Dark Horse eComics
By John Evans
Publisher Dark Horse Comics is using Flash to deliver online episodes
of comic books and comic strips.
It's a widely held notion that the Internet and digital technology
will create opportunities for new types of media, new expressions
of creativity the likes of which human civilization has never before
seen. The one problem with this hypothesis is that, as these new media
are totally new, no one has quite figured out what they are yet.
Dark Horse Comics has approached this problem in a kind of incremental
fashion. The eComics section of Dark Horse's website contains a number
of comic books and strips made into small Flash programs. The comics
featured include established favorites like Ghost, Usagi Yojimbo and
Buffy the Vampire Slayer, as well as others like A Bag of Oranges.
The programs themselves are fairly simple; usually there are "Next
Panel" and "Previous Panel" buttons to move through
the strips, that perform the expected functions. Each "issue"
or "episode" consists of half a dozen panels, which in all
would make up two or three pages of an actual comic book. Minor sound
effects are played as the strips move on and off-screen. There are
also occasionally small animations scattered through the strips; the
Buffy the Vampire Slayer issue I read featured animated glowing vampire
eyes and a fading transparent ghost. Some of the comics aren't actually
"comics", being instead interactive sketch books. Each program
also features links to other parts of the Dark Horse website.
The question remains, is the site successful? As I mentioned, each
Flash program is equivalent to just a couple of comic pages, but they
only take a minute or so to download, even with a modem. And they're
free, of course, although ads are prominently displayed at the end
of of each program. In fact, the programs themselves could be considered
advertisements for the comics that inspired them, and for Dark Horse
itself. And all the programs and artwork are of high quality; anyone
could get an afternoon's amusement from looking through the programs
fan of Dark Horse or not. In my opinion, Dark Horse has found a way
to use technology to add something interesting to their website, expand
their content offerings and attract surfers to their site. And that
should be a success by any measure.