Web Comics

Comics are a staple of print media - particularly newspapers -  and the syndication process by which authors get their work published encourages comics that have mass-appeal. Tragically, as is all too often the case, mass appeal is synonmous with "mostly garbage", and so newspaper comics are almost uniformly mediocre. Cases in point include Dilbert, Drabble and arguably the platonic form of mediocre comic, Garfield.

While there have been some notable exceptions - The Far Side, Peanuts, Calvin and Hobbes - the process of syndication basically ensures that only turgid, watered down and unremarkable comics ever see widespread publication, and the world seemed to have resigned itself to filling the Sunday funny pages with re-runs of Hagar the Horrible. However, the humble comic received a new burst of life when artists all over the globe realised that they could reach an audience directly, bypassing the syndication process, by posting their comics on the Internet.

The result has been an explosion of talented - and not so talented - artists and writers taking the concept of the newspaper strip comic and putting it to varied and often fantastic uses.