I've been working on an online comic for about a year and a half and after following Mark Waid's progress with Thrillbent, I started thinking more about how digital comics are presented and why they're presented that way. I totally dig what Mark is doing over there and thought about applying some of the same things to my own comic. So, if you could take a few minutes and give me feedback about it, I'd really appreciate it.

Here is the way my comic is viewed now. It's pretty straightforward webcomic stuff with a slight twist. Still, it's a static page, like you'd read in print.

http://variables.selfcentent.com/comic/variables-2002-1/

Here is a revised version with more comic "motion" (though not motion comics, ugh). Don't mind the site design, it's a test site. This covers the first 1 1/2 pages of that same issue. It's rough around the edges because this is more of a working prototype than an actual comic I'd release on my site. It definitely needs some polish.

http://ftgotp.selfcentent.com/?page_id=2

Which would you rather read and why? What do you like or dislike about each format? Any comment or criticism is welcome and I really appreciate any input you have on the subject.

Not really an avid comic reader so I don't think I am your audience... but I can see the advantages of both. Personally if I am reading a story online I like to be able to open everything at once, then for turning the page I can simply close the tab. With comics though I guess the story progress is too fast, and would also involve opening dozens of tabs, as such I think I prefer the 2nd link of yours, which has the faded sections as you click through. Comic layout I guess can be a little complex wondering what pane is next, so it's nice to be led through it more.
Also while I agree having animated parts of the comic (ie characters, or panes flying in like some Powerpoint presentation) would not be good. The last section I think could have benefited from a more fluid zoom out motion (fading out the un-needed text).
How were you planning on implementing the 1 & 1/3rd page portion of the protests?

Some pages will be split in half, others in thirds. The black and white scenes will be split into thirds.

I'm going to have a much longer version ready tomorrow with better transitions and better text bubbles.

Advantage of the click-through "motion" one: It feels more interactive and therefore a bit more engaging

Disadvantage: No way I'm going to sit there and click-click-click-click through all of that.

It's interesting. The strength is the weakness...

Yeah, that is a problem... For now. Over time, I think people are going to start to learn that these galleries can also be operated by keyboard arrow keys. On tablets, you can swipe the images. It's repetitive but it's also really fast once you acclimate to it.

I was just going to mention you can "click" with the return key.

While I guess there is more clicking involved if you have to cycle through different sections of what would normally be one page, like i said it does help lead you through it. Also as pages are broken up a bit more anyway, there is no scrolling for me unlike with the full page version.

I hate scrolling. I mean I really fucking hate it. It's the driving force behind this idea.

At this point, I'm not sure how I feel about digital comics. I bought a lot (maybe 100) on my Droid but it just doesn't feel right. In fact, they suck. I've tried doing it on my laptop and even the 360 (Gold Digger 1-7 is on sale on XBL Indie Games) and that didn't feel right, either.

For me, I guess comics have to be on paper or on the PSP (which doesn't offer the service anymore). Those are the only two formats I really enjoyed.

Well, I'm catering to as many devices as possible with this new system. It's widescreen so it will work with landscape devices MUCH better than the previous vertical layout I used on the comic. All around, it's more versatile than the static format and should work better on 95% of the devices out there. The current layout is good for tablets and virtually nothing else.

I'm a person who only has read webcomics as we don't really have a much of a comic book scene here in NZ, so I don't know if I'm your target market.

I've got to say that I loved the second link, it feels much more dynamic than the presentation styles of other webcomics I've read. For some reason it kind of reminds me of oldschool adventure computer games.

A couple of comments though - you should make each 'page' (that is the start of each page before any of the other text/panels come up) obviously linkable so you can start where you got up to. Also perhaps make it so when you click back you go to the previous page, rather than just removing the last text added.