I think I've figured something out

[bigscary]

There are comics and then there are COMICS!.
Warren Ellis writes COMICS! about subject matter normally found in comics.
JMS is vice versa, he writes comics about COMICS! subject matter.
Kurt Busiek writes comics set in a world out of COMICS!.
Mighty God King's "I Should Write the Legion" is all about COMICS!.
Strangers in Paradise is a romance COMIC!.
Powers is a superhero comic.
If you cut Grant Morrison he bleeds the word COMICS! in a spiky font, probably in a bright, saturated color.

Comments

[mneme]

Hmm. I'm familiar with most of the sources, but still unclear on the distinction.

COMIC = Over the Top?

comic = calmer, nastier, more dialog-centric?

[bigscary.livejournal.com]

COMICS are big and weird; comics are sequential art.
COMICS are happy being what they are, a unique art form; comics want respect from other media.
The definitional form of the COMIC is superhero stories; the definitional form of comics is probably romance (if funny animal strips/books had ever thought about respect rather than being exactly what they are, they would almost definitely be the definitional form, with the over-the-top Scrooge stories that gave us Duck Tales the COMICy exception), but I'm not sure about that, there are plenty of romance COMICS. It's safe to say that comics seem to have a wider natural spread of genre than COMICS, though.