Walking the Web: A Brief History of the Net in Comics

I was inspired to create this short-run comic strip after thinking about and learning more about the history of the development of the World Wide Web. (Which sounds funny to say it as a full three-word phrase these days, doesn’t it?). I wondered: what if two kids — Ralph and Carl — were able to go back in time, like Bill and Ted (in their own dimwitted excellent adventures), and witness some of the main events of the Web history and chat with the bigwhigs behind those ideas? And why not do it as a short-run comic, where things like time and reality have no real anchor and where I could maybe poke fun at things? (I had one friend who said that my version of the web is distorted and biased against Microsoft. Well, maybe. Sorry, Mr. Gates). That’s where the idea for Walking the Web began and this is where it ended too.

One final note: when I got to the last comic strip, where the boys come home and meet themselves from the future, I realized that I wasn’t quite done. I wanted to think about the comic in terms of something larger, and that was the impetus for the meta-comic that ends it all, as a comic version of me look at the comic strip, even as the real me looks at the comic me looking at the comic strip (got that?).

Kevin