Hey chicks and dudes, check out my webcomic!

Joined: 09 Feb 2006 Posts: 46

Like I say, I don't want to enter into a debate about whether what I do is a comic, but I know that it would lose something by being translated into straight text without panels. The panels force you to read it in a way that you simply can't get through punctuation and line breaks. The same is absolutely true, and maybe more demonstrable in The Invisibles by the simple nature of its context within a (more or less) traditional image-based comic. Outside of a comic, that last momentous period would just be a period--within the Invisibles, Jesus, it's everything.

Where it starts to get murky for me is in something like the League of Extraordinary Gentleman: Black Dossier book, which includes whole sections not broken up into panels. Is it still a comic? Or do you call it something else, like a narrative magazine or a (cringe) multimedia presentation? Deep waters.

I guess this is a little bit self-serving, but as far as I'm concerned categorizing is a question for librarians. I don't mean to denigrate librarians by that, just to say that really the only good reason for categorizing is to help people find things that interest them, and under that definition I don't think there's a problem with putting The Black Dossier and The Invisibles on the shelf next to Spiderman and Sandman. And McCloud's books, which are ironically probably the least comic booky things you'll see on that shelf. (My comic shop back home did a great thing, I thought, a few years ago, where they handed out a flyer with non-comic writers and interests and comic books that shared common ground with them, along the lines of, "if you like Hunter S. Thompson, you might like Transmetropolitan, if you liked Dogma, you might like Preacher, if you like hiking, you might like Concrete" and so on.)

Otherwise, the question isn't whether something is a comic or not, but whether it entertains, enlightens, or otherwise enhances your life. Whether you like it and want to read it. This sounds like a motivational speech all of a sudden. Anyway, that's why I feel justified doing what I do and pimping it on webcomic message boards--comic or not, people into webcomics are more likely to be into it.

Thus concludes my ramble for the day.

Joined: 27 Mar 2009 Posts: 155

That is a well-said and well-supported argument. If your comic was as funny or smart as that was smart or persuasive, I'd probably read it.

That said, I'm an poopy head and argumentative by nature, so I'm not about to stop debating this. Good luck with the whatever it is you're doing, though.

Posted: Mon May 18, 2009 5:44 pm

There was a guy who used to post here sometimes who is/was a pretty big name in arty webcomics (haha) who did a comic for a while that was only panels and text too. But I can't for the life of me remember his name or his comics right now.

Posted: Mon May 18, 2009 5:49 pm

Alexander Danner?

Posted: Mon May 18, 2009 6:00 pm

Haha yes, I just found his name from Whispered Apologies and was coming back to post it.

Posted: Mon May 18, 2009 6:02 pm

Still gonna pretend I don't know anything about webcomics whenever it is convenient fyi.

Joined: 09 Feb 2006 Posts: 46

Yeah, I've just looked over a couple of his things and he's way better than me. Different, though. I live in terror of finding someone doing the exact same thing somewhere.

Posted: Mon May 18, 2009 7:25 pm

Fermatprime wrote:

I know plenty about the medium; I've read McCloud, and I've read a pretty good chunk of the scholarly work that exists on comics (which there's, uh, not much of.) I'm just loud and have unpopular opinions.

Basically you're using this to excuse that you don't know jack shit and your opinions aren't well thought out so good job for that

Posted: Mon May 18, 2009 7:26 pm

post after post you rephrase that line.

Joined: 27 Mar 2009 Posts: 155

oh wait phool i thought you were the guy with the crappy chatlog comic. i feel stupid now

i like what you're doing even though i'm not sure it's a comic. didn't mean to implicitly insult you

so... keep it up

Joined: 27 Mar 2009 Posts: 155

trainwreck wrote:

Fermatprime wrote:

I know plenty about the medium; I've read McCloud, and I've read a pretty good chunk of the scholarly work that exists on comics (which there's, uh, not much of.) I'm just loud and have unpopular opinions.

Basically you're using this to excuse that you don't know jack shit and your opinions aren't well thought out so good job for that

damn straight

you caught me

whatever will i do

Posted: Mon May 18, 2009 7:43 pm

Fermatprime wrote:

whatever will i do

Hopefully you'll go away since you've been primarily terrible the entire time you've been here.

Don't trivialize the fact that I called you on basing your argument around "You're only being mean to me because of my opinion". TaBB doesn't do that unless you're like, a Nazi. If you could actually make well thought out arguments, nobody would be throwing paragraphs at you. You're a moron.

Joined: 27 Mar 2009 Posts: 155

thing is though i know i'm not a moron

plus i really don't care if everyone else thinks i'm terrible, i'm amusing myself and maybe even someone else, so whatever.

Joined: 27 Mar 2009 Posts: 155

and i realize you're not really worked up or anything, but jesus christ if this is your reaction to someone acting dumb you probably should think some stuff over

basically i wouldn't want to see someone actually troll you, you might have a stroke

Posted: Mon May 18, 2009 8:01 pm

good move questioning my resolve rather than addressing anything i say

Joined: 27 Mar 2009 Posts: 155

Fine, I'll address what you said; it's pretty hard to make a coherent argument when you're basically saying whatever's coming to mind because it's more fun to start a debate/keep a debate going than to just agree with what everyone else has already said.

what you have to realize is that i don't actually believe half the shit I say, I'm playing "devil's advocate" except that I'm not invested in it and I suck pretty bad at defending stuff I don't believe anyway.

basically trainwreck you are ruining my fun by not playing along goddammit why must you suck so hard.

Posted: Mon May 18, 2009 8:29 pm

you're right; it's more fun to have interesting conversations than just sit around agreeing at each other. i hate when people just sit around jerking each other off. but you could at least make an attempt to play devil's advocate well rather than just spouting off what comes to mind.

in this case here in this thread, you'd have been better off saying you are playing devil's advocate than saying you're loud and have unpopular opinions. one of those means you're just trying to liven things up and the other means you are someone who doesn't understand how to debate or your own opinion, which makes you out to be a fool. there are plenty of times on tabb when someone plays devil's advocate and they are open about it and it works fine! most tabbers do that quite often.

and anyway, it's time you learned--as all people on tabb who get into conversations like the one you and miles and a bear were having--that no matter what, if you present uninformed opinions in the context of you knowing something about the topic you will be confronted and probably shut down, or else quite quickly called a troll and yelled at until you leave. you've been here too long without anyone calling you on any of the dumb shit you do in debates like this. being online doesn't give you license to be lazy.

Joined: 27 Mar 2009 Posts: 155

mm'kay, fair enough

99% of internet people are too stupid or too lazy to actually refute stuff even when you're just putting out whatever comes to mind. but apparently tabb isn't like that (Miles did you like do debate in high school or something?) so if I'm going to troll you I'd have to actually work at it, and hug that.

so I'll try to stop being a douchebag then at least with this account. maybe i'll get another one, but more likely i'll just find somewhere else to take this schtick.

Posted: Mon May 18, 2009 8:54 pm

Well la-dee-dah, there was a bunch of drama and Fermatprime's gonna get a new account and now the whole museum gallery-as-comics thing doesn't seem very relevant any more. I'll just lay out some points that I guess Miles and I just don't agree on:

- No, there is totally a deliberate sequence in mind when the dude puts the caption next to the painting (or the photograph, or under the picture in the magazine). If he expects the caption to be read at all, he expects the reader to look at it after they see the picture. You may think me a bit hasty in saying so, but so be it: I will never compromise on this point, ever.

- Timing is not an essential part of comics, at least in McCloud's definition. The big deal he makes about juxtaposition is that it makes it possible to express temporal events spatially, but his stated definition does not refer to time or timing or the word "temporal"—Unless I just don't remember the definition, which I guess is highly likely. The case you've made leads me to believe that an improved definition of comics would reference timing in some way.

- If you asked me yesterday, I would not say that the photo and caption constitute a comic, or that the guy laying out the magazine is a cartoonist, but I am saying now that captions do fall under McCloud's definition of comics. You're right, this is counterintuitive, and that is a problem for McCloud's definition.

(- Unfortunately, I forsee that a change in the definition that would exclude the art gallery caption scenario would also exclude The Far Side, and then we are back where we started.)

Joined: 15 May 2009 Posts: 41

guys i'm worried that i will turn into fermatprime

how can i stop this

Posted: Mon May 18, 2009 10:52 pm

well he claims to make a conscious effort to be that terrible so you are likely in the clear unless something is actually wrong with you

Joined: 15 May 2009 Posts: 41

man ok. i guess if i start hating on people here i'll just have to pull out

Posted: Mon May 18, 2009 10:56 pm

it's fine to get mad at people on the internet

Joined: 18 Sep 2008 Posts: 8353

we're also on the rhythm method

Posted: Tue May 19, 2009 11:41 am

A Bear wrote:

Timing is not an essential part of comics, at least in McCloud's definition.

But isn't timing an inherent property of sequence?

or did I just blow your mind

Posted: Tue May 19, 2009 11:42 am

nevermind that I implied earlier that they are separate and that this is important

Joined: 09 Feb 2006 Posts: 46

A Bear wrote:

Well la-dee-dah, there was a bunch of drama and Fermatprime's gonna get a new account and now the whole museum gallery-as-comics thing doesn't seem very relevant any more. I'll just lay out some points that I guess Miles and I just don't agree on:

- No, there is totally a deliberate sequence in mind when the dude puts the caption next to the painting (or the photograph, or under the picture in the magazine). If he expects the caption to be read at all, he expects the reader to look at it after they see the picture. You may think me a bit hasty in saying so, but so be it: I will never compromise on this point, ever.

- Timing is not an essential part of comics, at least in McCloud's definition. The big deal he makes about juxtaposition is that it makes it possible to express temporal events spatially, but his stated definition does not refer to time or timing or the word "temporal"—Unless I just don't remember the definition, which I guess is highly likely. The case you've made leads me to believe that an improved definition of comics would reference timing in some way.

- If you asked me yesterday, I would not say that the photo and caption constitute a comic, or that the guy laying out the magazine is a cartoonist, but I am saying now that captions do fall under McCloud's definition of comics. You're right, this is counterintuitive, and that is a problem for McCloud's definition.

(- Unfortunately, I forsee that a change in the definition that would exclude the art gallery caption scenario would also exclude The Far Side, and then we are back where we started.)

There's an essay by Roland Barthes talking about photography and the way that captions interact with images to produce meaning, which was talking primarily about advertising. I don't remember what it was called, and I think I sold that book back to make room for comic books.

Posted: Tue May 19, 2009 1:36 pm

Tho' you call yourself a phool, I can see you are quite wize.

Joined: 14 Aug 2008 Posts: 1786 Location: The fine land

man

I just got to say

NEEEEERRRRRRRRDDDDDDDS!

Joined: 31 Mar 2009 Posts: 703

tis true ! Distraughty the Eagle