Webcomics: from Witches and Stitches to Penny Arcade

by Harmonie Snow

I discovered the world of webcomics in the fall of 2002, my first year at UMBC. Thanks to my friends who were both drawing and reading them, I quickly amassed a collection of bookmarks for sites like Megatokyo and Machall, Penny Arcade and VG Cats. One webcomic linked to at least five others, so you could easily start anywhere and find yourself reading the back catalog of a completely different comic into the wee hours of the morning.

It's important for context to know that some of the earliest comics come from the mid 1980s, and were made as a way to put content out there, without any restrictions on what it contained (Wikipedia, 2021). There are some parallels here to the early, experimental offerings from jazz or punk: they could be argued to be made mostly as an expression of the artist, and not some polished product for mainstream consumption. When I found webcomics in 2002, Scott McCloud's book “Reinventing Comics” was already a year old, and was a sequel to an earlier book from 1993. The medium that had started as a way to publish content without censorship or the need for support from mainstream methods of distribution, had already gotten through some rebellious teenage years, and was starting to take on a more approachable attitude.

UMBC offered a class on comic books, which I happily took. We looked at how the format of the comic had grown from things like Marmaduke and serialized comics in newspapers, to superhero comics, to graphic novels like Sandman and Strangers in Paradise. These weren't just collections of old comics, these were serious stories being told in a medium that had mostly seen use as a vehicle for the delivery of humor. For example, Maus tells the story of the Holocaust, through the eyes of the child of a survivor, who must take care of his father and come to terms with how his family's experiences have shaped his own life.

Webcomics took this foundation and built upon it, exploring the same topics with enthusiasm, although not always in ways that communicated well. One example is a comic done by the folks behind CTRL+ALT+DEL, who interrupted their “guys joking about video games” strip to do a serious comic about miscarriage. Their audience were mostly teens, and the format of the comic instead turned into a meme, known as “Loss” (Know Your Meme, 2011).

Due to the widespread availability of webcomics, the nerd counter culture in them eventually became mainstream, and merch companies like Thinkgeek (aquired by Gamestop in 2015) benefited from it. Shows like The Big Bang Theory helped create an echo chamber where those archetypes were solidified and packaged into marketable content for sitcoms and the general viewing audience (Jahromi, 2019). Some of those early content creators made comics which were often misogynistic or anti-LGBTQ+, focusing instead on creating empty jokes for TV.

Anyone could make a webcomic, and as sites that provided cheap and simple hosting became available, everyone did their best to do just that. One of the webcomics that made this work for them long term is Penny Arcade. They are the people behind PAX (Penny Arcade Expo) which has four conferences a year (Boston, Melbourne, Philadelphia and Seattle) wherein all the big names in the gaming industry set up booths and announce new games. They've also established a charity, called Child's Play, that donates video games and consoles to the children's section of hospitals. Penny Arcade was another “two guys on a couch, talking about games” comic, but since its start in 1998, was able to capitalize on the success of the comic to grow other projects.

Due to the speed at which the internet ages, the “golden age” of webcomics was really only a few years, and although many still exist, the internet today has changed how people consume them. Most webcomic creators use social media or apps to post easily-shareable content, instead of directing users to a website. There is a wealth of content and the medium has become very familiar, so it has become something which is entirely social. It's led to a revival of the graphic novel, which has given us works like Saga and the reboot of classic comics like Archie. The internet has allowed us to take a graphical story-telling medium and use its format to bring depth and impact to our content, as well as connect with each other over the visual content when language will not suffice. It will be interesting, at least to me, to see where this takes us in the future.

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