Zeroes and Ones

What's so special about Digital Comics? Aren't they just the same as Web Comics? Matt Fraction has the answer.
18 May 2001

Look: I know more people who have seen that stupid Hamster Dance thing than have read AS I LAY DYING. What does that tell you about the potential of the Web?

Digital technology has slapped Hollywood for a loop; digital audio formats will kill the bloated zombie music industry once and for all; and as creative types without the stomach for dealing with People People and fake smiles, this makes us very happy. The Global Village is being decentralised, and 'Help Wanted' signs are up all over the place.

The triple-threat combination of mass-Web saturation, high-bandwidth proliferation, and cheaper, faster digital tools mean the same things for comics as it does for film or music. The punk rock adage of Do It Yourself has never been easier or more appealing to half-drunken, half-broke art school dropouts like myself (and I suspect like many of you). A filmmaker no longer needs to go to Sundance or NYU to be taken seriously; a musician needs a cover-shot on Rolling Stone just as much as they need cocaine habits and galloping Malaysian herpes. Get your work on the Net. Become a meme. Spread like a virus and infect the world.

Simple, right?

Comics, lacking the glitzy sex of music or the art-house pontification that film seems to spawn, are about to come into their own. Comics are hacking and slashing off their useless appendages and finally, after decades of stagnant retardation, exploding like the vital medium we always knew they were. And the notion of Digital Comics is waiting, waiting, waiting for someone to come along and exploit her.

Will Digital Comics ever replace meatspace comics? Nope. But they offer people all around the world the opportunity to refine their craft, cultivate an audience and interact with said audience. It's a low cost, high-traffic opportunity to cut your teeth and hone your idiom. If you wish to adhere to a DIY solution, Digital Comics are all you could ever ask for. If you want to push your way into meatspace publishing, Digital Comics will prove that you can walk the walk. And in the final analysis, it means you can make more comics.

It's a good time to be a comics renaissance person.

Comics can be made, produced, and distributed for practically nothing now save talent and intensity. The eight grand that one could spend getting a small print run and full cover card-stock cover printed, shipped, and solicited will - digitally speaking - provide you with each and every single tool you would ever need to make comics the rest of your life and get them out to a world-wide audience. And you'd still probably have about three grand left over.

As we take our first tentative steps out of our geographic tribes and go hunting for new villages to practice this weird shamanism in, we'll find a more sincere and legitimate connection with our ideal audience while sticking it to the proverbial man, simultaneously. By eliminating middlemen, any profit generated will be pure and untouched by the maggots and vultures that pollute other industries, thus allowing a pure revenue stream from creator to consumer. And, most importantly, our work will be instantly accessible to the whole entire goddamn world.

But.

Stop fiddling with HTML.

Seriously, knock it off. Especially if you're trying to make a digital comic.

It's chunky, clunky, and slow. You have to worry about browsers, browser versions, and platforms. Load time. Resolution. Bandwidth as it relates to the complexity and diversity of your work. Chances are, no matter what kind of comic artist you are, you don't have the needed skills to make vital and fresh web pages - and you simply cannot separate good content from shit design. Worst of all, you've trapped your readers into roaming from point A to point B on a Cartesian axis: From Up to Down, or from Left to Right, and vice versa; click here to continue. That infinite load time between pages and panels kill the pacing of your work, no matter what you do to circumvent it.

You can't do anything with it when you're done other than post it and pray people show up, send out the link, and hope you don't frustrate people already tired of the World Wide Wait.

Fuck that.

As a matter of fact, fuck Web Comics, too.

The difference between a Web Comic and a Digital Comic is that the former tries to conform itself to the physics of the Web; the latter exists as nothing more than a system of zeroes and ones somewhere, but conforms to the classic notion of comic/audience interaction.

Now: put on your Imagination Caps, and think of a straight line, with Comics As They Are on the left, Web Comics in the centre, and Digital Comics on the right. My tastes and ideas lie on the far left and the far right, with almost no interest for anything that falls in the centre.

I admire the formalism and structures encouraged and executed by Comics as They Are. I'm a purist: I want panels, gutters, speech balloons, and pages. And sadly, Web Comics give the reader an imitation of these things because of everyone's favourite hoary old chestnuts, load time and image size. Pacing is shot right out the window, pitched with baby and bath water. Or, failing that, I've found I don't care much for Web Comics - regardless of how talented the creator - because they're oftentimes infused with animation.

In my book, something that's animated just isn't a comic; it's animation. Perhaps a simple and crude animation, but a cartoon nevertheless. An animator would not sit you down inside of a darkened theatre to show you a projection of key-frames and call it a comic, would they?

There's no shame in animation, but as a creator if I want to make a cartoon, I'll make a cartoon. This doesn't make Web Comics creators and their work any more or less valid than any other type of comic creators. But any time a creator presumes to define pacing and rhythm for the reader, or music and other sound cues, they have destroyed the most important covenant between themselves and their readers. Comics exist on implication and nuance. The ideas they contain flutter in and out of a limbo that is the reader's job to explore, with the map provided by the creator. And, no matter how subtle or minimal web animations are within the comic, it violates that implication with capital-M Meaning.

In a sense, I would argue comics are the world's first interactive media, more so than film. The reader experiences a type of cognitive interaction not just with the panels, but with the gutters. The reader fills in information missing from the work itself; in this way, the reader becomes part of the story. Any interference by the creator in this interactivity spoils the spell. When the creator chooses to animate his work for an online audience, that creator is saying, in no uncertain terms, "And then it happened like this." Animation ruptures the psychic vacuum that comics fill within the reader's minds, thus invalidating the core of what makes comics... well, comics.

In the end, Web Comics are an interesting, new chimera art form. A hybrid of a hybrid of a hybrid, deserving of their own syntax, rules, and eventually masterworks. But they aren't comics, you know?

Digital Comics can encompass all that's sexy and cool about any media on the web without sacrificing any of the control methodologies of Comics As They Are. As a matter of fact, digital comics allow for a real, true metapanel to be created for the first time, and offers creators unparalleled control of the comic-space. Multiple choice, multiple story lines, multiple paths of entry and completion - real-time comics, opening doors to the creator that brush and paper can only dream of.

Let's talk about the .PDF format from Adobe.

I can't ever get into this without sounding like an Adobe salesman; but I assure you that this isn't the case.

PDF means Portable Document Format; not quite as cool as S.H.I.E.L.D. or U.N.C.L.E., I know, but it'll have to do. I don't want to get into the ins and outs of the fucking thing, though; if you really care, or are really curious, visit Adobe's website.

If you're online and reading this, chances are you've already got some sort of PDF reader - they're free, and bundled nowadays with most software so manufacturers don't have to kill half of Brazil to print instructions. PDF is a type of digital book format that allows for high visual quality and low file size simultaneously. Okay? Okay.

The newest version of Acrobat - the program that allows the user to create certain files in the PDF format - allows you to add a shitload of cool little piggybacked features to your PDF - encryption, pay per view, non-printable, non-copying... hell, you can even add HTML functionality to the thing. Will Eisner's much speculated upon 'metapanel' is an interactive reality.

Why hasn't anyone jumped on this yet?

I believe that the future of digital comic and the PDF format are intertwined deeply. In terms of download time, you download a PDF comic once, and you have it. All the pages, all the art, all the story rests upon the reader's hard drive. There is no waiting for pages to load, no need to worry about Net congestion and bandwidth. You commit yourself, as a reader, to downloading the thing and that's it. As opposed to Web Comics, where the reader must wait for each individual page to load each individual graphic.

It allows for the creator to specify usage. If you want your digital comic to remain digital, you can specify this. If you want it readable only once, you can do that. But most of all, high-quality, low file sized digital comics can be transported in their entirety in less time than it takes to smoke a cigarette. The pacing and timing of the strip is returned to the creator, who no longer must concern themselves with load-times and browser compatibility.

So, then, one last time: Why Digital Comics? Well, okay.

The fiscal requirements associated with creating meatspace comics are nearly obliterated; all the creator needs is the willpower to burn and the time needed to ignite. No-one need cash in their barmitzvah money to get a mediocre run of a small-press book printed on used toilet paper stock out to a grand total of nine stores before wilting into obscurity and returning to that nine-to-five at Kinko's.

No one need worry about distribution or nearly any of the organisational requirements that meatpublishing requires. Memetic spreading of your work, unfettered by overhead costs, allows the creator instant global distribution.

PDF does not allow for a passive consumer. Whereas HTML simply sits to be looked at like a shiny, blinking magazine, the very act of downloading a PDF file makes the downloader an active participant in the chain of transfer - an Active Consumer. Make a comic, scan it, correct the image digitally, convert it to PDF, upload it to a site for download and encourage your readers to print and distribute your book as you see fit.

Download time aside, all of the inherent intangibles of classic comics are returned to the creator that HTML comics present as problematic. A vital, established portfolio of work hones your skills as a creator while simultaneously building an audience.

Hey, kids!

Free comics.

Matt Fraction is the author of LAST OF THE INDEPENDENTS and REX MANTOOTH and a writer for Artbomb.net.

Ninth Art endorses the principle of Ideological Freeware. The author permits distribution of this article by private individuals, on condition that the author and source of the article are clearly shown, no charge is made, and the whole article is reproduced intact, including this notice.