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Continuando da complicada relação do $$$, print, web e arte, a nossa atenção vai para a edição mais recente de Sloane Leong no TCJ. Onde Boulet consegue uma boa ponte entre o print e o online, o exemplo que nos ocupa ilustra as dificuldades dessa relação.

Andrew Hussie "[A6I1] Rose: Level up."

A propósito do sucesso - ou falta dele- da edição em livro do "Homestuck" por Andrew Hussie, "an interesting but overall redundant artifact".

The choice of formatting for this book is [...] a small but ugly problem. The web version of Homestuck has you click through single panel to single panel the majority of the time. In print we most often get a standard four-panel page, some single panel pages, and some pages that are chat text only. The issue arises with the more exhaustively animated scenes or minigames, where keyframes, which can number up to twelve at a time, are compressed and then clustered into a single page, some awkwardly aligned on the page, unnecessarily disjointed. Even panels that are given room on a four-panel page still suffer from detail loss because of compression and it had me squinting to see the minor but important details. All in all this was a mediocre way to experience a comic I'm actually interested in continuing to read.

Even with the wry bonus commentary from Hussie, this variant form of Homestuck is lackluster in comparison to its jittering, melodic virtual original and doesn't adequately translate this robust iconic webcomic to paper.
in "Homestuck, Book 1: Acts 1 & 2" ^{16 abril 2018}

Enterrada na introdução à série online, a autora acrescenta algumas considerações mais gerais que se inscrevem igualmente nas nossas preocupações... mais gerais, web-wise.

I remember the manic hype around Homestuck during its original run online (between 2009 and 2016), which easily consumed the attention on anyone within five or six degrees of it. The webcomic became a magnetic field that you were either completely absorbed by or fully repelled by. No in-betweens, no casual readers. This sort of fandom environment was the quintessence of the decade. The early 2000s felt to me like everyone was completely in thrall to their particular media fandom and then something happened in the early 2010s and the open manic enthusiasm started to fade out. I think the proliferation of social justice discourse began heavily permeating online social media at this point and readers became more careful as to what and, more importantly, who they wanted to stan for publicly.
in "Homestuck, Book 1: Acts 1 & 2" ^{16 abril 2018}

Nesse contexto sentimos que devemos recuperar igualmente um excerto da sua intervenção anterior, na qual nos caracteriza o que chama de "Tumblr style":

A look that's cropped up around this fourth generation of webcartoonists, a confluence of unexpected, eclectic influences and inspirations coalescing into a single, quirky style and executed through a digital medium. Tumbling is actually a pretty good descriptor of what a lot of internet-born artists go through who cut their teeth on filling DeviantArt galleries with fanart and OCs, spending hours in oekakis and taking cheap Gaia commissions. It’s art that’s been rolled as if in a rock tumbler of inspiration, where there’s little direction applied except for technical and stylistic trends of the current platform being used or the whims of their $10 commissioners. Art history itself is flattened out completely on the internet but especially on Tumblr where Late Byzantine pieces are posted alongside glossy superhero pinups and over-filtered anime screencaps. Your eyes start gliding over the illuminated visual noise. It takes a severe focus to keep from getting haphazardly dented, to instead be polished by the constant battering of styles. Habitual techniques leave deep tracks in one's muscle memory and absorbing the same family of visual vocabulary repetitively makes even microscopic changes feel vast. Sometimes muscle memory will beat out my will to execute a new texture or a new type of line. Only repetition carves space in my mind for it to exist but it's like pulling teeth as I get older. Deeply rooted teeth.
in "Comics Dragnet 4" ^{4 abril 2018}

Contra o "not reaching the kitsch aesthetic bar it needs to be interesting" da década anterior que caracteriza o Homestuck, será mesmo uma evolução? E como antes, aquilo do fazer por gosto vs o fazer à comissão.

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