Why American Elf Is Important To Webcomics

Derik Badman has a review of the second collected volume of James Kochalka's webcomic American Elf in print. (I wrote a review of the first volume of American Elf which you can read here)

We don't write as much about Kochalka as we did in the earlier years of Comixpedia, but that is really no reflection on the creativity and importance of his work (instead I tend to think it shows the growth of webcomics as a whole). I think Kochalka is important to webcomics for a couple of reasons. Kochalka's self-enforced construct for American Elf (one comic a day capturing a moment therein, without any compulsion to build an overarching storyline), turned out to be such a natural fit for the web that he both inverted his entire publishing strategy for the comic (he now publishes everyday on the web and then collects the work for print in these large volumes), and he also inspired a whole movement of "journal webcomics" that roughly followed his construct.

Uncategorized

Xaviar Xerexes

Wandering webcomic ronin. Created Comixpedia (2002-2005) and ComixTalk (2006-2012; 2016-?). Made a lot of unfinished comics and novels.

Comments are closed.