IDW Joins The Brawl! Making the Switch To Digital
Now that digital comics are becoming a more and more viable reading option, it's critical that the printed originals receive careful attention in being adapted. It's a chance for publishers to put out work they already own with just minor tweaks, a way to garner revenue from a series that's lost public attention. When I checked out the IDW app on my iPod touch, I liked what I saw: first issues for free and a healthy library of decently priced, older titles. IDW could stand to gain from increased attention in the App Store as a smaller publisher, so I was surprised to discover how carelessly the group had broken down their products for their pixelated recreation.
First, a few objects of note; The observations drawn here derive from reading the digital editions of Groom Lake #1 and The Dreamer #1, both available for free, which is just perfect for the PinkKryptonite budget. It could be that IDW Is more meticulous in transcribing their paid content, but these editions were lacking in professionalism. Also, these comics were viewed on an iPod touch instead of the more sleek and streamlined iPad interface they're intended for, so these problems may not be universal.
So you're adapting illustrated work for an entirely different viewing method, and you want to preserve the artist's work, but need to resize the text for more modest resolutions. Groom Lake resolves this by fitting most horizontal panels into a letterbox and floating the expanded dialogue boxes into the black void where the gutters went to die. Square or horizontal panels normally get coupled to maintain a widescreen view of the comic. Why this preference for a wide presentation exists appears to be a mostly aesthetic choice, but it reads naturally; Though the iPad allows readers to fit a panel to the screen size, the iPod functionality is still easy on the eyes by insisting on left-to-right reading order. Dreamer's redesign is more straightforward, its panels are resized with no internal redesign, leaving this reader to appreciate the small creative choices made for the digital Groom Lake. With Dreamer, the small inset panels detract from the larger panels they're conjoined to, and in one instance, the comic misses the point entirely on a splash page by splitting it in two.
Yet for all its poor tweaking decisions, Dreamer was still the better adapted comic, likely because its transition was so straight-edge. Groom Lake had a few technical failures, presenting panels out of sequence and omitting a dialog box on page 21. These are presumably errors of an overworked and uncredited adapter, but also serve a shining example of why digital comics require a dedicated adaptation team.
This early experiment shows just how young the digital distribution method is. I'm hopeful for manga adaptations, comics' kin that often tells its stories in wide boxes. But if ereaders should strive to reach more people, publishers need to develop specialized personnel in transferring the comic, and accredit them as they do for letterers and colorists. Even in panel-by-panel recreations, the process requires some creative input from whoever is doing the transcribing. This side of the comics industry will naturally reform as it expands, and it's essential that these are clean changes that improve the way comics are sold.
Rubber Justice
Posted to editorial on 19 April 2010
· Comments (2)
Other stuff like this: app store, digital distribution, groom lake, idw
I confess that I have yet to try any "motion" comics or other digital comics formats because I, despite being a professional nerd, am a complete comics Luddite. So, how does it work? Is it like a cartoon or is it just like a scanned page from a comic book, broken into panels?
It varies depending on the comic, Klarion. Most of the IDW comics I've sampled just cut up the panels and resize the text boxes. But in a few Marvel comics, if you open up to large panel, the "next panel" motion will zoom in on a cluster of speech bubbles, and hitting it again will pan across the same panel to the next batch, sort of like a slow reveal of the entire drawing while simultaneously preventing reader error of looking ahead or misreading the speech sequence. To me, digital comics present themselves like an alternate way to enjoy the story instead of a full-on replacement for print.