infinity #2 | digital graphic novels and digital comics

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RUSSELL WILLIS • EDITOR

ON AND ON AND ON

CoverHunt Emerson

EditorRussell Willis

[email protected]

ContributorsHunt EmersonTerry WileyPJ HoldenAlan MooreMar=n HandChloë Mar=nPM Buchan

Hayden HughesJohn GraBanNick Dawkins

PublisherPanel Nine

∞Published bi-‐monthly. Contents © the

respec=ve copyright holders.

This app © iEnglish.com Ltd.Contents© individual copyright holders.

Volume2• Issue#2•November 2012.This is issue #2of thenew INFINITY, a

magazine about digital comics andmore.Please email inquiries about contributions

to the address above.

PHEW!… It’s been a busy old time since last issue (which was preparedunder the watchful eye of a bust of Margaret Thatcher atSomerville College... Ask me if you see me). I had a great timespreading the word about digital graphic novels both in the UKand in the US – there’s a lot going on and it’s clearer than everthat digital is the future of graphic novels and comics. And asyou’ll see from our news section, Panel Nine, the publisher ofINFINITY, has been up to some exciting things with The Phoenixand Terry Wiley – with even *more* exciting stuff to announcenext issue.

All this excitement has meant that there’s been liBle =mefor INFINITY, and that doesn’t look like it’s going to change. Solet me take the opportunity to beg for contribu=ons in the formof ar=cles, reviews, strips, illustra=ons, whatever you can do.We’re looking for regular people, and we pay. So if you’reinterested, please drop me a line.

Despite the rush I think we’ve s=ll got a great issue – howcould we not have with the amazing talents of Alan Moore,Hunt Emerson and Terry Wiley on display? One thing that ismissing though, is our leBers pages. Are leBers pages dead? Ihope not. There’s nothing more dispiri=ng than having to readthrough the comments on an ar=cle on the Internet, hoping topick out nuggets of interest in a swamp of idiocy and vitriol.Let’s bring back the art of leBer-‐wri=ng, and here’s anincen=ve: every leBer published gets a free Panel Nine app(worth $9.99!). Come on now, don’t let me down…

SPECIAL FEATURESRemember that blue text in the app signifies a link (except for thatone!), and tapping takes you to extra content, such as a web page.Images with yellow borders (like the one top right) can be seen full-‐screen if you tap on them. Double-‐tap comics to enter ‘PanelMode’ and read panel-‐by-‐panel. If the ‘Play Audio’ buBon is lit upthen you can listen along… This issue there’s audio for HuntEmerson’s ‘Freak Brothers’ and ‘Den=st’ pages. Enjoy!

ENDS ∞ INFINITY #2 • November 2012 • 1 of 59

CONTINUES ➤ INFINITY #2 • November 2012 • 2 of 59

THE PHOENIX COMIC TO ADD IPAD EDITION STARTING JANUARY!Britain’s The Phoenix comic is to add an iPad Newsstand version starting in January 2013. The acclaimed children’s comic is teaming up with digital comics developer and publisher Panel Nine to make The Phoenix available to kids worldwide via iTunes. Panel Nine president Russell Willis commented, ‘The Phoenix is publishing the cream of British comics talent and we’re delighted to be able to help make it available to a larger audience. Kids love the iPad and they love The Phoenix when they get hold of it, so

we think this is a very powerful combination.’ Panel Nine, the publisher of INFINITY, is regarded as the gold standard for digital comics apps and has created a new, even richer, platform for the digital version of The Phoenix. Phoenix secret operative Ben Sharpe noted the reaction to the prototype of the software: ‘Blown-off socks are still being retrieved from the rafters of Phoenix HQ.’ Events to publicize the launch of the Newsstand iPad app have been planned and consumer-focused announcements will be made shortly.

DC SEES 200% INCREASE IN DIGITAL SALES; NIXES EXCLUSIVE WITH COMIXOLOGYTalking to VentureBeat, DC (publisher of Superman and Batman) announced that its digital comics sales had tripled year-on-year and it has decided to drop its periodical comics exclusive with Comixology and sell through a variety of ‘platform storefronts’ including Apple’s iBookstore, Barnes & Nobles’s Nook Store and Amazon’s Kindle Store, despite complaints that these platforms are not suitable for reading comics. DC’s actions

A ROUNDUP OF THE DIGITAL COMICS NEWS

RADAR

take place as the digital comics industry is experiencing a huge sales growth, with Comixology alone predicting top line sales of $70 million in 2012 compared to $19 million in 2011.

GRAPHICLY HAS ‘MOVED ON’ FROM COMICSMicah Baldwin, the CEO of Graphicly, a company that once aspired to compete with Comixology and iVerse in the digital comics wars, has told Tech Crunch that the company has ‘moved on’ from comics. Graphicly, which raised over $5 million from venture capitalists, now has 15 people in a ‘virtual office’ setup and facilitates the formatting of visual stories for sale through Kindle, iBooks and Nook. In INFINITY’s interview with PJ Holden in July, Russell Willis noted that Graphicly had poor comics-reading software and had lost any hope of competing with Comixology. Its move to being a formatting factory for visual publications was seen as a last-ditch measure to stay relevant – and stay in business.

DARK HORSE RELEASES ANDROID APPDark Horse, America’s 5th-ranked mainstream comics publisher in terms of sales (Star Wars, Hellboy, The Goon) has announced the release of its comics app for Android. The company said in a press release, ‘Dark Horse Comics continues to pave the way as the premier publisher

NEWS ROUNDUP


of video-gaming-related titles and the leader in independent digital comics. The free Dark Horse Digital comics app

is now available worldwide through all modern web browsers and features cloud storage in both the Android and iOS apps.’ Visit Dark Horse’s digital site for more information.

GOOGLE CELEBRATES WINSOR McCAY WITH INTERACTIVE GOOGLE DOODLEWinsor McCay, who was featured in INFINITY last issue, was recently celebrated by Google with one of its most elaborate doodles ever.

The doodle (which is best viewed on a PC or Mac) was released on October 15th and features the adventures of the main character (a little boy) from the comics artist’s ‘Little Nemo in Slumberland’ strips which began in 1905.

Google said they wanted ‘to approach this doodle as McCay might have. What if McCay composed a Nemo comic for the Internet? We may never know how far he would have pushed the resources and technology available today, but his work will continue to inspire generations of dreamers.’

MONKEYBRAIN PLEDGE ALL NOVEMBER PROFITS TO THE HERO INITIATIVE

The co-founder of Monkeybrain Comics, Chris Roberson, has announced that the digital-only publisher will be donating all

November profits to Hero Initiative, a charity set up to support comics industry professionals – often well-known veterans of the industry – who have fallen on hard times.

Roberson notes, ‘There are far too many stories of well-respected, talented writers and artists who created successful and beloved comics in previous decades, and who now are living in reduced means – unable to afford healthcare, unable to find paying work, some even homeless. At the same time, characters created and co-created by many of these same creators have gone on to appear in major motion pictures, on television, and in toy aisles.’

Monkeybrain comics, featuring work by Kurt Busiek, Steve Lieber, Jennifer Meyer and others, are available from Comixology and direct donations to the Hero Initiative organization can be made at the organization’s website.

NEWS ROUNDUP


DISNEY GOING DIGITAL FIRST WITH COMICS

Proving that Disney’s digital adaptation of Pixar’s Brave as an interactive comic – released before any print version – wasn’t a one-

off, the company has now released a Wreck-It Ralph digital comic which acts as a prequel to the Disney movie.

Lyle Underkoffler, a VP at Disney Publishing Worldwide, told Publishers Weekly, ‘As we debut more comic stories, we’re learning that they resonate with a non-traditional audience. We hope to expand our repertoire of digital-firsts across platforms and Disney franchises to respond to the growing demand.’

Both the Brave digital comic and Wreck-It Ralph used the digital comics engine created by Tall Chair, the makers of Operation Ajax, that includes animation and audio (see review in our Preview issue).

ART OF PHO MOTION COMIC WINS TOP EUROPEAN AWARDThe Prix Europa, a Cannes for broadcasters in Europe, has announced that The Art of Pho has won the award for Best Online Project of the Year 2012. The motion comic is based on the graphic novel by award-winning British artist Julian Hanshaw. The original graphic novel can be found here.


THRILLBENT ADDS PAX ARENA TO LINEUPMark Waid’s Thrillbent site has bounced back from being hacked (which caused it to be offline for weeks) and has added science fiction strip ‘Pax Arena’ by Mast, Balak and Geoffo to complement Mark Waid and Peter Krause’s ‘Insufferable’ superhero strip.

Balak is the artist behind a superb one-off strip written by Waid that demonstrates a number of storytelling devices being pioneered in digital comics. Take a look at ‘Cthulhu Calls’ and then browse the process material, including Waid’s scripts.

IVERSE DECELERATES ACCELERATORLast issue we reported on ComicsPlus owner iVerse’s efforts to set up a Kickstarter clone aimed at comics called ComicsAccelerator. Many critics were worried that the platform would not be

able to reach critical mass and attract either backers or creators. Despite this the initiative attracted a lot of positive press coverage, but looking at the digital ghost town that is the ComicsAccelerator site today it seems that the doubters were right. Now comes word from iVerse that they are effectively abandoning the project just two months after the launch and repositioning themselves as Kickstarter consultants:

‘We will soon be transitioning away from the site as it currently exists into a more streamlined, user-friendly experience. Secondly, and most importantly, we’ll now be available as “campaign advisors” to any creator looking to launch a project on established crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter or IndieGoGo. If you’re curious, a great example of such a service is Springboard, run by the game designer/distributor Game Salute. What they’re doing for games is what we’ll be doing with comics: partnering with the best projects and applying our expertise to ensure success at every step of the way.’

MARVEL AND IVERSE TIE UP OVERSEASIn better news for iVerse, the company has announced an exclusive deal to work with Marvel to distribute foreign-language digital comics and graphic novels. Rob Salkowitz has the full story on his excellent website.

NEWS ROUNDUP

Cthulhu gets quite upset when his calls aren’t returned

SONY’S PSP DIGITAL COMICS STORE CLOSES

It’s probably a sign of Sony’s general woes that in the middle of a boom in digital

comics it has closed down its PSP comics portal. October 30th was the last day that users could purchase new comics content. Users can re-download previously purchased content up until mid-January, after which Sony is recommending that users back up their comics on Media Go. Sony had been selling Marvel comics since 2009.

BRITISH SMALL PRESS MARKETPLACE, COMICSY, LAUNCHEDComicsy is a new website launched in October with the aim of helping UK small press creators sell their wares.

Tim West, the man behind the site, told Down the Tubes that Comicsy is

suitable for those looking to get their goods online, in an easy to manage web store, and for people who have already set up their own

sales site but want the benefits of being part of a small press shopping network.

‘Think of it as a permanently open, online comic expo,’ he says. ‘The small press industry here in the UK produces some amazing work.’

Have you got news for us? If so, please send a press release to

[email protected].


∞ INFINITY NEWS DESK ∞

NEWS ROUNDUP

TERRY WILEY’S VERITYFAIR TO GET PANEL NINE DIGITAL TREATMENTTerry Wiley, the British comics artist whose work has been described by Richard Bruton of Forbidden Planet as ‘magnificent’, ‘brilliant’, and ‘perfect’, is working with Panel Nine (publisher of INFINITY) to collect his Verityfair series into a deluxe digital graphic novel, on the same platform as the apps produced with Eddie Campbell, David Lloyd and Hunt Emerson.

Panel Nine president Russell Willis commented, ‘I’m delighted to be working with Terry to package the Verityfair series in our deluxe digital format. He is one of Britain’s best comics creators, with a unique and authentic approach, and comics readers deserve to have his work available worldwide.’ ∞

Verity Bourneville, the star of Verityfair

Verbatim

THE WORD ON DIGITAL COMICSJOE LISTCartoonist, Guardian Weekend Magazine • Via Twitter “Marvel’s new motion comics are gross and unnecessary.”

•••CHARLES SKAGGSWriter, Ben 10: Omniverse, Generator Rex • Via Twitter“I’m a huge proponent of digital comics but it stuns me to charge $3.99 for one issue when you can buy standard def TV episodes for $1.99.”

•••DAVID GALLAHERWriter, High Moon, Box 13 • Interview with The Beat“A print comic these days seems to have a very limited shelf life. A digital comic has the potential to continually gain new readers.”

•••NEILL CAMERONArtist, The Phoenix, Mo-Bot High • Via Twitter“Great work can be utterly defeated by poor user interface / format. If a digital comic has a poor UI – is printed on crappy digital paper, if you will – it can utterly break the reading experience.”

•••STEWART AITKENMarketing specialist • Via Twitter“@neillcameron: You’ve read comics in iBooks, then..!”

•••

DANIEL CLOWESCreator, Ghost World • Overheard at SPX“The future of comics is digital, but not for my comics.”

NEIL GAIMANWriter, Sandman, Coraline • At Vulture“Perhaps I don’t have the allegiance to paper that I ought to because anybody who invests in The Absolute Sandman, all four volumes, is now carrying 40 pounds of paper and cardboard around with them. And they hurt and they complain, “Oh, I feel guilty.” And I look at it and go, you’re not getting anything that is quantitatively or qualitatively better than the experience you’d be getting on an iPad, where you can enlarge the pages, you can move it around, it’s following the eye, and you can flip the pages.”

•••

RON PERAZZAFounder, Comic Book Think Tank • Via his blog“I hate fake, digital ‘pages’. I really do. I’m actually kind of insulted by them. It’s not because they usually look shitty – although anyone that Photoshops in a page curl really ought to pause and think about why they make such poor life choices.”


GOT A QUOTE?

Have you come across an interesting quote about digital comics? Then help

us out and get in touch:

[email protected]

– and please include a source!


Creating Digitally

TOOLS OF THE TRADELast time, I introduced you to a couple of essential apps for the funnybook-drawing, iPad-toting comics artist, and this time I’ll offer up a few more.

Camera+ is a camera app available both for the iPad and iPhone. Where it scores points above and beyond the standard iOS camera utilities is as a reference camera – Camera+’s timer mechanism allows you to set up and pose for your own reference shots. If you’re lucky enough to have an iPad and an iPhone you can even have the iPhone take the shot and have it automagically send the photo via the cloud to Camera+ on the iPad – allowing you to take advantage of the iPad’s larger screen.

Finngr/FinngrPro is a super limited drawing app that really only allows drawing – no undo, no erase and, in fact, no editing of any kind. Its pen and brush tools simulate a blotchy, inaccurate pen and inky, overloaded brush and the underlying drawing surface is a coffee stained, grimy texture. Where it scores points is the

PJ’s first published work waswith Fantagraphics in 1997 (HolyCross #3) with Malachy Coney,and he provided art for a storywith Mike Carey from Caliber in1997. He started working for2000 AD in 2001 (Judge Dredd‘Sino-‐Cit’) and has been workingprofessionally since. Hissubsequent work has includedfurther s=nts drawing JudgeDredd and The 86ers. He has alsodrawn Rogue Trooper, JohnnyWoo, and Tharg’s FutureShocks. Holden broke into theAmerican comic book marketwith the Image Comics mini-‐series Fearless.

Prior to his comics career hespent 20 years in the IT industry.

PJ is on TwiBer and has a blog.

PJ HOLDEN

Camera + on the iPad.A variety of sillyposes, some onlypossible thanks tothe =mer

TOOLS OF THE TRADE • PJ HOLDEN


immediacy and fun of getting your fingers digitally dirty. Every drawing has just got bags of warmth and charm.

Actions for iPad is a brand new app. Actions allows you to, in effect, build a custom keyboard for the iPad. Big and bold, the chunky icons can be programmed to simulate various combinations of keypresses tied to individual apps. I’ve found it especially useful if you have a Cintiq and are using apps like Photoshop and Manga Studio a great deal.

One of the nice things about iPad apps is that they’re often created by small companies who are constantly

Camera+Great for reference shots • $0.99

“One of the nice thingsabout iPad apps is thatthey’re oFen created bysmall companies who are

constantly addingfuncIonality.”

Drawing with FinngrPro on the iPad

AcBons for iPad. HereI’ve set up a bunch ofcommonly used toolsforManga Studio

Finngr ProWarmth and charm… • $0.99

TOOLS OF THE TRADE • PJ HOLDEN

ENDS ∞

adding functionality – even now, Actions is pretty damn useful, but they’re promising to build more and more in to the app. It’ll be interesting to see how it develops.

And finally, one of THE most essential iPad apps/ website utilities that really will become your best friend…

Dropbox is a cloud-based storage facility (with apps for pretty much all portable devices) that’s free to join and will – almost certainly, at some point – save your working career. It’s dead simple. Install the software on your

desktop/laptop device, and store files in the assigned directory – as you’d do normally. And, invisibly, silently, and – most importantly – reliably, those files will be uploaded and stored on a cloud-based store. You can also set up shared Dropbox directories, or access your own dropbox files from either a browser or an app. It’s the comic creators’ secret weapon.

Next issue, PJ will go back to one of the first apps he suggested youtake a look at, Procreate, and go a liNle more in-‐depth with a tutorial.

“[Dropbox is] one ofTHE most essenIal iPadapps/ website uIliIesthat really will become

your best friend.”

Dropbox for iPad (thefiles on the drop boxlist are all available onmy desktop, laptopand iPhone, as well ason any web browservia Dropbox.com)

Ac=ons for iPadCreate a custom keyboard • $2.99

DropboxCloud-‐based storage… • FREE

INFINITY #2 • November 2012 • 10 of 59

“A brilliant crime-noir graphic novel.” KICKBACKA CRIME-NOIR THRILLER FROM

THE CREATOR OF V FOR VENDETTA

DAVID LLOYDCONTENTS• All 92 pages of the original graphic novel• Audio commentary by David Lloyd• Production sketches• Production notes• Kickback covers collection• An exclusive interview with David Lloyd, discussing the origins of Kickback, the comics industry, V for Vendetta, and much more

PRAISE FOR KICKBACK ON THE IPAD‘Fantastic! Buy it!’ – David Hine

‘The app works beautifully and looks gorgeous. It would be a crime not to buy it!’ – Comic Heroes

Available for iPad, $9.99. Tap this page toview the app in the App Store.

PANEL NINE

CONTINUES ➤

The First Time…

GOING DIGITALSETTLING INI’ve had a couple of months now to adjust to the concept of reading comics digitally and not lugging Marvel Omnibus editions with me on my commute every day. I still buy a lot of print and get sent a lot of poor-quality PDFs to review, but I’m also starting to like the ease of shopping for HD comics from the comfort of my bedroom.

MADEFIREBrash, kinetic and eclectic, Madefire are putting out vibrant new content by a mix of influential creators and newcomers. They don’t create traditional comics and that’s why I love them, because they’re offering something new that reads intuitively and enhances the reading experience with sound, motion, and impeccable timing. So far all the content on the Madefire app has inexplicably been available to download for free, making it easy to get a feel for what the delivery system can do and how it suits different styles of storytelling. None of the free content has bored me yet and each use of the app is skewed subtly to reflect the different creative teams, but Mono and Treatment both stand out as stories that I’d pay to continue reading.

Core Madefire founders Ben Wolstenholme and Liam Sharp have created Mono, a transparent retelling of the Incredible Hulk/Jekyll & Hyde tropes, transposed on to the kind of Victorian adventurer that you could see Alan Moore revelling in, set across a series of wars in the twentieth century. It’s frankly brilliant, with a synergy of

PM Buchan is the lead comic-‐book columnist for Starburstmagazine and considers himselfto be a vocal advocate for theBri=sh comic book industry.

When not cul=va=ng hisobsession with comics he writesnovels about the end of theworld, watches horror films, andreads books about the Mansonfamily. He now sincerely hopesthat all his favourite comiccreators will announce their plansto create work with the iPad inmind so that he can ditch hiscolossal collec=on of gradually-‐decaying printed material.

PM BUCHAN


GOING DIGITAL • PM BUCHAN

CONTINUES ➤

sound, art, and reveals that adds weight, shock, and awe to the Hulk myth and makes the eponymous hero far more fearsome than conventional comics could have accomplished. Treatment is more of a team effort, created by Dave Gibbons, written by Robbie Morrison and with a rotating team of artists, including a wonderfully kinetic two-parter from Doug Braithwaite. This series very much covers similar ground to 2000 AD, but does so with all of Madefire’s trademark bluster and spectacle, so much so that I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that Rebellion were the first publisher to license use of the Madefire technology.

PANEL NINEPanel Nine’s The Certified Hunt Emerson collects material from across the career of one of the UK’s most exuberant comic creators, a man that has left a slew of profanities and surrealism across the British publishing landscape since the mid-1970s. Easily comparable to the comics of Robert Crumb or Sergio Aragones, Emerson has been less visible in recent years and Panel Nine’s new collection serves as an excellent primer to his work. With creator commentaries, little-seen strips and a meticulous eye for detail, Panel Nine seem to be carving out a niche not only in publishing comics but in curating them, presenting the strips with beautiful reproduction values and enough context to add another layer of appreciation to the reading experience. The quality of Hunt Emerson’s collected strips is understandably variable, but my biggest qualm is that a lot of the content is far less offensive that you’d expect for a man that has had strips serialised in porn magazines! The particularly lewd strips stand out, in a good way, so although I felt uncomfortable reading about men smashing coconuts with their phalluses while I rode on public transport, I also laughed out loud and couldn’t

TREATMENT MEXICOby Robbie Morrison and Doug

Braithwaite et al

THE CERTIFIED HUNT EMERSONOver 200 pages, including aninterview, cover gallery and

audio commentary


stop. More strips like that would have made this essential reading. The final thing I’d like to note is that for any of the modern Fantagraphics crowd unfamiliar with Hunt’s work, his Citymouth strips read a LOT like classic Jim Woodring, which speaks volumes for his originality and talent as an artist. All in all I’m overwhelmingly happy that this collection exists as a primer for new readers worldwide, because to ignore Hunt Emerson when you’re handing out accolades to British comic creators would be nothing less than criminal.

COMIXOLOGYIn the interests of fairness I also gave Comixology another go. It seems that I’m physically incapable of paying for digital versions of Marvel or DC comics, knowing that every individual chapter takes about two seconds to read and is completely inconsequential out of sequence. What I don’t mind doing is supporting more (comparatively) independent comics, so I bought a complete collection of Aaron Alexovich and Drew Rausch’s Eldritch! Originally created as an entry for DC’s digital comics competition Zuda, this one comes from the Johnny the Homicidal Maniac and Lenore schools of inappropriately-gross-and-insightful humour, pitting a science genius against her monster-obsessed artist brother, with hilarious and horrific effect. I reviewed a couple of issues as a PDF viewed on a desktop earlier in the year, and the difference between that and this HD beauty is pretty amazing. I can’t bring myself to use Guided View or take an interest in ANY digital extras, but the reading experience itself was smooth while the art stayed crisp and clear. I don’t want to say that it was better than reading print, but it was definitely as good, and my conscience feels a lot better supporting something new and niche like Eldritch! than it would sinking money into the New 52.


CONTINUES ➤

CITYMOUTHfrom The Cer=fied Hunt Emerson

“The Citymouth stripsread a LOT like classic

Jim Woodring.”


GETTING COMFYAll in all I’m starting to love reading comics digitally, which I never expected to happen, though I swear that I never had to battle my three-year-old son for Spider-Man comics in the same way that I do for the iPad! Madefire is something new, something that’s both more and less than conventional comics, Panel Nine are curating comics digitally with a respect that the medium is rarely afforded, and Comixology is pure commerce and pretends to be nothing else. Between them all my needs so far are covered, until somebody tells me otherwise and points out a dazzling digital initiative that I should get behind. ∞


ENDS ∞

Eldritch!by Aaron Alexovich and

Drew Rausch. Cover aboveand sample page to leF


CONTINUES ➤

Terry Wiley started drawing comics when he was five and became anavid fan of Leo Baxendale before graduating to the Mighty World ofMarvel in his early teens. Tragically he was put off comics altogether bythat comic’s haphazard diet of reprints. He was reintroduced to comicsand their potential via Love & Rockets and Cerebus in the late 80s andstarted working on Sleaze Castle (with Dave McKinnon) almostimmediately. Sleaze Castle lasted until 2001, upon which Wiley took abreak from comics. He returned to the drawing board in 2008 with theacclaimed Verityfair which he describes as ‘a slightly twisted soap operawith themerest dash of X-‐Files!’

VerityfairFollowing are the first seven pages (of over 80) of Part 1 of Verityfair. All three chapters plus supplementary material will be collected into a deluxe digital graphic novel by Panel Nine for release in January 2013.

VerityfairChapter 1 by Terry Wiley. Thefirst four chapters have beenreleased as independent comicbooks and are available from theauthor. The first three chapterscomprise Part 1 of Verityfair.

Sequential Art

TERRY WILEY • VERITYFAIR

PANEL MODE ENABLED.

Double-‐tap a panel on the comicspages that follow to view the

strip panel-‐by-‐panel.


She’s a mess, a loudmouth, waver of hands, a pain in the neck, a cack-‐handed, bath-‐singing, confabula=ng pest; she makes up words and forgets to tell anyone what theymean. Why doesn’t she fix those ears? She could stand to lose a few pounds too! Isthat her real hair? Is that even her real name? That’s not how you spell ‘Bournville’!How old is she really? “Look at those sharp knees, I definitely wouldn’t hit it.”

She’s a freeloading scrounger, a terrible role-‐model, part of the problem, a ringingindictment of our broken society, a blight on Britain! She’s a trooper, a diamond, aflinger of fists in defence of the right of every red-‐blooded Englishwoman to stay inbed un=l 3pm and stare at the sky blowing bubbles and prac=sing her lines.

She likes MARMITE!

So what if she only comes up to so high, if her upper arms flap a liBle in the wind, ifshe remembers ‘Pogle’s Wood’, if she can’t see past the end of her arms without herglasses? She takes a bow as she throws her homework on to the fire, she is criminallyvulgar, she is famous, she is funny, she doesn’t even exist!

Don’t hold that against her!

Who is Verity Bourneville?

Verityfair is available in printed form from Comicsy and will be released in a deluxedigital edi=on for the iPad in January 2013 by Panel Nine. Subscribe to INFINITY for the

latest news or follow Panel Nine on Twitter.

Currently available are:

Verityfair #1Verityfair #2Verityfair #3Verityfair #4

And you may also enjoy other work by Terry Wiley includingSleaze Castle and Petra Etcetera.

Want more Verity?

CONTINUES ➤

WEB COMICS

THE BEST ONLINE COMICS

Strip

Briefly

NEILL CAMERON

WAIT, WHO?

This is just a hilariously funnyexposé of a rather large plothole in Doctor Who… In the firstepisode of the current season,‘The Asylum of the Daleks’, it isrevealed that the Doctor hassomehow managed to erase thememory of himself from =me…The pitch-‐perfect dialoguebetween the Daleks is laugh-‐out-‐loud funny every =me, thedrawing is great, and theleBering is spot on.

Strip

Briefly

RANDALL MUNROE

CLICK AND DRAG

This became an Internetphenomenon because of its useof interac=vity and the way inwhich the strip could beexplored for hours. RandallMunroe is living proof that youcan be a successful cartoonistwith ideas and almost nodrawing ability whatsoever.This strip is an unusualdeparture for him and musthave taken a significant amountof planning to get it right.

Strip

Briefly

EHUD LAVSKI

THE INVADER

Around the age of ten my twomain ac=vi=es were readingcomics and playing SpaceInvaders. I became extremelyadept, and my parents wouldgive me 20p and leave me in thehall outside the pub for hours,happily playing a table-‐topversion of the Namco game…I never knew what I was doing.The terrible innocence andsavagery of youth. This comicputs it all into perspec=ve.


ENDS ∞

WEB COMICS

THE BEST ONLINE COMICS

Strip

Briefly

GAVIN AUNG THAN

STEPHEN FRY: SELF-PITY

The Bri=sh comedian, actor andwit Stephen Fry was delightedto see a fragment of one of hisspeeches adapted by GavinAung Than of Zen Pencils. Thesite is devoted to the illustra=onof speeches, and despite thecheesy ending this one is neatlydone, with great illustra=veskills. For me, Gavin needs towork on his pacing andstorytelling skills as these cansome=mes seem rigid.

Strip

Briefly

DANIEL HERRMANN

IN OUR GARDEN

The first dog we had that I wasold enough to remember wascalled Scruffy. He was a straythat my dad found. We thoughthe was a black Cairn Terrier, buta{er washing he turned out tobe a brilliant white. Unlike thedog in this touching story,Scruffy died when I was tooyoung, my parents thought, tobe told. For too many years Iimagined him chasing cats ona farm... ‘Which farm, Mum?’

Strip

Briefly

BOULET

MOTIVATION

Interes=ngly, I had just finisheda marathon clean-‐up of mybedroom that had beenoverdue for months when Iread this. Books were si{ed,categorized and placed in thecorrect piles or shelves, drawerswere emp=ed, desks werecleaned… and all because I hada pressing deadline. The powerof procras=na=on. I wonderhow this lovely trait evolved…Boulet’s work is superb.


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Archive

ALAN MOORE ON ARCADE

Alan Moore is the renowned British writer behind A Small Killing(with Oscar Zarate), Lost Girls (with Melinda Gebbie), and From Hell(with Eddie Campbell). In the 80s, whilst writing Swamp Thing forDC and a host of other professional comics, Moore was also a prolificcontributor to small press magazines and fanzines. In 1984 hesubmitted this piece to the first incarnaBon of INFINITY. Here is thesecond part of his in-‐depth look at Arcade – ‘an almost perfectculminaBon of the whole idea of Underground Comix’.

TOO AVANT-GARDE FOR THE MAFIA?CRUMB, GRIFFITH, AND SPIEGELMAN

Crumb’s Arcade work, although it has perhaps been surpassed by some of the material he’s contributed to Weirdo, was his best to date at that point. Apart from surprisingly lyrical covers, he contributed a healthy number of strips to the magazine’s interior, including a two-page

dissertation upon buttocks, a selection of unpublished drawings from his sketchbook that proved every bit a meticulous and fascinating as his comic work, and a

Robert Crumb

Bill Griffith

Art Spiegelman


stunning and bleak look at like in ‘This Here Modern America’ that oozed despair. Indeed, after looking at the best two pieces that Crumb contributed to Arcade one might be forgiven for assuming that the Mid-Seventies were not a particularly happy time for the artist.

In Arcade #6, Crumb contributed something that looked very much like the last word in funny animal anthropomorphism at the time, and still does to a certain extent. Entitled ‘Ain’t It Nice’ and starring ‘Those Cute Little Bearzy Wearzies’, the strip portrayed a vision of inner urban life and love every bit as flatly and methodically as something like Last Exit To Brooklyn could

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ARCHIVE • ALAN MOORE ON ARCADE

Modern America


achieve in the literary field. It was seven pages long, and each page had a grid containing twenty individual panels. The strip minutely chronicles a day in the life of two working class inner urban bears, Jippo and Boopsy, as they go through their day. Some moments are ugly, some are surprisingly touching, but by the end of the strip you feel a sort of pang of recognition, along with a sensation of having learned something. Crumb has used funny animals in the classic sense: By showing human foibles portrayed by animals an artist can sidestep all the obscuring preconceptions that people have about human behaviour and enable them to look at themselves dispassionately as if they were observing another species. The beauty of Crumb’s concept here is that he has made the human behaviour being portrayed a lot more disturbingly naturalistic and near the knuckle than most of his predecessors. In doing so he also shows us how much of the animal there is in human behaviour by way of the rough physical preliminaries that the two-lovers go through before finally arriving at a sloppy and drunken

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Ain’t it Nice


sexual bout. There’s a sort of inversion of the principals of anthropomorphism there that hasn’t been attempted since Kurtzman/Elder Mickey Rodent strip in MAD.

Crumb’s best piece, however, concerned real people. Appearing in Arcade #3 under the title ‘That’s Life’, it chronicled the brief and unspectacular rise and fall of a black backwoods singer called Tommy Grady who cut one 78rpm record before being shot dead in 1931. The first three pages take us through Tommy Grady’s last year of life. He fights with his wife and hits the road taking only a knapsack and a guitar. Picked up by friends on their way to Memphis to cut a record, he is persuaded to cut a tune

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That’s Life


himself as part of the then-current boom in Ethnic Music. Blowing his first pay-check on drink he picks up a woman and gets shot dead in a senseless argument with her boyfriend. The next two pages carry us through the depression of the thirties, when many of the small record labels went out of business and a large number of records deleted, Tommy Grady’s amongst them. The final page brings us up to the seventies, where an avaricious blues collector looking suspiciously like Crumb himself, buys a solitary surviving copy of Tommy Grady’s only record from an old black woman as part of a job lot. He takes it to his blues aficionado friends in L.A. who give it a public airing over their expensive hi-fi units. The last panel shows a crowd of rich white-American blues scholars smiling blissfully as Tommy Grady’s voice drifts around the elegant apartment: ‘Po-o boy, lo-ong way f’um home… Po-o boy lo-ong way f’um home…’ A lone caption reminds us of the title: ‘…And that’s life!’ Crumb at his manic-depressive zenith.

The fact that the two editors of Arcade, Griffith and Spiegelman, contributed so many of the most wilfully experimental pieces (as well as the best in many instances) leads me to suspect that they saw the experimental angle as one of Arcade’s major reasons for existence, and

individually they followed their convictions with a vengeance. Griffith contributed a number of truly memorable pieces including a number of half-page ‘Griffith’s Observatory’ strips for the Sideshow feature. The Rousseau piece mentioned earlier figured highly

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amongst the rest of his works, as do the Commedia Dell Zippy and the disturbing ‘The Toad & The Madman’ in which Mr Toad and Alfred Jarry discourse upon the unspeakable truth. Also the strictly paced piece of film noir entitled Doll Boy should be given a mention if only for its style and control.

Griffith’s best piece, at least in my mind, remains ‘A Fools Paradise Revisited’ in Arcade #3. In this ten page strip, Griffith followed the passage of the ubiquitous Zippy The Pinhead through a lavish and classical Stately home. Each page is divided into four wide horizontal panels, stacked one on top of the other, creating a cinemascope effect (or Zippyscope, as the artist would have it). After a number a splendid sequences made more evocative by the panoramic nature of the visuals, we get a single deviation from this rigid page structure. One strip on the last page is broken into seven smaller panels, showing Zippy The Pinhead’s progress as he drifts out to sea upon a chunk of ice-berg. Zippy’s comment at this juncture, delivered with one word in each panel as the pitiful Pinhead drifts away towards the distant horizon, is revealing: ‘I Hate Everything That’s Modern. Everything. That’s. Modern. I Hate. It…’ It’s not until you’ve read it a few times that

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The Toad and the Madman


you realise that the sun is slowly rising in the background as night gives way to daytime, and that the magnificent microcephile has managed to sting one sentence out over some three or four hours. Like Jarry’s Pere Ubu, Zippy perpetrates a sort of comedy of the unconscious,

stumbling through a half-understood landscape shattering time, logic and preconception as he goes. The bits that you laugh at loudest are always the bits that you least understand consciously, and at times the Zippy mystique manifests itself eerily beneath the veneer of slapstick – and nowhere more effectively than here.

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A Fools Paradise Revisited


Griffith’s co-editor, Art Spiegelman, is the last artist under discussion here. Of all the contributors to Arcade, Spiegelman remains the most creatively self-conscious in his use of the medium, and in consequence achieves many of the more penetrating insights. For the

most part Spiegelman’s work is as much about the comic-strip medium as whatever story he happens to be telling. While this is true to a lesser extent even of such recent work as Maus, the trend for self-examination was most apparent during Spiegelman’s stint on Arcade.

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Cracking Jokes


In the first issue, Spiegelman contributed a piece entitled ‘Cracking Jokes’ which manages to provide an accurate and scholarly dissertation upon humour while being in itself funny. By taking a simple four frame gag and examining it over and over again from every conceivable standpoint for three pages, Spiegelman actually manages to say something about humour itself at the same time as expanding one’s notions of what the comic medium is capable of.

Other notable strips include ‘Ace Hole Midget Detective’, in which Spiegelman manages to weave a detective story in together with a few observations on Picasso and the relationship between comics and modern art; and ‘As The Mind Reels’, in which he successfully intercuts between a mundane soap-opera, a pasta advertisement, a bored housewife’s telephone conversation and his own working notes for the strip, creating a sort of collage of everyday life punctuated by televisual inanity, contrasting the real-life of soap operas with the real-life of the everyday world.

My favourite Spiegelman piece, however, is a two page exercise included in Arcade #6, entitled ‘The Malpractice Suite’. What Spiegelman has done is to take panels from

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“Most issues had a textfeature wri_en by somecontemporary notableand illustrated by one of

the Arcade crew.”

As the Mind Reels


the Rex Morgan newspaper strip by Bradley and Edgington – head and shoulders shots for the most part – and then extend the lines of the image beyond the panel borders to form them into new shapes and contexts. As an example, we see a standard Rex Morgan panel with a woman up close in the foreground, turning away from us in a head and shoulders shot. She is starting to glance towards a man in a raincoat who has just come to the door, his feet invisible below the bottom panel borders, however we see that what Spiegelman has added to the original design has placed it into a disturbingly different and surreal context. The woman whose face we see in the foreground is given a crude and stumpy body beyond the frame borders, the blouse open to reveal naked and sagging breasts. The man in the background, it transpires is not in the background at all. He’s about eight inches high and he’s in the foreground. The bare-breasted woman is holding him up in one hand like a popsicle. The sudden change in he way that reality is perceived is disturbing, and suggests all of the subliminal tensions and currents that exist just beyond the panel borders of everyday life.

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The MalpracBce Suite


Of course the most bewildering thing is exactly how they managed to fit all of the good material mentioned at wearying length above – as well as all the worthy stuff I didn’t mention – into a mere seven issues, although I for one am glad that they did. To me Arcade was an almost perfect culmination of the whole idea of Underground Comix. Granted, there have been worthy individual efforts by the various Arcade contributors since then, but somehow without the same flair. RAW is a splendid magazine, but it’s intimidating. I can’t bring myself to criticise anything that is that well printed and I find myself approaching RAW in almost the same way as I approach gallery art – coldly and from a polite distance. Crumb’s Weirdo is similarly excellent, but I think that at least in terms of a magazine he needed someone to balance his consuming taste for artistic deviance with slightly less iconoclastic sensibilities.

Balance is what Arcade achieved, in a nutshell. It balanced Griffith’s metaphysical slapstick against Spiegelman’s thirst for self-reverential comic material and ground their more explosive experiments with a solid anchor of Robert Crumb’s simple and unadorned storytelling. It pushed the medium in all sorts of new directions, the vast majority of which still remain to be properly explored almost ten years later. Anyone seriously interested in seeing what directions comics might go in the future could do a lot worse than checking out just how far they’ve been in the not too distant past.

If the Mafia were really responsible for Arcade’s demise then perhaps Joe Valachi was right to squeal on the bastards after all. ∞

ENDS ∞



Alan Moore by MarBn Hand, 2012

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THE CERTIFIED HUNT EMERSON

MADCAP MAYHEM FROM THE MIND OF THE MASTER!

‘His mind works on a level untouched by most humans.’ – The Comics Journal

Panel Nine proudly presents astounding strips by Hunt Emerson, including his team-up with Alan Moore, a fabulous Freak Brothers episode, the frolics of Firkin the cat and much more.

The app collects together over 200 pages of essential Emerson – 27 comic strips supplemented with a host of eccentric extras including madcap illustrations, galleries of cover art and self-portraits, audio commentaries, and a brand new interview with the man himself.

Hunt Emerson is one of the godfathers of the underground comix industry, with his 'Firkin the Cat' and ‘Phenomenomix’ strips both running for over 30 years. He has collaborated with Alan Moore and produced graphic novel adaptations of classics such as Lady Chatterley's Lover, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, and Dante's Inferno. His work has appeared in numerous publications and has been translated into a dozen languages.

Here INFINITY presents a page each from three strips from The Certified Hunt Emerson for your delight and edification.

Digital Comics Sample

THE CERTIFIED HUNT EMERSON

Panel Nine • iPad • $9.99

User Comment‘My favourite digital graphic novel.Love it to bits.’ – Daniel Wilson

PANEL MODE ENABLED.

Double-‐tap a panel on the comicspages that follow to view the

strip panel-‐by-‐panel.


• Over 200 pages of Hunt Emerson mania!

• 27 individual strips including: the full Leviticus 20 with Alan Moore, the complete Freak Brothers strip, Firkin the Cat, Calculus the Cat, Puss Puss and so much more!

• Audio commentaries by Hunt

•Gallery of illustrations

•Gallery of self-portraits

•Gallery of covers

•Exclusive interview

Available for iPad, $9.99. Tap this page to view the app in the App Store.

PANEL NINE

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Interview

LIAM SHARP

BURNING QUESTIONS Based on their custom-‐made MoBon Book tool, Madefire is a newbreed of publisher, hoping to break the boundaries of mainstreamcomics by uBlising sound, moBon, and interacBvity. With the supportof well-‐known creators like Dave Gibbons, Brian Bolland, BillSienkiewicz, Mike Carey and Doug Braithwaite, the app launched witha bang, creaBng a plagorm for brand new content that could happilyco-‐exist alongside tradiBonal comic techniques.

PM Buchan talked with Liam Sharp for INFINITY…

TREATMENT: MEXICO CITY

Madefire • iPad / iPhone • FREE

Current ‘mo=on book’ =tleson the Madefire app includeTreatment,Mono, Cap Stone

and The Engine. All =tles are free.App is op=mized for iOS 5.


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INTERVIEW • LIAM SHARP

INFINITYWhat was the driving factor behind the creation of Madefire?

LIAM SHARPI had been publishing traditionally (Mam Tor Publishing) at a point when things were getting tough for that marketplace, so I’d started to look at digital possibilities. Ben Wolstenholme, an old friend of mine, had been steeped in storytelling and progressive tech for 14 years as founder and CEO of Moving Brands. We got together over beers and the planets aligned! We were then introduced to our tech lead, Eugene Walden, by our backers – True Ventures (the people behind Wordpress) – and the three of us really started to engage with what could be done on the iPad if you built specifically for that platform. It got very exciting very quickly!

INFINITYLooking at the rest of the team, from as early as the computer game Beneath A Steel Sky Dave Gibbons has been involved in new platforms.

LIAM SHARPDave and I have known each other for years, and are both big Apple users. We’d trade notes at conventions about tricks you could use in Photoshop, and talk about possibilities for the medium. You only have to see an iPad to know it’s a no-brainer, but convincing hardcore comic fans that’s the case is another story.

INFINITYIs there confusion between Motion Comics and Motion Books?

LIAM SHARPIn some circles Motion Comics is a term that provokes scorn, but mostly – we think – because it’s a passive watching experience. With Madefire you’re still reading, and interacting with the pages. You, as the reader, dictate

MONOWri_en by Ben Wolstenholmeand drawn by Liam Sharp

“[Comics on the iPadare] a no-‐brainer, butconvincing hardcorecomic fans that’s thecase is another story.”


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the pace.

INFINITY Now that you’ve had a little time to play around with the software, what sort of stories does the Madefire platform seem to particularly lend itself to?

LIAM SHARP I think it’s wide open, but the elements of sound and timing lend themselves to horror and comedy in a way that comics always struggled with. You can produce a ‘reveal’ in the Madefire app that wouldn’t be possible with paper.

INFINITY Are there similarities between your Mam Tor publishing ethos and Madefire?

LIAM SHARP Mam Tor was creator driven, designed to let frustrated artists and writers scratch old itches, and also to showcase new talent. There’s certainly that element in what we’re doing at Madefire – but Madefire goes up to 11! Print publishing as an independent is tricky, and it’s hard to be heard in all the noise of the comic marketplace, let alone compete with the big, established companies. With the advent of the iPad it was clear where the medium would take us, we just had to be visionary, and treat the new platform with respect, not a yearning hankering for the good old days. We embraced change – after all, without change there would never have been comics in the first place…

INFINITY What’s the future of Madefire? Other than building a library of content, where do you go from here?

LIAM SHARPWe aim to continue to grow, to keep our software live and adaptable, led by the needs and requests of the creators. We are bringing other publishers on to the reader – iconic


Braithwaite et al

“We are bringing otherpublishers on to the

reader – iconic characterswith all-‐new MoIon

Book stories…”


ENDS ∞


characters with all-new Motion Book stories… And we’re still learning the grammar of a new medium. Very exciting days!

INFINITY Which creators are working with Madefire?

LIAM SHARPWe have a Steve Niles and Mark Texeira story just finished, Dan Brereton, Ben Templesmith, James Robinson, Dave Taylor, Neil Googe… add them to Brian Bolland, Bill Sienkiewicz, Dave Gibbons, Chris Weston, Mike Carey, Dougie Braithwaite, Gary Erskine… the contributors are seriously stellar!

INFINITY Now that Madefire is moving so quickly, how much opportunity do you have to actively write or illustrate comics? Do you find that you’re having to take a step back?

LIAM SHARPYou’re right to pick up on this. I have far less time than I used to have, but I go out of my way to make it. I have so many things I want to try at this extremely exciting time, right at the birth of a new medium, that I’m completely energised creatively. But yes – I’d love a month or two just to create stuff! I think that may be some distance in the future…

INFINITY If you could have had this technology to tell one story from your career so far, which one would you most liked to have seen brought to life?

LIAM SHARPGreat question. Most probably Man-Thing, because that was the most broadly creative book I ever drew and I think the material would have worked like a dream on the Madefire app. Would have been a lot of fun! ∞


Braithwaite et al

“I have so many thingsI want to try at this

extremely exciIng Ime,right at the birth of a

new medium…”


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Art for Art’s Sake

HUNT EMERSON’S ILLUSTRATIONS

Hunt Emerson broke out of the 1970s Birmingham alternative arts scene with a duo of funny felines: sex-mad Firkin for Fiesta and frazzled Calculus Cat for Escape. His penchant for comedy timing and elasticated brushstrokes perfectly suited graphic adaptations such as Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Casanova’s Last Stand and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. A mainstay of Britain’s underground publisher Knockabout, his comics have appeared in numerous comic books and magazines, with his ‘Phenomenomix’ strip appearing regularly in the Fortean Times since 1979, and his two-page adult feature ‘Firkin’ appearing in Fiesta since 1981.

Emerson was chosen as one of the 75 European Masters of Cartooning of the 20th Century by the Bibliothèque Nationale de France and his latest literary adaptation is Dante’s Inferno. He lives in Birmingham.


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ART FOR ART’S SAKE • HUNT EMERSON

CHICKEN SMOKE


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FAMOUS WRITERS


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THE PUBLICIST


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BEM


ENDS ∞


FIRKZILLA


FORMAT WARSRegular readers will know that I get exasperated by the implicitview that ‘all digital is the same’. I was reminded of this issue atthe news of DC publishing their comics on iBooks etc. as well asthrough Comixology. The problem is simple: iBooks is not anappropriate pla�orm for comics (see my comparison ofpla�orms here, if you doubt me). So what happens if someonebuys their copy of Superman through iBooks and then discoversthat the same comic is available on Comixology, with a superioruser interface? I had this experience with Harvey Pekar’sCleveland from Top Shelf (a superb publishing company thatdoes almost everything right). I bought the iBooks version thenfound out that there was a Comixology version. The iBooksCleveland, predictably, stank. It made me dizzy and frustrated. Ifelt stung. Now, marke=ng people will say they are ‘giving theconsumer more choice’, but are they really just abdica=ng theirresponsibility for quality?

At Panel Nine, we face the same problem. We want to getour product out to as many people as possible… but are weprepared to sacrifice the superior user experience that our ownpla�orm provides to have it on the iBookstore? Should we? I’dbe interested in your thoughts.

A SENSE OF SHELFI used to display my CDs on a shelf along with my books. Andthen my DVDs. Now the CDs are gone, consumed by iTunes.The DVDs are gone too, consumed by Apple TV. My bookshelf iss=ll there and it tells a story about who I am through what Iread. And, yes, I want to have a physical representa=on of thethings that help define my sense of self... but as I buy morebooks on the iPad, my bookshelf is becoming an iden=ty =mecapsule – the me of two years ago. Perhaps we need to get afridge magnet with each digital purchase, or to get sent aregularly updated poster with the covers of what we bought…

ENDS ∞

Opinion

THE LAST WORD…

Russell has worked in publishingfor over 25 years, specialising indigital media. In 1993 he set upa mul=media developmentcompany in Japan whichproduced customised language-‐learning so{ware for Canon andpublished a large number ofsuccessful language-‐learningso{ware products, includingFinding Out, a joint venture withMacmillan described byModernEducaIon as the ‘best language-‐learning so{ware for childrenavailable’. He has createdproducts for TIME, the Bri=shgovernment, Oxford UniversityPress, and many more.

Russell’s audiobooks, podcasts,and iOS apps have all reachedthe No.1 spot in Apple’s iTunescharts in Japan.

He is the president of Panel Nine.

RUSSELL WILLIS


PANEL NINE

We design, engineer, and publish digital comics and

magazine platforms. If you’d like to find out how we can help you with your digital publishing needs, don’t hesitate to contact

Russell Willis at:

[email protected]

or visit our website for more information:

www.panelnine.com

infinity #2 | digital graphic novels and digital comics

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