(Blogtown needs a “Print is Dead” category. Or is that implied?)
As Steve mentioned, the new Kindle was released today; I still don’t want one. Not just because I intrinsically value “books as objects”—but because books as a technology are still working just fine for me, and there’s no real incentive to pay for an upgrade.
A post on i09 yesterday about a comics distribution company that “transfer[s] the medium from a page-by-page format to a more iPhone-friendly panel-by-panel format” attempts to argue that viewing comics on an iPhone actually does represent an improved reading experience:
Unlike other companies that have tried to hokey-up the digitization of comics with AudioBook-like voice-overs or animations and noise-tracks, UClick tries to transfer the experience seamlessly to the iPhone screen. They don’t. They transfer a better experience.
It may be minor, but sitting with an iPhone and viewing their most popular converted title – Jeff Smith’s Bone – is truly an impressively enjoyable experience. No longer are you accidentally viewing a frame or two ahead because of the nature of multi-panel pages; you’re actually able to see it panel-by-panel — just like the artists originally created it. Also, because the iPhone is backlit, you’re able to see more vibrant colors and artwork than you’d ever see on crudely-printed paper.
Sounds good to me, if you’re talking about a comic with discrete, regularly sized panels meant to be read one square at a time. That’s a pretty big if, though. Has anyone tried this? Bone seems like it would work well in that format (that’s how Dave Gibbons recently reread it, apparently).
You kids get yer Kindle off my lawn!
Hooligans.
Harrumph.
“Also, because the iPhone is backlit, you’re able to see more vibrant colors and artwork than you’d ever see on crudely-printed paper.”
These people don’t understand how color reproduction works. I will forgive them, however, because I find books and paper to be vast wastes of space and can’t wait for tech to replace them and have Luddites shake their canes in the street.
The comics thing is total bullshit. The medium of the comic, be it strip or book, is about the arrangement of panels in sequence. The comic artists know this, and draw based upon it. Viewing them all as discrete panels undoes that altogether.
b!x, you’re obviously right as things presently stand. Comics as they currently exist would be completely destroyed with one-panel-at-a-time presentation, but when digital readers like kindle catch on there will certainly be artists that make comics for the medium.
The lack of size or format restraints is one of my favorite things about web comics. But I think the format would work well for daily strip type work.