http://www.gjohnstone.net/lanterns.html

GJ

Work continues on the current chapter of Curse.

I have posted a dozen more pages, mostly a sequence inspired by and in the style of Victorian Magic Lantern slides.

I hope people like them.

Best wishes

GJ

When I think of something like your Sting of the Arrow, some of the pages are such that I can’t imagine those complex compositions or the power they convey being compartmentalized into pieces the size of the Windy panels above. That’s not a knock against the Windy comic, either, because you’ve drafted it with a mind towards the constraints of the form–and it works. (See my remark towards the end of this post)

So, I guess I do have a substantial thought towards the one-panel-at-a-time form: it can work. Still, I don’t want comics to be dominated by that form–and in the age of hand held electronic comic book readers it seems to be moving towards that.

And newsprint seems interesting. I see independent/small press artists distributing comics in those 8-page accordion books or A4-sized mini-books nowadays. There are very few people I’ve heard of putting out comics on newsprint–I figure it’s cheap, but is it an unwieldy format? More people should do it if not!

Sidebar: are the Primitif stories not on Scribd or in Sting of the Arrow/Land of the Dead available anywhere presently? Are they in Magic Mirror?

And another sidebar: the pages 12-13 gag was my favorite! The dry “It’s a kind of…” line does it for me. I can’t even pin down why it’s so appealing to me. It’s self-referential, yes, and the gag was totally telegraphed, but I wanna say there’s more to it. Still, funny! I do see a tiny bit of Mickey Mouse in Windy here.

No need to reply–I know I’m all over the place. Sorry, sorry!

Yes, I admit this new story was drawn with web publication in mind. Do I like the one-panel-at-a-time format? I still remain unpersuaded. To some degree I’m experimenting on this site and trying to find some form of digital presentation of a comic that I am reasonably happy with – including separate pages which have to be downloaded one at a time, uploading a PDF which is sort of like a book, and publication on Scribd which is also sort of like a book but is slightly easier to advance the pages.

I think there’s another online thing, which I don’t use, that imitates “page turning” through the use of Flash animation.

If I had my way I would print everything on paper, preferably newsprint, and sell them as mini comics. Doing it online can potentially reach more people, but I am firmly wedded to reading comics on paper. So this website is something of a compromise.

I’m guessing this one was drafted as a webcomic and as such didn’t have to suffer through any modifications? I don’t know if I like or dislike the whole one-panel-at-a-time thing that so many web comics are adopting.

I recently read a take on the traditional comics form saying that unless the author is extremely skilled in directing the reader’s gaze across a page, the reader is going to inadvertently skip to a panel or part of the page that the author does not want them to go to at that moment. To quote a remark from that post’s comment section: “Can you imagine if you were meant to watch a film with what’s already happened, what’s going to happen, and what is happening currently all on the same screen at the same time??”

That thought was embedded in the commenter’s rant about how online-only panel-at-a-time comics are the future. Printed comics are “tired and antiquated,” while the alternative allows for “real, controlled pacing and awesome, shocking reveals.”

–I’m remembering a comic I read last year in a newsprint anthology about Josef von Sternburg’s directorial debut, by Nathan Gelgud: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-L2UlTXxkShQ/UA13oHwoinI/AAAAAAAAAtA/QhVFKpEFlPQ/s1600/von+sternberg+comic+gelgud.jpg (taken from his blog). I liked it a lot, but the whole two-simultaneously-occuring-sequences thing seems unsustainable; a trick that may only captivate people like that commenter once before losing its charm.

So, I don’t know. I think I probably like one-panel-at-a-time more than I dislike it, but I want to say it’s the other way around.

–and I’m almost embarrassed to be submitting this. But I wanted to say that I loved your posts, and that your comments on the other Windy story you put up this month made me think about what I’ve recently read.

Thanks for the information! Yes, a scan of John Watson’s art for this cereal box would be most welcome. My email address is at http://comics.edpinsent.com/contact/.

Regards, Ed