Scott McCloud illustrates (Ha Ha!) an insightful picture of digital technologies and the future of comics in his article Reinventing Comics. The convergence of print into the digital realm (or repurposed print, as McCloud refers to it) isn’t something new. Walter Ong had written a whole book about the transformation of text in Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (1982). In this book Ong wrote about the same kind of convergence that McCloud refers to. What was once limited to the oral later adapted to the written which was later adapted to the digital. It is and will always be a progression and evolution of what was once only oral communication. McCloud wrote “…the ultimate goal for comics – as far as any art form – will be to find a durable mutation that will continue to survive and thrive well into the new century.” (207) This could not be more true. As with any art form, comics can be perceived as art in the form of visual literacy. The juxtaposition of text with images can have powerful implications in meaning (as we have studied by reading Birdsell and Groarke) but even more so in the digital realm. However there is still a fine line in being walked between print and hypertext. Comics introduction and adaptation into the digital medium offers fantastic enhancements. The inclusion of sound, motion and interactivity make the digital comic something more that what previously existed in print. The fine line, as McCloud pointed out, relies on the ability to keep the comic from morphing into a medium such as film, or from losing its identity in the face of the hypertext itself. Will digital technology kill the comic? I would venture to guess that no, it won’t. Again, it’s about adaptation. As with any art form that has entered the digital pool it either needs to adapt and find a way to carve a unique niche for itself or it will be lost, killed, or replaced as a form of art.
Likewise the monitor is a window or better yet a doorway that frees us from the confines of the paper and print. McCloud discusses how this doorway opens up the world (of comics) giving us room to stretch our limbs. Even more than this, the monitor opens doors. It is simply a threshold to the infinite space that is cyberspace and all that it encompasses: information, countless and countless doorways to information. Is there a better metaphor for the monitor than this? Perhaps, but I like to think that a window or a doorway is simple enough in describing what the monitor represents to us.
Finally, which one text/link/pdf would I save from demise? This is a hard question to answer because there is so much out in the world in analog and digital form that has meaning to me. Before the computer and cyberspace I would probably have to say the Bible, not because I’m a Bible thumper or anything like that, but because it is the one book that brings immense hope and comfort to millions of souls across the planet (not to mention it’s the most widely translated and printed text in existence). Whether one considers themselves a Christian or not, in the bleakest of times it perhaps contains something that could speak to almost anyone. I think I’d also want to save my copy of the Joy of Cooking as well, because I like to read cookbooks and it’s the mother of them all!
Works Cited:
McCloud, Scott. Reinventing Comics. New York: Perennial, 2001. 199-241. Print.
