landscape or portrait
What is your ideal comics format without regard for commercial concerns or production. You don't have to worry about shelving or monitor resolution, only art. Landscape or portrait? 2x3 or 3x4? (or something else). Serial or done-in-one? Scroll or codex?
Comments
After years, yeeeears of being a "screw singles, bleeh!" OGN/webcomics snob, I'm finding on a recent project that I am absolutely in love with writing self-containedish 16 pagers.
For the most part I prefer the done-in-one approach to storytelling. (As a reader I hate serials. They're OK for TV, because who has time/endurance to watch 100 hours of Babylon 5 in a row, but don't ask me to spread 250 pages of comics across a year. Ongoing episodic shows (e.g. Star Trek, Seinfeld), alright, but ongoing serials... no fucking thanks.) As a writer, the only exceptions to this are episodic stories like the Tales – where the plot doesn't need to carry thru from one to the next – and one graphic novel that I began writing years ago with the idea of it being a 12-issue mini-series. I like the every-24-pages issue breaks that I mapped out for it, and the idea of breaking it into 12 parts has some thematic appeal (the hero is famous for having 12 sidekicks)... but I'd be just as happy to have them as simple chapter breaks instead.
I argued against this, since 1) I don't want to write that way, and 2) I don't know that page orientation is trending the way he thinks it is. If you want to do portrait, do that. If you want to do landscape (Mike Norton did this very successfully with Battle Pug, and got it published landscape) then do that.
My recommendation would be to keep it consistent, especially across media. If you post in portrait, then print in portrait - and vise versa.
That said, there's definitely a sweet spot in terms of how much scrolling is worth it, and I don't hate the thing some folks do, where they've got a portrait page that they cut in half horizontally, and post as two smaller landscape joints.
Ia! Ia! Cthulhu Fhtagn!
Anyway, I prefer portrait both as a writer and as a reader. While it's possible to vary a landscape layout, it only makes sense when the page is big enough. I've done some experimenting in that direction, and I still don't know how to present that comic properly. Breaking down a page into halves for the online presentation doesn't make sense to me for two reasons:
1) You're blocking yourself from good layout opportunities which will lead to a staler print layout;
2) You'll end up with only half a page's worth of content for every update.
As for the aspect ratio - they both have advantages and disadvantages. 2/3 sure looks better, but 3/4 leaves more room to do stuff with. The European format is somewhere in-between, 1/1.41, and while it does look a little plump after reading a lot of US comic books, it's not that bad.
As a reader, I like the way a portrait-format book handles. Whereas, at least for paperbacks, landsapes can feel kinda unstable. I can hold a portrait book in one hand. Landscapes will wobble out of sight on one side or the other. Online, I don't care either way. On a tablet, I can just turn the tablet, and on the desktop, I can scroll. Just make sure I don't have to scroll in more than one direction and that I don't have to scroll up again to turn the page.
Oh, and: I hate reading a story that doesn't have an ending. I've noticed that the old habit of writing for the trade has grown into
a tendency to write for the omnibus, and I keep feeling cheated. At least resolve a sub-plot within the chapter you're presenting. Gimme some resolution.
I don't like that idea, though. It fusses with pacing, and what if I wanted a taller vertical image or a full page splash panel?
That said, I think it works better with a European/magazine page than a thinner US page, both in terms of screen matching and printed page real estate.