As the World Wide Web was proliferating in the second half of the 1990s, various creators of webcomics started to communicate with one another and link to each other's work. Cartoonist Reinder Dijkhuis remembered that in mid-1995, there were hundreds of comics made available online; many of which were based on college newspaper comic strips and many were short-lived. From this point on, the World Wide Web gained attention from syndicated cartoonists such as Scott Adams and cartoonists who saw the internet as a potential path to eventual syndication. Author T Campbell called 1996 the end of the "stone age" of webcomics, and cartoonist Shaenon Garrity described the period from 1996 to 2000 as "the Singularity" of webcomics as the medium "exploded" in popularity. Joe Zabel said of Charley Parker's 1995 webcomic Argon Zark! that "the web could hardly have picked a more outstanding premiere series," and celebrated the tenth anniversary of its release with a round table on the "artistic history of webcomics." In France, interactive digital comics were spread on compact disks during this period, while the introduction of the internet in French homes spurred the creation of the first webcomic blogs. In the United States, various major webcomic genres were established and popularized between 1995 and 1999. The video game webcomic came into being in 1995 with the release of Polymer City Chronicles and was popularized in the following years by PvP and Penny Arcade. The first sprite comic - Jay Resop's Neglected Mario Characters - was released in 1998, though the genre wouldn't be popularized until Bob and George came out in 2000. In Reinventing Comics, Scott McCloud pointed out that some webcomic creators had been experimenting with the capabilities of the Web, such as through an interactive hypertext interface, GIF animations, and sound. The first major webcomic portal, Big Panda, started in 1997. Big Panda hosted over 770 webcomics, including Sluggy Freelance and User Friendly. Big Panda's discontinuation eventually resulted in the formation of Keenspot in 2000.
List
Several notable webcomics that started in this period include:
