My combined expertise in visual and digital media has positioned me as an authority on the subject of webcomics within the developing field of comics studies. In my entry for the Keywords in Comics Studies volume forthcoming from NYU Press, I discuss the necessity of examining webcomics within their digital historical contexts. While my research on how the comment sections of the Hyperbole and a Half webcomic posts on depression help those struggling with the illness* to form a sense of solidarity by talking about their experiences focuses primarily on positioning the comic within its digital context, my archival web research on how webcomics authors developed cooperative competition to succeed in an the attention economy of the 2000s combines that focus on digital context with a historical viewpoint.
Webcomics Forming Community
The presentation below features a video for a virtual class I have used in both my “Digital Authorship” and “Comics and Mental Health” courses that is based on a chapter of Comics Correspondents, the book project I am currently working on. In the presentation and the chapter, I demonstrate how Allie Brosh’s comics about depression, by visualizing the experience of the illness, helped others who struggle with depression feel less alone. I use an analysis of the comment section to discuss how webcomics helped readers build a sense of community through discussions of their experiences with the disease. This kind of community building is particularly important for those struggling with depression, which can be such an isolating illness.
In addition to the discussion in this slide show, the chapter will include a visualization that tracks the spread of the individual webcomics. This will provide a methodology for tracking how digital media spread, while also giving insight into the many audiences webcomics about mental health might reach. I am currently evaluating options for how to visualize the search results.
Archival Research
The presentation below, delivered at the Hermes Consortium in Prague in the summer of 2015,
discusses how, in the early 2000s, authors in webcomics collectives cross-promoted, taking advantage of the multiplication of links to better their standing in search results, which were based on the Google PageRank algorithm of the day. For this research, I used the WayBack Machine to examine webcomics from Jeph Jacques’s Questionable Content and Sam Logan’s Sam and Fuzzy in their original digital contexts. To the right is a slide highlighting an advertisement for Logan’s comic posted on Jacques’s site that I pulled from the WayBack Machine to show the cross promotion present in webcomics collectives in the early 2000s.
As PageRank’s algorithm changed, webcomics collectives became less prominent in the landscape, which in turn altered the structure of the pages and sites in which webcomics appeared. While it might seem odd to historicize a 20 year old form, the rapid and extensive changes to digital technology have influenced the development of all digital media. The serial nature of webcomics–the fact that they are often published by the same creator or creative team even as digital technology develops– can help us track how digital technology has changed digital media over time.
*I use the term “illness” to refer to mental health issues because, in my own personal experience, medicalizing the issue has been the most reliable way to receive care. When I teach about mental health, I have students decide what terms they would prefer to use after a discussion of the implications of each option. Possibilities include “disability,” “issue,” “illness,” and “problem,” and we also discuss the language of “madness,” “being crazy,” and “mental instability.”