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The Intriguing Choices of Interactive Comics

Posted on by Posted in Webcomic .

You’re 7 years old. Your mom has gotten you one of those super cool “choose-your-own-adventure” books. You flip back and forth through the pages, going through every possible scenario and timeline, and you can’t help but wish there was an easier way to do it.

So yes, now we have games – but what if we wanted something more open-ended? What if we wanted something almost like a conversation, a story developing through suggestions and development from multiple people.

One of the most well-known webcomics on the internet is Homestuck, a webcomic by Andrew Hussie on the host website of MSPaint Adventures, about a group of teenagers playing a simulation computer game that causes catastrophic real-world events. It is a massively complex comic now, but it started as a choose-your-own-adventure style comic, very similar to the text-based game of Zork. Zork was an interactive fiction computer game, best known for the quote “it is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.” It’s never fully explained what a grue is, but it nonetheless compels you to act in a certain way (light a match, nobody wants to get eaten!) Interactive Fiction comics act in much the same way, by providing set options or refusing certain commands. The author is still the ultimate controller of the story. However, this doesn’t prevent readers from having fun with the author or the author poking fun back, as with the continual joke of Andrew Hussie not drawing his characters with arms.

Source: Jailbreak

Source: Jailbreak

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Source: Homestuck

Source: Homestuck

arms-examplehomestuck2

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This interaction between audience and author is even closer for interactive fiction than it is for the normal webcomic. While every author is likely to receive audience story suggestions, few follow them – or even respond. In a traditional story writing format, it’d be rude to throw your suggestions at someone and expect them to take it. It’s like writing to J.K. Rowling and saying “yes I know you’ve already finished the story and that’s great, but I really wanted Draco and Harry to be in a gay relationship, can you change your existing canon to accommodate my fanfiction?” (yes I know Dumbledore is now gay). But with interactive fiction this response is practically invited. It’s like having a planning meeting for a TV show, where you may be the director/writer but you’re listening to others suggestions and responses and accepting the ones you like.

While there are interactive comics hosted on their own page like MSPaintAdventures, most are located on Tumblr or other forums. These are much easier for hosting, because of the forums’ quick response time and audience input, and the function of Tumblr’s question box for audience suggestions. Tumblr in particular has an entire community of ask blogs, usually based on existing franchises but with OCs (Original Characters) or unusual takes on existing characters ‘running’ the blog and answering questions. This puts whole new meaning to fans having control or influence over the storyline, because these fans have created their own canon and their own interactive universe.

 

Why isn’t interactive fiction more of a thing?

Want to play zork?

 

 

Evolution vs. End Game

Posted on by Posted in Webcomic .

If you open up a newspaper to find the funnies, there’s probably a few things you’re expecting.

  1. A specific group of characters per comic
  2. A consistent art style
  3. A consistency in content

Part of being a newspaper artist is having a comic that is completely consistent, that doesn’t change styles or content, so readers know what to expect and don’t have to keep up with it every week. They can just open up any newspaper and enjoy whatever content is there.

Webcomics function a little differently. While they can exist as a series of stand-alone comics, most take advantage of the existence of archives on the web to catalog their stories, develop their characters and change their art style. Bill Holbrook, author of Kevin and Kell, says that the reason he created Kevin and Kell as a webcomic (and currently the longest-running one), was to take advantage of the existence of archives to build longer narratives and more complicated storylines. Kevin and Kell also exists as a newspaper comic, but its primary publishing is through the web.

However, as with any aspect of the web, archives carry their cons as well as their pros. Many webcomic artists have changed their artistic style over time, or improved in artistic ability. And it can be painful to know that anytime someone new finds your comic, they immediately go to the “horror” that is your first art. And sometimes this will turn people off from the comic if they’re not a fan of the original art style. But it also means that the artist gets to experiment with their art style, and try new things over the series of the comic.

Say you don’t think your old content is professional enough. Or you want to redo it/publish it in a more professional fashion. Many webcomic artists will turn their comics into a series of graphic novels. It’s created a reverse from the old standard of regular comics being converted for the web. And it provides a unique challenge to artists, because many don’t start their comic with the possibility of printing in mind. So it’s a long process to go back through and re-format things, or re-organize daily/weekly content to be viewed all at once.

The archive also can be a dangerous pit to fall into for those artists whose style has changed over the years. It can be a very tempting thought to go back and redo your old comics to match your updated style and advanced art ability. But then your artistic ability advances even more and your style changes, and you have to redo them again. And again. And again. And pretty soon you’re never writing new content, just redoing the old over and over again.

The creation of social media meant that our past would never truly be private again. And the existence of archives means our artistic past never will either. But both show how much improvement can be made over time, and humanize the author of such content. We are all evolving, learning people, who make mistakes and go through terrible periods and learn from it. The comic Sinfest exists as an epitome of this. The author begins with fairly good art, and somewhat biased, inappropriate comics or jokes, that clearly show his worldview and sense of humor. But as the comic goes on, his art style begins to change, and with it his content. He goes from making jokes about a potential “matriarchy”, to creating a feminist resistance group within the comics that fights the patriarchy. A patriarchy that exists in a fashion similar to the matrix in coding people’s behavior and assumptions. His characters go through drastic reformation of thought and personality, and through the lens of his comic we see his own worldview changing. And it’s not something that could have been predicted or planned for, and it’s not something that could have happened in newspaper comics. It exists solely because of the nature of the webcomic.

Source: Sinfest

Source: Sinfest

The Scoop on Social Media

Posted on by Posted in Webcomic .

What do you do when you wake up in the morning?

Get out of bed? Brush your teeth? Get dressed? Or do you check your phone? Or your Facebook? Or Twitter?

In our modern age, almost everyone has an account on some form of social media. It’s hard to get by without it – it’s how you connect with people, organize events, even how you find jobs. Everyone has to worry about their presence on social media, even webcomic artists.

With how much webcomics are seen on mediums other than their actual website (The Word on Webcomics), webcomic artists need to advertise on every possible form of social media to get attention. Since social media are inherently about sharing, they provide a uniquely effective way of getting your comic shared with the world.

However, letting your comic loose on free sharing forums runs its share of risks. Most importantly, not being credited. It’s the most common thing to happen to producers of content on the internet. If you don’t have a watermark/signature (and sometimes even if you do, because people will crop it out), your hard work is thrown out to the world without you getting a single bit of attention or revenue from it. And there’s no real way to police it. Authors will put their website addresses on the comic, tell people not to share without crediting/permission, even try and threaten audiences with copyright infringement, but it still happens.

The most prominent example of this is the “X all the Things” meme, which originated from Allie Brosh’s blog Hyperbole and a Half, and specifically her comic “This is why I’ll never be an adult“.

After this comic was published in 2010, the internet took hold of it and made it into a meme, one often repurposed to reference any number of fandoms or jokes. But throughout all these incarnations, no one thought to credit the original artist. In fact, if it weren’t for the fact that I read Hyperbole and a Half regularly, I would never have known that’s where it came from.

So even though social media of every form provides webcomics a great avenue of advertisement, it’s also often where authorship goes to die. Unless an artist is able to carefully police everywhere their content is shared and reproduced (on the Internet? I’d be impressed), they are in danger of having their content stolen, plagiarized, or just used without credit.

There are a lot of benefits to having the internet be free-use and open to everyone, there’s so much we can learn and see and use. But it also gives people almost open license to take the content they see and exploit it however they like. But before you worry too much, there are laws about Copyright on the Internet.

Fun Filler