Print vs. Digital

[Chris Pitzer]

Jim Rugg brings some thoughts...

http://jimrugg.com/?p=290

[Julian Lytle]

Great post.

[Jon O]

Lots of good stuff to think about. Thanks for sharing!

[BobBretall]

So....the upshot is that the printer did a shitty job on Hellboy in Hell #1??

I must admit, I read the print copy of this comic & wasn't put off by the coloring/definition, it worked just fine for me in print.   But, I wasn't really poring over the art/coloring in close detail, I was just reading the story and spending maybe 45 seconds to a minute per page.

[BobBretall]

I realized that Lex had read a digital copy (on his beautiful Mac display) while I had read a print copy.

I also think the digital side of this can vary widely based on the type of device/display used for viewing.

[Wood]

BRILLIANT article.

 

[boshuda]

I suspect a similar difference between the print and digital copy of Image's I Love Trouble.  I haven't seen the digital version, but the print version felt very muddy.

[David]

BRILLIANT article.

 

[evaD]

Great article. For me, the most important thing in the article was this:

Media guru Marshall McLuhan suggests that when a medium is no longer considered mass media, it needs to redefine itself or it becomes obsolete. I heard Art Spiegelman apply this notion to comics as “Comics now either will probably become an art form or disappear.”

I believe this is already happening. There is an overlapping with mainstream and independent comics, but people like Chris Ware and Rugg are already approaching it as an art form. In another thread someone mentioned that sometimes it seems as though every comic fan wants to work in the industry. Poetry has become this way. Jazz is similar. Certainly comics cultural appeal, although strong as source material for other mediums, is waning.

[JoeyN]

It's pretty much like that for most titles. Surprised it hasn't been mentioned more

[Eduardo_Sanchez]

I suspect a similar difference between the print and digital copy of Image's I Love Trouble.  I haven't seen the digital version, but the print version felt very muddy.

I agree.  I feel like it has to do with the type of paper they chose.

[Chris Pitzer]

I also think the digital side of this can vary widely based on the type of device/display used for viewing.

Yeah... here's some comments on my FB page that I thought are worth sharing:

Lee Keeler: Very good piece. My additional gripe with HIH as a series is that about one thing (plot-wise) happens per issue. I stumbled across an issue of "Wake the Devil" at a thrift store recently and it was INTENSE! I mean SLAM! BANG! BOOM! every 3 pages. Great, kinetic, dynamic. In HIH, Hellboy kind of wanders around somewhere and there's some pretty demonic city without action or whatever. Boring.
These days, guys like Mignola are just making single issues as a kind of afterthought for the trade paperbacks. It used to be the other way around, and made actually going to the comic shop every month to grab a specific series and actual treat (see Mike Allred's "FF").
So, YES, this kinda boring comic isn't colored as brightly as it should be.

Jakob Westman The RGB colour space IS much bigger than the CMYK colour space that is used in print. But it sounds crazy to say that you have better control of the colours in digital comics.
In digital comics you have thousands of outputs, all of them with different settings, in print you have ONE output (the offset press). There might be small variations over a print run, but they'll definitely be more in sync over the edition than thousands of different computer screens and devices will ever be.
And when Jim says it prints darker or more muted on paper that's only when you don't have proper soft proof setups for your work flow. Something I'm sure Dave Stewart has. I also don't think Mignola, Allie and Stewart colour proof the comics on screen. I'm 100 % sure they do proofs on paper.
What looks better is subjective, but who knows what the "proper" palette is, maybe Stewart and Mignola prefer the muted colours and find the digital comics blaring, garrish and loud.
The thing about the bigger colour range on screen is true though...

[Scott C.]

For enjoying artwork, I much prefer print over digital but I've been struggling to figure out why.  Digital is a fine reading experience but I find that I don't get immersed in the artwork nearly as much as I do with print. With the backlighting and the overpowering intensity of modern coloring techniques, a lot of line work in digital comics feels like the line work of coloring books-- it's there to provide definition to the coloring.

The artwork in a printed book just feels more physical to me.  Not in the manner that it's something that I can hold and feel but in the fact that it a penciller and inker's work looks and feels much more substantial than it does on an iPad.  This is as much due to the sophistication of modern coloring where the colors are becoming so much more important to the final product that it's obscuring or even changing the linework.

After a brief love affair with digital comics, I find myself more and more enamored by print objects because I feel like I can appreciate them so much more and dive into the experience of a page (the words and the pictures) than I can with something that exists as a series of 0s and 1s on my device.