Reference

I learned in one of my college courses that every new technology that comes along will never be accepted by the public unless it can completely replicate the current technology that it will replace. The typewriter (and then the computer word processor) replaced handwriting (at least in large businesses) when it could make all of the symbols used in writing (letters, numbers, punctuation, special characters). It makes sense, though. Why am I going to throw out my typewriter if it can do more than this newfangled computer can?

But new technology doesn't merely replace the existing one; it adds on to the last version. Typewriters are faster than handwriting (with equal skill), use less energy, and are guaranteed to be legible. Computers beat the type writer by being faster and easier still, plus they add ease of editing - no Wite-Out needed to fix errors and no wasted paper by printing drafts.

The comics world functions in the same way. With the internet being the new technology for delivering comics, there comes the question of what it has added to the repertoire of publishing comics. One of those tools is external reference. If a comic has a joke that people might not understand, the writer can provide a link to an external source of information that explains it. For example, this SMBC comic has a link in the blog update that explains the Delilah joke for those who are unfamiliar with the story. It certainly is nice to not be left scratching your head if you aren't in the know, and I am sure it saves a whole lot of emails from filling up the writer's mailbox. But I wonder, should it be used?

The infinite canvas (another one of the additions of the internet), is a tool that largely doesn't work. The idea is that because the dimensions of a web page are boundless, a comic can be made in absolutely any dimension. The problem with this is that people really don't like horizontal scrolling and they hate even more horizontal and vertical scrolling on the same image. The underlying problem, as I see it, is that people just can't see the whole thing at once, which is a shame. At the moment, the infinite canvas only really works in allowing a tall comic (like one that would be printed in comic book format) to be put on one page without being condensed.

External reference is great in that it frees the writer to make any joke regardless of obscurity, but I have a pretty strong suspicion that it also largely doesn't work. There are two main problems with it: the first is that people hate doing extra work. It has been found time and time again that the more clicks of the mouse it takes to get somewhere, the fewer people will take the time to do it. Making a comic that takes multiple clicks to get means not everybody who reads it will take the time to get it.

The other problem is that it just isn't funny. Sure, it's great to the handful of people that do know the same things that you do, but how many people are deeply familiar with motorcycles and paleontology? And since one of the rules of comedy is that if you have to explain the joke, it's not funny, I wonder if the joke should even be made in the first place.

The internet, despite it's vast size and rapid, continuous growth, is still largely unexplored. I guess the only way to see if external reference works is to try it out and see the results.