ABSTRACT
The career potential of a viral short, one that transcends ephemera and the fickle attention spans of online audiences, has been proven elsewhere. More examples of virality translating into mainstream success largely take advantage of the new relationship that has developed between creators and audiences. One of the crucial audience draws the series maintained was the expansiveness of its universe and the Chapman brothers’ intuitive impulse to spin off strong concepts into their own series, ultimately creating metaphysical universes within universes that fans were hugely receptive to. Chief amongst these was Strong Bad Email, which served as an outlet for new webisodic content on the site with the added appeal of using real fan mail as a jumping-off point. As hugely popular as the phenomenon of independent webtoons has grown to be, it remains curiously separate from the comparatively insular world of broadcast animation production.
