I'm not sure if this will show up for anybody who doesn't already have a custom Google page, but here's the link to the comics gadget I've been using for a while. It has the ability to display more than one comic per gadget frame, but I find that any more than two or three comics makes it unwieldy to work with as you then have to scroll not only horizontally, but vertically too to read'em (which puts the horizontal scroll bar down so far that you first have to first scroll vertically to get to it!). Placing a separate copy of the same gadget for each comic seems to work best (sometimes even if you have multiple comics chosen in the one gadget, it might still only display one!).
I ended up creating two comics tabs in Google just to make it so the pages were not too large (each tab's comics then basically fit within the confines of my screen). The gadget includes a clickable button to view any chosen comics full size in a separate browser window (which I liked, but again it didn't always work quite right).
The other day when viewing my Google comics tabs I found that there was a note in the gadgets announcing that there is now a new "inline" version. I'm not sure how to find a listing for this new version other than to add the old gadget version to your Google page and then copy the xml link—http://scripts.mit.edu/~sharo/comics/comics-inline.xml—from the new version announcement and paste it into the page for adding new Google gadgets via the "Add by URL" selection.
The new version lets you select all the comics you want (from those offered anyway) and it will display them below all other displayed gadgets on the Google tab. The comics display full size one on top of the next one and all you have to do is scroll down the browser window page to read them. Cool. You don't have to scroll horizontally to view each single comic and you don't have to open a whole other browser window either.
I kept the two separate comics tabs in my Google page, but now one is for comics I've seen on occasion and generally like (they just don't appear in my local paper) and the other for those that do appear in my local paper. The reason for the latter tab is simply convenience. If I'm online before I get to my paper I can read some of the comics there (plus a few of them appear in color!). Also, if I come across one that I think someone in particular might really enjoy I can it and email a copy quite easily. Or if it's one that I happen to really like for some reason I can grab it and archive it on my hard drive strictly for personal use/enjoyment.
I'm not sure if that's quite kosher with copyright laws, but I'm hardly doing it frequently and there's no way I can think of that it's costing the publisher or the artist/writer of the comic any money as I wouldn't be buying whole collections just to get one particular strip I found funny one day, nor would I be subscribing to any online email delivery of said comics. I figure what little bit I engage in this practice actually in a very small way promotes the comic(s) and to me that's a good thing. Or maybe I'm just rationalizing and I'm a bad, bad man.
Here are the comics I currently have set up to view on my two Google tabs...
Comics
Bloom County (classic early reruns)
Candorville
Dilbert
Drabble
Herman (in color)
Monty
Over the Hedge
Rose Is Rose
Shoe
The Quigmans
Comics (Inquirer)
Pickles (in color, but this one is via a different gadget)
B.C.
Baldo (in color)
Cathy (in color)
Doonesbury (in color)
For Better Or For Worse (in color)
Get Fuzzy
Jump Start
Non Sequitur
One Big Happy
Peanuts
Pearls Before Swine
Ziggy (in color)
All of the comics I view via Google are available through their syndicate(s) online, but frankly that just takes waaaaaay too long for me (being one of the last dialup users in America), so I just never bother. This method of viewing them on my Google pages eliminates the useless (from my perspective) "frills" on those sites, the numerous ads and promotions (which I've never once clicked) that load on a page before I even begin to see the actual comic loading.
I also assume (though I'm not 100% sure) that if the source syndicate(s) and artists/writers were not OK with this arrangement of having their works appear in this manner in Google they would simply not allow it. And again I'm assuming that that is in fact what they are doing... allowing it—that this isn't somehow possible via some method of which they aren't aware.
I can't help noticing that King Features comics (e.g. Beetle Bailey, Blondie, Hagar the Horrible, The Piranha Club, and Zits to name a handful) do not seem to be available via any Google gadgets. They also limit free online access to only the first week of the prior month! Instead they encourage interested folk to subscribe via DailyINK for $15/year (which isn't horrible, I suppose, but not something I'd do either).
As a result of The Inquirer's recent comics competition I wanted to find a way to add Sherman's Lagoon to my Google pages, but unfortunately it's a King Features comic so that's not possible. Oh well.
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