Websnark

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Websnark is a website and a webcomic review on the site. The site is a critical and popular culture commentary website and blog, and the reviews are known for increasing traffic to the site. It is in use mostly in webcomic circles. Its endurance is yet to be determined.

Websnark.com began in August 2004 by Eric A. Burns as his commentary blog, which quickly migrated towards a webcomics theme. Currently, it has two authors, the aforementioned Eric Burns, and Wednesday White, who joined the regular writing team in February 2005.

Although Burns has written reviews for and has a monthly column at Comixpedia, Websnark tends not to contain reviews of full comic runs, but will instead focus on the day's comic (often in the context of the strips preceding it). Site regulars refer to Websnark reviews as snarks, and the activity of writing them as snarking. Each snark is usually accompanied by a size-reduced thumbnail of the strip it is reviewing, and a link to said strip at the webcomic's archive page.

For the most part, the commentary in a given snark will center around particular elements of the strip that the commentator found noteworthy (whether good or bad); strips Burns finds particularly outstanding earn their creators "a tasty, tasty biscuit"—Websnark's equivalent of kudos or a gold star. In keeping with its blog format, occasionally the site will also feature some of Burns's novel-writing or webcomic projects, an essay, or a personal update.

Also included in the site's lexicon is the phrase Cerebus Syndrome—named after Dave Sim's Cerebus the Aardvark—which describes the scenario when a light, gag-a-day comic adds layer after layer of sophistication to its characters and set-up. Eventually, the strip comes to the point where the strip bears little resemblance to its roots and is the greater for it (on the web, the seminal example is Sluggy Freelance). There is also First and Ten Syndrome, named after an early HBO program which shifted directions abruptly between seasons, losing its old viewers and failing to attract new ones. The phrase describes when a comic does just that (or something similar), often the result of a failed attempt at Cerebus Syndrome. Websnark comics differ from the usual because they don't focus on comedy, but drama.