Chapter 1: Introduction to Webcomics

When chatting on the phone with her mother one day, a member of our class on graphic novels rattled off the homework she had to do for the week.

"I'm having trouble writing a chapter on audience demographics in webcomic readership for my graphic novel class' web book assignment," she said. "I'd like to include Roger Sabin's early comparative analysis of the medium with that of the original medium, but I'm not sure really where to begin?"

After a pause, her mother responded, "Honey, you lost me at 'webcomic.' What is that?"

The student was positively flabbergasted. Wasn't this the very question the project sought to explore? To philosophize on the intricate, complicated, definition of a webcomic? For weeks, she and her classmates had been pondering this question. So how should she even begin to answer?

"Well... Um, it's like a comic strip in the newspaper or from a comic book store, but, you know... on the internet."

This answer seemed to satisfy her mother's curiosity, which upset the student all the more. Was that everything? Shouldn't the answer be more complicated than that?

The answer: yes and no. Webcomic is a combination of terms, much like any other term that uses "web" as a prefix. There is an older form or, as Marshall McLuhan might say, an older "medium" (the comic of the printed page), which is modified by another medium (the internet) that thus makes it a new form (the Webcomic). However, much like a comic is not so easily comparable to a book or a painting, Webcomics, too, have their own elements, facets, and impact.

Here, in this web book, the Mary Washington English 375 class will explore the element of Webcomics.