Comics have long been defined by the limitations set by the newspaper layout. However, comics are more and more published online. My research question is how much the digital environment has changed the form of comics or their layout and has there even developed a completely new genre vitally different to printed comics. The narrative can’t be overlooked but it’s not the main focus of this paper. I concentrate on web comics that are read directly online, in contrast to comics only distributed online.
An interesting feature is that web comics are read through one’s own screen and the actual comic may look very different on different devices. How does this affect the work and is it the same work? A web comic may not be available at all times as it’s not published in the traditional way. This leads to a rather philosophical question of how possibly temporary works of art should be treated. Web comics also usually provide the possibility of user interaction. Some comic artists even change the plot according to the readers’ feedback.
A starting point to explore the different views on web comics is McCloud’s Reinventing Comics (2000) where he presents possible forms of development for Internet comics. Various researchers have since studied different aspects on digital and web comics. It might also be useful to find out how reading in digital environments has been treated in different studies.
Hilda Ruokolainen
Perhaps I did not catch everything but your proceeding sounds a little bit unclear to me. I am not sure whether you want to explore the development of web comics or the difference to comics only distributed online or anything else. Further it might be helpful to clarify or specify what “work” you are talking about. [‘How does this affect the work and is it the same work?’]
You give a good overview of the issue and show all aspects that can be investigated. But your own research question and structure of your paper is not clear to me because you mention a lot of different aspects like layout, user interaction and the of development of web comics. Maybe it would help if you only focus on one aspect in your paper.
Your focus on the appearing changes in comic culture through digitalizing comics is very interesting and your synopsis covers up a lot ideas about research. Further, your main question is pointed out very well in the beginning, but then you start focusing on different topics where I miss a clear structure in it. What do you want to write exactly? So I would recommend to you not give so much away in the synopsis but try to focus on the main points and on what you want to do, not on what possible research is available, like it felt to me while reading it. Besides that, I miss some references and a brief overview about how you want to structure your paper.
Excellent topic. It’s probably good to be rather explicit about what you mean by web comic and what is a print comic on the web. You could also think about formulating your question in a slightly more tangible form to make it easier to answer.
As the others mentioned, it could be helpful to focus on one question to don’t lose a clear structure. Besides that in my opinion, another very interesting aspect of web comics is the phenomenon of the memes. Maybe you could present the memes and the normal web comic together and show some differences. For example you could present some political movements behind a meme or their viral spread. But of course it depends on your final research question. However, I am curious about your final paper and your findings about the development of the comic!