I was reading an article a while back – I can’t remember what article, or where, or when, so it was probably a bad idea to start this article with such a vague reference, but I’m terrified that if I look it up I’ll find out it wasn’t as bad as I remembered – so, I was reading this article about outstanding webcomics. Possibly they were awarded something. I’m not sure.

Thing is, the webcomics selected weren’t just selected because they were outstanding. They were selected because they had made some sort of contribution to the artistic medium. Even more specifically, they had made some sort of contribution to the artistic medium of webcomics as opposed to the artistic medium of print comics. I don’t recall if it was ever made explicit, but I left the article with the impression that if you weren’t contributing to the medium, you were wasting space, and that there was some sort of undeclared war against print going on. I left with a deep sense of unsettlement, though I wasn’t sure why at the time. Probably because I’m not an experimental artist.

It reminded me of the first time I read Scott McCloud’s Reinventing Comics. I had loved his Understanding Comics, and bought Reinventing Comics even though I never gave a damn about the comic book industry whatsoever. I was just interested in webcomics, a forum without editorial restrictions that have plagued many print comic creators. But did the internet section of Reinventing Comics mention the potential of webcomics to reach new audiences, cater to smaller niches, and experiment with the medium without the pressures of a publisher hanging overhead? Or touch on the various, garage-band-esque enthusiasm of amateurs trying out the artform? No, it was nothing but a pitch for infinite canvas, a style I’ve never found appealing (there have been many good arguments in favor of its use and application, but frankly, I don’t like scrolling. Sad as it sounds, I don’t have very good scrolling control, and my mouse’s roller doesn’t work for the horizontal sidebar). I felt disappointed.

Infinite canvas was one of the topics of discussion in the unidentified article I read. It seems to be the concept at the forefront of the struggle to distinguish webcomics from print comics.

Now, I don’t have anything against expanding the artform, or shifting paradigms, or whatever the hell else you call the experimental stuff. Ideologically, I can’t. It would cause some part of my brain to explode. I have to love this stuff, even if it doesn’t always work or ends up offensive or pretentious or imbecilic. The very fact that people are out there trying new things at all makes it . . . wonderful. What I don’t like is the implication that people who aren’t doing so are not living up to their potential, or the potential of the medium. The belief among some infinite canvas advocates that people who aspire to having their work published in print are sellouts, or who hate the idea of printing altogether because of the inherent limitations of the page. The...elitism...that seems to accuse me and my simple little comic of not doing enough, or perhaps of mindless imitation of print-form comics.

The thing is, there are brilliant and vibrant things that are left to be done. Things to do with storytelling and the juxtaposition of words and art, questions that apply to both print and internet comics alike. And while print comics are inherently limited by the page, there are still fantastic things that can be done within those limitations, not just in spite of them but because of them, in the same way that my English teacher tells me the limitations of sonnets can cause a beautiful poem to flourish (oh, sonnets...I will defeat you someday).

As far as I am concerned, the two methods should be flourishing together and drawing strength from one another’s fanbases, not pitting themselves against one another in a desperate show of medium patriotism. On the subject of the print-versus-internet debate, here’s a good reason why you shouldn’t ignore printing or look down on those who dream of someday being in print: If all the publishers in the world just stopped publishing, stopped with no intention of creating a single book, ever again, you would still have all the books you’ve ever bought. If all the internet publishers and servers decided to pack it all in their servers would go down and all your comics would be gone, regardless of paid subscriptions or free exchange.

The internet is not the wave of the future. It is the wave of the now – it is constantly supported by our servers, our electricity, our money and our attention. That’s what gives the internet its main draw as a publishing service – it’s alive. The comic is still being made, the events haven’t happened yet, we can talk to the author, he’s only a mouse click away. We can make our own comic, we can publish it, we can talk to other authors and get good, free advice, and all of this without editors or submissions or rejections or market forces or company policies (and without money, of course, but nothing’s perfect). It’s current, it’s exciting, and it’s got that garage band feel I love so much. A lot of crap is out there, yes, but it’s because of the crap that you know you’re seeing all possibilities played out.

But the internet is constantly in flux, and downtime, vanishing sites and servers make everything transient. That’s the price of immediacy.

I read a book called Patchwork Girl, by Shelley Jackson for a class of mine (hah! I know the name of this example!) It was on a cd-rom, and all the chunks of story were in different sections and you read them in whatever order you chose. A patchwork story. It was appropriate, it was experimental, it was art. It was also damn hard to read. The fact that my computer had to open Classic mode to read it didn’t help.

There are two morals to this story: First, ‘experimental’ does not always a good story make, and second, the constantly upgrading world of computers does not lend itself to lasting works.

Incidentally, the same author who did Patchwork Girl also did a piece called ‘Skin’. Each word of the story was to be tattooed somewhere on the body of a volunteer. The story would then be impossible to read unless you got everyone in one place and lined them up. Then, as people aged, died, and otherwise had their tattoos altered by accident, the story would change, and eventually die. A living story. It’s a compelling idea and it’s definitely art, but it’s really not practical if you want to tell a story.

The point is that comics do have massive potential, and that focusing on certain aspects of that potential to the exclusion of other aspects of that potential isn’t recognizing the true potential of comics at all.

I just like standing at the bottom, looking up and around at everything we’re doing. I think of comics simply, in terms of art and pictures smashed together to create something new, and print and web comics are just different extensions of the same thing. I want to concentrate on that one thing, comics, and look at all the glorious, exciting, messy, and sometimes downright stupid things that come out of it.

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