Welcome to this Webcomics Blog

Hello and welcome to our blog, kind stranger! We are so very happy to be able to bring you this blog about our most beloved webcomics. It’s our first attempt at blogging, so if you have any advice for us, we’d be happy to hear it!

You probably share our passion for webcomics, otherwise why would you be here? The question is, are you a casual enjoyer of webcomics or are you a nerd like us who can pull out some crazy facts about them? If you’re from the former, but want to learn more like the latter, we got you covered!

We will give you all sorts of interesting information about a specific webcomic in our articles, and we will use this space to tell you some cool facts about webcomics in general. Enjoy reading and discovering!

Early History of Webcomics

Some might think that webcomics are a somewhat recent trend, but they’d be terribly wrong. In fact, the first webcomic actually predates the World Wide Web. Witches in Stitches, an unauthorized parody of The Wizard of Oz, was published in CompuServe all the way back in 1985 when the author, Eric Millikin, was still in elementary school.

A few years later, in 1991, Hans Bjordahl’s Where the Buffalo Roam became the first serialized webcomic, published through Usenet. Then, in 1993, Doctor Fun by David Farley became the first webcomic on the World Wide Web.

If you didn’t live in that era, as we personally weren’t born yet, you probably don’t know the technology behind accessing these comics. Unlike our time, the Internet wasn’t readily available and webcomics had to be shared through mailing lists or emails or by being in certain net-groups. The humanity!

Once the WWW took over in the mid-1990’s though, everything changed. Cartoonists were eager to try out that new medium and finally share their art without the constraints of print publishing. Although this period was certainly sensational, not that many artists used the webcomic format.

It was still very much a niche interest, so the result was webcomics exploring topics like technology and geeky references. The audience was also limited, but the people who had access to the Internet back then had similar interests to the content creators, so all was fine.

In the late 1990’s and the early 2000’s webcomics started branching out and covering more bases in terms of topics and style. The craft also experienced its first formalization attempt with the publication of comics theorist Scott McCloud book Reinventing Comics. People thus began to realize the potential of webcomics.

Soon enough, the craze began. Serialized comics and whole graphic novels were published online to much interest. Still, the nerdy, game-related comics were the most sought after, along with highly specific comics that are only relatable to certain niche groups.

Not only did the number of webcomics increased, but artists started winning money from them. Mostly, they did so through merchandise such as selling T-shirts based on their creations.

However, times changed and webcomics with dedicated websites experienced a decline of interest once social media platforms like Tumblr and Facebook gained prominence. On the other hand, Tumblr was the perfect place for new artists to publish their comics and enjoy a much larger audience. A lot of the artists we will talk about on the blog started with Tumblr.

Arguably, this is the time when webcomics transformed from niche-oriented works to highly relatable strips in order to accommodate social media platforms. Moreover, new businesses such as Patreon and Kickstarter also allowed creators to receive donations from their fan base, which allowed them to pretty much turn their hobby into a profitable career.

Despite the fact that the webcomics craze is now over, there haven’t been more webcomics online than now, so try to think of that when you long after the early 2000’s. You can find everything from relatable webcomics to extremely obscure ones with one Google search, and we just love that.

Thank You

Thank you for reading our welcome post and thank you for supporting our blog!