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One of the earliest observations about webcomics that people made — I think I was one of those people, maybe the first, I dunno — was that, weirdly, there weren’t a lot of superheroes running around.
That was a long time ago. There are probably more superhero webcomics these days than there were webcomics, period, back in 2000, 2001, when people started saying this. But still, given the dominance of the superhero genre in the world of print comics, you’d think that there would have been a larger and more prominent spot for capes ‘n tights in the webcomics world. It hasn’t turned out that way.
There are/were probably a lot of reasons that superheroes are less prominent in webcomics than they are in print, not the least of which is that superhero fans are pretty well-served by the “Big Two” publishers, while the fans of other kinds of comics weren’t always able to find what they wanted at the comic book store, so they turned to webcomics more quickly. Makes some sense.
How to explain, then, the prominent presence of superheroes in the nascent world of serialized webfiction? It’s one of the most popular genres, apparently (judging by sites like webfictionguide.com and topwebfiction.com, as well as a purely anecdotal survey of sites that come up when you Google the term “serialized fiction” or “webfiction.”) A lot of them are really good, too. There’s the Legion of Nothing by Jim Zoetewey, for example, which sits at or near the top of almost every popularity chart. (Personally, I like the stories but hate the web design — or, more specifically, the navigational structure — but that’s just me). There’s Warren Hately’s awesome Zephyr, too, which is my personal favorite. There’s a whole section dedicated to the genre at webfictionguide.
I’m interested mainly because of my own little project, of course. But I’m also interested generally. Why do you think the superhero genre is taking off in prose fiction (it’s not just on the web — have a look at superheronovels.com, a blog dedicated solely to prose superhero stories coming out in print and ebook form)?
I suspect it’s partly an inverse of your observation about the lack of superheroes in webcomics; superhero fans were well-served by mainstream comics, so it was fans of other kinds of comics who turned to the web. On the other hand, superheroes for a long time were just about the only genre not to be found in prose fiction–so superhero fans turned to the web to correct that.
After all, not everyone who finds the genre of superheroes compelling necessarily likes the form of comics.
Thanks for the tag and the big compliment Joey. Keep the alt.supers flame rocking.
W
Zephyr — a superhero webcomic in prose
http://zephyr.warrenhately.com
Thanks for mentioning me. I was amused to find a link to my stuff from the blog of the person who started Modern Tales, Serializer, and a number of other sites I’ve used.
As for the navigation/template of my site… Yeah. It needs work. I used a free theme that almost fit my needs, but it was intended to be a temporary measure till I wrote my own. Though you’d never guess it from my site, I’m a web developer.
That’s one of those things I have to change. It’s hard to motivate myself to do web development after a long day of doing web development.
I know what you mean. That’s exactly the reason I use wordpress.com instead of self-hosting. Last thing I need us another website to keep up and running!
I may have done some work in webcomics, but when it comes to online fiction, I am but a mere apprentice, and you are a Master!
Using someone else’s service would make a lot of sense. The trouble is that when I do things like that, I want more options than it’s worth it for them to give me.
As for my level of experience in web fiction… The funny thing is that when I encounter a “how do I do this” question in areas outside writing (like update frequency, for example), I usually use webcomics as a guide. More often than not, it seems like they’ve already solved the problem.
I haven’t seen a fiction-specific site that does enough to make me want to use one.
WP isn’t perfect but it’s reasonably workable.
The one thing I want most (and, I think, webcomics could use too — I’ve seen a few that do this, but not many), is a way for readers to keep track of where they were in the archives the last time they visited. I don’t need permanent bookmarks, or anything the reader has to keep track of and deliberately move on his/her own — but something more like the way the Kindle always opens up onto the last page of the last book I was reading. I’m reading through a lot of archives of webfiction right now, and it’s frustrating to either have to set (and then later delete) a browser bookmark every time I leave to go do something else — or, as happens most often, go to a site, then page through multiple chapters before I remember which one I was on when I stopped reading. Y’know? My own archives aren’t big enough yet for this to be a problem, but they will be!
I’ve probably long since hit the point where readers wish there was a bookmark system. More than that, it’s been one of my priorities for when I do a site redesign.
Here’s what sucks though: With many people hitting a site from two different computers plus their phone, it becomes a more complex problem. It goes from something that you can solve with a little bit of javascript and a cookie (which would work if people only used one computer) to writing a small (I hope) WordPress plugin.
Incidentally, have you looked at Pandamian (http://www.pandamian.com)? Though it doesn’t have all the features I want yet, it is promising. It’s done by Eli James (and other people I don’t know as well). Eli’s also the person behind Novelr (http://novelr.com), a blog about issues in online fiction.
I did look at that! Looks very promising! I’d want the ability to have my own domain (though I’m not using that WP feature on Snake-Boy, I know that I could, and that makes a big difference to me — I am using the domain feature here on joeymanley.com, and it’s perfect) and some very basic custom templating functionality, and I’d be all over that!
Having talked to Eli about both domains and templating, I know those are on their list of “things that must be added.”
What don’t know is when. I’m sure it’ll be a while. They’re all college students working on Pandamian in the time they have left after school.