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 After the Internet furore over Holden and Ewing's banned Murderdrome app, the duo are back with another, considerably violence-free, app for the iPhone - Masked Marshal - the first comic using the new Eye Candy platform.
The comic is certainly worth a download for 2000AD readers, despite clearly aiming at a much younger market. Holden's art is as good as ever and Ewing's sense of humour still works even when the body count is cut back. It's maybe a teeny bit too short, but you still get the opportunity to colour in, watch how the comic is built up from pencils and a whole lot more. Hopefully we'll soon see something more 2000AD-like from them soon, but this will certainly do in the meantime.
And all this gives us the chance to finally put up our much delayed Q&A with Holden...
First of all - what made you decided to try out a comic on the iphone? Did you try out the Clickwheel app before embarking on your own venture - and if so what are your thoughts of that?
PJ Holden: From the first moment I saw an iPod touch/iPhone I thought - that's it! Apple just have NO idea of the potential they're sitting on. This was before the app store, before the sdk (software developer kit) and when the entire thing was just out.
As soon as the SDK was available I downloaded it to play with - to write my own app, but time was my enemy, so, in stead, I posted my plans online (www.xcake.org) and left it there as a project I'd do on my own time.
Shortly after that, I met Phil Orr (the programmer) while at Matt Johnston's wedding (our mutal friend and the third chap involved in infurious comics, the company formed around the comic app)
How does the process of writing and drawing for the iphone differ from any other medium? What specific considerations of the format did you have to work around?
I've been drawing it in a simple US Size, four panels per page. It's only when you put the art on the iPod that you really notice things that would be fine on a normal page are a little odd on screen. Notably, the reading experience (in the comics we've done so far) has been reading left to right, so, for example, where you have a panel with sound that comes from the previous panel - normally in comics, you could have that sound coming from any direction, on the iPhone comic it's better if it's coming from the direction of the previous panel. (It's bloody hard to explain this stuff, you really need to see it!)
What extra pizazz can you add to the comic by having it on the iphone
Well, the iPhone is a computer - 10 years ago it would've been an incredible computer. So there's all sorts of scope for what you could do - off the top of my head (and some of the stuff we've built in to our reader):
- International Support (we can supply layers in multiple language - so you can instantly have a French edition, Japanese or German)
- Commentary - audio tracks built in, listen along to the creator
- Multiple layers (as you've seen in the demo) these could include alternative artwork, photo reference (if it was used), a script layer, a youtube video showing the panel being drawn, links to a wikipedia about the comic, etc.
- and, what we've got built into our new comic 'Eye Candy'
I could sit for half an hour and come up with a dozen extra features - really, the limitation here is your imagination.
As reported, Apple have some issues with the Murderdrome comic. Before we go into that, and assuming the issues can be resolved, what can you tell what we can expect from the comic itself?
I think it's very, very funny. And every panel makes me laugh.
What was the response from Apple - and is there a possibility of "appeal"?
Essentially, Apple rejected it based on the content not meeting their 'community standards' - which is fair enough, I think they're wrong in not having the same flexibility in books as they have in games - where you can rate a game as, for example, 17+. We've appealed as best we can, and we're now waiting to hear something. Anything.
Given Apple's concerns, what's the next stage in getting the app live? It's been suggested that you promote the app as a delivery method - and sell the comics separately - is that a possibility?
It's a possibility, but the beauty of the system that we'd planned on using is that the costs of production are very low - seperating the comic from the reader means introducing a massive website with micropayments, brilliant reliability, massive bandwidth and unlimited storage. Everything we were getting from Apple by combining the app with content.
We could also tack a game onto the end of it and throw it into the games section with a 17+ rating.
Is the eventual plan to make the app available to other writers and artists for their own creations? What kind of response have you had from the community so far?
Infurious's plans were always about creating new content for the iPhone (personally, I detest the zoom/pinch method of reading comics on the iPhone and we're far more interested in new content than delivering something else that's been chopped up for the iPhone). The important thing about the potential for the iPhone is how it can really introduce something far more equitable to comic creators than the current publishing/distribution systems can. An iPhone comic selling 3000 units is substantially more profitable than the equivalent selling print comic simply because the distribution / publishing costs are zero.
And that's it - so go and download Masked Marshal now ! If you don't have an iPhone, then you won't have long to wait to see Holden's artwork in 2000AD again, as he's working on a new series of The 86ers, now written by Arthur Wyatt (based on an idea from Gordon Rennie) due to see print in March 2009. More on that soon.
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