Not too long ago, a reader put comments up on this site questioning the general quality of webcomics. I thought it would be good to respond via post not to pick on the guy, but because his point is one that’s been made may times by many people, whether they’re proponents of print comics or casual webcomic readers or what not.

“comics not good enough to end up in print” sounds about right. We’d like to think that some vitriol-filled, scathing reviews would improve any of these end products, but the fact is, that, yes, just as the internet is a wonderful library of information in which every piece of information you never wanted to see or have contact with is usually in the path to your goal, likewise good webcomics are incredibly difficult to come by, and even most of the review sites that claim to point toward the higher-quality work are sycophantic droolers.

….

… Penny Arcade and Chugworth and Megatokyo and other low-quality comics may have acheived print status, finally, but they’re still webcomics, and will always only ever be “webcomics.” They will be “comics not good enough to make it into print, who’ve found a wide and mediocre audience that will eat dog food if you serve it to ‘em, and through the powers of the internet, gathered this niche of chowder-headed buffoons and united them into a market that might actually buy the crappy book.” It serves two purposes. It tries to elevate them to the same status as any other book of newspaper cartoons you might find in the humor section, and it gives ‘em something pretty to sign at conventions, and we KNOW how much egomaniac artists and writers love to sign things.

I’m sure that I probably shouldn’t be taking this post too seriously. However, his views are neither wrong nor a minority opinion. There really are a lot of awful webcomics out there. If this blog were to ever to reflect the true depth and breadth of all the webcomics I’ve read, 90% of them would be filled with zero-star reviews. That’s right, those not even good enough to warrant a write up. Half of them have no right telling jokes, half of them have no right telling stories, and almost 100% of them should not pick up a pen or pencil or Wacom tablet without taking a basic cartooning class or at least reading How to Draw Cars the Hot Wheels Way first. ’tis only my pity for these misguided souls that stays my hand.

But does this mean that webcomics, as a whole, are thus inherently an inferior medium to print? Around the same time, I ran across a Wall Street Journal article entitled “Does the Internet Make You Smarter?” The article wasn’t specifically about webcomics. However, it did examine the total mediocrity of everything online. Think webcomics are the only thing plagued by awfulness? How about Youtube vs. television? Blogs vs. newsprint? The problem is everywhere.

The writer of the article, Clay Shirky, takes things one step further. He mentions that this is hardly the first time the world has seen such a phenomenon. He compares the modern digital revolution to the advent of the printing press.
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