Wednesday, December 13, 2006

I save the day!

Going through my files, I came across parts of a graphic that I was working on in preparation for a Webcomics Examiner article.



It was a take off on Phil Sandifer's concept of the infinite gutter to be written jointly by Phil and myself. It was an argument on the unique properties of space that the web brings to comics.

Traditionally, comics are restricted to two dimensions; x-axis width, and y-axis height. Much of comics' mechanics takes place in mentally bridging the gap between panels in the x/y-axis (the gutter). Phil argues that webcomics feature an additional axis in terms of their available archives. Your eyes naturally traverse the finite x/y plane and the forward/back links traverse the "infinite" z-axis. Phil argues that as much mental activity is completed across strips as is between panels in one strip, hence the term "infinite gutter."

I don't completely buy into Phil's theory, especially with regards his (apparent) definition of space itself. While the x/y plane is quantifiable space the proposed z-axis is purely conceptual in nature. Can it still be called space? Do the same mechanics as x/y panel transitions apply? These questions and the resulting discussion would have been the basis for the article.

It pretty much looks like the article is a dead issue by now, as I haven't even heard from Phil in about a year and the Examiner seems pretty dead anyway. So I guess it's okay to publish these here.





So, there. It's kind of a comic and I posted it on Wednesday, so I'm still on track for the week! Hooray for me!

For the record, I do think that something happens between strips (mentally). And I also think that the archives offer under exploited potential for monkeying around with narrative.

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