Webcomics R&D

This site researches making accessible, translateable, fast, responsive, progressively-enhanced, more-than-print webcomics.

Or in other words, how to publish comics so that anyone can read them:

• ♿️ no matter their ability, situation, or language,
• 🌐 on any connection from anywhere in the world,
• 📱 respecting the devices and screens they can afford,
• 🧭 using any browser, operating system, software updates, or subscription preference,
• 🧪 …and why not have fun with the Web as a medium while we’re at it?

Today’s “normal” ways to publish comics online unnecessarily limit their appeal and audience:

Publishing large images of entire pages

Bad for speed

Bad for responsiveness

Unnecessarily hard to make accessible

Embedding text into panel images

Bad for accessibility

Blocks translation tools

Also bad for performance

On platforms that don’t care about artists or their presentation, distribution, and creative rights

Bad for audience reach and reading experience

Bad for digital preservation

Browsers are built into almost every device. You don’t need to buy a license, pay companies so everyone who subscribed can see your updates,

Unnecessarily imitating printed comics

Web browsers are an unprecedentedly universal and powerful creative medium: you can freely combine text, images, animation, video, sound, interactivity — almost anything computers can do!

But most webcomics treat publication on the Web as a temporary embarrassment on their way to print. If we don’t experiment with the Web as a medium, it’d be like if they invented new colors and we never used them — not as far-fetched as that sounds.