Scott McCloud's Quartet of Online Comics.
Reviewing the contribution to online comics from the writer/artist that deconstructed print comics.

Reviewed by Alasdair Watson.

Scott McCloud is the man behind such works as ZOT! and UNDERSTANDING COMICS He is also (unsurprisingly) the man behind http://www.scottmccloud.com, wherein he can be found applying his talents to the still-young medium of the online comic.

He offers the reader a choice of 4 comics with different subject matter in each. All the works are beautifully presented and well written comics, but they meet with varying levels of success as online comics. It's noticeable that the oldest work is also the weakest.

"All the works are beautifully presented and well written comics…"

The first work is an adaptation of Robert Browning's "Porphyria's Lover" - and while it all looks very nice, it takes far too long to load, requiring the viewer to download some 500K of images before it becomes visible. And once it is visible we're left to discover that we have to learn to read in odd loops, rather than top to bottom and left to right. On the one hand, this requirement sets a definite rhythm to the work, as we become so much more aware of our movement from one panel to the next, but on the other, it does make the work seem like a bit harder going than it needs to be.

His next work is entitled "Ninety Five" and is a story about reading to his daughter, Sky. This is off to a stronger start straight away, as it loads substantially faster. It also provides a certain element of reader interactivity, requiring the reader to click on some of the panels in order to reveal what's behind them, in the manner similar to that of a child's pop-up book, which is entirely appropriate for the story. However, rather than accomplishing this through JavaScript (an easy enough feat), he does it by linking through the image to another page, on which the story continues, with the previously obscured panel now visible. Oddly, though, he's chosen to loose some of the story on these pages - it's organised into tiers, and as we move to other pages, the upper tiers go missing. While this could be a device to save those without the ability to cache graphics a bit of download time, it still seems a little strange to find bits of the story vanishing.

Moving on, we come to perhaps the strongest piece of work on the site. Readers of UNDERSTANDING COMICS will remember the story of Carl, which could be read in many directions. McCloud has adopted a similar style here, with the added twist that while the map that the panels will fill is laid out, only some of the panels begin with any content. New panels are added at the rate of one a week (which almost certainly sure helps to keep the traffic to the site constant), and are actually suggested by the readers, so that McCloud picks his favourite suggestion each week. This is one of the best ideas yet seen in online comics, something that really makes use of the capacity that the medium provides for easy feedback and interaction, using it to build a more involving narrative (and perhaps encourage a sense of community about the site).

Finally, what is perhaps the most enjoyable work: "My Obsession with Chess" is a strong a personal story that takes advantage of neat square shapes that the web requires for images, using a table to lay them out in a chess like pattern. However, it also does what a lot of people have regarded as a very clever trick, and requires the use of horizontal as well as vertical scrolling. And this perhaps is what bothers me slightly about the all the comics bar the "Carl" story. They're all good strong narratives, reasonably attractive and involving, but they're not good web design, because most people aren't used to having to scroll sideways to read on the web. It's possible to get them to scroll downwards without breaking them out of the narrative, but sideways is unusual enough that the reader's involvement in the narrative suffers.

While it's ludicrous to say that online comics should follow strictly all the principles of good web design, there are some things that should be a consideration. Firstly and most obviously, download times. Many of these pages take a very long time to download, and could probably be made slightly faster, both by improved graphics optimisation, or a few more page breaks. Secondly, the readability. If something is normally done a certain way online then it's often best to stick to this, especially at the moment while the web is still young. When it has been around as long as print comics, that'll be the time to experiment in odd ways with the medium. For now, however, people are still having to learn to read online, and it's probably best not to confuse them.

Still, McCloud's mistakes are more than made up for by the quality of the material available, and as a result his site is an excellent first step toward online comics, better by some way than many of the other online comics out there. Worth a visit, certainly.

Alasdair Watson is the writer of the Eagle Nominated RUST.

Alasdair Watson is the writer of the Eagle Nominated RUST.

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