By Jeannie Ben-Hain
Frankenstudent is an online comic strip produced by Tony Morris.
He has been posting the strip online since Dec. 6, 1999, posting comics
daily Monday through Friday of most weeks. Frankenstudent is a strip
about a 3rd grader named Franklin who is a child-size Frankenstein,
living with his cousin Derek and his father. Other regular characters
include the class bully, the class nerd, their teacher, and Derek
and Franklin's grandparents. The strip's humor is a good combination
of classic elementary school humor (like the accidents that occur
when learning to ride a bike) and wacky events caused by Franklin's
monster nature. Some examples include Franklin's arm coming off and
needing restitching and his "monstermaker" which turns Derek
into a Werepig.
The online nature of the strip gives it some uniqueness. Mr. Morris
found that publishers would not hire him to create his strip so online
publication allows him to offer his strip to the public without relying
on it as a source of income. Unlike print comic strips, the site allows
readers to get caught up in the storyline even after discovering the
comic strip late into its run. This ability to read an entire collection
of strips in chronological order allows the creator to have the freedom
of a continuing storyline without the fear of confusing new readers.
At the same time, Mr. Morris does not seem to take advantage of many
of the innovative aspects unique to the web that Scott McCloud discussed
in class. He creates all of the comics by hand, often using shading
hatchmarks, and scans them in to post them. He maintains the 3-4 horizontal
panel nature of most print comic strips. There are a few color strips,
but mostly Frankenstudent appears in black and white. This seems to
be disadvantageous because one of the main characters is green and
it seems like more humor could be created by using color. There is
one week that the strip deviates from the set pattern. The strip appears
in color and is presented vertically with panels of varying sizes.
The story is a face-off between print comic strip characters and their
online counterparts. Unfortunately, the joke involved in the strip
seems to be an in joke in the industry and I didn't really understand
it.
The site also contains areas dedicated to information about the author
and the characters of the strip. In addition, there are links to other
online comic strips, including Tony Morris's one panel strip called
"The Panels". All in all, I enjoyed reading the strip and
was able to do so thanks to the internet which allowed Mr. Morris
to get it out to his public. It would be nice to see him take advantage
of more of the unique features the web provides.