The Forbidden Planet International Blog Log

Redeye Magazine Volume 2, Issue 1. August 2009

Edited by Baz Renshaw

Engine Comics

Redeye version 1 was a critically well received comics news and features magazine with very strong links to UK comics. Critically well received doesn’t automatically translate as commercial success though and the magazine was put on hold in 2007. Well, now it’s back, in slightly unfamiliar form as each issue of the new series of Redeye magazine will be available as a pdf download from the Redeye site for a measly £1. According to Barry’s editorial they need 1500 downloads a month to make it financially viable – and at just £1 for 115 pages I’d really hope this wouldn’t be too much trouble.

Particularly when the 115 pages are, with some minor problems, very, very good indeed. Between Redeye and Tripwire I think UK comic fans finally have all round, year long comic coverage that we can be proud of.

The really big problem Redeye faces is that of timeliness and online competition. This is nowhere more apparent than the news section where all the news is, by the very nature of print in this age of news websites, blogs and twitter, out of date even before it’s published.

The important bit of Redeye is the stuff that comes after the news; the articles and interviews. It’s here that any modern magazine has to really focus, since these are the things that should make the magazine unique. And there’s a really good selection of work here, all presented with Redeye’s excellent style.

Features this time round include reports on the LUC176 convention from July, pages from Accent UK’s Western anthology, a look at the “Secret History Of Irish Comix”. The issue’s interviews cover a great deal of ground from comic folk from the UK and beyond; with the writers of the new Sherlock Holmes series Leah Moore and John Reppion, LUC founder and all round comics enfant terrible Oli Smith on comics and publishing, New York cartoonist Liz Baillie, The Rainbow Orchid’s Garen Ewing, Northern Irish cartoonist Bridgeen Reilly and a double interview by Matt Badham with Jim Medway and Adam Cadwell.

Every article and interview is well written, informative and interesting to read – just what you want. However, at least one has already been published online and the report on LUC176 was, however nicely laid out, rather pointless as I’d already read so many online reports that it became as out of date and unnecessary as the news section. But even so, Redeye’s still worth reading, the content is good and the design’s excellent; clear and clean yet visually dynamic and very stylish, but never in a way that overwhelms it’s content.

Except that isn’t quite true. If you take each page separately it works, but sadly there’s a problem with Redeye’s layout that’s all due to it’s pdf formatting. I’m reading my copy on screen and to make it big enough to read I can fit about half a page on screen at a time. The problem is that a lot of the features are deliberately designed across a double page spread – very attractively done – just look at John Cassaday’s fantastic image from John Reppion & Leah Moore’s Sherlock Holmes comic above, and the inclusion of the first page of the feature as an integral part of the image is stylish and innovative – but when split across a screen, viewed 1 page at a time it loses much of it’s innovation and just becomes mildly annoying. And this happens almost every time with the features and interviews – the introductory double page looks fantastic but the effect is ruined because the double page has to be viewed singly.

So it seems that Redeye is trying to sit between two stools and ends up falling between. It’s designed as a print magazine – and designed very well – but is then meant to be read on screen. (Please don’t tell me it’s meant to be printed out – that’s really a ridiculous idea). And reading on screen requires a completely different set of design rules. Definitely something that needs thinking about with future issues.

So Redeye is only a partial success. It’s an excellent read, full of great articles and interviews (and certainly worth the money) but there’s a flaw in it’s design and it really needs to rethink whether it even needs a news section. However, it’s something easy to fix and once that’s sorted this may well become a major comics magazine for the UK.

I’d recommend you all toss a quid Redeye’s way and make your own minds up – surely we can get at least 1500 of you to give it a try?

Redeye Volume 2 issue 1 is available for download at the Redeye website.

Richard Bruton.