The unfortunates: towards a history and definition of the motion comic

Abstract

Motion comics – despite being widely overlooked by the discipline of Comics Studies – are a formally diverse multimedia format. Straddling the line between limited animation and the comic book, the diversity of motion comics have allowed them both to elude general definitions and to evolve into another new media format: the motion book. This article argues against the disciplinary prejudice that has defined this maligned format over the past decade in order to better grasp both the industrial overlap between the American comic book and film industries and the developmental processes of new media. Moreover, this article begins to explore how tablets and e-readers are remediating and re-inventing the comic in 2014.

Keywords:

• animation
• comics
• comics studies
• formalism
• limited animation
• motion books
• motion comics

Acknowledgements

Special thanks to Nicole Alvarado, Michelle Bumatay, Scott Bukatman, Daniel Burwen, John Caldwell, Michael Clarke, Philippe Gauthier, Henry Jenkins, Doug Julien, Christian Keathley, Derek Kompare, Geoff Long, Denise Mann, Scott McCloud, Misha Mihailova, Ben Sampson, Jeff Shuter, Mark Waid, my classmates at UCLA, my colleagues at TAMUT, and the anonymous peer reviewers of the Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics.

Notes

1. Bukatman’s essay was published in 2002 and his slippery terminology is the result of writing about a subject that is in its historical infancy. My intention is not to criticise his work, but to add to his discussion from another temporal vantage point. This said, I refer to his ‘online comics’ as motion comics from this point on in order to avoid confusion.

2. I would direct the curious reader to the article ‘Sketching under the influence?: Winsor McCay and the question of aesthetic convergence between comics and film’ (Morton 2010) for a detailed review of literature.

3. I am deliberately differentiating, like many Comics scholars, between single-panel comics like The Family Circus (1960–present) and The Far Side (1980–1995) and the successive panel structure of comic strips, comic books and graphic novels.

4. I would add that other factors – such as vibration – could also be considered in further establishing this taxonomy. Owing to the modest scope of this brief article and number of texts analysed here, my interest is in establishing a preliminary set of attributes. I look forward to the amendments that additional analysis by my fellow scholars will bring.

5. Multiframe motion – in terms of the motion comics described here – differs from the ‘Guided View’ technology offered by Comixology’s reader application insofar as the former is not controlled by the reader/viewer. The temporality of the text, as Bukatman (2002, 141) notes with regard to the difference between comics and animation, is determined by the creator.

6. Sadly, the text is no longer accessible on account of software incompatibility between version 2.5 of the McSweeney’s application and the iPad’s iOS 7.1.1. Thus, the majority of my brief analysis has been completed from memory, brief video clips and articles that describe the text.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Drew Morton

Drew Morton is an Assistant Professor of Mass Communication at Texas A&M University–Texarkana. He the co-editor and co-founder of [in]Transition: Journal of Videographic Film and Moving Image Studies, the first peer-reviewed academic journal focused on the visual essay and all of its forms (co-presented by MediaCommons and Cinema Journal). The journal recently won an award of distinction in the Anne Friedberg Innovative Scholarship competition held annually by the Society of Cinema and Media Studies. His publications have appeared in Animation: An Interdisciplinary Journal, Flow, Mediascape, Press Play, Senses of Cinema, Studies in Comics and a range of academic anthologies. At present, he is completing a manuscript on the overlap between American blockbuster cinema and comic book style.