A new exhibit draws browsers to the art of the comic, possibly the genre most readily adaptable to the format of an online gallery.

"The New Englanders: Five Artists" online at [C] gallery launched Sept. 1, says curator Brian Moore, who came up with the theme, designed the Web site at www.evosarts.com/comicsgallery/comics.html and curated the current show.

"I decided to focus on New England-area creators for this show. I was curious to see how many creators lived in this part of the country," Moore says. He called comic store owners for recommendations, studied comics messageboards on the Web, and visited artists' personal sites.

[C]'s real-world home is Evos Arts, a 30,000-square-foot artist-run space in downtown Lowell that offers live music, gallery shows, video festivals, etc. Evos has an online literary magazine, Meter, and they wanted to create an online gallery for comics and cartoons. They contacted Moore after seeing his "Teddy & Anna" in a show. "[C] is a bad pun on "see," short for "comics" or "cartoons," and a typographical icon for a letter contained in a comic panel," Moore said.

"I wanted to show a broad selection of styles and subject matter-some humor, some autobiography, some adventure. Ideally, visitors to the site who are not comics afficianados will find the work accessible and exciting, and visitors who are more well-read in comics will discover work they haven't seen before," Moore said.

The current show features the work of Ariel Bordeaux ("Deep Girl," "Raisin Pie"), Gareth Hinds ("Bearskin," "Beowulf"), Steve Hogan ("Acid Keg"), James Kochalka ("Sketchbook Diaries," "Fancy Froglin," etc.) and Moore ("Teddy & Anna"). Themes range from autobiography to hallucinatory humor to critiques of comics and commercialism.

"I like the variety of the artwork shown on the site-for example, Gareth Hinds' pages are painterly and dense; James Kochalka's work looks deceptively simple but is the product of strong drawing and composition," Moore said. All are self-published or published by small publishing companies. Each artist's set of pages has a link to his or her Web site, a short bio and a bibliography.

"The New Englanders: Five Artists" will be up through December. The next show will have a different curator and theme, but the details haven't been worked out yet.