A comic strip is a sequence of drawings, often 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.
A cartoon is a type of visual art that is typically drawn, frequently animated, in an unrealistic or semi-realistic style. The specific meaning has evolved over time, but the modern usage usually refers to either: an image or series of images intended for satire, caricature, or humor; or a motion picture that relies on a sequence of illustrations for its animation. Someone who creates cartoons in the first sense is called a cartoonist, and in the second sense they are usually called an animator.
Webcomics are comics published on a website or mobile app. While many are published exclusively on the web, others are also published in magazines, newspapers, or comic books.
James Jean is a Taiwanese-American visual artist working primarily in painting and drawing. He lives and works in Los Angeles, where he moved from New York in 2003.
VG Cats is a webcomic written and drawn by Canadian cartoonist Scott Ramsoomair. Published on its own website, it featured the adventures of a pair of anthropomorphic cats, who often played the roles of characters in popular video games that are parodied in the strip. Strips were usually presented in a large format and in full color. The author generally set Mondays as days for updating the comic; however, the update schedule had a reputation of being incredibly sporadic; he frequently mocked his tardiness in updating in various strips due to personal reasons, drawing nude drawings on Patreon and frequent convention appearances. As of March 2018, the site had approximately 380 comics listed in its main archives. Based on this archive alone, VG Cats averaged 25 comics a year while it was at its peak. During 2017-2018 that average has gone down to 5 comics a year. Ramsoomair updated the comic on May 22, 2020, adding a completely different website. Later changes included comic #381, which was planned to be released in February 2020, and the removal of ads, because he felt internet advertising had become "information peddling", stating that he "[doesn't] think I'm okay with what they are anymore". The comic is now very irregularly updated, with only 4 comics being posted since 2018, the most recent update being comic #384 on February 22, 2021.
Sam Brown, pseudonym of Adam Culbert, is an American illustrator and author most noted for his website, explodingdog. The gimmick of the site is that he draws pictures based on titles that visitors to the site send him via email or Twitter. He has also written two books of art and short stories, Wish For Something Better and Amazing Rain, based on the art of his website.
Shaenon K. Garrity is a webcomic creator and science-fiction author best known for her webcomics Narbonic and Skin Horse. She collaborated with various artists to write webcomics for the Modern Tales-family of webcomic subscription services in the early 2000s, and write columns for various comics journals. Since 2003, Garrity has done freelance editing for Viz Media on various manga translations.
Dumbrella is an alliance of webcomic artists who promote one another's sites, travel to conventions, and sell merchandise together. It is also the name of the website of that alliance, which serves as a shared weblog.
SpinnWebe was the personal website of Greg Galcik, also known as "spinn." It gathered the most fame as the home of the Dysfunctional Family Circus, which ran in the late 1990s. Additionally, the site was the showcase for a number of Galcik's other projects, which generally had interactive humor as the unifying theme; in this respect, it anticipated the development of later sites such as Fark and Something Awful. The name SpinnWebe comes from an infamously bad machine translation of the German word for "spider web."
Married to the Sea is a webcomic by husband and wife Drew Fairweather and Natalie Dee. Both Drew and Natalie have creative input on Married to the Sea but the comic is not strictly collaborative. Each has a personal webcomic project: Drew is also the author of Toothpaste for Dinner and Natalie Dee produces NatalieDee.
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal (SMBC) is a webcomic by Zach Weinersmith. The gag-a-day comic features few recurring characters or storylines, and has no set format; some strips may be a single panel, while others may go on for ten panels or more. Recurring themes in SMBC include science, research, superheroes, religion, romance, dating, parenting and the meaning of life. SMBC has run since 2002 and is published daily.
Zachary Alexander Weinersmith is an American cartoonist and writer, best known for his webcomic Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal (SMBC). Outside of SMBC, he is the co-creator of four books, a sketch comedy series, a podcast, and multiple other webcomics.
Max Douglas is a Canadian comic book creator. Since approximately 1996, he has worked under the pen name of Salgood Sam which is derived from a reverse spelling of his name.
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.
Jillian Tamaki is a Canadian American illustrator and comic artist known for her work in The New York Times and The New Yorker in addition to the graphic novels Boundless, as well as Skim and This One Summer written by her cousin Mariko Tamaki.
Although, traditionally, female comics creators have long been a minority in the industry, they have made a notable impact since the very beginning, and more and more female artists are getting recognition along with the maturing of the medium. Women creators have worked in every genre, from superheroes to romance, westerns to war, crime to horror.
Marshall Arisman was an American illustrator, painter, storyteller, and educator.
In contrast with mainstream American comics, webcomics are primarily written and drawn by women and gender variant people. Because of the self-published nature of webcomics, the internet has become a successful platform for social commentary, as well as lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) expression.
Aarthi Parthasarathy is an Indian filmmaker and webcomic creator. Having grown up in Mumbai and living in Bengaluru, Parthasarathy is known for creating the webcomic Royal Existentials and writing for the webcomic Urbanlore. Parthasarathy became part of feminist art collective Kadak in March 2016, where she has collaborated to create Personal (Cyber) Space and Aloe Vera and The Void.
Natalie Riess is an American artist, illustrator, and webcomic creator. She gained public recognition after her comic Space Battle Lunchtime was published by Oni Press in 2016. Her webcomic Dungeon Critters created with Sara Goetter was published by First Second Books in 2020.
