I was talking with someone yesterday about this comic and the site, and they said that they were especially impressed with “the drawing of the guy falling between the buildings” below Friday’s comic. So it was kind of awkward when I had to explain that the disparity in art quality was because I didn’t draw it. A famous French artist named Mœbius did.

Needless to say, I wasn’t exactly expecting that to happen. I’d put a caption under the image crediting it to Mœbius/Jodorowsky, and the whole entry that the image was nestled in was about Mœbius. So I guess I learned that different people consume content in different ways? It seems pretty obvious, now.

The comic is clearly the centerpiece of this site, and I certainly don’t expect everyone to subject themselves to the onus of slogging through the rambling passages I often plaster underneath them. And probably other people miss the mouseover text on the comics and other images, or don’t bother with the comments.

Which is all well and good, but it raises some considerations about design and content that I hadn’t explicitly considered before. What percentage of Dinosaur Comics readers read the comics’ mouseover texts (which are often funnier than the comics themselves)? And how many read the subject line in the “comments” link that accompanies each comic? Is this “bonus” content? Should Ryan North bother hiding so many easter eggs in his site?

For me, the mouseover and comment texts are as central to reading DC as the comic itself (whereas, say, in A Softer World, the mouseover text is less integral, and sometimes absent). But Ryan has to make the comic stand by itself, because probably a fair chunk of his (less regular) audience will miss the mouseovers altogether. And if someone prints a comic and makes flyers out of it (and I’ve seen a bunch of these), that text won’t carry over.

The comic stands alone. So what purpose does the rest of the content that Ryan includes serve? Is it just an extra outlet for an overactive writer? Does it imbue the more devoted section of his readership with the special joy of being “in” on a secret, albeit an open one? Does it enable a minute, specialized, and ultimately meaningless feeling of superiority that’s just dying to say, “oh, you didn’t know about the ‘comments’ subject line gags? PFFFT”?¹

Anyway, if you made it this far, congratulations, here’s a little language treat:

I looked it up, and I was right: the word “burrito” is derived from the diminutive of “burro”, which is Spanish for “donkey”. So, y’know, next time you order a burrito, remember that you are asking for a tiny donkey. Maybe a very literal-minded Hispanic person would mess up your order and give you one? It could be your tiny donkey friend and carry tiny things for you, like strawberries!

1. Which reminds me of a joke someone told me:
   Q: How many hipsters does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
   A: You don’t know? [↩]

Tags: ballpoint, batmobile, delorean, eeen, index card, pen

This entry was posted on Monday, September 8th, 2008 at 12:00 and is filed under Comic. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.