Educational web comics

[Wikkit]

I'm launching a website detatiling a variety of pulse jet engines. Along with theory, history, designs, etc., I'm planning to have a few how-to type articles. Right now I'm planning on doing the "how-to"s in regular old text with a few graphics, but I'm contemplating making comics instead. They would be more interesting, and there isn't anything like it in this particular community of websites.

Has anyone done anything like this? Has anyone seen anything like this?

Another unrelated question that I don't want to start a new thread for: is http://www.angryflower.com/machin.gif one comic strip or two? There's a syndicated strip in my local newspaper on Sundays that does a similar thing, having a three line strip where the first line is the title and a two panel strip that is outside the story of the two lines below it.

Ben

[Bob Stevenson]

I've seen things off and on over the years in print. I even actually did a couple instructional comics for a model airplane magazine on flight physics. On the web, a hard drive tutorial done in flash was posted here a couple of months ago. It allowed you to zoom in to examine the guts of a had drive and was accompanied by explanatory text. It was posted to entice someone into creating a zooming comic whose story developed as you zoomed. Does anyone have the address?

It seems to me that any instructional material with illustrations on the web could be considered comics. It doesn't need a box around it or words in balloons to count and by its nature alone, instructions are sequential (Though it lacks characters, story, time, all are implicit.)

I think that's one of the points of Scott McCloud's ideas. For comics to grow on the web they need to branch out into different subject matter and embrace rather than reject. I'm sure someone would disagree with my loose definition of comics but I think it can only make the medium stronger to include/welcome this type of project.

Good Luck

Bob Stevenson
Journeyintohistory.com

[Tailsteak]

I'd say "The Machine" is one strip, because the two ends are so obviously connected.

[Jack Masters]

<a href="http://www.yellow5.com/pokey/">Pokey</a> is educational, but that's probably not what you meant.

I also say the bob the angry flower is one comic. If you're going to start saying comics that have weak internal connections are actually collections of smaller comics, you should start with <a href="http://castlezzt.net/spongy">mine.</a>

[Bob Stevenson]

I'm with Jack on this one. The frame to frame "huh" that he seems to be going for (and gets) is one reason I'm still interested in comics. Isn't a lack of continuity in itself a kind of continuity?

Nice work on the rectangle strip Jack. Parts of it seem to speak to this discussion.

Bob Stevenson
Journeyintohistory.com