Gadgetory

comics you might not be aware of it but you are constantly surrounded by comics whether it's choking hazard sign in the restaurant or the IKEA instructions you're trying to decipher at one point another in your life you've read a comic ever since Action Comics introduced the world to Superman in 1938 modern comics have been a huge driver of art and culture what used to be ridiculed and cast aside has now become modern-day cultural phenomenon generating billions of dollars comics have come a long way and thanks to new digital platforms comics are more accessible than ever it really feels like we're in this kind of weird comic Renaissance there's just more of everything yeah there's so much diversity small publishers are doing really well small publishers big publishing to be a little more organized I mean independents now can just go out and do it and just publish themselves but I really like I don't even like where to start anymore where do we begin with comics when I started out I could I could just like go hmm and imagine the entire world of comics you know in 1984 I could just see it in my head you can't do that anymore it's too big this is Scott McCloud he's a major figure in comics theory you may recognize him more like this in 1993 he created the seminal comic book understanding comics it was a comic book treatise of sorts illustrating how comics leveraged many different disciplines from semiotics to sequential art he's a kind of a go-to guy for anything comics you know the comics industry has changed even since the last book even since 2006 or since 1993 it's a completely new industry six months after understanding comics came out in 93 the first graphical web browser came out web comics came in just crashing into our art form and and completely changed the rules meanwhile a graphic novels movement finally takes hold and that was a tremendous change you also saw the influx of manga and a lot of storytelling techniques that I think could be tremendously valuable in comics storytelling so these are four massive changes in comics culture the result is we have this tremendous biodiversity of the that are out there of the the kinds of subjects that people can talk about in comics of the people making comics we're seeing more diversity there and we're seeing a tremendous diversity of formats and technologies this is how you have a healthy art form you want an art form that's so diverse that you can't see from one end of it to another it's also diversity in terms of format - especially with you know digital comics right now because they can think beyond just the page convention right people are doing things that are really innovative in digital comics for instance one really great example that I can think of is Somalia Somalia was an interactive comics journalism magazine that was published on iPad and through PDFs this is Joyce rice she was the creative director of sambhal yeah she knows a lot about digital comics how you make them and what they can do and she really believes that they can enhance the comics reading experience if you make them right one of my favorite inspirations for interactive comics actually is raw magazine which was a magazine that was printed in the 80s and 90s they would include like sound discs and packs of bubble gum and like all these different kinds of interactive things in their printed magazines and so I look at raw and I'm like what can we do on the computer that's totally different symbolic deals in nonfiction and that sometimes means dealing with data so in this case they combined a map graphic into a single panel thanks to a gif if you wanted to do that in print you need a bunch of additional panels now over here were shown a street by tapping on this icon you can here with an environment sounded like the audio and visual combination lets you enter that landscape in a way that couldn't be possible in print so digital comics aren't just changing the way that we read comics they're also changing the way that we buy them here there's still a surprising number of apps like actually let you read and purchase comics there's Marvel unlimited for example those Dark Horse and of course there's comiXology there are tons of digital comics reading apps the comixology is my app of choice it's less buggy than most and it sports a larger selection than any other digital comics store to read a book on your tablet or phone all you have to do is buy it in the online store and then you're off but comiXology is more than a store the company also pioneered a comics reading interface called guided view the origins of data view is that we needed a cheap way to present a portrait style image onto a smaller screen or a device at the start everybody was just cutting out panels into in Photoshop so huge overhead right you got to get a bunch of people sitting in front of Photoshop cutting out panels into four 40 by 640 the iPhone size and we're making slideshows we felt like the rhythm of the story was gone the feeling of the page was gone the layout of the page was gone but at the same time you're talking about a very small device so we had two goals one make it very readable so that the text was readable without a lot of pinching is doing cuz that's a pain - we wanted the whole page there so the idea of guided you came in we basically show you chunks of the page one screen at a time but do it in a way that where we're telling a story so we're not simply just moving around the page we're actually going with the flow of the story and then sometimes we'll actually crop out unnecessary parts of the artwork because they're not integral to what the story is and then one of the nice offsets of this is that you know we actually invented a new way of telling stories which has got to be native which was completely done by accident what happens is when you go from panel to panel it slides but when you go from page to page there's a crossfade and so we had a lot of people see that and say I want to create stories in this manner it seems like there's a lot of possibilities with guide of unitive but it really just makes you think of the device that you're using a lot more than maybe you should be because you're constantly tapping the screen and waiting for bubbles to appear it also comes down to authorial intent like people a lot of these comics were written with the page and I'm like that's meant to keep them I especially for example Scott McCloud who made a big deal with a sculptor and being something you should first and foremost this thing was in every way designed to take advantage of what print can do in full knowledge and awareness of prints limitations you know I have I have one moment where where my protagonist early in the book is shown is shown death you know with with a little help from a supernatural entity he's able to understand what death is something that all of us maybe understand on some level but you need a little help to really understand it some people have described understanding death is like seeing the back of your own eyeball the idea that that consciousness can't even conceive of the absence of itself you know so I and the way I choose to show it in the book is two blank pages the idea of putting that in an iPad and having people think that there is malfunctioning you know I mean what do you do it's like it's designed for print it exists in print it's a it's a printed artifact you know paper without ink with that said I mean paper is always something beautiful I think this is a great constriction for people to kind of experiment for mine but digital is a way to expand entire audience yeah more people are reading comic books because of the digital format I think that you know people who don't live close to a comic book store have more access to comics in general and then it also just you know for people who maybe are wouldn't feel comfortable going into a comic book store as you know a newbie I think that it allows them to explore a world and and you know gain some knowledge before having to step into a comic book store and honestly anything that brings more people to comic books there's nothing wrong with that