2007 November | the Captain's JLA blog

Marvel’s Digital Comics Unlimited

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By Jason Kirk / 22 November 2007 / JLA Weblog / 0 Comments

Marvel, as you may have heard, has unleashed their own brand of digital comics. Much like DC Zuda Webcomic interface the Mavel interface is based on Flash, but unlike Zuda its blisteringly fast and surprisingly easy to use. I particularly like the Smart panels feature. The quality of the art (compression wise) could be higher and they could do with better text anti-aliasing. DC’s preview PDFs always suffered the same problems – they retained the separate art and lettering layers from the original photoshop pages which downgraded the reading experience. Far better to release a merged single-layer compressed image like a jpeg — higher quality, smaller file size.

Whatever happens with digital comics they should steer clear of PDFs. Adode PDFs are based on an older technology called postscript. We use it at work for preparing and distributing journal papers and articles as it is excellent at plain text, figures, charts, graphs, and diagrams (like an SVG or WMF), but hideous for bitmap art (GIF, JPEG, etc).

The type of digital comics you can download are a fairly sweet medium – as with mp3s: you have possession of the data that you can take anywhere you want and put on any machine you want. These digital web/comics initiatives from the big two are nice, but they’re webservices and not actual downloads. However, the downloadable illegal cbr-style digital comics are very much a fanish enterprise. Scan size is not standardised, scan quality can be patchy, and colour correction is all over the place.

Unlike some people I find reading comics fine on screen – not prose however – although they work better on a laptop/tablet than a desktop. I’ll admit to investigating torrented digital comics to see what the fuss was, but I’ve never really taken to them. Its a pain to find anything you want and I’ve already mentioned the uneven quality. However, a legal, guilt free, digital service would be attractive. As somebody who often has to search through dozens, if not hundreds of issues, to write profiles and such I can certainly understand the appeal of easily accessible digital comics. If DC offered an equivalent digital comics service at a reasonable price then I promise to be one of the first people to sign up.

(And let us not passby without mentioning the cheek of Marvel launching a service that is effectively called DC Unlimited).

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Superman: Doomsday

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By Jason Kirk / 11 November 2007 / Film Reviews / 0 Comments

Superman: Doomsday is the first straight-to-DVD movie released as part of Warner Brothers Animation’s new DC Universe line – a series of animated films that adapt particular comic book stories. Superman: Doomsday is an adaptation of the sprawling “Death of Superman” storyline from the 1990s, the same storyline that almost became the plot to Superman Returns movie. However, there is something hollow about this first animated film. For me, and I can only speak personally, the 1990s “Death of Superman” storyline worked so well because it was so embedded within the rich tapestry of the ongoing Superman continuity. It drew upon the large supporting cast to add a sense of pathos that it shared with Jerry Siegel’s original 1961 “Death of Superman” imaginary story. This movie doesn’t have that room to do that and makes do with an abridged retelling of the original plotline.

The original “Death of Superman” storyline was made up of four story arcs. The first was the “Doomsday” fight which whistles past at a frenetic pace as its only really a plot device to get to the second block, the “Funeral For A Friend” arc, which is the richest part of the storytelling. That is deals with the funeral, the grieving of his friends, and machinations that happen once Superman is gone. That arc ends with Pa Kent having a near death experience and a vision of his son’s soul returning to Earth. The next arc, “Reign of the Supermen”, suddenly changes pace with the appearance of four pretenders that each claim to embody some element of Superman’s legacy. It was that arc which produced Superboy and Steel, arguably the two biggest breakout characters of the 1990s at DC. The final arc, the “Return of Superman”, is a massive blockbuster storyline that sees the returned, but still powerless Superman, unite his successors against a villain who posed as one of them.

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Paul Norris, “last of the great creators of Golden Age DC super-heroes” RIP

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By Jason Kirk / 06 November 2007 / Comic Books & Graphic Novels / 3 Comments

It is with sadness that I read Mark Evanier’s reporting that Paul Norris, Aquaman‘s designer and first illustrator, has died at the age of 93.

Evanier noted that:

I think I oughta point out that he was the last of the great creators of Golden Age DC super-heroes. The guys who created Superman, Batman, Flash, Green Lantern and Wonder Woman are all gone…and now we’ve lost the guy who designed and first drew Aquaman.

Norris, as mentioned was Aquaman’s co-creator, but he also worked on the Sandman feature whilst Simon and Kirby were otherwise occupied. He and writing partner Mort Weisinger were responsible for the Sandman’s shift into the pure super-hero and they created his side-kick, Sandy Hawkes, the current JSA’s Sandman.

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