The Internet has a large influence on comics and comics education, offering a large selection of novel formal potentialities such as clip art, ready-made templates, different layout possibilities and tutorials. More importantly however, networked culture has fostered digital communities by encouraging a decentralized and discursive approach to comics. By radically displacing the medium’s production routines and modes of address, it has emphasized the fundamental ambiguity and the porosity of the established figures of the industry.
How has the Internet, as a site of disintermediation, contributed in not only reducing the distance between producers and consumers but has also provided the backdrop for a flexible, collective intelligence to organize these new forms of experimentation? Futures of Comics brings together a series of workshops conducted by experienced artists. The workshops help unfold how individual practices, unaffiliated with the commonly accepted history of the comics medium can be as inventive as thought provoking: From “publish your own zine” to exploring appropriation techniques and hands-on experimentation on alternatives modes of distribution, Futures of Comics provides an educational program from artists to artists.
