The R Stands for Hope

While I was disappointed that the second episode of Batman 66 doesn’t use any digital storytelling tricks, the story by Jeff Parker is fine. Robin plays a crucial role, rightly embodying the “idealism of youth” and receiving praise from Batman at the end.

Ty Templeton drew the Boy Wonder with a classic design, green gloves and bare legs, even while climbing on an iceberg. In contrast, Jonathan Case’s pictures in the first issue showed pale tights and darker, almost black gloves, as Burt Ward often wore on the television show.

Guided View Gone

I was disappointed to find that the second episode of the Batman 66 comic (digital issues #4-5, paper issue #2) does not have the digital tricks of the first.

As I described back here, the first story combined ComiXology’s “guided view” method of sliding from one panel to another with the sequences of similar panels as pioneered by Thrillbent to create a digital comic that has almost 300 “page turns,” or new elements, appearing over the course of the story.

Jonathan Case drew extra art to take advantage of that format so that readers could, for example, see three sequential pictures of Batman shinnying up a rope to the Riddler’s biplane. A single panel in the printed version served as up to half a dozen in the digital format, which the publisher modestly labeled “DC2.”

In contrast, the second story has fewer than fifty page turns, each simply a shift to the next half-page of the printed comic. (Each digital page is the top or bottom half of one page in the printed version.)

Ever alert for conspiracy theories, the Bleeding Cool website suggested that the reason for the change was a patent dispute. ComiXology’s “guided view” might infringe on patents from 2006-2012 owned by Disney, now owner of Marvel Comics.

However, commenter Hsielke at reported a more mundane explanation:

I contacted comixology and found out that not until chapter 10 will [Batman 66] be DC2 again. I also saw in an interview with the writer that they will not be doing all in DC2 because if they did they would not be able to hit their deadlines.

Which makes sense: drawing more pictures takes more time. Learning the new storytelling tricks takes more time. But I think it will be time well spent.

The Batman ’66 Comic: Retro on the Digital Edge

I wasn’t a big fan of the 1960s Batman television show while growing up. I caught a few episodes, and, though I didn’t recognize the deliberate camp, I caught enough to sense that someone might be having a laugh at my expense.

So my response to the new Batman 66 comic isn’t colored by nostalgia—not by nostalgia for Adam West, that is. On the other hand, I can’t deny liking the return of straightforward heroes v. villain action, bright colors, and clear action from artist Jonathan Case. Writer Jeff Parker’s recreation of the Dynamic Duo’s earnest dialogue is just fine as well.

I recommend reading this comic in its digital form. There are some awkward signs that it’s been prepared for both digital and print publication (word balloons in different sizes, panels that look overly enlarged). But the digital version from ComiXology offers a lot that the print version won’t.

I previously wrote about the digital techniques that DC was touting, asking whether they’d amount to anything more than sound effects over the artwork or what Thrillbent was already doing. They do.

Yes, there are big sound effects popping up over the artwork. Yes, like Thrillbent’s stories Batman 66 adds balloons to panels, adds panels to pages, recolors art, or changes backgrounds while leaving other parts of the screen intact—something print comics can’t do. But the ComiXology platform also lets Batman 66 slide from one panel to the next.

And this story really milks those digital tricks. The first installment of Batman 66 is 95 screens. Some of those screens have multiple panels, some the same panel you just saw with a new detail. But that’s over 90 times something new has popped up in front of your eyes. And Parker’s story is just halfway done. [CORRECTION: Actually just one-third done.]

Even with those new digital tricks, however, the comic looks old-fashioned—on purpose. Case told the New York Post: “I wanted it to scream ‘retro’, so I'm doing some things to emulate old comics (mis-registration, screen tones, and punchy colors).” You can see some of those techniques, looking like mistakes, in his portrait of Robin above.

As a sign of Case’s attention to detail, look at Robin’s legs. While Mike and Laura Allred’s cover for the print edition (not part of the first digital bundle) colors Robin’s legs the same pink as his bare arms, Case shows him in the pallid tights that Burt Ward wore.