While readers may not realize it, many web- comickers tend to form small mini- communities among themselves. On the simplest level, these communities consist of mutual fans drawing their own comics who’ll trade fanart and pay homage to other comics through the use of cameos and the like. One such homage over at Something Positive (of Girls With Slingshots) has taken a life of its own and transformed into a strange cameo/crossover hybrid that has proven rather entertaining.

The hijinks actually got their start back in July of 2009 when Randy Milholland drew his main protagonist, Davan, posting a comment in the wedding blog of two characters over at SWS. Danielle Corsetto of GWS responded with a brief cameo of Davan and his current girlfriend surfing the wedding site. Davan’s decision to attend the wedding (undoubtedly out of a perverse desire to see if the wedding became a fiasco) started one of the more… unusual crossovers that I’ve come across.

In many ways, the SP/GWS crossover feels more like a series of cameos. Its structure is very loose (even compared to previous crossovers between Aeire’s Queen of Wands and SP in the past) and has this feel that Milholland and Corsetto are playing off of one another’s updates, rather than scripting out a storyline in advance and timing every last minutia of the strip. Nor is Davan’s presence at the wedding integral to the plot. Davan isn’t saving the day (though he did get an usher drunk off of a whiskey flask with a mixture of alcohols guaranteed to send someone to the emergency room).

Of course, the ultimate goal of any crossover is to encourage cross-pollination of readers. In this, I’m not sure if the SP/GWS crossover will succeed. As Davan is primarily an observer of the wedding and hasn’t played a significant role (which is actually quite logical seeing that he barely knows these people and they don’t know him), his own readers don’t really have a reason (outside of mild curiousity) to delve into GWS’s archives. While Milholland isn’t lacking in readers, Corsetto’s own readers have even less of a reason to read SP (except to find out who that guy is who fed the usher booze strong enough to intoxify with only a swig or two). But when you consider the sheer amount of work in plotting out even a short crossover’s storyline, and in timing the presentation of the strips, drawing characters the artist isn’t familiar with, and cooperating in a storyline where the cartoonist’s pride and joys won’t necessarily prevail… and I’m left wondering if Milholland and Corsetto are onto something here.

The majority of webcomic crossovers often appear inspired by the zero-sum games that typify traditional print superhero comics. Often the cast in both comics come to blows before eventually teaming up to prevail against some greater antagonist. In the GWS/SP crossover, the only conflict is that inherent within GWS’s own plotline, and Davan’s own presence as a guest is touching mostly upon secondary aspects of the story that would otherwise detract from the wedding storyline. It is a more casual form of crossover, and readers don’t need to read through the other comic in order to decypher what is going on. I suspect it also requires far less work on part of Corsetto and Milholland; whether the two artists are collaborating more closely, or if the crossover truly is a series of improv strips feeding off of one another remains to be seen.