It doesn't matter if a site has the best comics in the world if you can't access the site in the first place without your computer crashing every five minutes. Contrary to what companies like Verizon want to tell us, not everyone wants or especially needs DSL or faster Web access, and considering that even a cheapo Gateway system costs more than a used car but isn't as necessary, most of our Web surfers are doing so from work. No complaints here, but ongoing layoffs are going to change Web demographics, because the only Web surfing to be done by fresh deadcom refugees is surfing job sites. Big comics project, like what we're used to seeing in standard comic book, aren't all that practical. The comic strip.
Comic strips are a perfect medium for the Web, for multiple reasons.
Another reason why strips are important is due to their decline in standard print formats. As the daily newspaper continues to decline, the emphasis in comic strips is toward the noncontroversial or the safe. Garry Trudeau made news in 1983 when he put Doonesbury on an 18-month hiatus, because most other creators, no matter how beloved by readers, who tried something like this would have been canned and the strip taken over by a replacement artist in short order. This attitude is changing, but if you thought that creator rights in comics was a long, slow battle, you haven't seen anything until you've seen for how long some strip creators have to fight before they regain the rights to their characters. Another aspect of strip decline lies with the newspapers themselves.