One advantage that webcomics have over newspaper comics has to lie with persistent archives. While this has allowed plot-intensive comics to flourish, it also has allowed comics to suffer from story-bloat, with plots growing longer and more convoluted while becoming more difficult to follow. Many of the older webcomics show occasional signs of this, with story arcs that started out running for a few weeks being replaced by stories that last for years. Yet this isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

The newest generation of comics has learned from the mistakes of the past, building on larger storylines from the very beginning and intertwining shorter plots into the weave of a greater plot. These graphic web-novels do manage to avoid many of the issues with continuity that such forerunners as Sluggy Freelance and College Roomies from Hell are afflicted with, but can often suffer from such issues as pacing.

On the surface, Garanos looks much like its peers in the graphic web-novel field. Indeed, in the five months I’ve been reading, I’ve been chomping at the bit and wondering when the comic was actually going to start moving. Garanos would update three times a week, and some of those updates were voiceless moments, seconds of time where Alex Heberling would show us the story rather than take the quick and easy way out and tell us what happens next.

It is when you step back and start reading the comic from the start that the story and pace truly leaps out. Again, I’m reminded of Sluggy Freelance, this of a classic scene when Gwynn Turned Around. While I wasn’t reading SF back then, the mere pause of seeing that comic and going “what the blazes is going to happen next?” got to me. I empathized with readers from 2001 who went through that ordeal, of waiting a whole day to find out just what was going to happen to Gwynn. Only now, I was experiencing it with one of my absolute favorite graphic web-novels.

Nor would the obvious solution, increased panel count, necessarily work here. There are times when Garanos needs that Gwynn Turned Around. Moments of shock. Moments where we’re left hanging, not knowing just what will happen next. And I must admit I’ve rather enjoyed the artwork, even at the expense of not finding out more about the story at the moment. No doubt, later into the story when the pace increases, the panel count will as well. We’re in the lulls at the moment, learning more of Garanos’s background story and the consequences of her actions all those many months ago.

The original Garanos was based on a short story. It had a beginning, middle, and an ending. Fortunately, Heberling left room to expand from there. Whether the second volume of Garanos has as tight a story remains to be seen. Once you’ve read through the archives (and I must once again stress that the Harbinger volume is absolutely stunning in execution and plot) it may feel like the comic is taking forever to get anywhere. But much like the rest of the archives, Garanos is best read in one sitting, to allow the pacing to flow. Much like the old flip books, the story is far greater as the whole than just the sum of its parts.