Comics are the closest medium to Animation. they combine timing, dialogue, posing and body language, story and more. Good Animators often make good Comic book artist and vise versa. I once had a teacher who claimed that had Michelangelo and Caravaggio been alive today, they would have been Animators or Comic book artists. The difference between the media is clearly the amount of work. Comics allow one to tell grand complex stories independent of the need for funding.