Delirium wrote:
http://www.english.ufl.edu/imagetext/ See what I mean about the dangers of reasoning from personal ignorance? Now I eagerly await objections that don't boil down to "but webcomics are worse for Wikipedia than Pokemon."
Assuming that was directed at me, then I'm not sure what you mean about "the dangers of reasoning from personal ignorance".
I meant the implication that there was not and could not be an actual academic peer-reviewed journal of webcomics, which has come up a bit in this thread - that's definitely arguing from personal ignorance.
I was arguing against the general principle that we ought to write novel histories in cases where existing ones don't exist. If in this particular case one does exist, then of course that doesn't apply.
Of course. Every crank has fifty references for their original research stitched together in a novel fashion, but that doesn't make it not original research.
- d.
On Feb 27, 2006, at 11:17 AM, David Gerard wrote:
I meant the implication that there was not and could not be an actual academic peer-reviewed journal of webcomics, which has come up a bit in this thread - that's definitely arguing from personal ignorance.
To be fair, ImageTexT not a journal of webcomics - it's a journal of comics and animation in general, broadly construed, that has published what is, to my knowledge, the only peer-reviewed piece on webcomics.
The journal on webcomics is the Webcomics Examiner, which is not peer reviewed, though it is run by Joe Zabel, an artist who has worked with Harvey Pekar on American Splendor,
I've worked on both, as it happens.
Another note is that I just got done with the 4th annual comics conference here at UF, and though no papers were presented on webcomics (Which is in part, I suspect, because the topic - Comics and Childhood - didn't really lend itself to those papers), I can tell you that webcomics and digital distribution were on a LOT of people's minds in Q&A, and there's a strong push for the 2008 conference to be on digital comics.
What it comes down to is this:
Is there a systematic peer-reviewed academic study and classification of webcomics at present? No.
Is there a systematic popular academic study and classification of webcomics at present? Yes.
Is it any good? Yes.
Are webcomics something of concern to comics scholarship? Yes, though few people in the (fairly small) field of comic studies have them as a primary focus. That said, few people have post-war newspaper strips as a primary focus. So we should get right on deleting [[Calvin and Hobbes]].
None of which is the real question. The real question is:
Has the webcomics community developed a sufficient non-promotional body of thought to be taken seriously in its self-assessment of what its important parts are?
Between the Examiner, the academic attention, the division of the community into profitable syndicates, and people like Eric Burns, the answer is, frankly, an unequivocal yes.
-Phil
Snowspinner wrote:
Has the webcomics community developed a sufficient non-promotional body of thought to be taken seriously in its self-assessment of what its important parts are?
Between the Examiner, the academic attention, the division of the community into profitable syndicates, and people like Eric Burns, the answer is, frankly, an unequivocal yes.
See, I agree with the above. Each is a source that can be utilised in it's own way. I'd add the published comics press, like The Journal, which reviews webcomics to the list, and note that newspapers reprint and review some of the strips too.