Webcomics, of course, are known for being an outlet for creative people whose ideas can’t (or, at least, “aren’t likely to”) get past editorial gatekeepers. Most webcomics feature new material developed by the creator(s) for the express purpose of being part of their comic. Even those creators who can barely draw stick figures are able to produce popular comics. Or they utilize clip art over and over again. A few creators have taken to lifting famous newspaper strips, changing the art or dialogue slightly, usually to make a running commentary about the source strip itself.

The most recent example I’ve seen of a creator using existing content to create a new message comes in the form of a subreddit called r/behindthegifs. The idea is to take well-known animated GIFs and create a backstory for them in comic form. The “rules” as listed on Reddit are scarely more detailed than that. People are submitting comics of all lengths and styles, from photocomics to stick figures drawn in MS Paint. They’re generally humorous (or at least intended to be humorous) since many of the GIFs being using as springboards are amusing in the first place. But where the source GIFs tend to stand alone as a sort of theatre of the absurd, the extended comic prologues often set them up as a perfectly logical conclusion to an equally, if not even more absurd premise.

The first one was created by redjarman in early 2014 using, I believe, a snippet from a commercial for a TV tray. (The clip in question focuses on a hapless man who inadvertently tips over his comically large bowl of Cheetos while hanging up the telephone. It was originally posted in another subreddit “for ads taken out of context in animated images.”) The r/behindthegifs subreddit was formed less than a month later and since then there have been well over one thousand contributions. That’s between three and four new comics every day! There are indeed three that have been posted in the 24 hours prior to my writing this, and there are over 130,000 individuals who subscribe to that thread.

The process here is fascinating if you think about it. People start by posting an amusing video, often either taken from the television or a home movie of some kind. After that gets passed around and shared a while, someone else edits the video down to a few key seconds, and converts it from a video to an animated GIF. After that gets passed around and shared a while, a third person adds more content to that to share and pass around. We’re seeing content that is created, decontextualized, and then recontextualized by three entirely different and unconnected individuals. Each one is producing a piece of art that is unique and entertaining in its own right, even though each piece is decidedly derivative of the preceeding one. (I do feel obliged to point out that, technically, the second and third person are illegally procuring the source content in the first place, as they almost certainly are not obtaining permission of the original creator, i.e. the copyright holder. That no one seems to be fussing over this is the matter of another column!)

That the comic producers behind r/behindthegifs don’t appear to be trying to earn a living with their pieces suggests that the highly derivative nature of their work is perhaps not commercially viable. Though I suspect it has equally as much to do with the fact that these creators are just having fun being able to contribute in whatever small way they can.