Let Me Tell You About Webcomics: A New Postmodern Genre
by Paige Gelsimino
First, webcomics re-invent story-telling by transcending the boundaries of how narrative is communicated. Webcomics aren’t bound to the same rules as print comics where the print comic has a set form. Print comics are situated on a page, each image contained by the lines of a panel. One can make these panels different shapes and sizes, but they cannot escape the page they are printed on and therefore they can’t use other media such as music or animation. Shedd describes it as “when a comic is published in book form, it is divided up into rectangular pages, each of the same size and shape. The artist is forced to make his or her work conform to the shape of the page, often compromising the story or the art as a result” (Shedd). For example, take this print comic that I drew and wrote called "Plant Boys."
This comic is contained by the boxes it's drawn in and, while on paper, there is nothing else that can be added to it. This is where the advantages of a webcomic come into place. Where print comics have to stick to the shape of the page, webcomics can branch out far beyond it. Comics and webcomics approach story-telling in some similar ways, like the five decisions discussed in Jonathan Seyfried’s article “Graphic Novels as Educational Heavyweights.” There he discusses how print comics and graphic novels set up their narrative, by deciding on “choice of moment, choice of frame, choice of image, choice of word, and choice of flow.” The choice of moment is deciding what the narrative is focusing on, the choice of frame is how the narrative should show the moment in the panels or “framing” the story. Just like in "Plant Boys" where the choice is to show the moment of Clover Boy's meeting of Daisy Boy. The choice of image is deciding what should be pictured in the frames, where in "Plant Boys" it goes from an image of plants, to Clover Boy, to him finding Daisy Boy, and ending with a close up of Daisy Boy. Then the choice of words is deciding what should or shouldn’t be said in the frames. In "Plant Boys" the words are Clover Boy's inner monologue as he thinks about his situation and then discovers Daisy Boy. And the last is “the choice of flow, or how the reader follows the sequence of the panels” (Seyfried). In "Plant Boys" this is demonstrated by how each panel follows one another in a straight line. Print comics and graphic novels follow this approach to storytelling. In a way, webcomics also loosely follow this approach, but end up discarding many of the limitations that print comics have. While print comics are contained to the paper they are printed on, webcomics can escape their “page.” As Alycia Shedd says in “No Borders, No Limits: The Infinite Canvas as a Storytelling Tool in Online Comics” the medium of the internet “breaks down the various barriers inherent in print publishing, and allows comics creators to connect directly with their readers and push the medium to its limits and beyond.” Webcomics use print, image, sound, animation, games and even dimension to tell a story. Using these, webcomics break out of the frames put in place for print comics. This way, webcomics can imitate reality in a way that print comics never can.
Click on the buttons to explore how each webcomic does this!