Broken Frontier

Summer is here – at least for the super-heroes. Iron Man was in theaters last weekend, heralding in the likes of Hellboy, Hancock, Hulk and Batman in the weeks to come. Summer and super-heroes clearly mix – but what about webcomics?

Webcomics are genuinely interested in webomics – both Ctrl Alt Del (right) and Least I Could Do (below) put their protagonist in the unfortunately impractical Iron Man suit, and the latter put Rayne right in the midst of a comic con. Comic books seem to exist even in fantasy worlds like Dominic Deegan, who later turned into a cheesy Spartan-esque hero during the last soul-searching arc. But for one reason or another, there are few webcomics genuinely about super-heroes.

Within the scope of the Top 10 Top Webcomics, I have seen only one which loosely bears some resemblance to traditional super-heroes. Though not specifically super-heroes, Earthsong does resemble a team book in the vein of X-Men , or more recently, Guardians of the Galaxy. The books find empowered champions from several different home worlds falling under the command of opposing leaders – the titular Earthsong and the evil Beluosus. Though surely not a traditional super-hero book, there are a few notable similarities – the opposing teams, the colorful cast and the outsider protagonist looking for her place somewhere between the two teams.

So why aren’t there more serious super-heroes in webcomics? I’m really not quite sure. I could harbor a guess – it is a bit easier to write a full super-hero script then a weekly webcomic. Pragmatically speaking, only two parts of a 22-page super-hero script matter – page one and page twenty-two. But in a webcomic, every page matters and every page is a pass-or-fail effort to reach more readers. But this distinction extends to all webcomics, not just super-hero ones.

So again, why aren’t there more super-heroes in webcomics? That’s a question I’m hoping to answer before the month of May is through.