While minicomics are a fixture of conventions, and increasingly the Eisner Awards, it seems doubtful we'll encounter microcomics in artists alley anytime soon. Still, cartoonist Claudia Puhlfürst's "Juana Knits the Planet" is leading the charge.

The 12-panel comic strip has been etched onto a single human hair using a focused ion beam, " a very sharp and high-speed jet of matter is produced and directed towards the hair to etch it -- similar to a fine laser beam."

The result, billed as the world's smallest comic -- I have little doubt that it is -- was documented in the video below as a promotion for the Exceptional Hardware Software Meeting, held next month in Germany. (In case you're wondering, unit of measurement shown in the image above, and video below, is the micrometer, which is one millionth of 1 meter.)

You can see the original strip on Puhlfürst's deviantART page.

(via CNET, Boing Boing)