Serialized picture books

The great thing about finals week is it's the perfect time to catch up on the archives of all the different webcomics I've been meaning to read.

It's striking me as rather interesting, actually, how comics transfer from the newspaper to the net. The fact that you *can* read the archives, for one, the sense that there are small segments of a larger work, and the larger work is important enough to merit saving to old pieces. It also makes it a lot easier, I think, for authors to create more complex storylines, because they can assume the audience has read the entire story, or can if they get lost (sometimes there are links off to the side, directing the reader to relevent back story). There are certainly a lot that are still rather disconnected isolated strips by the same person in the same style, but I find longer, more...epic? comics are far more prevelant on the web (and far more interesting & easier to get in to than mary worth & prince valiant).

The ability to control the context also has an impact. There's something more...not quite serious, but close to that, for me with webcomics, because they are stand-alone entities. Yes, a lot of comics link to others, and a lot are part of larger groups of sorts, but they still tend to exist in their own personal space, relatively isolated form other comics, visually. The comics have more of a feel, a sort of personality that extends beyond the physical strip.