INFINITY #1 | Digital Graphic Novels and Digital Comics

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ON AND ON AND ON RUSSELL WILLIS • EDITOR

WELCOME! … to the first issue proper of INFINITY. Our Preview was well-­‐ received and we’ve had around 2,000 downloads at the Gme of wriGng, with more people subscribing every day.

We’ve got a great issue, I think, with some fabulous arGcles and strips, not least among which is the first part of an in-­‐depth and extremely entertaining arGcle on the 70s underground classic Arcade by Alan Moore. This piece first saw print in INFINITY’s 80s predecessor (see our Preview issue for details) but Alan was kind enough to allow us to reuse it here.

There are no digital versions of Arcade, but an omnibus ediGon for the iPad would surely be a thing of wonder… (So the Arcade arGcle is a good example of the ‘and More’ in the ‘Digital Graphic Novels and More’ of our tagline.)

I’m also delighted to include some great strips… there’s a preview of David Lloyd’s Kickback, which should give you a taste of what to expect in the full graphic novel app. We’ve also got a really neat four-­‐pager by Jessica Abel, featuring a Who’s Who of comics arGsts, from Art Spiegelman to Chris Ware.

Eddie Campbell is interviewed in the iPad ediGon of Dapper John and here we have an excerpt from that interview which I think you’ll find entertaining. Add to this a great secGon on Winsor McCay, your leJers, a news roundup, and columns

by PM Buchan, PJ Holden, and yours truly, and I think we’ve got something quite nice… But get in touch to let us know how we can do beJer – or contribute something yourself. Our next issue is out on November 15th.

SPECIAL FEATURES Don’t forget that blue text in the app signifies a link, and tapping will take you to some extra content, such as a web page. Pictures with yellow borders can be seen full-­‐screen if you tap on them. And if the ‘Play Audio’ buJon is lit up then you can listen along… This issue we have audio to accompany the preview of David Lloyd’s Kickback app. Enjoy!

ENDS ∞

Cover Eddie Campbell Editor Russell Willis contact@ienglish.com Contributors PJ Holden Rob Salkowitz David Lloyd Eddie Campbell Alan Moore Chloë MarGn PM Buchan Hayden Hughes John GraJan Publisher Panel Nine

∞

Published bi-­‐monthly. Contents © the respecGve copyright holders.

This app © iEnglish.com Ltd. Volume 2 • Issue #1• September 2012.

This is issue #1 of the new INFINITY, a magazine about digital comics and more.

Contents © individual copyright holders.

Please email inquiries about contributions to the address above.

INFINITY #1 • September 2012 • 1 of 77

RADAR A ROUNDUP OF THE TOP DIGITAL COMICS NEWS ACES WEEKLY TO LAUNCH END SEPT. David Lloyd’s new web-based digital-only ‘comic art magazine’ Aces Weekly is due to launch on September 30th. As reported last issue, Lloyd has secured the agreement of a wide range of well-known comics professionals to produce work for the series. ‘This is not like normal publishing,’

said Lloyd, ‘this is an all-for-one, one-forall situation where the publication is designed from the beginning to benefit the creators.’ Long-time British comics editor

Bambos Georgiou is managing editor for the series. More information can be had at the Aces Weekly Facebook page.

MONKEYBRAIN LAUNCHES DIGITALFIRST COMICS LINE Chris Roberson and Allison Baker launched a new creator-owned digital comics line, Monkeybrain Comics, distributed through Comixology’s comics app. Creators include Kurt Busiek, Steve Lieber, Dennis Culver, and Colleen Coover. The full lineup can be found at the Monkeybrain website.

2000 AD LAUNCHES NEWSSTAND APP August saw the release of the 2000 AD Newsstand app for iPad and iPhone.

The app comes with a free 69-page sampler, and issues become available on the same day as their print counterparts. Subscribers CONTINUES ➤

INFINITY #1 • September 2012 • 2 of 77

NEWS ROUNDUP can sign up for one month, three months, or a year – and will get a selection of free back issues – or issues can be bought individually. As part of the major PR campaign for the upcoming Dredd 3D movie, released this month, 2000 AD has also created a special prologue to the film which is given away free in the app. The short story, titled Top of the World, Ma-Ma, tells the story of the film’s main baddie, MaMa. Wired has the full report.

DESPERATE DAN GOES DIGITAL The Dandy, the UK’s oldest children’s comic, is soon to cease weekly print publication and go online only. Publisher DC Thomson has confirmed that the final printed issue will be released on The Dandy’s 75th birthday in December this year. !

The classic comic is being pulled from shelves following a drop in circulation in recent years. Circulation peaked at around two million copies a week in its heyday, but had slumped to under 7,500 by last year. !

Ellie Watson, chief executive of DC Thomson’s newspaper and magazine operations, said that the 75th anniversary edition on December 4th will include a reprint of the first ever issue, which went

Desperate Dan will be online-only from December

on sale in 1937. Watson commented, ‘It’s what comes online then that will set the tone for the next 75 years. Dan has certainly not eaten his last cow pie. All of The Dandy’s characters are just… days away from a new lease of life.’ !

The Cartoon Museum in London is currently preparing an exhibition marking the 75th anniversary of the The Dandy. The first issue went on sale in 1937, priced at 2p with a free whistle. !

The Dandy also has an app for iPad and iPhone, released last year.

PANEL NINE TO RELEASE HUNT EMERSON ANTHOLOGY APP A new iPad app, due for release in late September, will collect together the work of underground comix master Hunt Emerson. !

The Certified Hunt Emerson will be released CONTINUES ➤

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NEWS ROUNDUP

by Panel Nine, the company behind INFINITY. Panel Nine have created the app

Hunt Emerson, creator of Firkin and Calculus Cat and a master of the British underground comix scene

using material specially selected by Emerson, who is known for his unique and eccentric illustration style. !

The app gathers together over 200 pages of material including 27 different comic strips, a collection of covers and artwork, audio commentaries recorded

by Emerson exclusively for the app, a

Pages from Hunt Emerson’s famous ‘Leviticus’ and ‘Freak Brothers’ strips

lengthy interview about the 80s underground comix scene, and much more. Emerson’s famous Outrageous Tales From the Old Testament collaboration with Alan Moore is featured, along with his ‘Furry Freak Brothers’, ‘Firkin’, and ‘Phenomenomix’ strips. !

Subscribe to the Panel Nine newsletter to be notified when the app goes on sale.

BEN ABERNATHY JOINS MADEFIRE Former digital editor at DC Comics, Ben Abernathy, has joined Madefire as their new editorial director.

!

Abernathy spent over a decade at DC Comics, starting with WildStorm before eventually handling editorial duties for DC’s digital comics. He has also worked with Dark Horse and Marvel. !

The news comes at the same time as Madefire announces it will soon deliver content on a weekly basis. On the Madefire website, founder Liam Sharp commented, ‘Having Ben join the Madefire team is a huge step forward for the company. Releasing this many original new titles and episodes within a CONTINUES ➤

INFINITY #1 • September 2012 • 4 of 77

NEWS ROUNDUP three month period is virtually unheard of in the comics space. Ben’s experience and vision will be vital as Madefire continues to deliver original, highquality, episodic content to readers on a weekly basis.’ !

Comic Book Resources has the full story.

CEREBUS NEGATIVES DESTROYED IN HOUSE FIRE The negatives for Cerebus: High Society have been destroyed in a fire. The apartment building that was home to Sandeep Atwal, communications director for Dave Sim’s Aarvard-Vanaheim Inc, caught fire on August 24th. Atwal escaped from the building unharmed, but 130 film negatives were lost.

Cerebus is set to become a major digital publication

!

Cerebus: High Society is a huge project aiming to turn over 300 issues of the acclaimed comic into ‘the world’s longest audio book’ by creating digital versions of each page and supplementing them with recordings of dialogue, audio-visual

commentary, and extra artwork. !

The Cerebus: High Society team, including George Gatsis and Dave Sim, have been posting updates about the project on their Kickstarter page. As a result of the fire, the project has been unable to keep to its original September 12th launch date, but the team are working hard to meet the new date of October 10th. Cerebus Fangirl has a site collecting donations for Atwal, and Dave Sim’s Cerebus Art Collection page is on the lookout for anyone with original pages who can send in a scan. Everyone at INFINITY wishes the team the best of luck getting back on track with the project.

COMIXOLOGY CALL FOR CREATOR INFO At Baltimore Comic-Con this month, Comixology launched a 26-week initiative to collect photographs and information about 6,000 comic book creators, from artists and writers to inkers, letterers, and editors. The company is collecting this information via their Twitter account, to eventually create a huge database of comic book creators for users to browse through. CEO David Steinberger said, ‘Creators are the lifeblood of the comic industry and having the most complete info about creators will create a fuller experience for our customers. In 26 weeks we plan to cover everyone from Aaron to Zuzelo.’ !

The company hopes to do one letter ENDS ∞

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NEWS ROUNDUP of the alphabet a week. More details are available on Comixology’s blog.

IVERSE LAUNCHES COMICS CROWDFUNDING SITE Publishers Weekly reports that iVerse, the company behind ComicsPlus, is to launch a new platform for raising money for comics-based projects. Looking to muscle in on the territory that has been owned almost solely by Kickstarter up until now, ComicsAccelerator will offer users a crowdfunding platform for anything comics-related – print titles, digital projects, merchandise, and so on. !

ComicsAccelerator will charge 5% of the project as project management fee, and unlike Kickstarter, they will cap the total project fee at $2,500. Kickstarter also charges a 5% processing fee but has no cap – however, this means ComicsAccelerator users will only make a saving if a project draws $50,000 or above. !

The ComicsAccelerator service is currently in beta, with the formal launch scheduled for later in September. iVerse CEO Michael Murphey said, ‘This whole thing is an experiment for us. We like experimenting with new ways to do things, and it looks like crowdsource funding has a huge future in changing the way creators make their comics.’

!

In the same article, Publishers Weekly also noted iVerse’s move into DRM-free content. iVerse will be offering DRM-free PDF versions of a selection of comics, starting with creator-owned titles. More news as we get it.

JMANGA LAUNCH SPINOFF SITE October will see the launch of a spinoff from JManga, the digital manga site that is home to content from almost 40 publishers.

JManga7 will offer free content updated daily

!

The spinoff site, JManga7, will be updated daily with new content. It will serialise manga titles one chapter at a time, allowing readers to stay current with a series. When all the chapters in a volume have been released, the volume will be removed from JManga7 and become available for purchase on the main JManga site. Some titles will be available for free, and a monthly subscription will give access to further content. !

See Publishers Weekly for the full story. ∞ INFINITY NEWS DESK ∞

Have you got news for us?

If so, please send a press release to contact@ienglish.com.

ENDS ∞

INFINITY #1 • September 2012 • 6 of 77

Verbatim

THE WORD ON DIGITAL COMICS ZANDER CANNON

MARK WAID

CREATOR OF DOUBLE BARREL

CREATOR OF THRILLBENT

‘What we have set out to do on Double Barrel is not to undervalue digital comics but to place them in line with other digital media such as TV, novels, and music, in terms of money for time (approximately $2/hour by our reckoning). Comics were once one of the most inexpensive options for entertainment, and now they’re virtually the most expensive.’

‘99 cents… because 99 cents is the point at which even the most casual readers will… try something they have not tried before… 99 cents is the price you’d pay for an app from the App Store… We’re not competing with other comics and we’re not competing with print comics, we’re competing with other things that cost 99 cents.’

– in the FAQ secGon of Double Barrel #3, available from Comixology

– quoted widely from a panel at San Diego Comic-­‐Con 2012

DAVID STEINBERGER

MICHAEL MURPHEY

CEO OF COMIXOLOGY

CEO OF IVERSE

‘[Physical] comics stores are like vinyl [record] stores. It’s where people who truly love the books come together to hang out. Everybody had access to DVDs, but not everybody had access to comics stores. There’s no Best Buy or Tower Records of comics.’

‘Comixology, it seems to me, is trying to recreate the direct market in digital form.

That’s not where iVerse has ever been. We have always thought of ourselves as a newsstand rather than the direct market. We do better than most people think because most of our customers are not direct market customers. We sell a ton of children’s product through ComicsPlus Kids, we have Archie Comics, and we have Pocket God comics.’

– in an interview with CNET in July

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

ENDS ∞

INFINITY #1 • September 2012 • 7 of 77

Creating Digitally

TOOLS OF THE TRADE GETTING STARTED For comics artists with iPads there are a number of useful apps that can really help get the job done. Here are three to get going with: L’Ecorché is a terrible (if absolutely accurate) name for a great bit of software for the iPhone/iPad (best on the iPad3, I’m afraid). Its single function is the display of an anatomically accurate human body, which can be rotated, pinched, and zoomed and moved around at will. It’s a great way to understand how the muscle structure works, and it’s a tool that artists have used (in model form) for generations. I’d count it as absolutely essential to anyone who wants to learn to draw. The full-featured version is here, and there’s a free Lite version here.

Procreate (another awful name) is hands down the best drawing app for the iPad. Works as smooth as silk, and features various ‘natural’ media, but the killer feature is that the ‘canvas’ can be pinched and zoomed and, more importantly, rotated – allowing you to sqwoosh it this way and that, like a bit of paper. Can’t recommend it enough (it’s $4.99 with sets of natural media at 99 cents each). Developed by Savage Interactive. Get it here.

Pinterest has a website of course, but it also has a great iPad app. Think of it as an old fashioned picture morgue.

It allows you to build up various boards with pictures, links, and other media. And it’s all free. Get it here.

PJ HOLDEN 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 sGnts drawing 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.

Prior to his comics career he spent 20 years in the IT industry.

PJ is on TwiJer and has a blog.

That’s all for this issue. See you next time.

ENDS ∞

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The First Time...

GOING DIGITAL A NEW WORLD I never imagined a world where I’d want to read digital comics. As a reviewer, I’ve reluctantly accepted PDFs from creators that can’t afford to post out free physical copies. I’ve even bought Ben Templesmith’s back catalogue directly through his app on the iPhone to prepare for an interview with him. And I’ve read thousands of comic pages on my desktop PC – but this has never been more than a means to an end, a necessary evil of my job. It wasn’t until my iPad arrived a week ago that I saw the myriad possibilities for digital comics.

PM BUCHAN TRYING OUT COMIXOLOGY What jumped out the first time I turned on the iPad was the brightness and clarity of image. The screen is crystal clear and almost perfectly shaped for comics. Everybody knows that Comixology is the biggest player, so I downloaded their app to try it for myself. Scalped by Jason Aaron and RM Guéra just finished its run, so I

Scalped published by Vertigo

PM Buchan is the lead comic-­‐ book columnist for Starburst magazine and considers himself to be a vocal advocate for the BriGsh comic book industry.

When not culGvaGng his obsession with comics he writes novels about the end of the world, watches horror films, and reads books about the Manson family. He now sincerely hopes that all his favourite comic creators will announce their plans to create work with the iPad in mind so that he can ditch his colossal collecGon of gradually-­‐ decaying printed material.

bought the final issue. This is the best that Scalped has ever looked. The colours are more vibrant than I knew they could be. The pages swipe effortlessly and the Guided View mode is a nice touch, even if it blows up CONTINUES ➤

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GOING DIGITAL • PM BUCHAN some panels bigger than they were ever intended to be viewed. If I want mainstream American comics then Comixology has me covered.

IBOOKS AND EMANATA For comparison I headed to iBooks to look at some of the PDFs I should be reviewing. The interface is considerably easier than reading hunched at a desktop, but after Comixology the inability to do more than scroll and zoom feels clumsy, merely functional. This does not feel like the future of comics, this feels utilitarian. I hunt for more apps. Emanata boasts that they offer a platform for independent comic creators to promote their work. I like it because the comics fit the page beautifully, so there’s really no need to zoom and scroll around. What bothers me is that I don’t recognise any of the creators and I don’t know where to start.

IVERSE Moving on, Comics+ from iVerse seems to occupy the middle ground between the mainstream and the smaller independents. The reading experience of their previews is basic but still better than iBooks. The quality of the comic files vary, with brilliant clarity from one of the bigger publishers but real fuzziness on an independent title that I’ve read before. If I paid money for comics that looked this bad I’d ask for a refund. Are iVerse vetting the quality of their content?

Free indie comics on Emanata

“If I paid money for comics that looked this bad I’d ask for a refund.

Are iVerse ve?ng the quality of their content?”

MADEFIRE To prove to myself that digital comics really might be the future I try the Madefire app and am not disappointed.

Even the loading and menu screens crackle with animation, colour, and exciting sounds. The two free comics that I read allow me to dictate the speed that the story progresses, a sequence of static images disguised as CONTINUES ➤

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GOING DIGITAL • PM BUCHAN animation by flashy swipes, reveals, and fades. Dialogue appears on the screen timed, brought to life by equally scripted dynamic soundtracks that add an extra layer to the experience. This is NOT a traditional comic, but it captures the vibrancy and energy that so many western comics strive towards. I wonder at the longevity of an app like this, at how financially viable it can be to pack so many features into such a short experience, but mostly I just feel like I want them to announce that my favourite writers and artists are developing stories for Madefire. I always hated the idea of ‘motion comics’, I’ve openly scoffed at Marvel’s attempts in the past, but this is something new and somehow it validates my decision to read comics on the iPad. MAKE IT FOR DIGITAL I think I’ll struggle to convince myself to spend the same amount of money on digital comics as I would for physical comics that I can keep indefinitely, but I’ll have no qualms about shelling out for an experience that I could only get on my iPad. This, I have decided, is the future. But if you want me to pay a comparable price for a virtual product then sell me something designed specifically for this medium. Now that I have some idea what I’m willing to spend money on, all I need are recommendations from reviewers that I respect. Easy reading experiences might draw me to these apps, but content is what will keep me there. ∞

ENDS ∞

The Madefire storefront

“I’ll have no qualms about shelling out for an experience that I could only get on my iPad.”

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Sequential Art

JESSICA ABEL

Jessica Abel is an award-­‐winning (Harvey, Lulu, and Xeric) graphic novelist, whose works include La Perdida and Life Sucks. She teaches at New York’s School of Visual Arts and has authored two textbooks about making comics, Drawing Words & Writing Pictures and Mastering Comics, written with her husband, the cartoonist Matt Madden.

The strip was originally published in July-­‐August issue of The University of Chicago Magazine and is used with permission.

Copyright © Jessica Abel

CHICKEN FAT The Comics: Philosophy and Practice conference at the Logan Center for the Arts drew 17 cartoonists and hundreds of observers, in person and online, for three days in May of intense discussion of the field.

PANEL MODE ENABLED.

In the pages that follow, Jessica Abel documents in comic strip form some key discussions at the conference.

Participants included Art Spiegelman, Alison Bechdel, Joe Sacco, Charles Burns, Seth, Chris Ware, Lynda Barry, Aline Kominsky, Carol Tyler, and Justin Green.

Double-­‐tap a panel on the comics pages following to view the strip panel-­‐by-­‐panel.

CONTINUES ➤

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Archive

ALAN MOORE ON ARCADE

Alan Moore is the renowned British writer behind A Small Killing (with Oscar Zarate), Lost Girls (with Melinda Gebbie), and From Hell (with Eddie Campbell). In the 80s, whilst writing Swamp Thing for DC and a host of other professional comics, Moore was also a prolific contributor to small press magazines and fanzines. In 1984 he submitted this piece to the first incarnaXon of INFINITY. It is reprinted here with Alan’s permission. There is, as yet, no digital version of Arcade.

Arcade #1 • 1975

TOO AVANT-GARDE FOR THE MAFIA? Alan, Thanks for the entertaining letter. Seeing as it was of such a high intellectual calibre, we’ll most likely print it in our next issue… You almost found us too late. No 7 is just out and No 8 (out in 6-10 months) will be our last as a magazine. After that we go annual, in paperback form. I’m afraid we’re a bit too avant-garde for the Mafia.

Tally ho, Griffy

“Arcade was swiGly elevated to the Olympian reaches of my Three Favourite Comics Ever In The History of The Universe.”

I received the above letter in the late September of 1976 after coming across a handful of issues of Arcade at the comic shop Dark They Were & Golden Eyed. I’d originally CONTINUES ➤

INFINITY #1 • September 2012 • 17 of 77

ARCHIVE • ALAN MOORE ON ARCADE picked the magazine up on impulse after being attracted by a cover line that promised the unlikely combination of William S Burroughs and S Clay Wilson, apparently to be found within. What I discovered was a collection of comic material that swiftly elevated Arcade: The Comics Revue to the Olympian reaches of my Three Favourite Comics Ever In The History Of The Universe. As is usually the way when I encounter something I’m really fond of, my condition escalated rapidly from good natured boyish enthusiasm to an embarrassing display of slobbering hysteria. I wrote a long and love-struck letter to the magazine swearing that in order to ensure the continued publication of this Pulp Paragon I would be prepared to have sexual intercourse with a Komodo dragon or kill my family with a blunt butter-knife (or words to that effect).

A few weeks later I received the above reply from Bill Griffiths. I reprint it here partly because I really like the bit about my high intellectual calibre, and partly because of its historical interest: The last issue of Arcade was issue 7. There was no annual paperback. The Mafia obviously got them after all.

Arcade #2 • 1975

“Arcade published some of the only truly worthwhile material produced during the 1970s…”

During its brief lifespan Arcade published some of the only truly worthwhile material produced during the 1970s, and for a short time seemed almost capable of revitalising the near-extinct genus of the Underground Comic. This dream was truncated suddenly when Bill Griffiths woke up one morning to find Zippy the Pinhead’s pointed, severed head in bed with him, or whatever way it was that those ruthless pinstriped Sicilians put the frighteners on him. The fact that Arcade folded is a shame; the fact that it has been pointedly ignored ever since is a tragedy… at least on the effete scale with which we aesthetes evaluate tragedies.

CONTINUES ➤

INFINITY #1 • September 2012 • 18 of 77

ARCHIVE • ALAN MOORE ON ARCADE In an effort to address the balance a little I’d like to attempt a brief and necessarily inconclusive rundown on the magazine. To understand Arcade you first have to understand a little of its historical context, so I hope you’ll bear with me as I do my best to lubricate the dry facts.

Arcade #1 was published in the spring of 1975 as a quarterly black and white magazine of around fifty pages, sporting beautiful full colour covers, many by Robert Crumb, printed on card. It appeared at a time when the Underground Comic had started to cough up blood after several years of looking pale and ill. The initial wave of energy provided by ZAP Comix had reached its high water mark, broken, and fallen back. The busts and court cases had taken their toll, and the only undergrounds that seemed to be breaking even were those that tended towards sex and horror: Skull, Slow Death and lesser titles seemed to appear with some regularity while the more adventurous and experimental books fell by the wayside.

One gets the impression in retrospect that the underground market was slimming itself down and getting rid of its social conscience in preparation for its metamorphosis into the Heavy Metal audience of some years later. Whatever the situation, things looked bleak for the underground.

Arcade #3 • 1975

“It appeared at a Tme when the Underground Comic had started to cough up blood aGer several years of looking pale and ill.”

In 1975 then, Arcade served as a rallying point for those cartoonists who were more concerned with their art than their bank balances. In the process it brought more concentrated intelligence to bear upon the comix strip medium than has been experienced since the balmy heyday of the Great American Newspaper Strip. So what was it all about?

As a package it was delightful: Nice printing on white CONTINUES ➤

INFINITY #1 • September 2012 • 19 of 77

ARCHIVE • ALAN MOORE ON ARCADE paper and card covers aside, it had a sort of garish pulp charm that latterday descendants such as RAW can’t really hope to capture. Arcade wasn’t hard edged and intimidatingly intellectual. It was approachable, and everything from the style of the masthead lettering to the gallery of self-portraits on the contents page reflected this somehow. Entertaining as the package might have been however, it didn’t hold a candle to the contents.

The contents of Arcade had a pleasing regularity, considering how diverse the actual material was. Most of the early issues opened with a full page illustrated text feature by Jim Osborne on the inside front cover, similar to the Loathsome Lore features that the late Roy Krenkel did for Warren’s early run of Creepy. These were historical items centreing upon some famous real-life monster from history, such as baby-butchering Caterina Sforza or Peter Kurten the Düsseldorf vampire. Lovingly illustrated in Osborne’s delicate stippling, these catalogues of genuine atrocities became so numbingly terrible as to be almost funny, leading the reader in to the uneasy no-man’s-land between the disturbing and the amusing that was to become almost a trade mark for a number of the most prominent Arcade artists, and the nearest that the magazine ever got to a distinctive House Style.

Arcade #4 • 1975

“Arcade wasn’t hard edged and inTmidaTngly intellectual.”

After an imaginatively designed contents and editorial page, the main contents unrolled. As the issues passed, some of these emerged as Arcade’s equivalent to continuing features.

As an example, there seemed to be a sort of unofficial biography spot, in which one of Arcade’s regulars would produce a comic strip biography of the character of his choice. These included George Kuchar’s darkly comic CONTINUES ➤

INFINITY #1 • September 2012 • 20 of 77

ARCHIVE • ALAN MOORE ON ARCADE piece on HP Lovecraft and a brilliant study of the life of Henri Rousseau by Bill Griffiths but the very best was a portrait of Stalin by Spain Rodriguez (Arcade #4). Within a limited number of pages, Spain created a convincing picture of the brooding and psychopathic ‘Red Monarch’ and the strange abstracted landscape in which he lived.

The use of heavy block shadows and Rodriguez’s powerful sense of composition give a real atmosphere and weight to the story, with an abrupt and brutal pace to the storytelling that matches the chilling nature of the subject matter quite adequately. A scene in which Stalin’s wife is Arcade #5 • 1976

“The use of heavy block shadows and Rodriguez’s powerful sense of composiTon give a real atmosphere and weight to the story…”

reported a ‘Suicide’ (whatever that meant in Stalinist Russia) is portrayed as a severe downshot, looking straight down from near the ceiling of an elegant bathroom at the woman sprawled upon the floor like a stringless puppet, hard lines of black ink radiating from her slashed wrists and trickling off across the white tiles.

And the final images are perfect: The narrative caption CONTINUES ➤

INFINITY #1 • September 2012 • 21 of 77

ARCHIVE • ALAN MOORE ON ARCADE boxes relate how, during his final years, Stalin would travel by car along highways built for his solitary personal use across Russia. Wherever he stopped along the way there would be a room waiting for him specially constructed so as to be an exact duplicate of his room in the Kremlin, right down to the book lying open on the bedside table. While this is sinking in, we see three pictures, showing a simple side elevation of a sparsely furnished, neat-looking bedroom. Each picture is identical to the others except that they get progressively smaller. In effect, we get the impression of an endless series of identical rooms stretching away into the empty distance, proving an unnerving glimpse into the mind of someone who once controlled half of the world.

Arcade #6 • 1976

Another high-point of Arcade was Justin Green’s Classics Crucified series, in which Green, the undisputed Nabob of Neuroticism and creator of the remarkable Binky Brown Meets The Holy Virgin Mary, took the concept behind Classics Illustrated to its logical and bloody extreme.

Whereas Classics Illustrated somehow managed to maintain an air of false dignity all the time it was sawing Captain Ahab’s other leg off in an attempt to fit Moby Dick into a comic-book, Green pulled out all the stops and deliberately vulgarised works of classic literature with all the delicacy of a PCP-crazed dog-sodomist. The best example is probably his three page reworking of Dostoevsky’s Crime & Punishment in issue 3 of Arcade. I won’t go into detail, but the final panel should adequately describe the reverence with which this greatest of Russian novelists has been approached. After tortured protagonist Raskolnikov has reached the point of self-revelation that has eluded him throughout this massive novel (‘Oh God! I just realised… I’m a shitty murderer and a terrible person!’) his persecutor, Inspector Porfiry Petrovich,

“Green… deliberately vulgarised works of classic literature with all the delicacy of a PCP-­‐crazed dog-­‐sodomist.”

CONTINUES ➤

INFINITY #1 • September 2012 • 22 of 77

ARCHIVE • ALAN MOORE ON ARCADE

strikes up a relationship with Raskolnikov’s loved one, Sonia. In the last panel, Green summarises Dostoevsky’s notion that the torture of one individual is somehow redeemed in the elevation of others to loving harmony, most adequately as Inspector Petrovich poignantly remarks, ‘Just think… if those two bimbos wasn’t knocked off, I never woulda met Sonia!’ Sonia gazes at him adoringly and says, ‘He is my Sugar-Father.’ End of strip. For my part I thought it was better than the original.

JusSn Green’s Classics Crucified series takes on Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment

Then there was Kim Deitch’s recountings of the stories upon his own pet theme: Famous Frauds. Filtered through Deitch’s Fleischer-esque sensibilities, the stories of such notable tricksters as Don Carlos Balmo-I, who was CONTINUES ➤

INFINITY #1 • September 2012 • 23 of 77

ARCHIVE • ALAN MOORE ON ARCADE LeX: Kim Deitch’s Ajeeb the chess-­‐ playing ‘robot’ meets its match

A Kim Deitch self-­‐portrait from the contents page of Arcade

actually a woman, and the chess-playing robot Ajeeb took on a new and surreal dimension. Ajeeb was particularly interesting: a huge and hollow ‘automaton’ concealing a small human operative, Ajeeb outlasted several operators – one of whom turned to drink and went mad after spending his entire working life sitting in the cramped interior of the stuffy and lightless pseudo-robot – before finally suffering the humiliation of defeat at the hands of CONTINUES ➤

INFINITY #1 • September 2012 • 24 of 77

ARCHIVE • ALAN MOORE ON ARCADE an 11 year old boy. The boy won a box of cigars, and that was Bobby Fischer’s very first chess prize. The stories are simply told and fascinating, and therein lies a lot of the appeal, both of Deitch’s work in particular and of Arcade in general: the stuff was well written and well constructed. It hung together well and it had a point.

Would that there were four books like that around today.

Most issues had a text feature written by some contemporary notable and illustrated by one of the Arcade crew. The idea worked well – the three page text features broke up the otherwise acres of comic strip and

The final issue: Arcade #7 • 1976

“Most issues had a text feature wriZen by some contemporary notable and illustrated by one of the Arcade crew.”

LeX: A Charles Bukowski text story illustrated by Robert Crumb CONTINUES ➤

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ARCHIVE • ALAN MOORE ON ARCADE set off the work to its best effect by contrast. The better pieces in this category included two inspiring pairings: Charles Bukowski and Robert Crumb; and S Clay Wilson and William Burroughs. Crumb’s rubbery Terrytoon lines perfectly evoked the seamy nostalgia of Bukowski’s prose, while in Burroughs S Clay Wilson seemed to have found a match for his own abnormally horrid imagination.

Jim Hoberman also contributed a text column, Space Age Confidential by name. Variously illustrated by Deitch, Robert Williams and Art Spiegelman, Space Age Confidential talked enthrallingly about such American icons as Coca-Cola, Disneyworld and President Calvin Coolidge. In doing so it underlined another prominent strand running through Arcade, a sort of determination to expose the dark and bizarre side of contemporary pop culture, starting with the comic strip and working outwards.

Despite the heavy whiff of Dadaism in the material, Arcade displayed nothing but the greatest respect for the medium it was working within. Great moments in the medium’s past were recalled and re-examined in a feature called Arcade Archives. While at the moment we have an exemplary publication like Nemo to help us find out about strips of the past, in 1975 Arcade Archive’s four or five pages a quarter were the best thing on offer.

It was here that I first discovered such glittering geniuses as Harrison Cady, and became convinced that a familiar name like HM Bateman might be worth a deeper examination.

This concern for the past of the medium was matched with a concern for its future that was best reflected in a feature known as Arcade Sideshow, which rounded out the CONTINUES ➤

Robert Crumb in 2011

“Arcade displayed nothing but the greatest respect for the medium it was working within.”

HM Bateman

INFINITY #1 • September 2012 • 26 of 77

ARCHIVE • ALAN MOORE ON ARCADE magazine.

Sideshow consisted of numerous half-page strips by new artists, or occasionally by an older hand who simply wanted to experiment with the interesting restrictions of the half-page format.

Aline Kominsky, Mark Beyer, Sally Cruikshank, Rory Hayes – I encountered them all for the first time in the sawdust and popcorn atmosphere of the Sideshow.

The title seemed especially adequate in light of the freakishness of some of the art-styles on display. It was my first exposure to the idea of primitivism in comic art, and after my initial conditioned repulsion had worn off – about three months – I found myself approaching the work of people like the late Rory Hayes with a real and almost inexplicable pleasure. This is the edge of the underground that most comic fans balk at. When confronted by the painful amateurishness of an Aline Kominsky, the mind conditioned to Neal Adams and Mike Golden will probably recoil in stark terror and vomit mauve bile. The root of the argument seems to be, ‘But she can’t draw.’ In terms of standard comic art, this is perfectly true. John Byrne can draw and Aline Kominsky can’t. What you have to realise however, is that the drawing ability of the artist is not what art is about. Not all the time. And I for one would love to see Aline Kominsky do an issue of the Fantastic Four.

CONTINUES ➤

A Fear of Froaks by Rory Hayes

“… The mind condiToned to Neal Adams and Mike Golden will probably recoil in stark terror and vomit mauve bile.”

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ARCHIVE • ALAN MOORE ON ARCADE LeX: Art Spiegelman’s ‘Real Dream’ strip was a recurring feature in Arcade

All of the above is an attempt to list just the continuing features of Arcade, and even so it is incomplete. I haven’t mentioned Art Spiegelman’s Real Dream spot, where readers were invited to send in dreams for Spiegelman to illustrate, or Yippie monument Paul Krassner’s exposé upon Timothy Leary and the grim facts behind the Lenny Bruce industry. This is largely because the most significant of Arcade’s contributions to the medium were one-off pieces rather than continuing features. However astonishing the material listed above might actually be it was really only the setting for the various pieces de resistance that Arcade was to present over its seven issue lifespan.

There were so many good pieces, even in such a drastically curtailed run, that I can only hope to list a few in passing before tackling a couple of personal favourites in depth. There was Jay Kinney’s wordless and ominous Midnight, executed entirely upon scaper-board; the late Willy Murphy’s excellent Arnold Peck adventures, Diane Noomin’s Sultana of schlock Didi Glitz in a series of vacuous vignettes, the stunning colour work adorning the back covers by Spiegelman, Moscoso, McMillan, Robert CONTINUES ➤

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ARCHIVE • ALAN MOORE ON ARCADE Williams, Kliban and others, and so on and so on in an endless shopping list of extraordinary talent gathered in one place at one time. Quite genuinely, this was the most perfectly conceived and executed comic publication since Harvey Kurtzman’s MAD, and there has been nothing like it since.

I think that without a doubt the three most consistent creators working at Arcade were the magazine’s editors; Bill Griffith and Art Spiegelman; and that cranky old misogynist Robert Crumb himself…

Art Spiegelman

In part two of this article next issue, Alan Moore takes an in-­‐depth, critical look at the Arcade work of Robert Crumb, Bill Griffith, and Art Spiegelman.

Bill Griffith

ENDS ∞

INFINITY #1 • September 2012 • 29 of 77

Capsule Reviews

GONE DIGITAL Bo>om of the Ninth Creator

Ryan Woodward

Publisher Spinire Studios

ALEC: The Years Have Pants Creator

Cleveland

Eddie Campbell

Creator

Publisher Top Shelf ProducGons

Harvey Pekar

Publisher Top Shelf ProducGons

Price

$3.99

Price

$9.99

Price

$9.99

Device

iPad

Device

iPad

Device

iPad

RaGng

★★★★★★★★★★

RaGng

★★★★★★★★★★

RaGng

★★★★★★★★★★

Briefly

An infuria)ng app. It combines some stunningly beau)ful artwork and anima)on with a distrac)ng and some)mes unresponsive user experience, including difficult-­‐to-­‐read le@ering… There’s a longer review needed here because this has a WOW factor in the way it integrates comics, audio, and anima)on… but it’s almost unreadable. Worth $3.99 though.

Briefly

Over 30 years of Campbell’s ‘Alec’ strips have been collected here in this massive tome, and there is new material too. At turns funny, erudite, poignant, violent, trivial – but always lifeaffirming. If you’re a Campbell fan you already have it. If not, what’s wrong with you? This is essential reading for anyone interested in the art form. It will change your view of what comics can be about.

Briefly

The late Harvey Pekar’s homage to the American splendour of his home. Beau)fully illustrated

by Joseph Remnant, Pekar gives us a history of the development of Cleveland before taking us through some deeply personal recollec)ons of his experiences in the city and introducing us to more of its characters. A harsher tone than Campbell, it none the less affects us with its honesty.

App Store Bo@om of the Ninth

Web page ALEC: The Years Have Pants

ENDS ∞

Web page Cleveland

INFINITY #1 • September 2012 • 30 of 77

Digital Comics Sample

KICKBACK DAVID LLOYD’S CRIME-NOIR GRAPHIC NOVEL Kickback is the first graphic novel written and illustrated by the critically-acclaimed artist of V for Vendetta, David Lloyd. It’s a slick, stylish, fast-paced thriller that explores themes of corruption, consciousness, society, and selfrespect against a big-city film-noir backdrop.

Joe Canelli is a corrupt cop in a tough city. Haunted by his dreams and confused by his past, when his partner is murdered and his colleagues betray him, how much can he take before he has to change direction?

This year Panel Nine released Kickback as a deluxe app for the iPad. The app presents the full 92-page graphic novel plus audio commentaries recorded by David Lloyd, an exclusive interview, and a host of unseen extras. Pages are shown in stunning high-quality digital format, with a specially-designed user interface that gives the reader smooth swiping from page to page, flawless pixel-persecond movement, and effortless transition to Panel Mode to view enlarged panels one by one in beautiful detail.

KICKBACK • DAVID LLOYD Panel Nine • iPad • $9.99 Persian Cat Press raGng ★★★★★★★★★★

Here INFINITY presents an exclusive sample of Kickback for your enjoyment.

PANEL MODE ENABLED. Double-­‐tap a panel on the comics pages following to view the strip panel-­‐by-­‐panel.

CONTINUES ➤

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“A brilliant crime-noir graphic novel.”

KICKBACK

A CRIME-NOIR THRILLER FROM THE CREATOR OF V FOR VENDETTA

DAVID LLOYD CONTENTS

• All 92 pages of the original graphic novel • Audio commentary by David Lloyd • Production sketches • Production notes • Kickback covers collection • An exclusive interview with David Lloyd, discussing the origins of Kickback, the comics industry, V for Vendetta, and much more

PRAISE FOR KICKBACK ON THE IPAD

‘Fantastic! Buy it!’ – David Hine ‘The app works beautifully and looks gorgeous. It would be a crime not to buy it!’ – Comic Heroes Available for iPad, $9.99. Tap this page to view the app in the App Store.

PANEL NINE

Interview

EDDIE CAMPBELL

DAPPER JOHN • EDDIE CAMPBELL

SPECIAL DAPPER JOHN INTERVIEW EXCERPT Before Alec there was Dapper John, and the Panel Nine iPad and iPhone apps pull together all the ‘Dapper John’ strips and combine them with new material by Eddie Campbell including an overview of the small press scene of the 80s and a photographic record of the rock ’n’ roll scene in Southend in the 70s. It’s an amazing package with the equivalent of over 150 printed pages.

Panel Nine • iPad / iPhone • $9.99 Persian Cat Press raGng ★★★★★★★★★★ Contains the Dapper John graphic novel plus addiGonal stories, an overview of the 80s small press scene by Campbell, rarely-­‐seen artwork and covers and a full-­‐ length interview.

Neil Gaiman commented: ‘I read and really loved Dapper John for the iPad’.

In the excerpt that follows, Eddie Campbell talks with Russell Willis about the context in which the original ‘Dapper John’ strips were created.

CONTINUES ➤

INFINITY #1 • September 2012 • 42 of 77

INTERVIEW • EDDIE CAMPBELL INTERVIEWER It’s 1978 and you’re working on In the Days of the Ace Rock ’n’ Roll Club… what was the situation like for a someone creating comics then?

EDDIE CAMPBELL I was working in an idiom that didn’t exist yet. I’d create a comic as a book, and when that was finished I’d think about what my next book would be about. Doing a comic, never mind a whole big self-contained one, where you didn’t go to a big company and draw one of their characters, was inconceivable. I didn’t think of the Ace Club as belonging to the underground tradition, if it can be called a tradition, either. In fact I sent photocopies to Kitchen Sink Press, and Dennis Kitchen rejected it outright. He thought it was very rough and amateurish. In fact, later on when he fell into the position of publishing From Hell, I still had a feeling he thought my work was crap. Much later when I was having drinks with him at conventions – which I miss now that I haven’t been travelling so much over the last three or four years – I said to him, “I still think you don’t like my work.”

He didn’t answer. We laughed. By then I’d done a couple of Spirit stories and other stuff for him.

“I WAS WORKING IN AN IDIOM THAT DIDN’T EXIST YET.”

I tried to sell one of the Ace Club stories to Knockabout when they were doing their underground comics here. They found it all a bit flat, so I chopped up xeroxes of one of the stories and tried to redo it as a a bouncy rock ’n’ roll thing in a Hunt Emerson style but they rejected that too. My god it was awful though. I tore it up.

INTERVIEWER You were compromising there?

EDDIE CAMPBELL I would have compromised if they’d let me, but compromise wasn’t getting me anywhere. I was in a situation where I was unable to sell anything to the fragmentary market that existed for self-made comics. There was nowhere else to go.

Seriously. Even Fantagraphics didn’t exist yet.

CONTINUES ➤

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INTERVIEW • EDDIE CAMPBELL Roughly at that point Paul Gravett serendipitously turned up with his Fast Fiction table. He’d seen one of my stories via the British Amateur Press Association, which was a big pompous name for a bunch of people exchanging their blatherings in the mail. The internet is the place for it nowadays.

INTERVIEWER What led you to the creation of the Ace Club stories?

EDDIE CAMPBELL Before I started The Ace Rock ’n’ Roll Club, I’d been reading the stories of Damon Runyon where every character had a nickname like Harry the Horse or Nathan Detroit or NicelyNicely Johnson, and the characters from one short story would turn up as background characters in another story or they might just be referenced, but they seemed to be used as though they were coordinates in a mappable environment. The entire opus of all his stories forms an environment, so to speak, where any of these characters might be encountered at any given moment, without a titular character to dominate the proceedings.

I’d been thinking about all of this as I was trying to invent some characters of my own. I’ve got this tiny little sketch of some of them, included here somewhere, and I was giving them names like Chortle and Castro Smythe and there was another one called Icarus Ibbotson. It occurred to me that there was no sound reason for any of these people to know each other, which is why I started looking at this rock ’n’ roll club situation. I thought, what if I infiltrated this situation and got to know people? – because it wasn’t something that I was inclined to do by nature and I wasn’t into rock ’n’ roll music in a big way. I’ve long been a collector of old jazz music. But there was something about the obsessions and definitions that they imposed upon themselves that ensured that this would be the very narrow and limited environment that I was seeking.

CONTINUES ➤

“I THOUGHT, WHAT IF I INFILTRATED THIS [ROCK ’N’ ROLL] SITUATION AND GOT TO KNOW PEOPLE? – BECAUSE IT WASN’T SOMETHING THAT I WAS INCLINED TO DO BY NATURE AND I WASN’T INTO ROCK ’N’ ROLL MUSIC IN A BIG WAY.”

INFINITY #1 • September 2012 • 44 of 77

INTERVIEW • EDDIE CAMPBELL

INTERVIEWER It sounds like you were engaging in a bit of literary participant observation.

ENLARGED DETAIL FROM THE COLOUR VERSION OF AWAYDAY DELINQUENT, 1979

EDDIE CAMPBELL Like going into deep caves to study bats or something. It was whilst creating these stories I discovered the idea of being autobiographical in comics. I’m not saying I invented the idea, but I stumbled across my own version. And as such, looking back at them now I was finding it a bit cringeworthy.

But in putting them together for this app I found myself rereading them. Sideways at first, because it’s difficult to look at one’s old work face to face. Around the fourth story, or chapter, I started laughing at it all.

CONTINUES ➤

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INTERVIEW • EDDIE CAMPBELL Where it was a bit twee and silly at the beginning, an element of bitter satire creeps in when sex raises its head. Jeezis! What was I thinking?

INTERVIEWER If you were a jazz fan, what possessed you to dress up in those clothes and join a group of teddy boys?

EDDIE CAMPBELL I was a lost person. The rock ’n’ roll thing was a subculture that attracted lost people and social misfits and sensitive people playing at being desperados, because the 70s was such a bland place.

Punk came along and was a nihilistic destructive ‘fuck you’ thing. Both the rock ’n’ roll scene and punk were a reaction to the mental blandness whose outward signs were taken to be flared trousers and fluffy hair. In such critical moments you tend to get two camps, one that sweeps the board clean and another that goes back to the beginning and attempts to perpetuate the first moment of inspiration. In jazz music in the late 1940s it was the moderns against the ‘mouldy figs’. Now it was Johnny Rotten proclaiming that “Elvis’ fat belly cast a shadow over rock ’n’ roll!”

“I WAS A LOST PERSON. THE ROCK ’N’ ROLL THING WAS A SUBCULTURE THAT ATTRACTED LOST PEOPLE AND SOCIAL MISFITS…”

INTERVIEWER Was the title In the Days of the Ace Rock ’n’ Roll Club meant to be ironic? It was in fact taking place in the present.

EDDIE CAMPBELL Yeah, these characters that I’m drawing would walk as though they were walking in their own myth. They were already mythologising their walk down the street before they’d come to the end of it. The title was a sarcastic way of saying that.

INTERVIEWER Not all of the stories seem to be based on your own experience. If Monkeys Learn to Fly… for example.

EDDIE CAMPBELL That was based on a girl I was going out with and the loony things she told me…

CONTINUES ➤

INFINITY #1 • September 2012 • 46 of 77

INTERVIEW • EDDIE CAMPBELL And I couldn’t make that stuff up because I’d be too embarrassed to make it up, but I was transcribing things that I was hearing and I thought, ‘this is stupid, it ought to be in a comic’. But because I was really constructing this as a big singular story, I put her story in there because in the next one she has to meet Dapper John because Dapper John is the real protagonist of the thing.

Alan [Moore] once told me and it’s in the interview in Disease of Language where he says that when he was creating John Constantine, ‘a working class wide-boy magician’ for Swamp Thing, he was partially thinking of Dapper John.

INTERVIEWER Dapper John is certainly a charismatic character. I think you mentioned somewhere that he is actually not a single character.

EDDIE CAMPBELL He is a composite. I was thinking in terms of characters, and using what I needed to make them work the way I thought fiction should work. There was a guy I was hanging around with at the time called John Martin. What have I called him?

Dapper John Marvin?

INTERVIEWER Yep. EDDIE CAMPBELL Because I was thinking of this guy, and this guy was so fussy over his clothes. I think he was only 19 but he was so fastidious about what he was wearing that he ought to be in a comic.

There was a one time I was with him and he was trying to buy a pair of black suede chukka boots (like he’s wearing on our cover) but it was no good if they had little metal eyelets on the lace holes. They had to be WITHOUT the eyelets. And he was getting irritable in the shop because the salesperson didn’t get it.

“BUT I DIDN’T PUT INDIVIDUALS INTO THE STORIES COMPLETE. I THOUGHT IF SOME OF THESE PEOPLE KNEW I WAS DRAWING PICTURES OF THEM THEY MIGHT BEAT ME UP.”

For the full interview, get the Dapper John graphic novel app.

Available for both iPad and iPhone.

But I didn’t put individuals into the stories complete. I thought if some of these people knew I was drawing pictures of them they might beat me up.

ENDS ∞

INFINITY #1 • September 2012 • 47 of 77

Art for Art’s Sake

WINSOR McCAY

Winsor McCay (1869–1934) was an American cartoonist and animator, best known for the comic strip Little Nemo (begun 1905) and the animated cartoon Gertie the Dinosaur (1914). A prolific artist, McCay’s pioneering early animated films far outshone the work of his contemporaries, and set a standard followed by Walt Disney and others in later decades. His comic strip work has influenced generations of artists, including creators such as Moebius, Maurice Sendak, Chris Ware, and Bill Watterson.

Presented here are details from public domain Little Nemo ‘Sunday’ strips published in 1906.

They are made available by the Digital Comic Museum. If you’d like to read these in full, head over to the Museum where you can download a wide variety of McCay strips along with lots of other superb material.

CONTINUES ➤

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ART FOR ART’S SAKE • WINSOR McCAY • 1906

CONTINUES ➤

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ART FOR ART’S SAKE • WINSOR McCAY • 1906

CONTINUES ➤

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ART FOR ART’S SAKE • WINSOR McCAY • 1906

CONTINUES ➤

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ART FOR ART’S SAKE • WINSOR McCAY • 1906

CONTINUES ➤

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ART FOR ART’S SAKE • WINSOR McCAY • 1906

ENDS ∞

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BUSINESS

ROB SALKOWITZ ON DIGITAL COMICS

Rob Salkowitz writes, speaks, and consults on the social implicaXons of digital media and the digital generaXon. Author of Young World Rising and GeneraFon Blend, Rob is Director of Strategy and Content for MediaPlant LLC in Sea]le and teaches at the University of Washington. The following is an excerpt from his fascinaXng and essenXal new book, Comic-­‐Con and the Business of Pop Culture, and looks at how the mainstream superhero comics publishers are dealing with the challenge of digital.

From Comic-­‐Con and the Business of Pop Culture by Rob Salkowitz, reprinted with permission. Copyright © McGraw-­‐Hill 2012 Pictures and quotes sourced and selected by INFINITY

DIGITAL DESTINY: ATOMS, BITS, & DOLLARS The breakout success of tablets in the wake of the iPad finally provided digital comics with their ideal platform— and comics provided tablets and color e-book readers with their ideal content. The tech-savvy hipsters who snapped up the first iPads were in the sweet spot to be the long-promised new comics audience (the Trickster crowd): trendy, geek-chic urbanites and well-educated CONTINUES ➤

INFINITY #1 • September 2012 • 54 of 77

BUSINESS • ROB SALKOWITZ ON DIGITAL COMICS consumers for the new generation of intellectually respectable graphic novels. Tablets also provide the technical platform to make true transmedia content, such as comics embedded in movies, e-books, and video games or comics with real-time or rich media components, a practical reality. ! In their first full year as mainstream consumer products (2010), tablets (both iPads and devices running Google’s Android operating system) sold 10.3 million units in the United States. The technology analysis firm Forrester forecast that by 2015, total tablet usage will top 82.1 million U.S. adults. Gartner Research estimates that tablets will be a $49 billion global business by 2015, with more than 294 million units sold worldwide. And those estimates came before Amazon shattered the $200 price barrier with the Kindle Fire tablet in 2011. With this kind of engine pulling comics and graphic novels into the consumer marketplace, digital comics have the potential to explode from a niche category with revenues of less than $10 million in 2010 to one of the main drivers of a burgeoning e-book business that is expected to generate more than $2.8 billion by 2015, according to Forrester. ! Industry executives understand the potential, but they are determined not to repeat the mistakes of earlier entrants into the commercial digital media arena, particularly those involving piracy. This is a hard problem to address because digital rights management (DRM) technologies are complex, costly, annoying to consumers, and easy to beat. At the end of the day, even with the world’s finest DRM for the online files, anyone with a camera or a scanner and access to a printed issue can upload a scan in a matter of minutes. Apple tried a rightsmanaged approach to selling music through the iTunes Store in the mid-2000s, using a protected file format that was playable only using its technology. The effort failed CONTINUES ➤

“The technology analysis firm Forrester forecast that by 2015, total tablet usage will top 82.1 million US adults.”

The Kindle Fire

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BUSINESS • ROB SALKOWITZ ON DIGITAL COMICS largely because the MP3 format was already widely established, and consumers—especially the Net Generation young people who are the pop culture target market—will always prefer an open system to a restrictive one, all other things being equal. ! In comics, though, few mainstream consumers had had much exposure to the open formats like CBR and CBZ (compressed JPEG containers) used by the illicit scanners and BitTorrent traders. Publishers and distributors figured that if they could establish a rights management regime as the default for digital comics when they first hit the market in earnest, they could marginalize the pirates and anchor their e-commerce strategy on a secure foundation. ! Several digital comic start-ups, including ComiXology, iVerse, and Graphicly, had already built platforms to sell comics from multiple publishers on mobile phones and browsers. They had solved the rights management issue by using secure files that ran only in their own application environments rather than “open” formats that could be shared and traded freely. While most publishers rolled out digital storefronts that licensed existing technology (principally ComiXology’s display engine), a few, notably Dark Horse, developed their own apps and formats as well. ! Most of these distribution schemes make comics available through the cloud, meaning that the files themselves reside primarily online rather than on the user’s own device. This gives readers access to their comics libraries across any device running the app without having to transfer or reacquire the files, and without the risks of a hard-drive crash or loss of the device. The apps used to read the files are free and are available for most systems and devices, so users don’t have to pick a winner in the Apple-Google-MicrosoftCONTINUES ➤

“While most publishers rolled out digital storefronts that licensed exisTng technology… a few, notably Dark Horse, developed their own apps and formats as well.”

The Dark Horse storefront on the iPad

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BUSINESS • ROB SALKOWITZ ON DIGITAL COMICS Amazon wars. That convenience, plus the social legitimacy of buying rather than stealing content, presumably helps justify the price and restrictive terms of use governing digital comics. ! Though most publishers have their own branded online portals and apps, the emergence of independent digital distributors brings order to the market by providing a few simple points of access where fans can build diverse libraries of digital comics without needing an app (and an account) from each publisher. Publishers can outsource some of the risk and responsibility of managing the content and technology to the distributors, while keeping control of the pricing and license terms.

The distributors also insulate publishers from direct competition with their brick-and-mortar retail channel and provide a dedicated, comics-friendly front end to vast app stores where it might be hard to find and differentiate comics from a sea of other options. ! Problem solved? Not quite. While the distributors’ proprietary file formats and cloud-based strategies assuage the publishers’ concerns about content security, they create some new problems that are likely to haunt the industry in the future. ! The lack of a cross-industry standard file format means that if you buy a digital comic through one distributor’s platform, you can read it only using a compatible application. You can’t open it in a “generic” reader, and you can’t transfer or consolidate titles that you bought from multiple sources into one library. There’s no inherent reason why people can’t use multiple applications to read different titles, but mainstream comics fans are an orderly and habit-driven lot. Once fans begin building a collection on a single platform, they are likely to stick with it to keep everything organized, accessible, and convenient. Every subsequent purchase CONTINUES ➤

“Publishers can outsource some of the risk and responsibility of managing the content and technology to the distributors…”

INFINITY #1 • September 2012 • 57 of 77

BUSINESS • ROB SALKOWITZ ON DIGITAL COMICS will lock them in further and reduce the incentive to buy through other, incompatible apps. ! The uncertainties of the cloud model also feed into the cycle. Consider this: if Apple went out of business tomorrow, all the people who bought music from the Apple store would still be able to play their MP3s from their hard drives. If Marvel stopped publishing tomorrow, Joe Quesada would not sneak into your basement and remove all the old issues of X-Men from your collection. But what happens to proprietary, cloudhosted content if the service provider vanishes into the mist? What if you try to access a digital comic that you purchased, and the platform that hosts and enables you to read that particular type of file is no longer in business? This element of uncertainty means that small shifts in momentum could easily trigger a mass flight to the safer harbors of the market leader, accelerating trends toward consolidation. ! Once one provider shows signs of achieving critical mass, market momentum will take care of the rest: publishers will disdain less popular channels and formats and will work with the leader; new fans will go where the best and most content can be found. Competitors will wither on the vine, leaving the leader with the lion’s share of the market. ! This set of user behaviors and dynamics, arising from the peculiarities of the superhero-driven comics market and its hard-core collector audience, favors the emergence of a single digital comics clearinghouse rather than a diversity of distributors, all offering differently formatted, mutually incompatible versions of the same comics at the same price. ! If that happens, publishers will find themselves dealing with a monopoly digital distributor, just as they are currently dealing with a monopoly print distributor.

CONTINUES ➤

“But what happens to proprietary, cloud-­‐hosted content if the service provider vanishes into the mist?”

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BUSINESS • ROB SALKOWITZ ON DIGITAL COMICS The only way to break the emerging monopoly without drowning the market in a flood of standalone, proprietary technologies is to open up the protected file formats, allowing people to move and organize their digital collections between applications and providers. But that would strip away the technical protections that prevent wholesale copying, sharing, and redistribution of the digital comics. ! Given the choice between monopoly and piracy, it seems pretty clear which the industry will prefer to tolerate. ! These conditions set the stage for a winner-take-all battle to become the preeminent digital comics distributor, and as 2011 dawned, the race was on. The three leading contenders, ComiXology, iVerse, and Graphicly, all angled for advantage, with each company pursuing different strategies to create critical mass around its platform. ! Graphicly, a feisty and well-funded start-up that was cofounded by tech entrepreneur Micah Baldwin, is especially aggressive in embracing social media and looking past the dysfunctional direct market to a new model for getting graphic literature out to that giant potential audience glimpsed at the Trickster party. In April 2012, Graphicly closed its Android and iOS marketplaces and announced a new focus on facilitating distribution of graphic-heavy ebooks, such as cookbooks and textbooks, as well as comics, across multiple platforms. ! iVerse, which announced a $4 million infusion of capital from private equity in November 2011, is also banking on an enhanced content strategy with its Digital Comics Reader in addition to its Comics+ application. It is partnering with Diamond, the print distributor, on a new digital service, and it is trying to broaden the market to CONTINUES ➤

“Given the choice between monopoly and piracy, it seems preZy clear which the industry will prefer to tolerate.”

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BUSINESS • ROB SALKOWITZ ON DIGITAL COMICS kids, video-game fans, and those outside the superhero crowd. In February 2012, CEO Michael Murphey announced an ambitious system, offering a new way for brick-and-mortar comics shops to participate in digital revenues through their Diamond accounts, claiming lower costs and less competitive risk than other affiliate programs. iVerse has also presented an offline alternative to the proprietary/cloud-based file model, although the program’s details and its potential for widespread industry adoption remain unclear. ! Then there’s ComiXology, which began 2011 in a great position to claim the leader’s mantle and ended the year as the prohibitive favorite to lock things up: quite a journey for a company that is still barely out of the startup phase. ComiXology began in 2006 as a project of David Steinberger, a business student at NYU, and partners John Roberts and Peter Jaffe, to create an online community to help comics fans identify and rate upcoming titles from the direct market Previews catalog. After the team won a business plan competition in 2007 and got some seed money, ComiXology added tools for fans to preorder comics that they wanted from local retailers, a set of store and inventory-management tools for comics stores, and finally a comics reader app to enable users to read comics on their mobile devices and the web. ! ComiXology’s special sauce for the reader application is a patent-pending technology called Guided View, a concise and intuitive way to represent the multipanel comic book page as a sequence of frames on a mobile device while maintaining the integrity of the design composition and the experience of reading a printed comic book. Steinberger, a trained opera singer, was reportedly inspired by the musical principles of harmony and dynamics when designing an application for making comic pages “sing” within the confines of a digital CONTINUES ➤

“ComiXology, which began 2011 in a great posiTon to claim the leader’s mantle and ended the year as the prohibiTve favorite to lock things up…”

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BUSINESS • ROB SALKOWITZ ON DIGITAL COMICS display. ComiXology was also among the first to integrate Apple’s in-app content purchasing technology, making it possible to order and purchase comics directly from the application with one touch. ! In contrast to Graphicly, iVerse, and some of the others, ComiXology does not seem terribly interested in delivering comics through social channels or in building in a lot of extra features to augment the art and story.

Steinberger espouses a belief in the integrity of the comic book format as its own medium, and the company has gone out of its way to recruit rather than antagonize the direct market with an early and widely adopted affiliate program. ! ComiXology recognized that in the short term, its most important customers were not the end users and not the creators, but rather the publishers, who were in need of a trusted partner. Steinberger and his team worked behind the scenes to get their technology adopted as the “white label” engine powering the largest publishers’ branded applications, while also increasing the visibility of their own Comics by ComiXology app on readers’ devices. They lined up an impressive array of content providers, including almost all of the top names in the industry, and while most publishers hedged their bets by dealing with multiple distributors, ComiXology won exclusive rights to distribute DC Comics on Apple’s iOS devices. That turned out to be a very big deal. ! When DC relaunched its comics line in September 2011, the market response was tremendous. All 52 first issues sold out, driving comics sales to heights not seen in nearly a decade while revving the digital engine to levels that surprised even seasoned industry observers. If you wanted to buy copies of Batman, Superman, Justice League, and the others to read on your iPad or iPhone, you could use DC’s own application, you could go to your comics CONTINUES ➤

“If you wanted to buy copies of Batman, Superman, JusGce League, and the others to read on your iPad or iPhone… in all cases they were coming via ComiXology.”

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BUSINESS • ROB SALKOWITZ ON DIGITAL COMICS store’s “digital storefront” (if it had one), or you could get them through your ComiXology-branded app, but in all cases they were coming via ComiXology technology and were not available to users of other systems. ! ComiXology’s DC exclusive helped make it the top downloaded iOS and Android app throughout the fall of 2011, unseating even the mighty Angry Birds on Wednesdays, the day the new comics were released to the market. In November 2011, the company announced its biggest and potentially most important deal yet: featured presence on Amazon’s Kindle Fire tablet to buy comics through the Amazon store and view them on the ComiXology app. This has boxed in the other digital comics players, forcing them to adopt strategies that sell around the DC exclusive and focus on other aspects of the audience. Both Graphicly and iVerse have courted independent creators, small presses, and self-published authors more assiduously than ComiXology and offer greater social media integration, in an apparent attempt to fuse the economics of paid digital downloads with the vitality and diversity of webcomics. Both appear to be betting on technological enhancements to comics, from hyperlinked exclusives to rich content (video, animation, and games), based on the trajectory of their development and acquisitions. iVerse brings Diamond’s power to the table (albeit nearly a year after the digital market began taking shape in earnest). ! As long-term strategies, these plans might work.

Certainly the investors who wrote those companies ninefigure checks think so. But in the superhero world that defines the traditional comics market mainstream, ComiXology, harnessed to the DC juggernaut and glowing white hot from the Kindle Fire, is running away from the field. In March 2012, ComiXology announced that customers had downloaded more than 50 million CONTINUES ➤

“iVerse brings Diamond’s power to the table (albeit nearly a year aGer the digital market began taking shape in earnest).”

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BUSINESS • ROB SALKOWITZ ON DIGITAL COMICS titles since the company started doing business, with 5 million of those downloads coming in December 2011 alone (compared to 6.4 million print comics and graphic novels sold through the direct market in the same period). Those are staggering numbers and represent a growth curve undreamed of by the most optimistic industry observers. Though industrywide figures are difficult to ascertain for comparison, anecdotal evidence suggests that ComiXology is outselling its competitors tenfold or more. ! If this trend continues, the digital distribution wars will be over before most consumers realize that they had a choice. But we are still in the early days. There are plenty of companies in the media-publishing-technologydistribution space with enough cash to buy and sell the entire digital comics market many times over anytime they choose. If an Amazon, Apple, or Netflix wanted to get directly into the digital comics business, it could make a strategic acquisition (potentially changing the terms of service in unexpected ways) or set itself up as a morethan-credible competitor overnight. If an Adobe or a Microsoft came forward with a secure standard file format or DRM scheme for digital comics that was not tethered to a distributor or an application, its entry into the market would change the game instantly—and make a lot of early adopters of proprietary platforms look like suckers. ! Even if one player establishes an insurmountable lead in the digital distribution market, size and scale do not offer protection from user dissatisfaction in today’s social media marketplace. As Facebook and Netflix discovered, the more people rely on a service, the harder it is to change the privacy or pricing policy, or even tweak the user interface, without incurring some backlash. If enough users get fed up with a digital comics provider, they can tarnish the distributor’s reputation in the tightCONTINUES ➤

“If an Amazon, Apple, or Neglix wanted to get directly into the digital comics business, it could make a strategic acquisiTon… or set itself up as a more-­‐than-­‐credible compeTtor overnight.”

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BUSINESS • ROB SALKOWITZ ON DIGITAL COMICS knit fan community, potentially even casting a shadow over the distributor’s future business prospects. That could trigger a stampede of users who are desperate to “back up” their purchases from illicit sources so that they don’t lose their investment in cloud-hosted content, tearing the scab off the whole piracy issue once again. ! There’s also another irksome issue for detail-minded comics collectors: when digital content is hosted in the cloud, it can be updated, corrected, redacted, or withdrawn from circulation at the source without the buyer’s consent or control. A comic that you thought you bought may no longer be available to you, or may have been altered by the publisher after you purchased it. In a hobby in which misprints, early shipments, and controversy become overnight collectors’ items, this “feature” of remotely managed digital comics not only smacks of paternalism, but also seems like a step backward from the certainties of print. ! The point here is not to dwell on every far-fetched negative possibility, but it’s worth keeping in mind that the cloud-based model comes with troublesome issues that haven’t been fully worked out anywhere in the IT industry or the content business, as much as some parties would like to present the system as a fait accompli.

Publishers and distributors may have collectively decided that deploying rights-managed, cloud-hosted media is better than giving consumers unfettered access to the data, but consumers may not be convinced. If something happens to break the customers’ trust, comics’ digital destiny could end up in the ditch. ! The biggest uncertainty around all media distributed online, not just comics, is whether the problematic digital channel increases the total market or cannibalizes sales from more reliable traditional retail outlets. Are the folks who are paying for downloaded content (or stealing it, for CONTINUES ➤

“… It’s worth keeping in mind that the cloud-­‐ based model comes with troublesome issues that haven’t been fully worked out anywhere in the IT industry or the content business…”

INFINITY #1 • September 2012 • 64 of 77

BUSINESS • ROB SALKOWITZ ON DIGITAL COMICS that matter) just old fans looking for their favorites in a new format, or is there a whole new market of digitalonly customers waiting to be tapped? Is the current estimate of 300,000 regular comic book readers a floor or a ceiling? Can comics (or any niche content segment) grow their market just by providing more and bigger doorways to the same giant funhouse? ! A lot of the conflicts between the direct market and the publishers concerning digital comics are predicated on the assumption that when it comes to the superherofantasy-horror comics mainstream, it’s a zero-sum game, that every dollar spent on downloads comes out of the hide of the retailers. ComiXology’s David Steinberger does not share this view, and has stated publicly that he believes that the direct market audience wants the brickand-mortar retail experience, whereas digital-only customers represent a blue-sky opportunity to bring in entirely new readers. Retailers usually respond, “Yeah, that’s what you would say!” ! For years, the vocal opposition of direct market retailers has won that argument and “wagged the dog” in terms of creating artificial roadblocks (delayed availability, higher prices for digital copies) in the publishers’ digital marketing plans. Only a company like Archie Comics, which still distributes primarily to newsstands rather than through comic book stores, has had the freedom to pursue its own digital strategy early on (which it did, rather successfully, when it recognized that its younger audience was composed primarily of Net Generation digital natives). ! Because of this touchy political situation, the publishers cannot appear to be making too strong a push to appeal to customers directly, as that would put them in competition with their own retailers. They can’t adopt more flexible pricing models or marketing CONTINUES ➤

“For years, the vocal opposiTon of direct market retailers has won that argument and ‘wagged the dog’ in terms of creaTng arTficial roadblocks (delayed availability, higher prices for digital copies) in the publishers’ digital markeTng plans.”

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BUSINESS • ROB SALKOWITZ ON DIGITAL COMICS strategies that bring more customers into the digital channel if doing so is perceived as threatening the lifeblood sales of printed products. ! But competition may be forcing the issue. As of 2012, same day as print digital (simultaneous with print) release is standard in the industry. Some publishers are doing low-cost “digital-first” releases for titles that might not have enough viability in the direct market. All the online distributors and the publishers who sell direct to consumers offer digital backstock titles at significant discounts, sometimes as low as 99 cents or even free.

Marvel is doing discounted pricing for complete story arcs; Archie is first to market with a monthly subscription model through the iVerse service; various publishers are starting to discount digital graphic novels on Amazon. ! Will this kill the direct market? It is still early, but sales data from the triumphant fall of 2011, following DC’s successful New 52 relaunch, showed that the market had in fact expanded in all dimensions. Digital was bringing in new readers, while the shops held their own and even made some headway with lapsed readers and traditional customers. Justice League #1, for example, sold more than 500,000 copies (with digital running at about 10 percent of that)—stunning numbers in the context of recent comics sales. Print sales soon entered their usual cycle of decline, but they are declining more slowly and from significantly higher levels than was the case as recently as the summer of 2011. Meanwhile, the digital channel continues to expand. Fifty million is a mighty big number for such early days of the market, and the math gets better as tablets and e-book readers continue to increase in features and popularity while falling in price. ! If that trend can be sustained, the future of the “mainstream” industry looks brighter than it has in decades, despite the inherent fragility of a business model CONTINUES ➤

“CompeTTon may be forcing the issue. As of 2012, same day as print digital (simultaneous with print) release is standard in the industry.”

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BUSINESS • ROB SALKOWITZ ON DIGITAL COMICS that depends on the continued health and growth of a single distributor. The clannish, dysfunctional comics industry could end up lighting the way forward in digital distribution for other content-driven businesses, succeeding where much higher-stakes media like music and video have failed. By backing into the future, the big publishers may have stumbled onto a payday—at least for the time being. ! There’s something else to consider: all of these concerns about monopoly, rights management, and zerosum games matter only when you are talking about the mainstream comics business, with its ties to the larger world of licensing, entertainment, and transmedia.

Superman, Spider-Man, Walking Dead, and Wolverine are brands as much as they are story sources, even though they are based fundamentally in the comics medium. If they are to continue as revenue-generating comics properties, they need distribution capabilities and revenue models that are scaled to a mass market. They need a digital channel that at least resembles the current print channel, with all of its built-in complexities and protections. !

But what if the future of pop culture looks more like the world of webcomics and indie publishers than like the world of superheroes? In this scenario, technology providers don’t need to be concerned about lock-in, standardization, and rights management, and don’t need to tiptoe around the delicate sensitivities of retailers. The artificial constraints on pricing and availability of digital content do not apply. There is room for greater innovation and less mediation between the content creators and the audience. As with webcomics, anyone can play, and good ideas will find their way to the market; as with the burgeoning world of direct-to-web videos, do-it-yourself projects from talented creators can end up influencing and CONTINUES ➤

“But what if the future of pop culture looks more like the world of webcomics and indie publishers than like the world of superheroes?”

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BUSINESS • ROB SALKOWITZ ON DIGITAL COMICS outperforming big-budget, A-list blockbusters. ! This is the model that’s taking hold in the graphic novel space, where a diverse group of developers is working with publishers and creators to create custom apps to enhance the content of graphic e-books. The graphic novel and indie market has never been dominated by collectors and obsessive completists, so there is no compelling need for ordinary readers to “standardize” on one application for reading graphic novels. Amazon offers its own graphic novel reader application for the Kindle Fire, but consumers have many alternatives to choose from. ! One example is the digital edition of Eric Shanower’s epic Trojan War–themed graphic novel Age of Bronze, released in monthly segments starting in October 2011.

The custom app uses the “Seen” engine, created by publisher Throwaway Horse LLC (which also published illustrated annotated versions of Ulysses and The Waste Land in digital format), to offer a page-by-page interactive reader’s guide, plus additional content such as character profiles, maps, and a built-in discussion board where users can interact with the creators and one another. The annotated twenty-fifth-anniversary edition of Art Spiegelman’s Maus, called MetaMaus, offers the same kind of rich bonus features and integration, albeit in the slightly antiquated format of a DVD that comes with the physical book. Many other media enhancements, from semianimated motion comics to full immersive, interactive experiences, are certain to appear soon, taking advantage of the converged platform of the tablet. ! In contrast to the walled gardens of the big publishers—constrained by costs, scale, and legacy business concerns—this grand bazaar of grassroots, entrepreneurial innovation from independent developers and creators has more pricing flexibility as well as a CONTINUES ➤

“The graphic novel and indie market has never been dominated by collectors and obsessive compleTsts…”

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BUSINESS • ROB SALKOWITZ ON DIGITAL COMICS greater latitude to innovate. In a consolidated market with a single supplier, it may be possible to sustain artificially high prices and margins, but not in a situation in which many small app developers and distributors are competing for share. In an interview with Publishers Weekly, Robert Berry, cofounder of Throwaway Horse, explained, “People are used to getting more from digital content for less. We don’t want to undervalue Eric [Shanower]’s work, but 99 cents seems to make new audiences try new material. We want new readers to see his work and that means keeping it at an affordable price.” ! Pricing flexibility is a competitive requirement, especially as distributors make better content formatting and marketing tools available to self-publishers. Over the 2011 holiday season, four of Amazon’s top 10 digital graphic novel bestsellers, including the number one title, How to Be a Super-Villain (a Children’s Colorful and Fun Picture Book and Entertaining Bedtime Story) by 14-year-old Rachel Yu, were self-published. These do-it-yourself offerings outsold Superman, Batman, Watchmen, and titles by some of the top professional talent in the comics industry. In this upside-down model of the industry, distributors replace publishers in the value chain; big brands and popular characters lose their pricing power in an environment where anyone can come to market at a low price point and win customers on an equal basis. If that’s the future of digital comics, then everybody in the business needs to rethink their assumptions. ! The big publishers appear to have put aside their reluctance to issue digital comics in the 2010s, but they still need to build fences and charge tolls to maintain the value of their IP assets. Two decades’ experience has shown us that the Internet is where fences go to die, and where money comes through the tip jar, not the tollbooth.

CONTINUES ➤

“Two decades’ experience has shown us that the Internet is where fences go to die, and where money comes through the Tp jar, not the tollbooth…”

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BUSINESS • ROB SALKOWITZ ON DIGITAL COMICS If the online world continues to collapse barriers to entry and empower creativity from the bottom up, the big publishers’ efforts to safeguard their content through sophisticated app-based distribution schemes will amount to little more than very expensive sand castles in the face of a rising tide. At best, a successful paid digital strategy will protect the core business but inhibit future creativity at the margins. At worst, publishers may alienate a generation of potential new readers, rendering any gains with the aging mainstream market short lived. ! Comics indeed have a digital destiny, one that represents a break from the old habits and mores of the print era. But whether that destiny leads toward a cloudy future of consolidation, centralized content management, and monopoly or toward grassroots innovation, experimentation, and spontaneity is the biggest uncertainty facing comics (and all content, media, and publishing) as we head deeper into the second decade of the century. ∞ For more insights into the world of digital comics and ‘geek culture’, buy a copy of the whole book – it’s a superb read that is a must-­‐have for business people and comics fans alike.

“Whether that desTny leads toward a cloudy future of consolidaTon, centralized content management, and monopoly or toward grassroots innovaTon, experimentaTon, and spontaneity is the biggest uncertainty facing comics.”

Are Digital Comics Expanding the Market? is a report on the San Diego Comic-­‐Con panel Rob Salkowitz moderated with David Steinberger and John Roberts of Comixology, Mike Richardson of Dark Horse, and Ted Adams of IDW. Visit his website and have a read.

Praise for Comic-­‐Con and the Business of Pop Culture: “If you care at all about comics, this is an essenSal read (and if you don’t, Salkowitz just might win you over). But it’s also grab-­‐worthy for anyone interested in the fascinaSng, conflicted, unfolding future of digital publishing and transmedia entertainment.”

– Booklist (starred review), June 1 2012 ENDS ∞

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Events

GET OUT! COMICS & DIGITAL II 2012

ALTERNATIVE PRESS EXPO 2012

THOUGHT BUBBLE 2012

Where?

New York, USA

Where?

San Francisco, USA

Where?

Leeds, UK

When?

October 10th 2012

When?

13–14 October 2012

When?

17–18 November 2012

Price?

$99-­‐$199

Price?

TBD

Price?

£12 per day / £20 weekend

URL?

www.icv2.com

URL?

www.comic-­‐con.org/ape

URL?

www.thoughtbubblefesGval.com

Type?

Industry conference

Type?

AlternaGve comics

Type?

AlternaGve and mainstream

Briefly

As digital comics boom, ICv2 holds its second conference on digital at the same time as New York Comic-­‐Con.

Briefly

Coming off its best year ever in 2011 (with over 5,500 aJendees), APE showcases publishers and arGsts from all over the country with a giant exhibit hall featuring the very best in comic art. Signed on as guests are Sergio Aragonès, Eric Drooker, Gilbert, Jaime, and Mario Hernandez (celebraGng 30 years of Love & Rockets), Ben Katchor, and Jim Woodring.

Briefly

Thought Bubble is the UK’s biggest, friendliest comic art fesGval! Featuring workshops, compeGGons, screenings, signings, panels, book launches, and much more.

The fesGval runs from 11–18 November with the comic convenGon at the weekend.

Speakers include Michael Murphey of iVerse, David Steinberger of Comixology, Dan Buckley from Marvel, Dave Gibbons from Madefire, and Mark Waid from Thrillbent.

ENDS ∞

Special guests include Kate Beaton, Alison Bechdel, Skottie Young, and Mark Waid.

INFINITY #1 • September 2012 • 71 of 77

LETTERS Le]ers are edited for length, clarity, and interest. Comments within /( )/ are by Russell Willis Send your le]ers to Russell at contact@ienglish.com Patrick Davidson • Costa Rica I’m glad I downloaded INFINITY. It contained a ton of great interviews, images, and information. As an independent illustrator/ animator myself, I try to envision where the digital age is going to take one of my favourite art forms. Talking to creators will give the clearest vision of this future, and this is where INFINITY really excelled. " I also appreciated the simplicity, design, and responsiveness of the app – it made for an enjoyable reading experience. /(Thanks – we’re intent on making the user experience as delightful as possible. Glad you like it! – RW)/ Rob Salkowitz • New York, USA As someone observing the rise of digital comics as both a business analyst and a fan, I was very excited to hear about the launch of INFINITY. The first issue brought the spirit of classic fanzines right up to the minute, combining knowledgable commentary with a great iPad experience. I especially enjoyed the feature on Eddie Campbell’s Dapper John. Eddie is one of

my favourites and it’s great to see his early work presented in a new format. Congratulations on a successful launch. I look forward to great things in the future for INFINITY! /(Thanks Rob, that’s greatly appreciated. Rob, as I’m sure many reading know, is the author of ComicCon: The Business of Pop Culture and an astute observer on the development of the comics market in general and digital comics in particular. – RW)/ Dean Simons • Barnet, UK The preview issue of the new iteration of INFINITY was an interesting beast. Rough around the edges, but at its core is something which is gravely needed in an increasingly interesting time in the world of digital, and I agree with your tastes in having stuff curated and ‘provided in elegant batches’. " I don’t 100% agree, though, with the reluctance toward superhero comics that was expressed in the previous incarnation of INFINITY. /(And this incarnation! – RW)/ It’s hard not to appreciate superheroes as a vehicle for the wider recognition of comics on screen. /(My point is that we don’t want comics recognised CONTINUES ➤

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LETTERS through superheroes, that’s the problem. – RW)/ That said, the comics that have always tended to stick in my head are often the non-superhero indie variety. /(Then this is the place to be! – RW)/ " I feel that the interviews need to be edited for length or written in a prose style that keeps the reader engaged. The PJ Holden article was interesting but after about six pages I started drifting off. /(Well, in that case I have some Comics Journal interviews you should take a look at… but I’m surprised that you found it interesting and sleepinducing at the same time… for me, and the other commentators I’ve heard from, PJ’s insights into his experience and his take on the development of digital comics was fascinating. I’m a fan of this interview format, so we’ll be seeing lots more like it. – RW)/ " As you noted in your Last Word column, digital is a very general term and I feel the magazine shouldn’t neglect the web comics scene. There are some splendid creators producing stuff on the internet and it would be a shame to not showcase such talent. /(We’ll definitely be expanding our coverage of web comics in future issues. – RW)/ Another area to pay attention to is the marrying of physical comics with digital – Marvel’s experimentation with augmented reality tech is a promising innovation. /(I think it’s a fad… it’ll have a summer and be gone once the novelty wears off. The payoff isn’t worth the investment in effort over the long term. – RW)/ Michael Nimmo • Surrey, UK After reading the excellent preview issue of INFINITY I found myself counting the days until the next issue – this is always a good sign! Sites like Comic Book Resources, Bleeding Cool, and Newsarama are all good where they are, but INFINITY seems like it will connect with a different audience. These are the people who want to read about comics, who want to read the thoughts of the creators,

artists, and publishers. People like industry legend David Lloyd! " Comics fans are a passionate bunch and I have found myself brought into that passion. I have met no end of interesting people and made some good friends. What I have seen from the team behind INFINITY is that same passion, that same drive that has led to the digital comics we are seeing on our phones, tablets, and computers today – and it’s infectious. /(Michael is the man behind the 3 Million Years website about digital comics. Go take a look! – RW)/ Dave Hornsby • London, UK Thanks for taking the time and trouble to launch INFINITY – like you, I too believe there’s a place for a magazine like this.

Personally, I’m looking for something to help guide me through the increasingly complex maze of material out there… As I get older, I find I’ve got less and less time to relax and enjoy a good comic – strange, isn’t it? When we were young we thought everything would be so much better/easier when we were ‘grown up’ – how little we knew… " I sort of dropped out of the mainstream comics market for a while and despite trying to get back into it, I feel like I’m in a different universe now – or multiverse, or whatever – and too much has changed for me to feel at home now. All my old favourites have gone or changed beyond recognition – Spider-Man’s a little black kid, the Hulk is red (or blue), there are multiple versions of everything and everybody and I just don’t know who I should care about any more… " I remember when I first started collecting comics, back in the 70s, Marvel used to print a little checklist at the back of every comic so you could keep track of what was out that month. It used to have about 25 comics on it CONTINUES ➤

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LETTERS and I used to cycle around the neighbourhood trying to check everything off. DC published about the same number of comics but I wasn’t really into them at the time, but even so, about 50 comics a month and that was it! There weren’t really any other publishers so it was easy to stay on top of everything. /(Yes, it’s bewildering these days… I started reading digital versions of these comics a while back and tried quite hard to understand and keep up with the modern continuity, but at the end of the day most of these comics aren’t worth it, and to be honest, why are adults reading Spider-Man anyway? It shouldn’t be aimed at me or you, but aimed at kids and teenagers. The vast majority of superhero comics should serve as a gateway drug for kids until we get them to mainline some Campbell, Bechdel, Spiegelman, or Ware – RW)/ " Nowadays I get the Previews catalogue and it’s like a bloody telephone directory each month. I don’t have the time to even look through it but there’s got to be more than a thousand comics published EVERY MONTH – how can anyone keep on top of that? There are now about a dozen different Spider-Man comics and God knows how many X-Men all taking place in different timelines, parallel universes etc., and I’m beyond caring. " So nowadays I tend to shy away from the mainstream and stick to graphic novels or short-run series for my fix and find that smaller publishers and creators that hark back to a simpler past get most of my attention and cash. A recent issue of The Goon (one of my alltime favourite comics) parodies the whole state of the current industry almost too well to be funny… " Anyway, enough ranting about the past.

I’m hoping that INFINITY can help guide me to a better future by highlighting the projects that I should know about and saving me from death by infinite universes. /(Your wish is my

command. Our checklists and reviews will kick in from next issue! – RW)/ " Sincere good wishes for the project and I’m eagerly awaiting the next issue.

Brad Brooks • Sussex, UK When I were just a lad, I started getting into comics. Back then, it was pretty easy to do – comics were everywhere. And my local newsagent had a veritable smorgasbord of the things. Comics for boys, comics for girls, funny comics, adventure comics, and these strange smaller format comics from America, with their glossy covers and stories about strongmen with silly costumes who went around hitting each other. I devoured them all (even comics for girls – I wasn’t proud, and Misty was bloody good). /(We covered it in issue #4 of INFINITY in 1984! – RW)/ " Then, at about the age of 13 or so, I discovered fandom. That was eye-opening to say the least. There were other people like me who were obsessed with drawings in boxes all put together to tell stories. True, their obsession seemed to be slightly different from mine, in that they were mostly obsessed with the US variety of drawings in boxes, but they were still kindred spirits. My obsession was a little more freeform than theirs, and I wasn’t as keen on the superhero genre as they were, but we bumped along for a bit very nicely thank you. " When I hit 16 in 1983, I’d been attending comic marts and buying comics fanzines as well as my normal fix of assorted UK and US comics for a good while. It was at one of these aforementioned comic marts when I happened across two things that changed my worldview in terms of what comics were, and what they could be. The first was a copy of RAW bought from one of the dealers, and the second was a thin, xeroxed pamphlet that I CONTINUES ➤

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LETTERS picked up somewhere on the day (could have been from the Fast Fiction table or from a guy at the entrance, I can’t recall). The pamphlet was called INFINITY, and while it had a couple of pieces in it from people I recognised from the pages of other fanzines, what really hit me was the attitude it exuded.

Here was a fanzine for fans of COMICS, not superheroes. It was like a bolt from the blue. " The great thing was that it got better and better as it went on. From interviews with the likes of David Lloyd and Posy Simmonds (Posy? In a fanzine? YES!!!) to articles on Eisner, drugs in comics, comics and communication, and Arcade (the last by Alan Moore no less), INFINITY is up there in my ‘three favourite magazines ever ’ list (the other two are The Comics Journal and Les Cahiers de la Bande Dessinée), and I devoured each issue as it came out. I also bored a lot of my comics friends about just how good it was, and how they should buy it, but most of them just ignored me and turned back to the latest issue of The Phenomenal PunchyMan or whatever. " And then it disappeared. I was pretty heartbroken, but time heals and I guess that, while I hadn’t ever forgotten INFINITY, the blow was softened by re-reading the old issues, and new issues of The Comics Journal, 9e Art, Comic Art, and other magazines that have come along since that shared something of INFINITY’s mindset. " Since INFINITY’s demise in the 80s, a lot of things have changed within the world of comics. Indeed, more than ever it is a world of comics, with the output of other countries (not just the US) more available to anyone with access to the internet than could have been imagined when I was 16. And the internet itself has opened new and exciting vistas for comics. The new digital paradigm

is an exciting one, and one that also calls into question our very definition of what comics are. It’s also a fast-moving scene, and one that could do with a guide in order to point us in the right direction for finding the good stuff. " So we come full circle. INFINITY is back, and with a new focus on this wild frontier of digital comics. I cannot tell you just how pleased I am to see Russell revive the old girl for a new age, and I’m looking forward to reading each new issue as it comes out, and seeing it challenge a new generation of comics fans to not accept the status quo, but to instead see the real potential of the comics art form as it moves to yet another medium – the screen. /(Wow, Brad, thanks for that. I don’t know what to say… I hope we can make this new version as memorable as the last one. It will take a few issues to fully find our feet but with everyone’s support (and contributions) we’ll get there. By the way, the guy at the door could easily have been me. I used to run around the mart harassing everyone I could see into buying a copy! – RW)/ Adrian Roberts • West Midlands, UK I’ve just finished reading the Preview issue of your fantastic magazine and I must say I’m blown away! I didn’t realise until I found an ad for the app on Google that I was searching for just this kind of thing, a digital comics magazine on the iPad presented in a fluid and easy to use form. I loved the interviews, and the reviews of different comic apps were the highlights for me! Can’t wait for the first issue proper! /(A happy note to end the first Ad Infinitum in 28 years… Please keep these letters coming. Your comments on the issue in general or opinions on issues raised here or about comics in general are all very, very welcome! – Russell Willis) ENDS ∞

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Opinion

THE LAST WORD… GOOD COVER STORIES Covers affect the way we deal with our experience of content and our sense of what we are reading and what we have read.

They affect how we categorise and remember that content in our brains. In the analogue world we remember things that we’ve read and experienced through a representaGve icon of, or key to, that content or experience. In the case of books, magazines, and comics, that key has usually been the cover, and someGmes a logo on the cover.

Think of a graphic novel and I think of the cover. Thinking of the cover triggers memories of the key points I associate with that graphic novel. When I was younger, thinking of the cover of a comic would bring a whole host of information with it, including the writer, artist, inker, and sometimes letterer, not to mention the story… So hiding or de-­‐emphasising the cover, as Kindle and iBooks do, is a user experience mistake. It disassociates the content and thoughts connected with that content from the key that puts it all together in the mind – the cover. Digital books become just a generic mass of text, much like when skimming the net, where articles are read but you have no idea of which website you read them on or by whom they were written. This devalues the experience of reading by making recall harder for the reader.

At Panel Nine we have a stubborn insistence on getting you to see the cover and associate that cover with the content that you’re reading. Indeed, to come to INFINITY you need to see the cover at least twice, usually more oyen – once as the smaller icon to tap to get into the issue and secondly as the cover appears before you go anywhere else… we facilitate the convenient resumption of reading through our Continue feature, but not before we’ve helped embed information about what you are reading via your memory of the cover as key.

Kindle, iBooks, and others should follow our lead.

ENDS ∞

RUSSELL WILLIS Russell has worked in publishing for over 25 years, specialising in digital media. In 1993 he set up a mulGmedia development company in Japan which produced customised language-­‐ learning soyware for Canon and published a large number of successful language-­‐learning soyware products, including Finding Out, a joint venture with Macmillan described by Modern EducaSon as the ‘best language-­‐ learning soyware for children available’. He has created products for TIME, the BriGsh government, Oxford University Press, and many more.

Russell’s audiobooks, podcasts, and iOS apps have all reached the No.1 spot in Apple’s iTunes charts in Japan.

He is the publisher at Panel Nine.

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PANEL NINE We design, engineer, and publish digital comics and magazine platforms. If you’d like to find out how we can help you with your digital publishing needs, don’t hesitate to contact Russell Willis at: contact@ienglish.com or visit our website for more information: www.panelnine.com

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