The Old Lady and the Troll

The Old Lady and the Troll began on November 22, 2006 and finished on January 29, 2007.

Part 1

1. "Once there lived an old lady..."
2. "Was it magic?"
3. "The old lady remembered a time..."
4. "Monsters had begun coming out of the mountains."
5. "Shapes emerged from the shadows."
6. "... or I will grind your bones!"
7. "Aaaargh!"
8. "It's my tooth!"
9. Did it work?
10. "That's amazing!"
11. "Culture and manners."

Part 2

1. "One night, the troll came to the old lady's house."
2. "...the kingdom could not stand against them."
3. "First I have to get cooking."
4. "Together you and your brother could drive them off!"
5. "The trolls trouble me too, but..."
6. "Bread began to disappear from the old lady's house."
7. "The week passed quickly."
8. "There they are!"
9. "Too late, the king realized the old lady was right."
10. Too many trolls.
11. "The troll chieftain just laughed."
12. "'Look!' cried the old lady."
13. Sizing each other up.
14. "Now it was at least a fair fight."
15. "You completed my spell."
16. "Oh. Yes. Just a moment."
17. "You cannot harm them, because you cannot harm me."
18. On the rebound.
19. "So the trolls fled."
20. "The Queen's new Chief of Security."

Welcome, welcome... Please come in! Have a seat. Would you like something to drink? Comfortable? Good.

If it's not too much trouble, would you please help me with my little experiment? The story is always the point, but for the moment, the story is beside the point. This little project is to help figure out what it takes to make the most user-friendly web comics user interface.

So, yes, I do hope you like the story too. It began life as a bedtime story, and like most stories it has a beginning, rising action, complication, climax, and resolution. And an end. So, I do want you to give me feedback on the storytelling and art. At least, I do if it's something I can use to improve. So please, by all means, tell me what you like and don't like about the pacing, characterization, composition, etc. I'd love to hear it all. (I'm under no illusion that it couldn't be more polished.)

What's really important, though, is your experience in reading it. I have lots of questions for you:

• What's frustrating about this screen?
• What works well?
• Can you find everything you need on it easily?
• What's missing?
• What webcomic features are missing from most pages?
• What's there but too hard to use?
• Which webcomics do you think have excellent features and navigation?
• Which webcomics could use some improvement? (Be nice...)

... and so on. Please comment in the forums to help figure this stuff out. The outcome? I hope to create an excellent user interface for artists, so they can make webcomics with excellent interfaces for their users. I like open source, so that's what I'm aiming at.

BTW, I'm not this Scott McDaniel. He's a professional. I am too, just not in comics art. :)

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