The future is...
...BODY BAGS?
NEWSARAMA - 12 GAUGE, VIDEOTVISION TAKE BOBY BAGS TO iTUNES
Running headlong into the future, BODY BAGS makes the leap to iPod comics with its first episode "Father's Day." I'm not really a fan of the material, but I was interested in checking out the execution. And like most video comics, it's no longer comics. Instead, it's minimal animation and camera effects with sound and voices carrying the dialogue.
Which, of course, means it's no longer a comic book. The presentation, and not the reader, sets the pace/timing of things, which is one of comics' greatest strengths in my mind. Comics manage time the way novels can manipulate the abstract and intangible. But when you hand that over to the producer of the video, you lose a lot of what makes comics unique.
And it's really damn small. I mean really small. I didn't even watch on my iPod, but on iTunes on my laptop, and even resizing the window up a bit, you lost a lot of whatever sparkle the artwork has. This is the real sticking point. iPods aren't the best sort of viewing device for this sort of thing, though they are ubiquitous (well, at least among the net-enabled--not so sure about how many people outside that group have 'em.)
The PSP seems like a more viable platform for this sort of thing, particularly when you build the comic around the presentation instead of shoehorning a comic page or set of panels into a 3x2" screen. Granted, neither of them is a perfect solution, by any stretch. What we really need is some kind of larger tablet computer/reader or electronic paper (as shown by Siemens recently--too lazy to dig up the link) that can present comics in the format/size they're accustomed to being shown at. Yes, those are years away (though there are tablet computers in play now, but they're too expensive to get wide adoption as of yet.)
The material doesn't impress me at all, but steps taken by guys like the BODY BAGS crew and the NYC2123 folks are necessary. They're far from perfect, but we're not going to jump into an e-comics format without taking a whole series of learning steps first. I'm interested to see how this is embraced, and how many folks check out the first chapter for free, and if they continue on following the story when they have to (gulp!) pay for it.