Hit Counts and Comics

I’ve read several different types of webcomics before but what struck me as a somewhat different with Shooting War was the fact that each “page” was essentially a single panel. Some of them obviously were broken up into several panels, but the experience of reading this comic online is completely different from reading a physical comic. With this webcomic in particular I found I had to wait for a new page load almost every panel, which makes a smooth reading especially complicated. I agree with many of Josh’s comments about this particular medium and his impressions, but I found Shooting War more frustrating than any other webcomic I’ve dealt with.

With a physical comic, you can see what is going on peripherally on the page which adds to the general impression of each page, putting the panel in a larger context. Even most webcomics I’ve experienced follow this kind of flow, but you still have to click over to the next page. As with any website, it is always about generating higher hit counts and increasing ad value. I accept this without complaint (free material is never without a price), but in the case of this particular webcomic I found it very disruptive to the reading.

I’m not sure why, though. Maybe it’s because it slowed me down considerably. I found myself eventually just clicking “Next Page” almost immediately and reading the panel as the next one started to load. This made me feel pulled out of the reading experience because I had to be consciously aware of what I was doing and when I needed to click.

Or, perhaps it was that the stutter-like flow of having to switch pages made it difficult to get into the story. I did not find the character uninteresting per se, but I did find it hard to get interested in what was going on because of the way the material flowed.

On the other hand, I found Bayou very easy to read. Even with the clicking from one page to the next, because of the pacing of each page it did not feel like an imposition in any way. The story flowed from page to page pretty evenly and I was able to get absorbed into the text as I would with a physical book. I agree with Josh the the navigation bar could be a nuisance, but there were only a few places where I felt it impacted the reading experience. Maybe it is as simple as this being essentially a comic “viewer” displaying a webcomic, rather than a webpage, but I found Bayou‘s page flow much more conducive to the story  than Shooting War‘s.

I am curious if the creators planned Shooting War around this page break idea or if it was merely a limitation they butted up against. If the former, I would question its usage. More likely is that it is a technical limitation and I am just a jerk for ragging on their comic, but I’ve seen similar limitations used to significant effect.