Like a simple chat room, or a forum reduced to a single thread. Commonly placed on the main page of a website.
Many Webcomics don't have a large enough community to support a full-size, separate Message Board. A Shout Box is one way to provide easy, highly visible interactivity.
The rise of chat group fics has seen this trope being used In-Universe quite frequently; there will always be a chat room or thread in which all the characters are allowed to interact in.
Compare Fourth-Wall Mail Slot (when fictional characters communicate with their real-life fans). Contrast The Rant (text underneath a webcomic page/strip that the author can use to give the readers updates).
Bound to appear in any Interactive Comic (comics in which Audience Participation decides how the story goes). Might contain an About the Author blurb.
Examples:
- Friendship is Dragons has one, that has become something of a friendly community for discussing Role Playing Games rather than the comic itself. The author cites it as his inspiration for continuing the strip.
- Archipelago Exodus: There's a shoutbox at the bottom of the page in addition to there being a forum thread for readers to post their comments. The difference is that the former is for announcements from the roleplayers and, occasionally, the characters.
- Olympian RPG: The forum has a shout-box in which the roleplayers can hang out. It's a place where they can interact with each other and talk about quests and plots, have simple chit-chat about school and fanfics, and sometimes it can range to epic pillow fights and "poke" wars.
- Final Fantasy XIV: Homeowners can setup a message book for any player to leave a message in.
- Papa Louie Arcade: There's a shout box with official announcements in the game's menu.
- Suikoden IV: There's a comments box to aid the player keep track of notes to solve the puzzles.
- Alien Dice uses one for comics and news posts, even though it does have a forum.
- Beyond Reality has both one of these and a forum.
- Bizarre Uprising: The shoutbox has consisted primarily of complaints of They Changed It, Now It Sucks! vis-a-vis the Time Skip.
- Brat-halla
has embedded a single, blog-powered comment thread for a similar effect.
- Cat Nine uses Chatango and is found on most pages.
- Code Name: Hunter: The creator has set up an interactive comment box that shows up below every page.
- The Cyantian Chronicles: All Shivae Studios Comics, which includes all Cyantian Chronicles comics, have a Shout Box below the comic.
- DreamCatcher (Hazu) uses one.
- City Face: Tom Siddell uses the home-encoded comment thread for Painting the Medium during this interim comic of Gunnerkrigg Court. Instead of displaying Real Life reader comments, it displayed comments from the Animated Actors reading scene scripts, and other in-universe characters reading the comic within the comic. They're archived here
.
- Juathuur: The creator named it MYSHOUTBOX
(yes, it's in all-caps) to post general announcements and other updates.
- Last Res0rt has one arranged.
- The Monster & The Girl has a shoutbox arranged so that a message on one comic page is seen on all the comic pages.
- Planet Zebeth uses one as well.
- Ratfist: It used to have a shout-box below every page; readers could post comments there. It eventually led to the creation of an off-site Ratfist forum.
- Bear And Kitten (read here
) has a very avid fanbase that actively posted in their shoutbox. Oddly enough, even though the webcomic hasn't been updated in almost a year now, the fans still post in the shoutbox because they actually became a close-knit group of friends. Seemingly forgetting that they even came to the website for the comic. Currently, the site is down, but the shoutbox is still accessible via the internet archive.
- DeviantArt: Users who subscribe have the option to put a shoutbox with any journal they post.
- Last Point FM: Each artist and band's page has a shoutbox for their fans to interact and post their ratings.
- Meme Italia: There's one at the top of the wiki.
- Rate Your Music: While each song, album, or soundtrack has its own comment threads box, there's also a shout box on the site's main page. It was brought down due to controversy over Lana Del Rey's Norman Fucking Rockwell.
- YouTube: Content creators can mark one comment (theirs or made by one of their viewers) as a sticky post on each video. Regardless of what you pick, said comment will always show up on top. Since other people can respond to it, it becomes a shout box of sorts for that particular video.
