Online comics, variously called webcomics, digital comics, webtoons, or comic e-zines, represent one of the most significant evolutions in the history of sequential art.
Unlike digital archives of print strips, these works are conceived, produced, and published specifically for the online environment. Their aesthetics, distribution models, and creative cultures reflect the possibilities and constraints of the digital world rather than the newspaper page or comic book format.
The history of online comics begins well before the World Wide Web.
Early digital artists were already experimenting with sequential and single-panel art on pre-web networks, using whatever tools the technology allowed. Before browsers, before HTML, and before image files were common, digital artists used ANSI and ASCII characters to create images on Bulletin Board Systems. These systems were the first widespread platforms for circulating digital art and digital comics. This era produced some of the earliest examples of online-native comics, including single-panel jokes, serialized stories, and seasonal art traditions that existed in the ephemeral world of dial-up BBS culture.
I ran a BBS from the early 1980s to the 1990s. While I didn't create the single-panel comic, I ran a Christmas-themed piece each year during the Christmas season that featured an elderly woman in a hallway, holding a small cow up to a wall lined with tiny cows and collies. She was calling someone offscreen, "Hand me another collie." Easily recognizable, the punchline played on the familiar Christmas lyric, "Deck the halls with boughs of holly."
As the web became more accessible, creators began publishing comics directly on personal websites. These early webcomics were often gaming humor, tech satire, slice-of-life diaries, and single-panel gags. They embraced color, layout freedom, and the ability to update instantly.
By the early 2000s, webcomics had matured into a full ecosystem, with dedicated hosting platforms, merchandising and ad revenue, conventions and fan communities, and long-form storytelling unconstrained by print formats.
South Korea's vertically scrolling webtoon format revolutionized digital comics. Designed for mobile phones, webtoons use infinite vertical scroll, cinematic pacing, color-rich panels, and occasional sound and animation. Platforms like Webtoon and Tapas globalized the medium and created new professional pathways for creators.
While many digital arts tools serve both print and online creators, several platforms are designed specifically for webcomics and webtoons.
Digital-native comic creation tools include Panel Haus (web-based, AI-assisted comic creation and publishing), LlamaGen Web Comic Maker (browser-based creation with templates and story tools), Pixton (online comic builder used widely in education and storytelling), Comic Draw (integrated scripting, layout, and lettering suite for iPad), and Storyboard That (simple visual storytelling tool used for comic-style narratives).
Webtoon-specific tools include Clip Studio Paint (vertical canvas presets and slicing tools), Webtoon Canvas Creator Tools (formatting, upload, and analytics for digital-first comics), and Tapas Creator Dashboard (optimized for serialized online publication).
These tools reflect the shift from print-oriented workflows to digital-native storytelling.
Online comics are not simply digital versions of print strips. They are a distinct medium shaped by infinite canvas possibilities, direct creator-to-reader relationships, global accessibility, low barriers to entry, new storytelling grammars, and community-driven funding models. From ANSI and ASCII art on BBSes to vertical-scroll webtoons, online-native comics have continually reinvented what sequential art can be.
Recommended Resources
Founded in the United Kingdom, CartoonStock is a commercial cartoon licensing service and marketplace that hosts work from many professional cartoonists and makes cartoons available for instant licensing and download. The online stock-house for cartoons positions itself as one of the world's largest searchable databases of cartoons, serving publishers, agencies, educators, and corporate customers. Key features include its searchable database of cartoons, illustrations, and political cartoons.
https://www.cartoonstock.com/
ComicExchange is a free comic-strip distribution service that lets webmasters embed rotating comics on their small and medium-sized websites, and helps cartoonists promote their work. Interested people can sign up or log in from the site's main pages. It delivers daily, rotating comic strips to participating websites via an embeddable HTML snippet, and runs a banner exchange to help promote member sites and cartoonists. Logins for cartoonists and webmasters are available.
http://www.comicexchange.com/
Presented as a webcomic focused on video-game culture, Ctrl+Alt+Del has been published online since the early 2000s. The long-running, tri-weekly webcomic is about video games and gamers. Viewers can read strips in order, browse the archive, follow the blog or RSS, and shop the site's online store for merchandise at the site's navigation links. For the most straightforward reading experience, click "All Comics in Order" or "Archive" to progress chronologically.
https://cad-comic.com/
Dilbert is an American comic strip written and distributed by Scott Adams, first published in 1989, and known for its satirical office humor about a micromanaged office with engineer Dilbert as the title character. Wildly popular, the syndicated comic strip was nevertheless dropped by its distributor, Andrews McMeel Syndication, which owns GoComics, in 2023 after Adams published a video criticizing Black Lives Matter. Adams relaunched it as a webcomic under the name Daily Dilbert Returns.
https://dilbert.com/
An online comic strip, Dot and Com, created by Jerry Leibowitz, presents a daily comic about two 8-year-olds exchanging experiences by email, and it appears to be an older, small-scale humor site. It is described as a repository for that comic and related cartoons and humor content, its tone and format typical of single-panel or short serialized web comics aimed at light, family-friendly humor. A subscription feature is present, though it is unclear whether the strip has been recently updated.
http://www.dotandcom.com/
Created by Brion Foulke, Flipside is an ongoing online fantasy manga/comic. The website hosts the latest chapter pages, an archive, convention appearance schedules, and links to donate or join its Patreon. The strip follows two women - Maytag (a jester with split personalities) and Bernadette (a swordswoman), and focuses on their adventures and relationships. The site includes recent page updates, an archive gallery, links to its Discord page, and an online store.
https://www.flipsidecomics.com/
Girl Genius is a long-running gaslamp fantasy webcomic by Phil and Kaja Foglio. Published by their Studio Foglio/Airship Entertainment imprint, the strip follows a character named Agatha Heterodyne in a steampunk-adjacent world, with new pages updating three times weekly, typically on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. The website also links to print volumes, merchandise, and news about adaptations. Graphic novels, PDF collections, and archives are also available.
https://www.girlgeniusonline.com/
Best known as a webcomic by Justine Shaw that ran from 2001 until 2010, Nowhere Girl has multiple mirrors and related projects. The comic began as an autobiographical/fictional webcomic about a college student navigating identity and sexuality. The original webcomic is retired, but archived mirrors and related projects exist. This site archives the original content and includes an FAQ that describes the strip and answers questions about it, along with rules regarding contemporary use.
https://www.nowheregirl.com/
Hosting over four hundred satirical political cartoons that skew conservative and intentionally provoke non-PC reactions, this is the archive and weekly cartoon page for conservative cartoonist Jim Huber. The website is a personal archive and showcase for his cartoons, framing his work as intentionally not politically correct and positioning his cartoons as commentary aimed at liberal viewpoints and mainstream media narratives. As of this time, the most recent cartoon is dated 3/15/20.
http://www.conservativecartoons.com/
Questionable Content on Patreon
QC is a slice-of-life webcomic written and illustrated by Jeph Jacques. Launched in 2003, the plot centered initially on Marten Reed, an indie rock fan; his anthropomorphized personal computer, Pintsize; and his roommate, Faye Whitaker. Over time, Jacques has added a supporting cast of characters, including employees of a local coffee shop and neighbors. The site is funded through Patreon contributions, and some posts on the creator's Patreon are gated and require membership to view.
https://questionablecontent.net/
SpiderForest Webcomic Collective
The creator-run, volunteer webcomic collective was founded in 2004. It curates and hosts more than 100 free-to-read comics across genres and also produces an annual print anthology of short comics. Its volunteers are creators who vet, curate, and promote high-quality webcomics rather than enforcing a single house style. Members collaborate on promotion, peer support, and shared projects rather than operating as a traditional publisher. It utilizes a proprietary CMS.
https://www.spiderforest.com/
Positioned as a home for diverse webcomics and novels, Tapas is a web and mobile platform for discovering, reading, and publishing them, offering free and premium content, creator tools, and community features. It highlights serialized comics and prose, in-app purchases, and creator monetization options. Users of the site can decide whether they want to read, publish, or monetize on Tapas, as well as content format, free distribution with optional paid episodes, or paid-first content.
https://tapas.io/
Stylized TopWebComics, this is a long-running directory and ranking site for webcomics and webtoons, which includes a Top 100 list highlighting community-voted favorites. Readers access the site to discover popular webcomics, vote for favorites, and follow creators. Users can choose to view long-running series, new comics, or genre-specific picks, while rating labels and other clarifying questions can further tailor results. Comics with organized fanbases tend to rank higher.
https://www.topwebcomics.com/
Created in 2003 and hosted at Keenspot, Twokinds is a long-running fantasy webcomic by Thomas Fischbach. It follows Trace Legacy and Flora in a world divided between Humans and animal-like Keidran, blending fantasy, character drama, and long-form storytelling with recurring themes of identity, prejudice, and found family. The site presents the comic in sequential pages with transcripts and navigation tools. Readers can use the archive index to jump by chapter or page.
https://twokinds.keenspot.com/
Created in the late 1990s as a parody of the venture-capital world and the dot-com era, The VC Comic Strip is a satirical webcomic that lampoons Silicon Valley culture. A full comics archive, author bios (Robert von Goeben and Kathryn Siegler), and background information are provided on the VC website, including an archive of strips that skewer pitch meetings, term sheets, portfolio drama, and Sand Hill Road culture. Comics are copyrighted content. Contacts are provided.
https://www.thevc.com/
The Webcomic List is a long-running, community-driven directory that monitors tens of thousands of webcomics and surfaces recent updates so readers can follow many strips without visiting each site individually. The website aggregates webcomic profiles and shows the latest updates across listed comics, letting users see which comics have posted recently without checking each site one by one. The site crawls or checks the listed comic feeds to present a consolidated "latest updates" view.
https://www.thewebcomiclist.com/
Available on Google Play for Android and the Apple App Store for iOS mobile devices, WebComics is an online platform and mobile application for reading webtoons, manga, manhwa, and comics across several genres, including romance, action, fantasy, BL, GL, drama, and horror. The website highlights featured series, originals, and trending titles for readers. Features include its large catalog, genre browsing, featured collections, and the promotion of original series, with sections for creators.
https://www.webcomicsapp.com/
As a major global webcomic platform, Webtoon hosts creator-published comics and offers tools and programs to help creators reach readers worldwide. The platform supports multiple languages and a large catalog of user and professionally produced titles. Available in multiple languages, Webtoon uses recommendation and discovery features, including AI-driven personalization, as well as a "New" and "Hot" tab, to help visitors find new series. Registration is optional but offers advantages.
https://www.webtoons.com/en/
Sometimes styled in lower-case, XKCD is a serial webcomic created in 2005 by American author Randall Munroe. Its tagline describes it as "a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language." According to the author's statement on the website, the name of he comic is not an acronym but "a word with no phonetic pronunciation." Its subject matter varies from statements on life and love to mathematical, programming, and scientific in-jokes. Licensure data is provided.
https://www.xkcd.com/
