One of these days, I'm going to get back into online comics, just because no-one else is doing it properly. I'm not talking about comics online, and I'm not talking about flash. I'm talking about still (or 99% still) images that are used to tell a story sequentially, but using tricks and techniques that simply could not be done in print, using devices unique to the web.

Oh, there are a few real online comics out there, but they tend to recycle the same old tricks, mostly Scott McCloud's rather sparse few techniques - the infinite canvas, the click-to-reveal, etc.

And they further annoy me because, as web design, many of them suck. I want online comics that conform to the way the web works. I want online comics that could, if pushed, work for blind people. Yeah, I know that's utterly fucking stupid, but I'm a web nerd. I want standards-compliant webcomics, which means they ought to work for blind people, even if it they work badly.

This is slightly less stupid than you think - print comics conform to the way people's eyes work over the page, and the technologies available for printing. If they do something weird, there's usually a good reason. I want the same to be true of web comics - they should conform to the way people work with the web.

'No-one is doing online comics properly.' I'm not saying they have to conform to every guideline of web usability, but I don't want to see an infinite canvas, I don't want to see a shit-load of 100k-plus images and I don't want to see panels cut off halfway because they don't fit my screen resolution. If you want to do that sort of thing, by all means, burn it to a CD and distribute it as digital comics, but don't ask me to come and read it on the web.

I want to see comics that respond to me. Comics that are interactive. Comics that offer me a slightly different experience based on choices I make, or even that someone else makes.

And because I'm a nice guy, I'll throw out a few ways you could do this. I'm not sure all of them are necessarily good, or even useable, but they're worth thinking about. Be warned that this may go off into incomprehensibly geeky territory for many of you.

Option One: Personalisation.

One of my younger brother's favourite books, when he was a kid, was one that my parents had personalised for him. You know the sort of thing: give the company your child's name, the name of their favourite toy, and the town where you live, and you'll get a book back where the child and their favourite toy save their hometown from a dragon, or something.

Not exactly wildly exciting to me, but then, I never said that I wanted online comics that were only for adults.

'I don't want to see an infinite canvas.' My point is, though: we have the technology to auto-generate images. Take a source .gif with the picture and the speech balloon already on it, and it's perfectly possible to put text in there that depends on what the user has typed earlier.

A step further on from that: It's not hard to, say, allow a reader to pick their favourite genre, and customise from there - tell a story with the same basic sequence of events as sci-fi, noir, fantasy, whatever you want. The only hard part would be drawing the story three times, as it were. Best suited to kids stuff, probably, but I'm sure that someone out there has an idea for a clever story that could work like this.

Option Two: Invisible Choices

Let me say right now: I'm not advocating the choose-your-own-adventure story. Well, maybe for kids, again, but not for adults. They don't produce the most rewarding stories. But here's a thought: what if every so often (hell, every page if you like) the story was altered slightly by something the user did, even if they weren't aware they were doing it? The easiest solution would be an image map (a single image, with links to a variety of different pages embedded in it), but one where every bit of the image was a link to somewhere, with a little bit of javascript that would make it look like they all went to the same place. Still, I think that's a bit crude, so how about this: The length of time between the page loading and the user clicking on to the next page could be used instead. (And because you can make the user's browser do that calculation, it doesn't matter how long the page takes to download, because the counter will only start when it's downloaded). So, for instance, a user who reads fast, and clicks quickly, could be given an action story (or part of story), while a user who clicks more slowly would get a quieter, more character-based piece. Still the same basic plot and characters, the same outcomes, but with a little look at different ways things might have gone.

Option Three: Subliminal Interaction

This one is the one that interests me the most. For the most interesting effect, imagine two websites, with nothing visible to the user that would connect the two, except that they both show a comics narrative. What if, using the sort of invisible choices described above (or hell, for this one I'll even go with visible ones), the actions taken that directed the story on one server could also affect the other - or even only affected the other.

'What if the story was altered by something the user did?' So someone reading fast on server A could alter what the person sees on server B, and vice versa. They wouldn't even need to be reading at the same time - server A could pass values across to server B that could be held until the next time someone reads server B's story, which would in turn pass values back to server A.

I'm not suggesting that this lead to an infinite story, or even that each story needs to change hugely, although the latter is certainly quite possible. I'm just thinking about narrative devices that you can't get in print media.

Out Of Options

I'm sure there are other techniques I haven't thought of yet. Ways to combine all the things I've suggested above, and other ideas too, probably ever crazier.

Yes, I'm aware that this is a lot more work than just producing a conventional comics narrative, but to my mind, that's like saying it takes more work to write a novel than a screenplay - the two forms aren't the same thing, and people can work in either, if they so choose.

Of course there are practical problems; firstly, whoever does this sort of thing is going to need to be a gifted storyteller and a talented artist (or have the services of one, at least) as well as a web developer (or again, have the services of one who is willing to deal with mad and crazy ideas). Furthermore, I'm not convinced you'll ever get people to pay for this sort of thing, so whoever does it isn't going to get any reward beyond the satisfaction of breaking new ground.

But there are loads of people running websites that don't make money. They do it for the love of the thing, or simply because they're completely crazy. Surely someone out there is insane enough to dedicate years of their life to a thankless labour of love in online comics?

Please, don't let it be me.

Alasdair Watson is the author of the Eagle Award-nominated RUST.

This article is Ideological Freeware. The author grants permission for its reproduction and redistribution by private individuals on condition that the author and source of the article are clearly shown, no charge is made, and the whole article is reproduced intact, including this notice.