The Future of Comics

 It’s fascinating to imagine what the future holds for comics. With the help of the Internet, indie comic book artists have had a chance to popularize their own creations by creating a dedicated readership online. However, with the amount of webcomics out there, I think webcomics have a harder chance achieving the same level of success mainstream comic books have.

I’ve read some brilliantly witty webcomics over the past few years. On the top of my head, I can think of Hark! A Vagrant by Kate Beaton, as one of the more successful webcomics. I also really enjoy Emily Carroll’s beautifully done horror-centric comics – Carroll manages to creep the heck out of me. And if you’re looking to have a nihilistic existentialist crisis, Michael DeForge’s Ant Colony is a webcomic for you.

I tried to read Johnny the Homicidal Maniac. Strangely enough, I felt more disturbed reading Johnny the Homicidal Maniac than when I had read the underground comics. It was almost as though underground comics were meant to be crude and vulgar, but reading Johnny the Homicidal Maniac was not humorous in the slightest – in fact, I felt as though I was reading into the psyche of a depraved and very angry human being. What’s funny to me is that I later realized that Jhonen Vasquez, the creator of Johnny the Homicidal Maniac also created Invader Zim, a cartoon I absolutely adored when I was in middle school.

What’s unfortunate to me is that a lot of webcomics will go unappreciated. I can think of several very popular webcomics that may be well-written or witty but don’t hold the same artistic value as I’ve seen with less popular webcomics. As an illustrator, I find the quality of the images to be extremely important as well. For example, xkcd is an extremely popular webcomic. But there’s no artistry in drawing stick figures; anyone is capable of drawing stick figures. And because of that I’ve had a hard time reading xkcd.