But you would only know that if you actually read it, which they were obviously unwilling to do.

It’s their loss, since I think that sort of discrimination is overlooking one of the truely great quality of webcomics, which is the non-standard formats that they can follow… I think the narrow vision is a hangover from the print format days and nothing more than that.

1) Punchline- or point- oriented updates, with little to no continuity.

2) Serial story-comics, with punchlines or points being a usual focus of the individual updates.

3) Serial story-comics, where the particular installments focus less on themselves and more on pushing the cast through various arcs – comic-booky, I guess.

4) Single story comics. The focus is telling one story through from beginning to end. Graphic novely.

There’s probably a category of 5) what I did not think of. Very few webcomics are going to fit entirely into one of those categories, but I think that this more represents the field than the vague “short” and “long” form.

Personally, I think the Eisners should ignore webcomics unless they’re in comic book form that has made it to print. It’s the comic book form that Will Eisner pushed that they’re interested in, and they’re doing themselves and anyone else affected a huge discredit by pretending otherwise.

I think on a level, Burns was right. It’s the means of distribution. All comics have to learn to work in the confines of that distribution. For example, you can always tell whether a story comic went web or print first. Generally, a good story comic on the web has an “umph” feeling to each and every page, as that’s all the audience is left with for a time. The originally print comic lacks this, sometimes painfully so, while offering pages meant to read continuously at a slooow pace.

So I think a webcomic is a comic that uses the web and uses it well.

Or manages to trick people into thinking they use it well. Most people will take frequent updates over decent content. Dreamland Chronicles, anyone? *retch*

Syndicate strips are funnelled down into a lowest common denominator while webcomics can explore niches far better (My particular interest being in genre webcomics means I’m somewhat biased). The geekcore audience has also changed the basis of where the mainstream in webcomics comes from, and where it can go next.

http://www.webcomics.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=50

Similar question for you to chew on

Anyways,I’m not entering this year, but when I submitted the comic before the same “long format” line was there. It was also there when PVP won if I remember correctly, and at that time Copper was also nominee that year as well as the year before. It hasn’t stopped any strips from being nominated so I quite honestly think it’s something that people are fine with not worrying about. Maybe things will suddenly become stricter in the future, but there’s no precedent to suggest that will be the case.The fact that the category actually refers to webcomics directly suggests that things are moving in the opposite direction… even if it’s at the cost of excluding other forms of digital comics.

Konami could have entered their PSP graphic novels last year, but if they had anything like that available this year they couldn’t unless it was put online, and that’s not cool.I think it would have been awesome for some other kind of digital comic to blindside the comic makers on the interweb and beat them in “their” category.

Many webcomics, even those most resembling graphic novels in style and format, retain a level of gag-a-day because the delivery system only gives you one page at a time, for many only one page a week. On that criteria, even Girl Genius slips into short form.

As far as the Eisners are concerned, they were once heavily criticised for giving an award to a webcomic (might have been Sam & Max, but I’m not sure) that only produced 7 pages over the whole year. And one year Minus was nominated, even though it states that it is specifically aiming for newspaper format, and has virtually no continuity.

If you are going to limit what webcomics are eligible for an award, you need to have a clear and consistent definition of terms.