The 1990s were not the best of times for the comics industry.
Arguably over-reliant on the superhero genre and the buying power of the adolescent boys who made up the bulk of its audience, the industry suffered some major hits.
BAM!! Comic book stores closed nationwide. POW!! Readership declined significantly. SWAK!! Comics artists, finding it impossible to get their books published, abandoned their work.
Once a national pastime (half of the U.S. population regularly read comic books in 1945), comics in the '90s flirted with extinction: Only one in a thousand Americans were buying.
But comics may prove to be indestructible, thanks in part to a secret weapon – the Web. With advances being made in their digital creation and delivery, comics remain alive, if not completely well.
"For years, the bad news had been very bad," said Scott McCloud, a cartoonist and the author of Understanding Comics. "Comics stores became so rare that, in certain regions, comics fans were simply out of luck. In a climate like that, comics artists are out of luck, too."
But the current technologies make the Internet quite comics friendly.
"Right now, the Web is great for the quick download of pictures and words, and that's comics," said cartoonist Steve Conley, a co-founder of Comicon.com. "When broadband arrives, we'll have to compete with TV, but for now, comics are what most people can fit through their modem."
Conley is among those who hope that digital technologies are helping seed a comics renaissance. At Comicon.com, a site for aspiring and established cartoonists, traffic has increased three-fold during the past six months. Conley expects this site to receive 15 million hits this month.
Though the memories of the disastrous downturn of the 1990s remain fresh, the emerging digital possibilities are encouraging both artists and audiences, or at least offering hope for the future.
"In the industry, there has been a debate whether to make comics for print or for the Web," McCloud said. "Really, though, for most artists the choice is between publishing on the Web or not publishing at all."
David Gaddis is one example. An aspiring artist who struggled for years to get attention for his drawn-on-paper comics, Gaddis recently reconfigured a portfolio piece called Piercing into a scroll format, more appropriate for the Web. After posting Piercing, Gaddis received feedback from around the world (including from some of his favorite cartoonists), along with several job offers – for print works.
Though he has no plans to abandon drawing on paper, Gaddis said he's grateful to be "part of this moment in history, when online comics are emerging."
Though most comic book artists are, like Gaddis, posting their creations either as a labor of love or as calling cards, a few professionals are figuring out ways to make money from their digital cartoons.
Conley has put together an innovative syndication tool called toonOrama that distributes 15 different serial strips. Conley's program allows subscribers, by copying a few lines of code onto their page, to receive daily updates of these strips, free of charge. Income is generated by advertisements embedded in the strips.
Schemes such as Conley's already are demonstrating how the Internet can be useful as a delivery device for cartoons. But McCloud has still higher hopes.
In his latest book, Reinventing Comics, McCloud proposes a visionary approach to the creation, distribution and consumption of what he sees as a generally unrecognized, underutilized art form.
McCloud predicts a day when artists using digital tools will be able to work towards a more expansive and inventive definition of comics. And if artists build more literate and diverse comics, featuring characters other than superheroes in tights, audiences beyond the pimpled-boy segment of the market may come.
That revolution may start, McCloud said, when cartoonists begin to view the screen as a window, rather than a page. Where the page hems cartoonists in, the computer enables what McCloud calls "the infinite canvas." On a computer screen, a narrative can move much more freely through space and time, constrained, he adds, only by the artist's imagination.
"If it serves your story to have an uninterrupted chain of 46 panels, you can do that," McCloud said. "We tend to forget what a dominant force the shape of the page is, just because it is such an omnipresent factor. For hundreds of years, comics have been chopped up to fit that rectangle. But those who move online have no reason to take that limitation with them."
McCloud also hopes the Internet can help artists sidestep another once-immovable force: corporate control of the marketplace.
The chain from artist to publisher to distributor to retailer to reader has become increasingly more complex over the past few decades, and that has hurt artists. In a perfect world, the Web would help cartoonists hop over the snafus of traditional distribution and connect directly with audiences.
"Of course, just hanging out your shingle doesn't mean the world will come to your door," McCloud said. "But you can't overemphasize the power of word of mouth online. Every comics fan has had the experience of hearing about a great comic, only to be told the store doesn't have it in stock. But word of mouth online is word of mouth written large – to hear about something is to know instantly where to find it."
Even if comics lovers flock to your site, getting paid, of course, remains a problem. Many talented cartoonists will be forced to draw in their spare time – a part of what McCloud calls "the gargantuan, disenfranchised tribe of amateurs" – until the establishment of a process to pay to view cartoons, either through subscription or micropayment systems.
If economics are one element helping to slow the digital comics revolution, technology is the other.
Cartoonist Rick Veitch, the co-founder, with Conley, of Comicon.com, is one of those who is waiting for the breakthrough – the MP3 of comics – to emerge. Music, he said, was the first medium to "come through the (digital) ring of fire," and comics are lagging behind.
Veitch points out that most people happy to go online for their daily Marmaduke fix will still balk at reading a 200-page graphic novel on their monitor. But, he adds, the day of reckoning may be coming for the once-beloved comic book – that pulpy, garishly colored piece of Americana.
"All of us are operating on the belief that comics online can be financially viable ... but people are used to the tactile feel of the pamphlet or newspaper or magazine – they are bound to it in an organic way," Veitch said. "Devices like e-paper and e-ink will have a huge impact on comics. You might have Marvel or DC with their own branded display. You pay a subscription, plug your book in at night and every morning you have new stuff to read. The new generations won't have the nostalgia for the little paper pamphlet that I have."
