This comic was first published sometime at the end of 2001.
It gained some popularity at the time it was published and was the most ambitious hypercomic I had attempted. It’s an Infinite Canvas style scrolling narration with embedded interactive flash files that add depth to the narrative.
The horizontal section of the comic features a virtual museum with a retrospective of the tragic (and fictional) webcomics artist Frank Delbruck, complete with museum writeup and attached artwork.
Here’s a metapanel view of the whole piece:
It was pretty favorably reviewed by people who were interested in hypercomics and online storytelling. The Webcomics Book Club, a volunteer-sourced review site took it on with some interesting reviews, including one guy who found it so confusing and useless that he decided to review a sandwich instead.
As an aside, Frank Delbruck has become a small mascot for webcomics experimentation and the occasional frustration that comes along with ambitious and formally-driven work.
Note: Some of the interactive elements of the narrative were built in Flash, a popular online animation tool at the time. Most browsers no longer support the playing of Flash files, but there is a Flash player extension availabe for Chrome that will load them with a couple of clicks.
This comic has been down for quite a while so I’m happy 10 years later, to have it posted again.
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