Mad Science

• https://xkcd.com
  • https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Category:Dynamic_comics
• https://itch.io/c/1666665/tistrees-comics
• https://web.archive.org/web/20170524031028/http://spidercliff.com/
  • https://www.reddit.com/r/lostmedia/comments/u3rkj1/the_spider_cliff_mysteries/
• https://www.hypercomics.net/the-archive/
• https://www.loc.gov/item/lcwaN0010675/
• https://toons.grovertoons.com/hamburglar

https://www.honey-crab.com/read.php?page=8

• Sometimes the transitions are too slow for my pace of reading, which means my clicks on the “next” button get eaten and it really pulls me out of the story. I'm starting to think if a comic starts dictating the reader's pace, it ceases being a comic and becomes a video instead.
• Not all of the flashiness (sound, animations, the name input???) is put to good use, but sometimes it does work. Most of the time it seems like keeping it as a regular comic would be just as effective, if not more so. (The name input also makes it pretty hard to talk about the protagonist.) If you don't believe me, turn on No-Frills mode and compare.
  • To counter that negativity, the things I really like are how big the panels are; the "infinite pages" approach pays off subtly and in a worthwhile way; and obviously I have to respect Rebecca’s methods — so what if it doesn’t always work out? Breaking ground doesn’t pay off every time.
  • Episode 8’s flashiness works pretty well with the construction paper retelling.
  • The text is really in the DOM, which is a step in the right direction for a11y and autotranslate. Sadly, it breaks when I put it into Google Translate, so I can’t check how well it works. However, it does work with Chrome’s built-in translator… mostly. (This also answers my question of what it does with <br> elements — it leaves them in, and the results aren’t always great.)
  • The part where it waits for all comic assets to finish loading before it shows you anything makes it really hard to read on anything but a good connection.
  • The choice in episode 9… not sure how I feel about that gimmick yet. Maybe it if was more consequential than just a single panel? (also I guess Dave Strider became a lifeguard, huh) (The choice in episode 29 straight up broke and wouldn’t work for me at all, so I’m witholding judgment on it.)
  • The juxtaposition between the transition and the suggestion of motion with a dotted line at the beginning of episode 14 is jarring
  • I don't love how the UI doesn't use hyperlinks even when it should — beyond just the accessibility parts, I can't open any of the top banner's links in new tabs easily
  • The sudden snap from color to B&W (and vice-versa, later) and the "ding" SFX on page 30 worked really well. I feel like it would work even better if it happened upon clicking “Next”, though.
  • The JS is inefficient
    • I suspect most of the bad JS is because of TypeKit. So not Rebecca’s fault, but it serves as a cautionary against choosing them for your fonts.
    • fontsmoothie.min.js only runs on Windows XP, so that’s unnecessary nowadays. (And it might indeed be TypeKit’s fault again.)

Scrolling

“Bongcheon-Dong Ghost” (봉천동귀신) by HORANG

A 2010s-infamous comic that uses scrolljacking for horror — note it might not work on mobile. Turn your sound on if it isn’t already (it’s not a jumpscare scream)

Has a sequel that’s apparently not as good. Later followed up with a third riff on the concept, so it’s at least a three-trick pony.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bongcheon-Dong_Ghost

Kill Six Billion Demons #139–140: The Tower by Tom Parkinson-Morgan

If you have no idea what you’re looking at on the above link, you may want to start reading from 3 pages earlier

Prequel’s “Carefully descend the strange stair case” by Kazerad/foxmage

scrollytelling

Decrypting Rita by Margaret Trauth/Egypt Urnash

The entire comic works via horizontal scrolling, which I’m not sure how I feel about but it’s a worthy experiment. Well, it starts out that simple, anyway. There’s a point to the horizontal scroll later. (You definitely want to be on a big, wide screen to read it, though.)

• http://www.casualvillain.com/Unsounded/comic/ch07/ch07_28.html
• http://e-merl.com/pocom.htm
• https://web.archive.org/web/20131004101552/http://www.radiomaru.com/comics/short/bca/
• http://www.scottmccloud.com/1-webcomics/zot/index.html
• https://kizu.dev/scroll-driven-animations/

The opposite of “The Infinite Canvas”: infinite tiny canvases

If you’re not familiar with Scott McCloud’s Infinite Canvas, it’s the idea that you can lay out webcomics however you like because web pages can be infinitely long and/or wide. The success of WEBTOON and Tapas have more or less proven Scott right, albeit in a vastly simplified form, but it took the popularity of mobile phones and their need for narrow comics to make it happen.

[NOTE to self: I’ll need to archive and HTMLify most of his links there, it looks like.]

But its reverse is also true; you can have infinite pages!

Kid Radd by Dan Miller

Note the above link is a backup mirror, hosted and updated for modern browsers by Brad Greco. No idea where to find Dan Miller nowadays, sadly.

Especially see Kid Radd’s “Making Of” explanation pages

Platinum Grit by Trudy Cooper, Doug Bayne, and Danny Murphy

Alas, only the last 3 episodes can be viewed in flash emulators, so I made an HTML version and linked it above.

- About Digital Comics by Yves Bigerel, aka “Balak”

The original was Flash on the creator’s deviantArt, so the link above is to my HTML recreation.

• https://archipelagoendless.com/story/1
• I saw Rebecca Harding was up to some panelset/front-end stuff during/after http://www.honey-crab.com
• The official TF2 webcomics do this sometimes for impactful transitions

Limited animation

• Not full animation, because then it’s hard to call it a “comic” anymore. My personal distinction is that once the reader is no longer controlling the pace of story progression, it stops becoming a comic and starts becoming more of a movie. Motion comics don't really interest me; they feel more like shitty videos.
• https://braintreehouse.tumblr.com/post/186967491813/introducing-ginny-pig-shes-business-bears
• https://www.themarysue.com/zac-gorman-magical-game-time/
  • https://magicalgametime.com/post/37333545171/this-comic-was-inspired-by-a-superbrothers-article
• https://www.casualvillain.com/Unsounded/comic/ch10/ch10_73.html (even uses a separate image file for the animated part for better quality/filesize)
• https://sandbox.tylersticka.com/iamaface/
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Webcomic#the_WackyCrackHeads_(first_interactive_and_animated_webcomic) (this one is probably also a candidate for digital preservation warnings, considering its tech stack and how poorly it was able to be archived)
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Webcomic#Animated_webcomics

<form>s

• The fad of Problem Sleuth-alikes, like Prequel, Homestuck, etc.
• Dynamic Mad Libs, like my original Munty Glubb fill-out letter idea
• Honey Crab’s name entry (which was also true of Doublepuma’s comic)

Speculative ideas

• Interactivity, like my Diorama Facets idea
• Fusions with other mediums
  • Not really what this page is about since I want the focus to be on uniquely-comics-like techniques, but it would be remiss to not mention it. Homestuck, obviously.

  • Neglected Mario Characters

    Has audio playing over some comics, which given its age might mean it was first, but I dunno if I’d recommend inflicting <BGSOUND SRC="ghostbusters.midi" LOOP=infinite> on readers nowadays.

    Archived from the original smbhq.com/nc/

• Wide-gamut colors; those won’t ever work in print

  In supporting browsers, there's 50% more colors to pick from! — https://developer.chrome.com/articles/high-definition-css-color-guide/

• Device orientation and other https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Sensor_APIs
• Procedural generation
• https://mschf.com/shop/big-red-boot
• Fucking with the interface for horror
  • Fake flies slowly accumulate onscreen and move around randomly
  • Cracks appear
  • Slow, subtle fucking with cursor (sadly desktop-only)
  • "dimming" the display
  • Vibration API, if the prompt issue can be figured out
  • Shifting the entire viewport around subtly/slowly at first
• Randomness
  • Margaret Trauth: “I’ve seen comics done as related panels on cards, that the reader is invited to shuffle.”
• Secrets and easter eggs (Kid Radd highlight text, hover text, secret links; https://www.tcj.com/the-entire-point-of-being-in-comics-is-to-be-here-for-a-long-time-an-interview-with-reimena-yee/)
• Links
• SVG
  • https://codepen.io/stoumann/pen/MWeNmyb
• https://climateart.org.uk
• Time-sensitivity (not sure to what GOOD end, but)
• Whatever this boundary-breaking trope Unsounded uses all the time would be called:
  • https://www.casualvillain.com/Unsounded/comic/ch09/ch09_56.html
  • https://www.casualvillain.com/Unsounded/comic/ch10/ch10_62.html
  • https://www.casualvillain.com/Unsounded/comic/ch10/ch10_73.html
• https://vermontbiz.com/news/2023/may/21/having-fun-doing-what-he-was-born-do-cartoonist-rick-veitch:

  “Like a dog with a big slurping tongue,” Veitch said. “And he’s slurping up a kid and getting him off the bed. And there’s a word balloon and the kid clicks on it. The words start appearing, very simple words like ‘Get off the bed.’ We’re doing textbooks that are essentially graphic novels.”