, many websites that exist today, using graphics and words to display their messages, can already be considered “comics” in a very non-traditional sort of way. By realizing this, perhaps online comic artists can find new ways to create their art.

I do have some reservations about a concept that you’ve mentioned in one of your “I Can’t Stop Thinking!” online comics, and that is the possibilities of sound and motion. I do not agree that these elements will really contribute to the essence of the comics medium. If you add sound, your comic is more akin to a film (in a strict sense of the word), where pictures and sound come together to convey a message. By adding motion, you are entering the medium of animation. Both of these mediums, film and animation, are not comics. One of the things that comics do, among other things, use static pictures and static words (which are also types of pictures, as you pointed out in Understanding Comics) to represent things like sound and motion. By adding sound and motion to an online comic, I think that you are taking away something that is unique to comic art. Comic art is supposed to envoke a feeling or a thought in the reader so that they can hear the sounds in their head and can sense the motion even though the image on the page (no matter the format) is static. By adding sound and motion to a comic, you’ve turned it into another medium.

These are just my thoughts, and I’d love to hear what you think of them. Thanks for “listening” and, now that I’ve discovered your website, I’ll be checking it out quite often.

Thanks