What is a webcomic?

[brunoharm3]

I know, a webcomic can be just about anything. But theres such a huge difference between genres sometimes, that I wonder if I'm in the right place. Bruno Harm is a comic strip, like Sunday paper cartoon strip. And I see a few things in that ball park, but I see way more long form comics and Manga style stuff. sometimes, I get that fish outa water vibe. What do you think? The more the merrier? separate but equal? Is there cross over? How much do you read outside of your main flavor of "webcomic?"

[ghostnxs]

Well when I go to the front page I see an equal amount of long form and short form comics. Also I don't think people read the Sunday cartoons as much anymore, I know I don't. I read whatever, I think you're thinking too deep about "webcomics", basically comic on the Internet if you are thinking anything else you've done too much thinking into it. If you aren't doing what's popular you will always be a fish out of water.

[UzukiCheverie]

A webcomic, in its entirety, is just a comic that has its origins and publishing home on the web. It doesn't matter what the format, style, or content is. The manga style and vertical style is just what's popular these days because of what we find and endorse in pop culture, and with the advancement of touch phones, an increasing number of vertical comics optimized for scrolling is to be expected (Tapastic takes a firm stance on pushing for mobile comics as well).

There are plenty of artists who do a newspaper style comic. Even look at the comic Mary Death, which many people are pretty sure was inspired by Calvin and Hobbes, in art style and content. You can make a newspaper style comic and still make it vertical (here's an example with one of my older comics).

So just go for it.

[ToonDoctor]

Hi. Johnny Bullet, my comic here on Tapastic is also a Sunday style comic strip. I checked your work. You're fine here.

[AnnaLandin]

Webcomics are comics published on the web. They span all the way from xkcd to HERO: A story - the former a science-centric gag-comic with stick figures, the latter a beautifully painted storybased comic that, for the majority of its chapters, tells its story with the text appearing only as you hover with your mouse pointer over the right panel - and everything that falls between, around and outside that.

I read both of those, and a bunch of others besides. I read gag-comics, I read storybased comics, I read comics about hockey - told in a faux-videoblog-and-social-media-updates style - even though I have no real interest in hockey. I read A Softer World, which is a strip illustrated by photographs and told in a weird mix of poetry and prose.

Some of the most successful comics online are strip-comics. I mean, look at Penny Arcade! There's absolutely no reason why a Sunday-strip shouldn't fit in here.

[GlanceReviver]

Strip comics are really well suited for the internet when it comes to readability and marketability, since a reader can land on any random strip and immediately get invested in the comic without having any prior experience. Page returns on a simple strip per day drive traffic and ad revenue up much higher than someone completing a page or two per week, even if that page is much larger, contains more plot elements, and has a higher level of artistic detail, like most long-form comics do.

Tapastic seems good for publishing long format stories because of the way it organizes pages and episodes, but strip comics still do well almost anywhere.

[SandraMJ]

A webcomic.... a webcomic is a pile of secrets!

But really, anything uploaded to the web... is a webcomic. Of course, webcomics give you many more crazy ways to defy the standard formats and invent your own way to "stand out".

[Peej]

I know exactly how you feel @brunoharm3
I've asked similar questions in the forums to your own, having shared your thoughts with my own strip
The fish outa water vibe especially rings true with me. I've even been so bold as to suggest a newspaper-style strip genre in the search but I realised that there were many genres and sub-genres it would be impossible to separate some artists/cartoonists work into the categories.
Personally, I label myself as a 'cartoonist' more than a comic artists. I'm still not sure how accepted the difference is!

[punkarsenic]

a webcomic is just a comic thats published online. any comic thats published online. so if your comic is a comic, and published online. it meets all the requirements.
the more serious question is if youre posting in the right place. from the sounds of your comic, pretty sure you are; those kindsa comics thrive on here afaik

[allenthomas]

There are a wide variety of comics on here. The most that I see on the front page are probably gag comics, or long story-driven style comics, but there are so many different kinds that are on the site. It may take some digging but they are there. To answer the topic question, at the risk of sounding very dumb, I just think that any comic on the web is simply a webcomic.