The Infinite Canvas: Big Deal
Hlavco, re. Scott McCloud's presentation: Seemed like the biggest thing he was pressing on us was that if you make a comic on the computer, it shouldn't be shaped like a newspaper comic. It should 'flow', and you should use your monitor as a window and move around it.
Some of webcomics' biggest mouths have taken Mr. McCloud to task for his distaste of newspaper-style computer comics. As it happens, I have a few choice disagreements with his message as well.
Scott McCloud seems to view newspaper-style comics as evidence that artists aren't taking advantage of all of the possibilities computers give us-- we aren't expanding our art to the outer limits of the medium. Computer assistance and web-publishing do give us unimaginable freedom as artists. This gives us more options, more control, and more choices, not a mandate. Preaching the infinite canvas as webcomics' ideal is like saying that haikus should go out of fashion after the invention of the 8.5"x11" paper.
I, for one, choose the four-panel format consciously. When I write a 6:35 comic, I want to tell a very short self-contained story. In fact, I often start with a very long dialogue that I pare to four panels of necessary information. Expanding the comic just because your browser has a scroll bar will not add quality to my comic, and I think a lot of other comics out there are in the same boat.
Furthermore, there is a big downside to the infinite canvas contained within a computer, and that is the very confining little "window" of the browser. When you make a painting, your work must be composed well within the confines of the canvas. When you make a comic for online viewing, you must be conscious that the first window's worth of comic makes a big difference to your viewer. For example, if your first few panels aren't good, they won't scroll. If(in a comic shaped like mine) the words are visible but the art is cut off in the window, expect readers to skim the words but miss the great art in your last panels. I switched my comics to landscape-oriented panels in their first year online just to accommodate easy and complete browser viewing, and I really wish more comics would do the same.
I'm also very surprised that a comic-book writer like Scott McCloud is ready to just ignore the effects of page composition. I can't speak for all artists, but I think of my strips as a page of art. I intend all four panels to be visible to the reader at once, and I want them to look nice together. I want them to suggest the mood and flow of the comic before the reader even catches the words. (Not that I succeed. ^__^)
Scott McCloud has written some excellent, amazing things about why sequence is important to comics, and how an artist controls his reader's temporal experience through clever composition. In addition to all that, a writer uses pages as a unit of plot. Things like the Tarquin Engine pretty much ruin these aspect of comicry by removing the context of a panel. Panels need other panels. Panels love other panels.
I definitely agree that it is the manifest destiny of computerized comics to embrace the benefits of their new medium. However, infinite canvas is not the only benefit of this medium, nor is it even a particularly great one. I wish that Scott McCloud would take a closer look at comic strips on the web and see that they're using the computer to take control of their work in amazing if less obvious ways than putting the entire graphic novel on a single plane.
Comments
The fact of this matter is that, although the capability is there, the "infinite canvas" is nothing more than a terrible design blunder waiting to happen. The web is certainly more flexible format-wise than a newspaper, but it has borders. No intelligent designer should fail to see that.
The real benefits of the web come in other forms. Hyperlinks, animation, sound, and various sorts of interactivity are the true marks of how comics can evolve on the web. Many examples already exist.