I’ve had a few people ask me why I don’t go with motion comics, or with traditional jpg comics (to be reprinted later in a collection) or Scott McCloud’s infinite canvas. When I started working on the interface/controls/layout for Petra’s Call, the amount of control the reader had was sort of a big deal. I wanted the user to control the pace and tempo of the comic. I didn’t want them to have to wait for an animation to play, or a narrator to introduce a scene – and this goes against a lot of the thinking in the web-comics space right now, especially with serialized adventure comic.
My reasoning behind this is simple.
Comics are about pictures and words – seeing and reading. Reading is something everyone does at their own pace – this is especially the case when they are accompanied by pictures.
The pace at which you read a book is different from person to person – the pace at which a person reads a COMIC book varies even greater.
It doesn’t make sense to me that a comic would take that control from the reader. I believe we should let the reader go through at their own pace. Click on a button, go to the next moment – click back if you want to step back.
This becomes especially important on consecutive readings.
Take the establishing shot from panel 1 of Petra’s Call. On first read – you’ve got the Oleksyn Valley. What is this valley? Where is this valley. An eager viewer might mouseover the title and click through to the wiki for more info, but that’s not likely (it’s “hidden treasure”, I only expect the hardcore will find it)
If a reader is going through the comic a 2nd or 3rd time, it’s very unlikely they’ll stop and study this panel. They know the valley, they know what’s coming up, they want to get on with the action, they don’t want to wait for me to play an animation, or have text fade in, the readers want ‘next’.
So I let them click for ‘next’.