‘Manga’ Publishers See Mobiles As The Future

Mobile MangaJapanese publishers of manga are eagerly embracing the mobile world as they see their paper-based business shrink, due to people spending more money on mobile phones. “Awano said only about 10 percent to 20 percent of handsets currently in use are equipped to display cartoon strips fully, and he expects readership to increase sharply as more people switch to the latest models. He also said the company plans to expand its manga lineup for women.”
A lot of the comics are being reprinted straight from magazines or even republished from old manga. “Awano explained there are basically two ways to display cartoon strips on cell phones — page scroll and picture card…For page scroll, users follow the original print layout by scrolling the display horizontally and vertically. For picture cards, each frame is made to fit the handset display, so readers can move to the next frame by clicking a button.”
While this works fine for the cartoon-strip style of telling a story comics have changed a lot. It’s not just a case of different-sized boxes, the best comic artists have action leaving the box, integrating the scene between multiple boxes and so on…things that simply don’t transcribe to the mobile phone.
I think if mobile comics are going to really take off they need to be created especially for mobile and make use of the capabilities of mobiles. Things like interacting with the comic, such as being able to follow different characters throughout the story. (via MobHappy)
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