iPhone and Flash: It Just Isn't Meant to Be

Here's an interesting development in the comic art form: mobile devices.

DC Comics made a fairly major change to its business model several months ago when they announced they would be releasing all of their monthly comic books in both magazine AND digital formats.  A lot of the internet discussion focus has turned to the implications for the business side of the industry, but I'd like to take a moment to address how this affects the aesthetic itself.

I read this part of the panel, then tap...

See, I've been subscribing to some of DC's titles via my smart phone because it's a quick, convenient way for me to access these comics.  I sometimes find myself with downtime at work and it's great to fill it with a few minutes of Green Lantern or Batman, and when a task inevitably falls into my lap I can easily just pop my phone back into my pocket.  The app is user-friendly, and the first time you use it there is a helpful tutorial that teaches you how it works: essentially, programmers have broken the comic's pages into their individual panels, and they organize them in a way that your phone's screen can display them for the reader to easily view.  Sometimes this involves zooming into different parts of an image to read text or focus on specific elements of a scene (only to suddenly pop out and view the whole image before moving on), sometimes a couple panels are crammed into one screen, and so forth.  Tapping on different parts of the screen will allow the reader to move forward and backward.  At first I thought this was all well and good, a rational way to translate a physical comic into a handheld format.  Then the frustrating confusion reared its ugly head.

...to read the rest of it.

 The first time this occurred was when I was reading Flash #2.  I was nearing the end of the issue.  Flash was on the run, as usual, and at the same time Iris West was visiting a prison for a story she was writing, some guy named Guerrero was being pressured by bad guys into pressing an ominous button, a commercial airliner's pilots were fiddling with their instruments, and a mysterious explosion was going off in the sky, seemingly from out of nowhere.  The last image of the comic is of Flash gawking at the jet about to crash down on top of him (and a bridge full of cars), leaving the reader in suspense as to whether he'll be able to save the endangered innocents or not.  Thing is, I was left REALLY confused.  Tapping on my screen to follow the app's way of pacing and progressing through the story was making me wonder if there was a glitch in the software, because suddenly I was jumping from one setting to another, rotating between five different locations -- I thought I was skipping entire pages!  I kept going back and forth trying to figure out what was happening with my comic, and I wasn't able to really figure it out until I had a chance to speak with a coworker who had already read this issue in magazine format, and who explained the story to me.  I felt kind of dumb when I finally understood what was happening, and took a moment to think about why I hadn't been able to piece it together on my own.

Then it dawned on me: storytelling in comic books assumes that the reader has entire pages laid out before him, trusting his inherent reading and logic skills, and relying on tried and true practices of art, to guide his eye to follow the words and images in sequence.  Creating sequential artwork for the intent of publishing an actual comic book, and then translating said artwork into what it is on our mobile devices, removes much of the comic book experience as it was intended to be by its creators.  My lack of understanding could very well have been caused by the inability to take a series of images (and in some cases, entire panels) in on my own, allowing my natural comic-book-reading abilities to do the legwork for me.

To be a little more fair to the publishers, there IS an option to view the entire page on the iPhone.  However, I don't think there's really much of a comparison.

Regular comic book page

Smartphone view

 









It's like watching a theater performance on a television screen.  I've always hated watching plays on video, but it wasn't until film school that I pieced together why.  A professor was showing us Mandy Pantinkin's performance of "Sundays in the Park with George" one class period, and after about a thousand cross-fade transitions I couldn't stop thinking about how inappropriate it was to riddle a stage play with digital footprints.  Then I got caught up in the camera angles and how I wanted to look at the overall painting being portrayed, but no, I was at the mercy of the camera.  I really enjoy going to the theater.  Attending big-budget musicals and performing in high school plays was a big part of my adolescence -- which is why I insist that theater should be seen IN A THEATER.  Production design, scripting, costume, choreography, acting -- these are all things that are meant to lead an audience member's eyes from one point to another.  Introducing cameras to this foreign environment endangers and muffles the other storytellers on stage!

Smart phones are great, and so are comic books.  The breeding of the two is what yields oft-unwieldy spawn.  It would be interesting if someone were to begin making comics with smart phones specifically in mind.  This would be like a new medium for sequential art, as it's designed without any intention of the work being laid out in one big spread in front of you (so much for the infinite canvas, eh?).  It could cater to the strengths of mobile devices and their technological capabilities, rather than being a second thought by a marketing team.  Authors of comics who create stories specifically with this format in mind can be more confident that their smart phone readers are more likely to understand what exactly it is that they're trying to get across.

For now, though, I guess all we can do is to help readers be aware of how their experience is being affected.  I certainly like the idea of carrying my comics everywhere with me, I just have to recognize that it's just detracting from the purest form of comic book reading by doing so.

Comics in a Digital Era

I already commented just a tad in former posts about webcomics and their potential as "comics," and thanks to Scott Kurtz's reference at PvP, I came across this nice illustration that briefly criticizes some webcomics for straying outside of what an actual comic is, explains that definition, and shows what the author means through form following concept. (WARNING: some strong language in the first few panels, but it cleans up once it gets to the meat!)


about DIGITAL COMICS by ~Balak01 on deviantART

I think this Balak01 fellow has hit the nail on the head. He keeps comics pure by not straying from their basics -- images in a deliberate sequence -- but still makes them dynamic and manipulates time by taking advantage of the visual space properties that are unique to the digital format.

The Potential of a Medium

Penny Arcade is known for its refined styles in pencils and coloring.

Yesterday I was listening to episode #47 of Webcomics Weekly, a podcast hosted by Brad Guigar, Dave Kellet, Scott Kurtz and Kris Straub, a group of webcomics authors who give their insights on building and maintaing a webcomic business and answer fanmail. In this particular installment, Mike Krahulik of Penny Arcade, currently the most renowned online comic strip, joins the crew as a special guest, throwing in his opinions on what's worked for him and his business, how he's managed to become so popular, etc.

What really grabbed my attention was a topic that was brought up some time into the episode, where the guys are discussing the roles of writing and drawing a comic, separately from each other as well as cooperatively. Krahulik eventually mentions that some comics, such as xkcd, utilize very minimal visual art yet implement very intelligent writing.

xkcd uses mere stick figures to draw attention to its dialog.

He continues (in a way that I'm sure wasn't meant to be a slam on the example he gave) to explain his philosophy that comics are a very visual medium, and thus the creator(s) should aspire to a higher level of art that would require some sort of training or practice to develop, where a certain quality of skill shoud be apparent in the illustrator -- coupled with good writing and storytelling ability.

Chainsawsuit's use of basic line is a commentary on indie comics.

This expression got me thinking. "Should" a comic creator aspire to a polished, more detailed skill in drawings, or is it sometimes sufficient to use stick figures or other simple figures?

When I was a film student at Brigham Young University, I took a documentary production class

Edison's studio housed a locked-down
camera and rotated to control light.

where we discussed a similar question. Bearing in mind the unique capabilities of film and its basic components (sound and a moving image), which is more important to focus on in manipulation of the medium: audio or video? We discussed this quite a bit, and I remember being somewhat torn. Though I seemed to immediately side with the video argument ("What other media exist that utilize a moving picture?"), I couldn't help but remember Thomas Edison who, in spite of all his accomplishments in the invention of the movie camera and Black Maria, was most pleased with his achievements in audio, more than anything else he had invented. But we had always been told that video should be able to stand alone from the audio in storytelling -- that the viewer should be able to tell what's going on if everything is muted, that music can be

Edison's phonograph.

manipulative and dangerous!

In the end my wise professor calmly stated that BOTH were equally as important. He seemed to take the side of many theorists who believe that any given art medium should focus on and exploit what is exclusive to that specific medium (I don't have my notes from my film theory class with me -- otherwise I'd be able to sound really smart right now and rattle off a few examples). But I'm not sure I entirely agree with that mindset.

It seems to be a pretty purist mindset to tell any medium that it must consider what makes itself that particular medium and equally and fully make use of those aspects in whatever it does. Perhaps I can agree that doing so is to truly make itself representative of the art form, but some of the best films I've ever seen have been more visual than otherwise. Charlie Chaplin continued to make silent films even after the advent of talkies. Did this make him less of a filmmaker? He catered to the strengths of visual storytelling, and was magnificent at it. In fact, in some of his talkies that I've seen, I've found myself wishing that he'd just shut up ("Limelight," anyone?). And the same can be said of the opposite. I've seen films where the audio just blew me away and seemed to say more for the movie than the video did at times (one example being "Dan in Real Life," where I credit the sound mixers and foley artists for making me sense the title character's down-to-earth outlook on the world around him).

Projecting this conversation onto the Krahulik sentiment, I'm not sure I can fully agree that EVERY comic should equally focus on refined writing AND drawing skills.

Firstly, though, I will concede that a worthwhile comic cannot exist without some sort of writing ability. This

Dinosaur Comics reuses the same digital
images and layout in each strip.

doesn't mean that you need to have a Pulitzer, but a comic creator should be able to communicate his or her ideas prettly fluently, however he's going to do it -- whether that be through conventional narrative storytelling, or perhaps an even more mosaic approach where seemingly unrelated images are juxtaposed and clash/merge to convey meaning.

That being said, I question whether or not a refined visual presence is entirely necessary. The beauty of xkcd is that its simplicity draws the reader to the writing and dialog more. Others, like Dinosaur Comics, essentially utilize a template of digital images to add text to, showing how the same images can deliver individual stories on a regular basis. Scott McCloud, comics theorist extraordinaire, invented the "24-hour comic," a challenge to comics creators of every skill level to crank out a comic from conception to finish in a strict 24-hour time period. Take a look at some of the results in the collection on the website. There is some pretty rough artwork in there due to the time limit, but does that make some of them any less a comic than an issue of Green Lantern?

An excerpt from Scott McCloud's first 24-hour comic, A Day's Work.

There are visual laws that need to be learned when any comic illustrator enters the arena (i.e. telling a visual story, how much space to leave for dialog, layouts, gutter spacing, etc.), but I feel that as long as the artist is consistent in his technique within the given series of comic strips/books and the writing isn't hindered, why not show us new and different ways of visually supporting your writing, even if those ways aren't as seemingly polished as a Davinci?

Is this more a comic than
the likes of xkcd?

What do you think? Are the roles of writing and visual presentation equal in comics? Should a comics creator strive to develop a clean, detailed visual style to support his writing? Discuss!

(In his defense, I am not insinuating that Mike Krahulik would oppose the ideas I raise in this column. He didn't clarify or flesh out his argument enough for me to state that he is against what I have to say -- for all I know he and I could see eye-to-eye on some or most of these points.)

What are Comics?

Now that we've better established what art is or should be, the next logical step is to define what is meant when referring to "comics" on this blog. I find the following sufficient for our needs:

Juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence, intended to convey information and/or produce an aesthetic response in the reader.
-Scott McCloud, Understanding Comics

The book from which this definition was taken does a pretty thorough job of dissecting this sentence to clearly explain what is meant. I highly recommend picking up this book, because McCloud makes some interesting arguments that inspire a lot of the thought process in this blog.

McCloud's definition is actually pretty broad. In fact, in this interview he explains that one could even create a comic by organizing a series of subjects in stained glass. I like that this is broad, however, because I think it forces us to look at how comics are so similar to other media we may be readier to accept as an art form.

For example, "The Voyage of Life" series of paintings by Thomas Cole are beautiful individual works, but are very much incomplete without being viewed together, in a deliberate sequential order. Some of you may be thinking, "Wait, 'Voyage of Life' is NOT comics," but I beg you to break down the images into essentially what they are, and you will see that they actually have quite a bit in common with their descendants, the brightly-colored, commercialized magazines/funny papers.

From the National Gallery of Art:

Cole's renowned four-part series traces the journey of an archetypal hero along the "River of Life." Confidently assuming control of his destiny and oblivious to the dangers that await him, the voyager boldly strives to reach an aerial castle, emblematic of the daydreams of "Youth" and its aspirations for glory and fame. As the traveler approaches his goal, the ever-more-turbulent stream deviates from its course and relentlessly carries him toward the next picture in the series, where nature's fury, evil demons, and self-doubt will threaten his very existence. Only prayer, Cole suggests, can save the voyager from a dark and tragic fate.

Juxtaposition of the four images, in sequence, yields several interpretations, including Christian themes of sin and redemption, but also allusions to the birth and development of America and warnings of impending tragedy brought about by the notions of Manifest Destiny.

The idea of sequential images for the purpose of juxtaposition and extraction of meaning/emotion is common in other media as well, showing us that the structure of comics is replicated in other forms.

The Kuleshov Effect is a montage theory of film editing, developed in 1918 by Lev Kuleshov. The idea is that content of images is less important (as far as conveyance of meaning goes) than the order in which they are edited and juxtaposed. This was first experimented with an audience viewing a series of four shots: a man's face, a bowl of soup, a girl, and a lady in a coffin. Though each shot remained the same throughout the film's duration, the audience walked away raving about the man's acting ability, sensing different emotions in his face depending on what the preceding/following shots were (with the soup, hunger; with the coffin, mourning; etc.)!

(a short recreation of the Kuleshov effect)

So, believe it or not, you and I are subject to this psychological theory every time we sit down to watch the most recent summer blockbuster. As an editor myself, I can atest to the power of manipulating the order of images to express a specific idea or emotion. Comics follow similar principles.

Notice, then, that some things we may consider to be "comics" do NOT fit McCloud's definition. For example, "The Family Circus" is only a single panel and, though certainly it holds an important relationship to standard comics, it fits better with the description of "cartoon." My brother Jared would argue that even a single panel may contain sequenced images -- such as when Billy runs around the neighborhood, leaving a dotted line for us to follow -- and I will concede this point, but for the most part this principle isn't followed in true single-panel illustrations.

Also note that a comic doesn't necessarily require text in order to be a comic. There are plenty of textless comics that evoke meaning. (Sidenote: I'll be returning to "The Family Circus" in the future as a good example of juxtaposition of text and image and what it is capable of.)

In sum: When looking at what comics are, we see that the structure they follow really isn't
all that different from what we appreciate in other media.The ideas behind comics were even used in the Renaissance! You better believe that there will be future posts of case studies between art of different cultures/time periods and contemporary comics.

Isn't it interesting to think that the following is rooted in such works as those of Matthias Grünewald?


*Calvin and Hobbes is copyrighted by Bill Watterson. Family Circus is copyrighted by Bil Keane. Used without permission.