Well, whatever your opinion on comics and cartoons on mobile phones (and Kenny’s post the other day seems to have generated a fair bit of discussion on the blogosphere) it certainly looks like more interest is being paid to the idea, with PrimeNewswire running a story on ROK Comics. There isn’t much there that John Freeman hasn’t already said about the venture, but what I thought was significant was that a Nasdaq company was reporting on it – obviously the business world of New Media is paying attention to see where this will go, as well as comics readers having a look. I must admit I rarely use my phone for more than short calls and text messages, but an awful lot of people do enjoy using extra services from video clips and photographs to music on their phones in the way I would use my laptop, so really, why not comics? I’m unsure about reading a full comic on a mobile, but short strips would seem pretty well suited to the medium – even Judge Dredd worked quite well in three or four panels in a newspaper strip after all; they even managed to summarise the epic, multi-part Apocalypse War in one single strip to keep newspaper strip readers abreast of developments in 2000AD, so why not a few panels for the phone?
Traditional comics readers may not be too sure about this but there may be plenty of phone users who aren’t heavy comics readers who will be (after all a lot of the readers of the newspaper strip Dredd probably never picked up the comic, didn’t stop them being interested in reading the strip version and it did make them more aware of the character and brand). It might not be for everyone but in a multimedia age no medium, comics included, can afford to ignore alternative ways of reaching readers, expanding the reach of the genre and hopefully finding new revenue streams to help keep publishers – especially small publishers – in business so they can do what we all want and keep making comics. And if someone with John Freeman’s history in comics believes there is a future in this form of comics publishing then we probably should be paying attention. Expect more discussion to follow in the future.
Wed, Jun 20, 2007
Comics and cartoons