Hypercomics

Hypercomics refers to a variation of webcomics, coming from the merging of the term "hypertext" with "comics." While traditional comics have been posted on the Internet as drawings scanned into digital media or even drawn entirely on computer, hypercomics take advantage of the properties of their electronic existence to offer an experience that is impossible with traditional print comics.

Hypercomics have been created that add a number of features to a comic/webcomic, including sound, animation, hyperlinks, non-linear breakdowns, reader interaction, and spatial expansion (such as infinite canvas).

The webcomic Argon Zark! made use of some of these technique early on its run, in the second half of 1996. Page 46 makes use of animation within the comic (the first example of many in that webcomic). Page 40 and 41 have a clickable button on the page that switches back and forth between the two pages. A few pages earlier, page 38 shows a parodic web direction which the reader can click on, taking him outside the normal page sequence of the comic.

Scott McCloud argued for the creation of hypercomics (without (?) using that term), in his Reinventing Comics. In particular, he is known for advocating the use of the infinite canvas.