September 9, 2009 0

Panels and Pages– thoughts about comics on the iPhone

By Scott Cederlund in comics

For the past few years, I think everyone has been waiting for the emergence of web comics.  Faster, cheaper and more controllable by the creators, web comics were supposed to be the medium that brought comics to the masses.  Web comics have certainly had their share of success but there still seems to be some kind block that is keeping web comics from being widely adopted by audiences and creators.  But there seems to be something interesting happening with comics being formatted for iPhones and other mobile devices.  Right now, Archie: Freshman Year #1 is one of the top free book applications over on iTunes and GI Joe: Prequel #1 is one of the top paid book apps.  Applications like iVerse and Comixology’s Comics are making it easier and easier to get comics like The Walking Dead, Atomic Robo and The Surrogates on your phone.

For the past couple of weeks, I’ve kind of been experimenting with these apps.  If nothing else, it’s been fun to be able to sample an issue of a series either for free or, at the most, for $0.99 (compared to $2.99 or more for most single issues.)  With Longbox fueling a lot of the discussion about digital comics this summer, the financial benefits of digital distribution to the creators makes an iTunes model for comics sound better than the traditional pamphlet model.  If iVerse and Comics has a similar benefit for creators while giving comics at a cheaper price point to consumers, digital distribution seems like a win/win for everyone involved.

Of course, there needs to be a transformation of how we read comics if we move to a phone-based platform.  The size of the iPhone screen makes it almost perfect for viewing one panel at a time.  Here’s how a full page from The Surrogates #1 looks on the iPhone:

This image is maybe a slight bit larger than actual size.  By itself, the page in unreadable but this page on an iPhone isn’t meant to be read.  In fact, if you hold your iPhone in a certain way, you’d never see a full page like this.  I think most of the app developers put a view of a comic page in like this just so the reader could get a feel for the actual comic page.  When you start actually flipping through the screens, here’s how the reading of Surrogates #1, page 2 actually works.
Screen 1:
Screen 2:
Screen 3:

Screen 4:
Formatted for the iPhone, one printed page becomes four screens, each conveying only a fraction of the information of a whole page.

I miss the ebb and flow of Brett Weldele’s art from the original page.  The strong vertical images get lost when the page is broken down into iPhone-sized bites.  Even the intimacy of the seduction is lost a bit.  On the full page, each image of the lovers could almost get lost in the rain and the alley.  The act of the seduction itself is part of something larger when it’s on the printed page.  On the phone screen, each panel or subset of panels becomes its own entity.  The images are actually crisper and more defined when separated out of the larger page.  Each panel begs you to look deeper into the actions of these back alley lovers.  The action is much more focused when you can only concentrate on a panel as opposed to seeing the whole page.

The exposure comics get on the iPhone or on Google’s Android platform may yet be the story of the year that hardly anyone is talking about.  Sales of digital copies of Star Trek and GI Joe, driven by their ties to popular movies, looks like IDW is finding ways to get their comics in front of people’s eyes even if it’s not the way that we’re used to.  All of the Surrogates is available right now, just as the movie is coming out in a few weeks.  And the success of Archie: Freshman Year #1 shows that comics on the phone isn’t just tied into movies.  The iPhone and other phones open up whole new ways for comics to be distributed and read.  I wonder if this will be the way out of the direct market many creators and even publishers have been looking for.

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