INFINITY Preview Digital Graphic Novels and Digital Comics

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ON AND ON AND ON

DIGITAL GRAPHIC NOVELS AND MORE

RUSSELL WILLIS

A warm welcome to the preview issue of INFINITY, a new bi-‐ monthly digital magazine that will primarily cover the world of digital comics and graphic novels but will also encourage the development of the medium in general, in print and digital format. In the fast-‐paced world of Twitter, Facebook and the Web, some may see a magazine such as this as redundant, but I know that I quite like to have my content curated and provided to me in elegant batches. Sometimes the constant flow of information is disorienting, and it’s nice to sit back and catch up at leisure with a designed piece of lengthy content. That’s not to say that I have anything against online media – indeed, publications such as John Freeman’s Down the Tubes Mobile and Michael Nimmo’s 3 Million Years, amongst others, are great sources of information about digital comics, and I urge you to check them out if you haven’t done so already. This magazine’s format is new, but British old-‐timers may know that in the 80s there was a short-‐lived but quite popular comics fanzine called INFINITY that I edited. Its call to arms was that superheroes were the villains of the piece. We got criticized for that, but as Alan Moore wrote in our sixth issue in 1984, ‘Whilst I don’t have anything in theory against the mainstream comic publishers or superhero comics per se… I think a bit of positive discrimination is called for at times…’ Well, the first part of that quote might not still hold true for Alan, but the need for a bit of positive discrimination continues 28 years later. So you’ll see very few superheroes here, and although we will give special attention to digital comics (in terms of the fledgling industry as well as the content and presentation), we will also be looking at the world of printed comics and seeing if we can’t get the good stuff over to digital. This is a preview issue, done to help us work out the bugs before the first issue proper. It’s a li`le self-‐indulgent and rough around the edges, but we think we’ve got a nice package, and hope you like it. Please do let us know what you think. ENDS ∞

Cover David Lloyd Editor Russell Willis contact@ienglish.com Contributors PJ Holden Simon Russell David Lloyd Eddie Campbell Chloë MarCn Hayden Hughes Publisher Panel Nine ∞

Published bi-‐monthly. Contents © the respecCve copyright holders. This app © iEnglish.com Ltd.

Volume 2 • Preview Issue • July 2012. This is the preview issue of the new INFINITY, a magazine about digital comics and more. Contents © individual copyright holders. Please email inquiries about contributions to the address above.

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News

DIGITAL COMICS ROUNDUP MADEFIRE LAUNCHES ‘MOTION BOOKS’ Madefire, a new digital comics company set up by Liam Sharp, Ben Wolstenholme and Eugene Walden, launched its new ‘Motion Books’ iPad app on June 21, claiming that it will ‘revolutionise the reading experience’ and ‘transform a once static medium into an interactive

The whole experience is similar to the Operation Ajax app (released last year and reviewed this issue) with elements of Mark Waid’s Thrillbent project. It’s not ‘motion comics’ but there are short bits of animation and a sometimes overpowering musical score. A video trailer is available. Madefire is also planning to make available its ‘Motion Book Tool’ but there are no details on how this may work in practice in business or licensing terms, and indeed there is no mention in Madefire’s press release of a business model of any sort.

Madefire launched with the support of some big names, including Watchmen and The Originals artist Dave Gibbons

MARK WAID LAUNCHES THRILLBENT iPad-toting Mark Waid, an A-list comics writer for 20 years, has launched Thrillbent, a digital comics site. The site, which went live in May, will feature creator-owned works such as Insufferable drawn by Peter Krause. In an interview with Publishers Weekly, Waid noted that his move to the digital side first started when he understood the economics of print were going to make it almost impossible for indie publishers to survive in the traditional direct sales market. The launch of the iPad moved him further in the digital direction and he now plans for all of his creator-owned work to be

iPad experience that unfolds dynamically on screen, and evolves with each new episode.’ Comics luminaries Dave Gibbons and Bill Sienkiewicz are backing the project and Gibbons is listed in the credits for the first batch of free titles that can be downloaded via the Madefire app – although none of them are actually drawn by him. The free titles currently available for download include The Treatment by Kinman Chan and Robbie Morrison, Mono by Ben Wolstenholme and Liam Sharp, and Captain Stone by Liam Sharp and Christina McCormack.

CONTINUES ➤

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NEWS ROUNDUP published digital-first through Thrillbent (monetised through advertising). The author doesn’t rule out the possibility of deluxe digital collections and print

Mark Waid, popular writer for Marvel and CD and founder of the Thrillbent digital comics site

editions down the line. Being digital first, Waid has managed to create comics that take advantage of new technologies and digital delivery and has documented some of the issues involved in his Thrillbent process blog. GRAPHICLY ABANDONS APP-BASED STOREFRONTS, TOUTS E-PUB To the confusion of many, Graphicly abandoned its digital comics storefront apps on iOS and Android and announced a new business model designed along the lines of a digital Lulu.com. The new business model allows creators to have Graphicly format and release their ‘visual stories’ as ePub digital books on a variety of platforms for a fee. Some have noted the inadequacy of ePubs for comics (see interview this issue) and view the move as an admission by Graphicly that they

have lost the mainstream digital comics wars to Comixology. Graphicly asserts that the real market for comics is in the digital book stores of iTunes and Android. See the Graphicly press release here. CEREBUS TO GO DIGITAL WITH MONEY RAISED THROUGH KICKSTARTER Cerebus fans were surprised to hear that famed technophobe Dave Sim had launched a Kickstarter to raise $6,000 for a ‘special audio/visual digital edition’ of High Society. Exactly what this digital beast would be was initially left to the imagination and it appears that the organisers are still defining what exactly will be put on offer. George Gatsis, who has been put in charge of the digital

Dave Sim signing rewards for backers of the Cerebus digital Kickstarter CONTINUES ➤

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NEWS ROUNDUP development, is also the publisher of his own comics app called TBDE. Panel Nine and INFINITY publisher Russell Willis took the quality of his app to task in a special comparison video which also looked at iBooks, Comixology, and Panel Nine’s own offerings. The Kickstarter has already raised over $50,000, and Sim plans to use the money to put as much as possible of Cerebus into digital format. We’re big fans of the earth-pig here and wish Dave and his team all the very best. LLOYD ANNOUNCES DIGITAL WEEKLY [Via John Freeman and the British comics news website Down the Tubes] David Lloyd, co-creator of V For Vendetta and creator of Kickback, has announced the forthcoming publication of a creatorowned weekly digital comic. Contributors lined up for the project so far include David Lloyd, Kyle Baker, John McCrea, Billy Tucci, Bill Sienkiewicz, Steve Bissette, Marc Hempel, Phil Elliott, Dave Hine, Shaky Kane, Colleen Doran, Hunt Emerson, Roger Langridge, and many other major talents from around the world. The online magazine has been funded by artist and publisher David Lloyd, who has commissioned a website – the site name as yet unrevealed – from which the weekly publication can be logged on to and read. The new publication does not

rely on the potentially huge audience beyond the direct sales market to succeed, but is designed to be viable even on a small percentage of the direct sales

David Lloyd is due to start publishing a weekly digital comic with a host of famous creators. Does he have some aces up his sleeve?

market. This can be achieved due to the structure of the company which Lloyd has created, which is specifically designed to make money for the creators. A seven-issue subscription will cost £6.99/$10. More news as we get it. EMANATA LAUNCHES INDIE IPAD APP The Emanata iPad app is designed to ‘help independent comics find their audience’ and features a number of free comics from independent creators according to the company website, where you can get a link to download the app from iTunes. CONTINUES ➤

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NEWS ROUNDUP IVERSE REBRANDS Digital comics ‘veteran’ iVerse has rebranded its Comics+ app as ComicsPlus, with a new logo. The rebranding comes as part of a series of changes at iVerse on the

No comics in the rebranded App Store icon for ComicsPlus

heels of a $4 million round of investment last year. Other changes include the introduction of tools for independent creators, a crowdfunding platform and a special version of their app accessible through library web portals. ComicsPlus powers Archie and the hugely successful Pocket God digital comics which have sold hundreds of thousands of copies. Comic Book Resources has the full story. KINDLE FIRE NABS DOONESBURY AND DILBERT EXCLUSIVES Amazon announced at the end of May that it has exclusive rights on 40: A Doonesbury Retrospective by Garry

Dilbert provides tech support to Kindle Fire comics readers

Trudeau and Dilbert 2.0 by Scott Adams, both published in print by Andrews McMeel. The comics (available in four volumes each, for $9.99 and $7.99 respectively) will be available in full colour and use Kindle Panel View, the Kindle Fire’s rather creaky way of seeing comics panel by panel (explained by Dilbert himself below left). WARREN ELLIS PONDERS DIGITAL COMICS FORMATS Warren Ellis, acclaimed writer of Transmetropolitan, Red, and Fell, amongst other popular works, shares his thoughts on format issues for digital comics, noting how many creators have moved towards a two-tier structure with the landscape half-page of a normal comic format being a single screen or page on a tablet. This allows two screens to be combined for a normal print page. He contrasts this with his own digital comic from Avatar, Freak Angels. COMIXOLOGY COPIES Bleeding Cool reported on a software hack posted on Reddit that allowed the leeching of the comics content from a Comixology file. Whilst the app was quickly removed, it did highlight the issue of many users wanting a DRM-free version of digital comics outside of reader platforms that some are concerned may go out of business. CONTINUES ➤

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NEWS ROUNDUP DIAMOND DIGITAL LAYS OFF KEY STAFF Bleeding Cool also reported on the layoff of three key staff from Diamond Digital. The near-monopoly comics distributor launched the service (designed to cut offline stores in on digital purchases) with iVerse amid great fanfare, but things have since gone quiet.

FANTAGRAPHICS ON COMIXOLOGY Fantagraphics announced at the San Diego Comic Convention that they would be making their publications available on Comixology, starting with the first four volumes of Love & Rockets: New Stories. POCKET GOD IN DIGITAL MATCHES AVENGERS VS X-MEN IN PRINT TechCrunch has reported on how Pocket God, best known as a hit smartphone game, has recently been embraced as a digital comic. Ape Entertainment have published a total of 16 issues since August 2010 and have sold more than 600,000 digital copies, with the first issue seeing more than 200,000 sales. In the world of comics, that puts Pocket God #1 in digital at roughly the same level as Avengers vs.

X-Men #1 (which was the top-selling comic in March 2012) in print. In other words, judged purely on digital, Pocket God is probably outselling Marvel and DC’s top titles by a considerable margin. A DOUBLE BARREL OF ACTION AND ADVENTURE FROM TOP SHELF Top Shelf have launched a digital-only monthly action comics magazine called Double Barrel from Zander Cannon and Kevin Cannon (no relation). The first issue has 122 pages and sees Zander launch Heck (the story of a washed-up high school football hero who discovers a portal to the underworld), while Kevin presents Crater XV (following the smash

Double Barrel from Zander and Kevin Cannon

success of his first graphic novel Far Arden with an all-new saga of that crusty Arctic sea-dog Army Shanks). The app is available via Google Play, Comixology, Comics Plus, and iBooks. CONTINUES ➤

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NEWS ROUNDUP EDDIE CAMPBELL’S DAPPER JOHN HITS THE IPHONE Dapper John, the compilation of classic Eddie Campbell material, saw a release on the iPhone in early July. Until then it had only been available for the iPad. With the equivalent of over 150 pages, the app from Panel Nine includes the definitive collection of Campbell’s ‘Ace Rock ‘n’ Roll’ strips along with new articles, artwork, and an exclusive interview with the artist behind Alec, From Hell (with Alan Moore), and Bacchus. Both iPhone and iPad versions are available for a special launch price of $1.99 through August. DUBLIN MAN WINS ORIGINAL KICKBACK ARTWORK FROM DAVID LLOYD Niall Kitson from Dublin was the lucky winner of the first in a series of draws promoting the iPad version of David Lloyd’s Kickback for the iPad. Niall was drawn from the list of those who had joined the Panel Nine newsletter, retweeted a Kickback tweet or joined the Kickback Facebook page. Two more pieces of original artwork stand to be won, along with a brand new iPad. Subscribe to the Panel Nine newsletter for details. DISNEY LAUNCHES INTERACTIVE COMICS WITH BRAVE Disney Publishing have launched an iPad digital comic version of the Pixar movie

Brave. The comic costs $1.99 for 48 pages and is a standalone app produced using software from Tall Chair, the company behind the software used in Operation Ajax. Like Ajax and the Madefire app, it features timed audio and short animated parts, but the narrative flow is under the control of the user. The app also includes various extras such as a slideshow of sketches and concept art, along with a How-to-Draw guide.

Disney Publishing’s Brave, based on the animated movie, is now a digital comic based on the same engine as Operation Ajax

YAHOO TIES UP WITH LIQUID COMICS Yahoo Screen will feature two motion comics from film directors Barry Sonnenfeld and Guy Ritchie. Sonnenfeld’s Dinosaurs vs. Aliens is being written by Grant Morrison and painted by Mukesh Singh, whilst Ritchie’s Gamekeeper from 2007, scripted by Andy Diggle, will also appear on Yahoo. Both are destined for the silver screen. Liquid Comics is the successor to the ill-fated Virgin Comics, changing over to its current name in 2008. CONTINUES ➤

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NEWS ROUNDUP DIGITAL COMICS SALES EXPECTED TO TOP $70 MILLION IN 2012 Comixology has announced that it expects to more than triple 2011’s sales of $19 million and sell in excess of $70 million in ‘gross merchandise value’ worth of digital comics. Even with a significant percentage of that going to platform providers such as Apple (30%) and the suppliers of the comics such as Marvel and DC (50%?), Comixology will still be left with over $14 million before operating expenses. Digital comics sales figures have been difficult to come by but recently Image Comics and IDW both let on that digital was

making up more than 10% of their sales, and with a print comic and graphic novel market worth around $700 million, it appears that digital is set to be worth over 10% of the market. ICv2, a trade website for the comics business, and a source for this article, estimates that Comixology has 75% of digital comics sales, making it the market leader by a huge margin. It consolidated this position in May by signing an exclusive deal to distribute single issues of Marvel’s line in English worldwide. ∞ INFINITY NEWS DESK ∞

Have you got news for us? If so, please send a press release to contact@ienglish.com.

A CRIME-NOIR THRILLER FROM DAVID LLOYD, THE ARTIST BEHIND V FOR VENDETTA “Frankly, all digitally released graphic novels should be given this amount of care.” – Spandexless “The app works beautifully and looks gorgeous. It would be a crime not to buy it.” – Comic Heroes “This app is fantastic! Go buy it!” – David Hine

THE IPAD GRAPHIC NOVEL • AVAILABLE ON THE APP STORE ENDS ∞

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Verbatim

THE WORD ON DIGITAL COMICS ART SPIEGELMAN

DAVE SIM

CREATOR OF MAUS

CREATOR OF CEREBUS

‘Right now anything made for the iPad is like performance art. I’m not interested in performance art. Comics are too hard to make to be done for such a passing blip. When it stabilises, I’ll look at it. Right now, I’m very happy to download a comic from the Digital Comics Museum and put it on my iPad to read.’

‘No one knows how the digital comics world is ultimately going to shake out… each company has a very different plan and a very different mental image of where we are and where we’re going… I think I’m safe in saying the next year in particular is going to be really, really, really interesting in digital comics. A cross between the stateroom scene in Night at the Opera and Shoot Out at the OK Corral.’

– in an interview with Publishers Weekly last October

– in a Kickstarter update sent out in June

DANIEL CLOWES

EDDIE CAMPBELL

CREATOR OF GHOST WORLD

CREATOR OF ALEC

‘Digital seems like such a step back from a printed book. For me, the whole process involves envisioning this book in my head as I’m working. That is what I’m trying to create. That’s the work of art. That’s the sculpture I’m chipping away at, and when I’m finally done, I will arrive at that perfect 3-D object. The iPad version would be like a picture of the book, which doesn’t hold any interest at all for me. Even if I only had 10 readers, I’d rather do the book for them than for a million readers online.’

‘The only comics I’m reading at the moment are the old romance comics from Jim Vadeboncoeur’s collection as they get scanned and put up at the Digital Comics Museum. I thoroughly enjoy reading them like that because I can zoom in whenever I want to. Who needs paper? It’s all just information. And the way that takes up the least space is good for me.’

– in an interview with Wired in May

– in an interview with Robot 6 of Comic Book Resources in May

ENDS ∞

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Interview

PJ HOLDEN

PART ONE: CNN IS CALLING FOR YOU… Paul (’PJ’) Holden woke up on a sunny morning in his native Belfast to find himself the centre of worldwide media attention. It was 2009 and the established comic-‐strip artist (whose work is currently appearing in 2000 AD and Strip Magazine) had been dabbling in a little thing called digital comics… Russell Willis It’s May 2009, you’re sitting at your drawing board in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and CNN and the world is talking about you… How did this all come about?

‘Murderdrome has now joined the pantheon of suppressed ﬁcIon as the ﬁrst digital book banished from Apple’s App Store by censors in CuperIno.’ – CNN Money (2009)

‘Mr Holden and his colleagues may have accidentally hit upon what could be the future of comic book publishing.’ – BBC (2009)

PJ Holden

It all happened within about a two-week period. I was talking to a software developer at a friend’s wedding and CONTINUES ➤

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INTERVIEW • PJ HOLDEN told him I wanted to do something with comics because I thought the iPhone would be a spectacular device for comics. This was because in the UK, especially, we have a tradition of different physical-sized comics which America doesn’t really have. I was thinking really of Commando comics, which is a kind of digest-sized comic where you get two panels per page. That’s it. There’s not room for much within that. I kind of reasoned that, well, if you treat each screen of the iPhone as its own page, you could have a comic. It ticks all the boxes in Scott McCloud’s definition of what a comic is. It’s sequential images juxtaposed against each other to tell a story. The software developer from the wedding, Phil Orr, turned out to be an iPhone programmer at a time when there were very few iPhone programmers. He had wanted to do a children’s storybook. We sat down and I thrashed out a couple of ideas and we developed the software and I drew the comic. It was a two-page comic – a proof of concept more than anything else. I had said to him and I said to a bunch of other people, look, we could do market research here. We could go and spend a fortune trying to figure out if this is the sort of thing that would sell or we could actually just do it and put it up there and see if it sells. I kind of reasoned that one would cost as much as the other. Oddly it cost less to actually just do it and put it out there than it would have cost for us the invest time and the effort to do the market research.

The Itle screen of the banned Murderdrome iPhone app

The splash screen of the banned Murderdrome iPhone app

So it seemed like the most sensible thing to do was just to do it, and do a very, very simple proof of concept to see if this would work. And so we submitted Murderdrome. We sent it to Apple’s App Store and the great wait began… CONTINUES ➤

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INTERVIEW • PJ HOLDEN Russell Willis I understand that it was written by Al Ewing, is that right? PJ Holden

That’s right, and the thing with Murderdrome was it was conceived as software and comic at almost exactly the same time. Unlike a lot of stuff that’s out there, Murderdrome the comic was drawn specifically for the iPhone. A lot of stuff that we did on it was only possible because we were doing it at the same time as developing the software. One of the things that we did was this sort of multiple layers of having pencils, inks, and colours and so on, and to allow for multiple languages. You could have had multiple languages in the same comic with the same artwork because of how we built the software. At that time I think there were about five or six comics on the App Store. All of those were repurposed content, so what we were doing was a completely new thing. So we submitted this to Apple and the friend who had gone off to get married went on honeymoon. By the time he came back from honeymoon, we had just got word from Apple that they were rejecting the app. Russell Willis On what grounds?

Panel 1 of Murderdrome

Panel 2 of Murderdrome

PJ Holden

Essentially they were rejecting it because the content was too violent. And it was quite violent. But it was a very silly comic. It was essentially an exaggerated spoof of all the boys’ comics from the 70s that featured futuristic sports where people have to die in order to play. The Mean Arena in 2000 AD is a good example of it. There would be street battles and people would be shot with CONTINUES ➤

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INTERVIEW • PJ HOLDEN lasers and all sorts of craziness. Murderdrome was sort of an exaggeration of that. In order to score a goal in Murderdrome, you had to decapitate an opposing player and use their head as a ball. I think when you hear the idea about how to score a goal it’s instantly funny. It’s so over the top. Russell Willis Did Apple have their rating system sorted out? Because when you submit an app now you need to define how offensive it might be. PJ Holden

I did a lot of interviews at the time and one of the things I said was that ‘if Apple introduced a proper rating system…’ because Apple had a rating system for games, but at that point had never considered or didn’t appear to have considered the idea that people would be trying to sell content. As far as Apple was concerned, people were going to sell software, and so videogames needed a rating because that’s the sort of software that you need to have a rating on but nothing else would need it – you wouldn’t need a rating, for example, on an application that told you about astronomy or how to do your accounts. So Apple had a rating system but if you weren’t a videogame you had to have a PG rating, the thinking went. I also think that, frankly, if Apple’s American sensibilities were closer to British sensibilities, there’s a good chance they would have let us through: it was just a stupid and ridiculous spoof.

Panel 3 of Murderdrome

Panel 4 of Murderdrome

Russell Willis Do you think they were also concerned because it was a comic, and ‘comics are for kids’ and therefore it would mislead kids into buying material that wasn’t suitable? CONTINUES ➤

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INTERVIEW • PJ HOLDEN PJ Holden

Yeah, but I find that with Apple that the more you try to scrutinise them the more inscrutable they are. Russell Willis (Laughter) Very true.

PJ Holden We got a two-line response saying if you simply tone down the content then you can resubmit, which looked like a form letter to me… The premise of it is that you decapitate a player to score a goal… I talked to friends about it afterwards and said, look – the thing is if you tone it down what you do is you actually make it worse, because by toning it down you remove the fact that it is really satire. Once you get rid of, say, the outrageous method of scoring a goal and replace it with something more realistic it just becomes utterly violent.

Panel 5 of Murderdrome

Russell Willis Now it’s just nasty. Yeah. PJ Holden

It just becomes nasty. That’s the thing. It’s like any joke, really. The more exaggerated that is, the funnier it becomes; and the less exaggerated it is, the more it becomes a statement rather than a joke. I enjoyed the fact that it was ridiculous and over the top and just very silly. There is a sequence in it where one character goes, ‘I killed them with my bare hands’, and the camera pulls up and you’re looking down at the guy shaking his fists. It only works because it’s deliberately over the top. It’s like saying to Monty Python about the Holy Grail: you can’t exaggerate anything. It has to be about a search for the Holy Grail, and then what have you got left? CONTINUES ➤

Panel 6 of Murderdrome

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INTERVIEW • PJ HOLDEN Russell Willis So you refused to tone it down and pleaded your case? PJ Holden

Yeah, so we waited and waited and waited and Apple took a while but they eventually rejected it again. Matt Johnston, the guy whose honeymoon it was, was always going to be the third partner along with myself and Phil. Matt had a good business head and had started up a couple of businesses and so we kind of sat down and we went, Matt, while you’ve been away we did this; and we sent it to Apple and they rejected it. Do you want to send out a press release? He went, yeah sure, I’ll send out a press release. I can’t emphasise enough how much things were done on a whim. Let’s do this, let’s try this. What about this? There was no plan in place. So Matt went, yeah, I will send out a press release. I sent an email to Rich Johnston at the Bleeding Cool website. At the time, these rejections were making news. Apple had just rejected an app that was a photograph of a knife and when you made a stabbing motion with the phone, it would make the sound from Psycho… it was a joke app… it was clearly over the top; Apple rejected it. I am not quite sure on what grounds, but there was a big stink in the press. We’re talking the early days of apps. These were the first kind of apps that were coming out. Apple were rejecting one thing after another. Each of these things that was being rejected was getting a bit of press. At that point, Apple were rejecting things, and people were going, oh, freedom of speech, freedom of speech. With the Murderdrome app I felt that because Apple had rejected it, that in itself was enough for a little bit of coverage. Because Apple had rejected it on the grounds of content CONTINUES ➤

Panel 7 of Murderdrome

The ﬁnal panel of Murderdrome (it was meant to be the ﬁrst part of a series, and a simple proof of concept)

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INTERVIEW • PJ HOLDEN there was also a freedom of speech issue. You can squint at it and say it’s a freedom of speech issue.

Swiping your ﬁnger across the screen revealed inked and then pencilled versions of the panel

I thought those two things would be enough to get a little bit of coverage and I thought that would do us no harm. We sent this stuff out… and it got phenomenal coverage. It got so much coverage that I can’t even begin to look at it without thinking: ‘Good grief!’ It was like – what was it like? I put a pebble in the water and it caused a tsunami. The reaction was so much bigger than the actual action and we were all reeling, the three of us were reeling. At the time, I was working for a charity doing computer work. I had been there about nine years. I couldn’t justify leaving the job because it was so well paid. It was so easy. It was only three days a week and I could draw comics the rest of the time. There was just no way I could turn around and say I want to leave this brilliantly paid job that’s part-time. A job that let me spend so much time at home. I couldn’t say I wanted to leave that job for a badly paid job; a job that would mean I would have to work every single hour. Any rational person would look at it and say that I would be mad to drop such a great job… But we were getting international coverage… The story was all over the blogosphere and so on. Russell Willis The press were featuring images from the comics in their coverage? PJ Holden

Yes, but it was just a two-page comic – I put a YouTube video on it out at the same time to show the app more, because no one had seen it. And it was hard to explain in words what the app was about. But when you saw the app and how it was used, it looked magical because again, this is pre-iPad, and this is sort of the early day of apps. CONTINUES ➤

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INTERVIEW • PJ HOLDEN One of the things was the – I can explain it to you by saying ‘you swipe your finger down and the inks are replaced by pencils’, but what happened was when you swiped your finger down there was a magical sort of metamorphosis where the inks were replaced by pencils and the inks slowly disappeared over the lead pencils. If you are into art, into comic art, then that in itself is like this beautiful magical thing. I did a silent video of me demonstrating the application. I put it on YouTube and we put the press release out at the same time. Within a week we had 40,000 views on YouTube. Now, if you sold 40,000 copies of a comic that would be a phenomenal sale. 40,000 views in a week on YouTube was like, oh, my! The other thing we did – because Apple had rejected the app was… Well, they were opening an Apple Store in Belfast and I thought it’d be hilariously funny to print up some T-shirts with our logo on it from the game, from Murderdrome. It was like a skull and cross and two bones which was the tattoo from a character in it and it became part of the logo.

A couple of icon ideas for the Murderdrome app

I thought, what we’ll do is go down to the Apple Store that’s opening and we’ll hand these T-shirts out whilst people are queueing. I reasoned that if we only do up five or six T-shirts and give them to the people in the front of the queue, what’s going to happen is that the BBC will be there to film the fact that there’s a queue there, but they’ll also be interested in the first few people going in. They wouldn’t film the tail end of it or the middle of it, they’ll only film the first few. That’s exactly what happened. If you ever see the video, it looks like every person in the queue has a Murderdrome T-shirt. CONTINUES ➤

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INTERVIEW • PJ HOLDEN Then they interviewed one of the guys there, the BBC did an interview with him. He was wearing the T-shirt as well. It seemed like this sort of – it was like we were going through this period where everything we decided to do on a whim was working out in the best possible way. It was strange. It was easily the strangest experience of my life. We did a couple of kids’ comics which instead of sort of using the PR from Murderdrome we just kind of went, no, we don’t want to associate with that because people will think of blood and death and these are kids’ comics so we don’t want to do that, which was maybe in hindsight a bit daft. We did those and I showed the apps off at a couple of comic conventions and we ended up fielding calls from senior editors at DC Comics, senior people at Marvel. Then we got an email out of the blue from Universal Studios in the States asking if we wanted to look at developing our app for their comics, for the TV series Heroes. We had a couple of conference calls with those guys and in the end that’s what we did. It was at that point that I chucked my job in. I should say this was all within maybe two weeks of the app being rejected.

The Heroes comic reader app. Not updated since 2009, but now available for free in the USA from the iTunes App Store

‘Then we got an email out of the blue from Universal Studios in the States asking if we wanted to look at developing our app for their comics, for the TV series Heroes.’

Russell Willis That was a powerful press release! PJ Holden

If you just happen to have the magic words in it – and at that time all eyes were on Apple, all eyes were on things being banned. Those were the things that made – I think it got picked up at one place, then another, then another, then another because it was a hot issue for a little while. The mistake I made, with hindsight, is clear – the mistake CONTINUES ➤

INFINITY Preview • July 2012 • 18 of 68

INTERVIEW • PJ HOLDEN I made was thinking that those 40,000 views on YouTube meant something. What they really meant was that we were this week’s cat playing the piano. That’s all we were. But I thought this was it, this is it. Guys, we’ve reinvented comics for the iPhone. We have completely destroyed Diamond Distribution and print is dead. And I am going through a bit of a mad period because publicity about what we had done was everywhere.

‘We were this week’s cat playing the piano.’

Russell Willis You were imagining that every person that viewed the YouTube video would buy an app… PJ Holden

I just assumed. 40,000 views, that translates to – even for a pessimist – that translates to at least 30,000 people or 30,000 purchases, which is good money in comics. No matter what way you cut it… which of course was nonsense! The important thing about the video was that it was seen by a couple of people at senior positions in NBC and DC and a few other places, that were then capable of turning around and saying, look, can we have a chat with you. Russell Willis And this was before Comixology, before Graphicly, before any of these major digital comics distributors had really got off the ground.

‘The important thing about the video was that it was seen by a couple of people at senior posiIons in NBC and DC and a few other places…’

PJ Holden

I think the guy at iVerse had come to the same conclusion as me which was that digital comics were going to be big. It was the press coverage of Murderdrome that attracted all the attention to digital comics and I knew iVerse had seen it, and the head of iVerse then had to make a move which sort of prompted him to push a little bit faster I think. That was iVerse; Comixology ultimately came in and they CONTINUES ➤

INFINITY Preview • July 2012 • 19 of 68

INTERVIEW • PJ HOLDEN realised that it wasn’t really about the technology, it was all about what publishers you established relationships with. It was about that. It was about whether you can get Marvel on board, whether you can get DC on board. Everything else is almost a secondary consideration. In a space of two weeks we ended up with a big contract to write an application for Universal to do comics with them – and I left my job. I left the job thinking, I am going to go off now and do comics and I’m going to do digital comics. This is going to be awesome.

‘In a space of two weeks we ended up with a big contract to write an applicaIon for Universal to do comics.’

Russell Willis What happened to the Heroes comic? Did that get published? PJ Holden

Weirdly they limited it so it would only be on sale in the US. What we found was the bigger the company we were dealing with, the more people had to have their fingers in it. The more people that had their fingers in it, the less people wanted to do it. The NBC guy who really wanted to push this was their head of mobile application development. The people who really didn’t want to do it were the people who actually did the comics. One was pulling and the other one was pushing and in the end the comic was released – in a form nowhere near what we wanted to do with it. And it took longer because they kept changing their minds about what they wanted. It was only available in America. I can’t even download the thing to look at.

‘What we found was the bigger the company we were dealing with, the more people had to have their ﬁngers in it. The more people that had their ﬁngers in it, the less people wanted to do it.’

It was only me and one other guy involved in the programming of it. When I left everything was working but the moment Apple changed their devices they would have required him to update things and he would have CONTINUES ➤

INFINITY Preview • July 2012 • 20 of 68

INTERVIEW • PJ HOLDEN had to do more development. Once I left to focus on drawing comics I – I wouldn’t say I cut ties, but I was moving forwards rather than backwards. Russell Willis The company name was Infurious, right? I think there is a sort of remnant of that website still around on there. PJ Holden

We had enormous plans. One of the plans that we had was – in a way I am sorry it never really came about – was that we had planned that there’d be a comic reader and backend website that allowed anyone to submit comics, and the backend was going to allow you to submit material to it and press a button and it would be available on the comic reader. I kind of came up with – we were going to call it Infurious Republic to push the idea that it’s for anyone. Anyone could submit their comics. It’s taken a while but Graphicly I think are doing the same sort of thing. We talked about that two or three years ago or whenever it was because I felt that the way to do it was to give people access, upload the stuff, possibly charging $10 or something for a joining fee and maybe $10 for uploading the thing because it was one of those things – in a gold rush the people making money are the people who sell picks – that kind of thing.

‘It’s taken a while but Graphicly I think are doing the same sort of thing. We talked about that two or three years ago.’

Russell Willis As you had the contract with Universal for the Heroes comic, I assume you were planning to do something along those lines. What happened? PJ Holden

I think we were just a little too early and at the same time all this stuff had swept over me, and I had found myself CONTINUES ➤

INFINITY Preview • July 2012 • 21 of 68

INTERVIEW • PJ HOLDEN going from a part-time computer job to a full-time computer job and had even less time to draw. It didn’t quite work out the way that I had imagined. My younger son had just been born and then tragically my wife’s brother committed suicide and that completely – it pulled everything from under my family and it made me sort of re-evaluate exactly what was going on. I kind of thought: I really want to draw. All I want to do is draw. Because of my wife Annette’s brother I kind of – I’ve lost some family of mine as well years and years ago, and every so often you lose a close family member and you think, what am I doing? Am I really doing something that I – if this is the last thing I do, will I be happy?

‘I realised I didn’t want to reinvent comics distribuIon on a digital pla^orm. What I wanted to do was draw comics.’

I realised I didn’t want to reinvent comics distribution on a digital platform. What I wanted to do was draw comics. In Part Two PJ discusses the state of digital comics and how he threw away a chance to be at the centre of a booming business in order to follow his passion: drawing comics.

CONTINUES ➤

INFINITY Preview • July 2012 • 22 of 68

INTERVIEW • PJ HOLDEN PART TWO: THE STATE OF DIGITAL COMICS As one of the pioneers of digital comics for the iPhone, as well as a software engineer and comics artist, PJ Holden is uniquely qualified to discuss digital comics. In the second part of our interview PJ discusses software engineering, user experience, and the market in general. Russell Willis I’m interested in how you feel about the various platforms that are available for reading digital comics today. It seems to me that many platforms are badly done. iBooks as a platform for comics, in its current version at least, is extremely irritating from a user experience point of view. I think this is a real step backwards because people can easily be put off reading comics on tablets. Comixology’s comics app is an exception – it does do a good job of presenting comics.

‘I think Apple at some point will look at the reading experience on iBooks and go, this isn’t ideal for comics – let’s buy Comixology.’

PJ Holden

Many comic readers aren’t great but I think for the vast majority of people, Comixology is it for reading comics. I think in the same way that if you want to buy a comic in the UK, you generally think of Forbidden Planet. That’s not meant to downgrade any others. That’s simply a statement of what I see as being true for the vast majority of people who don’t really know where to go and get these things. I think Comixology is just going to end up having the muscle in numbers. Russell Willis I think you are right when you are talking about traditional superhero comics. Comic shop customers who want to buy digital comics are going to move to Comixology. They have Marvel, DC – I don’t think they have Dark Horse right now – but they seem to be the 800 pound gorilla. PJ Holden

Yeah, Dark Horse have their own app. It’s OK. It’s not CONTINUES ➤

INFINITY Preview • July 2012 • 23 of 68

INTERVIEW • PJ HOLDEN amazing – for me as a buyer, Comixology is the preferred way of doing it because it keeps all the comics together. Really, I think we should watch what Apple are going to end up doing because I think Apple at some point will look at the reading experience on iBooks and go, this isn’t ideal for comics – let’s buy Comixology. If I were Apple, that’s what I’d be doing. I would be thinking about buying up Comixology. But I think Comixology will always be limited in what it can do because it can’t really… because it’s such a big beast, it’s going to be harder for small publishers to get work in there. iVerse seems to be following a Kindle model. You don’t buy it from within the iVerse app. You buy it on a website, on the Diamond Comics website. Diamond, I presume, are hoping that they will have the clout to get people to go to their website rather than just going to Comixology to buy stuff. Then there are the apps which actually do more. I think if you are going to release a comic, a standalone comic, it needs to do something more. I think Panel Nine has the right idea with the audio stuff on there. You have to bring something different to the table from what Comixology is going to be doing. Russell Willis If you are reading Marvel and DC and Image pamphlets, I think Comixology is great. For literary graphic novels, I don’t think that’s the case.

A PJ Holden cover for Judge Dredd Megazine, the BriIsh science-‐ﬁcIon comic featuring the iconic Judge Dredd

‘I think Comixology will always be limited in what it can do… because it’s such a big beast, it’s going to be harder for small publishers to get work in there.’

PJ Holden

Nine times out of ten users of Comixology don’t care about the creator. They care about whether Spider-Man’s getting his head punched in. I think it’s one of those CONTINUES ➤

INFINITY Preview • July 2012 • 24 of 68

INTERVIEW • PJ HOLDEN things where – I think you can go to McDonald’s and get a Big Mac which will fill you up, or you can go to a really nice gourmet burger place and get something that’s going to taste really nice. 90% of people are going to go and buy McDonald’s; it’s always easier and more convenient to buy something that’s pre-packaged, and you know what you’re getting. Russell Willis And through this, Comixology is locking up the superhero comics market as it exists now. There is this transition from people who visit comic shops moving to Comixology. At least Comixology provides a good reading experience whereas some of the things out there – I just downloaded The Walking Dead from iBooks and it’s a really irritating user experience. PJ Holden

iBooks is horrible. It’s absolutely impossible. When people talk about digital comics there are two strands to it. One is from the perspective of a reader, and one is from a perspective of a comic creator. For a comic creator, iBooks is brilliant because iBooks take a flat 30% because you are directly selling through the App Store. If you are selling through Comixology or iVerse or whoever, their fees are on top of Apple’s flat 30%. Which is why selling through Apple is obviously going to be more attractive to a comic creator.

Judge Dredd

‘iBooks is horrible. It’s absolutely impossible.’

Russell Willis If they are prepared to do their own PR and promotion etc. PJ Holden

Many comics people kind of feel that all you have to do is stick it up there and it’s on its way. Russell Willis Right, which is not the case at all. CONTINUES ➤

INFINITY Preview • July 2012 • 25 of 68

INTERVIEW • PJ HOLDEN PJ Holden

We are not long-sighted really, we are very short-sighted. It’s like, I’ve done my work. Now I want people to see it. I will put it on a website. There you go. Russell Willis I think people will move to the better user experience. You designed a great UX for Murderdrome early on and I think Comixology has a good user experience. Graphicly less so, iVerse not really. I consider iVerse, Graphicly, and Comixology the big three of digital comics platforms right now. But iVerse is just showing you one page. You can kind of zoom in but just in the way that you normally can on an iPad. There’s no real panel mode, as we call it. It has the fewest features, whereas Graphicly has a kind of panel mode but it’s not very well implemented. In fact Graphicly always seems to have lots of bugs in it. I always have problems with their software. PJ Holden

I think Graphicly’s problem has been that they have secured lots and lots and lots of investor funding but haven’t really secured the software base. Russell Willis Absolutely. How do you feel about Graphicly’s new ‘pay to have your comic published digitally’ approach? It seems like a last ditch attempt by Graphicly to be relevant.

The David Tennant Doctor Who

‘I think Graphicly’s problem has been that they have secured lots and lots and lots of investor funding but haven’t really secured the sobware base.’

PJ Holden

I think there needs to be something like that though. I think there needs to be some way for anyone to just upload their own comics and put them on there, because I think there’s a market for that. The market may never buy that many of those comics but I do feel that there’s a lot of people who want to do it. Russell Willis I worry because my experience of their product makes me feel that CONTINUES ➤

INFINITY Preview • July 2012 • 26 of 68

INTERVIEW • PJ HOLDEN they just don’t have it together from a software-engineering point of view. I think what could happen is a lot of bug-ridden, shoddy crap is going to come out. The content we can’t judge, but in terms of the actual software experience a lot of it is going to be broken, a lot of it is going to be buggy. You are going to have panel mode-type functions that don’t work. I can see it potentially being a bit of a disaster for Graphicly. More Judge Dredd

PJ Holden

I would say as well that the content is not going to be great. The sure thing is that a lot of people want to make comics but not a lot of people are really capable of doing it well. Russell Willis Sure. Absolutely. I worry that if people are exposed to too much rubbish they will tend to tar everything with the same brush. It’s problematic when you’ve got lots and lots of badly created, badly written comics with bad software engineering in the market. It’s not a nice prospect. PJ Holden

The thing that puts me off of the idea of paying Graphicly right now is the fact that they don’t have an iPad app. It smells like their investors have invested bucketloads of money, so now what Graphicly has to do is create some sort of bubble to make investors keep their money in. And the quickest way to do that is to make it look like they’ve got a lot of people wanting to use their software. How do they do that? They get a lot of people signing up for free. That’s the way. Those things inevitably lead to a massive crash.

‘It smells like their investors have invested bucketloads of money, so now what Graphicly has to do is create some sort of bubble to make investors keep their money in.’

Russell Willis Yeah, I find the whole situation very precarious. PJ Holden

Although one of the worst pieces of advice we received back in the Murderdrome days was not to get investment, CONTINUES ➤

INFINITY Preview • July 2012 • 27 of 68

INTERVIEW • PJ HOLDEN just do it ourselves. I think had we got a couple of million pounds of investment for Murderdrome etc. – which was a possibility – we may have been even further on than the current players… Russell Willis I think you should have gone for that investment. A key issue with investment is who you get it from. I’ve raised millions of dollars of venture capital investment in my time from a variety of different types of investors. Really, it depends on the investor. You might want the money but you don’t want the money at any price. PJ Holden

An adverIsement for the Judge Dredd Megazine

I have to say, I can’t really complain because I ended up drawing comics which is sort of what I wanted to do. There’s a certain pleasure in being able to say, ‘I could have been rich, but I decided against it!’ I do think the state of digital comics is interesting. It feels like there are very few people trying very hard any more though. Apart from you guys – and I say that not because I am talking to you now! – but a lot of them seem to think, let’s put the comic out there and now another comic, and now another comic. Nobody has really asked what we can do to make this medium slightly unique or different or whatever.

‘There’s a certain pleasure in being able to say, “I could have been rich, but I decided against it!”’

Russell Willis For us we’re doing two lines: The first line is what you’ve seen with Eddie Campbell and David Lloyd, and that’s basically taking something that was perfectly designed for print, and making a sleek, responsive experience with additions such as audio commentaries, exclusive interviews etc. The other is to commission new work designed especially for the iPad. PJ Holden I think one of the things that’s really evident is that comics are not books. They are certainly not digital books. I think if CONTINUES ➤

INFINITY Preview • July 2012 • 28 of 68

INTERVIEW • PJ HOLDEN you have a book reader, you can’t just go, I’ll slap some comics on to this. Russell Willis That’s what you would have thought… Many people are sceptical about the future of digital comics. I think they’ve ignored the point that the game changer is the iPad, is the touch screen tablet itself and the lean-back experience that allows you to immerse yourself in a comic on a tablet – sitting hunched up squinting at a computer monitor is a very, very different experience. PJ Holden

It changes everything. Comics to me are an intimate reading experience. With the best in the world you can never get intimate with your computer. The ability to sit with an iPad on your lap or in a car or wherever and read it and not have any other thing in your way. There’s no keyboard on there. There’s nothing. It’s about what you’re looking at on the screen. Russell Willis I’m glad to hear you feel the same way. It is the iPad, the touch screen mobile tablet that makes all the difference. The term ‘digital comics’ is very broad, so it could mean comics that have been digitised and stuck on a CD-ROM, it could mean web comics on a computer monitor, but I am really interested in comics on the iPad and similar devices. I think that’s where the future lies; and I know you do too.

The cover of Strip Magazine #1, a BriIsh acIon and adventure comic edited by John Freeman

‘[The iPad] changes everything. Comics to me are an inImate reading experience. With the best in the world you can never get inImate with your computer.’

PJ Holden

I think there are two big factors. First is that the device is a great thing but the second is the ease of distribution. It’s so easy to get your own work out there compared to going through Diamond and Diamond’s crazy systems. Even if you’re going through Comixology, and taking into account that Apple take 30% plus Comixology take a CONTINUES ➤

INFINITY Preview • July 2012 • 29 of 68

INTERVIEW • PJ HOLDEN percentage, you’re still probably giving up less than what Diamond take. Russell Willis Are you buying fewer physical comics these days? PJ Holden

Weirdly I have bought more print comics since reading comics on my iPad, because what I would often do is I will buy a thing and I’ll go, that’s really lovely. I think I’ll buy that in hardback. Russell Willis Yeah. You want the physical souvenir for stuff you really love. The physical artefact. Especially if you have the collector instinct.

The Maj Smith Doctor Who

PJ Holden

I’ll go and buy a hardback. Digital comics can be pricey and I usually only buy during sales. I’ll wait until they’re on sale for 69p. Russell Willis It’s going to be interesting how the pricing model for those pamphlets turns out. We’re dealing with pricing models for our ‘deluxe digital graphic novels’ like Kickback. For example, it’s $9.99 which is cheaper than the hardback book, but it could still be considered quite a bit for a digital product. But if you work it out, it’s 150 pages. It comes to a price of about $1.20 for 20 pages.

‘Weirdly I have bought more print comics since reading comics on my iPad.’

PJ Holden

One of the problems of creating stuff digitally is that it’s very hard to get a measure of its weight. Russell Willis Right! Its heft. PJ Holden

Yeah, its heft. The digital comic with 150 pages looks the CONTINUES ➤

INFINITY Preview • July 2012 • 30 of 68

INTERVIEW • PJ HOLDEN same as one with 20 pages. What Panel Nine has done with the audio stuff so clearly differentiates your product. I think the market will fall into three areas (and I’m going into dodgy forecasting territory here). One will be for this sort of pamphlet stuff that comes out of Comixology and possibly people putting their work up through that. I think there will also be room for a kind of Lulu.com-type application or company that allows anyone to upload materials and sell it as a comic or magazine through their own app. Anyone will be able to put comics into that. I think there’s an open end in the digital comics market for that. I think there’s a third category which will be the big heavy hardback type, the sort of thing that you would go, that’s the kind of comic I want on the coffee table, which will require things like audio commentaries, video interviews, pencils. It will require all that stuff to make it feel like it’s worth spending £12 or £15 on it.

Previously is a collecIon of PJ’s small press work

Russell Willis And there’s the issue of the different audience. I often look at someone like Raymond Briggs, or more recently Alison Bechdel. I think with her new graphic novel Are You My Mother? they are doing 100,000 copies as an initial print run. We are set up to do digital versions of that kind of thing. We could make them look gorgeous, and then add audio commentaries and all of the extra stuff that you might want to include in print but can’t because it becomes prohibitively expensive. And I am imagining the audience that would read Alison Bechdel or Raymond Briggs is not going to be as price-sensitive as those reading She-Hulk. With deluxe versions of printed graphic novels it’s easy to say to the potential buyer ‘150 pages plus all these extras’ and customers get what you mean. It’s going to be more problematic when things are designed specially for initial publication on the iPad. CONTINUES ➤

INFINITY Preview • July 2012 • 31 of 68

INTERVIEW • PJ HOLDEN PJ Holden

Right, DC have a couple of digital exclusive comics that are 22 pages. They look gorgeous on the iPad because they are exactly sized for the iPad. So you have around 22 screens but we are clearly talking about half the material that would be in a standard 22-page comic. It’s one of those things that needs to be figured out. Russell Willis I know you have to run now… thanks for your time today, Paul, it’s been great talking with you. PJ Holden

It’s been a pleasure. Our interview took place by telephone on March 30th, 2012 and has been edited for length and clarity. Visit PJ Holden’s website Dial H for Holden.

ENDS ∞

INFINITY Preview • July 2012 • 32 of 68

Fact File

PAUL JASON HOLDEN Name Paul Jason (PJ) Holden Nationality British Age 42 (December 28, 1969) Resides in Belfast, Northern Ireland Occupation Artist Publications 2000 AD, Strip Magazine Website http://www.pauljholden.com/blog/ Notes

PJ’s first published work was with Fantagraphics in 1997 (Holy Cross #3) with Malachy Coney, and he provided art for a story with Mike Carey from Caliber in 1997. He started working for 2000 AD in 2001 (Judge Dredd ‘Sino-Cit’) and has been working professionally since. His subsequent work has included further stints on Judge Dredd and The 86ers. He has also drawn Rogue Trooper, Johnny Woo, and Tharg’s Future Shocks. Holden broke into the American comic book market with the Image Comics mini-series Fearless. Before becoming a full-time professional comic artist, PJ worked for 20 years in the IT industry. He has a long history with the British small press, amongst other things providing the early covers for FutureQuake, and has collected all his small press work into a single volume, Previously. He made headlines around the world with the creation of Murderdrome for the iPhone (see interview).

Hellboy by Holden

ENDS ∞

INFINITY Preview • July 2012 • 33 of 68

Digital Comics Sample

MURDERDROME HEADS YOU LOSE Given the publicity surrounding the original Murderdrome, PJ thought it would be interesting to revisit it… ‘A couple of years later I went back to it, this time with the intent to do it as a full-fledged proper comic-sized comic. This time very much improved by the presence of Steve Denton on colours and Jim Campbell on letters.’ The two pages that follow are the result. They were written by Al Ewing and drawn by PJ Holden. Please note that as we do not have sufficiently large original files, Panel Mode is not enabled on these two pages. Swipe to the next screen to view.

MURDERDROME Al Ewing • PJ Holden Not published Read more about Murderdrome at PJ Holden’s website.

CONTINUES ➤

INFINITY Preview • July 2012 • 34 of 68

Digital Comics Sample

DAPPER JOHN IN THE DAYS OF THE ACE ROCK ‘N’ ROLL CLUB When Alan Moore first saw Eddie Campbell’s Dapper John stories in the 1980s, he wrote, ‘Eddie Campbell is, in my opinion, one of the most interesting talents, amateur or professional, working in comics at the moment.’ It was the start of a beautiful relationship that resulted in the magnificent From Hell. Campbell, of course, is now recognised as one of the world’s most talented comics artists, with his Alec stories included in The Comics Journal’s list of the 100 most important comics published. His graphic novels The Fate of the Artist, Bacchus, and The Playwright (with Daren White) have all drawn great critical acclaim.

DAPPER JOHN Eddie Campbell

The stories in the deluxe app from Panel Nine follow the lives of a group of teddy boys in Southend in the 70s – characters who could mythologise their walk down the street before they got to the end of it. The stories are a direct precursor to Campbell’s Alec series and are essential reading for any Campbell fan. INFINITY is proud to present a special preview of Dapper John, now available for both the iPad and the iPhone. What follows is just a tiny sampling of over 150 pages of Eddie Campbell available on the app proper, including new articles, artwork, and an exclusive interview.

Panel Nine $1.99 through August iPad and iPhone Persian Cat Press raCng ★★★★★★★★★★ 150 pages including new arCcles and artwork by Eddie Campbell and an exclusive full-‐ length interview. h`p://itunes.apple.com/us/ app/dapper-‐john-‐in-‐days-‐ace-‐ rock/id484862579?mt=8

PANEL MODE ENABLED. Double tap a panel on the comics pages to enter.

CONTINUES ➤

INFINITY Preview • July 2012 • 37 of 68

INTRODUCTION BY EDDIE CAMPBELL

Some early reviews of In the Days of the Ace Rock ’n’ Roll Club described the events as taking place in the 1950s. This was never meant to be the case. The ‘days’ were only ever meant to be halcyon ones, which take place in people’s heads, probably before they’ve even got home and gone to bed. These ‘days’ ideally would have happened sometime in 1955, but would have to suffice in a transported form, endlessly revived and repeated twenty years after their ideal moment. Like most of the situations in my life I was more an observer than a participant, and I arrived in this one at a time when I was seeking a kind of living worth writing about. More worth writing about than worth living is perhaps what I mean. Some of the characters in this subculture did seem larger than life to me, insofar as I could tell real ones from fictional ones. I was still working that out, which is perhaps the real story in these pages. Looking at the stuff now, once or twice in the middle of the run I’m suddenly struck by a moment that is perhaps a little too real, before I had figured out that’s what I wanted to traffic in, the ‘real’, whatever that might be in the final analysis. I knew what kind of a comic strip I wanted to make, except it didn’t really exist and didn’t have a name, or a place where they published them. Once again, it was halcyon days. In my head there was a publisher waiting for it to get done and I was pacing myself, trying to wrap up a chapter each month, all with zip-a-tones and camera-ready. I was chronicling the fictional doings of people for a fictional publisher. I too was a fiction. When young folk ask me how to become a comics artist I tell them that you have to be a bit mad, in that you have to seriously believe that you are one, long before you get the chance for it to be so.

ME NOW

HIM THEN

As for readers, I think maybe three people may have seen my Ace Club book while I was doing it or after it was done, and their reactions kept me on track. Not that I knew it was a ‘book’ until I arrived at a conclusion, though in truth, as you’ll see, I went some way past the finish before I realised I’d passed it. I’d already done another book, four years earlier in 1974. It was a 40-page narrative, self-contained. I printed 500 copies and didn’t have a clue how to sell them. In my head I imagined that they were being distributed and sold, though it was taking some time. Otherwise I would naturally have given up. But with this one, the Ace Club, I finished it and put it away. In my head it had been published. I half-expected to meet people who had come across a copy and read it. I was sure I had readers all over the place, maybe even people who had been moved and influenced by the work. In 1982 I met some people who were as nutty as me. We put our comics together as little photocopied pamphlets, which was such a comedown after being properly published in my head. But photocopying had become a viable way of doing it, and so we had a ‘scene’ going for a few years. I had always wanted to be one of the Impressionists, which you can only be if you find some other ones to be an Impressionist with. Or a Cubist or something. It had to be something special of course. No point in being one if we weren’t going to change the world. For a couple of years I was in print just about every month, and all the comics I had in reserve were brought out at last. Alan Moore wrote a positive review of one of these booklets and so I introduced myself and thanked him hugely. You never know where these little politenesses may lead. Much later Alan said in an interview that when he was coming up with a London wide-boy magician to put in Swamp Thing, in his mind’s eye he kept seeing ‘slick Teddy Boy folk hero, Dapper John’. Well, I don’t know how true that is, but it tends to be how these things happen, with a little bit of this and a little bit of that.

BEEM 1974

“WE PUT OUR COMICS TOGETHER AS LITTLE PHOTOCOPIED PAMPHLETS, WHICH WAS SUCH A COMEDOWN AFTER BEING PROPERLY PUBLISHED IN MY HEAD.”

Then in 1984, with Phil Elliott, I was filling Alan’s old weekly spot in Sounds, the rock paper. It was my first regular paying gig as an artist. Dapper John and company got to travel abroad through Martin Lock, who used to publish Fantasy Advertiser, a comics fanzine. Then he published his own ‘comic books’ for the US market under his own Harrier imprint, and Phil Elliott did the colouring on those Harrier covers of mine. Then in 1993 the whole bundle appeared from Fantagraphics, in one book at last, fifteen years after I conceived it. That was the last time it all appeared together. This time around I’ve dug up some supplementary material that has never been seen before. Looking at it all now, I’m not entirely certain it ever happened in any real way. I have a nagging suspicion that I just imagined the whole thing. I invented Eddie Campbell. I wrote him in a book, that was never published. They found it after I imagined I was someone else.

Eddie Campbell November, 2011

ACE 1993

CHAPTER FOUR JUST A COUPLE OF . . .

Only $1.99 through August 2012!

DAPPER JOHN

IN THE DAYS OF THE ACE ROCK ’N’ ROLL CLUB

EDDIE CAMPBELL CONTENTS

• Introduction by Eddie Campbell • The Ten Best-Dressed Geezers… • Queen for a Day • A Fine Romance • Just a Couple of… • After You, Shadow • If Monkeys Learn to Fly • Dapper John Minds the Baby • It’s Me Little Family, Ennit • Extras by Eddie Campbell • Awayday Delinquent • Dapper John • Harrier Comics Intros • Fantagraphics Intros • Fast Fiction Days • The Alan Moore Review • Southend Days • Eddie Campbell Interview Available for both iPhone and iPad. Normally $9.99 but with a special introductory price of $1.99 through to the end of August 2012. Over 150 pages of Classic Campbell!

PANEL NINE

Capsule Reviews

STANDALONE IPAD APPS LOVELACE & BABBAGE

CIA: OPERATION AJAX

THE THRILL ELECTRIC

Creators

Sydney Padua

Publisher Agant Ltd. (October 2011) Price

Free + In-‐App Purchase

Daniel Burwen, Mike De Seve

Publisher Cognito Comics (Dec. 2011)

Leah Moore, John Reppion

Publisher Channel 4 (March 2012)

Price

$4.99

Price

Free

Device

iPad

Device

iPad

Device

iPad • iPhone

RaCng

★★★★★★★★★★

RaCng

★★★★★★★★★★

RaCng

★★★★★★★★★★

Brieﬂy

Sydney Padua is a brilliant animator and comic arCst. Here she gives us science heroes Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage. They ﬁght crime in a gadget-‐ ﬁlled steampunk Victorian London. BeauCfully remastered from the web comic for the iPad, our heroes’ adventures are accompanied by copious footnotes and real-‐life historical documents and illustraCons.

Brieﬂy

This tells the true story of the ﬁrst CIA-‐backed coup which toppled Iran’s democracy in 1953. Combining subtle animaCon with a ﬁlm-‐quality soundtrack, the story unfolds in a groundbreaking cinemaCc reading experience.

Brieﬂy

A clunky UX spoils this free ten-‐part enhanced comic set in Victorian Manchester. The story examines the extraordinary parallels between the Internet Age and the Telegraph Age via the lives of the young women and men working at a telegraph company. 21st-‐century issues such as gang culture, cyber bullying, coming out and online ﬂirtaCons are featured.

iTunes:

Lovelace & Babbage

‘One of the coolest media experiences I’ve seen on the iPad’ – New York Times

iTunes:

OperaCon Ajax

ENDS ∞

The Thrill Electric

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Interview

DAVID LLOYD

ON KICKBACKS AND CORRUPTION David Lloyd is famous for his groundbreaking work with Alan Moore on V for Vendetta, but the graphic novel that is a strong contender for a lot of his affection is Kickback, a crime-‐noir thriller that has been released recently as a deluxe digital graphic novel by Panel Nine. As well as containing lots of extras, including an audio commentary and production sketches, the app also includes an exclusive interview. Here we provide some excerpts: Russell Willis How did Kickback come about? David Lloyd

Well, I always wanted to do a graphic novel of my own. I’d written some short stories for DC and other companies in the past but my central job is as an illustrator of other people’s scripts, and because I was quite successful at that, it meant that companies would call me and want me CONTINUES ➤

KICKBACK David Lloyd Panel Nine $9.99 iPad Persian Cat Press raCng ★★★★★★★★★★ The full graphic novel plus producCon sketches, alternate covers, a superb audio commentary and a full-‐length interview. View a Kickback trailer video here. View the app in the App Store: h`p://itunes.apple.com/us/ app/kickback-‐crime-‐noir-‐ thriller/id511224450?mt=8

INFINITY Preview • July 2012 • 51 of 68

INTERVIEW • DAVID LLOYD to work on other people’s scripts, and because I have to earn a living and pay the bills that’s what I did. To actually do something as substantial as a graphic novel, you have to take time out to develop it, to write it. I had a quiet summer where the phone wasn’t ringing as often as it usually does and instead of picking up the phone to phone a publisher – which, incidentally, is something you should never do if you are reasonably successful because if you pick up the phone and ask for work, the publisher thinks you’re desperate and you can’t knock your page rate up. Anyway, instead of picking up the phone to phone a publisher and saying, look, have you got something I could do for you, I thought – well, I’ll take this time out. So, I sat down with a pad of paper and I wrote out the first rough draft of Kickback, which at that time was called The Kickback. The idea came from a documentary I saw about airships which described something called an axial walkway. An axial walkway is the central maintenance platform in a rigid structure airship. I had this idea that if you’re walking along it in one direction and the airship was going in another, you wouldn’t have any idea about which direction you were really going in, and I thought that was a very interesting metaphor – somebody who believes they are going in one direction but who is actually being taken in another. And it was a good metaphor for describing a corrupt policeman who thinks he’s going in the right direction but is blind to the reality of where he’s going – that stuck with me. I liked the name axial walkway. It had a kind of poetry to it, and I initially wanted to use it as the title. But it didn’t translate well and it wasn’t really an evocative title for a crime thriller.

‘The idea came from a documentary I saw about airships which described something called an axial walkway.’

••• CONTINUES ➤

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INTERVIEW • DAVID LLOYD Russell Willis There has been a significant increase in the number of graphic novels since I last interviewed you in 1984. That’s progress, isn’t it? David Lloyd

Well, yes, there is progress, and it’s great that graphic novels have made their mark, but the general public perception still remains. Maybe it’s due to the term ‘comics’. I mean, I think that’s something that I’ve always… in fact, right now, if somebody asks me what I do, I tell them I’m a sequential artist, which is often looked upon by my colleagues as kind of pretentious but I think it’s very necessary to try and change the language – by changing the language you can try to change the perception of the general public towards what we do. I mean, the term ‘graphic novel’ came in to discussion of the medium accidentally but it gained traction in the media and it did a lot of good for the medium. That term has done some good and I think a term like ‘sequential art’ could do a similar job if more people use it. I mean, this is just a personal thing of mine and it might not be the most important strategy to use in this regard, but I think the perception of the general public really does need to be taken seriously if the medium is to be taken seriously long-term.

‘…in fact, right now, if somebody asks me what I do, I tell them I’m a sequenIal arIst, which is oben looked upon by my colleagues as kind of pretenIous…’

But I agree with you, things have changed on one level but in the mainstream comics business they haven’t changed at all, which I think is something that could have happened. I think there were opportunities for the big companies like Marvel and DC to have expanded their audience. I’ve been going on about this for years but they have always neglected their duty to reach a wider audience. ••• CONTINUES ➤

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INTERVIEW • DAVID LLOYD Russell Willis Corruption is a key theme in Kickback. David Lloyd

Essentially, it’s about corruption because I’m fascinated by that. We are all tempted. It doesn’t matter who we are, we are all tempted to do things that we shouldn’t do at a certain point. It could be on a very basic level or it could be on a small level, it could be in relationships, it could be big things or small things. I’m interested in why. What makes us do that and why are we so easily tempted to do things that we shouldn’t do? But again, that goes back to this metaphor of the walkway going in one direction when in fact, you’re going in the wrong direction, and that is at the core of the story.

A page from the deluxe Kickback iPad ediIon

Russell Willis Although he is a corrupt cop, Joe Canelli is depicted quite sympathetically. David Lloyd

I had this idea that if he’d lost his parents then somehow he’d be more vulnerable, and I wanted him to be vulnerable. I mean, he’s a tough cop but he’s got to be vulnerable as well for you to identify with him. It’s very important. Too many cop characters in movies you have no real sympathy for at all. In fact, a lot of the movies, a lot of the thrillers that are made about corrupt cops or cops anywhere, you really have no sympathy for them because they’re usually tough. They have no real dimension to them other than the superficiality of what they are.

‘We are all tempted. It doesn’t majer who we are, we are all tempted to do things that we shouldn’t do at a certain point.’

And with Joe Canelli, he does it because everybody else does it. Isn’t that something that we do in life? I think it’s a very interesting thing about human beings – we are like CONTINUES ➤

INFINITY Preview • July 2012 • 54 of 68

INTERVIEW • DAVID LLOYD sheep far too often and we go along with the flock. We all far too easily go along with the crowd and that’s how we become corrupt. We don’t stand up. We want to conform and we feel lonely if we don’t conform. It’s one of those flaws of humanity. In fact, in this matter, Kickback has a resonance with V for Vendetta. I often describe Kickback as similar thematically to Vendetta because Vendetta is about corruption, too. Vendetta was about how a society becomes corrupt and how it frees itself from corruption. Kickback is about a similar thing but it’s about one man who does the same thing. He becomes corrupt and he frees himself. He recognizes what he’s doing and he frees himself from it. ••• Russell Willis How do you feel about the art in comics coming out of the mainstream these days? David Lloyd

‘Vende`a was about how a society becomes corrupt and how it frees itself from corrupIon. Kickback is about a similar thing but it’s about one man who does the same thing.’

I think there’s a lack of energy in comics art now. It’s because, for a start, I think, generally speaking, one of the biggest inadequacies in most mainstream product is the coloring. The coloring kills the energy of the art in a most extraordinary manner. Looking at the art in most mainstream product, I’m sure that the black and white art has the required energy. I mean, I know these artists, I know a lot of them, and I am certain that energy is there in their black and white art. ••• The above is just a small selecCon from the exclusive interview with David Lloyd. For the full version, see the deluxe Kickback app for the iPad.

ENDS ∞

INFINITY Preview • July 2012 • 55 of 68

Art for Art’s Sake

SIMON RUSSELL

Simon Russell is the head of BOING, a design agency based in Brighton, England. He has produced design and illustration work for a wide range of clients including Emap, the Cartoon Museum, Visit Britain, and the Chinese State Circus, to name just a few. Simon has a personal blog and can be contacted through the BOING website. Simon was the cover artist for the very first issue of the old INFINITY back in 1983…

IllustraCon from Bertold Brecht’s The Threepenny Opera CONTINUES ➤

INFINITY Preview • July 2012 • 56 of 68