MORE COMICS SITES
Scott McCloud is the author of Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art, which as far as I am concerned makes him about the most incisive analyst of the art form walking the planet. His home page includes a number of innovative interactive comics ideas. Watch especially for "Choose Your Own Carl" in which a contest is held among readers each week to determine the next panel, and "Chess" an autobiographical piece laid out on a chessboard pattern that doesn't move just from right to left, but occassionally switched back as the story progresses downpage.
Jim Woodring is one of my very favorite comics creators. His site doesn't have a whole lot of interactive stuff on it, but does include samples of his stunning artwork from such publications as "Jim" "Frank" and "Tantalizing Stories." The dreamlike, surreal nature of Woodring's work makes it tough to describe - his writing process mostly involves going through his dream diary and transcribes what he finds into gorgeous black and white brushwork, or equally gorgeous full color paintings. Jim is a brilliant man, but sometimes his vision isn't for the timid or conventional. Most of the really frightening and bizarre stuff isn't shown here, but I thought it would only be fair to warn you. Here's another warning; if you can handle Jim Woodring, you may get hooked!
Published by Salon magazine, Dark Hotel is a framing device for a number of serialized comics. Three stories have been completed, and at this writing two more are in progress. Dark Hotel contains a few interactive features, but nothing too spectacular. Mostly, the interactivity is limited to moving around between the framing device and a few environmental details (you can read a history of the fictional hotel by clicking a brochure, for instance.) The real attraction is the inclusion of some spectacular writing and art from underground legends like Justin Green, Spain Rodriguez, Paul Mavrides, and Hal Robins. In the stories themselves one panel sits on a page at a time, which might cause some purists to claim that Dark Hotel isn't really comics at all. I'm sympathetic, but it sure saves on load time, so I'll forgive 'em.
Doodlenium, by Marc Alan Stamaty (link presently unavailable)
Doodlenium was run on a weekly basis for over a year in Slate magazine, Salon's chief competitor on the web. The story is extremely convoluted and silly, and sometimes takes ages and ages to load but you don't have to worry about it now; Slate's archive feature isn't working. However, Stamaty tried to incorporate various web-unique ideas to his comic, with varying degrees of success. Some strips include animation; others have pieces of the backstory explained in hyperlinked sidebars and digressions, among other innovations. Not a really great read, but intriguing as an experiment, or set of experiments.
Peter Kuper is another one of my favorites. The main feature of his homepage is the continuing archive of "Eye Of The Beholder," his weekly strip. Completely without dialog, and almost completely wordlessly, Kuper uses each five panel strip (or set of images, in the case of his site) to demonstrate to the viewer the perspective of a different character - rather than a punchline, each final panel shows whose perspective the strip has been from. It's good, contemplative stuff, and also sometimes includes small animations within the panels.
Amar Chitra KathaA collection of stories from Indian mythology, told in comic book form. Interesting stuff! The heroes and villians of the Hindic Vedas come to life in all their cheesey, four-color process, tiny-dot glory. Simply from the perspective of a westerner who's never been to India, I find these comics fascinating. Technically, there's not much to see here; the strips are all drawn in a somewhat generic 'realistic adventure' style similar to what you might see in an old G.I. Joe funnybook. Not surprising, really, when you consider the audience for these comics must have been adolescent boys.
You may not know it, but you've almost certainly seen Jack Chick comics before. Remember that funny little comic those evangelical Christians were handing out on the street, or at the county fair? The ones with the typed dialog, and the barely passable artwork? They had a little test on the back to help you see if you would go to heaven or not. Well, that was a Jack Chick comic, and here's his homepage. In the interests of fair play, I include this anti-Jack Chick site.