I've commented many times on how the Internet is really a new television distribution medium that allows a different economic model to emerge. So, with that in mind, a new animated Web series called "Afterworld" hinges on the mystery of how the world's technology and almost all its inhabitants were wiped out overnight.

It also raises another question: Whether a science-fiction epic can remain compelling if it's meted out in 130 two-minute installments.



Ten episodes in, the series has so far managed to keep up the suspense. "Afterworld" centers on bespectacled narrator Russell Shoemaker, an executive who says goodbye to his family in Seattle, flies to New York on business and wakes up to discover the city blacked out and its population vanished. In the episodes that follow, he tries to figure out what he slept through on that fateful night and make sense of his new surroundings.

The series was created by Electric Farm Entertainment, a digital studio formed by Stan Rogow, a former producer of the disney channel's "Lizzie McGuire," writer Brent Friedman, who has worked on movies like "Mortal Kombat 2" and Jeff Sagansky, a former TV network executive.