They’ll be a few readers of this blog (no doubt) that wonder at some of the talk here about webcomics and wonder what it has to do with them as readers of the great work. Well, obviously you have Rob’s adaptation of the work into the comic strip form to educate you and to lead you into this other world of comics. It’s this other world that interests me in the main and I too wonder how Rob’s comic book version of Ulysses fits into that world. So let me try and put Ulysses “Seen” into some context right here.

Recently I’ve spent some time reviewing some of the webcomic offerings from Top Shelf 2.0 – the print arm of which is a noted publisher of smart comics likely to appeal to our readership here. I’ll continue to keep an eye on Top Shelf for sure as it’s a model likely to throw up some interesting strips now and then. But it’s a big world of comics out there both in print and in internet-land and I wonder if any of us really knows what it all means and how to navigate around it to appreciate the big picture?

It would be easy to hunt down the ridiculous or join in with the praise of the big names and the usual suspects, so like Ulysses perhaps, we’re not going to take the easy route. I’m going to lead you through a world of webcomics and hopefully discuss with you some finer points, some pressing issues, a few dirty secrets – we’ll look into some technical problems, turn over a few rocks to see what scurries out and prepare to celebrate the slaughter of a sacred cow or two!

To my mind every webcomic presents an opportunity to discuss something interesting about the very nature of webcomics themselves. In the past and on my own blog I’ve closely followed the relatively new competition-based webcomic site over at Zudacomics, and although the content within that site waivers from the sublime to the ridiculous each comic presents the same opportunity to discuss process and point. What is the point of a webcomic? Should we even call them comics? Or even webcomics? I’ll continue to talk about the entries on my own blog in the context of the competition, but I’ll use them here to open out the discussion.

Of course Zuda is not the only game in town. We already have Top Shelf 2.0 to talk about – a completely different model and set of sensibilities to Zuda. Also there is Act-i-vate – a well respected community of webcomic creators comprising many familiar names. Transmission-X also boasts a growing reputation as a webcomic collective and we’ll take a look-see there too. Although the necessity for independent hosting services seems to be fading we can also look to Drunk Duck and many other hosted communities and naturally there are many webcomic creators who simply don’t need companionship in any of these ways – those who simply go it alone.

I’ll be looking at the benefits of any and all of the above routes. But mainly I’ll be asking why! There are many and varied reasons for the why of webcomics. And I won’t forget print comics either – though they’ve been around a lot longer. As the internet has revolutionised most other media so shall it revolutionise all things in print. Comics aside you can download Joyce’s masterpiece in a number of forms from twice as many places. Will it kill the bookshop? So many questions for so many different media – and comics won’t escape unscathed, but this medium has its own unique problems and advantages. Will those aspects of the medium be the salvation of comics online or in print or the damnation of them both?

As Homer’s Ulysses had many strange adventures so shall we. Join me tomorrow to begin.