Barriers crumble, empires fall, the Murderdrome's inside us all

August 23, 2008 9:45 PM

Is the iPhone the future of comics? Artist P J Holden demonstrates the interface for Murderdrome, which uses the rather slick new Comic Reader from Blue Pilot Software, and discusses the iPhone as comics platform. Also: Manga on the iPhone, How to read .CBR files on your iPhone, iPhone/iPod touch emulator for comic creators.
posted by Artw (16 comments total)

Murderdrome writer Al Ewing is also responsible for The Ultimate Future Shock, which if your familiar with 2000ad or Alan Moores Future Shocks stories is worth every one of the 30 odd clicks it takes to read it. Gaspamundo!
posted by Artw at 9:50 PM on August 23, 2008

That colors>inks>pencils feature is pretty damn awesome.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 10:21 PM on August 23, 2008

It is a neat application... but there are an awful lot of limitations imposed by essentially only being able to view one panel at a time and the restrictive panel dimensions (you can only break out of panel borders if you cut the screen down into what start to become very small panels, no across the fold layouts or splash pages, and little significant visual interaction possible between the panels).

It seems particularly suited to strips, honestly - not too many panels, you can flip through the whole sequence quickly, tend to have fixed dimensions anyway. People find clever things to do with clever thing so I'm sure interesting projects will come out of this, but I wonder about the experience of reading a true long-form piece in this can-only-see-a-panel-at-a-time format (wondering partly inspired by the new experience of reading a particular comic solely online and subsequently buying the print version (and not the last time it would seem) and finding the two experiences pretty distinct (and preferring the old-fashioned method, honestly). Of course I would have to buy an iPhone to really see for myself and (barring a mysterious benefactor or bequest of an unknown wealthy relative) that's not going to happen.

I think the healthy majority of the future of comics is going to be in paper for a good long time to come...
posted by nanojath at 10:24 PM on August 23, 2008

Why not scan a whole page and use the pinch-zoom feature?
posted by empath at 10:38 PM on August 23, 2008

It's not the future until the comics makers stop being half-assed at their digital releases. The pirates release them day-and-date, sometimes before people can even buy them locally, and certainly before they get their mailed issues. It's rather laughable.
posted by smackfu at 10:46 PM on August 23, 2008 [2 favorites]

Why not scan a whole page and use the pinch-zoom feature?

Pinch-zoom-scroll-scroll-scroll down and back and left-scroll-scroll-scroll-repeat ad nauseum.

I really do not think phones are going to be much good for sequential storytelling like comics outside of short strips for a long, long time.
posted by beaucoupkevin at 11:08 PM on August 23, 2008

This will be as popular as regular ebook readers, meaning there will be a market for it, but not a big one.
posted by blue_beetle at 1:32 AM on August 24, 2008

I don't know if the iPhone is the ticket, but .cbr's are the only way to read comics.

Personally, I find the DS comic app to be the easiest, most enjoyable way to read comics, and it is far, far easier to take the same number of pages with me in my pocket than carting around kilos of TPBs.
posted by paisley henosis at 1:48 AM on August 24, 2008

Am I the only one who initially read that as "Murderphone" and was excited to see a Metalocalypse-related post?
posted by Pope Guilty at 2:43 AM on August 24, 2008

... The Ultimate Future Shock...

That was so awesome it caused me to travel back into the past, where I accidently caused the creation of the original Future Shock*
* see prog1, Tharg
posted by AndrewStephens at 3:48 AM on August 24, 2008

Do you really want to drag your way all the way through a comic? I'd rather just page through, and then zoom if there's a piece of detail I'd like to inspect. It's a neat concept, but I wouldn't want to use it. I love comics, but the number of times I've wanted to see the seps or the pencils I can count on a single hand.
posted by Eideteker at 6:52 AM on August 24, 2008

Sort of on-topic, this app displays anamorphisms on the iPhone display, supposedly making the image appear to jump off the screen.
posted by ijoshua at 9:39 AM on August 24, 2008

If you're really lucky, your iPhone may come with photos of one of the factory workers already loaded onto it.

She seems pretty happy for someone working a 15-hour day for about $50 a month.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 5:44 PM on August 24, 2008

Uh oh. Murderdrome got shot down by Apple because “it contains content that does not comply with Community Standards" – presumably being too murder-y.
posted by Artw at 2:30 PM on August 25, 2008

More on that from techradar
posted by Artw at 1:29 PM on August 26, 2008

Eyecandy - the same technology on a new, non-murderous comic, which should be more kid (and appstore) freindly and hopefully be something you can actually download.
posted by Artw at 4:25 PM on September 9, 2008