The Artificial Cartoonist: Key Characteristics Of AI-Assisted Sequential Storytelling

Abstract

Since early 2022, AI image generators have made it possible for anyone to create comic-like sequential narratives, no drawing skills required. However, after an initial flurry of interest among creators and readers, so-called “AI comics” now seem to garner limited attention outside the realm of avantgarde experimentation.

This article offers a brief introduction to the form before moving into a close reading of two specific comics, one AI-generated, one human-made, informed by Mikkonen and Braithwaite’s concept of Figural Solidarity. Contrasting the two comics teases out characteristics of AI-generated visual storytelling which, judging by their reappearance in multiple other comics created with the help of generative AI, seem to stem from inherent limitations of the image generators themselves.

The article discusses how these characteristics may affect the reading experience and perhaps even the limited popularity of “AI comics”, and what, knowing what we now know, we may surmise about the future of the artificial or artificially enhanced cartoonist.

Keywords: AI, AI comics, comics analysis, sequential storytelling, iconic solidarity, figural solidarity