The Rise of Web Comics

[music playing] WOMAN (VOICEOVER): One of the benefits of having a comic that is distributed on the web is that it's not just distributed to the people who are closest to you.

It's distributed to anyone.

SAM BROWN (VOICEOVER): I like the idea where it could just be the single frame, then you could use it as your desktop.

It wasn't stuck in the three panel format.

ANDREW HUSSIE (VOICEOVER): "Homestuck" itself is definitely a story that's also a puzzle, and that was by design.

NICHOLAS GUREWITCH (VOICEOVER): I like to think that the comic makes you laugh at things that you don't laugh at everyday.

LUCY KNISLEY (VOICEOVER): I usually try to write something that's very true, and I try to make a comic around that.

[music playing] WOMAN (VOICEOVER): I think webcomics are interesting, because they have kind of a lot of different lineages.

There's the standard Marvel, DC, comic books, there's the newspaper comic strips, and then there's also the 'zine.

And I think, for me, webcomics are interesting because they combine all three, and then make it available to such a wide audience.

I think the benefits of publishing online are that there's no gatekeeper.

Anyone who comes up with an idea can very quickly start disseminating it to other people without having the approval of others.

As a result, they're often incredibly weird, and niche, and thanks to the internet, you have these communities forming that are based around interests rather than geography or other things.

And so rather than the creator trying to find a sensibility that attracts people, these fans are actually really rabid about the fact that this person is making something weird that seems to be particularly relatable to them.

You're not even limited to the page, you can have your comic be as large, or as little, or as animated, or as interactive as you want it to be.

So people are really given a lot of freedom to try different things, and luckily, the readers are happy to read a lot of different ones.

So as a result, there's a lot more variety.

[music playing] NICHOLAS GUREWITCH (VOICEOVER): "The Perry Bible Fellowship" is an uncommon comic strip.

The comic explores uncomfortable situations, and that makes me laugh.

The PBF that just came out about a week ago is probably my favorite.

It has two dinosaurs having sex in it.

At the end of the day, it's just kind of as if a bunch of ideas were jumbled up in a sack inside your head, and then that sack just accidentally spilled a little bit.

And what falls out onto your page is sometimes a collection of elements that you've been subconsciously or consciously pondering.

The most popular "Perry Bible Fellowship" comic is probably a comic called "Nice Shirt", which features a kid wearing a t-shirt that says unicorn power and has a terribly drawn unicorn on it.

I find myself laughing hardest when something really uncomfortable is happening.

I just find I can make a better product if I'm sharing, because I always work with people on the comic, and oftentimes have more fun.

I think that's why I enjoy the fellowship part of its title.

I would assume it would be the same story with every web comic artist, and every person ever touch the internet.

They wanted to share more.

[music playing] SAM BROWN (VOICEOVER): "Explodingdog" is a long-term, online, collaborative art project.

Someone will email me a title, and I try to figure out how am I going to take the title and actually change it to add more depth to it.

People like that they can be a part of it, where people can directly respond to me.

And I can have a drawing, get right back to them within an hour, and you can have more of a conversation.

I'm not really good at being funny, so I just feel like if there's some sort of emotional connection about it, you'll get something out of it.

A lot of it's just like basic getting through the day, and life, and make relationships, and stuff like that.

And I always sort of pictured every panel being sort of like a single frame out of a movie or out of a show.

And so that-- you can imagine the story that went on before and the story that came after it, but this was sort of like the critical moment in the story and that's what the panel captured.

I think everything's extremely complicated, and I just like simplicity and that's sort of my way of making things simpler.

[music playing] LUCY KNISLEY (VOICEOVER): I feel like web comics give me the ability to sort of do exactly what I want to do and not have to worry about an editor, or a deadline, and to be able to say very freely what I wanted to say.

In my "Stop Paying Attention" comic, I talk a lot about the internal mind, the idea of trying to express what's inside my thought process and try and make it understood by the reader.

It's sort of a way for me to organize my stray thoughts into visual, and comic, and essay form.

I like the idea of sort of covering a page with my thoughts and having people be able to get into it, and absorb it, and take some time with it.

And I really got into the idea that we all sort of share these common thought processes, and these reactions to our outside world, but we're unable to connect.

I can put things online that I wouldn't necessarily print in order to develop it and get feedback from people, and it really gives me a deep sense of satisfaction to know that what I write is being responded to by people online and that they feel the need to reach out and say, oh I felt the same way, or I had the same sort of thought process at some point.

So I do feel more free to experiment online, definitely, to try new things and see what sticks.

[music playing] ANDREW HUSSIE (VOICEOVER): "Homestuck" is about kids who play a video game over the internet with each other.

The video game has wide-reaching cosmic consequences.

A lot of young people today, a lot of them have friendships that are very similar to that.

Or their most important friendships and relationships happen over the internet.

I just thought it would be interesting to explore that.

There's a pretty live sense of communication between the readership in the story and the author.

The reader is supplying commands to the character by clicking links to get to the next page.

It's over 6,000 pages at this point, but a page is quite a variable thing in "Homestuck" that are really unpredictable.

You'll do a lot of reading, and then suddenly click to the next page and you have to sit through a three minute animation with a musical score.

It's a narrative, yes, but it involves a lot of complexity, and thinking, and making connections, and solving these little puzzles.

I think it kind of keeps the reader on their toes.

A lot of people like to say I'm trolling, or it's very confrontational.

I don't really see it that way.

I just keep the interaction with the readership pretty lively.

There can be many updates over the course of the day, and I think that's one of the things about it which has helped fuel the obsession.

More traditional comics tend to be a lot more structured, you have your panels and your speech bubbles.

I've kind of used the web to explode all that.

That was always part of the idea of behind the website, is to use a lot of different fun ideas for telling a story on the internet.

LUCY KINSLEY (VOICEOVER): Relatability is definitely something I think about, but the important part is that I express something true about me and I think that that's what people respond to the most.

NICHOLAS GUREWITCH (VOICEOVER): I love it when I can laugh at something that I don't always laugh at.

SAM BROWN (VOICEOVER): I just want to get it done quickly, and get it expressed quickly, and have as much excitement and emotion involved.

ANDREW HUSSIE (VOICEOVER): My goal right now is to end the comic.

It's got to be something pretty big to finish it.

WOMAN (VOICEOVER): I think it's really about people getting their message, and story, and ideas out there.

And the beauty of the internet is that it allows for all different types of expression.

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