The Outhouse - The Greatest Comic Book Forum

[Stephen Day]

Sir Hipsterhad Left Eye Lopes'd stately Wayne Manor!

That certainly is an interesting take on it.

[S.F. Jude Terror]

Yeah. Waid says in the blog post accompanying Cthulu Calls: "THIS is what gets me charged. THIS is why Thrillbent exists. To show what digital comics can do and to pass along to others what we learn as we go." If this is meant to show what digital comics can do, then I think it fails at its primary purpose.

But with all this criticism, I don't want to sound too harsh either. I appreciate Waid's mission here and I think he will learn and improve this process as it goes. I hope that he gets criticism like we've posted in this thread (as I doubt he'll read this - and if he does we'll all be eating through straws for the rest of our lives) and is able to use it to improve, because I do believe that the industry needs people like him who are willing to put their name behind products that try to be innovative in the digital world.

I just read Cthulu Calls on my macbook screen, and I think this is a definite improvement. For one thing, on the laptop screen, you can get the entire image on the screen at once and so you don't need to scroll around to see the whole image and read it. This allows the technique of altering small parts of the panels and adding and subtracting elements to function much more naturally. In action like that, it is much more impressive (and I also think it's used more effectively here than it was in Insufferable, perhaps because it is used more).

I do notice what you called incentivized clicking, which detracted from the experience on Insufferable because you're likely to miss stuff because you're clicking through it too fast. Here, it's not perfect by any means, but a little better because the "scene" will stay on one panel for a while, and clicking might change a character's face or change the speech bubbles, I think it's better because you're able to take in the art on one panel for the entire time you're clicking through that panel's transitions. I think creators who are really willing to experiment with that idea could do something cool with it, so I can see an inkling of the potential of this design, but if it's done just for the sake of proving you can do it without adding anything, it does nothing for me, and this has a long way to go before someone is using it effectively.

It's like synthesizers, you had to get through a good two decades of shitty Yes albums before people learned how to use the things.

So it's used better, but I also just realized that I have absolutely no idea what the story is about. I read the whole thing, but completely, subconsciously, ignored the story. So I just read it again and had to will myself to pay attention to it - and then I realized my lack of comprehension may have been because it was a four panel webcomic joke drawn out to 60 frames of "Thrillbent," so I had an incentive to click to receive the reward of new frames, but no incentive to pay attention to what I was seeing because the story was uninteresting. So you need both to work.

It still needs a fucking fullscreen mode, on the laptop and on devices. For fucks sake, it's 2012.

[S.F. Jude Terror]

Cthulu Calls is supposedly an unfinished product, "storyboards" as Waid calls it.

[Eli Katz]

Marshall McLuhan would say it's the more important thing to consider, and that the content of the medium is a "juicy piece of meat carried by the burglar to distract the watchdog of the mind," but that by focusing on that we miss the more important implications of new technology on media and the way it drives cultural and social changes.

"I heard what you were saying! You know nothing of my work! You mean my whole fallacy is wrong. How you got to teach a course in anything is totally amazing!"

[guitarsmashley]

"I heard what you were saying! You know nothing of my work! You mean my whole fallacy is wrong. How you got to teach a course in anything is totally amazing!"

will you run away with me and eat steaks?

[Eli Katz]

will you run away with me and eat steaks?

Anytime.

[guitarsmashley]

Anytime.

whoa. I thought Mr. Vegetarian was going to puss out on me but then you went and had to be perfect. Will you also drink scotch and smoke an occasional opium bud?

[Victorian Squid]

I think I hear Pearl Jam cover songs in the background, this is getting very romantic!

[S.F. Jude Terror]

"I don't always smoke opium and eat red meat, but when I do, it's in the company of a gay jew."

-Most interesting man in the world.

[Eli Katz]

"I don't always smoke opium and eat red meat, but when I do, it's in the company of a gay jew."

-Most interesting man in the world.

Indeed!

[guitarsmashley]

"I don't always smoke opium and eat red meat, but when I do, it's in the company of a gay jew."

-Most interesting man in the world.

And I thought you would be the most understanding about chasing the dragon.

[******]

For what it's worth, I think comiXology's reader does a good job, I just don't like their rent a license to view the content model.

I hate their forced panel transitions. I got used to it eventually after reading a few comics on my phone but it completely ruins the page composition.

[******]

Gah, why do I not take the time to do this when I have actual time?

Story wise, I dig Insufferable. Is it derivative? Welcome to superhero comics. For getting little snippets each week it's done a good job of introducing the characters and leaving you on a mini-cliffhanger to keep you coming back. This is vintage Mark Waid and I actually think it's kind of clever to push a superhero property through Thrillbent first. That's who Waid's core readership is and it seems like they would be much more likely to try out this than had it been from a different genre.

I don't really get the incentivized clicks argument. Does that make Warren Ellis deconstructions from the late 90s incentivized page turns? Certainly it doesn't always work, but when it does like in the 6th episode with happy/sad Gallahad when he gets home it adds a nice touch that would have wasted space in a traditional comic. I don't think this is how we'll see all digital comics going forward, but it is a baby step.

As already talked about in the thread, Thrillbent has a ways to go with their content delivery system. Reading it on the website on a desktop or laptop works fine, but take Insufferable out of that environment and it's a hassle. Maybe it works great on an iPad, but it's somewhat shortsighted to limit your audience to one device when the whole point is to be able to distribute your work to a broader audience.

Story: 8
Art: 8
Format/Delivery: 4
Overall: 6.66

[******]

Also, I meant to add that I completely agree with Stephen and Eli that the incentivized clicks totally add drama in a way that paper comics can only do in page turns which limits it's use and effectiveness, especially in corporate comics with advertising where editors aren't always paying attention.

[bkthomson]

Insufferable Chapters 1 – 6
Writer: Mark Waid
Artist Peter Krause

The team behind Boom! Comics Irredeemable return in ThrillBent Web Comic Insufferable. If you are familiar with Mark Waid Irredeemable and Incorruptible you would think this book takes place in that universe there is hardly any transition of style, color or tone in the book.

With the first chapter Mark does a wonderful job introducing the key characters Galahad and Nocturnus and puts a nice spin on the sidekick breaking away from his partner and the their relationship thereafter. Note: it is not all rosy like Batman and Robin/Nightwing was played out in DC Comics. The second and third lays out more of the history between Galahad and Nocturnes how their lives are so much different no they are no longer a team as well as how the sidekick son views his partner and father with some wonderful emotional moments all in a few short pages. In what you think is going to be the story about family and partnership the fourth chapter throws a curve ball that I did not see coming adding a very compelling mystical element into the lives of these two heroes a message to father and son from their deceased wife and mother. The fifth chapter continues to show the differences between the two heroes how Nocturnes takes the more scientific approach to the message where as Galahad see it more of a sign that his mother is alive and self-promotes his mission to finding her alive. Where the sixth chapter brings the two heroes together to discuss the message and why involving the public is never as good of an idea as one would think.

If you liked Mark Waid’s writing on Irredeemable and Incorruptible then you will enjoy Insufferable. His story is unique and it has some nice moments and plenty of character development that no one seems to be a throw away for the sake of the story. Without question you’d think you were reading Waid’s Boom! titles than his own web comic there is a seamless transition in the storytelling. Peter Krause reminds me a lot of Michael Gaydos and Sean Phillips dark and moody pencils and just the right touch of emotion in the character faces to propel the story to something great.

Mark Waid and Peter Krause have a nice little web comic that I looked forward to visiting Thrillbent.com each week to read the continuing chapters of Insufferable.


Score 9/10