Short-Form Documentary Webcomics

Abstract

This chapter turns to documentary comics that have emerged through digital distribution platforms. The examples I engage with here represent the diversity of short-form documentary comics found in a variety of settings online. While digital networks are far from inclusive, the parts of the global population who are connected in this way have over the past two decades seen the Internet become part of everyday practice—individual and institutional, personal and professional—so pervasively that a world and daily life without it, for many, has become inconceivable. For comics studies, webcomics constitute a rich and, as yet, only partially explored area of research that includes professional networking practices and translocal collaborations, marketing and circulation models, “presencing” (Couldry, 2012, 50-51), and fan practices as much as, though not necessarily distinct from, formal experimentation. Because this project specifically concerns documentary comics, it will highlight a strictly demarcated aspect of webcomics. However, the short-form documentary comics under discussion seem to be a phenomenon innately linked to their particular environment and distribution context, which means that the platforms themselves deserve some attention. I will also consider distinctions between webcomics and hypercomics, and attempt to situate documentary webcomics within a broader, cross-media category of emergent and experimental documentary in the digital and online sphere.