Heidi MacDonald (from The Beat, broheims) reports on an interesting development in digital comics: book reviews done in the form of sequential art at the Barnes & Noble site.

Why hadn’t anyone thought of this sooner?

Actually, Ward Sutton has done this before. His work has previously appeared in the Village Voice (h/t Jewish Book Council Blog). By the way, you may also know Mr. Sutton as “Kelly,” the man behind the subversive editorial toons at the Onion.

Honestly, I’d thought of doing comic style reviews (not of webcomics, necessarily) in the past, but I sorta got scared off by how time consuming that would be. Plus, they’d end up like giant text boxes anyway (which, let’s face it, Ward Sutton’s comic kinda is). Will Ward’s bold experiment stand the test of time, or will it just be some sort of literary crime?

Still, I see this as part of the natural progression in webcomics. For a medium that started off with comics featuring two guys sitting on a couch reviewing video games, we’ve now reached a point where webcomics are reviewing T. C. Boyle’s The Women. It’s like webcomics have gone upscale!

(Incidentally, someone should really come up with a webcomic of two dudes playing video games, but talking about Kurt Vonnegut novels. Money in the bank, people. Money in the bank.)