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Chapter 5 - Digital Comics

An Old/New Form

from Part I - Forms

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 August 2023

By
Giorgio Busi Rizzi
Edited by
Maaheen Ahmed
Maaheen Ahmed
Affiliation:
Universiteit Gent, Belgium
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Summary

This chapter provides an overview of the variety of contemporary digital comics.

Digital comics encompass diverse objects, both online and offline, ranging from print comics that are digitized to webcomics that resist print publications and have greater affinities with video games or animation. The chapter regroups these different formats into three main categories; it reconstructs the history of digital comics, isolating four partially overlapping phases connected to the evolution of digital culture. It traces the similarities and divergences between digital and print comics, identifying their formal specificities and contextualizing them in the analog/digital debate; and discusses their different characteristics in terms of immersion and agency. Finally, it reflects on the relationship between digital media and participatory practices on the one hand, and comics preservation on the other, elaborating on the issue of copyright infringement.

In doing so, the chapter offers a multidisciplinary and comprehensive account of the heterogeneous nature and stratified history of digital comics.

Keywords

digital comicswebcomicstransmedial narratologymedia sociologymedia archeologyreader agencyimmersion
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Companion to Comics , pp. 102 - 122
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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