By Todd Allen

Mark Waid has been teasing his upcoming webcomics project(s) for a little while now.   The same stuff that got him involved with this digital Nova comic Marvel’s putting out in relation to Avengers Vs. X-Men. As of today, you can download a free sample of his upcoming format.

A bit of advice?  Save that PDF, don’t open it in the browser.  Once it’s downloaded, open it in Acrobat (i.e. the PDF viewer) and hit the spacebar to advance panels and balloons.  Waid describes this as a proof of concept piece.  I find it similar to what Alex deCampi has been doing with the Valentine webcomic (also free).

“Luther,” Waid’s digital comic (not to be confused with the Idris Elba BBC detective show) is character piece about a developmentally disabled man in a post-apocalyptic, zombie-plagued southern state.  Waid promises details of his formal projects on April 2nd.  Which is to say he’s probably afraid we won’t take him seriously if he announces them on April 1st.

1 COMMENT

  1. I’m really looking forward to this. I’m really impressed a heavyweight talent like Waid is putting his money where his mouth is.

  2. I’m not sure I’m convinced PDF is the future of digital comics format. It’s a really rudimentary format that doesn’t transition well as compared to the guided view format Comixology offers.

    I’m far more interested in the process Greg Rucka is undergoing with http://www.ineffableaether.com/ and some of the comments he’s made about how to transition that back to collected print format, where panels would be different sizes and interact with each other.

  3. @FotoCub I think it’s a proof of concept and PDF is a convenient way to distribute it client-free. I imagine the final product will be distributed through a platform which manages the comic in an optimized way on the different platforms.

  4. This approach to digital comics is indeed nothing new but this is a nice example. The challenge with digital comics will be to scale or adapt well to all screen sizes AND to paper. On “Luther” the comic itself: I liked it a lot.