What's in a Genre?: Style and Content

Most print comics are drawn by hand, and in the print world, artistic ability is considered a prerequisite for creating a comic. Not so with webcomics! Anyone can create a comic using a variety of mediums. Many are still drawn by hand either on paper or on a computer tablet but many are using other mediums. People are using CGI, photography, and even pre-created images such as video game sprites and stock photography, and those who were once limited by artistic skill are no longer hindered. Now they, too, can create the next big hit webcomic. Early webcomics were frequently innovative, making their own genres and original styles. Eventually with the mass availability and ease of creation, more and more webcomics would sprout up that followed in the footsteps of earlier webcomics. Webcomic styles became genres themselves.

Popular 'style genres' include stick figures, using stock photography, sprites, base images, and computer generated images.

A popular stick figure webcomic is xkcd. "A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language" is its tagline. The comic is not serial, and hence each strip is self-contained. There may be a run of about 3 -4 strips every so often that are serial in nature.

xkcd

Using photography, sometimes stock photography, paired with text is another tool for the artistically disabled. A Softer World tends to take a single photograph, break it down into three frames and add some sort of text that sometimes relates to the image it is attached to.

a softer world

Other comics will take elements or people from photos or other images and place them within a new context. This new context is usually either hand drawn or created digitally. In The New Adventures of Queen Victoria, a properly cropped photograph of Queen Victoria and other various people are arranged in such a manner as to create an amusing narrative.

The New Adventures of Queen Victoria

Like The New Adventures of Queen Victoria, Dinosaur Comics, uses a base image over and over, adding small detail and text. Images of dinosaurs are flipped, mirrored, and cropped in order to have the reader not look at the same image throughout the entire strip.

Dinosaur Comics

Sprite comics will take images of characters and settings from video games (usually 8-bit) and create a narrative. Easily the most famous of these is 8-Bit Theater. Another very well known sprite webcomic is Bob and George. Bob and George took its images from the Megaman video game series. It is known for not only having normal strips but also have occasional animated strips.

Bob and George

It seems that CGI is not just for the movies. The Dreamland Chronicles is an example of webcomics that use CGI.

The Dreamland Chronicles

This is only a sampling but there are many comics within these 'style genres'. Webcomics are the prefect platform for those in the world who have always wanted to write or draw a comic but felt that their artistic skills were lacking. Image editing software has made it possible for anyone to create a comic. xkcd was probably not that first webcomic to use stick figures but it will not be last. That 'style genre' is also not limited to a specific 'content genre' whereas using stock photography might limit what your comic is about. Most Sprite comics are about video games but they do not necessarily need to be about the gaming culture or video game genres themselves. Style does not necessarily dictate genre. Webcomics continue to explore different ways of artistic expression, and different stories to tell.

Webcomics
Anez, Dave. Bob and George. http://www.bobandgeorge.com.
Clevinger, Brian. 8-bit Theatre. http://www.nuklearpower.com.
Comeau, Joey and Emily Horne. A Softer World. http://asofterworld.com.
Munroe, Randall. xkcd. http://www.xkcd.com.
North, Ryan. Dinosaur Comics. http://www.qwantz.com.
Sava, Scott Christian. The Dreamland Chronicles. http://www.thedreamlandchronicles.com/.
Sungenis, Pab. The New Adventures of Queen Victoria. http://www.newadventuresofqueenvictoria.com/.