What Can Publishers Learn from Digital Comic Books?
The technology for creating the digital comic media experience is still not fully realized. Waid decried early attempts at "motion comics" (simply animating still elements of a book) and noted that comiXology's panel-to-panel guided view is an improvement, but still an incomplete one. "They're still taking something that was designed for one medium (print) and adapting it into another (digital). Ultimately, I think the most successful work has been that which was created specifically for digital." On the question of fixed layout versus responsive design, Waid was similarly skeptical. "I've yet to see anyone successfully show me a comics page that can work both vertically and horizontally. But I keep an open mind."
John Parsons (john@intuideas.com), former Editorial Director of The Seybold Report, is an independent writer, ghostwriter, and editor. He is the co-author of the interactive printed textbook, Introduction to Graphic Communication, on the art, science and business of print, which has been adopted by Ryerson, Arizona State, the University of Houston, and many other schools and vocational training centers. Custom editions of the book are under consideration by major printing companies and franchises for internal training purposes.