Earlier quoted context omitted.
Phones could be fine if 95% of the screen wasn't covered in popups, adverts, mailing list & cookie prompts.
I make comics. I grew up reading stuff that used the space of a magazine spread in all kinds of clever ways, I fell in love with the way I can play with layout across a page. I made an entire graphic novel with multiple storylines running in parallel across every page. A phone can show one or two panels at a time, at best. There’s a lot of stuff you just can’t do. It’s a tiny, limited canvas, even before it gets shit…
I don't think any book could give the feeling of transitions as the webtoon format can, yes, its only a panel (or less!) at a time, but the artist can give a halting thought-by-thought feel of a man on his deathbed, or roll out an entire red carpet of flourishes to introduce a character of nobility
You can't go super transition-heavy in print, because well, printing and pages cost. and people need to move their big hands to flick the pages, there is an expected consumption rate for that effort put in, so even if cost wasn't an issue, people would get fed up with the transitions anyhow.
so yeah, 1 panel at a time, is a bit of a downside, but IMO its also an upside in that one can give each panel its own treatment and such. an infinite vertical strip as one's canvas
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of course, getting all the bits into the right places with the right breathing rooms and the right flow is a true skill in of itself, but, I dunno, is it better to read 1 super good comic, or 100 entertaining enough ones? the bar is lowered by all of this, yes, but is that a bad thing?