Fleen reported yesterday that Websnark is back at a somewhat new web address. I checked in to see if he’s looking into webcomics again. The answer, I think, is no… since “webcomics”, in his opinion, is becoming an obsolete term:

Back in the old days, we had a lot of distinctions we threw out. Newspaper Comics. Webcomics. Independent Comics. Mainstream Comics. Comic Books. Editorial Cartoons, Cartooning, Cartoonists, et al ad nauseum.

That was then. It’s 2011 now, and it seems to me we can simplify all of the above.

It’s “Comics.”

That’s all. Just “Comics.” Webcomics are increasingly meaningless as terminology — I have access to several thousand of Marvel’s archived comics at will. I can buy almost anything from DC at a moment’s notice. There are few to no comics available in newspapers that can’t be seen on a website. Setting up an artificial distinction based on… well, community identification from 5-10 years ago just seems silly.

I argued that webcomics are still a valid term a while back myself. However, I’ll leave, you, the readers of the Webcomic Overlook, to decide. “Webcomics” — meaningless or not?

I’m still on break, though right now I’m in the more “trying to catch up with reviews” phase than the “kicking back and soaking in the rays” phase. So, I thought I’d hit y’all up with a miniature interactive update. A while ago, a co-worker and I got to talking about webcomics. (Webcomic discussion in a non-internet setting? Inconceivable!) Anyway, among his recommendations was the extremely popular Hyperbole and A Half. The minute I clicked on the site, I knew I’d seen it before … but I hadn’t considered it a webcomic. It doesn’t look like one in a traditional sense. Which begs the question: is my rigid definition of what is and what isn’t a webcomic wrong and out-of-date?