Bludzee, Lewis Trondheim’s new all-digital title (produced in collaboration with Ave Comics), went live at the start of this month, with the main site available in both French and English (it looks like other languages will be added later on). French comics news site BoDoï was given the honour to present the first seven strips exclusively on their website. Naturally, these strips continue on the four demo features that were shown on the Bludzee site, and that give a pretty good idea of how the strip will work on the iPhone and assorted other smartphones.
(one of the Bludzee strips, by and (c) Lewis Trondheim, published digitally by Ave Comics)
Bludzee is genuine Trondheim: it’s a very simple strip about the daily adventures of a little black cat in a flat somewhere in an unnamed city. The artwork is beautiful in its simplicity and reminded me of La Mouche, Trondheim’s early hilarious comic for Kodansha. Trondheim has taken the limitations of the medium that he’s working for, and has adapted his layouts to this. Each strip consists of six panels, which eliminates the need for scrolling or zooming, and still keeps the pages perfectly legible on a normal page of screen.
(screenshot from the Bludzee site where readers can select comics for their smartphone; by and (c) Lewis Trondheim/Ave Comics)
Trondheim and Ave see things quite big, considering the fact that the first strips on bludzee.com are available in no less than nineteen languages, spread across the entire globe. Let the Bludzee conquest begin!
Thu, Sep 3, 2009
Comics and cartoons, From our Continental Correspondent