Like many late 80s geek teenagers I was consumed by adult comics and graphic novels such as The Dark Knight Returns, V for Vendetta and Watchmen; many of which have been recently re-released as gorgeous hardcover ‘Absolute’ editions by DC’s Vertigo label.
I missed out on many of the long running series at Vertigo, with just a handful of compilation editions purchased over the last few years (I kinda grew outta comics…)
However, in the last few weeks Vertigo has begun to offer the first issue, of some of their seminal titles, as downloadable PDFs editions, including series such as Y: The Last Man,
Death (The High Cost Of Living) and
Saga Of The Swamp Thing.
Though some way from Scott McCloud‘s vision of ComicsML and digital publishing, a dumb, static PDF is good enough. I hope Vertigo are bolder and begin to offer full editions of their works; I can imagine an Amazon Kindle or OLPC XO loaded with a ton of remixable and quotable comics 🙂
Last night I read the thought provoking first issue of Y: The Last Man – Unmanned – on my
MacBook, wondering if what Kevin Kelly recently termed ‘generative values of embodiment‘ could yield a renaissance in comic publishing.
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