A Response to Dr. Misemer’s “Webcomics”
In “Webcomics”, Dr. Misemer discusses the prevalence of scholarly writing for webcomics, as well as how the medium deserves more complex analysis than it receives. Dr. Misemer argues that, because of the exponential rate at which technology is advancing, the approximately 20 years webcomics have been around demands as much scrutiny and study as hundreds of years of prose. Additionally, as webcomics can cover a wide breadth of topics and be created by both amateur and professional artists, Dr. Misemer argues that webcomic scholarship would not be limited to sophisticated writers. Instead, the marginalized audiences that have adopted webcomics as a primary outlet for their voice would be best suited to carry out these studies.
As this is the first blog post diving deeper into the comic of my choosing, I decided to start my research by reading the earliest comics available in the archive. Immediately, Dr. Misemer’s argument about the fast-moving history of webcomics was justified. While the comic itself was not dated, many of the comments were dated for seven years ago, which I used to estimate the year the comic was created. The comic, and the others I analyzed, were in a drastically different style than Reza Farazmand’s (the author) current work. The first aspect that stood out to me was the change in subject—Reza’s early comics were all focused on people instead of animals such as Kev and Ernesto that have become tell-tale signs of his work nowadays. Additionally, the old comics were black and white and used a drawing style that was more crooked and jagged, unlike the smooth curves of recent comics. To top it all off, the comics were generally much longer, and instead of dialogue used narrative style text. If a single author’s style can change so drastically in seven years, imagine how much change could be discovered in 20 across the entire category.
Dr. Misemer’s plea for a larger representation of webcomics in academic writing is well justified. While the comic I am following has not directly been used as an outlet for marginalized voices (at least not yet), her claim is easily justifiable by the countless examples of comics given in the paper. Additionally, as technology becomes more advanced and the web becomes more expansive, webcomics are becoming increasingly popular. Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and even GT Memes for Buzzed Teens are examples of how pervasive webcomics have become—and how important their continued study is.
Poorly Drawn Lines and Well Written Blogs 