Should Web Comics Be Printer-friendly?
By Hervé St-LouisJan 14, 2009 - 20:30:47 PM
A common concern of Web comics creators is and readers is how easily it is to read a Web comic strip on a screen. The interesting thing about this concern is that there as myriads of solutions and formats that exist matching almost the total number of Web comics available. Asked to propose an answer to this creative existential question, I’ll go with a simple one. Web comics creators should make whatever they post online easily printable for the people who read their comic strips. My argument is that thinking about making a Web comics printer friendly will influence everything related to the actual delivery and creation of the comic strip, and therefore, make it a more appealing proposition to readers.
When Scott McCloud wrote his book, Reinventing Comics, he tried, unsuccessfully to map out the world of online comics. One of the many experiments he tried, and continues to do so on his Web site, is to post strips that are browsed horizontally and or others that are part of long continuous vertical pages. From a creative standpoint, exploring and experimenting the limits of one’s craft was a commendable. However, from a practical point of view, taking the viewer’s point of view as the paramount motivation, this was poor design and not user friendly.
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| Source: http://www.scottmccloud.com/comics/icst/icst-5/icst-5-full.html |
When it comes to online comics, the window with which creators can play and explore before alienating their readers is limited. Just because a comic strip is published online, it does not give the creators a freehand to disregard the wishes of the user that, in all matter, are the reason the Web site exists. Reading online scripts is notoriously laborious and counterproductive, as a form of entertainment. Although one expects to waste time while reading an online comic book, one still expects to have a somewhat fulfilling experience. If all the time a reader is spent figuring put a complicated interface, scrolling back and forth on pages that do not fit in a standard monitor layout, there is little enjoyments.
I will say this Web comics, should always let readers forget that they are reading something off a screen or in Cyberspace. One should be engaged in the story, not the artefacts used to deliver it. Failing this, good Web comics publishers should prepare good print-ready versions of their strips that users can print easily and read offline. Now, many will say that if a Web comics is easily printable, that it defeats the purpose of putting it online in the first place. Others will bring up an economic reason for not encouraging users to print an online comic strip, when they should be buying the collected edition or pay a token to access the Web site. To these and other critiques against making a Web comics print-friendly, I answer, if you think you’re readers won’t try to print your strips, if they are mildly interested in them, then you are deluding yourself. So instead of trying to fight a normal impulse and activity, that will facilitate the lives of your readers, go easy on your readers and help them do what they normally will.
My suggestions, is to stick with a page layout that is easily printable for the majority of your audience. For example, perhaps you will find that more readers, because of their country of origin, would favour the A4 format over the letter one. Than make your page suitable for them. If you have time and money, why not make print-friendly versions of your Web comic strips for both formats? Be careful about using something that fits well in a rectangular page instead of a square. Few people print with square paper. If the actual Web comic is well formatted, there is no need to create supplemental versions that are print-ready, saving the publisher time and money.
Page annotations are important. Every page of your Web comic should have a proper title, page number, reference to URLs, the Web site where the strip is published and your credits. This way readers can easily organize distribute your strips to others, helping your gain a wider online audience.
The most important aspect of any Web comic is to have clear and readable type. Many Web comics fail in that regard. It is very difficult to read the captions. Worse, are fuzzy panels and captions that were posted with too little resolution. If readers can’t read your Web comics, online and offline because of bad fonts, then there’s no point putting all this content online.
My argument in this article is to alert Web comics publishers and creators that their contents should be user friendly, even when they intend their users to buy a collected book edition of their online material. I view this as a long term sales approach. Thinking of the quick bucks may not support this mindset however.