Digital Comics

June 29, 2010
Stacey Mason

Comics designed on the printed page have traditionally used panels to denote space as time. Because of this key metaphor, comics have found themselves somewhat constrained in the wake of the digital revolution. On the one hand, the page boundary is no longer clear; we can have pages as big as we want. On the other hand, the screen is not print; if we want to depict motion, why not simply let things move?

Some comics have tried to take advantage of the medium by adding sound or video to panels, and it could be argued that many short flash videos have their roots in comics, but for the most part, the medium has struggled to retain the panel while taking advantage of time as it is afforded by digital media.

A simple web comic by Yves Bigerel explores this problem, and circumvents it by presenting panels sequentially through a Flash slideshow. This allows for greater authorial control over when information is presented while also allowing for certain framing tricks akin to cinematic sight gags.

Thanks, Bill Cole.

.