If a comic is in "classic newspaper strip form", but has a never ending story (i.e. classics like Rex Morgan M.D., Mary Worth, Judge Parker, ect.) is it considered a story like the graphic novel type pages, or is it still a strip? This has been gnawing on my gray matter and would really like to get some input here.
Thanks bunches.

At first I thought this would be easy to answer, but then I started thinking about it and now I'm all confused!

I would say a strip is a strip, with or without a story. However, those strips can be collected and put in a graphic novel format in chronological order.

Maybe what sets a strip apart from regular comic stories is that usually strips are self contained within their minimal amount of panels. By themselves, strips will usually provide a beginning, middle, and end using a small amount of panels and with or without a sense of continuity from strip to strip. This means that even if you do collect them within a single volume, you're still just collecting individual strips and they will remain that way unless you rewrite them to lead directly into one another. That means getting rid of that beginning, middle, and end that I mentioned earlier. If you do that, you would then consider them a regular comic story.

Hopefully this helps, and doesn't confuse further.

The odd thing is that those two basic categorizations that DD uses refer to completely different things. One is to content (story -- vs. stand-alone) and the other is to format (strip -- vs. full page).

I think on DD, however, most people are more concerned with content than with format, and "strip" is used to denote stand-alone updates without continuous plotlines rather than the comic format. When people filter out strips in their searches, it is because they want to read a longer story and when people look for strips here, it's usually because they don't want to read a backstory and just want a stand-alone.

With that in mind, I'd categorize your comic as a "story" comic, because of the audience it targets.

i agree with usedbooks, the medium format is how the comic is constructed, and the spaces it uses to work, but the strip and story are independent aspects from the format, i've seen comics with just a few frames developing stories in the long run, and full pages of short and comedic nature, yet these predefined categories are pretty much constructed under extremely different circumstances, so in the end what matters to define your comic is wether it has a story to follow in the long run or it's just a collection of fun moments ... i call for story comic too.

If you're wondering how to categorise it according to the DD criteria, I'd say forget the "technical" definitions (because they're always blurry!) and think of it from a practical point of view.

The categorisations only serve one practical purpose: to help people find what they're looking for when they run a search. So, if you think the kind of readers your comic would most appeal to are those who would be looking for strips, then categorise it as a strip. If you think it's more likely to appeal to those looking for a story comic, then categorise it as a story.

That way, when someone searches for strip (or story!) comics, they'll find yours. Alongside a couple of hundred others, obviously!

My flagship comic, Air Raid Robertson, is modeled after serialized adventure strips such as Terry and the Pirates, Flash Gordon, Prince Valiant, the Phantom, and the newspaper incarnations of Superman and Batman. That's not unlike your format at all.

I designate Air Raid Robertson as a "comic strip". That's just my perspective.

You can call yours whatever you want. It's not like the drunkduck police are going to kick down your door and give you a lecture on hairsplitting.

It's a story strip. Not all comic strips are gag-a-day affairs!