With the Garrity Doctrine igniting uproar all over the intertubes, Webcomic Overlook’s El Santo presents a rebuttal of sorts, Ten Things To Know About the Future of Webcomics. While any kind of manga-vs-webcomics fight is silly — they are parallel and non-competitive — lists are always fun. He admits a lot of the list is quite off the cuff, but a couple of points strike us as especially pertinent:
2.) The webcomic canon will, in fact, replace the existing comics canon. Despite the breadth and variety of webcomics out there, plenty standards fuel the common discussion in webcomic threads. Comics like Penny Arcade, xkcd, Questionable Content, Megatokyo, MSPaint Adventures, Achewood, Perry Bible Fellowship, Hark! A Vagrant … and yes, CAD. You know what? I think that more people read these comics than read actual manga.
And
4.) The Infinite Canvas will die. It’s fun as an experiment. However, it’s not working. And with iPad limiting the screen even more than the computer does, the canvas is shrinking and shrinking. What else is joining the infinite canvas?
That’s a lot of words to say “suck it, print”!
My column was mostly about the silliness of wanting a particular format, style, or delivery system to triumph over all others and be acknowledged for all time as What a Comic Looks Like, so of course 90% of the responses have been people proclaiming their favorite format/style/delivery system superior and telling me why all the others suck and should die.
That might be more effective as a tweet.
Has anyone tried much of anything with the infinite canvas concept since Drew Weing, about six years ago?
I think there were maybe a half-dozen people doing some interesting things with it, but proclaiming its death is about as bold as saying that pogs aren’t going to make a comeback this year.
I’m assuming the original article is a parody, but that having been said– these are both terrible points.
“There are popular webcomics that are referred to often.” That’s nice– so what? There’s a difference between popular and essential.
And the second– look: maybe it depends on your definition of Infinite Canvas, but … would you count a long scroll webcomic as an infinite canvas? Dash Shaw’s Bodyworld, or, say, the comics available at What Things Do? What Things Do is especially interesting I think, in how they handle double-page splashes. (Let alone if you just think of something like Achewood which changes its vertical shape all the time, based upon the particular demands of a strip…?) But maybe that’s a terminology thing and I’m misusing the Infinite Canvas term.
Or maybe this was just all a parody of something. I don’t even know anymore, internet.
Yeah, well, you know. We’ll just have to wait and see, wont we?