Transcript: 00:00.08

Krispy

Sonic is the fastest, like, I feel like there's other fast characters that we could talk about.

00:04.44

Varethane

The Flash?

00:08.19

Krispy

We could talk about the Flash. We could. Yeah.

00:11.14

Varethane

Superman.

00:12.25

Krispy

Superman is pretty fast.

00:12.95

Varethane

Who turned back time?

00:14.18

Rae

He's faster than a speeding bullet.

00:16.23

Krispy

That's true. I think that's faster than Sonic, isn't it?

00:20.13

Varethane

I don't know, has Sonic ever rewound time by running?

00:20.42

Rae

No.

00:26.94

Krispy

I actually don't know.

00:27.50

Rae

I don't know. I was more of a Night's Into Dreams kind of person, so.

00:31.02

Krispy

Mmm. Mmm. This all stays, editors.

00:40.90

Krispy

Hello and welcome to Screen Tones, where we talk anything and everything webcomics. Today, we're going to be jamming about the essence of webcomics and how we define them. I'm Krispy, my pronouns are she/they, and I make the webcomics Ghost Junk Sickness and Lunar Blight.

00:59.44

Rae

I'm Rae, I use they/them pronouns. I make the webcomics Overlord of Ravenfell and On Empyrean High.

01:13.36

Varethane

And I'm Verathane, I use she/they pronouns, and I make the webcomics Chirault and Wychwood.

01:20.10

Krispy

So I just heard that y'all make webcomics and I'm a little curious: what is a webcomic? What is that name? What does it mean to be a webcomic?

It's such a nebulous term now because of how things have changed. And I thought it would be very interesting to just really dissect what the heck is a webcomic. Now, for a little bit of history as to how this question kind of came up, well, obviously, the Screen Tones podcast, we created because we can't stop talking about them.

And I decided to throw in, what I considered a Molotov question to the cast members about... Like, what is Homestuck? Is Homestuck a webcomic?

What is it considered? It feels like it has a lot of different visuals and different things that play into it that make it very not comic-y, but apparently this is something that's been debated, been discussed, and, I mean, it's not one of its kind either. There's a lot of other things that play around with different mediums but are still considered webcomics, so I thought...This would be pretty fun to really dissect it.

And yes, we're finally talking about Homestuck. Oh my god.

02:38.28

Rae

See, Krispy. For me, my problem is I got five pages into Homestuck.

02:46.24

Varethane

Well, I was in the mines. I was in the Homestuck mines in 2012.

02:53.98

Varethane

I was reading it. I read every single one of its like, you know, 10,000 pages or however many there were. Yeah.

03:04.89

Krispy

So when you say pages, okay, let's just do that. like Let's start from here.

03:09.67

Krispy

When we say pages, scrollies, episodes, it's just terms that are getting thrown all over the place and I actually don't know how to gauge it. One thing that's really interesting is that... When we were doing the Nib and Ink Fest webcomic portfolio reviews, we had to kind of be like, okay, we want things to be X amount of pages, but then we also had to consider how many episodes is that? And then episodes are not all in like a certain amount of quote-unquote pages and they kind of change a lot too. And as said, yeah, it's—I don't know. I don't know how to describe it.

03:48.71

Varethane

I think depending on the type of work that it is, it can always mean—it's true that it does always mean something a little bit different. In the case of Homestuck, referring to a page is more in the sense of a web page, like an individual web page in its update, which would have a slightly different format every time because sometimes it would be one image.

04:12.51

Varethane

Sometimes it would be one image and a little bit of text, sometimes an image and a lot of text, sometimes anywhere between two and like five images. I can't remember how many ever actually got put into a single update.

04:25.13

Varethane

And sometimes it would be like an entire Flash game or something like that.

In the case of Webtoon, just to kind of go like take a sidestep into that field, Webtoon itself when they're like figuring out things about their originals and stuff, I think they quantify it by panels. They'd be like each episode should have 40 panels in it basically. Obviously the people who are not on originals can kind of put as many panels or as few panels into an update as they want.

But that kind of determines the overall length and amount of content. At least to my knowledge.

05:05.97

Krispy

Yeah. and I think that's interesting because you were also mentioning that they sometimes, this Homestuck, this sometimes has some images like one to two to three to five, apparently, and then some more texts than others…And um, how did you read the comic?

05:25.97

Varethane

Well, you see, it was on the web. Akin to a webbed comic, one might say.

05:33.44

Krispy

Did you click through like the text and it appears or was it just a wall of text?

05:38.11

Varethane

So for a little bit of kind of format thing for Homestuck, the appearance of the pages, they kind of have like this, it became iconic in Homestuck and all the Homestuck-alikes, where you would open up the website.

And you would have a single image in kind of a static dimension, which is usually a landscape formatted, like, I don't know, kind of a four by six aspect ratio image, like centered in the frame.

And then below it, there would be some sort of text. And at the bottom of the text, there would be, in larger text, there would be a hyperlink that would lead you to the next page.

And sometimes it would just be like arrows, often like ASCII, like it would be equal sign, equal sign, and then like the greater-than bracket, basically, to make an arrow.

Sometimes that link would also have text in it, which would additionally give extra context to the story, because part of the conceit of a lot of those comics is that it's like an adventure game and you're telling the character where to go so often those links would take the form of, like, open the chest, and then a little arrow. Or like, you know, pick up the stick, like, walk through the door. That kind of thing. But additionally above that usually above that maybe it was below it sometimes, it really changed constantly.

But above that, there would also be a chat log, which you would be able to expand. Like it would just be a little read more button. And then when you click it, you would get anywhere between, you know, maybe five lines of dialogue to like an entire essay post.

Usually that would be where the characters would talk to each other as if they were in like an instant messaging software.

And those could get extremely long.

07:26.36

Krispy

So it sounds like it's super interactive. It's actually reminding me of the old point-and-click kind of adventure games that they had where you had to input commands in the computer for something to happen.

07:38.46

Rae

Like the MUD games and stuff like that.

07:40.06

Krispy

Yeah! Yeah!

07:42.66

Varethane

That was a big inspiration for it, I'm pretty sure. I can't remember the names of any of the specific titles that it took inspiration from, but I'm pretty sure that it was brought up in interviews and stuff like that. That was the core to the inspiration was those types of games.

07:59.28

Krispy

So I think the thing that's been really interesting in this conversation so far is, where are the comics? Where are the panels? What makes it a webbed comic?

08:12.15

Rae

So one of the interesting things about this is, because I've been in webcomics for a long time. So I remember when Homestuck actually started becoming pretty popular and it actually was not called a webcomic by most of the people I know that read it. They actually usually referred to it as a multimedia project.

08:41.84

Krispy

Okay, that's interesting.

08:42:15

Rae

Yeah, I thought that was rather interesting.

08:43.45

Varethane

TV Tropes calls it a multimedia Thing with a capital T.

08:48.33

Krispy

A thing?

08:50.73

Varethane

Just a thing.

08:51.84

Krispy

They call it a multimedia thing. So, okay.

In our dives, because this has been something that's been hard to kind of, like, hammer down because we were also looking at other examples of things that kind of go beyond the norm. And I think we brought up Homestuck because this is something that's like constantly brought up in webcomic spheres of somehow being the longest webcomic, which is untrue.

But, you know, it’s like this is such a big deal as, as a webcomic. Like, this has ‘changed webcomics’. Like this is, you know, X, Y, Z. And as someone who has not read Homestuck, I'm curious because I'm just like, this doesn't look like a comic to me. And so I decided to dig deep and see, okay, well, what is a webcomic though? How am I defining that?

Why is it called this and whatever? I think ‘web’ is the biggest aspect to it because I've seen the printed version of this book, or sorry, this comic, story, multimedia thing.

10:02.15

Varethane

Ha, you called it a comic.

10:08.91

Krispy

I don’t know what it is. But it didn't look the best, unfortunately. And I think the biggest thing is that the web aspect is the biggest part of it being what it is. Another example of something that is a webcomic, but is outside of the norms is like Ava's Demon.

10:25.14

Krispy

It's more like, it's more closer to what webtoons is now, because webtoons is its own format. Like the webtoon scroll format. There's the webtoon as a format. And then there's the Webtoon as the company.

But the webtoon format, which is that scroll, they have the panels and it's really trying to emulate being animated, and I think that's something that, you know, that the heart of Ava's demon was also trying to do with that single panel kind of animated feeling, like things—well they looked animated. It looked like a storyboard almost. And I think it's interesting because we're seeing this shift and we're seeing a lot of things that can't really describe one thing that works for others.

And it's just interesting to see the kind of like… a lot of this unfold.

11:18.90

Rae

I think it's really interesting to see a lot of what I probably call proto-webtoons. Because they use kind of the... They use the scroll format, but it does look a lot different from how a lot of the norm is now, which uses the act of scrolling as like an animation.

11:41.16

Rae

But a lot of the scrolling in some of them are kind of more aware of the space that they take up on the browser than a lot of the webtoons are, to be honest.

11:53.84

Rae

One that I would probably say I found interesting was Margot's Room by E. M. Carroll. Because it uses the web format to where you're given a picture of this room, right?

12:12.30

Rae

But you can click on aspects of the room, and those will lead to comics that are kind of taken out of context. They don't really make much sense. But when you click all of them, you get a bigger part of the story.

12:28.06

Rae

And some of them scroll up and down. Some of them scroll sideways. It just depends on the type of feel that that particular part of the comic needs.

12:39.93

Rae

But I think that is definitely a webbed comic because it makes probably some of the fullest use of the website format.

12:51.53

Krispy

Yeah. And I think that that's just, like, that might be key here to consider what makes it a webcomic and some of the format that makes it so interesting kind of standing out.

It's just, I think, playing with that. The other thing that I think about when I think of webcomics, even using scroll, was that really scary one. What's the name of it where it would actually—you would—it was about the girl walking home and you would scroll down.

13:22.65

Varethane

Is this the Bongcheon-Dong Ghost? Yeah, from Chiller.

That's a famous one.

13:29.02

Krispy

Yes! Yes! Oh my god, it's so scary. I remember getting sent it because that's what you do. And the scariest part of it, not the fact that, you know, the images were scary or whatever, but they had something that locked your ability to do anything on your web browser! When you got to a certain panel of, like, the scare… and it was the scariest thing ever not being able to scroll anywhere. And I think there was a clicking noise or something. I just, I don't know. I remember just screaming and trying to find the X button really fast.

14:00.87

Rae

Another E.M. Carroll one that that reminded me of was, there was this one story I was reading where the panels would flicker into this scary picture for a split second, to the point that it's like, you go, “Wait, did that change?” and then it didn't happen again or there was one where it flickered and it just stayed at the other panel and it's like, “oh my god.” It's like, that kind of interaction I found to be really interesting

14:34.97

Varethane

I love that sort of thing. It always makes me wonder what they would do if they were to try to print it, though. Sometimes when you have, like—there's actually a full story being told between that type of flickering.

14:47.06

Varethane

Like Unsounded, I'm going to see this in print at some point soon because it is now being printed for real, but it's actually also made use of some pretty interesting explorations of the frame. Like there've been a part of, I think that this is because the website is like, I think it's static.

Like each page is statically generated or whatever. Like it's not in some system where every page will just go on to the same background. So the background can change for every chapter. And then sometimes also for every page within the chapter.

So you'll have a sequence where the characters are going into the dark or falling down a deep hole or something like that.

15:30.25

Varethane

And like just for the pages during that transit, like the background itself will get darker and darker each time. Or like suddenly there'll be a super long panel that just goes all the way down and the whole website will stretch and have other elements at the bottom.

Or I think there was one sequence where you could also scroll sideways and you're like traversing through this big, crazy space. And like there's some really neat stuff.

I don't think there's been a ton of overt animation, but there's been limited animation and background elements that will pop into the page or page elements that pop into the back. It's really cool.

But yeah, I guess that would have to be kind of limited when it goes into print somehow.

16:20.32

Rae

Yeah, probably the one that made such an impression on me for Unsounded was when—because the background for each comic page is like a sheaf of pages. And there's this point where they just all start catching on fire. And it eventually consumes the whole website. And then it just goes out.

16:36.47

Varethane

And then it's all ash and like char.

It looks so good.

16:38.83

Rae

And then it does. And then there's this other part that I absolutely loved. Where there's this character that's getting cursed. And this curse makes everyone hate him, essentially.

And if you click on all the parts of, like, the archives or the character stuff, it'll just have pictures of him with, like, his eyes x’ed out or just say, like, you know, that he should die and shit like that. It's funny.

17:13.39

Krispy

Okay, that is so cool.

17:15.50

Rae

Oh yeah, it makes use of the entire website and I just think that's just Chef's Kiss.

17:21.96

Krispy

That is epic! Well, you know, it's just, it's kind of making me a little sad, kind of talking about this because there's a lot of innovation that comes when you're playing with the web aspect of comics.

17:37.90

Krispy

And I think it's like a spectrum of what's more web than comic, and then they kind of meet in the middle. Because like my initial thought when we were dissecting the whole Homestuck thing, I was like, wow, it behaves more like a visual novel and stuff like that.

And possibly would have been labeled as that, had it been released now with how people are kind of interacting with that term. But, you know, it coming out being called a multimedia thing-slash-webcomic, kind of is what it is. But I also think that the web aspect and there's comic aspects and it meets somewhere on this web-slash-comic spectrum.

18:22.58

Varethane

I feel I have a whole bunch of different kinds of thoughts on different parts of it. So I'm going to try to make sense of these. But so for the visual novel thing, I feel like part of what helped Homestuck get so visible that, if the technology that we have now, like the easy ways of making visual novel type games and that sort of thing—if that had been around at the time, there's a decent chance that like it would have taken that format because definitely the interactivity was always really important to Homestuck as a work.

But I mean, it wasn't.

But at the same time, I feel like being in a browser—because so far as I'm aware, visual novels are like a thing that you download, like you have to get it onto your machine somehow through Steam or whatever. And it's different from being able to read the entire story just in a browser completely for free.

So that sort of thing can help with overall exposure. I do wonder if it would have gotten that popular if it was a paid download rather than something that you could just go look at right now and read in its entirety.

19:34.65

Krispy

There's visual novels that you just read in your browser.

19:38.57

Varethane

Are there?

19:39.38

Rae

Yeah, there there is. Granblue Fantasy is probably one of the main ones that I've played. It's very much a browser-based game, and even downloading the app, it's just an app that links to the website.

19:56.83

Varethane

But if you were to try, like, if you were to be playing through and you got to like a cool frame or something crazy happened and you wanted to send a link to that to your friend, like would you be able to just send them directly to that chunk of it?

20:13.03

Krispy

I have no idea. I feel like there was another one.

20:14.47

Rae

No. Usually no.

20:16.69

Varethane

Because I feel like the serialized aspect of Homestuck also was a huge phenomena like at the time it was happening because as it was updating, people would be sending like those pages to each other because you hit a cool update.

You could just hit the URL code at the top and copy that and send it or link it wherever. And so the fandom became its own intense viral marketing, basically, because everybody was reading it and talking about it all the time.

And the big updates that were going live, like early on, I think it was updating a crazy amount of times, like it would go through, like, you know, 20 pages in a day or something like that.

But later on, it started to get into these like higher production value, I guess, updates like when the flash game started happening and full videos that would be like, 10, 15 minutes with full music and everything and sound effects.

And those would sometimes have gaps of like a month or two in between or a few days.

And sometimes there would be a notification of when it would come out. But as soon as it dropped, everybody was like all over it. Like just the volume of, I guess, updates, I suppose, was also important. I don't think visual novels really work that way either, though. They tend to drop and then they're just there.

21:34.87

Rae

I mean, a lot of them now, these days, since they're mobile-based games, are actually serialized. And they will drop, like, little bits and pieces of a story these days. So it's like perhaps the current format could be a thing, but I do think Homestuck is uniquely part of that era of the internet.

22:02.71

Krispy

Yeah. Yeah. I think that's the biggest thing. Like when I'm going back and forth about describing what it is, I'm just like, I feel like the era is so important. And that goes specifically for the evolution of webcomics themselves, because there was still an expectation when starting out with webcomics as to what they are now and there was that shift of having the panel comics because obviously comics were very panel-focused with the three to four panels, and then you know how you have the era of couch comics, and the commentary comics that kind of do that, that are easily shareable.

The sprite comics. Huge thing! Shout out to those, where people would take sprites from video games because you can get like, you know, during the times when the interwebs, it was easy to copy-paste and change the colors of sprites and then make your own story. And then like at one point, webcomics started to shift to long form comics that were more closely resembling print format comics. So it's just interesting because there is a lot of changing.

And I think it's an expectation of what that is. And it's hard to define it specifically because It keeps changing. And even the word “comic,” even like describing what a comic is, isn't something that everybody agrees on either, because there's actually no consensus on the definition of the word itself. So the fact that that changes and then the format of the web, and the web changing with comics too, I think that's hard to keep up with and define.

23:45.57

Varethane

I miss when people got super experimental with their formats. I think that with the introduction of places like Webtoon and like everybody gravitating towards these big platforms, like whatever you make, it has to fit within like the stamped shape of the site now.

23:59.18

Rae

I honestly actually don't even think it's necessarily that. Like, Webtoon is pretty big, but I mean, KeenSpace slash Comic Genesis was pretty big for its time, too.

24:17.46

Rae

But I think the main reason why people have gotten less experimental is because so many people use phones versus browsers, and you have to have it work on both.

24:32.40

Varethane

That's true. There is another experimental webcomic from back in the day that I kind of occasionally also think about when people are talking about how to define a comic and what makes it and so on.

And it actually was, I think, on Comic Genesis.

24:50.66

Rae

It was Hero, right?

24:52.05

Varethane

Yeah, it was Hero.

And that one would be basically impossible to read on mobile. So anybody trying to optimize it— So the way this comic worked is that you would open up the website.

And you would see a comic page, but there would be no text on it. There's no speech bubbles, no captions, like, et cetera. It's just got, like, beautiful art. But what happens is when you hover your mouse over each panel, you would get a little, basically, like, alt text.

Like a little text pop-up that would have the words.

And that would be where any character dialogue would be. But it was all in prose format. So it would be, like... you know, blah, blah, blah, like, so and so said, and then it would even describe parts of the setting, like it was actually like it was lifted out of a novel, like paragraphs or like actual prose writing.

And they got—they somehow set up the page so that, you know, if you had six panels on the page, each panel would have a different little text thing as you moved your mouse over them.

It was really neat. But on a phone, I don't think it would work at all.

25:58.33

Rae

Funny story about that is when I first found Hero, I loved it. I didn't know until I got to chapter 2 that I was supposed to hover over the panels to see the text. I just thought it was a silent comic.

26:16.69

Krispy

Oh my god, really?

26:17.35

Rae

Yes, but I did find out, and I ended up rereading the entire thing. And I was just like, Oh my God, this is so cool.

But I do really like how they used the format because it really gives it a kind of dreamy feel to it because—and it feels interactive because you don't necessarily know what is going on until you have to physically mouse over each panel.

26:50.97

Krispy

Yeah. Yeah. I agree with the fact that it feels like there is a loss of that exploration with a lot of things. I remember when we were kind of going through a lot of comics and stuff like that. And I remember seeing a few that just had such a cool and grungy style.

And I was like, man, I wish this wasn't on Webtoon because the stark white background just does not lend to what they're trying to do. And if they made this interactive, this would be the craziest comic. And there's a lot of comics and I'm just like, gosh I wish that they had their own website like a Neocities or something like that, because I'm like it would be cool if it was so much more interactive. Not specifically interactive but they use the page and things, and just experimented a little bit more.

So I do agree. Like, I think it's both. I think there is that loss of exploration because everybody reads it on mobile, and developing things for mobile is much more difficult.

And then there's also the platform kind of plague going around where people feel—and it’s true—like they want an audience and they feel like they're all there.

So they post there. And it's free to post and et cetera, cetera. We talk a lot about that in other episodes. But I think when I'm talking about what makes a webcomic and stuff like that, web is a huge part of what makes it what it is.

And I'm finally kind of coming around this myself personally as a growth aspect when we talk about webcomics and Webtoon slash the format.

And when you see that a lot, being like, my webtoon is X, Y, Z, my webtoon is this. And it's like, well, are they not the same thing as a webtoon, as a webcomic? And there's this debate there now, if one is the other and so on and so forth.

And I think because it's such a nebulous thing and because the expectation of how to read is changing, I don't think that there's ever going to be a hard definition about what a webcomic is.

29:04.50

Varethane

Character growth.

29:06.89

Krispy

I know, right? Wow.

Yeah, because I used to be like, well, they're both the same thing. But now, like, this conversation alone is making me be like, is everything a webcomic?

29:20.36

Varethane

You're a webcomic.

29:28.60

Rae

Comics that have evolved for the web.

They have webbed feet and everything.

29:35.67

Krispy

It's just, it's making me take a pause in how I used to engage with that because it's like, if it's a comic on the web, it's a webcomic. And yeah, I think that's pretty easy. But as we've discussed in this jam, things aren't just comics, but they're on the web and during a time of this transformation and expectation.

So that's still, that title that it was, still can follow it. And maybe it's not what it is now. But I think with history changing like that, too, the word webcomic is transforming.

30:09.36

Varethane

I think when it comes to comics and defining comics and all that stuff, a long time ago, I wrote an essay about this for a school class or something, when I could pick my topic, and I was like, “I gotta write about comics.”

And I think that what I kind of opened with was basically like, “A comic is essentially a type of sequential art which tells a story through images in sequence.”

And I feel like a lot of things fall under that category.

But that's kind of the beauty of it, that it can encapsulate all kinds of things. It's a very big umbrella.

30:50.04

Rae

I think one of the most interesting things about comics versus, say, animation and stuff is what makes a comic is really, honestly, what happens between the panels and how that can manipulate your perceptions of a scene or time or whatever. And it's really interesting how people can do it on a page versus scroll.

And... the kinds of tools that they use. Because I've noticed a lot of Webtoons tend to be more like storyboards than, say, what you find on a page where it really has to make use of a very specific rectangular form.

So... I definitely do think that comics are honestly very varied, but they are also a very unique form of sequential art.

31:54.52

Krispy

Yeah, yeah, for sure. I do want to read this long description of what comics is and it isn’t. We've taken this description about comics from Wikipedia.

So gather round the campfire. “Comics is a medium used to express ideas with images, often combined with text or other visual information and typically takes the form of a sequence of panels of images. Textual devices such as speech balloons, captions, onomatopoeia can indicate dialogue, narration, sound effects, or other information.

“There is no consensus among theorists and historians on the definition of comics. Some emphasize the combination of images and texts, some sequentially, other image relations and other historical aspects such as mass reproduction or the use of recurring characters.”

Thank you, Wikipedia. That is so absolutely interesting to me because it's just, we're in our own little corner of defining what comics are.

And there's like a whole friggin playground of, like, so many different aspects or ways to describe what a comic is to other people.

33:10.29

Varethane

Science has agreed. There is no consensus on what makes a comic.

33:15.26

Krispy

It's true.

33:17.54

Rae

That means we could be comics.

33:18.26

Krispy

Oh my gosh is that how we do this? Is that how the episode ends?

33:19:34

Rae

Why not?

33:26.16

Varethane

That's our final form. A new health bar unfolds. Then the choir starts playing.

33:33.08

Krispy

Oh my gosh, phase two.

33:45.36

Rae

You can be a webcomic and you can be a webcomic.

33:51.75

Krispy

Well, this was absolutely enlightening. And I think with that, that's a chicken salad Caesar wrap.

Um I'm a webcomic and you can find my webcomic Ghost Junk Sickness and Lunar Blight at their respective webcomic locations, ghostjunkstickness.com and lunarblight.com.

34:11.60

Rae

And I'm a webcomic, and you can find my webcomic Overlord of Ravenfell on Webtoon and On Empyrean High at EmpyreanComic.com.

34:21.87

Varethane

And I'm a webcomic and you can find my webcomics at chirault.sevensmith.net and wychwoodcomic.com. And should that have been a chicken Caesar salad webcomic perhaps?

34:33.86

Krispy

Oh, I think you're right. I'm gonna eat this webcomic now.

34:35.78

Rae

You missed the opportunity for a sequential Caesar salad wrap.

34:41.99

Krispy

Oh my god!

34:46.14

Varethane

A hot new food trend of the summer.

34:46.21

Krispy

Yummy! I am glad we're webcomics.

34:51.24

Rae

So am I.