Really hoping to get to Leeds for some of Thought Bubble 2008, the premier UK event for sequential art, well, OK, that’s quite a grand title, but I love the way this site is put together and the way the styles of the artists all vie for your attention. This is a week when comics and technology have been getting some attention: Scott McLoud and his artwork for the new Google Chrome browser has been getting people talking, and then there’s the buzz around Apple iPhone comics, which is also brilliant. So a good time to be working in the business…
For me, there is no finer publisher of comics right now than Drawn and Quarterly. They make the business of finding great stories, great illustrations and turning them into viable, saleable comics look easy. Which of course it isn’t: there is lots of hard work behind the scenes, as they describe for their interns… everything from cleaning images to stuffing envelopes. Based in Canada, they somehow transcend borders too, which might be in part about the ubiquity of comics but partly their choice of language, use of colours, and layout of the site. The site editors, I think, have infused the site with a kind of touchable charm, the charm of an off-colour, slightly yellowing and yet infinitely precious hard bound book. It’s a site you want to cherish, with it’s combination of wide and expansive centre panel and then these densely packed borders and margins. It’s not that it slavishly replicates the format of a comic itself, but that it makes this a motif for the web. I am interested in what makes something ‘precious’ digitally, whether it’s a photo (obvious one that) or song, through to a game or other application that you somehow start to feel protective of, that by existing and influencing people, the world somehow becomes a better place. This morning, that’s how I feel about Drawn and Quartertly, it makes the web a better place…
