Week of 4/28/20 - Webcomics and the experience

I think that in terms of where I became heavily involved with comics is specifically around this section. Webcomics have shaped a lot of my interests and what I currently enjoy, back in 2011 I read Problem Sleuth which was this webcomic that was on mspaintadventures.com which would later on become homestuck.com. Made by a man named Andrew Hussie, this would be the last comic he made with a complete autonomy over storytelling. Problem Sleuth was particularly interesting because it combined a lot of film noir detective story tropes while mixing it with retro video game references and mechanics through plot. It really intrigued me because prior to reading Problem Sleuth I had never really found an interest in graphic literature that combined two genres and synthesized them in a way that PS did.

After I had begun Problem Sleuth this obviously led me into reading Homestuck and like most teenagers around my age in 2011-2013, Homestuck completely took over as a storm. There were so many fans that spawned because of this webcomic, which to say that its a comic would be giving it too little credit. With over 8000 pages, and a sequel, Homestuck is longer than the entirety of War and Peace, which in itself is incredibly intimidating. That being said, the story is incredible for the first 5 acts, after that, the writing completely nosedives and its clear to me that a lot of the consideration and thought that was put into the first four or five acts didn’t make it to the latter parts of the comic. Which goes to show me that a good idea simply isn’t enoough, like most of Steven King’s novels, Homestuck ends in a tumultuous mess, and though I realize this now. A lot of the experience that enamoured me about this webcomic was the constant stream of updates, an advantage that webcomics have over traditional comics, they could be updated more frequently and produced at a higher speed. It was definitely innovative for its time.