Webcomic
With webcomics the restrictions of traditional books, newspapers or magazines can be lifted, allowing artists and writers to take advantage of the web's unique capabilities.
Some webcomics stretch the boundaries of taste, taking advantage of the fact that Internet censorship is virtually nonexistent in countries like the United States.
Scott McCloud, an early advocate of webcomics since 1998,[11] pioneered the idea of the "infinite canvas" where, rather than being confined to normal print dimensions, artists are free to spread out in any direction indefinitely with their comics.
[12][13] Such a format proved highly successful in South-Korean webcomics when JunKoo Kim implemented an infinite scrolling mechanism in the platform Webtoon in 2004.
[16] The first comics to be shared through the Internet were Eric Millikin's Witches and Stitches, which he started uploading on CompuServe in 1985.
Early webcomics were often derivatives from strips in college newspapers,[citation needed] but when the Web became widely popular in the mid-1990s, more people started creating comics exclusively for this medium.
This decade had also seen an increasingly larger number of successful webcomics being adapted into animated series in China and Japan.
[20][21] In July 2000, Austin Osueke launched eigoMANGA, publishing original online manga, referred to as "webmanga".
Contributors included UK-based comic book creators Pat Mills, Simon Bisley, John Bolton, and Kevin O'Neill, and the author Clive Barker.
In March 2001, Shannon Denton and Patrick Coyle launched Komikwerks.com serving free strips from comics and animation professionals.
The site launched with 9 titles including Steve Conley's Astounding Space Thrills, Jason Kruse's The World of Quest, and Bernie Wrightson's The Nightmare Expeditions.
[29] In the second half of the 2000s, webcomics became less financially sustainable due to the rise of social media and consumers' disinterest in certain kinds of merchandise.
[34] Many traditionally print-comics focused organizations have added award categories for comics published on the web.
For some web cartoonists, a print release may be considered the "goal" of a webcomic series, while for others, comic books are "just another way to get the content out.
Some artists are not able to syndicate their work in newspapers because their comics are targeted to a specific niche audience and would not be popular with a broader readership.
Cultures surrounding non-anglophone webcomics have thrived in countries such as China, France, India, Japan, and South Korea.
Indian webcomics are successful as they reach a large audience for free[43] and they are frequently used by the country's younger generation to spread social awareness on topics such as politics and feminism.
