May I offer a few examples?

Dynamic images, which pull randomly from an archive whenever the page refreshes, don’t cause tech problems but add vitality.

Coherent design of the site as a whole, rather than just the landing page with other pages added, makes it more of a destination and brings out the full potential of the site.

Consider a comic like Cyanide and Happiness, which has short comic videos on YouTube. Making them available onsite is not interfering with the book’s ability to present the comic — and shouldn’t the book encourage visits to the site anyway, by mentioning additional material?

I’ll keep this list short by linking to an article I wrote that is more comprehensive: http://floatinglightbulb.blogspot.com/2009/04/koolstuff.html

I agree, beware of technologies that put readers off, no matter how cool they are.

I prefer print, too, though I am watching these Kindle-type devices with interest. But there are thousands who can and do read online for whatever reason, and I enjoy taking advantage of online technology to create a fuller experience. This is empty talk right now, because I won’t be introducing my own site designed with online in mind for at least a few more weeks, when LilNyet.com goes from its current weak design to something new. (My other comics will follow throughout the summer.) And I can’t say I’ve solved all the problems; there is still too much clicking for my taste, though we’ve pretty much beaten the scrolling.

Having independently produced books, print comics and online comics, I have to say that from a creator standpoint online cost structures and profit potential are far more appealing.

My solution is to try to make my webcomics as user friendly and “web fun” as possible, and look toward the day when I can offer print anthologies. And not saddle-stitched throwaways, either, but something that is rewarding to hold, read, and own. I figure if the webcomic makes money and the print anthology breaks even, I am doing great. (For clarity, I should mention that I am both a seasoned entrepreneur and creator of a new generation webcomic business model that is not quite done and not yet publicly released, but which gives me enough optimism to think that more people will make a living from their webcomics in the future. I am not trying to be provocative, it’s just that this is a serious and challenging undertaking and such things take time. Not to mention, I could yet fail at the attempt.)

But yeah, plant a tree today, print must never die.

I’ve yet to see any comics content on the web that could only be delivered by computer and yet at the same time was artistically necessary enough to justify the hassle.

I’m not even sure the Eisner’s should have a webcomic award; maybe they should just include them for consideration in the other categories.

To be honest, I hadn’t read the online Finder until just this moment, because both on Shadowline and McNeil’s site it has a really confusing interface I’ve never had the patience to wrestle through.

Having read it, I can say that it’s very much like that Sam & Max comic, in that it’s a lesser work from a really good cartoonist, and one that isn’t anywhere near the pinnacle of their work.

The main problem is that the whole story of the ring and beauty pageant/clan confirmation ceremony is a small beat in some very long running character arcs. Rachel, Marcie and Lynn were some of the protagonists in Sin Eater, the first story arc in the comic, and that arc really set up all of this. Sin Eater actually takes place several years before the events of the online material, which brings me to one of the things I like about Finder; the scope of it. Watching these characters age, and seeing how events set in motion years ago play themselves out is pretty interesting for me, and it’s not something that happens in too many comics.

I found this story to be kind of moving, and it really made me want to know what’s going to happen next, because I know who all these characters are, what they’re doing, why they’re doing it, and how they got to be in the situation they’re in. But if you don’t know these things, I don’t think you can divine them from the material.

Additionally, and you really don’t get a sense of it from this particular arc, Finder has some very complex and fascinating world-building, something it manages to accomplish while still having a very solid focus on characters. It’s that scope, which doesn’t really come through here, that really attracts me to the comic. Finder has numerous plotlines that range over wide spans of time, space, and social class.

It’s a dense comic. When you read a Finder comic, you get a comic that generally has way more stuff to mull over and think about than any comic of comparable length.

McNeil does have some problems with plotting, though; I only got to the end of the Sin Eater story recently, and it had what I found to be an anti-climactic ending. More then that, I really don’t understand what Jaeger, one of the core characters, thought he was doing when he did… well, it would take too much to get into here.

But I think that same problem with plotting pops up here; Somehow, McNeil has put the episode of Finder that stands alone the least online, where people are most likely to come across it without having any prior knowledge of the series. If you came across this as “Finder, issue 62″ you might just figure you needed more background to understand it and you’d go back to issue one to find out what you’d missed. Putting it online makes people see it as more of a standalone thing, which it really isn’t.

And that’s pretty odd, because most individual Finder graphic novels are pretty self-contained. I’m guessing that this was just the part of the story she wanted to write next, and she didn’t think about how it would be received differently on the web, or how it would read on its own, separated from the larger context.

Artwise, I like McNeil’s art. It’s a little hard for me to defend, though, because you’re so vague about what you dislike about it. One thing I do notice is that she seems to be trying a somewhat more realistic style for the faces in this one, and they’re stiffer then they are in most of her work.

Another little detail that I found interesting is that all the non-clan people are shown in silhouette, or not at all. Which, again, is a detail that you really won’t notice unless you understand the significance of the whole clan thing.

I don’t know; there’s all kinds of details and character moments that interest me as a fan, but you’ve really come in in the middle of the story. It’s totally fair to review it that way, since that’s how it’s sort of advertised, but I really think it’s something to keep in mind. You shouldn’t dismiss a work just on the basis of having read the middle and not understood it.

In addition, I highly admire Ms. Engstrom’s work ethic to get her name out. I think she traveled all the way here to a few webcomic conventions, which is a bit of a feat for someone based in Sweden. Plus, she’s been a fairly open and helpful person online (to a fault… I think she shut her comments section for a while due to a creepy online stalker).