By Linda Kim
Jitterbug Fantasia is an entertainment webzine that features online
games,
digital comics, short films, novels, poetry, and other "webtoys"
created by
Jitterbug Studios. Jitterbug Studios also offers webdesign services
for people
or companies who want innovative, animated, interactive websites,
for which
they have won major awards and received international press coverage.
Beginning initially in 1995 as Jitterbug Press, Jitterbug Studios
used their
site to promote their comics magazine Coven of Angels without going
through
middlemen to reach their audience. Now, as Jitterbug Fantasia, the
site has
been expanded to include full-length novels and downloadable online
games with
a special section on Star Wars fan films and a spoof game,
Star Bears.
Jitterbug utilizes all multimedia aspects of the web (animations,
sound, etc.)
to present their light, humorous, sometimes satirical content.
The diverse features of the site offer Jitterbug Fantasia visitors
an array of
things to do, perhaps depending on how much time they have to spend.
One only
needs five minutes to play the Star Bears game but it takes hours
to read the
b*girls novel. The site is a place where internet users can come back
again
and again to entertain themselves. Although there are many types of
entertainment available at Jitterbug Fantasia (games, novels, comics,
etc.),
there are only a few features of each.
Jitterbug Fantasia may have begun with digital comics (Loving Henry,
created
in 1996 by Kristen Brennan), but since then has done seemingly little
with it.
Perhaps in its efforts to present a plethora of multimedia amusement,
Jitterbug's production of digital comics has been pushed back. Presently,
only
two comics are featured. Neither comic really exploits the capabilities
of the
web to create space-time relations nor does either explore the possibilities
of presenting comics as temporal maps.
The original idea behind publishing material on the internet still
holds for
Jitterbug Studios, however. The artists and writers can deliver their
work
digitally to large audiences through their website without fussing
with
publishing companies and middlemen. Jitterbug Fantasia accomplishes
that for
not only comics but filmmakers and writers.