By Jeff Roberts
The funny pages comic strip is one of the more interesting constructs
of our
culture. Individually, it has the effect of an illustrated, one-line
joke.
Every day, as we reach the end of the newspaper, we enjoy this one
little
joke almost as a dessert at the end of a meal. The conciseness of
the joke
matches nicely with the concise writing style of the newspaper itself.
However, considering the strip over some number of days, it has the
effect
of a series, a story, similar to a television show. The continuity
of the
strip is ensured by the fact that people read the newspaper, usually
the
same one, every day by habit. So the effect of the strip is closely
tied to
the nature of the newspaper. This raises the question of what happens
when
the funny pages strip is removed and placed in a medium other than
the
newspaper. Frankenstudent, an amateur-drawn funny pages comic which
isn't
really "good" enough to be sold to newspapers, has found
a home on the
internet. What makes it interesting is that it is produced just as
one
would produce a comic for the newspaper, with three-to-four panel
installments released (almost) daily, but instead of being part of
a larger
publication, it stands alone on its own web site.
Frankenstudent is the story of a single father named Gordon who receives
a
package from his brother in the mail. Inside the package is a
Frankenstein's monster-like boy named Franklin, who was sent there
because
his brain needed more development, and what better place to develop
one's
brain than the American school system? This rather loose premise is
the
basis for a "Calvin and Hobbes"-like study into the trials
of childhood.
Franklin amuses us with social incompetency, making use of semantic
gags,
such as when his teacher asks him to "take a seat" and he
picks it up and
leaves with it. Of course, somewhere in the development of the series,
the
focus switches to Derek, Gordon's son and Franklin's "cousin",
whose
obsessive love of snow, innocent and sly way of torturing adults (especially
teachers), and regular encounters with his adversary, a neighborhood
girl,
makes him an almost perfect Calvin clone (almost perfect, because
he is much
less inspired). In terms of quality, Frankenstudent just isn't that
funny.
But that's not too important; most of the comic strips which do appear
in
the funny pages aren't that funny either.
The interesting thing about Frankenstudent is not the quality of
the strip
itself, which, in the world of comic strips, doesn't seem to matter.
The
key (and only) difference between Franskenstudent and a funny pages
comic is
that the funny pages gain an instant audience by virtue of the fact
that
they are part of the daily newspaper. Frankenstudent is produced because
it's part of a site called Keenspot, which provides web space to aspiring
comic strip artists. As in the newspaper, a new strip does come out
almost
daily, but who will go to this site every day simply to read one comic
strip? If the comic is no longer there at the back of the newspaper,
as a
reward for having got through all the bad news of the day, will anyone
want
to take the time to read it? I know I couldn't picture myself checking
back
on Derek and Franklin every day.
On the other hand, the web does provide some possibilities for comics
which
the funny pages don't. First of all, there are archives of all the
past
strips, so that one can read an entire part of the series all at once.
This
seems a much mode for reading the strip, since it's unlikely that
many
people will check in on a daily basis. However, the strips have to
be
scrolled-through, which is irritating as it limits how fast we can
consume
it-speed of consumption is quite important in web-based entertainment.
There's also a section to learn about the author, and learn some about
the
characters. The author, Tony Morris, works in computers by day and
draws
Frankenstudent as a hobby (as would be expected). The "about
the
characters" section doesn't tell much about the characters that
we can't get
by reading the strip itself. There's also a section on the page to
post
messages, however, there are currently only 14 posts, enough to show
that
there is some miniscule fan base from this strip. Many of them are
from
Morris himself, and hardly any say anything worth reading. One interesting
post reads: "Well, apparently I overslept and missed doing over
a month's
worth of strips. How come nobody woke me up? - TonyM."
Frankenstudent might be able to go farther if it were able to abandon
the
newspaper-like mode of production and create something more suitable
to the
web. On the other hand, there really wasn't any other kind of model
for
Morris to follow when he created it, and furthermore, the web design
seems
to be standard across all the Keenspot comics. Hopefully Morris and
Keenspot will pay attention to what is working and what isn't about
this
mode of presentation, and eventually they'll really be able to adapt
to the
new medium.