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There haven’t been many new developments in the “Future comics” category of late; that is comics that use animation, gifs, or other tablet- or web-based technology as a storytelling tool, beyond Madefire’s leading the category, and Boulet and Emily Carroll being the Eisenstein’s thus far. It seems like motion comics and the costs of developing platforms have sort of put this on the backburner…plus guided view and the like are now such a standard aspect of reading comics that they don’t elicit much comment.

When Damo Met Can by Zack Soto and Conor Willumsen isn’t a groundbreaker by any means, just a reminder that this is still pretty much wide open space.

The comic was commissioned by Red Bull Music Academy in Tokyo as part of a series edited by Marc Weidenbaum, formerly comics editor of Pulse Magazine and an editor at Tokyo Pop. According to the website:

[W]e’re celebrating one of Japan’s most beloved art forms: manga. Over the course of the next few weeks, we’ll be publishing animated music-related comics from Japanese and international artists that showcase a wide variety of styles, highlighting the impact that manga and comic artists have had on storytelling around the world.

Other comics in the series feature one about MF Doom by Gabe Soria and Dean Haspiel and one about DJ Krush by Haruhisa Nakata. It’s a nice little series that serves to remind us that comics’ horizons are still wide open.