Comics On The iPhone: BONE

Someday in The Future, comics companies will all come to their senses and form a consortium to financially support a color digital comic reader that will be offered at a reasonable price to the comic-reading masses.

In this Future, we will all have subscriptions to monthly titles or be able to purchase single comics or collections or original GNs, which will be downloaded to our readers in a timely manner.

Finally, we will purchase the comics we feel worth saving/re-reading in price-conscious hardcover and trade paperback collections.

Comics companies will make their entire catalog available for these new digital readers and become richer than ever, because in one fell swoop they will earn the elusive audience trifecta: pleased long-time fans, happy casual readers, and a steady new audience. They will also be free to take chances on more and riskier material thanks to the wider audience and constant need for new product.

But before this sadly preposterous nerd utopia happens, we have forward-thinking companies testing other digital comic distribution methods, like the iPhone.

I was skeptical of reading comics on the iPhone, but I decided to check out the first issue of Jeff Smith’s Bone (made available for the iPhone just recently for 99 cents), anyway because a) I like Bone a lot, and b) it was something awesome to do on the can.

Reading the comic works just as you think it might. Bone #1 downloads quick and is easily navigable — you just click through the panels, and panels are formatted differently depending on their original size.

And that’s where the bad news comes in: it’ll occur to you pretty quickly that the majority of modern comics will never really work successfully on a screen the size of the iPhone. The bottom line is the craft and pacing of the art is just too complex and intricate.

Something like Bone isn’t meant to be read by clicking from single panel to single panel. Jeff Smith very carefully and thoughtfully and somewhat masterfully laid his artwork out so that it flows seamlessly when it’s experienced in book form. Constant clicking forward is distracting and breaks up the strip’s continuity.

In other words, is it ideal to read Bone this way?

Or this way?

I suppose an optimist would say “Either way cuz it’s great!” But I’m a grumpy crank and I’m going to argue for the former.

That’s not to say the iPhone is a dead end for comics. A couple types I think will work — and even benefit — from being in this type of format: comic strips; comics made specifically with iPhone readers in mind; and, most importantly for publishers looking to move some backlist, Golden and most Silver Age comics. By that I mean books published before comic book artwork became wildly elaborate in its storytelling.

True, this means you couldn’t — and wouldn’t want to — read guys like Eisner or Kirby on the iPhone. But classics like Barks’s duck stories, all EC comics, C.C. Beck’s Shazam, and a lot of Silver Age DC and Marvel I think would be fine.

For example, DC, I am way too poor to buy your Archive volumes of Jack Cole’s Plastic Man. However, would I download an Archive volume for my iPhone for $10? Goddam hell fart yes I would.

Anyways, finally, to all the dads out there, if you’re chomping at the bit for a quality comic to shove under your kid’s nose, I would choose Bone front and center. Smith’s epic is smart, funny, thrilling, imaginative, and one of the best comics ever. Start with Scholastic’s first volume and see how it goes.