“The medium is the message.” Marshall McLuhan

Comic strips have, from their inception, been defined by the paper they’re printed on.  From the size of the page, to the frequency of printing, to the type of ink, I would argue traditional comic strips have been defined by these constraints.  For example, it used to be that only Sunday comic strips were printed in color while the rest of the week remained black and white.  Only 14% of the time could a comic strip cartoonist illustrate the color palette of their worlds.  This meant that Jim Davis could only show Garfield’s orange fur once a week.  The rest of the time, the reader had to imagine it.

Artists are still using this line of thinking and most online comic strips today have not yet pushed the creative envelope.  They can only be distinguished from their print counterparts by a few key characteristics:

1. No limits on color means many online strips are vibrantly colorful.  Printing color on paper is expensive; newspapers have been slow to adopt it daily.  Printing color on a computer screen “costs” nothing more than black and white.
2. Limitless publishing means unlimited strips – The cost of hosting a website, and thus publishing to the world, is basically free.  This means that anyone with a computer, an internet connection, and a sprinkling of creativity can have their own strip (you don’t even have to know how to draw).  This has enabled an explosion in the number of comic strips.  No longer do you need a newspaper to have your own strip.  Just publish it yourself and let the world find you.
3. The strip is an engaged community – The social networking net has also caught comic strips.  Most online comic strips have a very strong social network functionality.  Users can comment about the strips, share them with others, and create conversations around them.

That is until we stumbled upon this strip called about DIGITAL COMICS by Balak01 on deviantART:

Screen Capture of About Digital Comics on Devian Art by Balak01

It’s a comic strip where you need to page through each panel.  Think of it as a slideshow where each screen is another panel of the strip.  So instead of consuming the whole strip at once, you must interact with it in order to advance it.

Why is this game changing?  Because it changes the experience of the web comic strip in the following ways:

1. You can’t see the whole strip at once – This gives the artist the element of surprise.
2. You can do pseudo animations – Through clicking the arrows the artist can reveal pieces of the picture.  When used correctly, it will  give an animation effect.
3. The canvas is limitless – Instead of being bound by the limitations of one web page, this “slideshow” style enables unlimited panels.

The about DIGITAL COMICS by Balak01 is especially clever because it does an excellent job of explaining how this format pushes the medium.

What is noteworthy is how its the limitations of the medium creates its unique characteristics.  For example, the fact that you must page through each frame or the fact that it doesn’t have sound, makes this distinct from animation.

While some may think these limitations make it less exciting than video, these very limitations are what gives it potential.  While we all love 30 frames per second experience of a movie, we also love seeing each moment in time captured in a single panel.

What do you think?