A comic strip is a sequence of cartoons, arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions. Traditionally, throughout the 20th and into the 21st century, these have been published in newspapers and magazines, with daily horizontal strips printed in black-and-white in newspapers, while Sunday papers offered longer sequences in special color comics sections. With the advent of the internet, online comic strips began to appear as webcomics.
Webcomics are comics published on the internet, such as on a website or a mobile app. While many webcomics are published exclusively online, others are also published in magazines, newspapers, or comic books.
Tom the Dancing Bug is a weekly satirical comic strip by cartoonist and political commentator Ruben Bolling that covers mostly US current events from a liberal point of view. Tom the Dancing Bug won the 2002, 2003, 2007, 2008, and 2009 Association of Alternative Newsweeklies Awards for Best Cartoon. The strip was awarded the 2010 Sigma Delta Chi Award for editorial cartooning by the Society of Professional Journalists and best cartoon in the 2018 Robert F. Kennedy Book & Journalism Awards. His work on the strip won Bolling the 2017 Herblock Prize and the 2021 Berryman Award for Editorial Cartoons, and he was a finalist in the Editorial Cartooning category for the 2019 and 2021 Pulitzer Prize.
Jerry Holkins is an American writer. He is the co-creator and writer of the webcomic Penny Arcade along with its artist Mike Krahulik. Holkins sometimes uses the pseudonym "Tycho Brahe", which is also the name of a Penny Arcade character based on Holkins.
The Family Circus is a syndicated comic strip created by cartoonist Bil Keane and, since Keane's death in 2011, written, inked and rendered (colored) by his son Jeff Keane. The strip generally uses a single captioned panel with a round border, hence the original name of the series, which was changed following objections from the magazine Family Circle. The series debuted February 29, 1960, and has been in continuous production ever since. According to publisher King Features Syndicate, it is the most widely syndicated cartoon panel in the world, appearing in 1,500 newspapers. Compilations of Family Circus comic strips have sold more than 13 million copies worldwide.
Dinosaur Comics is a constrained webcomic by Canadian writer Ryan North. It is also known as "Qwantz", after the site's domain name, "qwantz.com". The first comic was posted on February 1, 2003, although there were earlier prototypes. Dinosaur Comics has also been printed in three collections and in a number of newspapers. The comic centers on three main characters, T-Rex, Utahraptor and Dromiceiomimus.
Scary Go Round is a webcomic by John Allison. Running from 2002 to 2009, it is set in the fictional North Yorkshire town of Tackleford and follows university students battling fantasy and science fiction threats to the town. The comic was a successor to Allison's first comic, Bobbins, and was followed by Bad Machinery, all of which take place in the same general setting.
Speech balloons are a graphic convention used most commonly in comic books, comics, and cartoons to allow words to be understood as representing a character's speech or thoughts. A formal distinction is often made between the balloon that indicates speech and the one that indicates thoughts; the balloon that conveys thoughts is often referred to as a thought bubble or conversation cloud.
Brad Guigar is an American cartoonist who is best known for his daily webcomic Greystone Inn and its sequel Evil Inc.
David M Willis is an American web cartoonist currently living in Columbus, Ohio. He is best known for his interconnected series of webcomics Roomies!, It's Walky!, Shortpacked!, and Dumbing of Age. Willis is also known online for his chatrooms and forums including "ItsWalky". KUTV in Salt Lake City calls him a satirist who is "a little bit edgy."
Lethargic Lad is a protagonist in the comic strip of the same name, created by Greg Hyland sometime in the late 1980s. The character is notable for being very slow and inactive. Lethargic Lad does not speak, though he sometimes mutters "Umm...".
Wondermark is a webcomic created by David Malki which was syndicated to Flak Magazine and appeared in The Onion's print edition from 2006 to 2008. It features 19th-century illustrations that have been recontextualized to create humorous juxtapositions. It takes the horizontal four-panel shape of a newspaper strip, although the number of panels varies from one to six or more. It is updated intermittently.
Liō is a daily comic strip created by American artist Mark Tatulli and distributed by Universal Press Syndicate/Universal Uclick/Andrews McMeel Syndication since May 15, 2006. As a pantomime strip, it has an international appeal. In 2008, the strip brought Tatulli a National Cartoonists Society Newspaper Comic Strip Award.
Multiplex is a comedy webcomic written and drawn by Gordon McAlpin which ran from 2005 to 2017. The comic focuses on the lives of the staff of the Multiplex 10 Cinemas and the movies that play there. Originally envisioned as an animated short, Multiplex is visually inspired by cut paper animation and vector graphics. Three print collections of the webcomic were released from 2010 to 1017. McAlpin's webcomic ended in April 2017, and the series is to be rebooted in the form of a stand-alone animated film, titled Multiplex 10.
Photo comics are a form of sequential storytelling using photographs rather than illustrations for the images, along with the usual comics conventions of narrative text and word balloons containing dialogue. They are sometimes referred to in English as fumetti, photonovels, photoromances, and similar terms. The photographs may be of real people in staged scenes, or posed dolls and other toys on sets.
The history of comics has followed different paths in different parts of the world. It can be traced back to early precursors such as Trajan's Column, in Rome, Egyptian hieroglyphs and the Bayeux Tapestry.
Sluggy Freelance is a long-running webcomic written and drawn by Pete Abrams. Starting in 1997, it is one of the oldest successful webcomics, and as of 2012 had hundreds of thousands of readers. Abrams was one of the first comic artists successful enough to make a living from a webcomic.
Subnormality is a satirical and often absurdist webcomic by a cartoonist who uses the pseudonym Winston Rowntree. Rowntree is a former resident of Regina, Saskatchewan who now lives in Toronto, Ontario. The strip appears at Rowntree's own website and occasionally at Cracked, where Rowntree also publishes the related webcomic Abnormality and created the animated web series peopleWatching.
Comics has developed specialized terminology. Several attempts have been made to formalize and define the terminology of comics by authors such as Will Eisner, Scott McCloud, R. C. Harvey and Dylan Horrocks. Much of the terminology in English is under dispute, so this page will list and describe the most common terms used in comics.
"Loss", sometimes referred to as "loss.jpg", is a strip published on June 2, 2008, by Tim Buckley for his gaming-related webcomic Ctrl+Alt+Del. It is part of a storyline in which the main character Ethan and his fiancée Lilah are expecting their first child. Presented as a four-panel comic with no dialogue, the strip shows Ethan entering a hospital where he sees Lilah weeping in a hospital bed after suffering a miscarriage. Buckley cited events in his life as inspiration for the comic.
